LINES WRITTEN IN THE BAY OF NAPLES. Ir is the hour, the glorious hour, When twilight's lingering mists grow dim, Where in their lonely glory sleep It tells of groves, whose deathless flowers It breathes of those delicious hours Faint image of a loftier race Than this, which, dead to honour's claim, Owns nought of Roman, save the name. In fervent hour its worship paid, Clime of the bard, the chief, the sage- My bark is bounding on the sea, That lightly shoots through fields of foam, And beauty's lute, from castled steep, P. THE BENCH AND THE PRESS. It is impossible to consider some of our Law proceedings, and to escap? being struck with the soreness of feeling which is displayed in them, by the dispensers of the justice of the country, towards whatever concerns the press. Its excesses, instead of being regarded as the overflowings of a pure and vivifying stream, bearing health and refreshment through the land-here and there perhaps causing a trifling mischief, but fertilizing and rendering productive the whole surface of the country—are used as arguments against the thing itself. There is a uniform tendency to say something injurious respecting it on the most trivial opportunity available for the purpose-and that something generally grounded on the most untenable reasoning-as if the press were the declared enemy of the profession'and practice of Law. There seems a constant wish to master its free spirit, and to confine it to the most narrow and petty regulations. Could those who indulge in their vituperations against the press carry the matter in their own way, nothing would ever be allowed to appear in print but what was literally proveable on oath. The examination of public men and their measures, the pursuit of truth, the arraignment of evils too subtle for the coarser -bonds of an act of parliament to restrain, must cease at the dictum of lawyers, and free discussion be chained to the formalities of the most narrowing and self-consequential of human pursuits. This disposition is partly generated by the opposite characters of the press and of the law. Lifted, after years of laborious practice, to the bench from a confined arena of quibble and set usage, of well-paid disputation on matters where the heart is never to be consulted, it is next to impossible that the common-place lawyer should have any congeniality of feeling with the "chartered libertine;" or appreciate any thing, the essence of which is freedom from constraint. They who are accustomed to subject thought and reason to the written institutes of others, cannot travel out of their own beaten track, and therefore labour to bring every thing within the stinted circumference of their own minds. They cannot judge largely and liberally: hence an accomplished lawyer neither cuts a figure in the senate, nor exhibits the grand views of the statesman. Law belongs more immediately to human action-to deed, and not to thought. The press belongs to mind and to imagination, and is not to be judged of as we judge of fact. It is within the empire of intellect, and its range cannot be defined by statute, nor its errors and mistakes rectified by human jurisprudence, though an excess of one particular character may. The errors of the press can only be subdued by the operation of reason and moral feeling. Law is a very limited empire as respects mind: that of the press is boundless. The lawyer is a mere expounder of the institutions of the legislator: he is his agent to effect certain limited objects. It is not his business to listen to nor act upon the suggestions of genius, nor always even of sound reason. Written laws confine him to the very letter of his duty. How can it be expected he should be otherwise than he is, when life is too short for him to penetrate through the cloud of involution and perplexity in which the study of his own profession has been laboriously enveloped? The power of the press is also an object of his envy. Its property of influencing large bodies of men, of moving mankind en masse, is viewed with jealousy; and as it is one of the safeguards of liberty, it has a tendency to enlarge instead of restrain; a quality the very reverse of law. It can, therefore, hardly be wondered at, that some feeling of antipathy should be shown towards it, arising from the habits as well as ambition of lawyers. But it by no means follows that it is prudent to exhibit it on every occasion. We have always been pleased at the respect borne towards the dispensers of justice. On his circuit the judge is almost regarded as a sacred personage by the people; and his respectful reception by the gentry in the country, adds to the salutary impression made on their minds by the awful nature of his duties. While he confines himself to the impartial exercise of his functions, he will be regarded with veneration and respect. But let him be cautious of travelling out of the path of his professional duties. No human being can have less hope of displaying universality of knowledge than a member of the bench. It is ten chances to one, if he attempt to give the gentlemen of the grand jury a disquisition on finance, a lecture on political economy, or a chapter on politics, but he shows his ignorance on each subject, and many who hear him are inwardly smiling at his want of knowledge of their most simple details. Mr. Justice Park is said to have lately declared that he should not be governed in the performance of his duty by public opinion; we should hope not, if public opinion could run counter to it; but it never has, nor can do so. What is called the applause of a mob, is a very different thing from public opinion; which is the expression of society, of the wise and the considerate-not of the unthinking. It is the unerring testimony of the "multitude of counsellors" to the principles of right and wrong. It fixes the character of events, consecrates great actions, rewards public virtue, incites to emulation, never fails in making just discriminations, and is the terrible Simoom that blasts for ever the wrong-doer, let his pretensions be what they may. The gratuitous declaration of the learned judge we must therefore, in common charity, refer to the partial and temporary feeling of a mob; and not to the aggregate opinion of this mighty nation; or, in other words, to public opinion in the true sense of the term. It is only of late that this censorious spirit toward the press has manifested itself so openly. The Recorder of London has come in too with his censures, and frowned from his official seat in judicial terrors at the press, as the diabolical cause of prize-fighting, and the mother of all mischief-Et tu Brute! this is the cruelest cut of all. The trial of an individual for killing his antagonist in one of those degrading exhibitions, the patronage of which is not confined to blackguards of the lower degrees, afforded an opportunity for an harangue upon the crimes of the press, in consequence of its appearing that the youthful gladiator had felt his ambition roused by reading an account of a prizefight. Oxford, when Aristotle and moods and predicates were in their glory, could not have offered a finer example of logical display, which might be thus embodied :-Prize-fights exist, newspapers report prize-fights, people read newspapers; therefore the press encourages prize-fighting. Thus the Aldermen of London give rich dinners, newspapers report them, people read