POPULAR VERDICTS.
THERE are three rude popular impressions as to matters of justice prevalent just now in Londou,—that the claimant in the Tichborne case is the real Sir Roger, and is kept out of
" his own" by the family ; that the acquittal of Mr. E. W. Pock in the trial for the murder of Jane Slade Clousens was contrary to justice ; and that Mrs. Newington was very severely dealt with when she was condemned to eight years' penal servitude for
the manslaughter of Mr. Moon. Now, of course, we shall - express no opinion as to the first of these popular impres- sions, for to do so might more or less prejudice a case still . sub judice ; but it cannot be doubted that in the two last instances the popular impressions formed are, strictly speaking, of the
nature of prepossessions, generated indeed by what was believed to be evidence, but very insufficient evidence ; nor that, in the first instance, the view at which the people have jumped, whether correct or otherwise, has not really varied with the ..swaying of the evidence hither and thither, but has been very nearly independent of the details of the trial, gaining no . additional strength from the most successful days of the claimant's • examination and cross-examination, and losing none under the die- crepancies elicited by the questions es to Stonyhurst or the Austra- lian voyage. The same characteristic of the popular judgment in these matters, that it does not follow the turns of the evidence, but springs very early to a conclusion,—whether right or wrong,— without reserving its opinion till there is adequate ground on which to form ono, without any waiting to weigh the significance of the multiplicity of facts attested, comes out in the opinions passed on the two later cases. In Greenwich at least the sot of the public feeling against the accused, who was not only ac- quitted, but almost cleared of suspicion by the final evidence . produced, is only explicable on the assumption that the ,public opinion of the place was very hastily and very positively formed, and pronounced before the general drift of the evidence • on both sides had even the chance of getting into the imagination
• of the people. And in Mrs. Newington's case there was no doubt . a precisely similar rudeness of consideration and judgment ; people • did not wait to hear the evidence of previous menaces, which tended to show that the idea of killing Mr. Moon was not new to the prisoner's mind ; the popular impression of the case was formed long before the exact antecedents and moral colouring of the -act of manslaughter were definitely known to the public, and hardly altered at all as these came out into clearer relief; there was a -general conception formed of a squabble between two people between whom there was, morally, little to choose, and in the midst of which the weaker party took a sudden and violent revenge on the stronger 'for some momentary insult, causing the latter's death, but suffer- ing violent grief aud remorse immediately afterwards ; and it was thought hard that the woman should be punished so much more severely for using a knife, than a drunken husband 'would have been, under like circumstances, for killing his wife by ,throwing a poker at her.
In none of these cases does it seem difficult to catch the main 'causes of the very strong and rude, though by no means wholly uunreasoning, popular impressions formed. The process appears to be something of this kind. A bit of striking, and, so far as it goes, important evidence, or asserted evidence, in connection with a case,—whether it happens to be authentic or unauthentic, does not matter,—gets hold of the public mind, generating a distinct ,picture of the general lie of the case, and of course sympathies and antipathies in conformity with that picture ; and from that moment everything which ought to tell against the truthfulness 'of that picture is apt to be imputed to wile or injustice of some kind, and rather confirms than shakes the popular prepossession. In the Tichborne case the bit of evidence which struck the public imagination was a very important and authentic fact, the late Dowager Lady Tichborne's acknowledgment of the claimant as her son ; that seemed unanswerable to the popular mind, which 'kept reiterating "his own mother knew him ; and if a mother can- not tell her own sou, these lawyer fellows certainly won't mend her memory ; " and from that fixed point people construed all the ovi-
deuce on the other side as a deliberate attempt to keep a man out
of his own property because lie had been ' a bit rough and wild,' —because he could not spell and read foreign tongues, in a word, because he was unwelcome to flue people. Again, in the Eltham case it was asserted and universally believed, though the evidence was not admitted on the trial, that the murdered girl had told her friend before starting on the fatal night that she was going to walk with the accused, Of course she said this, if she said it, without the slightest idea that elle was near her death, and that the statement would have the most powerful weight as an accusation ; and she might well have said what she did only as a blind as to, her real purpose ; but the statement or the rumour of it assumed the importance of a death-bed assertion to the people of the neighbourhood, and from the moment when that statement took possession of their imagination, all the evidence on the other side was regarded simply as frauds and wiles to avert justice. Again, in Mrs. Newington's case the evidence that she asked to go back and kiss the corpse was one of the first bits of evidence known, and one which produced a strong effect on the popular imagination,—though by no means an effect that received much confirmation from the subsequent evidence,—and after that, all evidence tending to enhance the guilt of the prisoner was regarded as a cruel attack on a person sufficiently wretched already. In the first ease, therefore, the popular sympathy runs with the man acknowledged by his mother whom the law keeps out of his own, and is against the law, which as yet denies him restitution ; in the second case, it runs with the police,—though the police certainly acted as if they had no duty in relation to the investigation of the facts at all, indeed, none except to convict the prisoner,—though against the verdict of the jury and the charge of the judge ; in the third, it simply criticizes the judge's sentence as far too severe. There is no trace, thou, of a fixed bias of popular opinion against the authorities. It is not the unpopularity of the law, or of its agents, or of the Courts of Justice which determines the set of the popular prepossession ; it is simply that the popular view has been hastily shaped in accordance with some one telling fragment of asserted fact which so preoccupied the ordinary mind as to re- tain it for one side, after which the issue remained no longer open, awl of course all the evidence unfavourable to the fixed idea of the public was regarded with a certain disgust and indignation, as if it were a false weight intended to cheat Justice of her due.
