The Sun. — 1845-05-26 (London, England)

KENYON— men who would be trampled upon in their turn if their chosen advocates should prevail, and who yet cringe to the hand that would bind stronger their fetters. What hope have they from the House of Lords ? Was there ever such an absurdity heard of as Dissenters trusting to support from the Puseyite Bishops of LONDON and EXETER ? Yet such is the fact. They turn with contempt from the RUSSELLS, the Howicxs, and the MACAULAYS, leaders of a party to whom they owe so much, and trust to 'Nous and LAW, and the bench of Bishops. In the whole history of the country there is no record of such deliberate folly— such a manifest act of political and religious suicide. They have inflicted a blow on the cause of dissent, from which it will not recover for ages, and furnished proofs of weakness hailed with the most intense delight by their present faithful allies. "We have tried these Church destroyers," say the high Tories, " in a reformed House of Commons, representing every large town, where Dissenters abound ; they could muster only 34 members in a House consisting of 505 Members, or about 1 to 15, and with our aid the united party sustained the most re. markable defeat ever known, not even excepting the palmy days of the old rotten-borough system. We know their strength, and we shall profit by experience, when they apply for the abolition of Church rates, rebel against Church extension, and raise a second time their voices against our plan of national education. PEEL has deserted us, but he has divided the forces of our enemies, and division is the certain forerunner of defeat." These are truths, unwelcome truths we admit, but the Duke knows, if the Dissenters do not, that " there is no mistake, and there can be no mistake."  JOHN RUSSELL insisted that it is, if it can accomplish I mutations like these. Were some of the diversities pro. I, duced by the divisions on, and after, the third reading ! of the Maynooth Grant Bill less extravagant? Assuredly not. Now the moral we would have Hon. Members to collect from these is simply this—having made a beginning and broken the ice, as it were, in their accidental encounters with former political opponents, on certain common grounds of political cerement, influenced in the main, perhaps, rather by a sense of equity, than ou calculations of statesmanship, let them proceed to discover and to occupy the numerous other grounds on which they may meet the just advocates of the more matured opinions on great economic and social questions. It would be, doubtless, romantic to expect at any early period the advent of this sort of political perfectability ; but we may gravely hope that a few such electrifying shocks as the divisions on the Maynooth question may bring the more' intelligent representatives of the people— Whigs, Conservatives, and Radicals—to discover that there are neither so many nor so insurmountable organic discrepancies of political theories between them, as should necessarily prevent their coming to a better understanding on most of them. And since we give them credit for being equally animated by a sincere desire to advance and consolidate the welfare of this great empire, let us hope that, in proportion as the impression is more emphatically produced on them by occasional accidents of this kind, that it is very possible for them to travel in the same path for the same great and common end, they will acquire the determination to betake themselves to those paths without delay or mistrust. For if the counsels of all the great parties—the popular, the lowest, and the middle classes— the representatives of the trading, manufacturing, and landed interests of the empire be really excited, what human power can withstand her physical force, her naval greatness, or her political supremacy ?  When we very lately animadverted on the strange anomalies and deficiencies of our criminal law, and instanced the absurd inequality with which punishment was apportioned to offences coming under the cognisance of its jurisdiction (an inequality by reason of which fhei severest penalties are sometimes meted out for the most venial transgressions of a statute, having regard to certain acts in themselves indifferent—and the lightest are inflicted for crimes the most revolting to humanity, because of some, technical informalities in the indictment, or some error in the pleadings), we little imagined that we should so soon encounter an evidence of the physical existence of one of those unconvicted ruffians who now and then escape in the last crisis, as it were, of fate, the ignominious doom they have justly merited. It is undoubtedly a sound principle of humanity, and of justice as well as of law, to assume any man innocent, in the face of whatever evidence may have been brought forward to substantiate his guilt, uc.til a verdict of Guilty shall have been recorded against bias. At the same time there are facts and circumstances on which, though the cumulative and legal proof necessary to establish a conviction may be wanting, the impression of the public mind is clear and distinct that they are conclusive of the guilt of the accused. We mentioned the case of one " SHEENE," tried many years ago at the bar of the Old Bailey, for the murder of his infant child by cutting its head off. This ruffian escaped conviction at the time, solely by virtue of some worthless quibble as to the technical description in the indictment of himself or his victim—(for we really forget which). Whichever it was, he had been styled in the pleas of the Crown " THOMAS " for " JOHN," or " JOHN " for "