The Express.
London, England, 1853-03-10 00:00:00

LONDON, THURSDAY, MARCH 10.

Tun Derby Election Committee, like the Chatham
Committee, has done its duty manfully and well.
The candidate of "W. 8.," FRAIL, MORGAN, RAD-
FORD, and Co., has been unseated. The Bribery at
the County Tavern has been defeated, and Mr.
HORSPALL, of Liverpool, is no longer able to append
M.P. to his name. The seat he has thus been put
out of has been awarded to Mr. HETWORTH, its
rightful owner ; the Tory petition against Mr. BABE
has been declared" frivolous and vexatious;" whilst,
to crown all, news comes from Derby that the Grand
Jury at the Assizes there have found a true bill upon
NI indictment for bribery against MORGAN.
Thus far, all is as it should be; but this is by no
means all that is required. Other Committees have
yet to sit, and, by an upright and bold discharge of
their duty, win the public applause, now cheerfully
paid to the members who tried the cases against
Chatham, Derby, and other boroughs. We shall
have other bribing delinquents unkennelled, and
other improperly elected M.P.s unseated. The
spread of this canker of corruption will
be further tracked until full knowledge on the sub-
ject has not only demonstrated yet more completely
the need for Parliamentary Reform, but has in-
structed the country and the Legislature on the beet
mode of securing it. Some large towns have yet to
peas through the ordeal of a Committee, and amongst
them Liverpool, and there is little doubt but the evi-
dence relative to the elect►on in that town will point
out one prominent loophole through which corruption
makes its way amongst constituencies, and there or
elsewhere it is to be hoped we may find eviaence cal-
culated to involve in the punishment of bribery those
higher, and hitherto more hidden, agents, the em-
ployers of the MORGANS and FRAILS. Hitherto we
have only caught members of the lower grade of this
criminal class. The Artful Dodgers of the Rotten
Boroughs have been caught by the Parliamentary
Police, but where are the Fogies? The great
plunder does not fall to the FRAILS and the Mtn-
roans : they are the procurers only in this corrupt
work. Where are those who set the abomination in
motion ? The task of investigation cannot be com-
plete till tAey are caught. To make thorough work
of it the House of Commons must, of course, issue
Commissions like the one sent to St. Albans ; since
by process in that mode alone shall we be able
to come at the whole truth. Under the wholesome
operation of a Commission of Inquiry many of the
" British Voters" who have sold themselves at 30 shil-
lings a head will, like men ashamed of guilt, make a
clean breast of it; will tell by whose hands they touched
the unholy silver for which their trust was sold. From
the bribes we shall travel up the scale to the Briber ;
from him we may hope to learn who supplied the
money ; and then, call►ng this third party into the
box, may ultimately reach that fountain head
of the mischief—the great London Wholesale
Firms who deal in Boroughs and Counties
is other men deal in corn or in stocks.
Commissions alone can ferret•the evil to its root, and
they must be called for as the natural and only legi-
timate conclusion of the important inquiries now in
progress. Whilst we are about this dirty task—this
real attempt to cleanse an Aegean stable—let us all
strive to do the work thoroughly. Those who object
to the exposures--perhaps fearing them, or it may be
thriving by the sale of seats—say, " If we check the

sin it will giow again,"—"You can't prevent
Bribery,"—" Corruption ',sista in all Governments,"
and so on. Them is just one small particle of truth
in this Amble or vicious talk, but mixed up with it
a very great portion of fallacy and falsehood. Whilst
man are mortal , them will be weakness and
sin—but because Captain Rook plucks Mr. Pigeon
the world does not therefore throw up the cards in
despair. Because the police can't catch a'l the thieves
we do not therefore put the police down and let rob-
bery have its full swing unchecked. The common-
sense world sails on a widely different tack, and
when a keen detective has caught one rogue they
tell him to go on and catch another and another,
that honesty may be vindicated against those who
outrage it. Because weeds may grow a second time
the gardener does not therefore give up weeding as
hopeless. So with this difficulty of Electoral Cor-
ruption, the public expect the House of Com-
mons to pursue the honest, upright, common-sense
course of catching all the sinners they can,—finding out
the real inciters to the crime of selling seats,—tracking
their secret courses,—itivestigating their plans of husi-
neas,—punishing all who can be convicted, and then,
with all the obtainable knowledge well in hand,
the nation look for the day when their represen-
tatives will be found going to work to arrange
such a plan of Parliamentary Reform as shall—in
the words of BENTHAM—maximise the good and
minimise the evil of an electoral system. This
task will not be found to be so difficult as at
first sight it may appear to be. As a rule, bribery
falls back in despair before large constituencies.
Here and there, where old corrupt elements
have been retained and allowed to infLct the
new voters, we might detect a few exceptions to this.
But they are exceptions. Large constituencies will
be found to be one death blow to the trade of the
seat-mongers. Marylebooe and Finsbury—Man-
chester and Birmingham, and such like places, are
too huge to be comprehended in any scheme of crea-
tures like W. B. and his rivals in an infamous trade.
They may contest such places of course. All men
are ut liberty to do that. But they cannot buy them.
T'sey cannot send down bags of sovereigns to be
dispbnsed by a Man in the Moon, to buy a seat which
the purchaser means afterwards to sell.

