A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
WHATEVER the nature of Lord Justice Goddard's report on the hushed-up trial of a Roman Catholic priest at Longton, in Staffordshire, the evidence given at the inquiry conducted by the Lord Justice tells its own story plainly enough. It will inevitably provoke criticism, directed—to some extent unjustly—at two targets. One is the Roman Catholic Church. The man on trial was a Catholic priest ; the justices' clerk who arranged what was alleged to be an irregular and private hearing is a Roman Catholic ; so is one of the two magistrates who sat at the unusual hour of 9.3o a.m. to deal with the case ; so is the police-superintendent who was in .charge of the case. If the accused had been an Anglican clergyman it would not have occurred to anyone to note whether justices, justices' clerk and the police concerned were members of the Church of England or not, but the fact that Roman Catholics in England are by com- parison few in number and that four out of five principals in this case were of that faith will raise inevitable 'questions. The other target is the lay J.P. generically. Here are two magistrates who seem to have lent themselves to a hole-and-corner business when they obviously should not have. But there is something to be said in mitigation. They were presumably summoned to this special hearing by the clerk of the peace, and they presumably supposed, at any rate till they got to court, that there were rdequate reasons for the summons. So at least it seems charitable to assume. But on all these matters judgement must be suspended till Lord Justice Goddard's considered findings are issued.
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