The Sun.
London, England, 1864-01-28 00:00:00

THE SUN , LONDON, THURSDAY EVENING, JANUARY 28, 1864.

Smyna. A strong and heartfelt desire is continually
manifested by the government to eacourage the
growth of eotton in every practicable way. Grants
of seed were made for Pernambuco, where it is
greatly in demand, and where it is said every pound
will be immediately planted, for Shanghao and
other places.

tion of a city and country life. Among all classes of men in
the city, at 20 and upwards, the mean age at death is scarcly
52 years, Whereas in all England it is nearly 56. Among
women at 20 and upwards the mean age at death in the city is
little less than 50, though in the rest of England it is a little
more. It would appear from this that there is a general
loss of about four years in the lifetime of every man in the
city, but the different classes show remarkable variations in
this respect. The merchant and shopkeeper, for instance,
says Dr. Letheby, die at the rr.ean age of 57, the clerk at 54;
the tailor, shoemaker, labourer, carpenter, and porter at
from 51 to 52; the cabman, ostler, and carman at 50; the
costermonger and hawker at 49, and the printer at 45. The
wives in these classes in every instance have a much longer
duration of life than their husbands, for it commonly reaches
to about 56 years, and therefore it is presumed that the
circumstances which shorten existence in the city are not so
much in the homes of the people as in their occupations and
habits. With respect to the causes of death daring the year,
of every 1,000 deaths, among all classes in the city, there
were 164 from pneumonia and bronchitis, 133 from phthisis,
76 from tabes and scrofula, 25 from hydrocephalus, 55 from
convulsions and teething, 27 from diarrhoea, 71 from scarlet
fever, 39 from continued fever, 15 from smallpox, 24 from
measles, 9 from erysipelas, 50 from whooping cough, croup,
and diphtheria, 62 from violence, privation, and poison, and
270 from causes of a chronic nature. Altogether, there
were 214 deaths in every 1,000 from tubercular diseases,
161 from inflammatory affections of the lungs, and 235 from
diseases of a zymotic character. The average number for
the last ten years are 212 from the first-named maladies,
164 from the second, and 236 from the third. In all Eng-
land the proportions are 160, 149, and 194 respectively.
Each of these groups of diseases is thus seen to be more
prevalent and fatal in the city than elsewhere.

