text:  whether a single bad count in an indictment on which there has been a general verdict of guilty with judgment accordingly will entitle the fortunate defendant to a reversal of that judgment? We heard a considerable portion of the argument; and listened to _this_ part of it with a comfortable consciousness that we beheld in each counsel arguing it as it were a viper gnawing a file! If _this_ be law thought we then have many thousands of injured gentlemen been in all human probability unjustly hanged and transported for life or for years been fined imprisoned sent to the tread-mill and publicly whipped; for Heaven only knows how many of the counts in the indictments against--say Mr Fauntleroy; Messrs Thistlewood Brunt Tidd and Ings; Messrs Greenacre Courvoisier and many others--have been defective in law! How many hundreds are now luxuriating in Norfolk Island who have on this supposition no just right to be there; and who had they been but _popular_ miscreants might have collected sufficient funds from their friends and admirers to enable them to prove this--to try a fall with justice and show her weakness; to overhaul the proceedings against them detect the latent flaws therein return in triumph to the bosom of their families and friends and exhibit new and greater feats of dexterity in their art and mystery! Why should not that "_innocent_" convict--now passing over the seas--Mr Barber on hearing of this decision soon after his arrival at the distant paradise to which he is bound take new heart and remit instructions by the next homeward bound ship for a writ of error in order that he may have _his_ chance of detecting a flaw in one of the many counts of _his_ indictment? But to be serious again how stands the case in the present instance? Of eleven counts six must be in legal contemplation expunged from the record: FOUR (the first second third and fourth ) because though in themselves sufficient in law the findings upon them were technically defective; and TWO (the sixth and seventh ) because they were technically defective in point of law though the findings on them were unobjectionable