and lost as they had been before, they had now fallen even lower in the scale of human misery.  Criminal proceedings were quickly instituted.  Several commissions were sent down to the districts in which these disturbances had take place, in order that the offenders might meet with speedy punishment.  The law officers of the crown, with many and able assistants, in person conducted the proceedings.  Temperate, mild, dignified, and forbearing was their demeanour; in no case was the individual the object of prosecution; it was the crime, through the person of the criminal, against which the government proceeded.  No feelings of a personal nature were there exhibited; and a mild, but firm, as it were, a parental correction of erring and misguided children, seemed to be the sole object of those who then represented the government.  Conviction was heaped upon conviction—­sentence followed sentence—­the miserable tool was distinguished from the man who made him what he was—­the active emissary, the secret conspirator, also received each their proportionate amount of punishment.  True, a few of the more cautious and crafty, all included in one indictment, eventually escaped the penalty due to their crimes; but, among the multitude of cases which were then tried, this was, we believe, the only instance even of partial failure.  In spite of this single miscarriage of the government, the great object of these proceedings was completely answered; the end of all punishment was attained; the vengeance which the law then took had all the effect which the most condign punishment of these few men could have accomplished; the constitutional maxim of “poena ad paucos, metus ad omnes,” has been amply illustrated by these proceedings; Chartism has been suppressed, by the temperate application of the constitutional means which were then resorted to for the correction of its violence, and the prevention of its seditious schemes.

We must not omit to mention the instances of signal and complete success which have been, from time to time, exhibited in other prosecutions against Feargus O’Connor and different members of the Chartist body, within the period of which we speak.  On none of these occasions has the course of justice been hindered, or even turned aside; but the defendants have, we believe, without exception, paid the penalty of their crimes by enduring the punishments awarded by the court.

The recent trials of the Rebecca rioters were also signally successful and effective; and the prejudices of a Welsh jury, which some feared would prove a fatal stumblingblock, were overcome by the dispassionate appeal to their better judgment then made by the officers of the crown.