practice of poaching, the latter as having led to an increase of crime in general by the drunkenness and immorality which have been its natural consequences. The Lord CHIEF JUSTICE stated that he would communicate the presentment to the proper quarter, but whether it will receive any attention from the Government, as it is a matter concerning only the morals of the people, we cannot take upon us to say. It was very recently that Lord ALTHORP declared he had no measure to propose in reference to the Beer Bill, so that all the time, labour, and expense incurred by the inquiry of a Parliamentary Committee of last Session into the practical effects of that most pernicious Act of legislative folly, has been thrown away. A real improvement of the game laws, and an abolition of the Beer Bill are among the Acts which the Legislature must pass, along with some other important measures, if it would restore the mind of the labouring population of England to any thing like a healthy moral state.

In those houses [Beer-shops] of course, the poachers, thieves, and house-breakers of a district congregate. There is no respectable company to observe or be a check upon themnothing to disturb the freedom of their conferences, or impede the progress of their guilty designs. There the simple countryman is ensnared into gambling, and drunkenness, and crime. There the domestic servant is plundered of his wages, and taught to plunder his master's house to supply his losses. There, too, is the convenient rendezvous where the poachers assemble, and whence they issue armed, at night, to enter the neighbouring preserves, where such dreadful conflicts continually take place between them and the game-keepers, as it shocks humanity to contemplate. *

*

Chief Justice TINDAL on the Bench.-Nov. 18, 1839.

In trying a prisoner for his life, Chief Justice TINDAL is one of the most patient, unimpassioned, and thoroughly impartial judges that ever presided on such a solemn occasion, even on the English bench. His anxiety not to com

mit, or allow others to commit, through haste or prejudice, any mistake injurious to a fellow-creature in such an awful situation, is obvious through the whole of the proceedings, from the first sentence of the evidence, to the last word of the summing-up. He thinks no time too long for the investigation of any point material to the issue; he thinks no trouble too great which is necessary to arrive at a correct conclusion. His mind is warped by no first impression; his judgment endures suspense until the whole of the case on both sides be heard; while his extensive and accurate knowledge of law secures, both to public justice and the prisoner, the legal rights of each. His addresses to the jury in difficult cases of circumstantial evidence, are among the most beautiful exhibitions of judicial ability that can be witnessed, for the ready power which they display of disentangling complicated facts, and presenting a consecutive view of the whole case, free from all superfluous matter, to the mind of a jury, by a train of lucid reasoning, conveyed in the simplest propriety of language.

*

When we think of the flippant manner-the precipitancythe obstinate prejudices-the passionate first impressions, of some of those who preside in certain inferior courts, we are the more led to admire that excellent, that unrivalled INSTITUTION OF THE INDEPENDENT FIFTEEN JUDGES OF ENGLAND, which provides such men as the most of those who now adorn Westminster Hall, for the dispensation of justice between the Crown and the subject.

Tragedy of Malaga-General MORENO in England.

-June 25, 1834.

WHEN the horrid tragedy of Malaga was yet recent, in which the Spanish general, MORENO, played the part of an executioner, and in that capacity shed the blood of Mr. BoYD, a British subject, without even the form of a trial, we called upon Government to demand from the Court of Spain satisfaction for the outrage. The wrong already committed, could not indeed, be repaired or atoned for-and as to satisfaction for blood in the nature of revenge, we recognise it not. But our Government owed a duty to the

living, though it could not restore the dead. It was not unreasonable to apprehend that the lives of British subjects in foreign States might, in future times, be sacrificed upon slight and frivolous pretexts, by tyrants and their minions, if this flagrant case of political murder were passed over without the serious notice of our Government, and the obtaining such satisfaction for the violation of the law of nations, and the insult to the British power, as the nature of the case would permit. The call was made in vain. * Nor among our patriot Members of the House of Commons was there one to be found who ventured to put a question to our Foreign Minister on the subject! The neglected fate of the brave and murdered BOYD was, and long will be, an ignominious stain upon the Government of England. Now, a ministerial Evening Paper-the Courier -gives an account of the transaction which more than justifies what we said at that time. The statement of the Courier covers the Government of FERDINAND with the most atrocious perfidy, and the infamy of concocting and managing the scheme for the bloody immolation of fifty or sixty individuals, who had taken shelter under the British flag at Gibraltar, whence they were decoyed to the shores of Spain by the Government that

butchered them!

