The Home Secretary is giving great and, we mast say,
very just offence by his defence of the policemen accused by Mr. Knox of perjury in giving evidence about a Haymarket riot. They said some clerks struck them and were drunk, whereas it was proved to the satisfaction of the magistrate and the public that the clerks were sober and were assaulted. On Tuesday night, Mr. Bruce, attacked about the case by men like Mr. Eykyu, Mr. Craufurd. Mr. Russell Gurney, and Mr. Jesse', defended his refusal to prosecute by saying that he had evidence of his own, and did not believe the police guilty. We pass over the excessive hardship of imputing perjury to the clerks declared truthful by a Magistrate,—for Mr. Bruce was, of course, compelled to state the real reason which weighed with him,—but we ask him how it can be his duty to allow his department to rest under such a stigma? He is bound to defend the police from misrepresentation, and in this case he refuses to do it in the only effectual way, by a prose- cution. If he thinks prosecution for perjury too severe, let him prosecute for assault. He ought, if our system were sound, to be able to prosecute for "grave misconduct on duty," but there is as yet no law for that.
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