TOPICS OF TIIE DAY.

A WRONG UNREDRESSED.

IF there is one trait of the times more alarming than another as a sign of national degeneracy, it is that disregard of justice which almost appears to be growing into a settled practice with us. The public is tired of hearing about the Baron de Bode and his ease,— and the public little thinks how tired the Baron must be, as his father was before him, of having justice refused year after year, and life after life ; but worse than the fatigue of either is • the ac- cumulating record of injustice obstinately repealed by tile suc- cessive public servants of England. On Monday next, Lord Lynd- hurst is to make a last appeal, by moving the following resolution

in the House of Lords.

"That this use, after considering the petition of i the Baron de Bode, and hearing a discussion thereon, having unanimously referred the allega- tions of the said petition to a Select Committee,' and the Committee having reported it as their opinion that the following facts had been fully established —viz that the claimant was a British subject within the meaning of the treaty and conventions; that he was the bona fide possessor of a valuable property in Alsace ; that the property was unduly eonfiscated by the Prench Revolutionary authorities; that the late Baron presanted his Claim far com- pensation within the time limited by the convention-; that, after the pay- ment of all other claims presented within the time limited, there remained a surplus more than sufficient to satisfy the Baron's claim ; that the rejec- tion of this claim originated principally in a mistake of the Commissioners, which caused them prematurely to close the inquiry upon a ground altogether invalid, whereby they excluded the full proof of the claimant's ease, the subsequent production of which proof at the inquisition and on the trial at bar led to the successive verdicts delivered in the claimant's favour; and further, that the Committee considered the petitioner's ease to be one of great hardship and injustice,—earnestly recommends the petitioner's claim to the favourable consideration of her Majesty's Government." This is little more than a plain summary of the rhain facts, with

the necessary consequences deduced from them. At the conclusion of the peace in 1815, it was agreed by treaty that property of Bri- tish subjects confiscated by the French Revolutionary Government should be compensated ; and the French Government handed over a large sum of money hi tbat purpose. 'The Baron de Bode was one of those British subjeots. Charles de Bode had obtained pos- session' jointly with-his son, of a lordship and land of Bonita, in Lower Alsace ; on the breaking out of the Revolution the father and son left their country, and the property was confiscated. Baron Charles had married, in 1775, the daughter of Mr. Kynnersley, of Loxley Park in Staffordshire : of this marriage Clement was born, in 1777, and baptized at Trttoxeter. In 1815, he claimed compen- sation under the treaty, and was put off with various pretexts, -which are well known, and which we need not recapitulate further than briefly to recall them to the reader's mind. One was, that the claim had not been presented within the time specified in the treaty ; a plea which was not true, for the claim had been pre- sented, and, though it was at first rejected by the Commissioners for want of proof that the claimant was a British subject, they afterwards received it. Another objection was, that his property was not confiscated as that of a British subject; a pretext over- ruled by several cases of an exactly similar kind, in which compensation was granted. A third objection to part of the claim arose from the ignorance of the Commissioners; who reported, for example, that he could not sustain the claim on the score of " biens caducs,”—which they translated to mean property the Baron had suffered to lapse, whereas it meant property escheated to the Baron. A fourth plea was, that certain evidence had not been completed ; though the Baron had been positively cautioned on the part of the Crown against offering new evidence. A fifth plea, urged very late in the inquiry, was, that there were no funds out of which to satisfy the claim : an act of Parliament, the 59th of George III. cap. 39, directed that any balance remaining after the discharge of claims admitted by the Commissioners should be ap- plied to such purposes as the Lords of the Treasury should direct ; and under that act, it would seem, the balance was expended years ago. But we need not recapitulate all the pleas advanced in bar of the claim. It will be observed that the Baron was excluded from the register by the Commissioners confessedly under a mistake; that a part of the claim was rejected under a mistranslation; that the deficiency of certain evidence, after enormous and successful exer- tions to procure all that was demanded, was owing to express and formal instructions on the part of the Crown; and that the final appropriation of the money was made in the face of an outstanding claim which had not been satisfied.*

The Baron de Bode's case has been brought before the courts of law, for the purpose of establishing his claim by all the remedies open to him or which appeared to be open to him. The last of these was called a petition of right; which is in truth a suit against the Crown. In the course of the proceedings, which are very cum- brous, be was called 'upon twice over to prove his case before ju- ries; and twice over had a verdict in his favour, in opposition to

* Those who wish to examine the case in its links and details, may find it compactly but clearly reported in a paniphlet published last year, under the title of "Debate in the House of Lords, 11th June 1852, on the Motion of Lord Lyndhurst, That a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into the Allegations of the Petition of the Baron de Bode.' Together with the Re- port of the Select Committee." Printed by T. Brettellt Rupert Street, Hay- market.

