the parties were found guilty of the offence laid to their charge.  In the ensuing term, all other business was, for a time, suspended; and the fifteen judges of the land, with all the stately majesty of the judicial office, were gathered together in solemn conclave in Westminster Hall.  A goodly array, tier above tier they sat—­the heavy artillery of a vast legal battery about to open the fire of their learning, with that imposing dignity which becomes the avengers of the country’s and the sovereign’s wrongs.  Day after day they met, heard, and deliberated upon arguments, which were conspicuous from their consummate learning and ability.  At length these learned persons delivered their judgments, and, amid much diversity of opinion, the majority thought, upon the whole, that the conviction was right, and that the terms of the statute had been virtually complied with.  The criminals, however, probably in consequence of the doubts and difficulty of the case, were absolved on the most highly penal consequences of their crime, and were, by a sort of compromise, transported for life to one of the penal settlements.

The doubt which some have entertained of the real insanity of Oxford, and others who have recently attempted the same crime which he so nearly committed, has caused these cases also to be brought forward in confirmation of the opinions, which we contend rest upon no real foundation.  The insanity of a prisoner is, however, a fact, upon which it is the province of the jury to decide, under the direction of the presiding judge.  In each case the law was luminously laid down by the judge for the guidance of the jury, who were fully instructed as to what the law required to establish the insanity of its prisoner, and to prove that “lesion of the will” which would render a human being irresponsible for his acts.  These verdicts, undoubtedly, gave rise to a grave discussion, whether the law, as it now stands, was sufficiently stringent to have reached these cases; and though this question was decided in the affirmative, the mere entertaining of the doubt afforded another specious confirmation of the impression, that a singular fatality was attendant upon a state prosecution.  This idea received another support from the case of Lord Cardigan, who, about this period, was unexpectedly acquitted, on technical grounds, from a grave and serious charge.  This, however, was no state prosecution, and we do but notice it, en passant, in corroboration of our general argument.

We now come to the case of the Chartists in 1842.  For some time previous to the summer of 1842, great distress, it will be remembered, prevailed among the manufacturing population of the northern and midland counties.  The misery of the preceding winter had been dreadful in the extreme; emaciated, haggard beings might be daily seen wandering about the country half naked, in the coldest weather; sufferings, almost without a parallel, were borne with patience and resignation.