TOPICS OF THE DAY.
GREAT STATE TRIAL.
Judges selected to conduct the Parnell Inquiry have decided to form a Court rather than a Commis- sion. That is, we think, the main conclusion which the public will draw from the preliminary proceedings on the 17th inst., and it is an entirely satisfactory one. There are many objections to the inquiry, which, whether neces- sary or not, overrides the ordinary law, dissociates con- viction from punishment, and establishes a precedent that, if party passion ever masters Englishmen—as it will do, if great social questions should divide them—may be employed with most disastrous effect. No one can fore- tell accurately what may follow the action of Parliament in suspending law in order that a special case may be specially investigated. It will, however, be some compen- sation for the great risk, perhaps even an adequate com- pensation, if the inquiry is a " hard " one, if the charges are made definite and the defence explicit, if legal rules are observed as to the reception of evidence, and if the whole proceedings are conducted as fairly and as resolutely as they would be if both the parties concerned were on trial for their lives. A great State Trial, rigidly conducted by a tribunal which will attend to nothing except proof and disproof, which cares nothing about the crowd outside (even if the crowd includes the House of Commons), and which will compel all—counsel, accusers, accused, and witnesses—to adhere to the principles accepted in legal procedure, may do good ; while an exceptional inquiry, unbound by rules, overwhelmed by doubtful evidence, and watched from the first with half-comprehension by the public, never could. The Judges, the counsel, the public, all under- stand thoroughly what a good criminal trial should be, what are the limitations of procedure, what evidence can be produced, what ought to be the kind of proof and dis- proof essential to a final condemnation or a full acquittal. Such a trial will satisfy the nation as nothing else could, and it is such a trial which the Judges selected with such pains are obviously determined to ensure. It was evident throughout the proceedings of Monday that, new as the circumstances were, confused as are the issues to be tried, heavy as are the possible results involved to all engaged, the Judges saw their way clearly to a definite line of pro- cedure, held all concerned in their hands, and would pursue their course to the truth, as desired by Parliament, regardless not only of persons, but of allegations of hardship, or fears of consequences to parties in the State. They intend to try the Parnellites on the prosecution of the Times just as if the trial were an ordinary one, as if the Parnellites were not a party, and the Times were not representing a mass of floating opinion. That attitude, the only just one, is also the one which will most attract the confidence of the country, a confidence invaluable in any Lind of procedure —it is confidence which is the justification of the jury system—but in this case indispensable, if a grand and novel State proceeding is to produce results at all to be weighed against its inherent evils. There could be no result to the inquiry so bad as a general impression that it had been weakly conducted, or even conducted in an unusual manner ; that it was an American trial, and not an English one ; and that everything at its close was as uncertain as at the beginning. We do not want a Beecher trial here. Then, indeed, the winds of partisan fury would be let loose, and the fissure between the parties, already too deep, would become as bottomless as in France or Ireland. It may be too soon yet to decide ; but everything in these cases depends upon the tone of the Court, and about the tone of the Court on Monday there can be no question. The Judges intend to try both the accused parties, for there are two, according to the principles which would govern any other great State trial, and intend, moreover, to retain the control of the investiga- tion where Parliament placed it,—that is, in their own hands. That is well for all.
We trust that the public, and especially that great and mixed body of journalists which is slowly but visibly usurping alike its functions and its prerogatives, will follow the example of the Judges, and treat the procedure as that of a great trial, abstaining not only from inter- ferences—those the Court can check—but from forming opinions before the evidence has been heard. There is nothing whatever in the case, now that it is to be searched through, to justify either precipitation or bias, still less an attempt to poison the public mind on either side. It is the country which, through its representatives, has ordered the inquiry, and it ought to await the proceedings and study the evidence as patiently and as conscientiously as if it were, what it really is, the jury present in Court. The possible effect of a verdict upon the position of parties, or even the history of the United Kingdom, has, now that the issue has been set, nothing whatever to do with the matter. The country has decided to run that risk, and ascertain the truth at all hazards ; and it is bound now to desire that it should be ascertained and acted on, be the consequences what they may. The affair has been taken out of the region within which political caution ought to prevail, and entered one wherein results can never be honourably or righteously taken into account. We in England do not hang or acquit accused men in order to affect the de- position of power. Let the Unionists fail, rather than Parnellites suffer injustice in a trial intended to be just. Let the Liberals be struck out of politics for years, rather than the Times be defeated by anything except the demerits of its case. Whether a Judge's order as to procedure benefits plaintiffs or defendants, matters nothing ; what does matter inexpressibly is that the people should regard it, as they would in any other case, as the order which the Court, according to the principles regulating the English distribution of justice, was bound to give. It may be said that this is a little conventional ; but there never was an occasion on which the people so needed to be reminded of the first principles which should govern men who intend justice. For the first time in their modern history, they are helping, their whole huge mass, to try political prisoners accused of non-political offences ; and they and their repre- sentatives, the journalists, should be as anxiously fair, as open-minded to evidence, and as scrupulous not to prejudice the Court, as if every man among them knew that he must ultimately sit as a Judge in Appeal. They know perfectly how to assume that attitude if they like, for they do assume it in every great murder case; and in this one the necessity is much more pressing, because the temptation to interfere, to "make the trial go right," to interpret evidence, to remonstrate on procedure, is so indefinitely greater, and because the jury is at once so multitudinous and so ignorant, Let the people study the evidence in silence, uninfluenced save by the Court. We address our warning even more earnestly to Unionists than to Gladstonians, for the Unionist method is to uphold and the Gladstonian method to depreciate the law. Moreover, while the Gladstonians can, at the worst, only impair the decorum of a trial which twenty years hence will be regarded as only a curious episode in English legal history, Unionists can confirm or dissipate the Irish impression that for them there is, beyond their own waters, no sym- pathetic justice. Now, it is the basis of the Unionist argument that England and Ireland are to live together in confidence and amity for ten thousand years.
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