In the House of Lords yesterday week, the Marquis of
Lans- downe raised a discussion on the failure of the Jury system in Ireland, in relation to the report of the Lords' Committee on this subject which was made at the end of last Session. He pointed out that the chief use of the Jury system is to give a certain popular sanction to the law, and that Lord O'Hagan's reforms were quite essential, in order to turn the Irish Jury into a buttress of Irish criminal law, which, with very high and exclusive qualifications for jurymen, such as the old qualifica- tions were, it was utterly impossible for an Irish jury to be. At the same time, when juries had acquitted criminals whose faces had been blackened for the purpose of disguise, and who had been caught by the police in the very act of attacking a house, the Court-house ringing with applause at the acquittal, it was obvious enough that the Jury system, so far from giving a popular support to the criminal law, was giving a popular support to the infraction of the law. The Mar- quis deprecated anything like a mere superstition as to juries. In England, we dispose of over half a million of cases without a jury, and only send 14,000 for trial with a jury. Why not greatly extend in Ireland the number of cases in which summary justice is awarded, and send all cases of the gravest crimes which the Irish people are inclined to excuse for trial before a Commission, without a jury P Lord Carlingford was, of course, very reserved in reply ; but we understand his speech as intimating that some modification of the law in this direction will be gravely considered by the Government during the Recess.
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