NEWS OF THE WEEK.
Punue attention is again directed to Monmouth, where the trial of the State prisoners commenced on Tuesday. The examination Of witnesses against Joust FROST, the first arraigned, was not con- cluded on Thursday evening; and it is probable that the proceed- ings in his ease will reach into next week. And should the verdict be agairq the accused, he may yet escape the penalty of treason. The :'ourt has reserved for the decision of the Judges in West- minster a point affecting all the testimony adduced by the Crown .1Awyers. From the evidence of Mr. halms:, Solicitor to the • Tielumry, it appeared that a list of witnesses was not given to the prisoner together with a copy of the indictment, but five days after ; and Sir FREDERICK POLLOCK cited a statute of Queen ANNE, and several precedents, in support of his argument that both must be delivered at the same time. By the statute of ANNE, the list of witnesses and a copy of the indictment must be furnished ten days before the trial; and the Attorney-General relied upon the delivery of both within the specified period, though not together. On the decision of this point may depend not only the fate of FROST, but of all his fellow prisoners under • the same charge. Is it ex- pedient that three Judges, selected from the Courts of Queen's Bench, Exchequer, and Common Pleas, to preside at trials for high treason, should be obliged to acknowledge inability to perform the duty especially required of them, the interpreta- tion or an act under which the trials take place ? Without, of course, presuming to anticipate - the decree of the Judges in Westminster Hall, we may remark, that justice pleads for a strict adherence to the forms of law. In this ease,
• we can imagine something of principle, and not a mere barren
involved in the point of form on which the prisoner's counsel rest their object:on. The framers of.the statute, we may suppose, intended that the indictment should be a true statement of facts thoroughly sifted and deliberately ascertained—just what the witnesses, of ‘vhom a list was to be delivered along with the indictment, had already averred : whereas, by permitting the in- dictment to be delivered first and the list of witnesses afterwards, an opportunity of suborning false testimony ill the interval, to make out the assumed accusation, might he affinded. To protect the prisoner in some degree against such an abuse of the Crown's enormous power, was the act of Queen ANNE made. Should the objection urged by FaosT's counsel be sustained by the Judges, the result may be considered a fortunate one. The prosecution was unavoidable—Government could not escape from it ; but hangings for treason would be a sorry accompaniment to tile young Qacen's marriage; and, considering the countenance given by many execllent friends of the present Ministers to a certain amount of physical-force display, for the attainment of their ob- jects, in not distant times, the extreme punishment of the Mon- mouthshire Chartists would come with a bad grace from them ; whilst a pardon, even though the Royal nuptials afforded an ex- cuse for a political amnesty, would subject the Government to obloquy and attack from the Opposition.
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