The Sun.
London, England, 1854-01-16 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, JANITTARY 16, 1854,

plaints. I have seen great advantage accrue from some
members of the Court of Aldermen being brokers by
profession. It is a mistake to suppose that no advan-
tage is gained to the public by the control of the Court
of Aldermen over the brokers. The cost of admission
to the brokers is 181., including the expense of taking up
the freedom ; and they also pay a yearly rent of 51. to
the corporation for the right to carry on their business.
'With respect to the cart-tax levied in the City, it pro-
duces about 5,0001. a year. It has existed from time
immemorial, and its produce has been mortgaged for
public improvements, an important instance of which is
the new Victoria-street. These mortgages are now
nearly all paid off, and the corporation have declared
themselves perfectly willing to relinquish these tolls.
At this stage of the inquiry, the commissioners ad-
journed till Tuesday.

THE EXTRAORDINARY ATTEMPT TO TRANS-
FER THE EXPENSE OF TER RECEIPT AND
DELIVERY OF LETTERS AT THE QUEEN'S
PRISON.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.

SIR,— I consider the public greatly indebted for your
exertions to obtain redress for one of the most atrocious
acts ever committed by persons having the control of a
public department of tae State. The wilful detention,
for the space of seven days, of all the letters addressed
to persons whose correspondence is generally of a con-
fidential character, and demanding the best possible ar-
rangements, is unprecedented, and I trust the Post
Master General will promptly correct the error and in-
justice which has been committed, in attempting t 3
transfer so trifling a charge in the post-office expenses,
to create a greater amount of charge in another depart-
ment, at the same time transferring duties to turnkeys
whose occupation is of such opposite character—the
post-office duties being of a confidential nature with the
prisoners, their solicitors and friends, the duties of turn-
keys being confidential only with the Governor and
his officers. At the same time it is due to the Governor
to state, he has proved that be has a better sense of
honour than to willingly permit his turnkeys to em-
bark in such duties.

As a question of revenue it must be manifest that
treble the number of letters will be posted in the office
within the walls, and a proportionate number received ;
for it must not be forgotten that every letter sent by
special messengers to post outside, and also to purchase
stamps, must be attended with inconvenience and extra
cost ; but if this were not the common-sense view of the
case, the wants of the prisoners demand the service as
one of the most essential for the benefit of creditors as
well as debtors.—l am, Sir, your obedient servant,

OBSERVER.

A VOICE FROM THE QUEEN'S BENCH.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.

Sir,—Since your insertion of my letter of the 29th of
December, for which accept our warmest thanks, the
authorities of the General Post-office have carried out
their ruthless order, and we have been shut out, by the
consequent abolition of our Post-office, established for
about 50 years, ever since the sth of January, from all
communication with our friends, relatives, and legal ad-
visers.

The confusion, perplexity, and distress it has occa-
sioned, " quceque ipsa misserrima vidi, et quorum, pcvs
magna fui," beyond all description or belief. Had a
similar interdict cut off the denizens of the Temple Or
Lincoln's-inn from postal communication with the ex-
ternal world what indignation, remonstrances, and de-
putations would have besieged and overwhelmed the
General Post-office ? But we are prisoners, and, con-
sequently, fair game. The General Post-office know
well that they have to deal only with defenceless pri-
soners, and, beyond a formal acknowledgment, no further
attention has been paid by them either to our respectful
memorial or to individual remonstrance. Their attitude
puts one in mind of Russian aggression and of Roman
menace to a conquered country, Vat victis
In pursuance of the order of the 21st of December,
the postmen presented, as they have since continued to
do, theletters of each delivery at the gate of the Queen's
Bench, and were met by the courteous offer of the Go-
vernor to furnish them with lists of the staircases, num-
bers, and their inhabitants—with greater facilities, in
fact, than they met with at the city chambers and Inns
of Court, to which this place bears a resemblance so close
as to render the distribution of letters a matter of no
difficulty when the details have been once mastered.
But the postmen, apprehensive of the consequences of
exceeding their instructions, and aware that the General
Post-office did not consider us entitled to the privilege
enjoyed by the most insignificant alley in the dirtiest
court of the metropolis, declined to avail themselves of
the Governor's assistance, and returned our letters to
St. Martin's-le-Grand. As I have already explained in
my letter of the 29th of December, the present officers
of the prison (even supposing there to be no insuperable
objection to the delivery of letters by irresponsible par-
ties) are utterly inadequate to the performance of a duty
requiring one man's incessant and undivided attention
for 12 hours daily.
They are divided into a day and right watch ; the first
experience difficulty in snatching an hour's relaxation,
aad the latter have not more than four hours' sleep out
of the 24. The distribution of letters, therefore, by
them, without an addition to their number,—which
would entail an expense of nearly double that of the late
postmaster,—is an absolute impossibility, of which an
hour's investigation would have convinced the Postmas-
ter-General.
The insinuation, therefore, of "obstinacy" against the
Governor,—than whom no one more sincerely deplores,
or is more anxious to remedy the present state of things,
by anything short of a concession that would indisputably
demoralize his officers and throw all the arrangements
of a hitherto well conducted prison into confusion,—is
an inconceivable absurdity.
With regard to ourselves, indeed, it is an exquisite re-
finement of cruelty in the General Post-office to visit men
already bowed down by misfortune, in addition to the
penalty already imposed by very stringent statutes upon
every bankrupt and insolvent debtor who fails to give
satisfaction to his creditors, with so tremendous an ag-
gravation of their difficulties, and an obstacle to every
arrangement to procure their liberty. The law says,
"You shall exert summary diligence in satisfying, or
arranging with, your creditors, and a post-office has
been established within your walls to afford you every
means of communicating with them and your legal ad-
visers for that purpose." But the General Post-office,
ignoring all this, says, "We have nothing to do with
acts of Parliament for your relief, or their general
policy, but only to carry out our plans of economy,
which require the abolition of your post-office." But
what justice or economy can there be in a regulation so
contrary in every respect to the letter and intention of
statutes for our relief, which injures the creditor by
cutting him off from all but personal intercourse with
his debtor ; for which he may have neither time nor in-
clination, and brings ruin and starvation upon the
debtor by the stoppage of his communications and sup-
plies ? The period, too, at which this cruel regulation
has been enforced is singularly unfortunate and inap-
portune. The necessaries of life, in consequence of the
absence of shops within the walls, and of a peculiarity
in our internal arrangements invidious to allude to, fur-
ther than that it is severely felt by the inmates, have
risen to more than double the price of last year, while
the means of procuring them have in many instances
diminished. The Post-office has chosen this very mo-
ment to add to our distress by damming up their source,
and consigning some dependent upon the occasional
bounty of friends, and others long struggling to protract
existence, embittered by misfortune and want, to star-
vation and despair.
Surely, the Postmaster-General cannot be aware of the
confusion, perplexity, and distress caused by this hasty
and inconsiderate regulation, more merciless even than
that of the Winchester gaoler ; he only starved them by
inches, but the Postmaster-General would fain finish out-
right. Should he, however, persist in endeavouring to
add another Jones to the list of inquests—and there-is
already a painful rumour of some in great distress —he
may perhaps be branded by a verdict of a more stringent
character than the last, the shame and remorse of which
will attach to him to his dying day.
.:. There are some here who have served her Majesty and
the country in various capacities, with more or less dis-
tinction ; others, members of the learned professions ;
and some who have been, or still are, extensive land-
holders, proprietors, and merchants, and who have
hitherto dischareed the functions of grand jurors, deputy
lieutenants, rnagistrates &c., and continue to pay rates
and taxes to a large amount, until misfortunes, more or
less temporary, brought them here to effect an arrange-
ment of their affairs. Are these, sir, to be suddenly de-
prived of a privilege not withdrawn from felons —of hear-
ing of the birth of a child, or the decease of a parent—
of receiving the consolations of friendship or the allevia-
tions of charity,
The Postmaster may not, perhaps, be aware that this
is not a common prison, like Whitecross-street or Horse-
monger-lane Gaol, to which every one is of necessity
brought after capture. This is filled by migration from
even the most distant parts of the country. Its superiority
over others consists in strict but more liberal regulation
—a private apartment, with sashed instead of grated
windows, unadulterated beer, and a little more leg room.
To obtain these mighty privileges, 3t., or, according to
the conscience of the attorney procuring it, as much as
51., is paid for a habeas to remove from another prison at
an additional expense, according to the distance, amount-
ing sometimes to 251. or 301. It is said that a portion
of this is paid into the Consolidated Fund, and which,
added to the revenue derived from the late post-office,
has amounted to several hundred pounds per annum. Is
it not then, sir, a hard case that, after being mercilessly
plundered by the bailiffs and sponging-house people to our
last shilling, and then turned out into Whitecross-street
Prison, where it is impossible to obtain the smallest
privacy for the arrangement of our affairs, we should
now be treated worse than felons by the Post-office,
after having paid so dearly for a privilege in which
we have acquired, es it were, a vested interest, and
the public also with us as creditors ? But the Post-office
turn a deaf ear to every remonstrance, to every argument ;
and it is therefore, only through the medium of your
journal, which exercises an influence to which the
peer and the peasant, the monarch and the slave alike
defer, that I in common with my fellow-prisoners ap-
peal to her Majesty's Secretary of State for the Home
Department—whose office it is to superintend this place
—to redress this monstrous wrong ; and we do so to one
no less distinguished for his urbanity and justice than
for his readiness to listen to the complaints of the hum-
blest, in the fullest confidence of his redeeming the
promise he made to that effect last year in Scotland, on
the broad ground that the abolition of our post-office is
contrary to the letter and spirit of enactments for the
relief of bankrupts and insolvent debtors, to public prin-
ciple and common humanity. For there can be no doubt,
sir, that, deprived of postal communication, this place
would cease to be what it was intended by the Legisla-
ture, and become an abyss of misery, despair, and death
frightful to contemplate—Pandora's box of evil, without
hope, with Dante's sentence inscribed upon its portals,
" Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch:entrate."
I remain, sir, your obedient servant,
A THREE YEAR'S CAPTIVE.
Queen's Prison, Jan. 11.