Since then, however, the Regal malefactor has gone to his account-the Government of FERDINAND is no more. His widow clung to his principles of sovereignty as long as she could, and had, thereby, nearly overturned the throne of the infant Queen in her cradle. MORENO-the once insolent and cruel minion of the tyrant-the brutal instrument of his will, is now a powerless individual, and a fugitive from his native land. He now treads the soil of ancient freedom-the asylum of those who fly from political persecution, and of tyrants or the tools of tyrants, whom retributive justice has driven, for protection against popular vengeance, to sanctuary in the temple of liberty.Who would dare to drag the fugitive from the horns of her altar?

Holding MORENO in detestation, as we do, for the part which he acted in the tragedy of Malaga, we look upon him at the same time as the mere instrument which was wielded in the

hand of the "pious and beloved" embroiderer of petticoats, whom our pusillanimous statesmen dared not to question for his crime. Either FERDINAND was responsible to the British Government for the death of Mr. BoYD, or no person was. As well might the executioner be called to account for the life of the criminal which he takes upon a sentence pronounced by some superior authority, as MORENO be arraigned and punished by our Government, for carrying into effect upon our lamented countryman the doom, pronounced against him and his fellows by the Government of Madrid.

It would have been becoming the dignity of the British nation to have held FERDINAND'S Government accountable for the blood of a British subject, who was put to death without trial; and we say without crime. * The vessel in which he and his companions were, had been previously forced on shore by two Spanish guard ships, or revenue cutters. So that if he was taken with arms in his hands on the Spanish soil, it was in self-defence; and, at all events, his being there was the act of the Spanish Government, or what is the same thing, of the Spanish revenue vessels that forced him on shore. He was decoyed in the first instance by the Spanish Government from Gibraltar, and then compelled by its own armed ships to make a descent on Spain to avoid being sunk at sea.

the

There was a time when a British Minister would have made FERDINAND tremble on his throne for such an act. Then the maxim of England, like that of ancient Rome, was parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos. Let us not invert the maxim. Having not even dared to remonstrate with the tyrant who commanded the deed, let us not talk of taking revenge upon obedient slave who only performed the commands of his master. The time is past for any other retribution than that which history will one day exercise upon the memory of the tyrant that commanded the sacrifice, and the memory of the British Ministry that passed it over in disgraceful silence until that tyrant was in his grave.

Character of LORD ERSKINE as an Advocate.- Written in 1820. THE eloquence of Lord ERSKINE formed an era in the history of the English Bar, as that of CHATHAM produced a splendid revolution in the Senate. But the genius of the latter was fortunate in laying a train of inspiration, productive of great men and an age of glory: while the example of ERSKINE was a solitary excellence-it created nothing like or second to itself; and when the orator winged his way to immortality, his charmed mantle fell upon no successor.

He was one of those original men of genius who are born for times of original complexion-whose talents rise with the demand for greatness, and display all their powers only in the midst of circumstances that have something of dangerous and sublime excitation. It is not in the ordinary flow of events, when the pace of time is measured by the periods of a silent chronology, that such men appear upon the stage of public life. Their powers, ill calculated to shine upon subjects of common or trivial interest, are little noticed in times of no public excitement; but they blaze out when opinion angrily disturbs the political atmosphere, and detonate in the storm. It was eloquently said of CHATHAM, that he could "rule the wilderness of free minds with unbounded authority;" and it might be as justly observed of ERSKINE, that he could bind the wishes of a people to the cause of a single individual. His talents gave to a legal trial the grandeur of an historical conflict; and wherever there were great rights to be advanced, and constitutional principles to be expounded, he did not appear like "a small statue on a lofty pedestal," but he seemed to grow colossal as he approached the magnitude of his subject. The foundation of all his practical power was a deep knowledge of the law, as it has been explained by writers who are emphatically called, its sages.

This knowledge was not memory, but erudition. It was learning acquired upon principle, and arranged in the philosophical intellect by a methodical and vigorous reason. It was not the verbal lumber of technical quibble and ingenuity— the solemn sophistry of points, and quirks, and evasions, “dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage;' but it was the rich