The Express.
London, England, 1853-09-05 00:00:00

03:43reORs.

TO CORRE4PONDENTS.
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HIGH WATER AT LITAboN BRIDGE.
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LONDO.Y. M.'JXDAI; SEPTEMBER 5.

Tut engravings of His, Mill and the pages of
"The State Ireals" have preserved the memory of
the cruelties reactivd upon prisoners in the gaols of
Londe*, in the early part of last century, by HAM-
-21R11,,LE and others. We have been accustomed to
flatter ourselves that the good work begun by
How %air hod made too great progress to permit
similar outrages on humanity to take place in our
day. Hut the inquiry now prosecuting by the Gaol
Commissioners at Birmingham shows that in this
we have over-estimated the power of the age's hu-
manising influences. Bastettits,e and his fellows in
guilt appear to have been prompted to many of
their atrocities by sordid avarice; the Birmingham
8AN111R10443 of the nineteenth century were so
fenced in by regulations and surveillance that even
bad they been so inclined they could not have ten-
den d their tyranny profitable to them in this way.
Their solo inspiring motives appear to have been a
desire to save themselves trouble, and to wreak their
vengeance upon every helpless creature who (with or
without right on his side) gave them any.
It is shocking to think to what excesses
callous and petty vindictive natures can
be carried by impulses seemingly so trivial.'
We have hesitated for some days to core-
rneut upon the proceedings of the Commis-
pioneers appointed to inquire into the complaints
of abuses perpetrated by the officials in
the gaol at Birmingham before the inquiry
should be concluded. Had the evidence been ex-
clusively such as would admit of counter-evidence
being brought forward at a later period, we should
still have kept silence. But the confessions of
Lieutenant At arc before us, and they neither
admit of being contradicted nor explained away. The
substance of the charges made against the goqucr
of Birmingham gaol is established by his own admis-
sions. By prosecuting their inquiries further, the
Commissioners may add to the depth of the sombre
. tints, but cannot alter the general character of the
revolting picture they are holding up to the public.
The portion of Lieutenant AusTlN's evidence
which we this day publish is especially deserving of
perusal. That person, when he found public indig-
nation excited by his practice of tying up prisoners
in a strait jacket and strapping them to the wall,
endeavoured to screen himself by alleging that the
same practice had prevailed under Captain MA-
CONOCUIE. In the moat deliberate manner did he
attempt to bring down the character for humanity
of his predecessor in office to a level with his own.
He made an entry (two months ago he told
the Commissioners) in the punishment-book to
the effect that a man had been strapped
to the wall by order of Captain MACONOCUIE;
but when pressed by the Commissioners he was
obliged to admit that ho knew not of his own know-
ledge that it was a fact ; he shuffled the paternity of
the story off upon one of his understrappers, who,
himself stands charged with gross inhumanity, and
whose evidence has been anything but straightfor-
ward and trustworthy. Mr. AUSTIN admits that he
had taken no steps to ascertain whether this gossip•
ping scandal against Captain MACONOCUIE was true
or not. The unscrupulousness of the man who could,
to palliate his own cruelty, have recourse to such a
subterfuge, needs no comment. It must, however,
be admitted that it was only natural be should clutch
at almost any device, when it is considered what a story
he had to tell of himself.
It would be harrowing the feelings of our readers
to no purpose to recapitulate all the cruelties of
which they have already read in the evidence.
No record of these cruelties was kept by their
authors. The punishments were inflicted at the
arbitrary Mill of Mr. AUSTIN, for what were, or
for what he was pleased to call, breaches of prison
discipline; they were inflicted without the warrant
of any law ; they were inflicted in secresy, not
entered in the punishment-book. But for the
humanity of the chaplain, and some of the warders
and instructor' of the prisoners, these abuses might
still have been going on unheard of by the world
outside the prison walls. And this leads naturally to a
word on the conduct of the visitingjust ices. When the
enormities perpetrated in Birmingham gaol first
began to get wind these gentlemen did all that lay
in their power to get the matter hushed up. A
sham inquiry was set on foot, and everything in the
gaol was declared to be much uit ought to be. Nor
does the connivance of the visiting justices stop hem.
It really seems from the conversations and squabble@
which had been taking place among the minor offi-
cials that the justices must have winked hard not to
see what was going on. Had they performed
their duty u visitors they could scarcely have
failed to come upon the scent of the abuses
the existence of which they at first so sturdily denied.
In the surgeon of the gaol Mr. Aetertv appears to
have met with a congenial spirit and worthy col-
league. The surgeon disdained to comply with the
injunctions of the legislature to keep any register of
his treatment of his patients. Prisoners, warders,
all agree that his examination of the prisoners was
hurried and imperfect in the extreme. He confessed
himself, when examined, that he did not see the pri-
soners so often as the regulations of the prison re-
quire. He remonstrated in no one cast, though he
most have seen that the health of men
and boys was being systematically undermined.
Nay, some of the inflictions seem to have been
of his suggestion. It was he who recommended that
BROWN should be soused with cold water on a
" seasonable day in February," and left in his wet
clothes. Of the minor agents and emulators of Mr.
AUSTIN'S cruelty it is unnecessary to speak at pre-
sent. We cannot, however, break off without a tri-
bute of praise to Lord Paeweestiie for his high- I
minded rejection of all attempts to hush up the
inquiry. To his resolute determination to see justice
done the public is iodebted for the detection of
atrocities which the tender-hearted visiting justic. s
took upon them to declare had no existence. The
'Hoses SECRETARY will no doubt complete the work
he has so well begun, and leave no person implicated
in these disgraceful disclosures—•governor, surgeon.
warders, or visiting justices—unrecompensed for
their respective abuses of authority or neglect of
may.

It would have been premature and unsatisfac-
tory to have discussed the last rise in the Rank rate
of interest till wo had the returns before us which
were contained in Friday's Gazelle. Though these
refer to the previous week, and though we should be
still better satisfied if we had the returns for last week,
as we cannot get them wo must make use of the latest
published. We may infer from the facts every day
recorded in our journal, that no very striking altera-
tion took place in the "manta between Saturday