the world, but does not, really, much exceed this in importance. The intentions of the late Government, in this direction, are incidentally illustrated by their India Bill. A provision is introduced into that measure in direct violation of the Constitution and of the statute of Anne, that, if the President of the New India Board shall be appointed to that office, while a member of Parliament, his seat shall not be vacated. Though thus invested with an office of such enormous power and influence, he is to be screened from the ordeal of public opinion and of responsibility to his constituents. This fact ought to attract wide and marked attention. It is characteristic of the entire object and end of that bill. And it is plain that, if one such office be once allowed to be exempted from the rule that has so long and wisely prevailed, of the necessity for re-election on office taken, not two years can pass before the statute of Anne will be repealed as to all offices held under the Crown. It is worth notice, that while, on the foregoing motion of the 16th, the occupants of the Treasury Bench, from the First Lord down to the UnderSecretaries, swelled the division for the motion,— indeed it was made up of that bench and its followers, not one of the present members of Lord Derby's Government voted for it. Lord Derby's co-officials will now have to go through the ordeal which Lord Palmerston and his co-officials were impatient of; and there is no doubt that the whole country will watch and listen with interest to what is said and doue on the occasion of this appeal by them, rightly required by the Constitution and the law, to the constituencies they must represent if they would seek to serve the Crown. Born Saut Port. Aput 12:58 THOUGH Lord CAMPBELL very properly suggested that no comment should be made on the trial of BERNARD during its progress, we may, as that ordeal is not just yet inaugurated formally, offer a remark or two on the learned dignitary's charge to the Grand Jury. Indeed, the circumstances in themselves are so noteworthy that it would be great remissness not to deal with the opening of this singular and unique commission wholly apart from the problem of the accused's guilt or innocence. The fact of the commission having been issued to hold this trial amounts to a decision of the vexed question as to the position of a foreigner as an English subject. The only power to issue such a commission arises under the act of 9 GEO. IV., c. 31. That power can only arise when "any of her MAJESTY's subjects" is charged. Unquestionably, then, the issuing of the commission implies that the authorities of the law have decided that a man in BERNARD's position is one of her MAJESTY's subjects, and is, as such, liable to such a charge as the alleged facts, if proved, will amount to. Lord CAMPBELL did indeed say, that Counsel could take objection to any point of law which "arise during trial." But the point of law as to may the application of the foregoing act to such a case cannot "arise during the trial." It must be preliminary, if taken at all; otherwise the validity of the commission is admitted. Lord CAMPBELL's charge to the Grand Jury ought not to pass without remark in another respect. It is not the duty of a Judge, it is contrary to the duty of a Judge, to point the minds of a Grand Jury to any facts. His function is simply to explain to them the bearing of the law on the range of matters of question that came before them. Lord CAMPBELL departed entirely from this course. Instead of thus explaining the bearings of the law, so as to enable them to know what they ought to receive in evidence of any of the charges brought before them, he went into the evidence on this case; and this, not by mere allusion to the broad data that might be brought before them, but by a balancing of details, ending with the instructions as to their finding true bills. We are unable to recall any instance in which the office and functions of the Grand Jury have been so strikingly interfered with; and when the extraordinary character of the proceedings in this matter before the committing Magistrate are remembered, it was certainly the more needful, as it would have been more becoming, and in every way more worthy of the time, the place, the occasion, the titular and attributes of the learned functionary himself, that the impartiality of the law of England should be vindicated, should be placed wholly beyond the range of criticism at the very outset of the preliminaries to the final arbritament which the Government of France have demanded, and which the Government of this country has conceded with an alacrity and a vigour that assuredly bespeak a determination to secure conviction, if conviction be procurable. The progress of this momentous enquiry, for momentous it will be, whatever the verdict, will necessarily be scrutinised with much interest, and it cannot elicit more than the principles at stake justify and demand. It involves many points