MR. SERJEANT ADAMS—the SOLON of Petty
Sessions—has discovered a new crime, and has fixed
on it a new punishment. He becomes at once en-
titled to all the publicity the press can give him. He
has discovered a novelty, and has distinguished himself
by a remarkable act. This discovery of the learned Ser-1
jeant—this novelty in crime—is— calling a policeman
a pig; the punishment, three years' transportation.
The notable fact reaches us through the reports of the
=ding, at the Middlesex Sessions, at which on
y one MARY HILL, aged 22, was tried for rob-'
bing a man named UNWIN. It seems clear that this
MARY HILL was a bad character. She belonged to that
glass which forms an apparently inevitable portion
of all crowded communities—a fungus growth, as it
were, of the blood-heat of high civilisation —but
whose lives, if deserving condemnation, ask also
he pity. First victims and then pests,
they are entitled to at least some charitable
consideration from the sex who adopt them
first as toys—use them next as conveniences—and
finally " put them down "as criminals. No doubt
this wretched Magdalen was a companion of thieves
—herself a thief—and leagued with a class especially
dangerous to men out at night after late and over-
ijovial parties; but this being said, all has been said- I
The law recognises robbery as a crime and allots a
certain punishment for that peculiar offence.
" MARY HILL, aged 22, a woman of loose
character" (as the report runs), doubtless
was all that was alleged against her. The
jury were no doubt quite right in their verdict,
when they declared her guilty of " having stolen a
gold watch value 61., the property of THOMAS
UNWIN, from his person"—said "THOMAS UN WIN
young man, a clerk on the Eastern Counties Rail-
way," having replied to her solicitations on the
street and "accompanied her to a court." It may
be quite true, also, that she was connected with a
gang of thieves, who, when the very innocent prose-
cutor was with MARY
HILL in a court, came up and
assaulted Mr. THOMAS Utswils, who "being very
frightened ran away,"—afterwards finding he had
lost his watch. It is also clear by the evidence that
this clerk on the Eastern Counties Railway charged
MARY HILL with stealing his watch—and she being
of loose character, was locked up upon Uwwiw's
oath, tried, and convicted of robbery, although the
lost watch was not found upon her. The jurors,
sworn to do justice according to the evidence, doubt-
less felt it to be their simple duty to return the ver-
dict they did. But the matter does not stop here.
The report of the trial thus continues :
The jury having found the prisoner guilty,
The Assistant-Judge asked if anything was known of her
previous character ; tor if there was, it was a proper case
for transportation, as this system of robbery, with the aid
of bullies, was a very serious thing.
A police-officer uidshe was the associate of thieves and
bad characters, and she was with a regular gang when she
was taken into custody.
The Assistant-Judge then sentenced her to seven years'
transportation.
The prisoner, who bad gone down on her knees implor-
ing mercy, on hearing this rose up, and in:a towering rage
screamed out to the policeman, with many oaths—" You
pig! oh, you pig! you perjured thief!"
The Assistant-Judge.—The sentence upon you now is,
that you be transported far ten years.
Here, then,we have the remarkable novelty in crime
and punishment. Mr. Serjeant ADAMS sentences MARY
HILL for robbing THOMAS UNwIN to seven years'
transportation. This weight of sentence is seemingly
brought down upon her by the statement of the police
officer in reply to a
.question from the Judge—
," Who knows her previous character ?" " I do," is
the response; " she is an associate of thieves."
" Transport her for seven years," quoth Serjeant
ADAMS. The prisoner, who on her
had been asking mercy, starts to her
flushed with indignation
.against the officer whose
description of her companions bad thus ensured her
condemnations With oaths of phrenzied passion
and rage, she shrieks to the policeman, "You pig,
oh you pig, you perjured thief." "The sentence on
you ISM" —say s Mr. Serjeant ADAMS—" is that you
be transported fen years." Clearly seven years for
the robbery—three years for calling a policeman a
pig. Whether all this be more ludicrous or more
shameful it is really difficult to say.
After a prisoner has been once sentenced, another
sentence cannot be pronounced for the same offence.
The extra three years' transportation could not
' therefore be an extra punishment for the robbery,
or the immoral life, or for anything that had been
given in evidence against the prisoner on whom it
was pronounced. In what statute, let us ask then,
don Mr. Serjeant ADAMS see the punishment of
three years in the hulks set down as that for bad
language ? Where is the act of parliament on',
which he proceeds? How and where does he find
his justification ? We wait for a reply. Those who
know him and his proceedings beat—and those, too,
who read from time to time the record of what
happens in the courts where he presides—
may, perhaps, be inclined to think that Mr.
Serjeant ADAMS himself would wince, if three years'
transportation always legally followed violent ex-
pressions used io court. Is he a dove-like model of
self-control? Is he a stranger to passion and to
violence of speech ? Does he preserve ever one
placid equability of voice and manner—tempering
justice with mercy? Is he gentleness personified
aiming to the Bench of Justice from a well-stored
home, and returning thence to a well-kept table—
heeding ever the trials of those more tempted and
more wretched mortals, whose bread has to be won
by courses of infamy, and whose liberty hangs upon
the oath of those ready to share their sins,
but unwilling to be their victims! Should not
Serjeant ADAMS with a knowledge of what he him-
self is in matters of feeling and of hasty speech, have
remembered to do to others as he would others should
do to him ? Should he not
Lightly scan his brother man,
More lightly sister—woman ?
He thinks not. His actions say so. From a Bench,
made remarkable by. his own liberties of speech, he
hurls out three years at the hulks as the penalty to
be paid by a wretched woman of 22, who—standing
helpless a convict in the dock—in a fit of impotent
rage and agony abuses a policeman.

