The Sun.
London, England, 1853-08-16 00:00:00

LONDON, TUESDAY, AUGUST 16, 1853.

The House of Commons has exhibited one more
striking proof of its subserviency to the dictates of
the Joint-stock Administration in addition to
those evinced on many occasions during the ses-
sion. It has accepted the Lords' amendment on
the Government of India Bill, without a division,
and almost without a discussion. It has surren-
dered at the first summons—submitted to the
contemptuous and unwarranted invasion of what
what was once its most cherished privilege—sanc-
tioned the interference of the Upper Home on a
purely fiscal question, and consented to the con-
tinuance of a vexatious and grinding monopoly,
affecting not only the comfort, but the very exist-
ence of myriads of her Majesty's subjects. Time
was when the popular branch of the Legislature
would have exhibited greater spirit—when it
would have boldly vindicated its independence if
so wantonly and unjustifiably assailed. But the
drab-coloured mantle of the "excellent ABERDEEN"
appears to have descended on the representatives
of the people. It only requires that the assumption
should be totally unjustifiable, and the demeanour
of the aggressor sufficiently insolent to insure
unqualified obedience. Verily their Lordships
have fully resented the insult offered to them-
selves by sending up a measure of such vital im-
portance to their House in the month of August.
If they sustained disgrace and humiliation by the
virtual ignoring of their existence as a delibera-
tive body, they exacted ample retribution, and
compelled the co-ordinate branch to swallow much
dirt when assenting to the amendment (amend-
runt, forsooth !) by which the 44th clause was
totally expunged from the bill, and the Company
was permitted to retain its commercial character
as sole manufacturer, exclusive vendor, of salt,
the article, par excellence, of primary necessity, on
which a heavy, almost a prohibitory, impost is
even more cruel than it would be even on rice
itself in India, or on potatoes in Ireland, and far
worse than a bread-tax in England.

We repeat the assertion, startling as it may
athPrart
the deliberately and advisedly repeat it—
that
ever on Salt in India is the most cruel
Those
who entered into human conception.
consider salt merely as it enters into
the consumption of their own families, or as it is
used in Europe,important positonea'iti form no conception of the
Hindoo Ryot. occupies with respect to the
It ii
that it must be 5t
as an • article of luxury
insipidityregarded.
the tastelesslt certainly removes
the coarse rice, the
chief, indeed the only, foof
of the soil. But°tlit of the half-naked cul-
tivatoranThmedicine—the
solitary preventive of the liesatashs
Y thousands of
ing disease that cuts off so ria --c and linger-
human
--that im-
molates beings in each and everyaatilyea.rth
innumerable victims
golden
Mammon without remorse or pity. 6 shrine of
Cc isi
NuMiluS" may be the financier's " eLtrr
rlli
never was there so ruthless an applieate.' but
the maxim as in the Salt Tax of India, on
tantalises the sufferers by visions of remedies,
from which they are excluded no less by the mag_ I
nitude of the tax than by the vexatious and unjus-
tifiable regulations adopted for its enforcement, and
which, by the monopoly created, and the consequent
adulteration practised, prevent even those who
could afford the necessary price from obtaining
the wished for-remedy in a pure and wholesome
state, which, by-a demoniacal refinement of cruelty,
makes death a painful, hideous, revolting, and
tedious death to thousands—the foundation of a
branch of the national revenue—the means by
which its collection was enforced.
Have we, as Mr. DISRAELI pertinently inquired
—" Have we well considered the consequence of
keeping an entire population in a chronic state of
bad health I'
risi-
bility of the The observation excited the
Hou
depicted se,but it was but too well founded,
too truly
.. e keep "
a th the results of the nefarious
W
impost.
of fundostan
itte great bulk of the inhabitants
chronic state of bad health,"
by limiting the suppl
of the only article that
tnd
possibly restore .
deteriorating the quality
and health to the sufferell vigour
no laughing matter to the • It is
horrible ingenuity that devised
miserable • •
unfortunately
victims of the
strument for extracting money so potent an in-
froin their pockets.

Mr. CARNAC BROWN, who published an able
pamphlet on the subject, from which Sir JOHN
PAKINGTON quoted largely, in bringing forward
the clause—which, in deference to their Lordships,
has now been struck out—has placed this matter
in the clearest light. The Honourable Gentle-
man, after referring to a fearful punishment in-
flicted upon convicted criminals of the worst
class, who, by the mere deprivation of salt,
were " devoured by worms engendered in their
own stomachs," says—"Be it noted that this effect
was produced upon these persons by confining
them to a vegetable diet, uncorrected by salt."
A diet wholly vegetable is the diet of numerous
classes in India, and a diet almost wholly so
is the diet of the rest of the population. A
punishment, therefore, the most horrible and
loathsome which human barbarity ever devised in
the dark ages for the torture of the worst crimi-
nals, is the fate which the East India Company
maintain and defend as one of their principal fis-
cal revenues, and which they deliberately run the
risk of inflicting, in this the nineteenth century,
upon the millions of innocent men whom humane
England has confided to their governance ! Not
only do multitudes of natives d'ie annually in the
interior, of disease produced by the want of a suffi-
cient supply of salt to sustain life in a healthy
state, but no man who has used his opportunities of
observation among them can entertain a doubt
that many of those who survive and are met with
in every part, victims to the most loathsome and
miserable diseases, gradually making them objects
truly horrible to behold, owe the origin and the
inveteracy of their sufferings to the same cause,
which converts the blood in their bodies into a
mass of corruption. These statements ought to
be written in characters of fire on the consciences
of those who, through carelessness or indifference,
have assisted in the perpetuation of this atrocious
tax. The Lords, who carried the amendment, in
violation of the privileges of the Commons, the
representatives who yielded without a struggle to
the usurpation, should ponder on the probable
consequences of their conduct, and reflect that
the sins of omission are as bad as those of com-
mission. There is but one consolation to be de-
rived from the proceedings, that, inasmuch as the
only redeeming feature of the entire measure has
been obliterated, the more speedy and more signal
must be the downfall of the Double Government.

