While all commend the recent action of the government, and give the executive full credit for the repression by proclamation of processions avowedly intended to be protests against authority and law, it is generally regretted that prosecutions should have been instituted against some of those who had taken part in these processions.  Had these menacing assemblages been held after the proclamations were issued, or in defiance of the authorities, the utmost power should have been exerted to put them down, and the terrors of the law would properly have been invoked to punish the guilty.  But, bearing in mind the fact that these processions had been declared by the head of the government—­expressing, no doubt, the opinion entertained at that time by the law officers of the crown, that these processions were “not illegal”—­remembering, too, that similar processions had been already held without the slightest intimation of opposition on the part of government; and recollecting, also, that the proclamation was everywhere implicitly obeyed, and without the least wish to dispute it, we cannot avoid regretting that the government should have been advised, at the last hour, to institute prosecutions of such a nature.  Once, however, it was determined to vindicate the law in this way, the utmost care should have been taken to maintain the dignity of the proceedings, and to avoid everything calculated to create annoyance, irritation, or offence.  If we except the moderate and very able speech of Mr. Murphy, Q.C., there is no one part of the proceedings in the police-court which merits commendation.  Some of the witnesses utterly broke down; opportunity was given for utterances not calculated to increase respect for the law; and disloyal sentiments were boldly expressed and cheered until the court rang again.  Great and serious as was the mistake in not obtaining an accurate legal opinion respecting the character of these meetings at the first, and then prohibiting them, a far greater mistake is now, we think, committed in instituting these retrospective prosecutions.  For this mistake the law officers of the crown must, we infer, be held responsible.  Were they men of energy and vigour, with the necessary knowledge of the world, they would not have suffered the executive to permit processions first, and then prohibit them, and at the same time try men for participating in what had been pronounced not to be illegal.  We exonerate the attorney-general from the error of summoning to give evidence persons who openly gloried in the part they had taken in these meetings.  To command the presence of such witnesses was of the nature of an offence.  There was no ground, for instance, for supposing that Mr. Sullivan would have played the informer against the friends who had walked with him in the procession—­such is not his character, his feeling, or his sense of honour.  The summoning of those who had moved with, and as part of, the multitude, to give