The Express.
London, England, 1858-09-28 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, TUESDAY EV

the languid or critical Comm with which they com-
monly go home alter witncooieg the fled ripoceento-
Lkn chi new play. _

. -
Many symptoms combine to indicate that the'
Tamen Government grows weary of unpopularity,
sad that it would fain relax the reins of re-
' sationary rale. It ease time since BALDABBIIOII7,
the principal Minister of the GRAND DUX', incurred
the denunciation of the Ultra-Montanistv among the
clergy, by his successful rcsistince to their schemes
of saerceehment over the temporal power. Gradually,
eachossiesso, is a variety of imialltmatters, have since
then been silently made; and the rigour of the oen-
morehip over new pablioations has been greatly miti-
gated. A volume of GITICCILILDINes political writ-
ings, not generally obtainable in Italy, has ben
lately published at Fianna., the whole besting and
tendency of which is eminently anti-despotic
and anti-Austrian. The remembrance of what
occurred in 1848 la too fresh in men's
minds to render the growth of political
oontidenee an easy matter. After swearing to main-
tain the constitation under all eireumstaness, and
to aid the other States of Italy in the expulsion of
the stranger, the GRAND Dun notoriously became
an accomplice with the Austrians in the overthrow
of the representative system and the occupation of
his capital by German troops. Neverthelms, as we
have said, there are again symptoms of revival of
popular hope, if not pledgee of royal repentance.
The example of Piedmont is irresistible. In 1848
Constitutionalism in Italy wu an untried them f—
la 1858 it is an accomplished and palpable fact.
Ten years ago nobody doubted that it would secure
practical liberty ; but many people honestly doubted
that it could resist foreign absolutism, or maintain
domestic order. In Piedmont it his now for ten
years dons both. There is no longer m;sgiving or
dispute upon the subject. Evil/ man of sense in
Tuscany longs to me the example followed there
which has been so instructively set by the Govern-
ment of Sardinia; and the most timid of Grand
Dual councillors begin to feel that the stability and
security they are so anxious to preserve might, after
all, be more effectually maintained by being just end
fearing not.

A emit was reported in our impressiou of Saturday
last which, in the interests of the public security, it
is utterly impossible to pew over. It was an inquest
on the body of a highly respectable woman, Mr..
I MALE AXE Moons, the wife of Mr. Lawts
Moons, the proprietor of the Jewellers' Arms, in
St. Jrwee's-walk, Clarkenwell. The poor woman
had died of apoplexy at one o'clock in the afternoon
of Wednesday last, at the Royal Free Hospital,
Gray's-inn-road, under the following deplorable
cireemstancas:

The deceived, who wee described is a most
exemplary and affectionate wife and a per-
son of extremely sober and regular habits, had
attended service at St. James's Church on the
Tuesday evening, and returned horns in excellent
health and spi-its. Shortly after her return from
church she had proposed to her husband to join her in
• walk. From some cause or other he we prevented
going out with her, and she left the house alone.
He supposed, as the fact was, that she had gone
to a neighbour with wham she was intimate.
and it was not till the night wore on to 12 o'clock
that he became aunty and went in search of her.
On making inquiries he learnt from a policeman
that in the course of the evening • woman
bad been picked up in • partially insensible state in

Wilmingtos-equare, and taken to the Clerkenwell
police-station. The husband went at ones to the
station, and, from inquiries made there, soon became
convinced that the person so dealt with wee his
missing wife, who was then in a cell in the station,
when she had been locked up on the charge of being
drunk and incapable of taking are of herself. Mr.
MOODIN represented to the Inspector in the etrongewt
terms that his wife was a person of extremely sober
habits, and that the charge of her being insensible
from drink could not possibly be correct. His re-
pneentatians were received with indifference or in-
credulity. He begged earnestly to be permitted to
see his wife. His urgent request wu peremptorily
refined. He then implored the Inspector to be
allowed to call in his own medical man. This
petition wu also rejected, and the poor woman was
kept in the cell till 4 o'clock in the morning, when
she was removed, still in a state of insensibility, to
the Royal Free Hospital. The husband followed her
there. The dying wife just recovered sufficient
0011/OiOOlllllOlS to recognise him, muttering faintly the
words "My htuiband." Bhe never rallied, and expired
lathe hospital at one o'clock in the afternoon. A post
insweites examination disclosed the canes of death—

