LEGES SINE MORIB US.
TIFIR law of England says that, if two foreign nations are I. at war, no one shall enlist men in this country to serve in the army or navy of either belligerent, and apparently juries think the law a bad one. It would be as reasonable to enact that a man shall not take a side in a street fight. Rather than submit to such tyranny, the common juror ac- tually becomes metaphysical and meditates fine-spun dis- tinctions between knowledge and consciousness. This is really quite a new line of defence, which the Chief Justice has suggested and the jury in the Rappahannock case adopted, and we hope the Old Bailey Bar, whose topics have long been deficient in novelty, will be grateful for the hint. If a man comes to me and asks for the loan of a centre-bit, and half an hour after I walk down to a neighbour's house, meet my friend coming out of the back door, which has evidently been forced, shake hands with him, accompany him to the railway station, and buy him a ticket for town, am I his accomplice or not? If my friend with the centre-bit declares that he did not tell me he was going to commit a burglary, ought a jury to acquit me on the ground that I did not know, but only had a "secret consciousness" of it ? The jury which tried Mr. Rumble seem to be of that opinion, but perhaps the distinction be- tween knowledge and consciousness only applies to political offences. It might do good service in a bribery case, but is perhaps too fine-spun for a murder or a larceny. At all events, it is to be hoped so, or these juridical metaphysics will endanger both our purses and our throats.
The gentleman who has been secretly conscious without knowing rejoices in the name of Rumble, and in the office of Inspector of Machinery Afloat at Sheerness. He was ac- quainted with Mr. Zachary Pearson, who purchased of the Crown the steamer afterwards known as the Rappa- hannock. She was at Sheerness, and was equipped in the Government dockyard, in compliance with an odd, but seem- ingly established usage. Mr. Pearson intended her for the China trade, just as the Alabama was built for the Emperor of China, and we must say that nothing could be more natural than that he should ask his friend Mr. Rumble to hire his engineers and stokers for him. Mr. Rumble did, and Mr. Pearson vows that he never told his friend that the vessel was sold to the Confederates. We entirely believe him. If a nod is as good as a wink to the blind, and none are so blind as those who will not see—proverbs whose truth we submit to be indisputable—why should he have brought his friend within the scope of the Foreign Enlistment Act by converting his secret consciousness into knowledge ? So Mr. Rumble hired the men for a fourteen days' trial trip, and the ship went to sea one Tuesday night. Unfortunately her boiler burst, and she had to put into Calais. There the Confederate flag was hoisted, a Confederate captain came on board, and the ship was re-christened the Rappahannock. Was Mr. Rumble angry with his friend Pearson for deceiving him? Not at all, for a man is seldom angry at what he has anticipated, and if you may be secretly conscious of a thing without knowing it, surely you may anticipate it too. Mr. Rumble, on the contrary, was in perfect charity with all men, but think- ing that he had made himself morally responsible to some of the tradespeople who had supplied goods to the vessel, he ran over to Calais to protect their interests. He even took a few boiler-makers with him, and did his best to persuade the men to: enlist in the Confederate service. Of course this officer of the Crown knew then, but offences under the Foreign. Enlistment Act must be committed in this country. The secret-consciousness theory was no longer needed.