But hasty as the public prepossessions are, it seems to us that they are formed rudely on real, though quite insufficient evi- dence, and that they err rather by building too soon on what may well be a misleading item of testimony, than by sheer passion. The Tichborne claimant, whom popular opinion has taken up, is avowedly a Roman Catholic, and avowedly also a man of very bad character, whom no section of English society would be likely to befriend simply on the ground that he writes un- grammatically and has no idea of spelling at all ; the prepossession in his favour was almost certainly due to the telling fact that the mother of the real Sir Roger accepted his story and swore to his person. Again, young Mr. Pook, with his flirtations and his epileptic fits, was by no means the kind of man to excite a violent popular antipathy, and we attribute that antipathy wholly to the false and excessive importance attached to the supposed evidence of the murdered girl as to the object of her walk, apparently confirmed as it was by the haste and confusion in which he was seen returning on the night of the murder. Finally, a woman in Mrs. Newington's position, living both a loose and a very luxurious life, was not at all the sort of person likely to be the object of is strong popular pity, knd we regard the sympathy apparently felt for her as very much due to the apparent evidence so early produced of her grief and remorse. In all these cases, as it seems to us, the popular impression has been formed on an item of, if true, really significant and important evidence ; and has been in fault chiefly from the inability to reserve judgment long enough, the indis- position or incapacity to withstand the force of a quite inauflicient, though telling and weighty indication. Popular opinion on matters of justice is impatient, and is far too credu- lous. It is unable to wait in a state of suspended opinion, and it is unable to believe that an apparently very clear indication may after all be accounted for on a hypothesis that is not obvious. It is restless till it has taken a definite form ; and when it has got any apparently simple clue, it repudiates almost violently the idea that that clue is a misleading ono, which you might account for on a principle directly opposed to that to which it seems to point. That the Dowager Lady Tiehborne might by a possibility have been so determined in her own mind that she should recover her son, as to dismiss even justifiable doubts as to his identity, is too refined a hypothesis to be even entertained by the popular judgment. That Jane Maria Clousens might have mentioned the name of a man who was not her lover, to withdraw suspicion from ohe who was, seems incredible to a hasty and indignant opinion, eager for the punishment of a villain. That a woman who had more than once contemplated stabbing her lover might have both felt and ostentatiously displayed a little grief after all was over, without detracting much from the guilt and premeditation of the crime, strikes a rude public opinion as unnatural. The simplicity of any theory of a disputed issue in a court of justice is a far too strong recommendation of it to the popular judgment which greatly craves simplicity. It is simpler to suppose the claimant the real Sir Roger, because if he is not, how did he come to impose on so many people ? while if he is, it is easy to regard all the evidence the other way as trumped up. It was easier to suppose Pook guilty, because if not, why was his name mentioned by the deceased as her lover, and why did he happen to be returning in a flurry on that very night soon after the girl disappeared ? It is simpler to think Mrs. Newington caused Mr. Moon's death without meaning to kill him, because she cried so after his death, and he had seemed so attached to her before. Popular opinion finds it most difficult to remain in a state of confessed ignorance ; and still more difficult to reject a single striking and obvious clue in favour of a great number of smaller clues which point to a different hypothesis. The first bit of evidence which really paints a tolerably coherent picture on the mind is, therefore, apt to retain the popular opinion for a particular view. Popular opinion wants subtlety and grasp, the power of fairly weighing manysinall signs against one or two big ones, so essential to a just balance of judgment. But it is not radically fanciful and partial. It really does in the first instance form its prepossession by evidence, though not by enough evidence, still less all the evidence ; it is prepossessed by that which has a real right to a hearing, though not to a verdict. In-- short, this hasty and im- mature popular judgment is not quite the creature of arbitrary caprice that it is sometimes represented to be.
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