fairly. He has, we think, a right to complain of being summoned as a
witness for the crown; but the government have even more reason to
complain of the conduct of their servants in exposing them by their
blunders to ridicule and contempt. It is too bad that with a large
and highly-paid staff of lawyers and attorneys the government
prosecutions should be conducted in a loose and slovenly manner. When
a state prosecution has been determined upon, every step ought to be
carefully and anxiously considered, and subordinate officials should
not be permitted by acts of officious zeal to compromise their
superiors and bring discredit on the administration of the law.

The Liberal-Conservative _Irish Times_ was still more outspoken:--

While all commend the recent action of the government, and give the
executive full credit for the repression by proclamation of
processions avowedly intended to be protests against authority and
law, it is generally regretted that prosecutions should have been
instituted against some of those who had taken part in these
processions. Had these menacing assemblages been held after the
proclamations were issued, or in defiance of the authorities, the
utmost power should have been exerted to put them down, and the
terrors of the law would properly have been invoked to punish the
guilty. But, bearing in mind the fact that these processions had been
declared by the head of the government--expressing, no doubt, the
opinion entertained at that time by the law officers of the crown,
that these processions were "not illegal"--remembering, too, that
similar processions had been already held without the slightest
intimation of opposition on the part of government; and recollecting,
also, that the proclamation was everywhere implicitly obeyed, and
without the least wish to dispute it, we cannot avoid regretting that