a premature death, and no man suffered to speak in my defence, when at this very moment, and in my hearing, all the eloquence of the bar, on the other side of your justice hall, is employed in defending a path or a hedge? Is a foot of land dearer to any man than my life is to me? The civil plaintiff has not trusted the smallest part of his fate or for tune to his own efforts; and will you grant me no assistance of superior wisdom, who have suffered a long famine to purchase it-who am broken by prison--broken by chains--and so shamed by this dress of guilt, and abashed by the presence of my superiors, that I have no words which you could hear without derision-that I could not give way for a moment to the fulness and agitation of my rude heart without moving your contempt?" So spoke a wretched creature to a judge in our hearing! and what answer could be given but "Jailer, take him away?" We are well aware that a great decency of language is observed by the counsel employed against the prisoner, in consequence of the silence imposed upon the opposite counsel; but then, though there is a decency as far as concerns impassioned declamation, yet there is no restraint, and there can be no restraint, upon the reasoning powers of a counsellor. He may put together the circumstances of an imputed crime in the most able, artful and ingenious manner, without the slightest vehemence or passion. We have no objection to this, if any counter statement were permitted. We want only fair play. Speech for both sides, or speech for none. The first would be the wiser system; but the second would be clear from the intolerable cruelty of the present. We see no harm that would ensue, if both advocates were to fol drawn in the speech of the prisoner's counsel. [ wit of man can devise no better method of disenHe would be no more prejudiced against the tangling difficulty, exposing_falsehood, and dedefendant in a criminal than in a civil suit. He tecting truth. "Tell me why I am hurried away to would select from the speeches of both counsel all that could be fairly urged for or against the defendant, and he would reply to their fallacious reasonings. The pure administration of justice requires of him, in either case, the same conduct. Whether the whole bar spoke for the prisoner, or whether he was left to defend himself, what can the judge do, or what ought he to do, but to state to the jury the facts as they are given in evidence, and the impression these facis have made upon his own mind? In the mean time, while the prisoner's counsel have been compelled to be silent, the accuser's, the opposite party, have enjoyed an immense advantage. In considering what bears against the prisoner, the judge has heard, not only the suggestions of his own understanding, but he has been exposed to the able and artful reasoning of a practised advocate, who has been previously instructed in the case of which the judge never heard a syllable before he came into court. Suppose it to be a case depending upon circumstantial evidence; in how many new points of view may a man of genius have placed those circumstances, which would not have occurred to the judge himself! How many inferences may he have drawn, which would have been unnoticed but for the efforts of a man whose bread and fame depend upon his exertions, and who has purposely, and on contract, flung the whole force of his understanding into one scale! In the mean time, the prisoner can say nothing, for he has not the gift of learned speech; his counsel can say nothing, though he has communicated with the prisoner, and could place the whole circumstances, perhaps, in the fairest and clearest point of view for the accused party. By the courtesy of Eng-low their own plan without restraint. But, if land this is called justice-we in the north cannot admit of the correctness of the appellation. It seems utterly to be forgotten, in estimating this practice, that two understandings are better than one. The judge must inevitably receive many new views against the prisoner by the speech of one counsel, and lose many views in favour of the prisoner by the silence of the other. We are not to suppose (like ladies going into court in an assize town) that the judge would have thought of every thing which the counsel against the prisoner has said, and which the counsel for the prisoner would have said. The judge, wigged and robed as he is, is often very inferior in acuteness to either of the persons who are pleading under him-a cold, slow, parchment and precedent man, without passions or præcordia, perhaps a sturdy brawler for church and king, or a quiet man of ordinary abilities, steadily, though perhaps conscientiously, following those in power through thick and thinthrough right and wrong. Whence comes it that the method of getting at truth, which is so excellent on all common occasions, should be considered as so improper on the greatest of all occasions, where the life of a man is concerned? If an acre of land is to be lost or won, one man says all that can be said on one side of the question-another on the other; and the jury, aided by the impartiality of the judge, decide. The the feelings are to be excluded in all causes of this nature (which seems very absurd), then let the same restraint be exacted from both sides. It might very soon be established, as the eti quette of the bar, that the