18 JULY 1840, Page 10

MINISTERIAL REBUKE OF OXFORD'S JURY.

TIIERE is nothing so provoking as to discover that there has been no call for heroism after we have worked ourselves up into a mood heroic and assumed a heroic attitude. We hear in fitncy the by- standers tittering, where we expected their admiration. We are conscious of the burlesque in our position. Wise men sneak out of such a serape as quietly and with as much apparent uncon- sciousness as they can : lbois grow waspish, and by their awkward show of soreness elicit redoubled peals of laughter. Some of our amiable Ministerial advocates are at present enacting a three of this kind with all the grave earnestness of LISTON. The report that the Queen had been shot at excited a universal and loudly, expressed sense of indignation and sympathy. The reception of the royal pair, on their next appearance in public after that event, told more eloquently than words what feelings the idea of assassination awakens in the heart of the British public. The addresses which flowed in from every quarter were but one prolonged utterance of the universal feeling. But a certain class of Ministerialists were not contented with this. With the imita- tive vanity of lackeys, they wished to appropriate a shred or rem- nant of the interest attaching to their mistress to themselves. With instinctive meanness and selfishness, they sought to work upon the generous sentiment of the public so as to serve their own ends. First came insinuations that OXFORD and his accomplices (if any) might have been instigated by the coarse and silly decla- mation of' some not over-wise adherents of the opposite party. Then came scarcely equivocal hints that Oxman was the mere tool of a conspiracy in the interest of the King of HANOVER. And in proportion as an opinion began to gain ground that the firing was the senseless act of an ill-regulated mind, and that.. the Queen had really been in no danger, did their vehement asseverations, that there was a traitorous plot, increase in strength and loudness. It placed them in a favourable point of' view with their Royal Mis- tress and the public, to have it believed that there was a plot ; it insured their continuance in office to have it believed there was a plot ; so right or wrong a plot there must be.

As far as searching scrutiny, and the verdict of an honest Jury can settle such a question, it has been settled, that there was no treasonable conspiracy tesainst the Queen, and that it is highly pro- bable her life never was in danger. And these wise men, instead of quietly relinquishing their heroics and changing the subject of' con- versation, insist upon making themselves more ridiculous by abusing in good round terms the Jury and all who attempt to open their eyes. One Sunday paper, which has been most resolute in its determi- nation to have balls in the pistols, wisely resolved to think twice before it spoke, and reserved till next week its comment on the verdict ; muttering at the same time, that the verdict in its ori- ginal shape was " a palpable absurdity." But another played off such a set of antics in its disappointment, as no created being but Mr. Punch ever before enacted. It lamented that the defence of her Majesty's most precious life should have been placed in the hands of " an Old Bailey jury." It insisted that " a Special Jury "— by which, it candidly stated, was meant a jury that "would have found a different verdict "—ought to have been impanelled on the occa- sion. It was beyond measure indignant at the Jury for having " by their verdict deprived her Majesty of the luxury of mercy." This ineffitbly vulgar sycophant would have (as the practice of the old Scotch criminal courts had) an " assize of error" for the purpose of convicting and punishing all jurors who dared to return a verdict of acquittal when the Crown was pro- secutor, and would have juries find men guilty solely to afford Kings and Queens the luxury of remitting their sentence. We hope we have as much loyalty as a quiet citizen requires : we might without any very serious misgiving see such a silly compli- ment paid to the present occupant of the throne ; but we must be allowed to remark that we have read of monarchs to whom we should no more think of intrusting a man's life in this way, than we should ourselves think of imitating the showman who stuck his head into the lion's month. For the pranks of the worthies of whom we have been speaking we entertain that sort of contemp- tuous tolerance which most people feel towards men under an access of sudden anger. We cannot, however, extend the same forbear- ance to the Globe ; which after one—two—three nights' sleep upon the matter, gravely took up the threadbare insinuations about Rom( and BRADSUAW, and deliberately asserted, that in the first verdict of the Jury, "it does not appear that they had directed their attention to that fact rwkether there were balls in the pis- tols] as being a material ingredient in the crime alleged in thes dictment ; " and that in their second " they established the fa the pistols being loaded with ball : " the first verdict contaients," • these words—" but whether they were loaded with bullets or

has not been satisfactorily proved; " and the second express' '

ing

opinion whatever as to the presence or absence of bullets.

