weeks living with her husband, never opened her lips to him respecting this murder, though Courvoisier had left a large parcel in her custody. Was there anything more absurd than that a woman should never open her lips in such an affair as the murder? Was it not strange that nothing had been heard of the plate, though fifty pounds reward had been offered for it, till the first night of this trial? The woman had heard, she said, of the case through a French paper."

In

The police are the common subjects of disgraceful and unmeasured attack by the prisoners' counsel in our penal courts. this case the degrading terms applied to three humble, but respectable, officers, were "ruffians," "gang," "miscreants," "bloodhounds."

"Was it right of Mr Mayne, the commissioner of police, and a magistrate to boot, to send this inquisitorial ruffian Pearce to a private room with the prisoner, to brow-beat and frighten him into an admission of his guilt? Of course Mr Pearce was not at all influenced by the reward of 450l. But I forgot-he had the candour to admit that he expected to receive some portion of the reward. Yes, gentlemen of the jury, the money is to be divided upon the coffin of my unfortunate client, should you pronounce him guilty, and Mr Inspector Pearce and the rest of the police myrmidons will, when they receive their respective shares, write the receipt in the blood of the prisoner. I had hoped, gentlemen of the jury, that the days of bloodmoney had passed away. I thought the atrocious system had been put an end to by the praiseworthy interference of an alderman of the city of London; but I am afraid I am mistaken, and that the system is about to be revived again. Now, gentlemen, allow me to ask you if you remember Mr Baldwin, the constable, and how he gave his evidence? When I asked him about the reward, do you not recollect the manner in which he attempted to baffle my question? Poor man, he did not know how to read, and he never heard anything about a reward; and yet the miscreant bloodhound was obliged to admit to me afterwards that he had heard the placard offering reward read at the station-house over and over again. Now, I tell the commissioners of police, and I tell the government from this place I tell them with the freedom and independence of a man who has nothing either to fear or expect from them-that they are acting upon a bad and vicious system in offering rewards to their men for hunting out the blood of their fellow-creatures."

Now it is very well known to be the general rule of the new police, which it never was of the old system of thief-catching, not to allow rewards to be taken by the men, although they are offered. This appears to have been explained to the judge. Could the fact have been unknown to the prisoner's counsel? Does not the tenor of the defence warrant the presumption that he was as well aware of it as he was at the time aware of the

2

truth of the charge against the prisoner, and consequently of the falsehood of every statement he made against the particular witnesses when, assuming to himself the functions of a judge, he poured upon them virulent condemnations as conspirators and culprits? With the full knowledge of the prisoner's guilt, the sanctions of religion were evoked, and the jury thus assailed:

;

"And now, gentlemen, having travelled through this case of mystery and darkness, my anxious and painful duty is ended. But, gentlemen, yours is about to commence, and I can only say, the Almighty God guide you to a just conclusion. The issue of life and death is in your hands. To you it is given to consign that man once more to the enjoyments of existence and the dignity of freedom, or to send him to an ignominious death, to brand upon his grave the awful epithet of murderer. Gentlemen, mine has been an awful task but still more awful is the responsibility attached to the decision upon the general fact or circumstances of the case. To violate the living temple which the Lord hath made,-to quench the fire within his breast, is an awful and a terrible responsibility; and the decision of guilty once pronounced, let me remind you, is irrevocable. Speak not that word lightly-speak it not on suspicion, however strongupon conviction, however apparently well grounded-upon inference -upon doubt-nor upon anything but the broad, clear, irresistible noonday conviction of the truth of what is alleged. I speak to you as a friend, as a fellow-Christian, and I tell you, that if you do not act in the spirit which I have called upon you to do, that the deed of to-day will never die within you," &c. &c.

We might ask our learned friend and fellow-Christian, as well as the learned and noble editor of Paley's Natural Theology,' and his other fellow-professors of the religion which says that "lying lips are an abomination to the Lord"-to explain to us how they reconcile the practice under their rule with the Christian precepts, or avoid the solemn scriptural denunciation.

"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.

"Which justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him.”—Isaiah, chap. 5.

The course of the particular defence may be disavowed by some of the bar as going too far, that is, as going beyond the "expedient means;" for their rule allows them to abandon a prisoner's defence if, in their discretion, they consider that the defence would be injurious to him. The common experience of our criminal courts would, however, prove such means to be well calculated to the end. The aspersions thrown upon the testimony of Sarah Mansell, upon the police, and the other witnesses, the

assaults upon the fears of the jury, were well fitted to confuse and shake the judgments of the rude, untutored minds which are commonly called upon to exercise the new and, to them, difficult functions of weighing evidence and deciding on the fate of a fellowcreature. The escape, by the like means, of several atrocious criminals, of whose guilt no reasonable person can doubt, might be adduced to show that they were well calculated for the purpose. Indeed, but for the accidental finding of the plate before the trial instead of after, we think the probabilities are, that the defence would have prevailed, and that the case of Courvoisier would have been added to the case of the murderer Gould, as an instance of the mischievous defect of our law, in not permitting an intermediate verdict of not proven, allowing the party to be again tried on the discovery of new evidence.