pleadings on both sides were expected to be calm, and to consist of reasoning upon the facts. In high treason, where the partiality of the judge and power of the court are suspected, this absurd incapacity of being heard by counsel is removed. No body pretends to say, in such cases, that the judge would be counsel for the prisoner; and yet, how many thousand cases are there in a free country which have nothing to do with high treason, and where the spirit of party, unknown to himself, may get possession of a judge? Suppose any trial for murder to have taken place in the Manchester riots,-will any man say that the conduct of many judges on such a question ought not to have been watched with the most jealous circumspection? Would any prisoner-would any fair mediator between the prisoner and the public-be satisfied at such a period with the axiom that the judge is counsel for the prisoner! We are not saying that there is no judge who might not be so trusted, but that all judges are not, at all times, to be so intrusted. We are not saying that any judge would wilfully do wrong; but that many might be led to do wrong by passions and prejudices of which they were unconscious; and that the real safeguard to the prisoner, the best, the only safeguard, is full liberty of speech for the counsel he has employed. What would be the discipline of that hospital where medical assistance was allowed in all trifling complaints, and withheld in every case of real danger? where Bailey and Halford were lavished upon stomach-aches and refused in typhus fever? where the dying patient beheld the greatest skill employed upon trifling evils of others, and was told, because his was a case of life and death, that the cook or the nurse was to be his physician? Suppose so intolerable an abuse (as the attorney and solicitor-general would term it) had been established, and that a law for its correction was now first proposed, entitled an Act to prevent the Counsel for Prisoners from being heard in their Defence !!! What evil would result from allowing counsel to be heard in defence of prisoners? Would too many people be hung from losing that valuable counsellor, the judge? or would too few people be hung? or would things remain much as they are at present? We never could get the admirers of this practice to inform us what the results would be of deviating from it; and we are the more particularly curious upon this point, because our practice is decidedly the reverse, and we find no other results from it than a fair administration of criminal justice. In all criminal cases that require the intervention of a jury in Scotland, a prisoner must have, 1st, a copy of the indictment, which must contain a minute specification of the offence charged; 2dly, a list of witnesses; 3dly, a list of the assize; and, 4thly, in every question that occurs, and in all addresses to the jury, the prisoner's counsel has the last word. Where is the boasted mercy of the English law after this? The truth is, it proceeds from the error which, in all dark ages, pervades all codes of laws, of confounding the accused with the guilty. In the early part of our state trials, the prisoners were not allowed to bring evidence against the witnesses of the crown. For a long period after this, the witnesses of the prisoner were not suffered to be examined upon oath. One piece of cruelty and folly has given way after another. Each has been defended by the attorney and solicitor-general for the time, as absolutely necessary to the existence of the state, and the most perfect performance of our illustrious ancestors. The last grand hope of every foolish person is the silence of the prisoner's counsel. In the defence of this, it will be seen what stupidity driven to despair can achieve. We beg pardon for this digression; but flesh and blood cannot endure the nonsense of lawyers upon this subject. clergy who are subject to him. Above all, do not let us omit the following beautiful anecdote, while we are talking of good and pious men. "The committee cannot refrain from extracting from the report of the Paris Society, the interesting anecdote of the excellent Père Joussony, who being sent, by the Consul at Algiers, to minister to the slaves, fixed his residence in their prison; and, during a period of thirty years, never quitted his post. Being compelled to repair to France, for a short period, he returned again to the prison, and at length resigned his breath in the midst of those for whose interests he had laboured, and who were dearer to him than life.”—Report, p. 30. It seems to be a very necessary part of the prison system, that any poor person, when acquitted, should be passed to his parish; and that all who are acquitted should be immediately liberated. At present, a prisoner, after acquittal, is not liberated till the grand jury are dismissed, in case (as it is said) any more bills should be preferred against him. This is really a considerable hardship; and we do not see, upon the same principle, why the prisoner may not be detained for another assize. To justify such a practice, notice should, at all events, be given to the jailer of intention to prefer other charges against him. To detain a man who is acquitted of all of which he has been accused, and who is accused of nothing more, merely because he may be accused of something more, seems to be a great perversion