But for these vagaries of the Ministerial press, we should basil, have been tempted to revert to a subject respecting which so repeatedly intimated our opinion that fimr more ado was thad! about it than it deserved. As time matter stands, however, it ma', not be altogether a waste of time to spend a few words upoeig form in which the Jury returned their verdict, and the evidek' upon which it rests. The questions of' fact submitted to the Jury were three,-fir did the prisoner on a certain day, at a certain place, level the' pistols successively at the Queen, and discharge them, or sis not ? second, were these pistols loaded with ball, or were the, not ? third, was the prisoner at the time he fired insane, or wasile in his sound mind? The first and second questions were pro, pounded by the counsel for the prosecution, the third was raised by the counsel for the prisoner. The delivery of the Jury NI, in these words—" We find that the prisoner Edward Oxford SS. charged the contents of two pistols at time Queen ; but wheelie, they were loaded with bullets or not, has not been satisfactorils proved ; be being at the time insane." In substance, this verths contains a " finding" upon each of' the three questions. It declare; that the prisoner discharged the pistols at the Queen at the fiat and place specified ; it declares that there is not sufficient evidence to warrant the conclusion that the pistols were loaded with ballot declares that the prisoner was insane at the time of firing. In Scot. land, such a verdict might have been received as tantamount to a res diet of " Not proven," in so far as " firing with intent to kill" mes charged. The English law does not warrant time Judges to receive the "Not proven " of the Scottish Courts : there must be a dis tinct finding of " Guilty " or " Not guilty." The Court therefore could not receive the verdict in the form in which it was originally tendered. The Jury were sent back to remodel it ; and they re. turned with a general finding of " Guilty, being at the time in. sane ;" which the Court interpreted into a verdict of acquittal on the ground of insanity. In all this there is nothing to the din. paragement of the Jury's intellect. They were not lawyers—they were not an fait of' the verbal niceties required (and properly re- quircd) by a court of law. But they returned in the first instance a verdict perfectly intelligible—only to be challenged if contrary to evidence ; and in the second instance they adhered to their first finding as far as was necessary to warrant the same mode of dealing with the prisoner pointed out by their original verdict—the saving of his life, but detaining hint in custody as a person whom it would be unsafe to allow to go at large. The question still remains, however, How far is this verdict borne out by the evidence ? That the prisoner levelled and fired the pistols as stated in the indictment, is admitted by all. The question of the presence of bullets is in a very different position, Two gentlemen swore that certain marks on the wall must have been made by the bullets; two witnesses swore to a whizzing sound which accompanied or succeeded the report of the pistol. A soldier swore that the marks on the wall scented to have been made by a stick; and another witness swore that time second pistol was pointed in a direction which rendered it impossible that the bullet could have hit the wall. The counsel on both sides and the Court ex- pressly concurred in opinion that the balls (if balls there were) must have gone over the wall. There remains, therefore, nothing but the whizzing sound, sworn to by two witnesses, who do not appear ever to have heard pistols fired with ball in them—who might have heard the sound of a hard wadding, or the ringing in their own startled ears, for they do not positively affirm that the sound was produced by a ball or balls. Such evidence, if unsup- ported by corroborative circumstantial evidence, certainly warrants an expression of scepticism as to whether there were balls in the pistols—at the least. No ODE saw OXFORD load the pistols. The inference drawn by the Ministerial " ball-men " from Oxsoan's practising at a target, that he was learning how to shoot the Queen, rests upon an assumption that he had long entertained malice towards her 'Alajesty ; of which no proof has been adduced. or semblance of reason to suppose. Ile fired at the target with ball : but no one was ever hurt by his favourite amusement of tiring in the back-yard and out of windows to frighten old women. The only corroboration, therefore, of the assertion that there were