The Claimant's trial—he is now no longer the Claimant but
the Defendant, by the way, and let us hope, with all the piety that is possible under such circumstances, that the jury may true and final deliverance make—at Bar, before the Lord Chief Justice and Judges Lush and Mellor, on a triple charge of perjury, com- menced on Wednesday, without any of the apprehended diffi- culty as to getting a jury ; and it is going on with an air of rapid, easy, and complete despatch that gives room to hope for a ver- dict long before the dog-days. Mr. Hawkins is distinguishing himself as brilliantly and much more briefly than the Attorney- General by his statement of the case. Every one is impressed by the keen, clear purpose, the lucid arrangement, and the well-worn but livingly vivid detail of his speech. We look forward with hope, not too sanguine, though rather increasing in confidence, to a by no means remote time when the prodigious penumbra of this distinguished personage will no longer project itself continually across the delicate film of mental vision, when he shall have returned to boast his victory, practise his profes- sion, and relate his wrongs to his many friends at Wagga Wagga,—or when, if the law should so decree, as is unhappily possible, he shall have retired from the pleasant companionship of Mr. Onslow and Mr. Whalley, and the position of a popular hero and "representative man," to the comparative obscurity of rentonville.
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