We have spoken elsewhere of the curious scene in the
Queen's Bench on Monday, when Chief Justice Cockburn explained to the Court that Mr. Justice Blackburn had entirely misapprehended the relation in which the legal doctrine of his recent charge in the case of "Regina v. Eyre" stood to the legal opinions held by his other colleagues in the Queen's Bench. Sir A. Cockburn specified three important matters of legal direction in which the opinion of Mr. Justice Blackburn had received no assent from his colleagues, on all of which he himself personally was inclined to differ from him, and on one of which he differed strongly and positively, having announced his own doctrine, overruled by Mr. Justice Blackburn, in his charge to the Grand Jury in the case of "Regina v. Nelson and Brand." On this point,—the legality and justifiability of the seizure of Mr. Gordon and others in a region outside the ambit of martial law, and of their transportation for trial into the pro- claimed districts,—Sir A. Cockburn asserted that Mr. Justice Blackburn stood quite alone among the Judges of the Queen's Bench, and was believed by his brethren on the Bench to have changed his own mind within a few hours of the charge. The Chief Justice asserted that the charge of the senior puisne judge of the Queen's Bench to a grand jury is always understood to carry with it the authority of all the Judges of the Court, and said that it would have been the duty of himself, Mr. Justice Lush, and Mr. Justice Hannen to have attended and delivered their own separate judgments, had they anticipated the raising of any point on which the Court were divided in opinion. Mr. Jus- tice Blackburn read a few words of unexplauatory explanation,— the true explanation apparently being that he was carried away by the strong bias of his own mind into a course unquestion- ably disrespectful to his chief, and scarcely fair to any of his colleagues.
