adverted to. He was far, indeed, from a brilliant judge, except at Nisi Prius, and there not clearly a very good one. Perhaps he was seen to most advantage when presiding in the Criminal Court, with the routine of which he had been so long familiar. Even at Nisi Prius there was a perpetual fidgettiness observable, arising, no doubt, from a consciousness that some legal point might at any moment occur, calling for a decision to which he felt himself inadequate. But no such apprehension disturbed his self-complacency when he had the dock before him.

After the counsel on both sides had exhausted their questions, it was his custom to luxuriate in an examination of his own, and here he often evinced his perfection in the art of which he was an admitted master. Nor did he shrink at times from, as it seemed, lowering his dignity, by the most lavish display of that peculiar knowledge which can only be acquired at the school in which he had studied. There was no mystery in the profession of the "appropriators,” in which he was not an adept. There was no term of art in the vocabulary of crime with which he was not familiar. At times the effect produced by him was most amusing. None who were present will forget the impression thus made upon an unhappy coiner, tried before him on the Oxford circuit. This man conducted his own defence, and did so with much skill and more effrontery. The judge seemed quite absorbed in admiration of the prisoner's ingenuity, and contrived to fill him with the delusion that he was so a delusion from which there was soon to be a fearful waking. "My Lord," he vociferated, "there were only two bad half-crowns found upon me. If I was making a trade of it, it stands to reason I'd have had more;" and he looked up to the bench quite confident of its sympathy. Garrow's white eyes glared upon the culprit, and in a tone which assured him all their secrets were in common, playfully replied, “Perhaps, sir, the WALLOP was exhausted." The word, and the tone of its enunciation, at once unnerved the prisoner-he felt he had before him a professor of his craft, whom it was quite useless to attempt to mystify, and he resigned himself to his fate. "Gentlemen, (said Garrow blandly to the jury, who shared in the ignorance of all around them,) a WALLOP is a term of free-masonry amongst coiners. It means the hidden heap of counterfeits to

which they resort for a supply when the exigencies of the profession may require one." The Court of Exchequer, then composed of Chief Baron Richards, and Barons Graham, Wood and Garrow, used to be thus rather more wittily than correctly described, as consisting of one who was a lawyer and no gentleman; another a gentleman and no lawyer; a third, both the one and the other; and a fourth neither. The truth of the description is here sacrificed, as usual, to the point of the epigram.

In Parliament, it needs scarce be observed, this very celebrated advocate had little or no success. Indeed he cordially hated the place, and was with difficulty induced to enter it, or having entered, to address it. Speak, however, he did; and he began to say that he had made, on entering Parliament, a covenant with himself not to speak, against which he was now compelled to act. His speech was a very bad one, and Mr. Windham, inheriting from Mr. Burke his dislike of lawyers, began his comment on this expression, as in a declaration; he "complained of covenants broken." Many parties," he observed, "had a right to complain of the breach which had been committed-the House-the subject-himself — but the party most entitled to complain," he added, "was the covenantee, he with whom the covenant had been made." Unlike the epigrammatic description which had been quoted above, the truth of this remark was fully as manifest as the wit.

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In private life Mr. Garrow was not only blameless, but every way to be commended. In all its relations he was unimpeachable; and beside the kindly nature of his social intercourse, he was to be admired for extraordinary generosity to all that wanted his aid. He gave and he lent large sums of his hard-earned gains to assist those who were in embarrassment or in distress. It is singular, that, probably from never having frequented good society, or, indeed, almost any society at all, he was in private one of the most shy and bashful of men, though very, very far otherwise in public.

ART. V. THE RECENT STATE TRIAL IN IRELAND.

THE House of Lords, in reversing the judgment of the Irish Court of Queen's Bench in the great cause of O'Connell and Others against the Queen, has conferred upon this country an inestimable benefit. Reader, be not alarmed; we are not repealers; we are not O'Connellites; it is not in its political point of view that we wish to consider this remarkable judgment, though we think that the government has little reason to be dissatisfied with the result; still less do we intend to discuss the relative value of the opinions entertained or expressed by the nine1 judges, who ineffectually supported, or the five2, who successfully reversed, the judgment below; but we desire, while the circumstances of this case are yet fresh in the minds of our countrymen, to draw their attention, gravely and respectfully, to one or two defects in the administration of the law; and we hail the decision of their Lordships with satisfaction, because, by strikingly exemplifying these defects, on an occasion of such universal interest, it has afforded us the most favourable opportunity of explaining and enforcing our views.

It were needless here to recapitulate the notorious facts connected with the trial, or to advert to the numerous objections that were urged by the traversers before the court of last resort; but it will suffice to remind our readers, that the broad legal proposition established by the case is this3,

In the House of Lords, the Lord Chancellor and Lord Brougham, and among the judges, Tindal C. J., Patteson, Maule, Williams, Coleridge, Js. and Gurney and Alderson, Bs.