axtravaiation of blood on the brain, the effects of
natural apoplexy.
Further inquiry before the Coroner elicited the
circumstances under which the poor woman had
become en inmate of the Clerken well police-station.
The friend whom she had been visiting on the Tues-
day evening had jest parted with her—abe being
then is a perfect state of sobriety sod apparent
health--when she wee observed by the bystanders,
in passing through Wilmington-square, suddenly to
fall from the pavement into the roadway. This
was shortly before 10 o'clock. She woe picked up,
and placed on a door-step, when the attention of the
pollee was called to the case. 47 0 came up to her,
and asked her where she lived. She wee sufficiently
sensible to give her true addrees-10, St. Jamie's-
walk—which was scarcely a stone's throw from the
spot where she was found. 47 0 admitted that in
ewes, where the addreas was known the friends were
generally sent to. In the ease of this poor woman
nothing of the kind was done, and the husband for
more than two hours afterwards was left utterly
ignorant of her fate, which at last he only ascertained
by his own inquiries. The Police Inspector who entered
the charge on the sheet as aces of incapable dna-
keauess, alleged in his own defense that he relied
in two medical men to seethe deceased, both of whom
easearred in the opinion that the cue was one of
helpless intoxication. The two persons whose testi-
mony was thus cited were not examined as wit-
nesses at the inquest, and it is impossible, therefore,
to ascertain what degree of attention, if any, they
paid to the case, or what trouble they took in
arriving at a judgment which the event has shown
to be so utterly erroneous. With regard to the refusal
to allow the husband to see his wife, the
Inspector had nothing to allege, except a general
rule not to permit prisoners to see their friends. In
the conned his ramming up the Coroner is reported
to have expressed an opinion that even early medical
aid could not have eared the life of the deemed. Any
considered opinion on a medial point earning from
Mr. WARLST is entitled to due respect; but here,
again, it is obvious to remark that it would be more
satisfactory had the scientific grounds for this
opinion been elicited from the medical authorities of
the hospital. The prima facie medallion is, that
is way ogee of apoplexy, the chanose of saving
life depend, more than in almost any other form of
&sass, upon the prompt and energetic administra-
tion of proper remedies. It will probably require
something more then the official opinion of Mr.
WARLEY to satisfy the public that keeping this poor
aresture in a cell for six long hours after the attack
bed first seized her, without any attempt at apply-

tug any curtails; process whatever, had not some-
thing at least to da with the rapidly fatal termina-
tion Ober sufferings.
Bet be thlw as it may, what an be more unen-
durable than the exclusion of a husband nada. such

circumstances from the presenoe of hie dying wife
by the omit-iron pedantry of a foolish role, worked
by ignorant officials P This poor woman—this ex-
cellent and irreproachable wife—lived fourteen hours
altogether after she was so suddenly struck down
by the visitation of GOD. Of theme fourteen
hours, six were passed under look and key in a pri-
son all, all access being rigorously denied to her
husband and her own medical attendant.

This will never do. It may be urged that
the 0408 is an exceptional ale; bat the
answer is that it may be the ems of any
one of us to-morrow. Sodden attacks of this kind
are by no means of such nnfrequent occurrence. Is
it to be contended that every unfortunate fellow-
creature who may fall in the public streets under the
stroke of epilepsy, or apoplexy, or heart disease, is
at once to become the victim of the stretcher and
the cell; to be charged as drank and incapable by
some coarse and blundering guardian of the peace;
to be entered accordingly in the police-sheet; to be
shut up all night, inexorably debarred from friends
or medicalaid, and to be turned out next morning inti
a hospital to die? Ttat such a case should only
once have happened is quite enough to entitle
the public to insist on the relaxation of a rule which
has led to results so deplorable. But we do not
believe that this kind of thing has only happened
ones, and we are quite sure that till the whole
I system of cellular restraint by the police is put on
another footing and subjected to a more rational set
of rules—there is no sort of security against its hap
pining again and again. We are no friende to the
Mate. Liquor Law as it exists on the other side of
the Atlantic, but we have a still stronger objection
to the Mayne Liquor Law as now administered
by the polies of the Metropolis--e law under
which any Inspector may shut up in a cell for
a whole night, without access to friend or medical
attendant, any human creature afflicted in the public
streets with temporary insensibility, on the life and
death chance that such insensibility may turn out to
be the effect of drunkenness and not of disease. The
Coroner and Jury hit the common-sense view of the
matter, when they suggested that the rule excluding
friends and medical attendants should be different in
oases of alleged drunkenness from that which prevails
in criminal cams. It is for the Commissioners of the
Police to use to it that these suggestions are
attended to without Ices of time. Death
by cellular treatment, as the penalty of insensi-
bility superindeocel by disease, is not the sort of
thing that Englishmen will be disposed to stand,
even as an occasional and untoward *vest. The
system that renders it possible under any circum-
stances is a bad system, and must be forthwith
altered.