The crime was revolting, as the horrible outbreak of rapacity, and its mastery over the domestic and social duties; but it also was a crime which arouses the common sympathies of mankind for its repression. To us, the existence of a law or practice which permits the occurrence of such a defence, the want of sympathy with mental pain, and the recklessness of its infliction on the witnesses, the public violation of the ordinary rules of morality, not to speak of either the code of morality, of which, as gentlemen, the bar in private life are properly tenacious, or of the Christianity which they profess, appear almost equally revolting indications of a state of moral depravity, which, though less violent or intense in the suffering it creates, is perhaps the cause of an equal sum of evil from its greater frequency.

Suppose, in any private circle of the middle classes of society, the investigation of any serious charge by the respectable head of a family. Imagine aspersions cast upon previously unimpeached and respectable witnesses. Would he feel easy in witnessing the infliction of a false or a mistaken accusation, until he had endeavoured to allay the irritation and sooth the painful feelings which he must, judging from his own, believe to have been excited in the breast of the person accused. We need scarcely say what would be the conduct of gentlemer, of those on whom a false imputation on their credit is a wound too grievous to be endured with life. Neither do we need to advert to what is the judicial procedure of gentlemen of the military profession at their courts-martial, where, we apprehend, no such reckless imputations would be allowed to be inflicted on the most rude of the soldiery without an apology.

Whilst adverting to the rules of behaviour current amongst the class of gentlemen, we must remark that it is one rule to put a double restraint upon themselves where they are protected, as

in the cases of clergymen and old men. Those who have been present in our common law courts, will say whether the bar does not avail itself of its authoritative protection to cast off all restraints against all parties. To serve the client by "all expedient means, to protect that client at all hazards and costs to all others," or, according to the noble and learned Lord who vindicates the practice as a duty, to disregard the "alarm, the suffering, the torment, the destruction, he may bring upon any others," we have seen innocent and respectable females so confused and assailed with such imperious gestures and condemnatory tones, on the assumptions (as groundless as the assumptions in the conspicuous case of Courvoisier), that they had committed perjury, as would make any father or brother shudder at exposing daughter or sister to, and in such a manner as the counsel using the "expedient means" neither could nor would use under any circumstances in respectable private society. The most demoralizing effect produced by these exhibitions appears to us to be the treatment given to persons of the labouring classes, servants, or policemen. If good conduct is to be promoted in them, one means of doing so is surely to increase their estimation of the value of character; one means of raising their moral perceptions is rather to assume that they are keenly alive to the pleasures and pains of self and social estimation, than that they are dead to them. We have frequently witnessed such treatment of witnesses as that displayed in the case of Courvoisier, but we never happened to witness an attempt "to comfort" the shattered witness of that class. Though the depraved state of the bar permits the practice of such inflictions in public trials, it does not prevent the judge from doing justice, by endeavouring to soothe the irritation, and at the same time manifesting the feelings of a gentleman. We shall endeavour to aid the conception of the practicability of such a course of reparation by supposing the following scene.

JUDGE.

"And now having passed the sentence of the law on the criminal, and expressed the opinion of the court on the aggravation of the character of the crime by the foul character of the defence, a duty remains towards those persons who have come forvard to further the ends of public justice. Madame Piolans, you have come forward with praiseworthy alacrity to state the fact which was extremely important to the ends of public justice. The court has to regret that in doing so you have been accused of perjury, and that your respectability has been questioned. You will consider that your credit, instead of being impaired by this false accusation, is confirmed and increased by

your conduct in this case. I would that this expression of the favourable opinion of the court might compensate as well as relieve any pain to which you may unfortunately have been subjected in the performance of what, under any circumstances, must be a painful and embarrassing duty to a private person and a female.

"Sarah Mansell, you will understand that the verdict of the jury is a verdict of their belief of your trustworthiness and truth; let not the painful recollections of the horror of the scenes you have witnessed be aggravated by doubts that there exists a suspicion in any mind that you have acted otherwise than with a good intent, and to the best of your capacity, as became a faithful subject.

(To the Police). "The court regrets that, in the zealous performance of your duty, you have individually been subjected to deeply criminal accusations. The court must accompany the verdict which establishes your innocence of the charges preferred against you, with an expression of their opinion that in this case you performed your duty actively and honestly. It would be unjust to criticise with the advantage of afterthought; but it must be said that, in a case which, happily, must be almost as extraordinary to you, or to a still more experienced force, as to any other persons, and in the absence of instructions devised from past experience to meet such cases, we think the mode in which the duty was performed in respect to skill to be a subject of great indulgence. Let those who have heard the contumelious expressions detracting from the general character of the force know, that the general conduct of the new force has been the constant theme of approbation by grand juries in this court and others, and in the present instance their conduct has been highly satisfactory to the court.”

A few words to this effect would appear to be a natural and simple expression of the feelings of a judge on such an occasion. The witnesses would then leave the court with a less painful perception of the wounds which the feelings of private persons, and especially persons of the poorer classes, receive, when, from a sense of duty, or from unavoidable circumstances, they are forced to aid in the administration of justice.

Obtuseness of feeling, and sympathy with the practices of the bar, from which they have been taken, are the chief reasons which suggest themselves for this otherwise unaccountable apathy of the bench on this subject. In more than one instance the deportment of the judge has afforded the example of habitual imperiousness, and justifies the suggestion. In other cases, from what is well known of the character and superior practice of