Swansea and Glamorgan Herald, and South Wales Free Press. — 1865-01-11 (Swansea, West Glamorgan, Wales)

CONFEDERATE RAIDERS AND CANADIAN  JUDGES.  (Fronk the Times)  We are now in possession of those papers from which mankind must form their judgment as to the true nature and bearing of those transactions in Canada which have ter greatly irritated the press and the people of the tnit,el State.. For once we feel very much inclined to sympathize with them in the first outburst of their indignation. The outrage which had been inflicted open them by persons taking their departure from the neutral territory of Canada was of the foulest description. It had nothing in it of the nature of war, but was really robbery and murder striving to shelter itself under that all-atoning name. The success of a hundred such outrsges as the St Alban's raid could not by any possibility Lave influenced in the slightest degree the result of the American Civil War. It is not by plundering banks I and murdering clerks that the destinies of great nations struggling for existence or independence are to be decided; and, for our part, we shall heartily rejoice if the perpetrators shall be at last given up, to be dealt with not as honourable enemies, but as criminals exposed to the just vengeance of offended law. Was it incumbent on the Judge to give such effect to an objection so highly technical and so easily remediable as to discharge six prisoners accused of such heavy offences, without even hearing what could be said in any case except one, and with the certainty that by so doing he was entirely defeating the ends of justice Be took time to consider his decision on a point which he stated himself to be one of intricacy and nicety. Would he have done wrong if he had taken for the consideration of a question err knotty and so important a period long enough to obtain the signature of the Governor-General, and thus to have cured effectually this purely technical clip, if it should really have been found to exist? We are not impugning the integrity or the ability of the Judge' of whoee antecedents we know nothing, but we certainly think there wee some want of di-cretion in the precipitate and almost violent manner I in which he cancelled the whole proceeding, and probably enabled six great criminals to escape from the hands of justice. A. warrant has of course been signed by the Governor-General, but we fear that it is exceedingly unlikely that these prisoners will be recaptured in so vast, so thickly wooded, and an thinly peopled a cuntry as Canada, where there must be many Confederate refugees who would strain every nerve to facilitate heir mope. But we go a step further, and meintain that if the ;ridge had no alternative but to act in the way that he d,d, the authorities of Montreal ought to have taken upnn themselves the risk and the responsibility of detuning these prisoners, even without legal warrant, for the very brief period which would have been required to obtoin the requisite warrant signed by the GovernorGeneral. The question was one of great importance; en it might have depended the issues of petite and war, and any one refusing to allow the ends ofjustice and the very legitimate demands of • neighbouring nation to be defeated by a merely technical objection might reckon with the utmost confidence on obtaining a legislative ndemeiry I.r his conduct. We do not keow where the Goveruer-3-eseral was, but he probably was not beyond