“I believe I am right in stating that he (Lord Russell) never said that he believed Mrs. Maybrick to be innocent.”
When this was shown Lord Russell by Mr. A. W. McDougall, Esq., the Chief Justice exclaimed:
“Does Lord Hugh Cecil suppose that I would abandon all the traditions of the Bar and put forward publicly as an argument in such a case my personal belief in this, that, or the other thing? Does he suppose that I would have made all the efforts I have been making to obtain her freedom if I believed her to be guilty?”
Explanation of Attitude of Home Secretaries
“Personal Rights,” of November 15, in commenting on the statement of Mr. Lucy in The Strand Magazine, says:
“We do not share the belief that Sir Fitz-James Stephen was insane in any plenary sense at the time of the trial; but we are convinced that he was not fully sane. His charge to the jury, the report of which is reproduced in full in Mr. Levy’s book, is grotesquely inaccurate; and if the jury took it to be a compendium of the evidence—as they probably did—the result of their deliberation is fully accounted for. Indeed, if the facts were such as the judge stated, the verdict could hardly be impugned. How different they were may be seen by any one who compares the evidence with the judge’s charge, in the book already referred to. To take a single instance: the judge stated that, according to the evidence of Alice Yapp, at the commencement of Mr. Maybrick’s illness, he was very sick and in great pain immediately after some medicine was given to him by his wife. Alice Yapp swore nothing of the kind. She saw neither any administration of medicine nor any sickness. We could give other instances of gross inaccuracy, generally leading to the conclusion of the prisoner’s guilt; but, for our present purpose, the above incident will suffice.
“If this was the character of the judge’s charge to the jury, what confidence can be placed in his notes? Still upon those notes was probably based the conclusions of successive Home Secretaries or of the officials employed by them. When Mr. Lucy holds up his hands in astonishment at the marvelous consensus of opinion of various Home Secretaries, he seems to us to manifest remarkable blindness—for one so long behind the Speaker’s chair—as to the vicarious nature of that opinion. It is more than possible that the conclusions of Mr. Matthews, Mr. Asquith, and Sir Matthew White-Ridley were all drawn for them by the same gentleman, or, at least, that the same gentleman helped these various Home Secretaries to come to the same conclusion.
“We hope that Mr. Ritchie, the new Home Secretary, will judge this matter for himself. Let him read the salient portions, at least, of Mr. Levy’s book, and, per contra, the article of X. Y. Z. in The Contemporary Review of September last. If he likes to make the inquiry, he will find that X. Y. Z. is one of his new permanent staff, and that the doctrines put forward in the article are the embodiment of Home Office practise. This is a matter which does not concern the Maybrick case alone. Scarcely a month passes without some new manifestation of injustice brought about by adherence to the traditions of the department over which Mr. Ritchie now presides. If he will seek out this hydra and slay it, he will leave for himself an immortal name among Secretaries of State, and—what he will hold of more importance—he will cut off a permanent source of injustice, give releasement and joy to the innocent pining in prison, and breathe a new life into a department which is sadly in need of a renovating spirit.”