constitutes the grand bar to the proposed alteration. If three hours would acquit a man, and he is hanged because he is only allowed two hours for his defence, the poor man is as much murdered as if his throat had been cut before he came into Court. If twelve Judges cannot do the most perfect justice, other twelve must be appointed. Strange administration of criminal law, to adhere obstinately to an inadequate number of Judges, and to refuse any improvement which is incompatible with this arbitrary and capricious enactment. Neither is it quite certain that the proposed alteration would create a greater demand upon the time of the Court. At present the counsel makes a defence by long crossexaminations, and examinations in chief of the witnesses, and the Judge allows a greater latitude than he would do, if the counsel of the prisoner were permitted to speak. The counsel by these oblique methods, and by stating false points of law for the express purpose of introducing facts, endeavours to obviate the injustice of the law, and takes up more time by this oblique, than he would do by a direct defence. But the best answer to this objection of time (which, if true, is no objection at all) is, that as many misdemeanours as felonies are tried in a given time, though counsel are allowed in the former, and not in the latter case.

One excuse for the absence of counsel is, that the evidence upon which the prisoner is convicted is always so clear, that the counsel cannot gainsay it. This is mere absurdity. There is not, and cannot be, any such rule. Many a man has been hung upon a string of circumstantial evidence, which not only very ingenious men, but very candid and judicious men, might criticise and call in question. If no one were found guilty but upon such evidence as would not admit of a doubt, half the crimes in the world would be unpunished. This dictum, by which the present practice has often been defended, was adopted by Lord Chancellor Nottingham. To the lot of this Chancellor, however, it fell to pass sentence of death upon Lord Stafford, whom (as Mr.

the House of Lords (constituted as it was in those days), could have put to death, if he had had counsel to defend him.

To improve the criminal law of England, and to make it really deserving of the incessant eulogium which is lavished upon it, we would assimilate trials for felony to trials for high treason. The prisoner should not only have counsel, but a copy of the indictment and a list of the witnesses, many days antecedent to the trial. It is in the highest degree unjust that I should not see and study the description of the crime with which I am charged, if the most scrupulous exactness be required in that instrument which charges me with crime. If the place where, the time when, and the manner how, and the persons by whom, must all be specified with the most perfect accuracy, if any deviation from this accuracy is fatal, the prisoner, or his legal advisers, should have a full opportunity of judging whether the scruples of the law have been attended to in the formation of the indictment; and they ought not to be confined to the hasty and imperfect consideration which can be given to an indictment exhibited for the first time in Court. Neither is it possible for the prisoner to repel accusation till he knows who is to be brought against him. He may see suddenly, stuck up in the witness's box, a man who has been writing him letters, to extort money from the threat of evidence he could produce. The character of such a witness would be destroyed in a moment, if the letters were produced; and the letters would have been produced, of course, if the prisoner had imagined such a person would have been brought forward by the prosecutor. It is utterly impossible for a prisoner to know in what way he may be assailed, and against what species of attacks he is to guard. Conversations may be brought against him which he has forgotten, and to which he could (upon notice) have given another colour and complexion. Actions are made to bear upon his case, which (if he had known they would have been referred to) might have been explained in the most satisfactory manner. All these modes of attack are pointed

out by the list of witnesses transmitted to the prisoner, and he has time to prepare his answer, as it is perfectly just he should have. This is justice, when a prisoner has ample means of compelling the attendance of his witnesses; when his written accusation is put into his hand, and he has time to study it—when he knows in what manner his guilt is to be proved, and when he has a man of practised understanding to state his facts, and prefer his arguments. Then criminal justice may march on boldly. The Judge has no stain of blood on his ermine; and the phrases which English people are so fond of lavishing upon the humanity of their laws will have a real foundation. At present this part of the law is a mere relic of the barbarous injustice by which accusation in the early part of our jurisprudence was always confounded with guilt. The greater part of these abuses have been brushed away, as this cannot fail soon to be. In the mean time it is defended (as every other abuse has been defended) by men who think it their duty to defend every thing which is, and to dread every thing which is not. We are told that the Judge does what he does not do, and ought not to do. The most pernicious effects are anticipated in trials of felony, from that which is found to produce the most perfect justice in civil causes, and in cases of treason and misdemeanour: we are called upon to continue a practice without example in any other country, and are required by lawyers to consider that custom as humane, which every one who is not a lawyer pronounces to be most cruel and unjust and which has not been brought forward to general notice, only because its bad effects are confined to the last and lowest of mankind.*

