The Sun.
London, England, 1864-03-23 00:00:00

SHIPPING—This Day.

Lorruorr, March 23.—Wind this day at noon—North,
East ; moderate breeze, and fine weather.
PLYMOUTH, March 22.—Wind N.E.—Arrived—lra.
kindle, from for Middelburg.
DARTMOUTH, March 22.—Wind E.—Arrived—Teviot,
from Colombo.

BnisToL; March 21.—Wind N.E.—Arrived—Monsoon,
from Mauritius.
DOVER, March 22.—Wind N.E.—Arrived—Polma,
from Alexandria.

NEWPORT, March 22.—Wind N,E.—Arrived —Gustav
Williams, from' Santander for Barcelona—Berkatone, from
London for Jamaica. Sailed—Caledonia, for Rio Janeiro
—Mary Grime, for St. Thomas.

(Er ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.)
SOUTHAMPTON, Wednesday Morning.
Arrived—Jantje Marims, from Groningen, Jantena
Aleda, from Mationsiel.
Sailed—Penn, steamer, for Lon•lon.
The Bremen, steamer. due off Cowes tomorrow from
New York, a regular course, wilt call at Queenstown for
orders, she having received instructions to that effect before
going out, in consequence of the war in Denmark and the
vessels of the North German Lloyd not having been trans-
ferred to the Russian fl ig at the time of her departure.
(BY MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH.)
GRAVESEND, Wednesday Morning.
Arrived, March 22—Raven, from Dram; Avalanche,
from Singapore; Apollo, from Porsgrund ; Juliez, from
Gravelines.
Arrived, March 23—Actro, from Landscrona ; Adler,
from Calmar; Batavier and Leo, steamers, trom Rotterdam ;
Gustaf Wass, steamer, from Gothenburg ; Ceres, from
Horsens; E. U., from Sannesand ; Pomona, from Helsing-
Vrg ; Argo, from Dram ; Industrial, from Aarhuus ; Lord
John Rus,,ell, steamer, from Dunkirk.
Sailed, March 23—Seine and Tamise, steamer, for Paris ;
Sir R. Peel, steamer, for Dunkirk; Triton, steamer, for
Boulogne.

DEAL, Wednesday Morning.
Passed—Come On, of Exeter, from the north, for the
west.

The late Newman Smith, E,q., has left the Na-
tional Lifeboat Institution a legacy of £5O.
THE LEOMINSTER MURDER.—At the Hereford-
shire Assizes, yesterday, Watkins, the man charged with
the murder of his wife at Leowinster, pleaded guilty. The
plea was, however, withdrawn, on the reeonamendation of
the judge, and the trial was postponed.
THE WORKING MAN'S OWN CLUB.—In 1855 a
club was established at Littlemore, near Oxford,
by the Rev. T. W. Huntingto: d, the government of which,
as that gentleman says in en accot:„tat he has written of its
operations, was "oligarchical, with a t:.ssh of des
spotis
vilm."
town and .
This is very often the case in small country
lages, where working men, conscious of their N 7 ant of ex-
perience in business affairs, are glad to place then:selves
under the guidance of the local clergyman or squire. In
some places specific religious opinions are required as an
indispensable condition of membership. But in others the
artisans and labourers have taken the matter into their own
hands with admirable effect. A remarkable instance of this
is presented by the club recently inaugurated and now
flourishing at Wednesbury, a little town in the iron manu-
facturing districts of Staffordshire. The institution was
first proposed at the commencement of last year; but the
gentlemen who made the suggestion, or who promised to
patronise it, slumbered over the work, and the mechanics,
getting tired of waiting, set their shoulders to the wheel,
rented a house on their own responsibility,furnished it with
everything necessary for such an undertaking, and obtained
so many members that, althoug the rooms were only
opened on the 30th May,1863, the club has for some months
porting, with no other receipts
past been entirely self-sup
than the subscriptions of its members and the sale of provi-
sions within its walls. The subscriptions are 2d a week and
2s a quarter, the honorary members giving a yearly dona-
tion of a guinea. The number of members at the commence-
ment was 100, but they increased so rapidly that it was soon
found necessary to take large and better premises, and the
club now rents the old Town Hall at per annum. Judg-
in
g from the einformationof the genuine Working we possess, we should
Men's Club
say that a
more perfect specimen
cannot be found anywhere. The committee and all the
governing officers belong to the industrial classes ; mem-
bers and subscriptions are canvassed for every Monday
morning at the factories, and the rent of the building is
guaranteed by the men themselves.--Dickens's "Au the
Year .11',oultd."
A TALE FOR THE MARINES. There is a
wonderful Hindoo chess-player at present in
London. He plays three games blindfolded, and wins.
At the same time he plays a game of cards, and
wins. During the game a bell is touched every one or two
seconds, and he gives the number of times it has been
touched. A man stands behind and throws little pebbles
one by one against his back; these, too, he counts; and
after the games are told he recites a poem in perfect rhyme
which he has composed during the sitting.
A senator flied this week—Prince de Beauvau,
born 1793, left for dead in the march on Moscow, under the
First Empire, and who reappeared in political life only
under Napoleon 111. He had married a sister of the ill-
puo do Fraslin.

