THE IMPRISONMENT OF MR,. GRAY.
THE imprisonment and fining of Mr. Gray, High Sheriff of Dublin and M.P. for Carlow County, by Mr. Justice Lawson, for the contempt of Court committed in publishing in his paper, the Freeman's Journal, an attack on the jury in a capital case tried by Mr. Justice Lawson, as well as remarks tending to show that the juries of that and other cases had been packed by the Crown, is one of those events on which it is very easy to form a hasty judgment in either direction, but not quite so easy to form a just one, taking fully into account all the facts of the case. On the one hand, there cannot be a doubt that Mr. Gray, as High Sheriff, officially charged with the custody of the jury, was in a very special position, in which his official functions rendered it more than usually discreditable to publish the attacks of others on the con- duct of the jury, without informing himself officially of their truth. Again, there can be no doubt that, as Mr. Justice Lawson says the function of jurymen at the present moment in Ireland is one of peculiar responsibility, and even danger, so that attacks upon them by any one,— most of all an official to whom their custody is confided,—may (involve consequences of the greatest moment, not only to the jurymen incriminated, but to other jurymen empannelled to try other cases of the same ,kind. It may fairly be said, on behalf of Mr. Justice Lawson, that to leave the protection of the jurymen to the very slow process of an action for criminal libel brought in their own defence, would have been unjust to the other juries to be empannelled under his commission. If juries are to be used at all, the habit of directing attacks upon them in the Press before any official inquiry can be made into the allegations against them ought to be summarily put down, for every one knows that the disproof of these allegations siever really undoes the effect of their wide dissemination. On the other hand, it may be said, and fairly said, that such charges as were brought by Mr. O'Brien, and by the other persons whose affidavits Mr. Sexton read in the House of Commons on Thursday night, require the fullest investigation; and espe- oially that Mr. Gray, as High Sheriff, was bound to secure that they should have the fullest investigation ; and that the loose public notion that unless you publish such charges, and get people to talk about them, a full investigation is not at all probable, might very excusably have deceived almost any .editor who was an editor, and nothing else.
In our opinion, however, this ought not to be an -excuse for Mr. Gray. He was, first and foremost, High sheriff, responsible through the Sub-Sheriff for the proper 'custody of the jurymen, responsible for the investigation and punishment of the Sub-Sheriff's conduct, if the Sub-Sheriff discharged his duty improperly ; bound to listen to all the Sub-Sheriff had to say for himself on the other side ; and, in shod, charged, as his first duty, with the protection of the jurymen from slanderous attacks, and 'charged, moreover, with the obligation to consult the Court, if he had reason to think that these slanderous attacks had any truth in them. It is perfectly clear that Mr. Gray neglected this first duty altogether, that he thought only of his position as a journalist, and not of his official duties at all,—that he felt no jealousy for the reputation of the jurymen under his 'Charge, no desire to take the advice of the Court as to his own proper course in a position of great delicacy,—and that, in a word, he grossly neglected his duty to the jurymen, in order to discharge what he may possibly have thought his duty to the public. This is the serious charge against him,— to which, as we understand it, there is no answer. And this, we believe, justified Mr. Justice Lawson in making-a peremp- tory example of his neglect of duty, whether the charges brought against the jury should prove to have a shadow of justification, or not.
_ On the other hand, we regret very much the use made by the Court of the criticism on the packing of the Juries. We believe t'hat the reply of the Attorney-General to that criticism is quite convincing, and that the persons challenged by the Crown were challenged chiefly, if not wholly, because the Crown knew that they were personally unwilling to discharge the duties of jurors,
and wholly without reference to their religious opinions. At the same time, packing juries has been so common in Ireland,
that the challenge of nineteen and twenty-six jurors by the Crown, a good many of whom, if not all, happened to be Roman Catholics, would necessarily suggest that there was an intention of excluding Roman Catholics from the jury-box ; and this being so, the Freeman's Journal might very fairly take iaotice of it. Criticism of this kind is wholly distinct from a
gross attack on a particular jury, assigned to the custody of the very man who allows that gross attack to be pub- lished; and it seems to us that the complaints made of the criticisms of the Freeman's Journal on the challenging of Roman Catholics, weakened instead of strengthening the case against Mr. Gray. Had Mr. Justice Lawson limited himself to insisting on the gross neglect of a High Sheriff's duty in authorising the publication of assertioni which, if not true, were gross libels on the jurymen con- signed to his charge, and which could not be known to be true without the most careful official investigation, such as he ought to have been the first to institute, we should have sustained Mr. Justice Lawson's decision as wholly just. The importance, however, assigned to a part of the case in which, so far as we can see, the Freeman's Journal hardly exceeded its proper right of criticism,—and in which, more- over, the Law Officers of the Crown had a complete answer to the accusation,—gives an impression of severity to Mr. Justice Lawson's action which we heartily regret. Had he limited himself to punishing Mr. Gray for his very serious disregard of his duty to the jury committed to his charge, he would have been beyond criticism, As it is, we believe that he was, though too peremptory in manner, yet substantially in the right.
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