ed counts is good, and would have been
supported by the evidence given at the trial, the prisoner can plead
_autrefois acquit_ to a fresh indictment, and so get off scot-free,
after having been incontestably proved guilty of the act of murder!
Suppose then, to avoid so fearful a result, separate sentences of death
be passed, to say nothing of the unseemliness of the transaction in open
court, which _might_ be avoided: but how can it be avoided _on the
record_, upon which it must be entered? Mr Baron Parke pronounces that
such a procedure would be "_superfluous, and savour of absurdity_,"[21]
and that therefore, "in such a case, the general judgment _might_ be
good!" Thus, in order to _work_ the new rule, Mr Baron Parke is forced
to make the case of murder a double exception--viz. to the _adoption_ of
the new rule at the trial, and then to the _operation_ of the new rule
before the court of error, which must then hold that a single bad, or a
dozen bad counts, will _not_ vitiate a general judgment, if sustained by
one good count! Does not all this suffice to show the desperate shifts
to which even two such distinguished judges are driven, in order to
support the new rule, and conceal its impracticability? Then why should
the old lamp be exchanged for the new?

We entertain, we repeat, very grave apprehension that the House of Lords
has treated far too cavalierly the authority of the great Lord
Mansfield, than whom a more enlightened, learned, and cautious a judge
probably never administered justice among mankind. He was not a man
accustomed, in delivering his judgments, to "utter things _needlessly_
and _inconsiderately_," as he is now charged with doing;[22] and when he
declared the established rule of criminal law to be that which has now
been so suddenly abrogated, he spoke with the authority which nearly
thirty years' judicial experience attaches to the opinion of a
responsible master-mind. We ask with deep anxiety, what will be the
consequences of thus lightly esteeming such authority?--of impugning the
stability of the legal fabric, by asserting one-half of its materials to
consist merely of "law taken for granted?"[23]--and, consequently, not
the product of experience and wisdom, and to be got rid of with
comparative indifference, in spite of the deliberate and solemn judgment
of an overwhelming majority of the existing judicial authorities of the
land.

The rule just abrogated has, for a long series of years--for