deeply concerning the liberties of Englishmen, and the independence of the administration of English law, and even, as might be shown in respect to the evidence of RUDIO's wife, the use or abuse of the prerogative of the Crown. Those who abhor an act of assassination will watch with not the less jealousy every stage of what is clearly paraded, very officiously, in the hope of ingratiating the favour of one who has recently attempted, in no very gentle manner, to enforce on England an alteration of her laws in order to win a personal security which the very myrmidons of his own police have so notoriously failed to secure him. How can such people, master or men, be made to understand that law is one thing and the will of the Executive for the time being quite another and utterly subordinate and futile and impotent thing? How can such people be made to comprehend the two fundamental maxims of British jurisprudence: 1st, that every man is presumptively innocent till proved guilty, and not only morally but legally guilty; for no matter how clear the crime, if it be not brought home precisely in the mode charged in the indictment, and according to the statute under which the indictment is laid, he is not guilty at all, and cannot be found guilty afterwards of the same charge:-and 2ndly, that it is better ninety-nine guilty escape than that one innocent should suffer? We have instances innumerable of our respect for the law overriding the most self-evident demonstrations of guilt; and rightly so doing, because the vindication of the rule far outweighed the evil cons quences, immediate or prospective, of the exceptions. One of the magazines for this month gives this case: "An English cruiser captured a slave ship, and put a prize crew on board; the slaver's crew overpowered the prize crew, and murdered the officer in charge. The miscreants were again taken by the English, and brought to trial for the murder of the officer. They were actually acquitted on the ground that the first capture was illegal, the cruiser not having the necessary papers." This seems scandalous and monstrous; and so it is per se. But in such facts, in the feelings which such facts discloses, the true spirit of justice abides; for it is the spirit which wholly ignores the doctrine of expediency, the doctrine of tampering with the truth, of doing a little evil that much good may arise; it is the spirit, in short, to which, above all things else, we owe the solidity of our institutions, the elasticity of our liberties; that have given us popular ramparts to defend, and which have afforded us shelter during that defence. But what know they of those things who call upon us to alter our laws because of certain temporary inconveniences arising to our neighbours, and therefore perhaps to ourselves? If BERNARD be not convicted it is not our laws, but our Government, they will blame; and we need not be surprised if that blame be conveyed with an emphasis proportioned to the efforts of our officials to obviate it. The exhibition before the Magistrate, we have always said, was not what it should have been, and as little so was the scene in which the LORD CHIEF JUSTICE of the Queen's Bench was the principal performer, as already adverted to. We know not what share in the now pending proceedings "Lawyer BODKIN," whose truculence at Bow Street recalls a grosser age of administrative zeal, will have; but it is no small justi fication of the animadversions his conduct there gave rise to that at the trial of the wretched murderer of the Haymarket courtesan, the other day, such was his insensibility to all idea of propriety that, during the very act of sentence of death being pronounced, he commenced chaffering with the Bench as to the pecuniary reward of a certain witness, and had to be publicly rebuked by the presiding Judge for the indecency of obtruding a trumpery question of money while a fellow-creature was receiving his doom. Let us hope that the instrument is not typical of the animus of the employers; but that calmness will characterise the Bench and the freest latitude be allowed the bar. We are glad to find that one menaced feature of infinite obnoxiousness is already excited. RUDIO is not to be made a witness. It would have been monstrous if he were, and most perilous too; for a conviction brought about by his means would have been an outrage on British law that would have produced a frame of mind in this country compared with which the gain to France, or rather to the French Government, of a thousand such trials would have been as nothing. There are peculiarities enough already about the proceedings to impart something very like an extra-judicial air to the case; and there will doubtless be more before it is over. The presence of RUDIO in the witness box, however, would be an intolerable innovation upon our criminal procedure; and for the sake of the prosecution itself, of the impassiveness which should distinguish everything pertaining to so solemn a drama, we