The House of Commons were engaged on Tuesday night in
discussing tie grievance of certain British subjects in Peru, who were imprisoned for above a year without being brought to trial. But we observe that on Wednesday, at Hertford, the Grand Jury, before being discharged, begged to call the attention of Lord Coleridge and Baron Cleasby to the fact that " George Hill has been eight months in prison on the grave charge of murder without trial." It is all very well to complain of the Peruvians, but there is not so much difference between eight months' delay and twelve months' delay as to give us much right to exit'. our horn. No doubt, the preliminary trial—on the strength of which the accused is "committed for trial "—goes for much. It is a partial guarantee that nobody shall be long imprisoned without a plausible case against him, as our countrymen are in Peru. Still this long delay of an adequate trial is the worst blot on English justice ; and when it happens, as it sometimes will in poaching cases, that the committing magistrates are strongly biassed, it is equivalent to a great iniquity.
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