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cretion, declined to pray the 'tales' for filling up the jury, and the other indictments were accordingly stopped. Now, was the Attorney-General wrong in his view of the case? That he was not so, is shown by the fact, that the judges of the Court of Exchequer, while, on full examination, they upheld the verdict against Law, set aside the verdict obtained against Meade for perjury. Suppose the Attorney-General had granted his fiat; suppose verdicts had been obtained on the seventeen other indictments against the witnesses, supported by the vindictive evidence of the smugglers-is it not clear that the Court of Exchequer would have been bound to set aside these verdicts, as they did that against Meade? Mr. Brougham talks of ten thousand pounds expense being incurred all for nothing.' Now, if this were the fact, we confess our tears would not flow very copiously for farmers who turn smugglers, and then, on one of them being convicted, hazard their substance in a heinous conspiracy to crush, by perjury and legal prosecutions, the witnesses who had given evidence against them. But is Mr. Brougham accurate in the fact? When the verdict against Meade was set aside, on an understanding that costs should be paid the prosecutors-their own bill of costs amounted only to two thousand pounds! the fairness of which amount may be judged of by the fact, that the officer of the court reduced it to two hundred and fifty pounds! And yet this bill included the costs of the greater part of the witnesses, in short, the greatest proportion of the whole expenses of all the prosecutions. The parties then appealed to the indulgence of the court for a more liberal allowance, and being referred again to the master, the sum was increased to six hundred pounds; and although they had liberty to renew their appeal to the court if dissatisfied, they took this six hundred pounds, and never appealed to the court again! So much for the ten thousand pounds incurred all for nothing!' for the public justice utterly frustrated,' and the grievous wrongs inflicted on individuals.' Nor,' says Mr. Brougham, did it end here-Meade, the false witness,' (that is, the witness whom Mr. Brougham and the smugglers call false, but whom the Court of Exchequer adjudged to be not so, in setting aside the verdict against him for perjury,) and Law, the farmer, whom he had informed against, and who was become the witness against him upon the approaching trial, lived in the same village, and one evening, in consequence, as was alleged, of some song or madrigul (!) sung by him in the street, this man Meade seized a gun, and shot Law from his house dead on the spot-he was acquitted of the murder on the ground of something like provocation!' &c. Well might the Solicitor-General say, If this statement

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had been correct, there could be no doubt that a case of more gross and unprovoked murder could scarcely suggest itself to the mind of any man.' But how could there be anything even ' like provocation,' according to the legal sense of the term, if, as Mr. Brougham states, Law was shot, in consequence of some song or madrigal'-some pastoral ditty exciting tender Corydons to murder? (O crudelis Alexi! mori me denique coges!') The reader shall see what the provocative 'madrigal' was, it was of the dramatic and tragic kind. On the day before the death of Law, he and the smugglers had assembled with a mob, beat and ill-treated one of the witnesses, and threatened to drown him in the sea; then let him go, and bade him tell him, Meade, they would serve him in the same manner. In the dead of the following night, they assembled in a riotous manner under Meade's window-beat against the door and windows, and then sang the 'madrigal,'—an obnoxious song, composed on the subject of the trial. Law, who headed the mob, and was on horseback, got on the footway, his head thus being on a level with the window of Meade. Meade, in the alarm occasioned by this attack, and imagining that the party were come to execute their threats, and at a time when it was so dark that it was impossible to distinguish Law, discharged the gun which killed Law. He was found guilty of manslaughter, and sentenced to two years' imprisonment; Mr. Justice Holroyd (the excellent and most impartial judge who tried him) stating to the jury, that it was more reasonable to consider the unfortunate transaction in question as originating from the fear of personal danger, than in the song which had been composed on the subject of the differences of the parties.' Now why was all this highly-coloured and tragic history of a revenue-prosecution, indictments for perjury, and a manslaughter, introduced by Mr. Brougham?—the reader must remember it was to prove to the House of Commons that the power of the Attorney-General to refuse praying a' tales' was shown to be wrong by an instance of gross abuse in its exercise. The story of the manslaughter committed by the persecuted witness in defence of his dwelling and his life, has obviously as little to do with the question of the Attorney-General's refusal of a' tales,' as the building of Tenterden steeple had to do with the Goodwin sands. But as Mr. Brougham introduced the story, we ask, does it not make against his own argument? Does not the ferocious conduct of Law and the smugglers, which (and not the Attorney-General) was the sole cause of the death-shot of Meade; does not this conduct abundantly evince the spirit which actuated the smugglers, in prosecuting their eighteen indictments against the witnesses, a spirit which the Attorney-General would have cul

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pably abetted and encouraged, had he not stopped the indictments as he did? Was Law, who had been clearly convicted of smuggling, who, in conjunction with his accomplices, was avenging himself by eighteen indictments against the witnesses who convicted him,-whould not restrain his vengeance from open violence against his punishers, accompanied with threats of taking their lives, were these men, inflamed with every malignant passion, likely to give such evidence on the indictments as to make it desirable for the ends of justice that they should be tried? Would it not have been intolerable-would not the AttorneyGeneral have been wanting in his duty, had the court been disgraced by such a trial when there were legal means in the Attorney-General's hands of stopping it? When the question of the propriety of this power is calmly considered, we confess, for our own parts, we think it of not much consequence whether it is retained or given up. In a temperate discussion of its utility, arguments may, doubtless, be adduced on both sides of the question. The burden of showing it objectionable lies on those who would abolish it; but when an established system is attacked, without an attempt at candid investigation into its principle,—but by the selection of a single instance of alleged abuse in its exercise,-doubtless the strongest, probably the only instance in the objector's knowledge,-and when this instance turns out to be so exaggerated and inaccurate in statement as to fail altogether in supporting the inference drawn from it, we think we may say to the assailed Attorney-General, Solvuntur tabula-tu missus abibis,' and may decline defending against Mr. Brougham a principle which he has not touched,

