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

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wilumula Ults

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LONDON, 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 doubtless bring some virgin gold to her MA-
JaiTy's intellectual treasury, and if there should be
much dross or matrix mixed with the precious metal,
assuredly in these days the art of refining is pretty
well understood. 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 bar Privy Council. It is etiquette indeed for
the Solons composing a Government of the day, and
the ex•Solons who lately composed one, to seem not to
know the discussions going on in the daily and better
weekly papers. It would not be quite the thing
for my Lord JoRN RUSSELL, or my Lord DERBY to
answer in form a leader in the Times or the Morning
post, much less to avow that such unauthorised ad-
vice bad effected a Cabinet decision. But such argu-
ments are taken up and replied to, not only by the
How Member for —, when refuting the Hon.
liamber for —;
but even by the " Noble Duke
on the ripe answering the " Noble Lord on his
left." Some dozen of her MAJESTY'S public council
(although their names appeared not in the Court
Circular) did, moreover, assuredly accompany Royalty
to Balmoral itself, and aided greatly both the PRE..
MIES and him Royal Mistress in their deliberations.
How perplexed would both have been without their
accustomed public advisers!

As to the sage of Hughenden Manor, we are per-
fectly sure that he 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 i
quite his equals on this subject ; he finds facts and
thoughts, which his best officials ignore or overlook,
stated, developed, and argued on with power. He is
aware, too, that this is all done by her MAJESTY'S
pwehe council. Its sittings are open to all concerned.
If he knows not what is debated and decided in this
open Cabinet, the public does, and a hundred M.P.'s
will soon inform him.
what, indeed, can any reasonable statesman do,
acquainted with the Times? Did
unless thoroughly
not She great Duke even mske 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 PALMBRITOY'S official information was
generally a day at least too late ; and the latter,
when it did arrive, found the answers all
cut and dried for transmission. Without
a Morning Chronicle and Advertiser, the routine of
Dovvniug•mtn,tt must infallibly rock its inmates in
ton protracted a slumber. The value of a Standard

is unquestioned amongst men of such tender moral
susceptibilities as politicidna in ofl:ce. What dese-
crations of antique, and
almost forgotten, principles
might they not be guilty
of without a friendly moni-

for to remind them of the sacredness of Vested
Wrongs ! Drawing nearer to ourselves, no one will
deVith4 a Foreign Secretary ought to be well ac-
oYSI

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 bad 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 unmanegeable.
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
pstticoat quarrel, and another in a militia fix, and the
like—that they cherish for hera 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 hr 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 ere
crowding around her, when her Lords and faithful
Commons are on tiptoe to catch a sight
of th© 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.
rax 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,
is, at most 700/. Ought the two to pay alike ? Yes, say s
Mr. 8., the shopkeeper's ICO/., 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
(see 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 untouchea ;
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. DISBAELI, 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 formulae 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. Be 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.
He who has a hundred a year, and two thousand
pounds whenever he likes to sell it, ought to pay
more than he who has a hundred a year, with 500/.,
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.

Bethlehem Hospital (or rather its governors, trea-
surer, matron, and medical ocer), is now upon its
trial. Fifteen months ago, on complaints made be-
fore them, as to mismanagement of that lunatic asy-
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 p€ople confined and coerced there.
The healai and the feelings cf the unfortunates in
Bethlehem appear to have been much uncared for. In
the heart of this metropolis what ought to have been a ,

