The Sun.
London, England, 1852-10-13 00:00:00

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LONDOLN, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1852.

We would not undervalue the services of her
MAJESTY'S Privy Council, not even of the eighteen
new Councillors from the " unworked diggings" of
Lord DERBY, recently added to the list. These latter
will doubles bring some virgin gold to her Ma-
awdrr's intellectual treasury, and if there should be
much dross or matrix mixed with the precious metal,
assuredly in these (153 the art of refining is pretty
well under! tood. We think, however, that her MA.-
JESTY'S Public Council, is become of quite equal value,
probably in the eyes of Monarchy itself, certainly in
those of the public and of her MAJESTY'S Cabinet,
with her Privy Couucil. It is etiquette indeed for
the Salons composing a Government of the day, and
the ex•Solons who lately composed one, to seem not to
know the discussions going oa in the daily and better
weekly papers. It would not be quite the thing
for my Lord JOHN Rossano, or my Lord Dertßr to
answer in form a leader in the Times or the Morning.
Post, much less to avow that such unauthorised ad-
vice had effected a Cabinet decision. But such argu-
ments are taken up and replied to, not only by the
HO4. Member for -, when refuting the Hon.
Member for -; but even by the " Noble Duke
on the right" answering the " Noble Lord on his
left." Some dozen of her MAJESTY'S public council
(although their names appeared not in the Cozzrt
Circular) did, moreover, assuredly accompanyßoyalty
to Balmoral itself, and aided greatly both the PEE_
mita and bis Royal Mistress in their deliberations.
Row perplexed would both have been without their
accustomed public advisers!
As to the ssge of Hughenden Manor, we are per-
fectly sure that be watches with anxious interest all
the leaders and letters which have lately occupied
public attention on the income-tax. Amply supplied
with information from the best " official sources,"
and competent himself to no mean difficulty, he yet
finds in the papers of the day contributions by writers
quite his equals on this subject; he finds facts and
thoughts, which his best otlicsa. ls ignore or overlook,
stated, developed, and argued on with power. He is
aware, too, that this is all done by her MAJESTY'S
public council. Its sittings are open to all concerned.
If he knows not what is debated and this
open decided in
open Cabinet, the public does, and a hundred M.P.'s
will soon inform him.
what, indeed, can any reasonable statesman do,
unites thoroughly acquainted with the Times ? Did
not the great Duke even make his greatest political
blunder through refusing to read aright the Times in
which he lived ? Without the Daily News how could
he hope to conduct the daily business of the empire ?
Even Lord PALMERSTON'S official information was
generally a day at least too late ; and the latter,
when it did arrive, found the answers all
ont and dried for transmission. Without
a Morning Chronicle and Advertiser, the routine of
Downing-street =it infallibly rock its inmates in
too protracted a slumber. The value of a Standard
is unquestioned amongst men of such tender moral
susceptibilities as politicians in office. What dese-
crations of antique, and almost forgotten, principles
rsTE-syspA -pp: Right they not be guilty of without a friendly moni-
. .-----woo-ree-re-tor to remind them of the sacredness of Vested
IO,5::- Lt,',.17, , Wrongs ! Drawing nearer to ourselves, no one will
tr- ~-.. , •, .-,:-.) ‘ LI. , ve ,
!t.. 1, riL,., 17'. &nth 5.c Oresgti Secretary
1 4;.:A.))4
II ought to ha well a:-
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N li s