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Mr. Brougham complains, we think without the slightest ground, of the judges of the land being appointed from party considerations, and from among individuals distinguished by party connexions. There is a custom above the law, in my mind, more honoured in the breach than the observance," that party as well as merit must be studied in these appointments. One-half of the bar is thus excluded from competition, for no man can be a judge who is not of a particular party unless his party happen to be the party connected with the crown, or allied with the ministry of the day, there is no chance for bim; that man must surely be excluded.'-p. 18.

We really think a glance at the bench at the present moment, and indeed at any time for the last ten or twenty years, is a conclusive answer to this objection. Are there two judges now among the twelve who were ever heard of as party men, or as men conspicuous for any expressed political opinions? Are there two is there one, who ever took an active part in any political transaction? The general character of the individuals

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appointed to the bench is, as it ought to be, that of lawyers exclusively devoted to their laborious profession, unknown to the world, except for their professional practice and merits. That they are not men known for party attachments hostile to the government, we admit; that the government does not go out of Westminster Hall to the opposition benches of the House of Commons to find the soundest lawyers or the most impartial men-that they do not select men to administer the laws indifferently between the crown and the people, and between the people of all parties, persuasions, and principles, who are themselves deeply pledged to what Mr. Brougham calls one side of the great political question,' and actively opposed to those on the other side, is, we think, the best proof of that wisdom and moderation which have long (with some rare exceptions) presided over the great trust of naming judges. If any quality, more than any other, unfits a man for the station of a judge, we think it is party spirit; if any habits are more prejudicial than others to that high independence of character, and that pure serenity of intellect and judgment which are required in a judge, we think they are the habits of a political partisan. When Mr. Brougham says I defy any one to show me any instance, in the course of the last hundred years, of a man in party fetters, and opposed to the principles of government, being raised to the bench, we think, though the statement is not quite accurate, that it unintentionally pays the highest compliment to the governments which have during that period selected the judges.

When we remember how much political feelings in this country enter into the whole of the business and commonest transactions of life-how frequently, at the bottom of the most trivial and ordinary causes there lurks some motive of party or polemical spirit; how many suits arise out of elections-how many out of party disputes in corporations and counties; how many more in which questions between the subject and the crown are involved-we ask whether it would be wise in the government, or satisfactory to the country, to appoint to the judicial bench men publicly and deeply pledged to one view of those political questions which are often so materially mixed up with the merits of the causes they decide? We ask whether any learning, any talents, any eloquence, however great, could make up for the absence of unbiassed evenness of mind? If we could condescend to place the question on a lower footing, we might fairly ask Mr. Brougham, as a party man, whether it is reasonable to expect of any government-whether Whig administrations have given the slightest reason for such expectations-to appoint to any offices, even those of a judicial character, men actively opposed to their conduct

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and measures? The public know well the value of all pretensions to this species of impartiality. But when Mr. Brougham defies any one to name a man in party fetters' appointed a judge, for a century, and when he declares (doubtless with competent knowledge) that, be his talent what it may-be his character what it may-be his party what it may, no man to whom the offer is made will refuse to be a judge' (page 18), he forgets that, in favour of pre-eminent merit and high character, even party connexions have been overlooked, and that, by delicate consistency, the office of a judgeship has been refused. The government of a Noble Lord now unhappily disabled from public service, showed its liberality by pressingly offering a chief-justiceship in England, and the highest legal office in Scotland, to two late distinguished advocates, both notoriously in party fetters;' and the public only lost their valuable services, by the high-minded delicacy of the individuals, which induced them both to do that which Mr. Brougham treats as an impossibility, viz., to decline accepting such appointments from a government whose principles and measures they conscientiously disapproved. Such offers and such refusals (impossible as either may seem) were, in our opinion, alike creditable to Lord Liverpool's government and to the eminent lawyers in question.

Mr. Brougham, having thus, contrary to the evidence of facts, assumed that party is regarded in the nomination of the judges, proceeds to reason on the assumption, and to state as a consequence of thus carrying party principles into judicial appointments,' that the judges are of necessity, partisans, and, therefore, less honest and impartial!'-a statement referred to in the index thus: Judges, political leaning asserted and accounted for, p. 19.' So grave, so serious a charge, against the judicial bench, (though accompanied by complimentary salvos in favour of all manner of individuals, like the savings at the end of an act of parliament,) we think should not have been put forth in the House of Commons, still less in the only authentic edition' of the printed speech, without some reference to facts, some attempt at proof. The only proof offered by Mr. Brougham is much more remarkable for its naïveté than its force.

It is perfectly notorious (says Mr. Brougham) that now a-days, whenever a question comes before the bench, whether it be on a prosecution for libel, or upon any other matter connected with politics, the council (counsel) at their meeting, take for granted that they can tell, pretty accurately, the leaning of the court, and predict exactly enough which way the consultation of the judges will terminate, though they may not always discover the particular path which will lead to that termination!'-p. 20.

Now, that Mr. Brougham and other zealous advocates in

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