Mr, Charles Gilpin, M.P., on Capital
Punishment.

Last night a lecture was delivered in the Surrey Chapel
by the Rev. Newman Hall, on " Capital Punishments."
Mr. Charles Gilpin, M.P., occupied the chair, and the
chapel was crowded by an audience composed chiefly of
working men.

Mr. GILPIN opened the proceedings, and after some
preliminary observations said :—This is a subject on
which I have long taken an active and earnest interest.
It is now close on twenty years ago since shortly after
coming to London I was the means of getting in Exeter
Hall as large a meeting as coald be assembled on the sub-
ject 'of capital punishments. We had a well filled plat-.
form. Mr. E wart, the member for Dumfiles, a most
active and intelligent Iftlemrer in the cause, was in the.
chair ; and we had Lord Nugent, Mr. Bright, Daniel
O'Connell, and other well- knowa persons present.
We had the Church represented by Dr. Mortimer and
'the Rev. Henry Christmas w,-; had Dissenters of
various denominations—we had, indeed, the Church of
Christ represented. That meeting uttered an emphatic
denunciation of the gallows and the principles upon which
it was maintained. (Applause.) Time will only allow me
to glance briefly at the reasons why I think—why I know—
that capital punishment ought to be abolished. In looking
back upim my earliest years I remember that one of the
earliest impressions which took hold upon my mind in con-
nection
with that Christian teaching of which I had the ad-
vantage, was a strong repugnance to the putting of men
and women to death upon any plea whatever. I had a child's
reason ; but that reason has grown with my growth. I
asked whether it were true that a man wan, or was not, fit
to die. According to my teaching and yours, a. man was
prepared for death, or he was not, and, if not prepared for
death, we know the consequences. If a man be prepared to
die—repentant, forgiven, and redeemed—then it seemed to
the child, as it seems to me, that for the murder of a fel-
low-man a man should not be hanged. If a man is not
repentent and forgiven, and consequently not prepared to
die, then it was something that made the child's mind shud-
der that a fellow-worm should take from a man or woman.
all possibility of repentance and condemn him to an eternity
of woe. In going over the dreary and dismal criminal re-
cords of the last 25 years I can show you cases illustrative
of the unsoundness of every argument that is urged upon
us for the maintenance of capital punishment. I hold that
there is no object of a good, righteous, and just law that
can be carried out by capital punishment. A boy under
16 years was executed some years ago as Newgate. He
had shot his master in a' most deliberate manner. He
had bought ,the pistol, bullet, and powder some days
before. He had gone to see some persons hanged, and
after having seen them hanged formed his own opinion
as to the amount of suffering that was to be endured.
He shot hie master : he was sentenced to death, and

a personal friend of mine who saw him in a cell
found him ,callous and insensible to all reasoning
as to the consequences of his crime. That boy went to his
death upon the scaffold like a favourite actor, and died in a
spirit of bravado. Near the same time a woman was executed
for murder. She committed the crime in a fit of jealousy,
but no sooner had she done it then she repen;ed it with her
whole heart. She gave herself up to justice, pleaded guilty,
but at first her plea was not accepted, and she was kept, I
think, over two assizas. During that time she wrote letters
of a very touching character; the chaplain was incessant
in his ministrations, and made no secret of his opinion that
she was a converted and repentant woman. On the day of
the execution the chaplain was with her in the cell. They
read the Bible, and prayed and sang hymns together, until

at last they were startled by hearing the bells tolling to tell
her that her last hour was come. She then asked to partake
of the sacrament, and you all know the beautiful language
in which the minister had to address that convict. I think
he had to call her " a sister in Christ," and yet before the
ceremony was over, Calcraft came to pinion " that sister in
Christ." She bore it patiently, and sustained herself until

she was met by the yells of the crowd, who from the delay
which had occurred, feared that they were to be deprived
of their victim. She fainted away, and was hung insensi-
ble. I recollect both Sarah Harriet Thomas and Tames
Bloomfield Rush. Their crimes were very different. Sarah
H. Thomas was a young girl of 18 or 19, and she made the
strongest effort to prevent herself being executed. I have
made a document before me showing that no lees than six
men had to drag her out of the cell, and hold her upon the
drop until she was strangled. Then Rush, who had nou-
rished his revenge for a lengthof time, and had deliberately,
with malice and forethought, committed murder in cold
blood, met his end as calmly and as coolly as a Christian on
his death- bed—not, of course, in the same frame of mind,
but with great hardihood. What good effect does the
ruthless killing of one man by another produce upon the
crowd, which is the great argument of those who support
capital punishment.? I well remember that Daniel 0' Con-

