23 MARCH 1844, Page 14

A FAIR. TRIAL.

IT is not very easy to imagine what Mr. O'CONNELL would call a " fair trial." Perhaps the trial of the soldier CORDERY, convicted at Belfast, the other day, by an unpacked Irish Jury, may fall under that category. The Jury found the prisoner guilty of shooting his sergeant, but recommended him to mercy, on the ground of " the previous intimacy of the parties." Shooting a man, it would appear, is in Ireland regarded as an innocent liberty when taken by an in- timate acquaintance ; though the sentence of death shows that the Judge did not think so. Possibly Mr. O'CoNNEnn wished for such a Jury ; which might have found him guilty of stirring up Ireland to war against the Imperial Government, and recommended him to-mercy on account of the "previous intimacy of the parties." In sooth, the piteous outcry that Mr. O'CONNELL has been making against his Judges and Jury, in the House of Commons and Covent Garden Theatre, at Birmingham and Coventry, does appear im- politic. His object is to convince the world that he is a victim of tyranny. But who will believe that there is tyranny either in theory or practice in a country where a person convicted of sedition can declaim as O'CoNantn does to assembled multitudes, from day today and from week to week ?