Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 342, April, 1844

Such are the desperate attempts to fasten charges of unfairness on this fairest of all recorded trials. And with an interest so keen in promoting the belief of some unfairness, was there ever yet a trial that could have satisfied the losing party? Losers have a proverbial privilege for being out of temper. But in this case more is sought than the mere gratification of wrath. Fresh hopes spring up in every stage of this protracted contest, and they are all equally groundless. First, Mr O'Connell was not to be arrested: it was impossible and absurd to suppose it. Next, being arrested, he was not to be tried. We must all remember the many assurances in Dublin papers—that all was done to save appearances, but that no trial would take place. Then, when it was past denial that the trial had really begun, it was to break down on grounds past numbering. Finally, the jury would never dare to record a verdict of guilty. This, however, being actually done, then was Mr O'Connell to bring writs of error; he was to "take the sense" of the whole Irish bench; and, having taken all that, he was to take the sense of the Lords. And after all these things were accomplished, finally (as we then understood it) he was to take himself off in the direction pointed out by the judges. But we find that he has not yet reconciled himself to that. Intimations come out at intervals that the judges will never dare to pass any but a nominal sentence upon him. We conclude that all these endless conflicts with the legal necessities of his case are the mere gasconades of Irish newspapers, addressing themselves to provincial readers. Were there reason to suppose them authorized by the Repealers, there would be still higher argument for what we are going to say. But under any circumstances, we agree with the opinion expressed dispassionately and seasonably by the Times newspaper—that judgment must be executed in this case. We agree with that journal—that the nation requires it as a homage rendered necessary to the violated majesty of law. Nobody wishes that, at Mr O'Connell's age, any severe punishment should be inflicted. Nobody will misunderstand, in such a case, the mitigation of the sentence. The very absence of all claim to mitigation, makes it impossible to mistake the motive to lenity in his case. But judgment must be done on Cawdor. Two aggravations, and heavy ones, of the offence have occurred even since the trial. One is the tone of defiance still maintained by newspapers under his control. Already, with one voice, they are ready to assure the country, in case of the sentence being incommensurate to the case, that Government wished to be severe, but had not courage for the effort; and that Government dares not enforce the sentence. The other aggravation lies in this—that he, a convicted conspirator, has presumed to take his seat amongst the senators of the land—"Venit in senatum, fit particeps consilii." Yet Catiline, here denounced to the public rage, was not a convicted conspirator; and even his conspiracy rests very much on the word of an enemy. It is true that, in some formal sense, a man's conviction is not complete in our law until sentence has been pronounced. But this makes no real difference as to the scandalous affront which Mr O'Connell has thus put upon the laws of the land. And in that view it is, viz. as an atonement for the many outrages offered to the laws, that the nation waits for the consummation of this public example.

1

The reader of German literature will call to mind the anecdote, in Jean Paul's Levana, of a Moldavian woman who in one day slew seven men with her own hand, and the same evening was delivered of a child.

2

Fifty Days on board a Slave vessel, in 1843. By the Rev. PASCOE GRENFELL HILL, Chaplain of H.M.S. Cleopatra.

3

The History of the Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain. By AHMED IBN MOHAMMED AL-MAKKARI of Telemsan. Translated and illustrated with Critical Notes by Pascual de Gayangos, late Professor of Arabic in the Athenæum of Madrid.—Printed for the Oriental Translation Fund. 2 vols. 4to. 1840-43.

4

The Almoravide and Almohade princes, who ruled both in Spain and Africa, often inserted a clause in their treaties with the Christians for the restoration of the libraries captured in the towns taken from the Moslems; and Ibn Khaldun mentions, that Yakob Al-mansor destined a college at Fez for the reception of the books thus recovered.

5

He is called by the Arabic writers Ludherik—a name afterwards applied as a general designation to the kings of Castile.

6

The translator adduces strong grounds for believing that the battle was fought, not as usually held, in the plain of Xeres, on the south bank of the Guadalete, but "nearer the sea-shore, and not far from the town of Medina-Sidonia."

7

This is not mentioned by the authors from whom Al-Makkari has drawn his materials, but is stated by Professor de Gayangos on the authority of Ibn Khaldun.

8

A story is here told of Musa's reaching some colossal ruins, and a monument inscribed with Arabic characters pointing out that place as the term of his conquests—a legend which perhaps gave the hint for one of the tales in the Thousand and One Nights, in which he is sent on an expedition to the city of Brass on the shores of the Western Ocean.—See Lane's translation, chap. 21.

9

Condé, and the writers who have followed him, constantly speak of the Beni-Modhar as Egyptian—an error owing to the neglect or omission of the point which in Arabic orthography distinguishes Modhar from Missr, (Egypt.)

10

Burkhardt (Travels in Arabia, i. 303) says, that all the golden ornaments which the Khalif Walid gave to the mosque at Mekka, "were sent from Toledo in Spain, and carried upon mules through Africa and Arabia."

11

The tribe of Fehr hold a conspicuous place in the Spanish annals, and one of them was the leader of the last attempt to shake off the yoke of Castile, after the capture of Granada.

12

It was by a body of exiles under Abu Hafss Omar, the Apochapsus of the Greeks, (incorrectly called Abu Caab by Gibbon,) driven from Cordova after one of these insurrections, that Crete was conquered in 823.

13

In this battle, according to the veracious Spanish chroniclers, Santiago first appeared on his white horse in the mêlée, fighting for the Christians.—See the "Maiden Tribute," in Lockhart's Spanish Ballads.

