A CRIMINAL TRIAL.

GREAT crimes are commonly produced
either out of a cold intensity of selfishness, or
out of a hot intensity of passion. It is not
difficult for any one to say which must lead
to the more detestable results. The visible
ferocity, the glare of envy or wild hatred in
the criminal who slays his enemy—foul
and detestable as it must ever be—is not so
loathsome as the tranquil good-humour of the
wretch utterly lost in self-content, ready
without a particle of malice or compunction
to pluck neighbours' lives, as fruit, for his
material refreshment. Of course he is the
most affable of liars. Never recognising
any use for language but the gaining of the
low ends of his most base life, he is meanly
false with as much natural placidity as
belongs usually to the exercise of everyday
habits. Such a being would seem kind to
those about him; and, indeed, feel kindly as
men usually do towards their own possessions.
He might be inclined most amiably—after
his selfish and proprietorial way—towards his
wife whilst he was putting her to a slow and
painful death by poison; he might support her
head, soothe her, and feel really comfortable
afterwards, about her memory. And he would
be ready to poison that too, in a pleasant easy
way, should chance ever appear to make it
worth his while to do so. The unprecedented
atrocity of such a man's career, does not
expose him to a hasty vengeance. English
criminal law displays even more clearly
than it enforces, a respect for life. Simply,
for instance, because the career of the
Poisoner whose trial we recently witnessed (too
plainly indicated by the result of inquests upon
certain of his victims) was happily without
almost precedent among us horrible and
revolting, therefore the justice of the nation
hedged itself about with an extent of
precaution never before known, to ensure
for the suspected man a calm and perfect
hearing. A case that could have been
decided justly in a day at the assizes to which
it belonged, and that was open to be proved
at once by evidence much more complete
and satisfactory than usually is to be had
against crimes of the class in question,
was, by a special act of parliament, brought
for trial to the metropolis, before a jury
of strangers, was argued before the Lord Chief
Justice himself, and was protracted so that
there should be no shadow of defence left
unproduced, and that the accusation
might be open to the utmost questioning. Ten
days were allowed to be spent in battle
against testimony. With unexampled
scrupulousness the judge occupied fourteen hours
in laying everything that had been said and
argued on the case justly and legally before
the jury. Never before was a criminal case
so argued, or summed up with such masterly
elaboration. But the just and perfect statement
of it tended—as, being the whole truth,
it could only tend—to the complete assurance
that the prisoner was guilty. He was declared
guilty by the jury of his countrymen;
and, in the spirit of that enormous selfishness
out of which had come the perpetration of
his crimes, the convicted Poisoner then
complained, we are told, that he had not had a fair trial.

A fair trial! However great may be
the defects of English law, certain it is that we
have attained at last to a complete respect
for the liberty of the subject, in the
administration of justice as regards felonies
and capital crimes. There is a great deal
to be amended in the dealing with lesser
offences at our petty and quarter sessions;
but, in our more solemn courts of criminal
justice, no honest man's liberty or life is
endangered. It was not so in Scotland,
neither was it altogether so in England
sixty years ago. Tyrannical deeds were
done in criminal courts in the years seventeen
hundred and ninety-three and four,
which prompted the late Lord Cockburn to
write an impression, the general acceptance
of which is singularly illustrated by one of
the events of the day in which his Memorials
are published,—namely, "that the existence
of circumstances, such as the supposed clearness
and greatness of their guilt, tending to
prejudice prisoners on their trials, gives
them a stronger claim than usual on that
sacred judicial mildness, which, far more
than any of the law's terrors, procures respect
for authority, and without which courts, let
them punish as they may, only alienate and provoke."

Since the days when Clothaire found it
necessary to decree by special law, that nobody