nell told us at the Exeter-hall meeting to which I havere-
ferred, of three men whom he himself had defended upon a

capital charge in Ireland. I will give his own words :
"I defended three brothers charged with a capital offence ;
they were young able-bodied men. I was satisfied of their
innocence, but the jury found them guilty, and they were
condemned to die. At that time, especially in Ireland, exe-
cution followed .swiftly .upoi sentence; and accordingly
shortly afterwards I saw those three young men led out to
execution. They were surrounded by a file of soldiers lest
any of the mob should come near them. Their mother was
there. I saw her, armed with the strength of her affection,

break through the file, for the bayonets of the soldiers
lowered instinctively before her. I saw her cling to her
eldest son, a young man, 23 years of age; I saw her throw
herself upon her second, who was 21 years of age; I saw
her burst upon the breast of her third son, a boy of 19; and
I ask who can make amends to her for that agony P They
were all executed, and they were all innocent, as it was
afterwards proved," The hon. gentleman then referred to
the case of James Howell, who was executed at Ipswich,
who declared his innocence to the last, and whose innocence

was believed by a large number of people, and the effect of
his death was to break the heart of his wife, who died a short
time afterwards. He also read a letter from an Indian chief

expressing in simple but striking language the horror with

. _
which he had witnessed an execution in this Christian coun-

try. The hon. gentleman then continued :—A great deal
was made by some people of a certain passage in the Old Tes-
tament, which is supposed in some way to sanction capital
punishment. I don't speak of this as a ground that will iaflu-
ence the House of Commons. Convince the House of Com-

mons that capital punishment can be safely done away with,
that it will be for the benefit of society that it should cease,

and you may rely that neither Mosaic nor pre-Mosaic com-
mands will prevent them from doing what they believe to be
expedient. (A laugh.) It is remarkable that in the various
public meetings which I have held on this subject, wherever
there has been any opposition it has generally come from

ministers of religion on one ground, " that whoso sheddeth

man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.' This is a text

of uncertain interpretation—there are some halt dozan read-
ings of it, and I tell you upon authority that cannot be effec-

tually disputed, that " will" would be as correct a transla-
tion as " shall." Upon this solitary foundation—one dis-
puted text-.-41 seems that they can build the structure of the
gibbet. Gad once punished a murderer, the worst because
th, -
-
-
-

e first murderer. Ilis sentence was, not that Cain shall
die, but that he shall live. " I will lay a mark upon him lest
any man finding him shall slay him." It is my earnest
hope and fervent trust now that public feeling is again
rising on the subject of capital punishment—now that the
working men are taking it up, that the time is not far dis,
tant when we shall find the gallows swept away among other

relics of a disgraceful past, and when we shall find our law

in this respect assimilated more iu spirit and practice to the
will of Him " who willeth not the neath of the sinner, but

rather that he should turn and live." (Cheers.)
The Rev. NEWMAN HALL then proceeded to deliver his
lecture, and entered will his usual eloquence and ability into

the subject. He replied to the scriptural argument, and

dwelt on the circumstance that juries often refused to con-
vict for crime knowing that death- would follow. He be-

lieved that capital punishment was.not commanded by
,the
Old Testament—was repugnant to the spirit of the new, and

opposed to the best interests of society,
vote of thanks to Mr. Gilpin concluded the proceedings.

MARKETS—This Day.

MARK-LANE.

A. limited supply of English wheat was received fresh
up to our market to-day. For good and fine dry samples
there was a steady demand, at full prices; otherwise the
trade was dull, on former terms.
The show of samples of foreign wheat on the stands was
by no means extensive. Sales, however, progressed slowly,
nevertheless, prices ruled firm. _ .

.
Floating cargoes of grain moved off slowly, at late rates.
With barley the market was moderately supplied. Ge-
nerally speaking the trade was quiet, yet prices ruled sta-
tionary, Good and fine malting qualities, however, were

firm in value.
Very little change took place in the value ot malt ; but
the trade was in a sluggish state.
Oats were in good supply and heavy request, at fully the
late decline in value.
Beans and peas met a slow sale at late rates.
The flour trade was quiet, on former terms.
The Corn Exchange will be closed on Friday next.
ARRIVALS THIS WEEK.
Wheat. Baricy. Malt. Oats. 'Flout.
Nnglish 210 210 I 1,910 680 370
Irish..
1,320 1,360. 11,520 I 120 eke,
brie