The Sun. — 1858-09-06 (London, England)

THE CORIVACKS. The just strictures of nearly the whole of the London press upon the recent disgraceful exhibition at Nenagh have found an echo in a respectable Roman Catholic journal. Honestly ashamed of the whole proceedings, the • 'Cork, .Reporter writes : " A meeting has been held at Nenagh, for which we are ashamed. The sentiments enunciated were violent, extreme, and unwarranted to the extent of being actionable. We do not at all mean to enter into a discussion of the trial,- which was managed in tho usual fashion. There was, as usual, a preliminary investigation before magistrates. A grand jury found the bills, A Crown prosecutor: ¶t13.9%  any earthly object, performed the case. A jury of 12 men found that the facts were proved. A judge, who had nothing to say to the finding of the facts; directed the law. A conviction being announced, he sentenced the prisoners, who had seven weeks to refer to the Court of Criminal Appeal if they had any cause of complaint. The_ mode of pressing their claims upon the reprieving prerogative of the Crown was open to them. Probably the ablest advocate of the bar in such cases, Mr. Rollestone, was retained, and pleaded for them. Now, a public meeting of some 10,000 of Tipperary men has been held to express sentiments of the rankest dissent from this result of an open trial. We regret to say that in that county where, even by the evidence adduced upon the trial, it was apparent that the murder of landlords was reduced to a faultless idiosyncrasy in popular belief, many priests sanctioned the assemblage, not alone with their presence, but with their spoken assent. Undoubtedly, paid assassins can be procured there to work the will of any per,,on murderously inclined. A long series of outrages can attest it, and one of the Crown witnesses avowed it. In the face of such incontestible truths we refrain from publishing what some of the speakers were not ashamed to advocate—the moral rectitude of taking the law into their own murderous hands. It is with deep regret that we advert to such a matter even incidentally, but it is impossible to pass that which has been so carefully emblazoned. We coincide with the expression of the Dublin Evening Mill, with which we seldom agree, that the Government should not pass over this case, but visit it with Punishment both exemplary and decisive, both in the case of the speakers and the chairman, who, holding an official position, still warranted with his presence the rabid abuse which was heaped upon the administration of criminal law in this country without a shadow of reason. The notion of placing blame at the door of the judge who tried the case when, if any objection could be raised, it could only be attributable to the learned counsel who was retained for the defence, is quite absurd. If Mr Justice Keogh were faulty in his rendering of the law the Court of Appeal was open, and he left abundant time that such correction might be availed of. If the jury were so depraved as to murder two men by a perjured verdict, yet the right of applying to the Lord-Lieutenant remained. It seems to us most unjust, unconscientious, and cruel that such an occasion should, be used to satisfy party feeling against a judge employed in a case where life or death was in the issue. As we have said, we turned to this subject with much and serious dislike, and we now leave it with a hope that such a lunatic exhibition of popular rancour will never again appear in Ireand."