NEWS OF THE WEEK.
Toss last scenes of the Parliamentary session, now formally closed, .have been signalized-by an unexpected event—the reversal of the -.judgment against DANIEL O'CONNELL and the other Repeaters— the annulling of the whole proceedings ! To the latest stages, the -gigantic and complex process maintained its characteristic confusion --and uncertainty. . Three tribunals have pronounced solemn judg- ment on the case; each has treated the one below it with slighteif -not with contempt ; and the matter is left after all in a state of.
doubt balancing between conflicting authorities, of greater weight „and number on one side and of greater technical rank on the other.
- It will he remembered that the indictment against Mr. O'CoN-
"NELL and his coadjutors in the Repeal agitation consisted of eleven :counts, and was of enormous length ; that it charged against the prisoners, inter alia, attempts to force a Repeal of the Union by
" intimidation" and display of physical force, to sow dissension J3etween different classes of the Queen's subjects, and to corrupt 'the Army ; that the trial in the Court of Queen's Bench of Dublin was delayed by endless technical objecaons ; that the obstacles were 'finally surmounted; "that the Jury took great pains to shape their . verdict accurately, that a Judge gave them a draft of the "issues, which they adopted; and that the Bench, pronouncing all the counts,particularly the sixth and seventh, to be "unexceptionable,"
sentenced the defendants to fine and imprisonment and to give -sureties. under heavy penalties to keep the peace for seven :sears. Leudly complaining of unfair trial, O'CONNELL went to prison ; where he has.been at the receipt of' sympathy and cash, -and whence, by the hand and mouth of the younger DANIEL, he has contitmed to issue his mandates oral and epistolary.
- An appeal was brought on behalf of the Repeaters before the House of Lords; and the Lords referred certain set questions to the .Jadges of England for their opinion. Though the majority of the English- Bench-supported the original judgment, their declarations -of opinion were startling; so much discredit did they cast upon 'the Dublin Court and the conduct of the trial. Six of the eleven counts they all -pronounced to be bad, or informal, for different reasons. The Jury, in an inordinate desire to be exact, had not been -content to return a simple verdict of " Guilty " or "Not Guilty" 'upon each count ; but had split the charges in the earlier portions of the indictment, which alleged most of the offences imputed, into divers degrees, by severally finding the prisoners guilty of greater or less parts of each count : thus they destroyed the unity of allegation which ought to exist in each count, and turned it into a charge of -different kinds of conspiracy, whereas it is held that each count can
only be taken to allege one offence; so that the "finding" on those !couets was erroneous. In that way four counts were vitiated. The _sixth and seventh counts alleged that the prisoners sought to gain their-ends by "intimidation " ; but as it was not stated who were 'to be intimidated or to be forced to obey the Repeaters, the English 'Judges held these two counts to be bad in structure. Thus six of the eleven counts, pronounced by the Irish Judges to be " unex- -ceptionable," are pronounced by the English Judges to bemitena- ble ! There is terrible collision between the Irish and- griglish 1:tenches. But now we come to discord among the, English Judges themselves. Seven of them held, that in spite of the bad :counts, the judgment must stand ; because the Irish Judges must -be presumed to know the bad from the good parts of the indict- *.ment ; and as the punishment was at their discretion, it must be :regarded as applied and apportioned to the good portions alone. It mattered not to" the English Judges that their Irish brethren did „not )Lnow the bad from the good—that they pronounced the worst ku be unexceptiouable ; for the judicial mind piques itself on a - post dense ignorance prepense, and precludes itself from receiving 'useful infoimation 'patent to all the world. The English Judges .theiefore made-believe to think that the Irish Judges exercised a :discrimination which they knew them not to possess. This is what is called a "legal fiction,"—of which it may be said that it
is not the kind of fiction that is truer than fact. Two of the Judges demurred to that imaginative view, and insisted that as the judgment was given on a whole indictment of which parts were un- sound, and as no one could tell how much of the punishment was awarded in respect of offences not legally brought home to the prisoners, the whole judgment must be annulled. The judicial majo- rity, however, was for upholding the award; and so stood the matter when the Judges delivered their opinions on Monday. Everybody expected that the Irish judgment would be sustained : the Re- peaters ieDublin affected the " utmost indifference " for the issue; sympathizers In London cried down the authority of the Lords, anticipating that it would be adverse.