DEATH FROM THE SNOW STORM.—OR the morn-
ing of Ssbb.itb, the 27th ult., the dead body of Mr. David
Adams, schoolmaster. Whitehill, Biree. was found in the
snow on the road at Berrying'', in that parish, by the post-
runner of the district. Mr. Adams had parted with a
neighbour about ten o'clock on the previous cvening.—Edin-
borjh Couvind.

FRANCE.
PARIS, WEDNESDAV EVENING.
It is now understood that the coronation of the
Emperor Napoleon and the Empress Eugenie will
take place next month.
A decree in this morning's 21fonaeur nominates
General Aupick, Ambassador at Madrid.
The Ottoman Government has conceded to the
French Consul at Smyrna, an indemnity of 300000
piastres for distribution among such of his country-
men as have been plundered by brigands.
A considerable change is made to-day in the re-
gulations relative to the restoration and repairing
ecclesiastical buildings. Before 1818 it was a fre-
quent subject of complaint that the einp!oyment of
the large sums annually voted by the state for the
maintenance of precious historical and artistica
monuments was left too much to the discretion of
local architects, whose labours, in a general point of
view, failed to produce a creditable result. Iu that
year a permanent committee was appointed for the
examination of all plans of church building or im-
provement, and at the same time France was divided
into 32 diocesan districts, confided to approved archi-
tects, who were directed to make a just division of
the credits voted, to consider how the work of