rejoice that no such experiment on the temper of our country men is to be attempted. Let moralists reason as they may, mankind will ever draw a wide distinction between crimes such as his and such as ORSINI'S, although the crime be actually the same; that is, assuming RUDIO to have been consciously implicated; and for the latter to be saved from death in one country, merely for the purpose of procuring the conviction of an alleged accomplice in another, and that other England, would be an intolerable straining of justice which, on every ground, it is well that the Imperial prosecutors and their assistants here have not ventured upon. It has been before well remarked elsewhere, that there has been a superfluity of assistance rendered on our part already. It should have been enough that facilities were afforded to, without the work being actually done for, the French authorities by ours. It is not easy to understand how it can be refused to others if asked for. There are some symptoms of a resumption of diplomatic relationship with Naples. Why may not ВOMBA call for the good offices of MALMESBURY at the Old Bailey, and how can they be refused after the example we are now setting? We are prosecuting booksellers for publishing abstract theories concerning regicide, and applying them to reigning tyrants. The ATTORNEY-General, whoever he may be, will not have to go far to seek ere he finds a culprit amenable to the charge of applying these dogmas to a living BOURBON, who has been denounced a thousand times over, as a monster unfit to exist, and whose existence is a curse to millions of his species. What if his MAJESTY should require that his defamers be placed in the criminal dock for so describing him? How could we say the law is open to him, let him avail of it? His answer naturally would be, "I call on you to avail of it in my behoof, as you have just done in that of your French ally, and I call upon you with infinitely more reason, as I have been for years the target of incessant attack, and not one word raised in my favour, whereas LOUIS NAPOLEON has been all but deified among you for acts compared Iwith which the worst of mine were venial, if not commendable." It would rather puzzle even SO astute a hair-splitter as Sir R. BETHELL, who inaugurated all the present ill-omened, mischief-fraught doings for Lord PALMERSTON, to resist this species of logic; and, if he did, for the very conclusive, if not very cogent reason, that the applicant might be despised, it is more than possible there may spring up another applicant who cannot and will not be despised; for it is quite within the probability of approaching circumstances that we may have to talk of the nature of the tenure of Czardom; and if, in so doing, we venture to repeat any of those illustrations respecting the dagger-ruled dynasty of ROMANOFF which were so copiously indulged in during the late war, it is more than likely we shall hear of it through the solicitor to his Excellency Baron BRUNOW, that is all; with the further likelihood that the solicitor to his Excellency, the Duke of MALAKOFF, would endorse the law of his learned friend. Thus, as ever, is the first false step, the first weak and unmanly concession, an invariable prelude to others, or to such resistance as must make the resistance invidious, and, therefore, productive of the very consequences which self respect at the outset would have obviated. THE CONSPIRACY TO "CONVICT:" THE LAW OF THE CASE. [From the LIVERPOOL ALBION, March 15th, 1858.] We have lately heard so much about "conspiracy to murder," that it seems to be thought, by some, that a conspiracy to "convict" is not only blameless but praiseworthy. The proceedings at the Police-court of Bow-street, on Thursday last, ought to attract the attention of every man who respects the pure administration of Justice, and would not see contempt brought upon what Blackstone calls "the most amiable prorogative of the Crown." Already men have begun to feel that the degradation which certain miscalled "Ministers of England" sought to bring upon their country, by their cowardly obedience to the dictation of France, in the matter of the "Conspiracy to Murder Bill," is being emulated again in the protracted proceedings against Bernard. For the protraction there can be no pretence of justification. It is highly injurious to the course of Justice, and to all the interests involved,except those recorded in the fee-book of Lawyer Bodkin. Honest men cannot but conclude from the delays, that the heavy charge made against Bernard is not much better founded than the celebrated charge against the English nation, that "assassination is here elevated to a doctrine and preached openly;" -for which latter, the only foundation pretended to be producible is that, at a tavern near Temple Bar, some young men one night discussed, "whether regicide is allowable under any circumstances." We shall soon have to send to France for licences to talk over our tea and toast. While