NEWS OF THE WEEK.
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AFTER a temporary abatement, the political and legal turmoil begins again in Dublin, with the same noise and "Irish howling" as ever, and the same threatful boasts that the blundering of the Crown lawyers will enable the Repeaters abruptly to stop the State trials ; which were resumed on the 4th, with the striking of the Special Jury. That process is strictly defined by law ; and is what we in England should as usual call, and make, a very "dry" affair. From a long list of some hundreds, forty-eight names are drawn by ballot, subject to certain technical objections ; then those forty-eight are reduced to twenty-four, by twelve peremptory challenges allowed to each side,—that is to say, each party is allowed to strike off twelve without reason assigned. On the part of the accused, many objections have been taken generally to the panel thus prepared,—that qualified persons were im- properly omitted in the original list ; that proper objections to persons balloted for the list of forty-eight were not entertained by the presiding officer; and other objections of form. But it is so difficult to distinguish in Ireland between objections to some real and substantial departure from justice or settled form, and objec- tions paraded merely for the sake of getting up a noise, that very little impression is made by this activity of the Repeal lawyers. - If the enemies of the Government are to be believed, the error in the Jary Tenet is fatal, and Ministers contemplate abandoning the prosecutions ; a boast which Ministerialists in London , treat as moonshine. One complaint is broader, and more authentic. The list a forty-eight contained the names of eleven Roman Catholics : the peremptory power of the lawyers for the prosecution was used to strike off the whole of those eleven, and the twelfth is said to have been one who sympathizes with Catholics. That exclusion has provoked the loudest and most unmeasured com- plaints, and is treated as an act of' religious oppression : as each successive name was struck off, one of the attornies for the accused exclaimed, "There goes another Catholic!" or "another Ro- man !" It is explained, that the names were struck off as those not of Roman Catholics but of Repeaters; while on the other side if is denied that all were Repeaters. Whether Repeaters or Ro- man Catholics, it does not appear, regarding the exclusion as a mere exercise of lawyer-discretion, that the professional men were to blame. It was their office to use their discretionary privilege to purge the list` of those whom they might consider opposed to them by a prejudgment on the issue of the trial ; and it is to be pre- sumed that such was the motive which impelled the exclusion of the eleven, some of whom are Repeaters, and all of whom may be supposed to sympathize with the Repeaters. It is equally to be presumed that the defending attornies acted on similar grounds,—that they excluded persons whom they thought likely to be prejudiced in favour of the prosecution : they struck off none but Protestants; and when Mr. CANTWELL exclaimed "Another Roman I" Mr. Exhibits might have retorted by exclaiming "Ano- ther Saxon " The Crown had no power of putting its nominees on the list in lieu of the excluded Catholics ; it had no privilege denied to the opposite party. It does not appear, therefore, on the face of the matter, that any blame fairly attaches to the lawyers.
. It would be well if that exhausted the question ; but it does not. It is an unpleasant circumstance that any class or sect should pal- pably be excluded from a jury on so important a trial and one of suCh national interest. It is an unpleasant circumstance that catholics should be excluded from a jury to try Catholics, and still more so that the exclusion should be the act of Government. It may be, that a jury including Repeaters would follow the example so often set in Ireland, and withhold a verdict altogether, or insist on one against the evidence; and thus it may be, that the exclu- sion, being possible, was necessary : but that scarcely mends the matter. It argues the country to be in a deplorable state, where the only alternative to a denial of justice, even in the capital, is some kind of manceuvering in the composition of the jury. It is no less melancholy to see all parties—the whole country—not con- tending for a fair trial, but looking at the result, each side aiming to secure it like a prize ; arranging the votes on the Jury like the votes on a Parliamentary Committee, and inferring the decision from the party of the jurors. All this implies an habitual disregard both of the forms and the spirit of justice, and a vitiated public mind. It is thus that misrule recoils upon bad rulers, in the shape of retributive embarrassment. The mismanagement of Ireland, through a long series of years, has enabled one sect to monopolize wealth and power, and by conse- quence to monopolize "respectability" in the British sense of the term ; so that there is a tendency in the state of things to produce these onesided juries. Ireland has really been " wronged " for centuries, and, like a disfavoured child, be cannot forego the loud tone of the aggrieved when her active wrongs have ceased : she haw not yet learned to know justice when she has it. And many of the causes that keep up the sense of injury, by continuing its effects, remain in full force, though the bad spirit that originated them no longer exists : there is, for example, no disposition to oppress the Catholics ; but the invidious endowment of a minority-church still mocks their poverty. While the general state of Ireland remains. unrelieved of these seeds of disease, popular violence, wrongheaded- ness, scandalous frustration of formal law, crime disguised as mar- tyrdom, will ever perplex and baffle the statesman. The scandals of the State trials are only a few of the thousand reproaches that recall the long-deferred task of setting the general state of Ireland to rights. Beyond the law-courts, the aspect of affairs is not more pro- • mising. Mr. O'CoantEra, reappears from his retreat at Darrynane, and renews on a small scale his monster-meetings—recommences. at the meetings of the Repeal Association his harangues in favour of what, with appropriate ambiguity, he calls "the most rigid and. the most awful peace "; furbishing up his popularity to its brightest glow in time for the trials. Mr. Roes motion, to pray the Queen for an act of oblivion and conciliation, has succeeded in the Town- Council of Dublin; but the slight and sneering and suspicion motive which it has encountered promise little further succese.
The Whig papers announce that Lord Jonx Roseau,' soon after the opening of the session, is to call the attention of Parliament to the state of Ireland, and to move for a Committee of inquiry. The report is of a kind common enough at the close of the long recess ; and, coupled with the feelers in the same direction that Whigs have put forth in reviews and pamphlets, is probable enough. But: from the fact that the State trials are still pending, the party-puff: derives an unusual taint of indecorum. Poor Ireland is more than ever the sport and tool of factions !
