The Press. — London, England, 1854-02-18 00:00:00

FEBRUARY 18, 1854. relaxation or abrogation of these securities to show that he entertains the same lofty contempt for spiritual enemies. But Lord JOHN RUSSELL should know that as the greatest fault a general in the field can com mit is to omit precautions because he con temns the enemy he has to encounter, so it is with the statesman in the Cabinet when it in duces him to abrogate securities provided for the safety of the commonwealth. LORD PALMERSTON IN THE HOME OFFICE. WHETHER Lord PALMERSTON be well placed in the Cabinet may be doubtful, but there is no doubt of his value as a Home Secretary. In truth, there was need of such a Minister in that department. Sir JAMES GRAHAM is a good man of business, but when he resigned his post in '46 we asked what, after all, had he done ? Where were the results of his five years' tenure ? His successor, Sir GEORGE GREY, made immense capital out of the foolish panic of April, '4B ; and his courtesy to indivi duals disarmed opposition. But neither was he in action a reforming Minister, though at times he talked like one. Mr. WALPOLE planned many good measures, and carried out some ; but his career was prematurely cut short, less to his own regret than to that of the country, for all men rated him higher than he rated himself. The present Secretary, though untrained to the work of his new department, seems bent on crowding into his short remain der of years reforms that might make the re putation of a life. Sanitary amendment— cab fares—protection of wives—and now the regulation of burial clubs and friendly societies —all have in turn engaged his attention. Nor has he handled any question with a feeble or unequal grasp. Perhaps in a Minister a little inexperience is a good thing. Your very prac tised men, whose whole training has lain in one department, are apt to magnify diffi culties, and imagine obstacles. The first view of a subject is often the best, at least it is always that with which the people outside will most readily fall in ; afterthoughts are fre quently refinements—ingenious, but unprac tical. So in this case. A hundred acute ob• jections may be raised to the dealing with those infanticidal institutions of which we have several times treated, but the people want them regulated ; they want murder sup pressed, and they expect their agents in Par liament to go to work by the shortest and most effectual way. What is that way? We repeat, and we be lieve that Parliament will bear us out—the prohibition of all money payments on the death of children, confining the operation of the burial societies to the provision of the actual funeral, the expenses whereof to he defrayed directly by the society, without the intervention of the parents. " But," we may be told, "this is the law " already. Even now, under the Joint-stock " Companies Act, such payments are forbidden " in the case of a child under ten years of age." True ; but this proviso, though existing, is unknown and unexecuted ; it forms no part of the Friendly Societies Act ; and its operation is clogged with many technical difficulties. We want it enacted in a new form—we want the penalties made such that they can be enforced—and we want it extended to persons of all ages. These provisions, in all probabi lity, will suffice for the present purpose. Again—unenrolled societies, though clearly illegal, exist to a vast extent. Yet no person can establish one under a penalty ; and every person insuring in one is liable to lose his money without legal redress. Why are these laws a dead letter? Mainly because of the cost of putting them in force. Make prosecu tions cheaper—make the penalty recoverable without expense or loss of time (for which a mere change in the wording of the act will be enough)—and these public pests will be put down at once. "But the insurance-offices will complain." They have no cause : the law will not practi cally affect them. For, in the first place, they refuse to insure infant lives; their tables are, we believe, not calculated below the age of ten THE PRESS. years ; and they generally deal with a different class of insurers, among whom child-murder does not prevail. But this is not the only difference of their position. They refuse, in variably and most wisely, to insure any life in which the insurer has not a personal pecuniary interest. This rule is necessary to prevent insurance from degenerating into a mere gam bling on lives; and it completely separates their status from that of the burial clubs. We have said our say, and leave the case contentedly in the hands of Lord PALMERSTON and the House of Commons. THE LAW OF SUCCESSION TO REAL PROPERTY. ON Tuesday last Mr. LOCKE Km moved for leave to bring in a Bill " to amend the Law of Suc cession to Real Property in Cases of Intestacy.' At present, with local exceptions, if the pos sessor of land dies intestate, his property descends to the heir. This Mr LOCKE KING proposes to alter, and to assimilate the laws affecting the inheritance of land to those which regulate personalty ; in short, to bring real estate under the operation of the Statute of Distributions. The motion was supported by Mr. HADFIELD, vehemently applauded by Mr. BRIGHT, and only met by Lord JOHN RUSSELL with the faint declaration, that there were some things in it of which he could not quite approve. Even Lord JOHN RUSSELL has not yet made up his mind to immolate his order on the shrine of democracy, other wise he would have incorporated this mea sure with his Reform Bill. Mr. Locxis KING, although he introduced it plausibly enough as a change of very little moment, was yet so conscious that it contained the germ of a power which would destroy the peerage, that he actually proposed to exempt the estates of peers from its operation ; and yet the chief argument he urged in favour of the mea sure was its abstract justice—as if abstract justice, and an exception so enormous, were not a contradiction in terms. There are in England estates which have descended in the same families for many cen turies, the owners of which would not. accept the honours of the peerage ; and where is the " justice" of the measure that would doom these ancient estates to infinitesimal division and subdivision, and exempt from the same fate the land which the recently-created baron has purchased with the profits of his banking business ? For Mr. LOCKE KING is in error when he assumes that " good sense " would prevent the division of property to an un limited