The perusal of that debate leaves an ineffaceable impression, that a just claim has been defeated, in the first place by a series of blunders and errors on the part of the Commissioners appointed to settle it; in the second place by a course of oppressive obstruction and litigious contrivances on the part of the British Government, descending at last to the pettifogging meanness of pleading the Statute of Limitations !

all the skill exerted against him on the part of the Crown. But when he came to ask the courts to give him the fruits of these verdicts, it was found that the Legislature had, no doubt un- consciously, so framed the act of George III. that the judges were precluded from awarding him the money which the juries had found due to him. He was thus placed in the position of a man proved to be the true owner of a fine estate, which a tyrannical law had surrounded by an impassable wall, leaving him on the outside. So the Baron has been defeated at law, not because his right failed, but because every legal remedy turns out to have been shut against him though by no fault of his own; neither the original claimant nor his his having ever ceased to prosecute their claim' but on the contrary having pursued it for a period of nearly forty years with matchless assiduity.

A plausible objection has sometimes been raised; which may be repeated, for aught we know. "-There must be," it is said, "an end of litigation some time or other. The Baron has exhausted all the remedies provided by the constitution. Let us grant for the sake of argument that law and justice are not in his ease in unison, and we only grant the existence of a defect incident to all human tribunals ; yet what would be the consequence if the allegation that such a defect had defeated justice in any particular instance was held to be a ground for litigation after all legal re- medies had been exhausted ? The affairs of mankind must come to a stand-still if suits were immortal. Every court would soon become so deeply in arrear that no cause could ever be determined until the parties had been dead for centuries : they could not be determined at all." •

Plausible—but inapplicable. It may be freely admitted that if the community appoints competent tribunals to judge between A and B, their decisions must be final. If A has had a thousand pounds by the judgment of these tribunals, which in justice ought to have been awarded to B, neither the tribunals nor the public are gainers by that transaction, and the practical conclusion in fa-

vour of finality arisinab out of the necessity of the case is undis-

puted. But look at the circumstances in the Baron de Bode's claim and see how different they are. Our Govern-

ment voluntarily accepts the trust of paying a certain de-

signated number of claimants out of funds provided by the French for the purpose of compensating every member of that

class who could establish his right—not to those only who could establish it according to the rules of a particular course of procedure. It turns out, that by a mistake of the agents employed by our Government to fulfil that trust, Baron de Bode's

i

claim s disallowed, and the consequence of such error is to leave a surplus in our pockets. It also turns out that our laws do furnish the means for enabling the Baron, even after this miscarriage, to prove his ease before a jury; which he does most fully. The real question, then, is whether, when through mistake a tribunal spe- cially appointed to act as our agent for administering a fund in- trusted to us has failed in its duty, whereby a profit arises to us as the principal—but which profit is shown by subsequent legal pro- ceedings not to be rightfully ours—we can without utter destrue- tiiin Of our national character for honesty, keep the money as against the true owner ? Will it do to shelter ourselves under maxims which are beside the true state of things ? We are in truth parties, and it is not merely surmised that justice has not been done, it is proved—proved in the most solemn and efficient mode of investigation which the wit of man has invented, that of trial by jury. Shamed out of this objection, refuge is taken in another. "We have not pocketed the money," it is said ; "we have given it to parties who although they had no claim of right to it, as not falling within the class to which the fund had been appropriated by vir- tue of the treaties, were nevertheless the objects of just compas- sion by reason of their having sustained analogous losses." The first answer is, that we did not in point of fact so dispose of the whole surplus, but expended a portion of it in payments to which the Government was legally bound, and which but for this so- called surplus must have been provided for out of our public re- venue ; a circumstance which shows that we exercised a free do- minion over the whole. True, we gave away the greater part in charity. But what has that to do with the question of whether or not it was ours to give away ? Consequently, the second and main answer is, that we were diverting the fund to uses to which it was not applicable. Let a private trustee expend his trust-fund in charity, and try to protect himself on such a ground. It would be of no avail that the charity was of the most imperative neces- sity. Let it, for instance, be a school to teach Ministers of State the rudiments of justice, and to initiate them by clear examples into the study of national honour; and let the Baron de Bode's case be made their hornbook. No lesson could be clearer, no lesson more forcible; and, now that the wheat is winnowed from the chaff by the Committee of the House of Lords, none could be shriller. Could charity-money be better expended than upon such a foundation ? And yet the Chancellor would return from his class to the woolsack and decide forthwith that the trustee must not make himself a name for generosity, even of the moat useful kind, at the expense of those for whom the trust-fund was origi- nally intended, although he, the judge himself, had been benefited by the diversion.

Hitherto the Baron de Bode has engrossed our compassion ; but should the debate of Mondaynight fail to relieve him, there will be another sufferer to pity. We mean, the House of Lords which .wilrbe placed in a position of the most open stultification. If the failure of all legal remedies ought to have extinguished the

claim, why did the House of Lords appoint a Committee of In- quiry after that legal event had occurred?

The advocates of Repudiation in America would gladly hail a vote putting England on a par in that respect with some of the United States—some, not all. The American press has already seized upon the argument, and a decision of the House of Lords adverse to the Baron de Bode's demand for justice would make it resound from Niagara to the Gulf of Mexico.