of justice. The greatest of all prison improvements, however, would be the delivery of jails four times in the year. It would save expense; render justice more terrible, by rendering it more prompt; facilitate classification, by lessening numbers; keep constantly alive, in the minds of wicked men, the dread of the law; and diminish the unjust sufferings of those who, after long imprisonment, are found innocent. "From documents," says Mr. Western, "upon the table of the House of Commons in 1819, I drew out an account, which I have already adverted to in part, but which I shall restate here, as it places, in a strong point of view, the extent of injustice, and inconsistency, too, arising out of the present system. It appeared that, at the Maidstone Lent Assizes of that year there were one hundred and seventy-seven prisoners for trial; of these, seventeen were in prison before the 1st of October, eighty-three before the 1st of January, the shortest period of confine ment before trial being six months of the former, three months of the latter. Nothing can show us more plainly the injustice of such confinement than the known fact of six months' imprisonment being considered a sufficient punishment for half the felonies that are committed· but the case is stronger, when we consider the number acquitted; seventeen of the twenty-seven teen were discharged, not being prosecuted, or having no bill found against them. On the other side it appeared, that twenty-five con victed felons were sentenced to six months' im prisonment, or under, the longest period of whose confinement did not, therefore, exceed The society have some very proper remarks upon the religious instructions of the chaplain-first mentioned were acquitted, nine of the seven an appointment of vast importance and utility; unfortunately very ill paid, and devolving entirely upon the lower clergy. It is said that the present Bishop of Gloucester, Dr. Ryder, goes into jails and busies himself with the temporal wretchedness and the eternal welfare of the prisoners. If this is so, it does him great honour, and is a noble example to all ranks of This has since been done away with. the shortest of the seventeen acquitted, or that of the nine, against whom no charge was adduced; there were three, who, after being about seven months in prison, were then discharged, whilst various convicted felons suffered sixsevenths only of the punishment, including the time before trial as well as after condemnation. By the returns from the Lent Assizes at Chelmsford, the same year, the cases were not less striking than those of Maidstone: the total number was one hundred and sixty-six; of these, twenty-five were in prison before the 1st of October, of whom eleven were acquitted, and of these eleven, six were discharged without any indictment preferred; two were in prison eight months; three, seven months and fifteen days. three, six months and fifteen days. On the other hand, sixteen convicted of felony, were considered to be sufficiently punished by imprisonment under six months. Upon the whole, it appeared that four hundred and five persons had been in gaol before the 1st of October, whilst eight hundred convicted felons were sentenced to a lighter punishment, to a shorter duration of imprisonment, than these four hundred and five had actually undergone. "It is a curious fact, that, upon an average, more than one-third of the total number committed for trial are acquitted. In the seven years ending 1819, seventy-two thousand two hundred and sixteen persons were committed; of these, fourteen thousand two hundred and ninety-one were acquitted on trial, eleven thousand two hundred and seventy-four were discharged, there being no prosecutions, or no bills found against them. This large proportion of acquittals aggravates the evil and injustice of long confinement before trial; but were it other. wise, what possible right can we have to detain a man in custody six months, upon any charge exhibited against him, before he is brought to trial? What excuse or palliation can be found for so barbarous a violation of all the principles of justice and humanity? How contemptible it is, by way of defence, to talk of the inexpediency of increasing the number of the judges, the expense, inconvenience, trouble, &c.! It is wrong to contend with such arguments against the unanswerable claims of justice, as it is only to admit they are entitled to weight. The fact is, we are so completely under the influence of habitual respect for established practice, that we do not stop to question the possibility of the existence of any serious defects in the administration of the law that can be capable of remedy. The public attention has never been earnestly and steadily fixed and devoted to the attainment of a better system."