the pamphlet, issued "by authority" from Paris, instead of being denounced and exposed as it deserves, is only tremblingly approached, and is even praised for its "moderation," our Government degrades itself by playing, in every way it can, into the hands of the French police. The evidence against Bernard, is rambling and inconclusive. A fine idea strikes the brain of some underling of the French Inquisition;-to which our English authorities are only too eager humbly to lend themselves. Let one of the men now convicted in Paris accuse Bernard, and his implication in the plot will be made out. It seems forgotten that, had Rudio really been inveigled by Bernard into the plot, he would have rested his own defence upon that ground beyond a doubt. It is thought that, by holding out to him the delusive hope of pardon, he may be induced to invent this, as an afterthought. No other of the convicted conspirators will suit for the purpose,-as none of them can come over and give evidence in an English court. But Rudio has a wife, who can be employed for the same purpose with even greater advantage than Rudio himself could. It is difficult to conceive a more discreditable proceeding. Upon the face of it, it is nothing other than a carefully planned arrangement to get up evidence to ensure a conviction. But the case is made far more grave, and far more needing the attention of those who value the safety of liberty and constitutional principle, by the means that have been taken to bring out this evidence. Rudio is, according to the assumption, a fellow-conspirator with Bermard. A man cannot be called on, in an English court, to criminate himself; neither is a wife allowed to give evidence which may criminate her husband. So, when "Lawyer Bodkin" tenders Rudio's wife as a witness, he says that her husband will be pardoned under the Great Seal of England! Mr. Bodkin seems to carry the prerogative of pardon in his pocket, from the unseemly way in which he speaks of it and uses it. The case itself involves anomalies so many and important that we are only able to call attention to a few of them. The prerogative of pardon is one which is, in itself, opposed to the due administration of perfect justice. It is because justice, humanly administered, can never be absolutely perfect, that the device of pardon, as a Crown prerogative, is recognized, as being sometimes able to supply a defect in the course of justice. But the exercise of this prerogative is a matter of the gravest i nose. Legislators, thus assailed nufacturing laws for unin truth, the stench that arkably just retribution ators, in our enlightened odwinked and led blindmselves the trouble of r duty. of this case? It is not Thames was, in verity, far as the purity of its e very object of sewers, rs, was to keep the river of to receive the polluWhen, three centuries wers Act of that much'roude assures us) Henry that "the King, like a is prince, nothing earthly e advancing of the com. commodity of this his 1e, for the Act of Parlia is benevolent considera ood waters thrown on to storms. To remedy the er safe and clear within ewers were appointed, as ore his time, whose duty vards, or guards against ere made. These were rt speech, sewers. Some a now line each side of ad are found in many y. Others were deep intervals, so that when waters came down, they instead of drowning the > history, in a few words, lly kept clean and free til very lately, a punisha or house sulliage into a appened that men arose he flesh-pots of Egypt; d a novel mode of reachstirred up to great alarm arm, carefully cherished, 138 quences, immediate or pr ( 140 responsibility. It is not an absolute prerogative. Those are wholly mistaken who think that the power of the Crown is unlimited in this respect. Kings of England have, before now, sought to frustrate plain justice by the exercise of this prerogative. Consequently, Statute Law and the Common Law have both interfered to put a limit and fix restrictions on its exercise. No law has allowed Lawyer Bodkin to carry it about in his pocket, in order to make out a case for conviction by second-hand means. The very idea and name of "pardon" imply a crime committed, and a person charged with it. The statutes (such as 10 & 11 Will. III., c. 23, sect. 5, 5 Anne, c. 31, sect. 4, &c.) which allow of pardon on the giving of evidence, all of them most explicitly state that "the offender" must give the evidence as the condition of the pardon. Nay, Lawyer Bodkin cuts his own ground from under him. He declares that his charge against Bernard will be, that of being "accessory to the capital offence of murder." Of course the charge against Rudio, were he here, could not be less. But Lord Chief Justice Coke very admirably points out (in his Third Institute) that the Crown, though it may pardon homicide, can never pardon murder:—the homicide is pardoned, when it is so, on the inference that it does not amount to murder. But, unquestionably, there can be no doubt in this case, so