THE SUN,

quaintei t with the whole Globe. What a figure has
even the t veteran WEBSTER just cue, through bis ig-
norance ,of Peruvian Islands; and we can assure
Lord lALMESBURY that a great many Englishmen
think be has much more need to shut himself
up tc study in his department, than has
Mr• -BENJAMIN DISRAELI. The last rays of the
Great Luminary, we are confident, cannot be too
much prized. A climate where, however cloudy and
dubious 'the morning, the Evening Sun is always seen,
enjoys a t least the most pleasing soothing light of
nature ; and every statesman knows that almost from
time itn memorial The Sun has, with his evening rays,
expressed for him intelligence for which he must
.)therwise have waited the long night through. But
a word about the light shed on everything by The
Sun, must be quite superfluous. Adverting to our
weekly coadjutors, too, it may well be feared that
without a Spectator some more deeds of special
darkness might escape publicity ; without an Econo-
mist we are quite sure they would get into far
worse scrapes with Messrs. COBDEN and BRIGHT, and
irritate Mr. Hymn perhaps almost fatally : and with-
out an Examiner, not only our statesmen, but our
judges of all sorts, our courts of justice, and even our
juries, would often be far more right in their own
eyes, and wrong in those of the public, than they
now are.

We of the Press have indeed been denominated the
Fourth Estate, and certainly no measure which an un •
questioned majority of our body has passed, has failed
ultimately to pass also the other three estates of the
realm; neither has any measure on which we have
put our veto, been able to escape a veto of the third
estate, whatever favour it may have had with the other
two. But probably the lesson bequeathed us by the
great man who has just left us, has disposed us to look
upon ourselves in a more courtly light. We wish to
remember that we are in her MAJESTY'S service. We
think her MAJESTY will own, that for loyalty to
her person, and for fidelity in giving advice, open at
the same time to herself, her Ministries, her Lords
and faithful Commons, and all her subjects too, she
has not a better servant in the realm than her Ma-
jesty's public council. Sometimes, indeed, when she
is supposed to be out of hearing, we quarrel rather
rudely among ourselves (not more so, however, than
the literati did in learned Latin half a century ago) ;
and sometimes we lash pretty severely some of her
MAJESTY'S paid servants ; she may be assured, how-
ever, that this is done purely for her own sake. She
would otherwise find them utterly unmanageable.
Her MAJESTY may have thought that, because so
many Ministries of late have taken office, as they
have avowed in the Houses of Parliament, out of
genuine pity for her MAJESTY'S forlorn condition,
when all her servants have been seized with a resig-
nation fit—because one Ministry pitied her in a
petticoat quarrel, and another in a militia fix, and the
like—that they cherish for here special reverence and
kindness. We beg to assure her that, however loyal
and generous the self-denying accepters of her offices
and her thousands a year, may be, we, who
would at her public command be happy to
render her any service gratuitously, we who
do labour' to perform her such invaluable
service, requited only by our mens conscia recti,—
we are not only her cheapest, but her most service-
able servants. We make their service) if that be
possible) worth the money; and we beg to make one
humble request to her MAJESTY, to ask one acknow-
ledgment of our services, that on the only occasion
on which she addresses her subjects—when rank and
nobility, male and female fashion and elegance are
crowding around her, when her Lords and faithful
Commons are on tiptoe to catch a sight
of the something which has been so long looming
in the future—that she would then, solemnly
from the throne, with the voice which interests 30
millions of her subjects, declare her obligations, and
the obligations of all her servants, to her MAJESTY'S
public council.