The Lords met on Wednesday ; and expectation was confounded by an inversion of the majority and minority. Lord LYNDHURST began, echoing the majority of the Judges ; and Lord BROUGHAM followed, going a step further, to vindicate the sufficiency of the sixth and seventh counts and the distinctness of "intimidation" as a crime. Three Whig Law Lords succeeded, echoing the mi- nority of the Judges, and going also somewhat further in that op- posite direction ; for they concurred in the objection that the omis- sion of names from the Dublin Jury-book vitiated the panel, and therefore the Jury drawn from it. Lord DENMAN was very emphatic. and eloquently " constitutional" on that point. Lord Corms/tax succeeded in bringing out distinctly the flaws in the doitrine that a general judgment may be taken on an indictment in which there are bad counts. Indeed, all the three Whig Law Lordshave suddenly discovered gross slovenliness in the existing prac- tiee of general judgments in criminal cases and of laxity in framing indictments ; and Lord Dasuwart pointed out the futility of indict- ments so monstrously bulky as to defy the grasp even of a lawyer's " leatoe and practised mind, much more of a simple juror's. Tlse Llw Lords having delivered their speeches, a curious scene entitled. There stood the "noble and learned" Lords, ready to vote—three to one against the Irish Judges, the English Judges, Sod Ministers : some merely " noble " Lords could not resist the impulse to redress the balance and vote. Here was a scandal! It is quite "constitutional" for the Lords to vote ; for they are, as Lord BROUGgest delights in telling them, the highest court of 'Ayr and of appeal in the empire,—only they are so upOt for the offiee,,that if they were really to exercise it, they mild' -not very long enjoy, it, without making the highest the lowest in the scale of contempt, if not breeding a revolution. Lord WHARNOLIFTE saw the danger, gave the Lay Lords some good advice, and they retired ; leaving the matter to be decided by the preponderance of Whig Ex-Chan- cellors. By that vote the judgment was reversed. The "monster trial" seems doomed to cast discredit upon all concerned in it. The prisoners began, dallying and equivocating with sedition and treason, neither daring to be bold traitor's nor yet scrupling to circumvent the law ; the Crown counsel came out with the vast and unmanageable indictment, offering in its unwieldy bulk a thousand vulnerable points of attack ; the prisoners' counsel kept up the game of equivocation and mere lawyer-like shuffling; the Judges have exposed themselve-,•:1-°- derogatory reversal of their confident decision ; the English Judges play fast-and-loose with the, law, and argue from expediency ; the Lords settle the question by ayote which, to say the least, coincides with party divisions; the bulk of that high "cqurt of Appeal stand by, confessing their own incapacity for the _vaunted office; and the upshot is, that while the indictrneut fails on specialties, nobody can tell what on-earth the law really is, so ,utter the,cenflict and confusion of authorities. The matter, was decided by. chance. Repeal gambled with Conservatism, Law ;Lords :betrig.lhe dice ; O'CONNELL'S genius threw deuce-ace, and he.won. there was no real triumph to either side. Ministers convicted their prisoner, but did not so contrive the business .as to. bring it to good fruit,; O'CONNELL conquered, but only upon technical quirks and Quibbles; for the Judges do not absolve him from crime. - Some of the main charges conveyed in the condemned counts, even the " intitnida- lion ' of the sixth and seventh, were restated: in the eleventh, which was sustained by all the Judges, in and out of Parliament. Perhaps Ministers might prevent the recurrence of such a disaster, by redressing the balance of Law Lords with a couple of successive new retirements and appointments in the Chancellorship ! But it is a more interesting question what will i3e done in the-matter now ? What will O'CONNELL do in the unexpected freedom thrust upon him? Something ingenious, no doubt-:-something to signalize to the uttermost his miraculous deliverance after "martyrdom." And whaf: will Ministers do ? The Prorogation Speech tells us nought. Perhaps their best course would be to turn over a new leaf; to let bygones be bygones; and to see if the Arch-Repealer has not learned a useful lesson, in what he must know to be condemna- tion, though the vulgar herd of his followers may think it victory.