were five sovereigns in the drawer, which ho claimed as
his property. On searching him I found a key which
fitted the box. I subsequently found at the Waterloo
Station, £5 13s 10d in money, as well as a watch and chain.
I also found a letter received from Mr. Kennedy, secretary
of the Bombay, Baroda, and Central Indian Railway, 10,
Liverpool-street, New Broad-street, London. It was dated
Nov. 7, and stated, in answer to an application for an ap-
pointment on that railway made by the prisoner, that there
was at that time no vacancy, but that his name should be
entered upon the company's book. I also found the second
letter in Mrs. Harris's handwriting, which has been real.
I went to London, and at the Waterloo station found a box
directed to Mrs. Wilson, &c. The key found upon the
prisoner fitted the lock. In the box were £33 in gold, and
also a slip of paper, on which the following was written :
" Dearest,—l have taken £5 back for other opportunities.
The rest is in the box, as Charley (meaning the prosecutor)
is in a way, and it may be found out if any one should see
I had so much money. Keep away from any of your
friends. He has sent to Chapple-street (the residence of
Mrs. Harris's grandfather) to day."
Mr. Samuel Davis, superintendent of the Salisbury sta-
tion of the South-Western Railway, knew the prisoner's
handwriting, and believed that on the scrap of paper found
in the box at the Waterloo station was the prisoner's, but
he could not swear positively to it.
The Bench having heard Mr. Wilson for the prisoner,
expressed their opinion that there was sufficient evidence to
warrant them In sending the case for trial.
Mrs. Betsy Harris was then called by Mr. Wilson, and
said she had determined to leave her husband, not because
he ill-used her, but because he made use of bad language
She knew the prisoner in consequence of his visiting her
husband's house. On Wednesday last she took some
clothes and money to the railway station, and asked the
prisoner to forward them to Waterloo station, and handed
him £5 to pay expenses. But there was no engagement
between her and the prisoner to meet each other in India,
though she proposed to go out herself, and applied at a
house in Birchin-lana to take part of a berth, but she was
asked £6O, which she thought too much, Her letters to
the prisoner were certainly very unguarded in expression.
Cross-examined--I do not generally address gentlemen
as " Here I am, my darling." (Laughter.) I made an ex-
ception in this case, because the prisoner was my tool. I
gave Stainton £5 to purchase the box, and to meet any ex-
penses to which he might be subject In assisting me in
escaping from my husband. I took £54 from my husband
altogether. I intended to earn my own living in India. I
have mentioned about going to India to the prisoner. He
told me that he had applied for a situation in India. I did
not make any arrangements for Stainton to see me in Lon-
don. I spoke to the prisoner about leaving Salisbury the
first time on the Wednesday morning. I left on Wednes-
day at a quarter-past two. The children I left in the care
of their father.
The Bench then committed the prisoner for.trial at the
ensuing spring assizes, to be held at Devizes, but they con-
sented to take bail, himself in £2OO and two sureties of £lOO
each.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIM EL—After a silence of two months Mr
Bright has at length accepted the challenge which
during all his long and angry correspondence with
this journal Mr. Cobden most carefully eluded—the
challenge to state what those measures were, not to
be passed in our present Parliament, but which
would be passed under a Parliament democratically
elected, the effect of which would be to abolish feu-
dalism and redeem the agricultural labourer from
his present poverty and serfdom. We denied that
any such measure could be pointed out, or that
there was the slightest reason to suppose that the
present Parliament would be ill disposed to enter-
tain it if it could be discovered. Mr. Bright has
undertaken to do what his champion, Mr. Cobden,
did net venture to attempt, and we beg especial
attention to the manner in which he has acquitted
himself of his undertaking. We dismiss as irrele-
vant, distasteful to ourselves, and wearisome to the
public, the personalities with which these cham-
pions of freedom have thought fit to encumber a
question in itself neither unimportant nor uninte-
resting. It matters very little to any one except
himself in what society the Editor of this journal
moves, or where he spends the hours of relaxation
which Mr. Bright devotes to the smoking-room of
the House of Commons or the billiard-room of the
Reform Club. It will be time enough to accuse any
gentleman interested in the Times of seeking for a
peerage when it can be shown that he has ever
'striven to push himself into a position beyond that
which naturally belongs to him, when he can be
shown to have sought any favour at the hands of
the Government, or when the public is ready to
assume, as Mr. Bright does, that a connection with
the Press is a virtual disqualification for any office
or any honour for which a person may otherwise
be fit. To appeal for proof of groundless asser-
tions to " the gossip of the Clubs" is a shabby
artifice, and to say that an intelligence which
comas into hostile collision with his own is
" godless intellect and practical atheism" is
to employ a weapon which in these days the
most grovelling fanatics scarcely condescend to
use. The existence of a Deity rests on evidence
differing both in kind and in degree from that dis-
torted political economy for which Mr. Bright seems
to claim something like a special revelation to him-
self, and impossible as it may seem to Mr. Bright,
people can be found who believe in God but have
not the slightest belief in him. The Times is public
property, its essence is notoriety, it will be judged
by its advised utterances as daily put forth, and not
by the gossip of clubs or second-hand tattle ,about
political or fashionable society. What, then, is that
law which Mr. Bright thinks could be carried in a
more democratic Parliament, and cannot be carried
in the present Parliament, which would redeem the
agricultural labourer from his present poverty and
degradation ? Of course by making the change
depend on a change in the electoral franchise Mr.
Bright excludes the notion of force or outrage, and
implies that everything would be done by consti-
tuted authority. It is ridiculous, therefore, to charge
us with inconsistency for denying that which we
never asserted. We have said, and we say it again,
that we know of no law which could distribute the
lands of the rich among the poor which did not
make the alienation compulsory and the distribu-
tion gratuitous ; the alienation compulsory because
the rich will not voluntarily part with their land,
, the distribution gratuitous because the poor
Pita with which to buy it. We gave Mr.
have no n,.,_
-eh
Bright credit_tho: eh it seems we ought not to have
s. what he said. We did
done so—for really lean.- was capable of re-
not at that time believe th ~
er he Ft million and
presenting the poverty and misery D.
an act
.
a half of his fellow•subjects as removable to; •
of legislation, without having formed to himself
least idea of any measure adequate to effect such a
result. Mr. Bright repudiates as inadequate the
proposal for a Union settlement, and for abolishing
criminal liabilities for breaches of contract to labour.
So, of course, they are. Here, then, is his remedy.
He proposes that iti case of intestacy landed pro-
perty should go among ti next of kin instead
of to the eldest son, and he 1-,zoposes that no
devise of land shall be made to anj unborn
person. That is all, absolutely all, and these 1z:0--
visions, Mr. Bright has the face to tell ns, would
remedy the present poverty, serfdom, and degrada-
tion of the agricultural labourer and enable him to
become a farmer. Surely never did such enormous
promises end in a conclusion so contemptible ? It
is just as if Mr. Bright were to undertake to make a
ploughman live as well as an alderman by taking
off the duties on claret and champagne. We will
not discuss the policy of these measures. They may
be good or bad as matters of Law Reform, but we
will submit to Mr. Bright a few questions which we
trust he will answer in his speech this evening :
If these measures would have this immense effect
in improving the condition of the agricultural la-
bourer, why has Mr. Bright never proposed them
before P Why has he not given the present Parlia-
ment the opportunity of pronouncing an opinion
upon them ? Why has he not communicated to the
world the secret of their connection with the wel-
fare of the poor, which is known, apparently, to
himself alone ? and why, in the name of truth and
justice, does he revile the present Parliament for
not passing measures which have never been bnought
before it, and call upon us to make a political revo-
lution in order to obtain a Legislature to do that
which our present Legislature has not refused to
do ? Mr, Bright anticipates that ho will be told
his measures would be inoperative, because few men
die without a will. This only shows how much
superficiality may be concealed under how much
arrogance. Mr. Bright, apparently, does not know
i
that the great mass of landed property n England
does not pass by will at all, but by settlements exe
cuted on the mctrriage of the eldest son. W. e would
next like to ask how the abolition of devises to un-
born persons, or the devolution of land to the next
of kin under a contingency which very seldom takes
place, will help the poor to the acquisition of land,
either as tenants or freeholders. Will these laws
make the proprietor willing to cut up his estate
into small holdings ? Will they give the labourer,
such as Mr. Bright describes him, the power to pur-
chase ? W ill they give him the means of affording
that most expensive of all luxuries in this country,
an investment in land? Will they give him capital
to buy stock ? Will they give him skill and know-
ledge to make the best of his property? Will they
enable him to compete with a large capitalist ? Will
they enable him to resist the temptation to cell toa
rich neighbour at a price which will double his
income, and leave him free to earn wages beside§ ?
And, above all, will any change in the law of suc-
cession to landed property give the poor man the
industry, the temperance, the self-denial, and eco-
nomy to which alone the poor can look for advance-
ment in life? Will any law put England, where
land Is the most highly-prized of all possessions, on
a level with America or Australia, where it is a