A specimen of one of its most important services is
now before our eyes. Letters and articles on the
income-tax. Mr. BABBAGE and the economists, en-
deavour to bewilder Mr. HUME and the actuaries.
Tax each kind of income alike, says Mr. BABBAGE.
Fax them according to their varied values, say the
actuaries. Tax 1001. a year over the counter, and
1001. a year from land alike, says Mr. B. Capitalize
them, say the actuaries, and the one pound will
sell for 20 years' purchase, or 2,0001, the
other at most for not more than six or seven, that
is, at most 7001. Ought the two to pay alike ? Yes, says
Mr. 8., the shopkeeper's 1001., lasts, say, ten years,
and pays ten taxes. The landowner's lasts an endless
number of years, and pays perpetually. To this it is
answered, there is an evident fallacy somewhere.
You may compel the one man to pay the same annual
tax as the other, but no sophistry can convince him
that it is just for him to do it. The landowner in-
wardly boasts while he says it's all fair; the shop-
keeper is inwardly sure of being wronged, though a
senior wrangler may silence him, and a House of
landlords make him pay. But in our public council
all parties are pitted fairly against each
other, and an actuary shows conclusively
Owe his letter in The Sun of Saturday)
that one fallacy at least is this—reckoning the two
incomes, as if they were both entirely incomes.
Whereas the 1001. a year from land, or Consols, is
purely income, leaving the capital quite untouched ;
while the income from any temporary source is com-
posed of income and capital too, inasmuch as it con-
sumes the capital itself in a certain ratio every year—
consumes it so completely that the capital vanishes
when the income ceases to the individual. We will
not enlarge, but leave Mr. DISRAELI, and each tax-
payer under schedules D and E to ponder this valu-
able suggestion. To us it seems pretty clear that
where the actuaries, men whose business lies, and
whose lives are spent in, the study of the values of
every kind of income, are unanimous on a question
like this, no honest legislators could hesitate to
prefer their guidance to that of theoretical
mathematicians, economists, none of the latter, more-
over, agreeing among themselves. Nay, it were even
conceivable that both may prove to be right. The
mathematician may determine almost mechanically
by his formulm the work which a steam-engine and
its machinery will do, but we should take final counsel
with the head mechanic in the factory when one en-
gine was to be made. He could tell us what it would
do, allowing for friction and other things, of which
the theorist has but vague conceptions. And possibly
the BABBAGES may be mathematically right, but
practically and socially wrong. The market value,
the thing known to the actuary, is without question
the only test of value for actual life. " A thing is
worth what it will sell for." If not taxed according
to what it will sell for, it is, therefore, not taxed ac-
cording to its worth.
Another circumstance, too, is pretty much over-
looked. We mean the increased trouble given to the
State by incomes from land and most fixed sources,
Nothing is more exposed than land and its produce
—nothing more the creature of law than the public
funds ; and if trade and business are dependent upon
public order, so is the cultivation of land. If the
tradesman's person needs the protection of the State,
so does that of the landlord ; but that which is
already become property is open to the direct attacks
of every kind of fraud or violence. Not only
does the man who derives his income from realized
property enjoy a more valuable income, he also en..
joys one which needs more protection from the State.
H e who has a hundred a year, and two thousand
pounds whenever he likes to sell it, ought to pay
more than be who has a hundred a year, with 5001,
if he sells it now, and nothing to sell at all in
five years hence. The former also ought to pay
more, because he makes annually more work for the
State, in insuring his property against fraud and
violence.