balls in the pistols, must be drawn front what appears to have been the state of his mind at the time : and he would be rather a bold logi- cian who would hang a man on the strength of such an inference. There reinains to be considered the state of OXFORD'S mind. The same eagerness to prove that they were in the right, which made two of the witnesses for the prosecution so confident that the marks on the wall were produced by bullets, seems to have influ- enced more than one of the witnesses to the unsoundness of Ox- FORD'S intellect. We must make allowance for this tendency : we must take the facts alone which are sworn to, sifted from the infer- ences which are mixed up with them in the guise of additional facts. Keeping this maxim in view, it is established—first, by the concurrent testimony of almost every witness for the defence, that from childhood to a very recent period, OXFORD had been subject to involuntary fits of laughing and crying, beginning and ceasing suddenly without any ostensible cause, and which there were no means of inducing or enabling him to control; second, by the tes- timony of his mother and the medical man who has attended the family for two years, that he was first retired and then savage when any persons forced themselves or were forced upon his notice ; third, by the testimony of his mother, his aunt, and Corporal Dar, that he took a childish and irrational pleasure in annoy- ;iv people ; fourth, that although arrived at the age of eighteen, his only associate was a boy much younger than himself, and his amusements were childish—wasting in the tiring of pistols the little money he had to support him while out of place ; fifth, that his solitary amusements were reading marvellous adventures, wishing that he were in the position of the heroes of the Minerva Press romances be read, devising rules, carrying on the correspond- ence and collecting the accoutrements of an imaginary and aim- less association, modelled upon what he may have read of in that class of works ; sixth that his sense of right and wrong was exces- sively dull and feeble. We have full details of his life and con- duct from his cradle down to the time of his committing the act for which he was brought to trial. These details are vouched for by the concurrent testimony of many witnesses. They all point to one self-consistent notion of his character—and that is, arrived at the years at which sane minds assume a manly tone, he is still a child in mind and habits. Ile can read, be can write after a fashion, he can go bunglingly. through the routine duty of a menial occupation ; but, although eighteen years of age, his pursuits, his pleasures, his apprehensions, are those of a child. A listless sense of wonder, a rude propensity to imitate such outward actions as have a theatrical effect, the idiot's inclination to take pleasure in teasing others, are his predominating characteristics. Too shy to impart his thoughts, except to a limited extent to a boy who looked up to him as his senior, he seems to have brooded over them to a degree that might have unsettled a stronger mind. A childish wish to have himself stared at, prompting to action a mind incapable of measuring what was great and little, unsusceptible of the impres- sion of responsibility, is the only assignable motive to the act which put his own if not the Queen's life in jeopardy. He is a living parody upon Don Quixote. To punish a being of so palpably imbecile and perverted a mind, was out of the question : to say that the balance of' probability inclines, after a review of his character, one way or other on the question " balls or no balls ?" is impossible. To tie him up as we do dogs which have bitten or attempted to bite some one, until we can decide with certainty whether they are dangerous or not, is our only resource. This is clearly the line of conduct which the Jury contemplated as the necessary consequence of their verdict, both in its original and amended form ; and in arriving at the conclusion which theydid, they showed their ability to weigh and appreciate the evidence laid before them.

The only inferences we feel inclined to draw at present from this long retrospect are—first, that a very in la-niti s •

0 cant agency may at times produce it very great commotion; second, that the national temper of Britain is, as it always has been, hostile to the base practice of assassination ; third, that the dominant thetion having, with their usual clumsiness, bad taste, and selfishness, sought to abuse a generous emotion for their own purposes, are deeper in the mire than ever.