The Sun.
London, England, 1830-02-09 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE, PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The. 'town was extremely astonished, and even
terrified, yesterday and the evening before, by the
news of the sudden death—that is, of the self-
murder—of Lord Graves, one of the Lords of his
Majesty's Bedchamber; and this morning we pre-
sent (such as we have been able to obtain) a re-
port of what we are sorry to say we cannot call the
Coroner's Inquest. We have indeed no hesitation
in declaring, that the publication which we now
present to our readers (and we are unable to pro-
cure a better) contains no satisfactory account what-
ever of the death of Lord Graves, or the causes
which led to it And if a Coroner's jury have been
induced to make any declaration whatever on the
state of his Lordship's mind, upon the evidence which
it has been thought proper now to put before the
public, they have acted rashly and erroneously. On
Saturday his Lordship attended his duty as Com-
missioner of Excise, and dined out in the even-
ing with Sir George Murray : he breakfasted
late on Sunday, but was cheerful ; and was
to have dined out again on that day, when,
in the short interval between three o'clock
and the hour of dressing for dinner, he -first
despatched a letter to Lady Graves (at Hamp-
ton-court we believe) by one of the coaches, and
then, if he be the author of his own destruction, per-
petrated the fatal act. Is it possible that a jury
can have been induced to pass a verdict upon that
act, without having inquired into the state of the
alleged perpetrator's mind on the Saturday, from
his brother commissioners with whom he transacted
business? Is it possible that they can have found
their verdict, without demanding a sight of that
litter which he wrote to Lady Graves on the very
instant preceding his death ? Is it possible that they
can have failed of requiring Lady Graves to be sum-
moned, that she might give a description of the
feelings of her husband and the causes which pro-
duced his irritation ? And who, we ask, are the
people examined, according to the published ac-
count? One servant, and the man at whose house
the deceased lodged, and one physician. The two
former contradict each other in the evidence put
forth, and the latter never attended his patient till
last Thursday! Is it thus that a British nobleman
can be passed out of life into eternity, and receive
his passport for Christian interment ? We say that
his Lordship ought not to be buried on such evi-
densei—the Coroner ought not to have granted his
warrant for the purpose. The causes of the mur-
dered man's death must be further inquired into !
And then let the nation look at the time at which
this inquest is held. Ilis Lordship was destroyed
after sun-set on Sunday night (" there were
two lighted candles standing on his Lordship's
dressing-table,"—Servant's evidence), and the
Jury met before sun-rise on the Monday morning !
At a quarter before eight the inquisition began. The
notice, therefore, required by law to be given to
the Coroner of the death, the issuing of the Coro-
ner's precept to the constable, and the summonses
by the constable, must all have taken place by
night—in the darkness of the very night on which
the deceased breathed his last ! The Jury must
have been called out of bed to receive their sum-
monses, and groped about ere day broke for the
dress which they had quitted the night before ! Is
this usual, we ask ? Is it decent ? Does not na-
ture revolt at it ? We again say, then, that a fresh
inquisition must be held. It is impossible not to
connect this fearful act with a rumour which has
been for some time in circulation; and to recall the
public attention, however painfully, to another std.
cede,—an inexplicable and mysterious suicide,—with
which a name that has been so often mentioned of
late was also connected. We require to know who
were the Jury that came to this rapid decision,—
their names, and occupations.—Times.
If the intrinsic magnitude and importance of the
subject of British trade to all parts of Asia be not
increased by the near approach of the period at
which that great qnestion must be permanently set-
tled, the interest attached to it at least becomes
stronger, even for those who may be called spec-