Bethlehemsurer,uiatls. governors,now
u p 0 tnr, e
itsa-
ron matron,
and
Hospitalm 0
medical
trial. Fifteen months ago, on complaints made be-
fore them, as to mismanagement of that lunatic asy-
ralroaffithceerri)t,s
lum, the metropolitan Commissioners in Lunacy com-
menced an investigation, which has been reported at
length in some of the public journals, has ex-
cited much indignant comment, and has indis-
putably proved that the greatest abuses have
been allowed, by those who were paid to
prevent it, to exist in the management of
the unhappy people confined and coerced there. i
The health and the feelings of the unfortunates in
Bethlehem appear to have been much uncared for. In
tilt Last of thi3 metropolis what ought to have been a

public blessinghas been converted into a public nuisance.
The treatment of the lunatics has been a hundred times
worse, in its systematic cruelty, than that of the worst
criminals. In short, what has transpired makes us blush
for humanity, makes us lament that, in the middls of
the nineteenth century, lunatics should be treated as
badly as they were when the philanthropy of HOWARD
gave the first impetus to the amelioration of the disci-
pline in prisons and lunatic asylums. It is impossible
that this state of things can be allowed to continue.
It should have been prevented and corrected by those
high and mighty personages—literally the master and
the mistress of Bethlehem—namely JOHN EDWARD
JOHNSTON, treasurer of the United Hospitals of
Bridewell and Bethlehem, and HENRIETTA HUNTER,
the matron. There is the case of Miss HANNA II
HYSON. She was admitted as a patient to Bethlehem.
Her medical attendant had been seeing her for three
weeks before. She was thin, but not greatly ema-
ciated ; her body was free from wounds, her bodily
health had been "of average goodness" for two years
before, and her disease was hysterical mania. She
was " temporarily lunatic" when he signed the usua
paper for her admission, and had refused her food for
two or three days before she left home. She en-
tered Bethlehem on April 4, 1851, and Mr. CHARLES
TAYLOR (her medical attendant) saw her again after
she had come out, at the end of a fortnight's con-
finement.

" She struck him as being very much altered in appear-
ance, and very emaciated ; she was very much thinner
than when she went in, and her bones were almost
projecting through her skin.' Her mind was much less
wandering ; but her countenance was very anxious
and dejected, and she looked miserable altogether. She
had no paralysis, but squinted a little, which was
not the case before she went in. She was labouring
under diarrhoea. He did not examine her person, and
could not say whether there were any wounds. He saw
her face, but forgets whether he noticed the marks that
evening or not. Believes it was that evening or the next
morning her mother said, 'Oh I Mr. Taylor, my girl
has been terribly ill-treated, and I wish you to look at
her,' and he then particularly examined her body all
over, and had a written account of it somewhere. There
was, to the best of his memory, a place' or mark on
the upper lip, and one on her cheek also. The wit-
ness then, in answer to a variety of questions, detailed
the various marks and wounds upon the patient's body,
on the ankles, knees, hips, elbows, &c. She died on the
morning of the 22d, four days after leaving the hospital,
and we' examined the body. By ' we' he meant Dr.
Wood, the resident apothecary of the hospital, his part-
ner, Mr. Crisp, and himself. The immediate cause of
her sinking was diarrhoea and want of food. She did
not refuse her food after she came out. Witness said to
her,' Hannah, now you must take what I tell yew,' she
said she would, and she did. When he said she died
from want of food, he meant the combined effects of
taking very little nourishment with constant
diarrhoea completely exhausted her. She was labouring
under diarrheas when she came out, and died of that
and exhaustion. He particularly noticed that she Lad
no paralysis. When he and his partner were about to
commence the post mortem examination the morning
after her death, Dr. Wood came in. The body was very
emaciated, and there were the wounds already described,
but he really could not say what they arose from. The
places' on her ankles caused him to suspect whether
they had not been bound. He thought she bad been
bound. It appeared to him as if there had been some
fetter or bandage, or ligature, but others might give a
different opinion. The other wounds could not have
been from ligatures—they must have been caused by
some violence or external applications. He did not sup-
pose they had been caused by picking or scratching. His
impression was that she had been ill-treated, but be
could not say in what way the wounds had been pro-
duced. It might have been by tumbling about, or by
being struck or bruised in some way. She might have
been rubbed on the fl )or, but he was decidedly of opinion
that they were not self-inflicted or body sores."
Further, "he was now ready to admit, after all
that he had heard and all that had passed, that .hiss
HYSON had been harshly used in the hospital. The
night before she died he went to the hospital to try
to see Dr. WOOD, to obtain more information about
the wounds and marks on her person. Dr. WOOD
was not within, and he saw the matron, who told him
that she believed it was from the cut ends of the
straw, but she had not heard of them before. She
said she had been told of them since, but was not
aware of them previously. She was not aware when
Miss HYSON left the hospital that she had any wounds
upon her person." Of course not. It will presently
appear how little trouble Mrs. HUNTER (the matron)
gave herself about the patients.

