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

men conl

nve,

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jol

ing, in a

rcv years to ou-

tain for their country a respectable National Debt,
and fraudulent Banks, whit . inundated it with
worthless paper money, se; 'tr ig thereby majori-
ties in the Legislature, ail .Trying wide-spread
ruin into society. We are old enough to remember
the disapprobation expressed in respectable socie-
ties in this country at what was called the
Quixotical Scheme of Jefferson in paying off the
National Debt and reducing Taxation, which
were then deemed the great consolidators of the
social union. However, begging the sublime
writer in Blackwood's pardon for so homely a
transition, in our wish to make the difficulty of
reconciling the people to their being excessively
taxed for the good of their betters as palpable ns it
ought to be, we may remark that it is with goverill,,g
by corruption as with the process of intoxication,
nothing so pleasant as the commencement of a
system of profuse expenditure to gratify friends,
and loans, and a depreciation of the currency,
and so forth. Nothing is so pleasant as the first
two or three glasses. But the difficulty is to
stop before complete ruin in the one case, and
nausea and head-ache in the other. Now, we
do not believe that education will reconcile men
to the state of things to which we have been
brought, when they come clearly to understand
the causes of it. Man is very apt, when he is

aware of any evil pressing on him, to cast about
how he can rid himself of it. Now let us con-
trast, with the sublimer recommendation of

patience under what seems injustice, by the
transcendental writer in Blackwood, the ibllow-

ing homely passage in Jefferson, with the view
to calculate which is most likely to find favour
with the many :—" The fact is, that at the for-
mation of our Government, many had formed
their political opinions on European writings and
practices, believing the experience of old coun-
tries, and especially of England, abusive as it
was, to be a safer guide • than mere theory.—
The doctrines of Europe were, that men in HU-.

merous associations cannot be restrained within
the limits of order and justice, but by forces, phy-
sical and moral, Nielded over them by authorities

independent of their will. Hence their organization
of Kings, hereditary Nobles, and Priests. Still
further to constrain the brute force of the people,
they deem it necessary to keep them down by
hard labour, poverty, and ignorance, and to take
from them, as from bees, so much of their earn-
ings, as that unremitting labour should be

sary to obtain a sufficient surplus barely to obtain
a scanty and miserable life. And these earnings
they apply to maintain their privileged orders in
splendour and idleness, to fascinate the eye of the
people, and excite in them an humble adoration
and submission as to an order of superior beings.
Although few among us had gone all these
lengths of opinion, yet many had advanced,
some more, some less, on the way ; and in the
convention which formed our Government, they
endeavoured to draw the cords of power as tight
as they could obtain theiti, to lessen the depen-
dence of the general functionaries on their con-
stituents, to subject to them those of the States,
and to weaken their means of maintaining the
steady equilibrium which the majority of the
Convention had deemed salutary for both
branches, general and local. To recover,
therefore, in practice, the powers which the
nation had refused, and to warp to their own
wishes those actually given, was the steady
object of the federal party. Ours, on the con-
trary, was to maintain the will of the majority of
the Convention, and of the people themselves.
We believed with them, that man was a rational
animal, endowed by nature with rights, and
with an innate sense of justice ; and that he
could be restrained from wrong, and protected
in right, by moderate powers confided to persons
of his own choice, and held to their duties by
dependence on his own will. We believed that
the complicated organization of Kings, Nobles,
and Priests, was not the wisest nor thft best to
effect the happiness of associated men ; that
wisdom and virtue were not hereditary ; that the
trappings of such a machinery consumed by
their expence those earnings of industry they
were meant to protect, and, by the inequalities
they produced, exposed liberty to sufferance.
We believed that men enjoying in ease and se-
curity the full fruits of their own industry, en-
listed by all their interests on the side of
law and order, habituated to think for them-
selves, and to follow their reason as their
guide, would be more easily and safely go-
verned, than with morals nourished in error,
and vitiated and debased, as in Europe, by
ignorance, indigence, and oppression." Writing
in 1815 to Colonel Monroe, he says, " We
seem equally incorrigible in our financial course.
Although a century of British experience has
proved to what a wonderful extent the funding
on specific redeeming taxes enables a nation to
anticipate in war the resources of peace, and
although the other nations of Europe have tried
and trodden every path of force or folly in fruit-
less quest of the same object, yet we still expect
to find in juggling tricks and Banking dreams
that money can be made out of nothing, and in
sufficient quantity tp meet the expenses of a
heavy war by sea and land. , . . • • •
All these doubts and fears prove only the extent
of the dominion which the Banking institutions
have obtained over the minds of our citizens,
and especially of those inhabiting cities or other
Banking places ; and this dominion must be
broken, or it will break us. The misfortune is,
that in the meantime we shall plunge ourselves
into unextinguishable debt, and entail on our
posterity an inheritance of eternal taxes, which
will bring our Government and people into the
condition of those of England, a nation of
pikes and gudgeons, the latter bred merely
as food for the former." In 1816. " No
earthly consideration could induce my consent
to contract such a debt as England has by her
wars for commerce, to reduce our citizens by
taxes to such wretchedness, as that, labouring
sixteen of the twenty-four hours, they are still
unable to afford themselves bread, or barely to
earn as much oatmeal or potatoes as will keep
soul and body together." In 1817, " What do
you think of the present situation of England ?
Is not thic the great and fatal crush of their
funding system, which, like death, has been fore-
seen by all, but its hour, like that of death,
hidden from mortal prescience ? The interest
of the National Debt is now equal to such a
portion of the profits of all theland and the la,
bour of the island, as not to leave enough for
the subsistence of those who labour. Hence
the owners of the land abandon it, and retire to
other countries, and the labourer has not enough
of his earnings left to him to cover his back, and
to fill his belly. The landholder has nothing of
his own to give ; be is but the fiduciary of those
who have lent him money ; the lender is so taxed
in his meat, drink, and clothing, that he has
but a bare subsistence left." Without saying
how much of the above picture is a faithful re-
presentation, there can be no question that edu-
cation will enable the people to discover many

more
apparent evils, Caused ny tneir governors,.
than they will be able to discover reasons for.
But who can prevent education ? Who can
turn back the tide ? Let what will come of all
this the impulse is given.—Morning Chronicle.
The last year, which has been so productive
of calamity, may be said to have been tolled out
with the funeral knell of four of our fellow-
creatures, who expiated their offences against
society, and satisfied the sanguinary spirit of the
law, by an ignominious death upon the scaffold.
The crime of two of them was certainly of that
nature which justifies the exaction of the last
penalty of justice ; for it was a burglary com-
mitted under circumstances of considerable vio-
lence, with deadly weapons, and which only ac-
cident prevented from ending in murder. There
is a clear distinction to be taken, however, be-
tween crimes of violence and fraud. The former
are in their nature more audacious, and in their
consequences more dangerous to society, than
the latter. Caution and prudence may not be
able to protect the lives or property of men from
the highway robber or the midnight burglar.—
They rely upon brute force and mortal weapons.
They force the traveller to surrender his property
under the threat of immediate death, and break
through the bolts and bars of the peaceful dwell-
ing in the deep silence of the night. They are
generally men of blood, reckless how they
shed it in pursuit of their object ; and, therefore,
it is no outrage to reason, or the feelings
of humanity, if their own blood should be re-
quired of them. But far different is the case of
the man who obtains dishonest possession of his
neighbour's money or goods by circumvention,
unaccompanied by force ; against the practices
of such a man the exercise of some vigilance and
precaution would generally protect those who are
the objects of his criminal designs. It matters
not, in principle, whether the fraud be accom-
plished by word of mouth or by a written paper ;
whether it be by a spoken or a written falsehood ;
whether, in short, it be by swindling or forgery,
the punishment should not be of such a nature
as to confound the offence with that of murder,
robbery, or other atrocious violence. It is said
by some who contend for the infliction of capital
punishment on forgery, and other offences not
attended with violence, that the object of punish-
ment is not atonement, but example, and that it
is, therefore, right to inflict whatever punishment
will operate as the most effective example, with-
out regarding the magnitude of the offence. In
answer to this inhuman sophism we say, that if
death be allotted to forgery, because it is calcu-
lated to make the most salutary impression on
the living, and to operate best towards the re-
pression of the crime, it should be inflicted in-
discriminately for the smallest as well as the
greatest offences—no regard being had to the
moral guilt. Justice could make compendious
work by substituting the exterminating system of
the ancient Stoics for the mild doctrines of
Christianity, and cutting off all criminals, great
and small, by one tremendous scythe. Though
such a Draconic character is not yet stamped
upon the Criminal Laws of England, they cer-
tainly approach very near it—they are more
sanguinary, we believe, than the code of any
country in Europe. The multiplicity of in-
stances in which death is decreed by our Statute-
book is a disgrace to our religion—our refine-
ment. It is an outrage on common reason—a
violation of the most sacred principles of hums•
nity and civilization. In reference to the exe-
cutions of yesterday, a humane and intelligent
Correspondent thus addresses himself:—" The
offences for which these men suffered were, it
will be seen, very different in their kind ; from
the midnight violator of the sectnity of home,
to the invader of property, who obtains his end
merely by deception ; from the ruffiian who
breaks into a house at the time of sleep, pre-
pared upon occasion to shed blood, to the cheat,
whose fraud is facilitated by the want of caution
on the part of those on whom it is practised ; from
the housebreaker to the utterer of forged paper ;
yet death is inflicted for all. Is this consistent with
justice, reason, and policy ?" We answer his inter-
rogatory by stating, that it is neither consistent
with justice, reason, nor policy. We cannot see
why a man who writes a fraud (for forgery is
but tvritten fraud), should suffer a heavier
punishment than the swindler who cheats un-
wary or credulous people of their money by any
other deceptions contrivance ; nor do we under-
stand why a sheep-stealer should die the death
of one who steeps his hands in blood, and his
soul in the guilt of murder. These things must
be reformed. We have often called the atten-
of the public and the Legislature to this subject
—and again we say the Statute-book of England
must be rendered more conformable to the dic-
tates of humanity and the principles of justice.
Excessive and vindictive punishments for crime
are themselves criminal in the eyes of Reason.
Instead of producing a salutary abhorrence of the
offence, they excite sympathy for the guilty
sufferer. They cause the natural feelings of
men to revolt against the barbarous infliction,
and thus destroy all the efficacy of penal example.
—Morning Herald.

POLICE INTELLIGENCE.

MANSION-HOUSE.

A man named John Child was brought before the
LORD MAYOR, by Thomas Herdsfield, one of the
city officers, charged with having robbed his em-
ployers, Messrs. Daly, M‘Murdo, and Co., whole-
sale druggists.
The prisoner, on being asked whether he had any
thing to say in his defence, was silent.
The LORD MAYOR said, that notwithstandingthe
numerous examples that had been made, this spe-
cies of offence was becoming still more prevalent.
A labourer complained that he could not prevail
upon the palish officers of Aldgate to give him re-
lief in his extreme necessity. Four summonses had
been sent to those authorities, it appeared, before
the beadle (Kindersley) attended to satisfy the
Lord Mayor as to the treatment of the applicant.—
The labourer said that he was unable to obtain
work, that he had four children, who had been
waiting for assistance for six days, in a perishing
condition.

Mr. Holder (to the beadle)--Why did you not
appear before ? The beadle—Why, I have had
such a desperate bad cold, and it is not to be ex-
pected that one can always ,come out this weather.
It's unreasonable to expect it. Besides, I have
business to attend to, and I can't always be leaving
it to attend to these here summonses:
Mr. nobler—But I suppose your overseers, whose
duty it is to attend, have not all got colds; and if
they have, are all those poor creatures to perish with
cold, on their empty stomachs, because you well-
clothed dignitaries are too delicate to venture out
in the weather from which these poor naked
wretches are dying ? If the Lord Mayor's sum-
monses are not attended to, we shall see whether
his warrants will be regarded.
The beadle—But I gived them relief.
Mr. nobler—Man of humanity, what relief did
you give them ?
The applicant declared, that the beadle six days
ago gave him at the rate of 6d. per mouth for him-
self and his wretched family,
Mr. Hobler—And what is the smallest quantity

or
coals you can manage to UO•WiLII Lill wranner r
Applicant—A peck of coals each day costs 4d., and
makes a miserable fire, which will hardly keep life
in us.

The beadle—But why did you not apply to the
Board? Applicant—We can get no relief from the
Board., When I did apply before, they only offered
me 3s. a week, for the support of myself and family
—six of us in all.

The LORD MAYOR, in a marked manner, con-
demned the conduct of the parish officers, and di-
rected that immediate avid more effectual relief
should be given to the pauper and his family.