LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE PRIVY-COUNCIL JUDGMENTS. [TO TER EDITOR OF TRH .SPROTATOR."1
Sur,—Permit me a few words, to explain better why I bring so heavy a charge as predetermined fraud against the Purchas and Ridsdale judgments of the Privy Council. The charge is so seri- ous, that I do not at all complain of your regarding it as some- thing like mania on my part, akin to cases of delusion which crop up every now and then in the police-courts and elsewhere, and as the result of partisan excitability. I may say in my exculpation that I have not brought this charge against the Mackonochie judgment—though I have my own opinion about it, too— because I see that, while it cannot by any possibility represent the law, it is yet capable of being palliated, as the result of strong bias acting on minds unfamiliar with the questions raised.
Nor, again, have I so accused the Judges of Appeal who have affirmed Lord Penzance's jurisdiction, because I know that nothing is more impossible for an ordinary English Judge to take in than a point of constitutional law, or to acknowledge that there are things which a Parliamentary statute is incom- petent to regulate. Jealousy of the Spiritualty and of ecclesi- astical law has been traditional with secular lawyers here since before the " Constitutions of Clarendon," and I do not expect them to rise above professional precedents. But in the two Judg- ments which I have impeached there are certain broad docu- mentary and historical misstatements which, if adduced in any other connection, or by any other class of persons, would be universally described in only one way.
The first of these is in the Purchas judgment. In order to
make it appear that the Advertisements of 1564 and the Canons of 1603 forbid the vestments, the Judges twice, professing to cite them verbally, say that they prescribe "a surplice only." The word " only " is not in either document in this connection. Now, strong prejudice might conceivably enough make the Judges exaggerate the value of the Advertisements and Canons, as against the Rubric ; but to foist into them a word which they do not contain, and to base a judgment largely, if not mainly, thereon, cannot be so explained, any more than I could so ex- plain my dealing with a cheque given inc in payment, were I to add "ty " after " nine," in the number of pounds payable to me. My strong belief that I ought to get ninety pounds, and that the drawer must have intended to give it me, would avail me very little at the Old Bailey, did I venture to plead it.
Next, in the Ridsdale judgment, not only was a wholly now principle of interpretation invented, to compass a hos- tile decision, but the vaguest inference was made to outweigh the most positive testimony, short of a Royal edict of dis- avowal, which can be imagined as disproving the Royal char- acter of the Advertisements. Cecil, the Prime Minister of the Crown, who had been solicitously importuned in their favour, declares in his own handwriting that they were " never author- ised ;" Parker, the Primate who issued them, similarly declares that ho put them forth on " mine own authority," precisely be- cause he could not obtain the Queen's sanction ; and these two facts were adduced by counsel in the pleadings. Absolutely nothing amounting to legal proof the other way, either from in- ternal evidence, or from testimony which is more than second or third-hand hear-say, was offered by the Court ; and yet it con- demned a man as it criminal for violating these Advertise- ments, because Royal,—a decision which involved two more falsehoods, which I need not repeat, as Mr. MacColl named them last week. Here, again, I entirely fail to see any but one way of accounting for the act of the Court. Prejudice might have made them overrate the inferential evidence, had there been none to oppose it, but to cast aside absolute disproof can be classed only with the conduct of Irish rural juries in trials for agrarian murder.—I am, Sir, &c.,
9 Red Lion Square, May 22nd. RICHARD F. LITTLEDALE.
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