2 of the Lords, the Lord Chief Justice, Lords Campbell and Cottenham ; and of the judges, Parke B. and Coltman J.

3 Another question of real constitutional importance, which related to the right of challenging the array of the jury panel, on account of the omission of many duly qualified persons from the general jury list, was much mooted in the House of Lords, though no ultimate decision was pronounced upon that point. The Lord Chancellor and Lord Brougham, backed by the opinion of eight judges, namely, Tindal C. J., Patteson, Maule, Williams, Coltman, Js. and Parke, Alderson, and Gurney, Bs., held that the omission was no valid

namely, that no general judgment on an indictment containing several counts can be sustained in a court of error, if any one count be bad in law; except, perhaps, where all the different counts render the accused liable to the same fixed punishment, which can only be once inflicted, such, for instance, as death or transportation for life.' The ex post facto effect of this decision, on what Mr. Baron Alderson most justly calls "the cloud of cases, in which a general judgment has been pronounced on an indictment with one or more defective counts"," would form an amusing subject of speculation. A writ of error, unlike an appeal, may be brought at any time within twenty years after the judgment is signed3; and though it appears, from some old obscure decisions in the arbitrary days of the Stuarts, that, in cases of treason and felony, this writ is allowed only ex gratiâ1, it has never been doubted since Paty's case, that persons convicted of mere misdemeanors may demand it as a matter of right. What, then, is to prevent all the ragamuffins who, since the year 1825, have been severally convicted of sedition, blasphemy, libel, slander, and a whole beadroll of degrading offences, from bringing writs of error to reverse the judgments on which they have been respectively fined? Not one record in twenty would, we are convinced, stand the

ground of challenge; while Lord Denman took a contrary view of the law, and was partially supported by the doubtfully expressed opinions of Lord Campbell and Coleridge J., the former of whom, " though unconvinced by the reasoning of the learned judges, would hardly have ventured to advise their Lordships to reverse the judgment, merely on the ground that the challenge to the array was overruled." See Print. Op. of Lord Campbell, p. 4. Lord Cottenham declined giving any opinion on the subject. See his Lordship's Pr. Op. p. 2. All their Lordships, as well as the judges, agreed that there must be some legal remedy for so great an error, but they declined to state what the remedy was; and Lord Denman, not without reason, complains of this unsatisfactory mode of dealing with the subject. See his Lordship's Pr. Op. p. 5. Surely, on a matter of so great importance, the legislature would do well to interfere with a declaratory enactment.

1 See the observations of Lord Denman in his Pr. Op., p. 13., and of Parke B., in the Pr. Op. of the Judges, 28. Semble, contrà, per Coltman J. id. 19. 2 Print. Op. of the Judges, 24. See also Pr. Op. of Lord Brougham, 4.

3 10 & 11 W. 3. c. 14.

4 Gargrave's case, Roll. R. 175.; R. v. Paty, 2 Salk, 504.; 1 Vern. 170.,

and cases there cited.

5 2 Salk. 504.

test of such an inquiry; and though the reversal of the sentence would not of itself benefit the offender, since, having once paid the amount of the penalty, he could only recover it by the doubtful process of a petition of right, yet surely, in so palpable a case of manifest injustice, the government could scarcely fail to refund at once its ill-gotten gains. The defendants having shewn, by the reversal of their judgments, that the sentences pronounced upon them were illegal, would, like Mr. O'Connell, be entitled in common justice to urge that they were innocent and ill-used individuals; nay, we are not sure that they might not claim five per cent. interest on the amount of their fines, together with compensation, varying of course according to their rank in society, for any imprisonment they may have already endured. Even the traitors and felons of the last twenty years might, with equal justice, complain, if they were not permitted to bring writs of error to reverse their sentences of transportation, which now turn out to have been illegal and void; for we must bear in mind that the rule of law laid down in O'Connell's case, though a matter of surprise to Mr. Baron Parke and Lord Denman', was not promulgated to meet the special circumstances of a special political trial, but has been undoubtedly the law of the land from time immemorial, though, from some unexplained cause, no one, not even the most astute and learned lawyer in the profession, was previously aware of the fact.

Passing, however, from fanciful speculation to sober reality, we do not hesitate to assert as our opinion, that, unless some relaxation be introduced by the legislature in the strictness at present required in drawing and construing indictments, the practical result of the decision in O'Connell's case will be, that no man, guilty of an offence of more complexity than petty larceny, can, with anything like certainty, be rendered amenable to punishment, provided that he or his friends can only raise a thousand pounds to carry the record to a court of error. In the last volume of Mr. Moody's " Crown Cases," which, be it remembered, contains points of criminal law reserved for the opinion of all the learned judges, we find

1 See Pr. Op. of the Judges, 27.; and Pr. Op. of Ld. Denman, 7.