newspapers; therefore the press encourages gluttony. The felicitous reasoning of Mr. Knowlys, by the same rule, demonstrates that the murders, rapes, and burglaries happening in this country are caused in the same manner as the sale of Warren's blacking by reading about them. Take the hint, ye legislators of Great Britain! Ye may now repeal the Vagrant Act, that stain on English jurisprudence-ye may repeal all the statutes, and make the Old Bailey a desert,-simply by extinguishing the press, and arraigning our typographers for "causing printing to be used, contrary to the King, his crown and dignity," as Jack Cade has it. But I ought to apologise to the reader for treating this subject so lightly, were it not that, while it shows the animus of some persons respecting it, the unsoundness of their reasoning might be put in a true light. But the press confers high benefits upon the justice of the land itself; it has contributed to effect a remarkable diminution of the more atrocious crimes, which the Report for inquiring into the state of our criminal laws vouches for. In the enlightened district of the metropolis murders have diminished in the proportion of three to one, in the very place where the press exerts most influence, and where it is the more immediate burthen of judicial censure. Lawyers are advocates for a privity in law proceedings, or for what may properly be called inquisitions. They have high opinions of the integrity of the lowest members of their caste. Attorneys or coroners are always most honourable characters; else how, according to law reasoning, could they act as attorneys or coroners? But the press is a check on the conduct of officials even in law, and greatly contributes to preserve the purity of justice. This was manifest in the late attempt of a coroner to screen a murderer; which conduct would, it is probable, but for the press, have been unknown and unpunished at this moment. Not only is the publication of law evidence of service, but publicity is in all cases the very essence of justice itself. With a sophism common to legal argument, it has been urged that the publication of evidence creates a prejudice against a prisoner.-What, when the verdict of a coroner's jury has already stamped his guilt? It tends, moreover, to secure the veracity of witnesses, who would not fear falsehood in a private examination: it is a restraint on the conduct of judges, and a security to the reputation of the government, which secret tribunals have universally brought into disrepute, and in some cases have overturned. No state can possess any thing worthy the name of liberty where the press is not free in respect to all matters relative to justice. In the designs of the Governor of the world, for the advancement of man to more elevated degrees of knowledge and moral feeling, liberty appears to be the active agent ; those states which are most free, being the most powerful, wise, and wealthy. In free states, spy systems, inquisitions, and a gendarmerie, could not exist; though they are necessary in despotic countries to regulate the most trivial matters, to apprehend offenders, and to preserve order. The press in free countries, by infusing a better moral feel The committee for inquiring into the state of criminal laws have boldly and truly laid down, that "the practice of immediately publishing the circumstance of every atrocious crime, and of circulating in various forms an account of every stage of the proceedings which relates to it, is far more prevalent in England than in any other country; and in our times, than in any former age. It is, on the whole, of great utility, not only as a control on courts of judicature, but also as a means of rendering it extremely difficult for odious criminals to escape. In this country, no atrocious erimes remain secret!" ing, recording public opinion, restraining folly, detecting and exposing offenders against the laws, and aiding their delivery to justice, acts more beneficially than a minister of police with an army of armed men, and an office of passports and licenses, inadmissible where a shade of freedom exists. Is a murder committed in London, for example, and has the murderer escaped-in twenty-four hours he is followed into every quarter of the land, into every village and house, where no knowledge of the fact could otherwise reach. He is pointed out to the public, and every man is made his enemy: he is marked, go where he may, and consigned to the retribution of the law;-a happy attribute of the press. The publication of all facts thus materially assists in the ends of justice. The stability of a government must, in free states, depend in a great measure upon the openness and ingenuousness of its acts, of which the press is the exhibitor. A state is a great family, which should have no mysteries among its members. In the dispensation of justice, our forefathers admitted this principle even in more arbitrary times. All courts must be open to the public; all England is present in them, according to our ancestors; yet lawyers oppose the printed publication of the proceedings, which our ancestors make it a rule that all England should hear a strange deduction from a fundamental principle in their own profession, and, like too many other objections, mere senseless drivelling. That the publication of actual truth can injure a prisoner while it is confined to facts, either before trial or after, has in no instance been proved, while great good has often resulted from it. In the case of Thurtell and Hunt, which has been cited in example, there is no proof of their having sustained detriment, though many falsehoods were circulated respecting them. The class in life in which the culprits lived, the magistrates themselves by their conduct before and after committing them, rumours of mysteries unexplained, and tremendous precautions for their seclusion before trial, excited the public curiosity to a high pitch. Had the crime been committed in Middlesex, they would have been sent to Newgate with no fear of their rescue, and have remained with comparative little public notice until their trial. The denial of their solicitors seeing them, the moving the Court of King's Bench in their favour, the extra guards to the prison, while showing a want of knowledge of the human mind and of public feeling, made them subjects of more eager notice. What atrocious murderers, so steeped in blood, would an English mob rescue? Political rioters, or some offenders committed on charges vulgarly deemed venial, might have given just ground for alarm. But the keeper of Newgate would have known there could be no reason for fearful precautions there against rescuers. There were many collateral causes, therefore, to feed public curiosity, and to induce the press to satisfy it. Murders were heaped on murders, and all gamblers were implicated with them; as if a gambler, who is always a fool, must necessarily be an assassin. The supply is always in proportion to the demand. The press was eager to gratify its patrons: every rumour was printed and published unsparingly, the whole being an event out of the regular course of things. But what evil resulted? The truth remained on the day of trial, and the rumours were forgotten. Neither judge, nor jury, nor the bar, nor the audience, exhibited one instance of prejudice against the prisoners. The short time allowed them for their defence, |