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We believe , therefore , that even Mr . Cobden talks a great deal of rubbish in the matter of peace , and that it is not from him that we should expect a true and deep appreciation of the present state , or of the past history , of Europe . He is one of the tallest men in the Peace crowd ; but there are taller men out of that crowd . The pamphlet on the state of Europe , and especially on the relations of this country to France during the last sixty years , is an able pamphlet ; but an abler pamphlet might be written which should tear it to pieces . Even the opening : part of the pamphlet , which is
by far the best , and which is intended asahistorical demonstration of the fact that England was the aggressor in the last war with France , and that her aggression was foolish and wrong , is susceptible , as the Times has proved , of revision in a higher and more searching spirit . And as to the latter part , where Mr . Cobden assumes a loftier office , and becomes an interpreter of the signs of the age , first sweeping through the social mind of England , and finding only a silly bugbear of war there , put into it by dotards and redcoats ; then ranging the social mind of France , and
finding no desire of war there , but only politeness and the highest civilization ; and , lastly , peeping into that cavernous hole which no human being ever pretended to see to the bottom of before , the mind of Louis Napoleon , and assuring the world that there , too , there is nothing like war , but only stones and mud ; why , as to all this , what can one say \ but that Mr . Cobden ' s philosophy is the philosophy of Mr . Cobden . In short , as an exposition of the place and duty of England in Europe at the
present time , Mr . Cobden ' s pamphlet is , m its latter part , a shocking example of the intellectual arrogance of a man of limited views . One reads it with astonishment , and so far from being convinced , looks up only to see the whole atmosphere more full of war than before , and the danger increased by such blind fanaticism for peace . And so with that incarnation of Mr . Cobden ' s pamphlet , the Peace congress , so long as it confined itself to desires and the diffusion of sentiment .
it was good ; when it entered on that highest and most difficult business of all , the calculation of the chances of a social probability , it was but as a congress of schoolboys not performing a sum which had been set them , but attempting to decide the sum by votes . And yet , as we have said above , we see good in Mr . Cobden and the whole Peace movement . As present advisers , the Peace advocates , in the sense in which we use the name , are foolish , arrogant , and dangerous ; the Coming years of Europe will consume them and their crotchets as fire consumes dry grass ; and Mr .
Cobden himself will yet see appalling proofs that civilization and war are not such incompatible things as he thinks them , and that society may wear red boots in the morning and white kid gloves in the evening , as readily in London as in Paris or at Pesth . But in appreciating fully the valiie of the Peace movement , we can dismiss the " tallest man" principle , and call in the " quantification" principle ; and then Ca ira . What a number of men , even if individually they are second-rate , have taken into thoir heads , will go on and end in something . And , equally with sentiment , profound social science—science
profounder than Mr . Cobden s—points to peace as a goal and consummation . To the age of military activity and feudalism is to succeed the ago of industrial activity and equality—wo all know that . There may be ups and downs and jolts in our progress ; but thither we go , in Bpite of those who will lose thoir commissions when the peace comes . And perhaps , as Cromwell said , God has " kindled a seed" am 6 ng us in this Peace movement . If so , though it bo a cotton-seed , it will come to something . Only , boforo then the movement will have to make out a better case for
itself , not only on the " quantification" principle , but also on the " tallest man" principle . Wo should hail the appearance of that ideal Quaker we have described , who should universalizo tho maxim of " yea and nay . " In his hands tho Peace movement would become another thing as a spiritual prediction and agitation , while it would bo leas felt as a political impediment and importinoneo .
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THE MORAL OF THE ACHILLI CASE . Witatkvkb may bo thought by the public at largo of the aggrogate results of tho lato proceedings in the case of Achilli v . Newman , it is perfectly olenr that that part of the community
which reflects must , by this time , be rather out of conceit with Lord Campbell ' s much vaunted law of libel , as well as utterly astounded at the indifference with which the final sentence in this particular case has been received . That the original verdict was against the weight of evidence , no sane man ever doubted ; that Dr . Newman was perfectly justified in what he said , the very penalty inflicted upon him admits . The law only , in its ultimate perfection , at that point of unsurpassable excellence
to which , according to its author , it has now arrived , pronounces him guilty , and , to the bewilderment of ordinary intellects , requires the judges to inflict a punishment , which they , in conscience , made so trifling that its mention caused the crowds in court to laugh , for an offence which , if committed , deserved the severest sentence and the strongest reprobation . But the plea of justification , we are told , is one and entire ; it raises only one issue , and unless the whole of it be proved , that issue must be
found for the plaintiff : so that , in this case , supposing Dr . Newman to have established , to the satisfaction of the Protestant Palladium of British liberties , the truth of twenty-two of his twenty-three charges against the virtuous and respectable " Christian unattached , " who now has a verdict , and supposing that twenty-third charge to have been the least important of them all , still the whole would not have been proved ; and therefore , though his sentence might have been lenient , his condemnation would have been inevitable ! As it is , even , the judges based their
refusal of a new trial , not upon the ground that the verdict was not , in the main , against the weight of evidence ; they admitted in terms , they confessed in their sentence , that they were not satisfied with the . verdict j but , they said—we use the Chief Justice ' s own words in this legal exposition—" Even if we should be of opinion that , with respect to any one , or to all of- these charges , the evidence greatly preponderated against the prosecutor , we conceive that we could not with propriety [ i . e . according to the existing
law ] set the verdict aside and grant a new trial . They took refuge for themselves , and endeavoured to hide this strange anomaly in the law , under the shadow of an argument that there were matters in Dr . Newman ' s attack which , confessedly , he was not , at the trial , in a position to prove ; and that , consequently , though they might agree with him , and his counsel , and the world , as to the worthlessness of that evidence for the prosecution which , because it supported their prejudices , the jury had received : yet they , and the jury , and his
