UNEVENHANDED JUSTICE.
Our old friend, Sir Peter Laurie, in his recent modest letter to the Times upon the legal (as well indeed as social, moral, and in universal) worth and excellence of our Aldermen, marks with a special note of admiration the gratifying fact, that the number of acquittals from our City Police Courts falls considerably below the usual percentage. Recollecting Sir Peter's old propensity for "putting down," we are in some degree prepared to find that such a fact as this should be a matter of rejoicing with him. Sir Peter clearly holds that the proof of the trial is in the finding guilty, and he has, doubtless, but a low opinion of those judicial courts where mercy is allowed to "season justice." "The rigour of the law" is clearly no unmeaning phrase in Sir Peter Laurie's eyes: indeed, we almost doubt if Judex damnatur cum innocens absolvitur be not in reality his first legal maxim.
Whatever Sir Peter's present faults may be, there is no denying that he has rid himself of an old one. We cannot certainly accuse him of tenacity of opinion, when he shows himself so evidently prone to conviction.