The Whig leading journal has been trying to be impartial,
and can't manage it. The Morning Chronicle yesterday proposed an abstinence from comments during the Irish trials, now fairly entered upon ; and straight followed up its counsel by denouncing the trials as "a legal de- vice" for "bolstering up" an "insane and wicked policy " ; deprecating "the public calamity of a conviction," and such like. The Standard exposed the inconsistency, with some sharp criticism ; and that re- tort has furnished the Chronicle with an excuse for backing out of its self-imposed but unmanageable task: it says today, that if the Govent- ment journals will persevere in violating the reserve which a sense of decency should impose, they must not complain if others follow their example : "Leaving, then, Mr. Smith's speech and the examination of his witnesses, for the present, we return to the consideration of the prosecution generally ' : which opens the door to a general attack on the prosecution and the conduct of it. One result of the trial will be "full proof of the impossibility and absurdity of arraigning an entire country, and bringing its whole population to judgment." True ; a nation, like the King or Queen, " can do niowrong ": but the leaders, or misleaders, may, like the Ministers, err, and be brought to account. The Chronicle pursues its strictures on the indictment : " The judges, the lawyers, the law, the forms, are all found to fail" ; "and now has come the crowning enterprise of Toryism, viz, to render English Judicature in Ireland as unpopular, anti-national, bigoted, and unjust, as the Imperial Ad-
ministration and the Imperial Legislature." This is the "total- abstinence " of a Teetotaler who swills peppermint-water.
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