14

Majus—Magians or fire worshippers, is the term invariably applied to these fierce Pagans by the Arabic historians, apparently by a negative induction from their being neither Moslems, Jews, nor Christians.

15

No fewer than twenty-seven insurgent leaders, in the reign of Abdullah alone, are enumerated in the translator's notes from Ibn Hayyan.

16

The epithet of kelb, "dog," frequently applied to this leader, has led Condé into the strange error of creating for him a son, whom he calls Kalib Ibun Hafssun. The term Muwallad is said to be the origin of mulatto.

17

We do not find this division mentioned by the authors cited by Al-Makkari; but it is stated by Condé, and appears to have prevailed as long as the kingdom retained its unity. The six provincial capitals were Saragossa, Toledo, Merida, Valencia, Murcia, and Granada. Shortly before the arrival of Abdurrahman, Yusuf Al-Fehri had organized five great governments, one of which comprised Narbonne and the Trans-Pyrenean conquests.

18

Under the Arab dynasties of the east, the vizir was exclusively an officer of the pen: and Makrizi expressly mentions that Bedr-al-Jemali, who became vizir to the Fatimite khalif Al-Mostanssor in 1074, was the first in whom the sword and the pen were united.

19

See Sale's Koran. Preliminary Discourse. Sect. 8.

20

Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella, i. 351.

21

Eighty free schools are said by other authorities to have existed or been founded during this reign in Cordova; the number of dwelling-houses in which at the same time, great and small, is stated at 200,000.

22

Some historians even speak of this period as the "dynasty of the Amirites," from Al-mansur's father, Abn Amir.

23

The precise locality of this famous battle is not very clearly ascertained; but Condé places it betveen Soria and Medinaceli.

24

The battle is placed by the Christian writers in 998; but the death of Al-mansur, which both Christians and Moslems agree in stating to have taken place within a very short time, is said by the latter to have been A.M. 392, A.D. 1002.

25

The nigua is a small but very dangerous insect which fixes itself in the feet, bores holes in the skin, and lays its eggs there. These, if not extracted, (which extraction by the by is a most painful operation) cause first an intolerable itching, and subsequently sores and ulcers of a sufficiently serious nature to entail the loss of the feet.

26

Memoirs of Admiral Earl St Vincent. By T.S. TUCKER. 2 vols.

27

A scene of peculiar infamy near Paris.

28

The reader may suppose that Lord John Russell had no motive for wishing his motion to fail, because (as he was truly admonished by Sir Robert Peel) that motion pledged him to nothing, and was "an exercise in political fluxions on the problem of combining the maximum of damage to his opponents with the minimum of prospective engagement to himself." True: but for all that Lord John would have cursed the hour in which he resolved on such a motion, had it succeeded. What would have followed? Ministers would have gone out: Sir Robert Peel has repeatedly said they would in the event of parliament condemning their Irish policy. This would bring in Lord John, and then would be revealed the distraction of his party, the chicanery of his late motion, and the mere incapacity of moving at all upon Irish questions, either to the right or to the left, for any government which at this moment the Whig-radicals could form. Doubtless, Lord John cherishes hopes of future power; but not at present. "Wait a little," is his secret caution to friends: let us see Ireland settled; let the turn be taken; let the policy of Sir Robert Peel (at length able to operate through the last assertion of the law) have once taken root; and then, having the benefit of measures which past declarations would not permit him personally to initiate, nor his party even to propose, Lord John might return to power securely—saying of the Peel policy, "Fieri non debuit, factum valet."

29

The trial of the seven bishops for declining to obey the king's order in council against what, in conscience, they believed to be the law of the land, is the more strictly a parallel case, because, as in Ireland, the whole Popish part of the population—in effect, therefore, the whole physical strength of the land—seemed to have arrayed itself on the side of the conspiracy; so in England, the only armed force, and that close to London, was supposed to have been bought over by the systematic indulgence of the king. Himself and the queen (Mary of Modena) had courted them through the summer. But all was fruitless against the overwhelming sympathy of the troops with an universal popular feeling. Bishop Burnet mentions that this army (about 10,000 men, and then encamped beyond Hounslow) broke into tremendous cheers at the moment when the news of the acquittal reached them. Whilst lauding their Creator his majesty was present. But a far more picturesque account of the case is given by an ancestor of the present Lord Lonsdale's, whose memoirs (still in MS.) are alluded to in one of his Ecclesiastic Sonnets by Mr Wordsworth, our present illustrious laureate. One trait is of a nature so fine, and so inevitable under similar circumstances of interest, that, but for the intervention of the sea, we should certainly have witnessed its repetition on the termination of the Dublin trials. Lord Lowther (such was the title at that time) mentions that, as the bishops came down the Thames in their boat after their acquittal, a perpetual series of men, linked knee to knee, knelt down along the shore. The blessing given, up rose a continuous thunder of huzzas; and these, by a kind of natural telegraph, ran along the streets and the river, through Brentford, and so on to Hounslow. According to the illustration of Lord L., this voice of a nation rolled like a feu-de-joie, or running fire, the who le ten miles from London to Hounslow, within a few minutes; or, like a train of gunpowder laid from London to the camp, this irresistible sentiment finally involved in its torrent evenits professional and hired enemies. Cæsar mentions that such a transmission, telegraphically propagated from mouth to mouth, of a Roman victory, reached himself, at a distance of 160 miles, within about four hours.