far as Rudio is concerned, that he is guilty of the capital offence. The Crown of England is precluded from granting a pardon in such a case. We say this very advisedly. But again, a pardon can only be granted to a man within the jurisdiction, and to whom it can avail. Rudio has never been charged with any crime in England. He cannot now be charged with this crime in England. No pardon from the Crown of England can avail to him. The very condition on which, only, a pardon can be promised, according to the acts already referred to, is impossible to be fulfilled by him. Again, therefore, we say, that the Crown is precluded from granting a pardon in this case. We have been told, lately, as an excuse for the "Conspiracy to Murder Bill," that foreigners can do, in England, what Englishmen cannot. This unscrupulous assertion, made for the purposes of party, is untrue. But, if such a pardon as the one pulled out of Lawyer Bodkin's pocket were of any avail, it would seem that the opposite of this assertion is true; and that, while innocent Englishmen must languish in an Italian jail, unhelped by England, the Great Seal of England has virtue even in the case of a foreigner convicted, by a French tribunal, of a crime committed in France! What, then, is the meaning of this indecent prostitution of the name of the Crown, and the Great Seal, and the prerogative of mercy? It is neither more nor less than, in servile truckling to Louis Napoleon, to attempt to pervert the course of law and evidence, in order to secure a verdict that may be acceptable to him. The poor wife of Rudio is deluded by the deception that a pardon from the Crown of England has validity in such a case, and that it will avail, beyond the realm of England, to save her husband. The husband has had a similar delusion held out to him, and has, consequently, urged his wife to tell a tale which, by its bringing home conviction to Bernard, may save himself. It is a fraud and a deception, carefully got up and deliberately practised, in order to patch up halting evidence. What can be more dangerous than the allowance of such a precedent? Lawyer Bodkin says, "it is usual" to make out a pardon in this way. We flatly deny it. We most emphatically and advisedly assert, that the case is without precedent; while no one can doubt that it is contrary to every principle of law and every rule of justice. Have all those concerned in getting up this case forgotten, or do they think that every one else has forgotten, what was said by Lord Chief Justice Mansfield himself, in the case of R. v. Rudd (Cowper's Report, page 336), that letting one party give evidence against another was never safe, as it holds out "so strong a temptation to a man to commit perjury, if, by accusing another, he can escape himself?" Is the temptation less when held out to the wife? And what shall be said when, not only is perjury thus invited, but the bait held out is not, in fact, what it pretends to be, but is-and all the power of England cannot make it more than-a mockery, a delusion, and a snare? THE LORD-ADVOCATE and the WESTERN BANK. TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES. Sir,-In confirmation of your correspondent "Auld Reekie," allow me to call your attention to the evidence given before a select committee of the House of Commons in June, 1855, by no less a person than the late Lord-Advocate himself. He stated that "the system of prosecution In Scotland proceeds upon the principle that it is the duty of the State to detect crime, apprehend offenders, and punish them, and that independently of the interests of a private party." He proceeded,-" The staff of the public prosecutor is as follows:-The Lord-Advocate is the head of the criminal department," &c. (See printed evidence, questions 111-171.) It is therefore plain that either the late Lord-Advocate, in giving this official evidence before a committee of Parliament, was labouring under some hallucination, or the present Lord-Advocate has yet to serve an apprenticeship to the duties of his office. April 20. Jeep. 150 Your obedient servant, TOULMIN SMITH. THE MIDDLESEX COUNTY RATE. TO THE EDITOR OF THE "STAR." SIR, Your paper of yesterday having reported a meeting of the county justices, to confirm the newly-made basis or standard for a county rate, it may be useful to the parish officers in this county to know that (apart from all other questions) the basis or standard thus made is wholly illegal, and absolutely void in itself, having been made in direct contravention of the requisitions of the Act. No overseer can legally make any payment in answer to any call made by the justices for a county rate upon this basis or standard.