So far the facts are admitted, but the accused nevertheless had a loophole by which the jury might fairly have let him escape. His knowledge of the ship's ultimate destination was immaterial, if he only hired the men for a trial trip, believing that nothing more than a trial trip was intended. The offence in the enlisting, and unless he knew that the trial trip was a mere pretence there was no enlistment in any sense of the word. As the Chief Justice said, " Whatever may have been Mr. Rumblers secret notions or consciousness of the destination of the vessel, and however much there may have been of impropriety, on his part in taking part in a transaction of this kind, if his object in. engaging these men was simply a trial trip, it is a quite different thing from getting the ship out under pretence of a trial trip, and thus getting the men into a position in which they might easily be induced to enter into the Confederate service." And though there were two•witnesses who gave evidence of con- vassatinns with Mr. Rumble which certainly would have shown a knowledge that the trial trip was a blind, both were distinctly contradicted. Indeed it is very probable that Mr. Pearson was "secretly conscious" that Mr. Rumble, how- ever Southern in his sympathies, was not disposed to risk his appointment by breaking the law, and prudently de- ceived his friend. He knew that his friend's Southern sym- pathies were strong enough to ensure his forgiveness. The jury, however, was far above any miserable half-measure of this sort. They were determined to find Mr. Rumble per- fectly ignorant of the destination of the ship. As for the- witnesses, whose evidence was conclusive on this point—one of them proving, for instance, that Mr. Rumble had told him that he would not want clothes, as there was "plenty of grey cloth on board "—they were all perjured. It must indeed be confessed that the sort of way in which they had been fed between Mr. Rumble's commitment and trial did look ugly. But even if this evidence alone was not quite to be depended on, can any man who considers Mr. Rumble's conduct at Calais, when the Confederate colours were flying over his head, doubt that he knew the destination of the vessel ?—unless indeed he be metaphysically inclined, and can rest in the "secret-consciousness" theory. But we really do hope that in future juries, if they must be meta- physical, will at least be less enthusiastically so. We should like to defend the palladium of our liberties, and if they could only have sat still like decent people, here was their loophole ready for them to creep through. But no, they could not sit still ; up they must get while the Solicitor- General was replying, and declare themselves satisfied that Mr. Rumble believed the vessel was really going to China. And in consequence here is half England involved in the laborious contemplation of subtle metaphysical pro- blems, and quite unnecessarily too. " The search of know- ledge," says an old writer, " is a thing painful," and it is painful when the searcher is bound to show that consciousness of a thing is to be accounted rather ignorance than knowledge, or else to wring his British soul by doubting the impartiality of a British jury. The only consolation is that our labours in the region of metaphysics have spared us much painful wire-drawing in the region of law. If Mr. Rumble had been convicted, there were two very nice points to be decided on the wording of our old acquaintance, the Foreign Enlistment Act. If you hire men to go, say to Madeira, with intent that some one else should enlist them there, do you enlist them in this country within the meaning of the Act? And again, are engi- neers and stokers " seamen" within the meaning of an Act which was passed long before steamers were t' ought of? Our metaphysical friends upon the jury have saved mankind from these legal subtleties, at all events for the present. It would, however, be interesting to know what is the view the Government takes of Mr. Rumble's conduct. Here is an officer of the Crown who by his own admission was tricked into aiding in a distinct breach of the law of the land, and when he discovers the deception he goes straight to Calais and commits what is not indeed a breach of law, for it was done in a foreign country, but nevertheless is a clear breach of the Queen's proclamation. No doubt that is not a law, and those who violate it only forfeit the Queen's protection. But is this impunity to be extended to her own officers ? Are her own servants, who wear her uniform and take her pay, to be suffered to treat her orders with barefaced and even insolent contempt ? One is tempted to ask whether there is any such thing as subordination in the Civil Service of the Crown when its own employes violate its. declared policy. If not only traders but even Government officials openly work for the Confederates at Calais, and only limit themselves to secret consciousness on. English soil, can. we wonder that the Northerners do not believe in our neu- trality ? The cost of this defence will no doubt amount to a tolerably heavy fine, and every one feels a certain reluctance to press for severity on a man who has perhaps suffered enough to make him wiser for• the future. But our national honour is involved in maintaining an. even-handed neutrality between North and South, and something certainly ought to be done to prove that the servants of the Government must either quit its service or refrain from combating its policy. Just to keep on the' windy side of the law is not enough. Every employer has a right to a cordial support from those whom he employs, and certainly the Crown ought to insist on no less. Mr. Rumble has been acquitted, but what rebuke is to be administered to the Inspector of Machinery Afloat ? Is there no member of Parliament curious enough to ask the question ?
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