counsel , and the world , must also be permitted to agree with him that there were some of his facts which he could not legally prove , and which thereforehe could onno principle legally justify . Achilli had been so ingenious , his lawyers had been so clever , that a mass of evidence supporting Dr . Newman ' s justification was got rid of ; some by the simple process of delay , till such time as the objectionable witness had left England ; somo by the judicious use of those technicalities to tho restraint of which judges and juries so smilingly assent , when it happens that tho testimony thus legally excluded leads to a moral
conviction at which they had much rather not arrive , and when , admitting the competency of the evidence , they cannot without utterly stultifying themselves , deny its sufficiency . Dr . Newman , it appears , therefore , becauso this evidence doubtless , if existing , could not be got at , was not justified in the unproved part of hin lrbol , though when he wrote it he believed it—though when lie wrote it
ho had sufficient grounds for believing it ; not evert if , when he wrote it , it was true . He was to know that evidence satisfactory to his mind —and though it may be a libel , we must say , to other people ' s—was open to technical objection ; and ho was to bo ready at any time to bring , from any country , original documents which had been burnt , women who wcro pregnant , and whoso husbands would not let them , come , and all
sorts of other impossible testimony , tho existence of which , as it was , ho - could prove , and for tho absence of which ho could and did most satisfactorily account . Dr . Achilli , on the other hand , was simply to read his Times overy morning of tho trial , to keep his short-hand writers each day diligently at work , and after a sufficient consumption of midnight oil over tho charges proved against him , to dony them in detail one after tho other ; to thank God that ho was not as other priests are , and % o return , an osoaped , but
not unwilling martyr , to the happy wife whom he married in spite of his vows , and to the new and exceptional , but unexceptionable , servant-maids , who have as yet made him the subject of no accusation . This is Lord Campbell ' s law of libel . By it Dr . Newman appears as a criminal ; Achilli as a saint . Could not the noisy law-reformers and barristers out of work , who at present seem to have no object beyond appointments and notoriety , turn their minds to such questions as these P Not a word more should be said of their motives , i f' only they would be either practical or useful in their operations .
With regard to the mode in which this case has been conducted , from the time when Lord Campbell first thought fit to talk clap-trap about the Inquisition , and comicality about the whereabouts of a Catholic bishop ' s See , to the time when Mr . Justice Coleridge , pausing , like his brother judge , for applause , recited his quasi-Protestantism from the bench , and delayed pronouncing the sentence to tell us—what if true was not important , and what if important would not have been relevant—that he meant to die in the Church of England , we can only echo the universal expression of disgust uttered from all quarters , and , we may say , from all countries , whither the fame , or rather the
infamy , of this trial has made its way . There was some excuse—at least , some way of accountingfor Sir Frederick Thesiger's acrimony . A disappointed man , who would at this time have been Attorney-General of the Fusion , but for the stinging clause which his—as he then thought it—expedient zeal , added to the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill , might , with some grounds , if not with any show of reason , attack bitterly , personally , and all but unprofessionally , the first Catholic who came in his way . He could not be justified , but he might ultimately be pardoned , for talking of Dr . Newman's writing as " coarse , " and " low , " and " vulgar ribaldry , " and t ) f Dr . Newman ' s temper in writing , as one of " vindictiveness . " We should have lamented over the bad taste ,
and deplored the bad animus which could have made any advocate , under the circumstances , contend in aggravation of the punishment of a man infinitely his intellectual superior , and when his client ' s reputation was no longer affected , " that nothing could be more scandalous than this libel , and that no one could read it without being satisfied that it was the production of the most rancorous feelings . " But our regret and surprise at the use of such language at suck a time is lost and hidden in the still greater wonder which we feel when we come to read the
sentence itself . The barrister had only been betrayed into improprieties , but the judge put himself studiously and affectedly in the wrong . Wanting to be talked about and to be popular , and knowing that the " whole available comic talent" of the Bench had been exhausted by Lord Campbell , ho attempted the solemnities , and preached—lie preached—at Dr . Newman , and—at the reporters . He described Dr . Newman as an executioner brandishing with joy and triumph the instrument of punishment , and , without tho smallest reason , of the invisible Church to which Achilli now belongs , as the Church ( that of England ) of which Dr . Newman was formerly a member . He told us , after expressions of
"infinite shame and disgust" nt the " manner" of this libel , what his own religious views always had been , at present were , and herealter always would bo ; and it was not till tho crowds were getting tired of sitting under this irrelevant and inappropriate discourse , that he condescended to conic to tho point , and to tell Dr . Newman , amid general laughter , the amount of sentence . meted out to Iuh crime—that crime being , wo must remember , malignantly libelling an innocent man , and subsequently . suborning twenty-two wil nesses to perjure themselves in . support , of the libel" Tho sentence of the Court upon you in , thai , you pay a lino of out ) hundred pounds to the Queen , and that you bo imprisoned in the first-class of misdemeanants in the Queen's Prison until that
fine be paid . " Mr . Justice' Coleridgo will gain no glory by this stage effort , with itn fatal anti-climax ; ISir J < . Thesiger will \ vinh Jiis share in tho proceedings forgotten ; Lord Campbell will seo henceforth , by his colleague ' s experience , that judicial sermons succeed even bettor than judicial jokes in eliciting laughter ; and the law of' libel , neon through by laymen , and discovered out of doom to bo unjust , will , as the result of this trial , bo brought into
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February ^ 1853 . ] THE LEADER . 133
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 5, 1853, page 133, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1972/page/13/
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