Money-getting and cotton-spinning have left us little time for fun of any kind in England—no one has a moment to spare, let him be ever so droll, and a joke seems now to be esteemed a bona fide expenditure; and as “a pin a day” is said to be “a groat a year,” there is no calculating what an inroad any manner of pleasantry might not make into a man's income. Book-writers have ceased to be laughter-moving—the stage has given it up altogether, except now and then in a new tragedy—society prefers gravity to gaiety—and, in fact, the spirit of comic fun and drollery would seem to have died out in the land—if it were not for that inimitable institution called trial by jury. Bless their honest hearts! jurymen do indeed relieve the drab-coloured look of every-day life—they come out in strong colour from the sombre tints of common-place events and people. Queer dogs! nothing can damp the warm ardour of their comic vein—all the solemnity of a court of justice—the look of the bar and the bench—the voice of the crier—the blue bags of briefs—the “terrible show,” has no effect on their minds—“ruat coelum,” they will have their joke.

It is in vain for the judge, let him be ever so rigid in his charge, to tell them that their province is simply with certain facts, on which they have to pronounce an opinion of yea or nay. They must be jurymen, and “something more.” It's not every day Mr. Sniggins, of Pimlico, is called upon to keep company with a chief-justice and sergeant learned in the law—Popkins don't leave his shop once a week to discuss Coke upon Littleton with an attorney-general. No: the event to them is a great one—there they sit, fawned on, and flattered by counsel on both sides—called impartial and intelligent, and all that—and while every impertinence the law encourages has been bandied about the body of the court, they remain to be lauded and praised by all parties, for they have a verdict in their power, and when it comes—what a thing it is!

There is a well-known story of an English nobleman, desiring to remain incog. in Calais, telling his negro servant—“If any one ask who I am, Sambo, mind you say, 'a Frenchman.'” Sambo carried out the instruction by saying—“My massa a Frenchman, and so am I.” This anecdote exactly exemplifies a verdict of a jury—it cannot stop short at sense, but must, by one fatal plunge, involve its decision in absurdity.

Hear what lately happened in the north of Ireland. A man was tried and found guilty of murder—the case admitted no doubt—the act was a cold-blooded, deliberate assassination, committed by a soldier on his sergeant, in the presence of many witnesses. The trial proceeded; the facts were proved; and—I quote the local newspaper—

“The jury retired, and were shut up when the judge left the court, at half-past seven. At nine, his lordship returned to court, when the foreman of the jury intimated that they had agreed. They were then called into court, and having answered to their names, returned a verdict of guilty, but recommended the prisoner to mercy upon account of the close intimacy that existed between the parties at the time of the occurrence.”

Now, what ever equalled this? When the jury who tried Madame Laffarge for the murder of her husband, returned a verdict of guilty, with that recommendation to mercy which is implied by the words “des circumstances attÉnuantes,” Alphonse Karr pronounced the “extenuating circumstances,” to be the fact, that she always mixed gum with the arsenic, and never gave him his poison “neat.”

But even they never thought of carrying out their humanity farther by employing the Belfast plea, that she had been “intimate with him” before she killed him. No, it was reserved for our canny northerns to find out this new secret of criminal jurisprudence, and to show the world that there is a deep philosophy in the vulgar expression, a blood relation—meaning thereby that degree of allianceship which admits of butchery, and makes killing no murder; for if intimacy be a ground of mercy, what must be friendship, what brotherhood, or paternity?

Were this plea to become general, how cautious would men become about their acquaintances—what a dread they would entertain of becoming intimate with gentlemen from Tipperary!

I scarcely think the Whigs would throw out such lures for Dan and his followers, if they could consider these consequences; and I doubt much—taking everything into consideration, that the “Duke” would see so much of Lord Brougham as he has latterly.

“Whom can a man make free with, if not with his friends?” saith Figaro; and the Belfast men have studied Beaumarchais, and only “carried out his principle,” as the Whigs say, when they speak of establishing popery in Ireland, to complete the intention of emancipation.

Lawyers must have been prodigiously sick of all the usual arguments in defence of prisoners in criminal cases many a year ago. One of the cleverest lawyers and the cleverest men I ever knew, says he would hang any man who was defended on an alibi, and backed by a good character. Insanity is worn out; but here comes Belfast to the rescue, with its plea of intimacy. Show that your client was no common acquaintance—prove clearly habits of meeting and dining together—display a degree of friendship between the parties that bordered on brotherhood, and all is safe. Let your witness satisfy the jury that they never had an altercation or angry word in their lives, and depend upon it, killing will seem merely a little freak of eccentricity, that may be indulged with Norfolk Island, but not punished with the gallows.

“Guilty, my lord, but very intimate with the deceased,” is a new discovery in law, and will hereafter be known as “the Belfast verdict.”