extent. It is a question susceptible of arithmetical calculation, and, should the mea sure ever become law, the data furnished by its operation for a few years would enable an actuary to calculate with precision how long it would take to assimilate the territorial condi tion of England to that of France—how long it would be before the " stately homes of Eng " land * * amid their tall ancestral trees" were in ruin and decay, like those deserted châteaux of the old noblesse that look so melancholy along the Loire. Mr. LOCKE KING says he only proposes to divide land amongst the children when the parent dies intestate, and that in England the desire of leaving a name and an estate behind is so strong that there would be no danger of the omission of so sim ple a form as a will. But, granting the strength of the desire, it is certain that the day will come when some one owner of an ancient in heritance will die intestate, and then it will be divided amongst his heirs, never to be reunited. Peerages will become extinct, and, when the proposed new law has operated for a sufficient time upon the landed gentry, where will be the class from which the peer age will be recruited? These consequenees were doubtless foreseen by Mr. BRIGHT when, with heat and vehemence unusual even in the " leader of the town tumults " of Rochdale," he boisterously supported and applauded the measure. Mr. LOCKE KING said " it seemed to him that it was now the clear " duty of every class to give up promptly and " with a good grace every indefensible privi " lege--every anomaly everything that " could in any way be construed into an act of " injustice." There was a day when similar 147 • sentiments were entertained in France ; it is known in history, if we mistake not, by the name of " The Night of Sacrifices," and it has been popularly termed " The Day of Dupes." Royalty, aristocracy, and episcopacy were thought " indefensible pri vileges," and those classes gave them up " promptly and with a good grace." The ex ample was set by Philippe Egalite, and peer and bishop laid down coronet and mitre on the altar of democracy on which that liberal Prince of the blood had offered up his royalty as a. sacrifice. Philippe Egalite on the scaffold, and the nobles and bishops of France in ruin, exile, and proscription, expiated the crimes of that suicidal night. We are willing to believe that Mr. LOCKE KING did not foresee the full effect of his measure when he proposed it, for he has since written a letter endeavouring to diminish its magnitude. Himself the son of a peer, he should beware of the applause of Mr. BRIGHT when tampering with the laws that ef fect the territorial element in the constitution of England. He should remember what class secured to us our laws, liberties, and religion in that revolution in which the honourable member's own ancestor bore a part so distin guished. Even Mr. MACAULAY gives the credit of the Revolution of 1688 to the aristocracy and. landed gentry of England. Some broadly marked and distinctive diftrence must exist between England and the nations of the Con tinent when she alone withstood unmoved the revolutionary whirlwind which in 1848 swept over Europe; and what can constitute this difference but that ancient and powerful aristocracy based on land which we alone possess? Mm'. LOCKE KING seems to think an alteration of the laws of succession a light matter; but, in conclusion, on this point M. de TOCQUEVILLE, quoted by Mr. THEMENHEERE in his recent work, shall speak : M. de Tocqueville expresses " astonishment that public writers, ancient and modern, have not attributed to the laws respecting succession a greater influence over the march of human affairs." lie says that the legislator, after having disposed of that law, may, in reference to the basis of power, repose for ages ; for after once giving the impulse to the movement the machine acts of its own accord. And, with no disguised reference to the wide of things in his own country, he represents the action of that principle " as dividing, distributing, scattering, property and power ;" " pounding to pieces, or bursting into trig ments, everything that resists its passage ; now raising itself up, now prostrate on the soil, until the only sub stance it presents to sight is that of a moving and im palpable dust, on which sits democracy." PUBLIC PROSECUTORS. ON Tuesday last Mr. PHILLIMOILE moved for leave to bring in a bill for the appointment of public prose cutors in criminal cases, and after a short discus tion left the subject in the hands of the Attorney- General, on the assurance of the Hon. and Learned Gentleman that it was under the considera tion of the Government. Until a measure is brought forward it would, be premature to discuss the ques firm at length, but one point seems to have been overlooked in the debate ; and that is, the grand jury system. If public itose. utors are appointed, grand juries must be abolisl!al. The duties which would be imposed on those functionaries would not be magisterial, but would commence immediately when a prirnd facie case for inquiry had been estab lished. Then the representative of public justice would step in, and by taking the conduct of criminal prosecu tions out of the bands of private persons would prevent those compromises and compositions by which wealthy offenders are occasionally enabled to escape from the penal consequences of crime. But criminal prosecu tions are often promoted for private ends, to opprets the weak and timid, or to extort money from rich offenders. For this the grand-jury system gives ample facilities. Nothing is more easy than to pro cure the return of a " true bill " when there is not a particle of evidence to support the case. Is the public prosecutor t) proceed with every bill so found? Then private malice may be gratified at the publio expense. Is be to overrule the grand jury ? Then he will exercise a power which the judges of the land do not possess. At present one great check on unjust prosecutions is, that the judges have a discre tionary power over the expenses, which are never allowed when the conduct of the prosecutor is ques tionable ; but., if the public prosecutes, the public must pay. Hence it must necessarily follow that the proposed change must be accompanied by the abolition of the grand-jury system. Before the public can prosecute, there must be such a reason able probability of a conviction as is at present en sured only by an investigation conducted before a stipendiary magistrate. I l