-Western, pp. 80—83. The public cannot be too grateful to Mr. Western for his labours on this subject. We strongly recommend his tract for general circulation. It is full of stout good sense, without one particle of nonsense or fanaticism:-good English stuff, of the most improved and best sort. Lord Londonderry has assented to the measure; and his assent does him and the government very great credit. It is a measure of first-rate importance. The multiplicity of imprisonments is truly awful. Within the distance of ten miles round London, thirty-one fairs are annually held, which continue eighty days within the space of seven months. The effect of these fairs, in filling the prisons of the metropolis, it is easy to imagine; and the topic is very wisely and properly brought forward by the society. Nothing can be so absurd as the reasoning used about flash houses. They are suffered to exist, it seems, because it is easy to the officers of justice to find, in such places, the prisoners of whom they are in search! But the very place where the thief is found is most probably the place which made him a thief. If it facili tates the search, it creates the necessity for searching, and multiplies guilt while it promotes detection. Wherever thieves are known to haunt, that place should be instantly purged of thieves. We have pushed this article to a length which will prevent us from dwelling upon that part of the plan of the Prison Society which embraces the reformation of juvenile delinquents, of whom it is calculated there are not less than 8000 in London who gain their livelihood by thieving. To this subject we may, perhaps, refer in some future number. We must content ourselves at present with a glimpse at the youthful criminals of the metropolis. "Upon a late occasion (in company with Mr. Samuel Hoare, the chairman of the Society for the Reform of Juvenile Delinquents), I visited, about midnight, many of those receptacles of thieves which abound in this metropolis. We selected the night of that day in which an execution had taken place; and our object was, to ascertain whether that terrible demonstration of rigour could operate even a short suspen sion of iniquity, and keep for a single nigh the votaries of crime from their accustomed orgies. In one room, I recollect, we found a large number of children of both sexes, the oldest under eighteen years of age, and in the centre of these a man who had been described to me by the police as one of the largest sellers of forged bank-notes. At another part, we were shown a number of buildings, into which only children were allowed to enter, and in which, if you could obtain admission, which you cannot, you would see scenes of the most flagrant, the most public, and the most shocking debauchery. Have I not, then, a right to say, that you are growing crimes at a terrible rate, and producing those miscreants who are to disturb the public peace, plunder the public property, and to become the scourge and the disgrace of the country?"-Buxton, pp. 66, 67. Houses dedicated to the debauchery of chil dren, where it is impossible to enter!!! Whence comes this impossibility? To show that their labours are not needlessly continued, the society make the following statement of the present state of prisons: "But although these considerations are highly encouraging, there is yet much to accomplish in this work of national improvement. So extensive are the defects of classification, that in thirty gaols, constructed for the confinement of 2985 persons, there were, at one time in the last year, no fewer than 5837 prisoners; and the whole number imprisoned i those gaols, dur. ing that period, amounted to 20.703 There are yet prisons where idleness and its attendant evils reign unrestrained-where the sexes are not separated-where all distinctions of crime are confounded-where few can enter, if uncorrupted, without pollution; and, if guilty, with out incurring deeper stains of criminality.-able, excellent woman, and ten thousand times There are yet prisons which receive not the pious visits of a Christian minister-which the light of knowledge never enters-and where the truths and consolations of the Gospel are never heard. There are yet prisons where, for the security of the prisoners, measures are re-visiting of friends-no education but religious sorted to as revolting to British feeling as they are repugnant to the spirit and letter of English law."-Report, pp. 63, 64. With this statement we take our leave of the subject of prisons, thoroughly convinced that, since the days of their cleanliness and salu brity, they have been so managed as to become the great school for crimes and wretchedness; and that the public, though beginning to awake, are not yet sufficiently aware of this fact, and sufficiently alarmed at it. Mrs. Fry is an ami better than the infamous neglect that preceded her; but hers is not the method to stop crimes. In prisons, which are really meant to keep the multitude in order, and to be a terror to evil doers, there must be no sharing of profits-no education-no freedom of diet-no weavers' looms or carpenters' benches. There must be a great deal of solitude; coarse food; a dress of shame; hard, incessant, irksome, eternal labour; a planned and regulated and unrelenting exclusion of happiness and comfort. PERSECUTING BISHOPS.