tators of the struggle, with every fresh proof of the
degree to which it has engaged the feelings of mer-
chants, manufacturers, and friends of free trade,
throughout the country. The Leeds meeting was
of the same complexion with others which have been
held in places- of equal or superior consequence
within the last twelve months. The present mono-
poly of the India Company was, by the general
sense of a numerous arid enlightened body of gen-
tlemen, condemned; and a set of resolutions, in
favour both of unshackled commerce and of au-
thorized colonization in India, were adopted, of
which Parliament cannot wave or long retard the
discussion. The Company seem disposed to pretend,
that by asking for perfect liberty of commerce with
all countries eastward of the Cape of Good Hope, the
British nation makes an attack on the "property"
of this corps of merchants. How is the trade to
China their property ? Indeed, how is India itself
their property ? They have had a lease of both
from Parliament for 20 years; the term is about to
expire; and whose is then the property of the do-
minions and the commerce so granted in temporary
and terminable possession ? It is the undoubted
duty of the Company to prove their right to a
renewed monopoly both of empire and of merchan-
dise in the East. They must prove their'title to
be more favoured than all other classes of British
subjects : the universality of the right is the rule,
the restraint of it is the exception. Let the Com-
pany show why that exception should be revived in
their favour, and against the people of England.
Their partisans—one of whom appears to hale
figured at Leeds by the name of Foster—tells us,
that the Company supplies us with better tea for
the same money than we could do ourselves. That
is our business,not theirs :—we like to be our own
purveyors. If they can undersell the private mer-
chant in his dealings with Canton, nobody pre-
vents them from continuing to frequent Canton with
their ships of 1,400 tons and upwards—no one
has the impudence to tell the Company, as they tell
the people of England—" We, private traders, in-
sist on it that you gentlemen of the Court of Di-
rectors shall not provide your own breakfasts—that
you shall drink no tea but sech as we choose to sell
you." On the contrary, by all means Jet the Com-
pany still carry on the trade with China. If they
can really furnish better tea than the private trader,
it surely follows that they cannot fear his competi-
tion. If they are quite satisfied that their private
trade to China will terminate, as they rather comi-
cally assert that the trade with India has done, in
the ruin of all those merchants who have increased
every year since 1813, in numbers and enterprise,
as is manifest on the face of the returns, why should
they be so wonderfully anxious to prevent an expe-
riment by which they must themselves be gainers ?
What is it to the Company if the British merchants
(poor ignorant blockheads as they are !)—have set
their hearts upon an unprofitable and destructive
commerce ? It will only go to restore, by the irre-
sistible operation of a mercantile necessity, that
which the Directors are now impolitic enough to
push for,by the more invidious, but not more certain,
mechanism of a positive Act of Parliament. We
submit, therefore, that the Company and its advo-
cates are taking a childish course. if they wish to
talk like rational creatures upon the question, and
to lay aside the practice of an odious, though flimsy
hypocrisy, which deceives nobody, but by which
every man of sense and honour is disgusted, they
will admit that their repugnance to any opening of
the trade with China arises from their making so
good a thing of the monopoly that the fear of losing
it fills them with mortification and despair. Why,
the confession of the large revenue derived to the
Company from the tea trade is the very proof we
want of the extent to which it injures the commu-
nity; and what becomes of those enormous profits ?
Not to support the Government of India ; no such
thing : the Indian Government is maintained by the
land revenue of 22,000,0001. sterling per annum,
the rack-rent levied on the miserable occupant of
the soil, or rather wrung from his vitals, as if
the most wretched of the Irish peasantry paid