--I am, &c., H. 17th July, 1858. PARLIAMENTARY JOBBING. TO THE EDITOR OF THE "STAR." SIR,-I observe, with great satisfaction, that you have at length broken the spell which has hitherto bound you and other journals to silence, on the jobbing that is going on in the present session. Your exposure of the Scotch Universities Bill will, I hope, do good, though it is rather late in the day. Attention was called to it six weeks ago in another quarter; but the watch-dogs were drugged. Another gross job has already been completed. Though attention was very explicitly called to it in a weekly record of the proceedings of Parliament, the Parliamentary Remembrancer, five weeks ago, it passed through all its stages in the House of Commons and the House of Lords, without a word from any hon. Radical economist, or from any of the newspaper press. It was done under cover of the "Non-Parochial Register Bill," the object of which was, simply, to raise the salary of the Registrar-General for doing nothing! Another job is to be perpetrated on Monday night, when the "Public Health Bill" comes before the House. The sole object and effect of this bill are to perpetuate the Board of Health (under a thin disguise); to give 1,500l. (!) a-year to a "medical officer" who does nothing; to keep up an idle staff of officers with great salaries, who do no earthly good to anybody, but who have long made themselves deservedly obnoxious by the mischief they do; and to give to the Ministers of the day the power to appoint salaried functionaries to any extent, without any consent or knowledge of Parliament, who are to meddle with the affairs of every or any place, and to cook up cases for extending that system of centralisation and over-government which you have often denounced. This "Public Health Bill" is a huger job by far than the Scotch Universities Bill, though both belong to the same class. Both are equally in bad faith. I could add many others to these illustrations of parliamentary jobbery. Commending them to your constant attention, I am, &c., WIDE-AWAKE. June 19, 1858. Pl. Albion 26 July THE SILVER THAMES AND ITS GOLDEN LESSON TO DWELLERS BY OTHER RIVERS.-There is no doubt that poor human nature has often exhibited her natural infirmities in the shape of jealousies enter tained, by some of our great cities, of the metropolis. It absorbs, they have sometimes bethought them, too many of the good things of high life, and too many of the kind attentions of the Legislatures Such jealousy must have received ample compensa tion during the last month, when both Houses of Legislation have stood trembling with horror and alarm, because, from the surface of the waters that wash the walls of their grand Palace of Westminster, there arose odours, not of sweet sacrifice, but of fearful stench. They realized some sense of charity for the gallant who so much stirred Hotspur's indig nation, because, to keep off the breath that came be tween the wind and his nobility, ever and anon a pouncetbox he put up to his nose. We may pity the poor Legislators, thus assailed in their patriotic task of manufacturing laws for ungrateful Englishmen. But, in truth, the stench that has assailed them is a remarkably just retribution for the way in which Legislators, in our enlightened days, are content to be hoodwinked and led blindfold, in order to save themselves the trouble of thinking, and fulfilling their duty. What are the simple facts of this case? It is not so very long ago since the Thames was, in verity, "the silver Thames," so far as the purity of its waters was concerned. The very object of sewers, and Commissioners of Sewers, was to keep the river sweet and unfouled, instead of to receive the pollution now poured into it. When, three centuries and a quarter ago, the Sewers Act of that muchmaligned monarch (as Mr. Froude assures us) Henry VIII. was passed, we find that "the King, like a "virtuous and most gracious prince, nothing earthly "so highly weighing as the advancing of the com"mon profit, wealth, and commodity of this his "realm," this must be true, for the Act of Parlia ment says it,-took into his benevolent considera tion the mischief done by flood waters thrown on to the land by the tide and by storms. To remedy the mischief, and keep the river safe and clear within bounds, Commissioners of Sewers were appointed, as they had been long ago before his time, whose duty it was to see that wears, wards, or guards against the influx of the tide, were made. These were called sea-wears, or, in short speech, sewers. Some were earthen banks, which now line each side of the Thames for miles, and are found in many other parts of the country. Others were deep trenches, cut in the land at intervals, so that when the tide was up, or storm waters came down, they might fill these trenches instead of drowning the adjoining land. This is the history, in a few words, of "sewers." These sewers were carefully kept clean and free from pollution. It was, until very lately, a punishable offence to put any filth or house sulliage into a sewer. But suddenly it happened that men arose whose souls yearned after the flesh-pots of Egypt; and their ingenuity devised a novel mode of reaching them. The land was stirred up to great alarm about the cholera. The alarm, carefully cherished, |