“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.” [Illustration: HON. ROBERT T. LINCOLN, American Ambassador to Court of St. James, 1889-1893.] UPHOLDING THE JUSTICIARY In the same number of this journal is an article from “Lex,” a well-known writer in English journals, which we reproduce: