The Sun.
London, England, 1830-01-07 00:00:00

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seeding to its compLtion, th I".tris 'sums
ready squandered mig'it not be.lttigctiter. turown
away !" How often, we ask, Sas \tf!is language
been used in Parham. nt ? How Acii has the alter-
native been nut to the House of Commons—" We
admit that the taste of this or tlint monstrosity
is hideous,—wc regret that no adequ ice system
of controul or prevention hasyet been established;
but see how near the whole affair is -to ,matu-
rity ; and sure it is a pity not to give a little
more money, for otherwise the building; will be
destroyed Not once, but an hundred times,
has t:iis unfeeling nonsense been echoed through
the walls of Parliament : not once, but always,
has i; been listened to, we cannot say with com-
placency, but (so much the more disgraceful)
without eny effective opposition. Had it been
left to any twelve sober-minded men in Eng,-
land, they would hare said, when first such an
alternative as we have presented was put to
them, " Well, then, even at this late hour, let
us save the public treasure, and instil a good
lesson into the Treasury,—let the building be
razed, not finished." We are amazed. on look-
ing back and considering some of the evidence
before the committee,—we are amazed at tble
freedom from salutary controul which has been
suffered so long to flourish. Mr. Nash, in one
of his answers, declared, that on some oteasionrs
" he received orders direct from his %jests',"
which he executed as a thing of couisc. Who can
blame Mr. Nash for such obedience, especially
when he does not aprear to have had any wan-
ing as to the personal risk which might at-
tend it But who, on the other hand, can
fail to fbresee results the most fatal from such sty
intermcddling with the public money ? Some
persons have been silly or servile enough to ask
whether the King was not the most proper judge
what sort of house he would himself desire to
inhabit. All that is mighty well, but the King
(God bless him) does not pay one farthing 10-
wards the cost of such an edifice. The King.
moreover is a gentleman far advanced in year:,
and is at most but tenant for- life of Buckingham
or any other palace. The freehold is in tine.
nation, who, with all deference, are better judges
than the King pro tempore of the amount of
money which they themselves choose to pay, and
of the sort of house which they approve of for
the King's successors. The hundreds of thou-
sands which Buckingham Palace has already cost
are frightful ;—those which " new stables " have
not yet cost (though we suspect the cash has
been issued professedly for them), will frighten
those who live to see the votes of Another aes-
sion. An end must be put to this. What is to
furnish Buckingham Palace, we beg leave to
ask ? How many more hundreds of thousands
there ? So far from a commission reporting
upon these offences only in three years, we at-
firm that there ought to be, not an annual, but a
quarterly, investigation, and interposition, to in-
tercept each folly as it first takes wing, and to
blight the budding mischiefs which,_ivhen full
grown, it would appear that no wisdom or
courage can disarm. Besides this exercise of
especial vigilance in some appointed officers, we
would urge most earnestly upon the acting chiefs
of t,he Government themselves, an inflexible and
inexorable disregard of every proposition which
can be tendered to them for indulging wild pro-
pensities to extravagance in the charge of public
revenue. The country cannot bear such weak-
ness as has hitherto been displayed on the mat-
ters to which we have adverted.—/bid. •
Mr. Mance, Governor of the House of Cot-
rection, Pctworth, has just published a Letter to
the Lord Lieutenant and Magistrates of time
county of Sussex, on the subject of Prison Dis-
cipline, in which a variety of improvement
on the existing anomalous system is pointed
out. The Prison Establishment of this
country, in importance, already takes its place
beside the Church Establishment ; and judging
from the progress of late years, we are war-
ranted in inferring that many years will
not elapse before prisons will rank in importance
before all our establishments. "On a moderate
calculation (says Mr. Mance), the number of
offenders confined in our respective prisons in
England and Wales is not less than 95,000 in
the course of one year, while the annual expellee
of these establishments is little short of 50,0001."
Where much money is expended there will gene-
rally be found talent ; and, accordingly some of
the cleverest men in the country are now to be
found in the once-despised situation of gaoler,
only with the respectable title of Governors, &c.
No men have such opportunities for the study
of human nature or, at least, of morbid mental •
anatomy ; and now that the ability to write en-
ables them to lay the results of their observa-
tions before the public, we may expect much
valuable information from this source. It is,
indeed, a matter of infinite importance
to become acquainted with that large
and growing portion of our population
which crimes and offences conduct to our
prisons. If 95,000 offenders pass through the
prisons of England and Wales in one year, we
may assume that those who have been in prison
some time or other, for crimes and offences,
amount to many times that number. Not a few
of the 95,000 have, no doubt, been more than
once in prison ; but making every allowance for
this, still the number of people who have been
contaminated by residence in a prison, spread
over England and Wales, must amount to seve-
ral hundred thousand. Whatever relates then to
so large a part of the inhabitants of England de-
serves the utmost attention. Nothing can well
be conceived more absurd than the notions
which prevail in this country respecting prison
labour. Would it- be believed that there are
persons suffered to walk at large, nay even Ma-
gistrates, who conceive that the labour of persons
maintained at such an enormous expence should
be thrown away ?—that there are persons so
stolid as not to perceive, that if, for instance, an
individual who pays U. towards this 500,0001.
gets articles, in return, worth to him 11., he is
better off than if he got nothing ? Yet these
notions are deeply rooted in many a Magisterial
and Ministerial head ; and hence, even in this
county of Middlesex, we have expensive machi-
nery erected in prisons, merely for unproductive
labour? " This injudicious practice (says Mr.
Mance) of not encouraging prison labour is not
confined to this division of the county of Sus-
sex, but extends also to the other division or
the county, and its injurious effects are, I
believe, more or less experienced in all
the :prisons throughout the kingdom. if
it is asked, why is this ? I answer, some
persons object to these prison manufactories, be-
cause they think they are calculated to injure the
honest manufactuor and the fair trader. But
surely this objection cannot be seriously enter-
tained by a reflecting mind. No man, however
selfish, thinks of seriously objecting to a new
manufacturer attempting to establish himself in
his vicinity, Why then should any person ob-
ject to a similar and necessarily limited mann-
fittory, supported by every one who pays poor-