A Report of Trials Before the Right Hon. the Lord Chief Justice, and the Hon. Baron Sir Wm. C. Smith, Bart., at the Special Commission, at Maryborough; Commencing on the 23rd May, and Ending on the 6th June (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1832. Excerpt: ... CHARGE. Gentlemen--I must recall your attention at the end of this tedious and painful discussion to the question you have to try, whether this panel has been impartially arrayed so as to afford a fair trial to the prisoners who have challenged the array, and by their challenge have insisted that persons have been put on the panel in high places more likely to convict the prisoners than others who have been left off or put in lower places who would have been more likely to acquit the prisoners. That very plain question has led to the discussio'n of another, its connexion with which 1 am unable to discover; that is, whether the Roman Catholic freeholders of the Queen's County have been returned on that panel in such numbers and in such places as their fair pretensions on the score of rank and respectability entitle them to. If they think otherwise, it is not surprizing that they should feel sorely and jealously, but it is very much to be lamented that so inappropriate an opportunity should have been selected for bringing this complaint before the public, arid to that complaint, and that alone, the evidence we have listened to, has been directed: we have nothing to do with the question whether that complaint is well founded, or whether the evidence you have heard has not afforded a sufficient answer and explanation, but we must confine our attention to the single enquiry whether this is an impartial panel. 1 might say that it has not appeared to this moment of what Religion the prisoners are, but it would be affectation not to assume that they are Roman Catholics, and we know from the Crown book that they are charged with an offence connected with the existing insurrection; but when 1 look at the words of the challenge, 1 cannot imagine to myself, how the e...