* All this nonsense is now put an end to. Counsel is allowed to the prisoner, and they are permitted to speak in his defence.

CATHOLICS. (E. REVIEW, 1827.)

1. A Plain Statement in support of the Political Claims of the Roman Catholics; in a Letter to the Rev. Sir George Lee, Bart. By Lord Nugent, Member of Parliament for Aylesbury. London, Hookham. 1826.

2. A Letter to Viscount Milton, M. P. By One of his Constituents. London, Ridgway.

1827.

3. Charge by the Archbishop of Cashel. Dublin, Milliken.

IF a poor man were to accept a guinea upon the condition that he spoke all the evil he could of another whom he believed to be innocent, and whose imprisonment he knew he should prolong, and whose privations he knew he should increase by his false testimony, would not the person so hired be one of the worst and basest of human beings? And would not his guilt be aggravated, if, up to the moment of receiving his aceldama, he had spoken in terms of high praise of the person whom he subsequently accused? Would not the latter feature of the case prove him to be as much without shame as the former evinced him to be without principle? Would the guilt be less, if the person so hired were a man of education? Would it be less, if he were above want? Would it be less, if the profession and occupation of his life were to decide men's rights, or to teach them morals and religion? Would it be less by the splendour of the bribe? Does a bribe of 3000l. leave a man innocent, whom a bribe of 30l. would cover with infamy? You are of a mature period of life, when the opinions of an honest man ought to be, and are fixed. On Monday you were a barrister or a country clergyman, a serious and temperate friend to religious liberty and Catholic emancipation. In a few weeks from this time you are a bishop, or a dean, or a judge—publishing and speaking charges and sermons against the poor Catholics, and ex

plaining away this sale of your soul by every species of falsehood, shabbiness, and equivocation. You may carry a bit of ermine on your shoulder, or hide the lower moiety of the body in a silken petticoat-and men may call you Mr. Dean, or My Lord; but you have sold your honour and your conscience for money; and, though better paid, you are as base as the witness who stands at the door of the judgment-hall, to swear whatever the suborner will put into his mouth, and to receive whatever he will put in his pocket.*

When soldiers exercise, there stands a goodly portly person out of the ranks, upon whom all eyes are directed, and whose signs and motions, in the performance of the manual exercise, all the soldiers follow. The Germans, we believe, call him a Flugelman. We propose Lord Nugent as a political flugelman;-he is always consistent, plain, and honest, steadily and straightly pursuing his object without hope or fear, under the influence of good feelings and high principle. The House of Commons does not contain within its walls a more honest, upright man.

We seize upon the opportunity which this able pamphlet of his Lordship's affords us, to renew our attention to the Catholic question. There is little new to be said; but we must not be silent, or, in these days of baseness and tergiversation, we shall be supposed to have deserted our friend the Pope; and they will say of us, Prostant venales apud Lambeth et Whitehall. God forbid it should ever be said of us with justice—it is pleasant to loll and roll, and to accumulate -to be a

purple and fine linen man, and to be called by some of those nicknames which frail and ephemeral beings are so fond of accumulating upon each other;-but the best thing of all is to live like honest men, and to add something to the cause of liberality, justice, and truth.

* It is very far from our intention to say that all who were for the Catholics, and are now against them, have made this change from base motives; it is equally far from our intention not to say that many men of both professions have subjected themselves to this shocking imputation.