* [EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1822.] Ir is a great point in any question to clear away encumbrances, and to make a naked circle about the object in dispute, so that there may be a clear view of it on every side. In pursuance of this disencumbering process, we shall first acquit the bishop of all wrong intentions. He has a very bad opinion of the practical effects of high Calvinistic doctrines upon the common people; and he thinks it his duty to exclude those clergymen who profess them from his diocese. There is no moral wrong in this. He has accordingly devised no fewer than eighty-seven interrogatories, by which he thinks he can detect the smallest taint of Calvinism that may lurk in the creed of the candidate; and in this also, whatever we may think of his reasoning, we suppose his purpose to be blameless. He believes, finally, that he has legally the power so to interrogate and exclude; and in this perhaps he is not mistaken. His intentions, then, are good, and his conduct, perhaps, not amenable to the law. All this we admit in his favour: but against him we must maintain, that his conduct upon the points in dispute has been singularly injudicious, extremely harsh, and, in its effects (though not in its intentions), very oppressive and vexatious to the clergy." We have no sort of intention to avail ourselves of an anonymous publication to say unkind, uncivil, or disrespectful things to a man of rank, learning, and character-we hope to be guilty of no such impropriety; but we cannot believe we are doing wrong in ranging ourselves on the weaker side, in the cause of propriety and justice. The mitre protects its wearer from indignity; but it does not secure impunity. turally lead them to coincide with him, think him wrong. If a man were to indulge in taking medicine till the apothecary, the druggist, and the physician, all called upon him to abandon his philo-cathartic propensities-if he were to gratify his convivial habits till the landlord demurred and the waiter shook his head-we should naturally imagine that advice so wholly disinterested was not given before it was wanted, and that it merited some little attention and respect. Now, though the Bench of Bishops certainly love power, and love the church, as well as the Bishop of Peterborough, yet not one defended him-not one rose to say, "I have done, or I would do the same thing." It was impossible to be present at the last debate on this question, without perceiving that his lordship stood alone-and this in a very gregarious profession, that habitually combines and butts against an opponent with a very extended front. If a lawyer is wounded, the rest of the profession pursue him, and put him to death. If a churchman is hurt, the others gather round for his protection, stamp with their feet, push with their horns, and demolish the dissenter who did the mischief. The bishop has at least done a very unusual thing in his Eighty-seven Questions. The two archbishops, and we believe every other bishop, and all the Irish hierarchy, admit curates into their dioceses without any such precautions. The necessity of such severe and scrupulous inquisition, in short, has been apparent to nobody but the Bishop of Peterborough; and the authorities by which he seeks to justify it are any thing but satisfactory. His lordship states, that forty years ago, he was himself examined by written interrogatories, and that he is not the only bishop who has done it; but he mentions no names; 1. An Appeal to the Legislature and Public; or, the Legality of the Eighty-seven Questions proposed by Dr. Her- and it was hardly worth while to state such bert Marsh, the Bishop of Peterborough, to Candidates for extremely slight precedents for so strong a deHoly Orders, and for Licenses, within that Diocese, consi-viation from the common practice of the dered. 2d Edition. London, Seely, 1821. It is a strong presumption that a man is wrong, when all his friends, whose habits na 2. A Speech, delivered in the House of Lords, on Friday, June 7, 1822, by Herbert, Lord Bishop of Peterborough, on the Presentation of a Petition against his Examination Questions: with Explanatory Notes, a Supplement, and a Copy of the Questions. London, Rivington. 1822. church. The bishop who rejects a curate upon the Eighty-seven Questions is necessarily and inevitably opposed to the bishop who ordained 3. The Wrongs of the Clergy of the Diocese of Peterbo- him. The Bishop of Gloucester ordains a rough stated and illustrated. By the Rev. T. S. GRIMSHAWE, M. A., Rector of Burton, Northamptonshire; and young man of twenty-three years of age, not Vicar of Biddenham, Bedfordshire. London, Seely, 1822. thinking it necessary to put to him these inter4. Episcopal Innovation: or, the Test of Modern Ortho- rogatories, or putting them perhaps, and apdoxy, in Eighty-seven Questions, imposed, as Articles of Faith, upon Candidates for Licenses and for Holy Orders, proving of answers diametrically opposite to in the Diocese of Peterborough; with a distinct Answer to those that are required by the Bishop of Petereach Question, and General Reflections Relative to their Il-borough. The young clergyman then comes legal Structure and Pernicious Tendency. London, Seely, 1820. 5. Official Correspondence between the Right Rev. Herbert, Lord Bishop of Peterborough, and the Rev. John Green, respecting his Nomination to the Curacy of Blatherwycke, in the Diocese of Peterborough, and County of Northampton: Also, between His Grace Charles, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Rev. Henry William Nevile, M. A., Rector of Blatherwycke, and of Cottesmore in the County of Rutland. 1821 to the last-mentioned bishop, and the bishop, after putting him to the question, says, “You are unfit for a clergyman,"-though, ten days before, the Bishop of Gloucester has made him one! It is bad enough for ladies to pull caps, but still worse for bishops to pull mitres. Nothing can be more mischievous or indecent |