There was the case of Miss WHETTINGHAM, a
delicate girl, who " had no marks or bruises on her
body when she went in," on January 9, 1851. After
her admission her mother and some of her friends
went to see her, and it was two months before this
was allowed, and then " she appeared to be in great
distress, and cried bitterly. The mother entreated
her not to do so, and she said, 'I cannot help it; I
cry all night.' She said 'Look at my fingers' (one of
them was very much swollen); and when witness in-
quired the cause she said it was one of the nurses, and
she also showed her bruises all down the side ; but wit-
ness had not the opportunity of seeing any more.
When asked why she did not complain to Dr. Woof),
the poor creature said it is of no use complaining to
Dr. WOOD. While they were talking Dr. WOOD
happened to come up, and the mother showed the
bruised hand and the marks on her side, and he
showed the swelled hand to one of the nurses, and
asked, How is this ?' The nurse said, Oh, that is
an old affair.' The joint of the finger was very much
swollen. The name of the nurse was ELIZABETH.
Her daughter told her that it was not that nurse who
had given her the bruises, bat that ELIZABETH used to
beat her with the keys. The bruises were not caused
by her tumbling about, but she at one time had the
misfortune to fall and hurt her hip, and the least push
or blow given her by the nurses would throw her
down. Her daughter slept for three months in the
basement story—she said she never slept on anything
but the bare straw, and no night clothes whatever.
Witness had no opportunity of examining her bed
end bedding, as she was not admitted into the place
where her daughter slept. Every time the poor girl
saw her mother she complained of ill-treatment, and
the mother and friends unfortunately thought it was
one of her delusions. On the second visit she com-
plained that, being awake all night, she overslept her-
self, and the nurse came and dragged her by the hair of
her head to make her get up, and shook her so violently
that it brought on a violent ft of coughing. On an-
other occasion her face appeared very much swollen
with constantly crying. The patient was discharged
cured on the 7th of June. Before she left she said she
would certainly make a complaint when she went
before the committee, but Mrs. HUNTER begged she
would not, as ELIZABETH, the nurse, had a mother to
keep, and the poor girl, being a feeling young per-
son, agreed not to make the complaint. The matron
stood beside the patient when she went before the
committee, so that she could not say anything. She
had since gone to her relatives in Somersetshire, in
the hope that change of air might further benefit her.
Among other things which she told her mother after
she left the hospital was that on one occasion she was
going to take a bath—whether she did not do it pro-
perly or not could not be ascertained, but no less than
three of the nurses forced her in again, and ill-treated
her very much, and she begged never to be put in a
bath again. She also complained of their calling her
most shocking names, and of very bad language being
used towards her."

Miss MORLEY'S case resembled the two others.
She came out of Bethlehem covered with 801•55 and
abrasions, the consequence of neglect, and was three
weeks before she recovered from these injuries. Dr.
NESBITT, in his letter to the Commissioners, said
sores and abrasions were evidently the consequences
of neglect—that the patient uniformly complained of
the treatment to which she was subjected in Beth-
lehem Hospital—that she had nothing but straw to lie
on, and there was no attempt to interpose any kind
of protection between her body and 'the straw—that it
hart her much, and she had no clothes even to cover
her. She described her whole treatment to be harsh
and coarse, and the recollection of it to inspire her with
horror—that the nurses were in the habit of giving
her nicknames derived either from the colour of her
skin or from her habits, and that they treated her
like a brute. He adds that the patient is remark able
for truthfulness:"

Some of the evidence went to show that the pa-
tients in the basement story (a place of punishment,
it would seem,) used to be turned out every morning
into a room floored with stone flags, there washed
with mops and cold water, and the lunatics' clothes
put on them without their bodies being dried after
this mopping !

Mr. JoHN EDWARD JOIINSON, treasurer for the
last three years (and virtually the manager of Beth-
lehem► Hospital), gave evidence meant to be exculpa-
tory. He stated that he hid assigned to the matron
the "moral treatment" of the patients, and by this ho
meant " proper exercise and employment;"—that h©
hiraws went mud the hoaptal about once u fort.