" 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 akin.' 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 diarrheas. 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! Mr. Taylor, my girl
has been terribly ill-treated, and I wish you to look at
her,' and be then particularly examined her body all
over, and had a written account ()fit somewhere. There
was, to the best of his memory, a plaao' 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 dap after leaving the hospital,
and we' examired the body. By 6 we' ho meant Dr.
Wood, the resident alaehecary of the hospital, his part-
ner, Mr. Crisp, and himself. The immediate cause of
her sinking was (lien-heel, and want of food. She did
not refuse her food after she came cut. Witness said to
her,' Hannah, now you must take what I tell you;' ahE
said she would, and she did. When ho said she dit d
from want of food, ho meant the combined effects of
taking very little nourishment with constant
(Hern:el completely exhausted her. She was labouring
under diarchms when she came out, and died of that
and exhaustion. He particularly noticed that she had
no paralysis. When he and his partner were about to
commence the post morteni examination the morning
after her death, Dr. Wood came in. The body was very
emaciated, and On re were the wounds already describes,
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. Ile thought she bad been
bound. It appeared to him as if there had been tome
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 bad been caused by picking or scratching. Hie
impression was that she had been ill-treated, but te
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 fleer, but ho 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 Mies
Hysore 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 be 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 bad 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,
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 ber, and it was two months before this
was allowed, and then " she appeared to be in great
distress, and cried bitterly. The mother entree -4
her not to do so, and bbe said, 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. WOOD,
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
and 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 o f
her head to make her get up, and shook her so violently
that it brought on a violent fit 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 du 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 sores 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 the
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
hurt her much, and she had no clothes even to cover
her. She described her whole treatment to be harsh
and coarae,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
skiihien
aorbrufrteem. hieire
andadbsits,
thata ntdhetphaattietnh
teyis
rtreemataed rkahbeler
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 JOHNSON, 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 had assigned to the matron
the "moral treatment of the patients, and by this he
meant " proper exercise and employment ;"—that he
himself went round the hospital about once a fort-

" If you repave a patient from the upper story to the
basement, to whom do you report it?—./ do not report it.
The physicians aid the resident medical man would soon
find out that thepatient had been removed, and if they
thought it wroni, they would alter it.
" You do not report it then—do you enter it in any
book ?—I have a book in which I make entries from (14
to day, and if I vere to put a patient in a different ward,
I should erase the name from No. 1 or No. 3, or from
the basement, aathe case might be. It is a book where
I put down the tames of the patients. Ido not say it is
my duty to do es, but in it I record it, if a patient is
removed from No. 2 or No. 3, or any other ward.
" Who is that book seen by?—No one. I keep it for
my own satisfaction. I have never been directed to keep
a book of the kind, bat I do it.
" The patients sometimes refuse to take their food;
how are they treated who so refuse?—Why, the nurse.
and if one is not suffisient, two will feed the patient. I
have often gone myself, and I know Dr. Wood has often
gone to see a patient of this kind fed. it has occurred
that the stomach-pump has been used in extreme cases.

" Do you know whether the medicines prescribed for
the patients are duly administered?—.No, I du not.
"Do you trust to the nurses?—They are directed to
be administered by the medical man, who gives the
medicines to the nurses with directions.

" But you leave no means of knowing that the nurses
fulfil their duty in this particular?—No; my only se-
curity is having for the head nurse a woman who ban
been there some years, and in whom wo have confidence.

" Are you aware that any of the female patients in
the basement sleep entirely naked on loose straw, with-
out any thing being interposed between the straw and
their bodies?—No, I never saw that. I will not say I
never saw it, because I did when I first came there.

"how many years ego?—Eleven, and then I made an
applicatiun for troug,is to enclose the straw.

"It is only recently that the straw has been placed
into covers?—lt is only a recent thing on the basement.
" Formerly they used to be put into the straw without
any cover?—yea, with a blanket put upon them.
Do you mean a blanket placed between the body of
the patient and the straw?—No, not with regard to the
patient herself, bat the bedding. The patient was pre-
timed to have some sort of clothing or covering about
her, such as her fLoriel, or her shift.

" And a biaLket over her?—Yes.
" She was placed on the straw ?—The blanket first on
the straw, and thm th,. patient.
" And then a bliuket over the patient?—Yea."
We need not go on. There is no use in proceed-
ing with the disgusting details of this Mrs. HUNTER,
whose humanity appears developed and exhausted in
the crowning effort of her matronship, that eleven
years ago she appied for troughs to confine the straw
in which the btsement patients sleep! A farmer's
lad would have done as much for his master's pigs !

Of course, the matter is not to rest here. The
treasurer and the matron are eminently entitled to be
relieved from the further management of Bethlehem.
Tio whole system there must be changed. It is too
bad for human cruelty and carelessness to make
miserable those whom it has pleased GOD to afflict
with the loss of reason.