the produce in kind of their con-acres directly to
the Government collectors. The profits of the
China trade are expended by the Company in pa-
tronage—in the apparatus of an extravagant factory
at Canton, out of which inconceivable fortunes are
" raised like exhalations," and almost as suddenly--
in immense towers by way of merchant-ships, built,
appointed, stored, and navigated, at an expense so
utterly monstrous, that freight on board a regular
Indiaman is upwards of 20/. per ton, when a private
ship carries goods from 71. to 101. No small share
of the said profits, moreover, goes to keep up the
Babylonish magnificence of Leadenhall-street—not
a very essential article, we presume to think, in the
estimate of a successful commerce. But we have
pursued these topics further than we at first in-
tended. The Committee of Parliament will be
immediately appointed for taking into consideration
the whole question of the trade with Asia, and if
the merchants, as clients of the Committee, are

behind-hand in diligence when compared with their
monopolizing rival, the loss will not fall on them-
selves alone, but through them on the whole com-
munity.—lbid.

That part of Friday's discussion in the House of
Commons, which related to the course of policy
pursued by the British Government as between
Spain and Mexico, having excited some attention,
we are inclined to notice a little pamphlet of 20
pages, which was sent to. us on Saturday, (the
morning after the debate), and which we are told
only issued from the press while Lord Palmerston
was in the act of bringing the subject forward. The
complaint of the Noble Lord, which was afterwards
repeated and enforced by Mr. Charles Grant, Dr.
Lushington, and Lord John Russell, amounts to this
—that Spain having been for a number of years
preparing to make one or more attacks on Mexico,
and the Mexicans conceiving that their most effec-
tive mode of self-defence was to anticipate the as-
sailant by an immediate attack on Cuba, were given
to understand by the British Minister for Foreign
Affairs, that no suck aitae7; on the island of Cuba
would, on the part of England, be permitted. The
Mexicans were thus prevented absolutely, by the
menaced interposition of this country, from defending
themselves in the only manner which could avert an
in iasion of the soil of Mexico; and Cuba was pro-
tected, for the benefit of Spain, from the arms of a
state with which, though at peace with the rest of
the world, Ferdinand thought proper to persist in
carrying on hostilities. The declared system of
England, from the hour at which the independence
of Mexico was recognized by Mr. Canning, and in-
deed throughout the latter periods of the preceding
contest for her freedom, was one of " strict and im-
partial neutrality." There are two kinds of neu-
trality,—one which disavows and abstains from all
interference whatever; another which, on a specific
principle, does not admit a qualified interference, but
an interference which, to be just or honest, must beper-
fectly equal in regard to both the belligerent parties.
England, then, having interposed to save Cuba from
an attack by the Mexicans, appears to have afforded
the Republic a serious topic of complaint, in having
granted to Cuba full permission to become the
nucleus and depot of all the armaments made by
Spain, and despatched across the Atlantic, for over-
turning the infant State of Mexico. Lord Palmer-
ston put it concisely thus—" that having already
saved Cuba from Mexico, it became our unquestion-
able duty to save Mexico from Cuba." It seems
probable that this subject had not been pressed
with much force or diligence on the British Go-
vernment by any friend of the Mexican nation, since
the expedition under Barradas, which was prepared
in the port of the Havannah, sailed against Mexico
altogether unmolested, and previously not discoun-
tenanced by this country. If there be (and we do
not deny that there may be) sufficient motives to
justify the British Government in protecting Cuba
from invasion by any transatlantic state, Mexico, it
appears, would be quite content to see that island
neutralized by the orders of Great Britain, and ren-
dered at one and the same moment unassailable by any
American power, and incapable of becoming the
assailant of any. That there are British interests
of immeasurable value involved in the question
whether the old Spanish colonies (and especially
Mexico, the most important of them) shall make
rapid advances towards national prosperity, or shall
continue desolate and bankrupt, from exposure to
the ruinous expense attending the maintenance of
standing armies to protect her shores from invasion,
no candid person will deny, and least of all, from
the known sentiments of some of them, his Ma-
jesty's present Ministers. As for any dread of a
war" with Spain, arising out of the substitution
on our part of an impartial for a unilateral policy
between these powers, we presume there is little to
apprehend. Other European nations were probably
well disposed to lend assistance to Ferdinand in his
attempts to reconquer America, but we have never
heard of their threatening England with " war" on
account of Mr. Canning's public declaration to Par-
liament, that we would not suffer any foreign Go-
vernment to take part in the colonial contest. This
country has, indeed, no very obvious right to found
a system of partial interference between two foreign
states, and deeply to the detriment of one of them,
on any view of mere selfish advantage. But if in-
terest, not honour, were to guide as on this question,
it is far more essential to have Mexico prosperous,
than to have Cuba undisturbed.—lbid.

Mr. Denison, on presenting a petition last night,
after briefly recapitulating the obligations of the
country to the Duke of Wellington, concluded with
observing, " that much still remained to be done;
and all the country looked for reduction—not the
reduction of a few paltry clerks, but of such offices
as the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland, together with
every other useless place and sinecure." It is a
favourable sign when men of Mr. Denison's weight
in the country call for the abolition of useless places
and sinecures, beginning with the most useless and
the most extravagantly paid of all—the Lord Lieu-
tenancy of Ireland—and propose that in the expen-
diture of the public money utility alone should be
our guide. No man has a deeper interest in an
economical expenditure of the public money than
the person who now receives this 30,0001. a year—
the Duke of Northumberland. A great landholder
like his, Grace must lose much more by the pre-
sent system than he can gain by it. We have more
than once observed that it is a fiction to say that
there are two Houses of Parliament. The Mem-
bers of the House of Peers sit personally in one
House, and by proxy in another. Whenever a
Commoner acquires a considerable property in
boroughs he is made a Peer. The Peers then are
the rulers of this country. But then, as the King
can make Peers when he pleases, and as the old
Peers, when they lose their property and influence,
still retain their votes in the Upper House, the
Peers possessed of large estates and influence are
forced to admit their needy brethren to a share of
the plunder of the country. Such men as the Dukes
of Buccleugh, Northumberland, Devonshire, and
Bedford; the Marquis of Stafford; Earls Gros-
venor, Fitzwilliam, Lonsdale, &c. are great losers at
this game, for they pay far more as their share of
contributions to the State to quiet the consciences
of their needy brethren than they can possibly gain
in offices and sinecures. It is possible that now
that we seem to have nearly reached the limits of
taxation, this discovery may be made by the richer
part of the Peers. No doubt there is a pleasure in
being able by a display of power to obtain a share
of the public money ; and we can understand how,
for the sake of this display, men should be
willing to pay more than they thus obtain.
Some people, we are also aware, have the plea-
sure in receiving money enhanced by the tits-
honesty of the mode of coming by it. It
was Lord Malmesbury, we believe, who observed
last year, that it was with men as with dogs ; there
was always a little of the wolf about them—that as
even a pampered dog would carry off bones and
hide them, so men always had a hankering after
regular modes of obtaining the goods of their neigh-
bours; and a contemporary lately observed, that
,;here was something shockingly human in the way

in which the monkeys at Exeter 'Change, in feeding,
chose each to eat out of his neighbour's dish. It
may be urged, in extenuation of the conduct of so
many wealthy Peers, in endeavouring to ruin them-
selves for the sake of ruining others, that the wild-
ness of their nature has never been overcome by dis-
cipline. Ignorance, too, of the extent of the injury
they inflicted on themselves,:may have had its effect,
Thus, for instance, we are told by a memoir writer.
" that the post of Captain of the Band of Pensioners
was vacant; the King wished to give it to a Gen-
tleman whom he desired to have about his person.
The Minister (Mr. Pelham) proposed to give it
to another Gentleman; but, after some struggle,
the Minister yielded, arid the post was des-
tined for the King's friend. At this mo-
ment, before the place was actually given
away, Lord Falmouth signified to the Minister that
he wished to have the employment. Mr. Pelham
remonstrated with him that the place was destined
for a personal friend of the King; the only answer
which Lord Falmouth made was, Sir, we are nine.'
This was the only answer which the Minister could
obtain from him; and because Lord Falmouth
named nine Members of the House of Commons,
the King and the Minister were both obliged to
submit." We suppose even then Lord Falmouth's
share of the taxes amounted to more than he could
clutch in this way. But then there was the plea-
sure of depriving the King of the presence of a
man personally agreeable to him,• arid of forcing
another on him whom he disliked, and there was
the pleasure which Lord hlalmesbury supposes all
men have in putting their hand into their neighbours'
pockets. But, however this may be, certain it is,
that till we have a House of Commons
fairly representing the country, and an end
put to the borough-mongering, it will not
be in the power of any Government to
protect the people from aristocratical beggars.
We may be sure that the expenditure will always
approach as closely as may be to the limit of ability
to support taxes. There are alwa) s needy men in
excess well connected to be provided for. The bo-
rough-mongers are merely the heads respectively of
a large partnership, with all the members of which
in the ratio of their influence they are obliged to
share the spoil. They are constantly beset by an
army of dependents, who acquire places of all descrip-
tions, down to the situation of a clerk, tide-waiter,
arid exciseman. The moment that there is a pros-
pect of increased means, the desire to obtain it will
give being to a faction, which can only be kept in
check by the usual means. The present distress awes
the possessors of influence, and gives a power for a
time to the Duke of Wellington; but the first fair
weather will bring out the vermin from their holes.
We were sorry to see Mr. O'Connell advocating the
existence of such an unjustifiable sinecure as the
Lord Lieutenancy, on the ground of the money be-
ing spent in Dublin, where there were 7,000 persons
living on the charity of lid. per day. If Mr.
O'Connell ‘vislies money for the poor, let him have
it in a regular way. The giving 30,0001. to a
Nobleman for the sake of the poor of Dublin, re-
minds us of an observation of an acute Ecclesiastical
historian, that the Clergy used to call themselves
treasurers for the poor, but they collected this re-
venue of the poor at the expence of 95 per cent. It
was happily observed by Mr. Hume, that we should
never be in want of abundance of gentlemen who
would consent to receive public money, on the con-
dition of spending it for the good of the country.
His Majesty, God bless him, builds palaces for the
good of the people, and finds employment for British
workmen in ornamenting them ; arid if we praise
Patriot Lord Lieutenants, why refuse to praise
Patriot Kings ?—lliorning Chronicle.
The state of the labouring classes in England
rapidly approaches the lowest point at which the
degradation of human nature can arrive, in what is
called a civilized country. If the present system,
that " grinds the faces of the poor," and desolates
the morals of the people, should go on much longer,
England will not be able to boast that her land re-
tains a single trace of that " bold peasantry—a
country's pride," for whose manly virtues she had
been so long celebrated. Distress and misery are
performing their work of desolation, and fast re-
ducing the industrious classes to the wretched and
destitute condition of the populace of some of those
Continental States which Englishmen used to con-
trast with their own with mingled feelings of pity
and patriotic exultation. The accounts which we
have of late given, fram time to time, from various
parts of the country, of English labourers set up to
auction, or carrying sand or earth from one place to
another to keep them out of idleness and mischief,
spoke badly enough for the effects of a system
which is working the downfall of the country—but
the statement which we subjoin from the Manches-
ter Advertiser surpasses whatever it has been our
melancholy duty heretofore to publish of the distress
arid debasement of the working classes. The state-
merit to which we allude runs as follows :

Considerable surprise has been excited in the town dur-
ing the present week, by the appearance of several waggons
loaded with flour, coal, and potatoes, which were dragged
by from sixteen to twenty agricultural labourers, regu-
larly yoked to the waggons like a team of horses. Yes-
terday a waggon-load of potatoes were brought into the
town by this mode of conveyance, in which twenty men
were yoked,by threes. On inquiry, we found that the pota-
toes were brought from Tarvin, in Cheshire, a distance,
we believe, of between thirty and forty miles. They were
for a huckster in this town, and the price of carriage for
the whole distance was two shillings per load, of which
the waggon contained five and twenty—just half-a-crown
per head for labourious employment of this kind, which
would, at least, occupy three days in coming here and re-
turning ! The wan and emaciated appearance of the greater
number of these poor men, who had to stop every few
moments to recruit their exhausted strength, afforded
strong evidence of the state of the agricultural population,
and of the stern necessity which prompted them to become
substitutes for beasts of burden.

—Here is a picture of misery that the slave islands
have never presented. Here are the blessings of
peace to the most industrious and once the most
comfortable population in the world, in the fifteenth
year of our " amicable relations" with all the Courts
of Europe. Let the Duke of Wellington, let Mr.
Cam Hobhouse, Mr. Hume, and Lord Howick,
with their Whig associates, who denied by their
votes the other night the existence of general and
grinding distress in this country—let them contem-
plate this picture, and say if, in that " partial suf-
fering which occasionally takes place in the progress
of a nation to improvement," it is necessary that
Englishmen should be converted into beasts of
burden, and usurp the offices of the brute creation I
There were feudal Lords in France, who, before the
Revolution, used, when they pleased, to yoke their
serfs to water-carts, and rejoice in degrading to the
condition of the inferior animals those whom it was
their interest, as well as duty, to have raised in the
scale of social existence. France was then, no doubt,
as the Duke of Wellington says of England, in
the progress to improvement; but it was that im-
provement which was to be pursued and attained
through the terrible scenes—the crimes and suffer-
ings of a ferocious revolution. Dreadful, then, was
the recoil of oppression on those who practised it—
fierce was the retaliation of those human beasts of
burden, who sprang from the passive submission of
the slave into the attitude and action of the vin-
dictive and unsparing oppressor. The feudal system
does not harness men to carts and waggons in Eng-
land; but distress produces the same effects. Men
are driven by their misery to supply the place of
oxen and horses, while machinery, in its turn,
displaces men. The Duke of Wellington is not
answerable for the origin of this state of things. He
was not the father of the war, and the National
Debt, and the Currency Bill, and the free-trade
system; but lie takes upon himself a heavy respon-
sibility when he endeavours to conceal from the
Sovereign and the Parliament, and as much as pos-
sible even from himself, the alarming and univeral
distress of the country. In so acting we do not
charge him with cold and premeditated inhumanity.
We believe the errors of his policy to arise from ig-
norance, and that, though a crime in a Minister,is not
of equal magnituJe with the cruelty that knows

and scorns the misery which it occasions. We be-
lieve the Premier has been led to suppose that the
present sufferings of the people of England arises
from temporary or accidental causes; and, there-
fore, he trusts more to the " working of events"
for a remedy than to the exercise of any human
wisdom. This only proves that a man of the first-
rate talents for war may be very incompetent to the
conduct of civil affairs. It was not the " working
of events" brought us into the state in which we
are—it was the active folly of our Statesmen and
Legislatures, and nothing but fortitude enlightened
by wisdom can extricate us. Where the physical
strength of the country is falling as rapidly into
misery and degradation as we see it in England by
the pressure of national calamity, there is nothing
can save the State from eventual convulsion but the
intelligence, decision, and energy of its rulers. A
Government that, in such times, shrinks from the
truth, and places its confidence in other acts of
statesmanship than those of candid arid intrepid
wisdom, only accelerates the crisis which every
lover of his country would wish to avert.—Morning
Herald.

It appears to be a matter of consolation with the
thick-and-thin supporters of the Ministry, that from
what has hitherto appeared of the Opposition, it is
made up of numerous small parties, who oppose it
on distinct, and sometimes adverse, grounds; but
we question much whether there is in reality so
much reason for congratulation on this score as they
seem to imagine. The Opposition, we allow, is
made up of small parties, no one of which is capable
singly of making head against the Ministry; but it
ought not to be forgotten, on the other, that although
these parties may take very different views of the
domestic and foreign policy of the Government, they
all concur in censuring and opposing it, and that
though they would undoubtedly be more formidable
were they to act in concert, their numbers are such,
and the points of attack so many, as to render their
opposition extremely embarrassing to the Ministry.
In the division which took place on the Address to
the Throne, it is confidently asserted that but for
the timely and disinterested aid of the Whig
Leader of the House of Commons, the Ministry
would have been left in a minority of three. As the
matter stood, however, the Opposition minority was
indeed frightful; and from the accounts which have
reached us from well-informed quarters, we have
strong reason to believe that it will be still more
frightful on the next occasion of a division. That
the Ministry have a difficult task to execute in the
present state of the country, no one will deny ; but
we can see no excuse for attempting to represent
that distress as partial which every one knows to be
general, and which even one of the ministerial
organs, in moving the Address, characterized as ex-
traordinary—still less reason has the country to be
satisfied with a Government which acknowledges
the error of its past ways, and yet refuses to amend
them—which saddles the country with a practical
addition to its burthens of fully 25 per cent., and
has no other mode of relief to propose but re-
trenchment. Retrenchment might have done some
good when the national debt only amounted to
a few millions, and the taxes that were levied went
in the most part in payment of the services of the
year; but retrenchment can do but little now.—
Three-fifths of the revenue pass into the hands of
the national creditor : and we are confident that we
do not exaggerate when we state that out of the re-
maining two-fifths any saving that can be ef-
fected—though the least saving is a good—must be
wholly inoperative in affording relief to the country.
The more, in fact, that we look at the state of the
country, and the causes by which its present
ruinous condition has been brought about, the more
are we persuaded that the small-note currency must
be restored ; and that however the Government
may oppose a return to such policy, the distress of
the country will ultimately force it upon it.—Morn-
ing Advertiser.

LAW INTELLIGENCE.

COURT OF KING'S BENCH, FEB. 8.
BRETT V. BEALES ♦ND OTHERS.

Lord TENTERDEN delivered the opinion of the
Court in this case, in which Mr. Taunton, in the
early part of the term, moved for a rule nisi for a
new trial. His Lordship stated that the Court was
of opinion, on the authority of several cases which
he cited, that there was no evidence to sustain a
toll thorough, and that the case had therefore been
properly left to the jury upon the single question
whether or not the fact of the existence of a toll
traverse had been made out. The Learned Counsel
consequently took no rule.

COURT OF COMMON PLEAS, FEE. S.
MURRAY V. NICIIOLLS AND OTHERS.

This was an action of false imprisonment, libel,
and trover, and was also tried before the Lord
Chief Justice, at Guildhall. It arose, it will be
recollected, out of a contract entered into and sub.
sequent disagreement between the plaintiff and de-
fendants, relative to the publication of a series of
maps of the inland navigation of Great Britain.
After a considerable number of subscriptions had
been obtained, the defendants disclaimed a partner-
ship with the plaintiff, treated him as merely an
agent or canvasser, and upon his refusing to give up
the subscription books in his possession, had him
apprehended on a charge of embezzlement, conveyed
from Manchester to Wakefield on the top of a
coach, handcuffed, his trunk seised and searched,
and afterwards advertised him, although he had
been discharged, as being under prosecution for em-
bezzlement. The Jury found a verdict for the
plaintiff, damages 5001. for the false imprisonment,
300/. for the libel, and 101. on the count in trover
for the seizure and loss of the trunk ; in all 8101.
It Michaelmas Term Mr. Serjeant Cross obtained
a rule to show cause why there should not be a new
trial, on the ground that the damages were exces-
sive; upon which occasion the Court intimated an
opinion that the payment of 5001. to the plaintiff
might, perhaps, be the fairest and most satisfactory
mode of settling the matter.
Mr. Serjeant WILDE stated that his client would
consent to receive the sum suggested by the Court.
A verdict for 5001. damages upon the count for
false imprisonment, and Is. each upon the other
counts, was accordingly entered for the plaintiff.