restoration might hest be carried on upon a regular
system, and to give precise and complete instructions
to operative agents. M. Fortoul, Minister of Public
Worship, in a report to the Emperor, acknowledges
that from that time the department of church build-
ing and reparation has been hater managed than
formerly. But he says it has been found by expe.
rience that the substitution of Parisian for local
architects—an idea adopted for the sake of giving
unity of direction to important archmolo,gical works
—has been in many instances &trimmer to parishes
possessing a church of no peculiar interest or beauty,
but in want of immediate repair. Bishops have com-
plained of having to wait more than a year before
the attention of one of the central architects could bo
obtained for the purpose of the most ordinary repara-
tion, and then the expense of the journey has
been out of all proportion to the occasion. M. For-
toul, to remedy these inconveniences, proposes to
return to the system of employing local archi-
tects except iu extraordinary cases, but every
plan and estimate is to be submitted to a superior
committee of inspection, to bo appolieed annually by
the Emperor. The inspectors are to vi-it periodically,
either personally or by their agents' all the works
confided to their superintendence, and to make a pri-
vate report to the Minister of' Public Worship as to
the state of the buildings, the propriety of the archi-
tect's plans, and the regularity of the expence. They
will meet from time to time in committee under
the presidence of the Director-General of Public
Worship, and will make an annual report of the gene-
ral state of ecclesiastical buildings throughout the
country. A decree to carry out this arrangement
follows the report in the Moni!cur, and further di-
rect that the:standingeommittie on religious edifices
attached to the committee of public instruction and
worship, shall henceforth consist of three sections,
the section of architecture and sculpture, the section
of painted glass and religious ornaments, and the sec-
tion of organs and religious music. The three newly
created inspectors are M. Ll'..once Reynaut, an en-
gineer in chief, director of bridges and highways,
professor of architecture in the Polytechnic School,
&c, and MM. Vaudoyer and Viollet le Duc, govern-
vernment architects. Their salaries for this service
will be 6,000 fr. each.
Three more senators are created this morning:
General Aupick, French ambassador at Madrid ;
Lebrun, ex-peer of France and member of tho Insti-
tute, and Baron Thieullen, member of the Corps
Legislatif. General Aupick is exceedingly well
known. I have endeavoured to learn something
about the two others, but the only answer 1 have
obtained to my inquiries is, that they are ":nullites."
M. Lebrun is known,: however, as the author of the
tragedy of " Marie Stuart."
One-fourth of the legislative session is now over,
and the only public measure passed by the Corps
Legislative is a bill for sanctioning the payment of
5,0001 r. arrears of rent due by the Minister of Public
Instruction. During the very few days on which
they have held public sittings for some half hour or
so, they have done nothing but vote a few insignifi-
cant private bills. All this, while the .Voniteur has
been unusually fertile in decrees. And if anything
were wanting to hold up the people's representa-
tives in a more glaring light to the eyes of the coun-
try as a perfectly useless body, the fact of their now
for the first time receiving a salary of 2,500 fr. per
month would accomplish the object. It is
probable that one or two energetic speeches will pro-
test against the farce of the budget, but this will be
the whole work of the session. M. de Montalem-
bert, it is understood, will make one great speech, if
M. Billault will let him, but this is very doubtful.
It was fancied last year, that when the excitement
consequent upon the coup cleat had passed away,
and a regular governmeut should be established, the
Corps Legislatif would assert the prerogative theore-
tically belonging to them as constitutional guardians
of the public purse, and seriously examine the state
of the finances. There is, however, now no expecta-
tion of their making any such attempt as a body.
They know their impotence, and are resigned to it.
They sac mere puppets in the hands of the govern-
ment, and are utterly without interest inthe country.
Nobody cares to inquire whether they are sitting or
not. The only consequence of their throwing out
any important bill would be that they would be dis-
solved, and the government carried on without the
form of an appeal to them. To make amends for
their political insignificance, they gratify their
sense of importance by making a stand upon
various questions of etiquette. The other day they
made a really gallant demonstration of indepen-
dence by presenting themeelyes at the Tuileries in
pantaloons when breeches were ordered to be min,
they passed a sort of private vote of censure upon
ace of their body for appearing at a recent
levee in the uniform of a chamberlain to
the Emperor, rather than in that of a deputy. They
busy themselves more than ever about the prepare
Lions for the ball to be given to the Empress, and
dispute so hotly upon the subject, that M. de Moray
and several other stewards have resigned. It is now
I believe, settled, notwithstanding certain ultra-
religious objections, that the ball shall take
place on Easter Monday. Each member will
subscribe 700 fr. and, as there are but two seats
vacant in the house, composed of 261 member., a sum
total of 180,000 fr. will be realised. It has been
voted that the subscription money shall be stopped
out the first month's salary of members.
On the Bourse to-day the business transacted was
at very fluctuating rates. A rise of 15c. was finally
obtained in the prices of the Three per Cents., which
closed at 811. 15c. for the next settlement. The Four-
and-a-Half per Cents. on the contrary left off 10c.
lower, being last called 1041. 900., and Bank Stock
also sustained another heavy fall of 15E, leaving off at
2,750 for the account. Railway shares were for
the most part higher.
The latest prices received by telegraph to-day from
the other continental bourses were:—Amsterdam:
Metalliques (Five), 811•' Two and-a-Half Belgian,
53 ; ditto, Dutch, 65 ; Bank shares, 4'4; Coupons,
6 7-16. Antwerp: Four-and-a-Half per Cents., 98;;
Two-and-a-Half, 561; Metalliques, 85. Brussels:
Fives, 100: ' • Four-and-a-Half, 984; 'f wo-and-a-
Half, 56 3-16; Bank of Belgium, 91. Vienna:
Metalliques, Five per Cents., 944; New Loan, 106;
Lomb., 991; Bank shares, 4102; exchange on
London, 10.50.

•
PARIS, TUESDAY EVENING.
I mentioned some time since that several arrests
had been made in the department of the Mersalt. A
government journal, the Opinion du Midi, treats
these arrests as connected with a serious plot. It
says " that the authorities were warned that secret
societies were again at work. An accidental circum-
stance made known to them the extent and import-
ance of the plot which ha•i been denounced to
them. According to the information received, it
appears certain that the mot d'ordre came from Lon-
don, and that a general insurrection was to have
broken out at the same time in the south of
France, in Switzerland, and in Italy.
usual, Marseilles was the centre of the in-
surrectional committee for the southern de-
partments." It is, however, a hopeless task
for a common observer in France to attempt to dis-
tinguish between a genuine plot and one concocted
by the police. The famous plot to assassinate the
President of the *public at Marseilles, which did
such yeoman service in stimulating the movement a
favour of the empire, is altogether forgotten. Nu-
merous arrests were made, the question whether the
prisoners should be tried by the high court of justice