Chief Justice Whiteside charged the jury in the great case
of "O'Keeffe versus Cardinal Cullen" on Monday and Tuesday, but what the character of his legal decisions were, very few English- men, as we have elsewhere pointed out, yet know, the Times' summary being very confused, and the longer reports of such Irish daily papers as we have seen, being quite unintel- ligible. But it is certain that he directed the jury, who would otherwise have disagreed or found for the defendant, to find a verdict for Father O'Keeffe on all the issues, and took upon himself the legal responsibility of so directing them. This direction has been the subject of much surprised comment in Ireland, where it is said that such a direction in a libel case has never been heard of since Fox's Act, nearly a century ago, and that the Lord Chief Justice's charge showed an extravagantly partisan spirit. Of that, however, we must wait to judge till we know better what it was. The counsel for the defendant, as we understand him, intimated that he should take the judgment of a Court of Error on the Chief Justice's ruling, —namely, that the jurywere not to form their own judgment of the libellous or non-libellous character of the sen- tence of suspension. The jury acquiesced in the Chief Justice's express injunction to find for the plaintiff, but gave only a farthing damages.
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