Rather north of the centre of the Durham coast
—about midway between the mouths of the Tyne
and the Tees—a flourishing little town has sprung
up within the brief interval of the last quarter of
a century. The history of the rise of Seaham
may be regarded as in every respect characteristic,
peculiarly characteristic, at once of this country,
and of the present generation. Certainly no
other age, and we may ventury to say, no other
nation, could have afforded an example compar-
able in its display of individual enterprise, irre-
sistible energy, and unflinching determination.
It is all very well to hear of a palace like that of
ALADDIN, built in a single night out of porphyry,
and gold, and jacinth, and onyx, and alabaster.
But it is vastly better to witness the construction
(within little more than five-and-twenty years),
of seven hundred houses—and these houses, more-
over, clustered together at a spot on the sea shore,
where, as recently as 1828, there was visible only
the rugged and barren beach, without the
sign of human habitation. While the one
palace is nothing more than a beautiful dream,
these seven hundred houses constitute at this
moment an admirable and most substantial
reality. A reality, too, of no less marvellous
origin than the golden pile conjured up by the
imagination of the Arabian Romancist. For in
this, as in so many other glorious instances
around us, the triumph has been effected at the
bidding of the Genii of the Lamp. Those mira-
culous slaves of civilisation—according to the ex-
pression of a living author, our great Poet-Novel-
ist—the Genii of " Skilled Labour," conjured up
by the Lamp of Modern Knowledge. Seaham is
another testimony of their power, a testimony
scarcely less notable than any by -which it may
have been preceded.
Elsewhere will be found in our impression of
this evening, a report extracted from the columns
of our contemporary the Sunderland News, ac-
cording to which, it would appear that another
epoch has been satisfactorily passed through by the
industrious little community, whose recent origin,
and rapidly-acquired good fortune, have here been,
in a few words, specified. The completion of
the Water Works in connection with Seaham Town
and Harbour gave occasion, it will be perceived,
to a banquet, by which that (to the locality) most
important achievement has been duly celebrated.
Allowance must, of course, be made as usual for
the fervid amiability of the different speeches de-
livered by the orators of the afternoon under
these agreeably postprandial circumstances.
we all know, is prover-
bial After-dinne- After-dinner-eloquence, quence,
for its exceeding suavity. Everybody is fami-
liar with the fact that rhetoricians invariably dis-
play under those somewhat delightful auspices, a
gentleness of tone comparable only to that
habitually observable among the charming race of
the As-you-likeans. Scarcely a man ever rises
after the cloth has been removed but his heart
seems melting in his bosom like butter, to employ
the delicious expression of the " Hermit of Belly-
fulle," the redoubtable sage of the Cell of the Cork-
screw. Under the genial influence of the hour,
the veriest curmudgeon becomes, on the instant,
metamorphosed into the philanthropist. It is to
us, as a peculiarly dinner-giving and dinner-
receiving race, the commonest of all social pheno-
mena—this most delectable of transformations.
If ever, therefore, compliments are lavished to the
right or to the left in the course of an after-
dinner oration, we are accustomed to swallow
the words, as well as the walnuts of the dessert,
cum grano salis. We credit the sincerity of the
speaker as much as we please, making ample al-
lowances at the same moment for the exaggera-
tions which we consider to be inevitable under
the circumstances.

Nevertheless if ever we might believe the truth
of the eulogiums pronounced during the convivial
declamations of such an assemblage, we do honestly
rest assured that we might in reference to this
banquet commemorative of the completion of the
Seaham Water Works. It was a festivity in which
good feeling and good fellowship must necessarily
have been the predominant sentiments. It was
an incident, in fact, in the pleasures of which
every individual present must, more or less cor-
dially, have participated. For the kindliest emo-
tions must have been on all hands to the full
reciprocated. It cannot have escaped the notice
of the least intelligent among the inhabitants of
the place, for example, that for the prosperity of
the town, for the very circumstance of its having
been called into existence, they are all of them
indiscriminately indebted to the personal enter-
prise, energy, determination, and perseverance of
the Marquis of LONDONDERRY. Every one of the
inhabitants of Seaham must have remembered
that truth in connection with others of a
kindred nature yet more remarkable re-
g°l-lecting, for instance, that to the same
eblenian
they owed, moreover, the harbour itself,
all well as the town f seven hundred habitations.
It must
likewise have been borne in mind by
those present
banq
from the
uet, that a
e the occasion of this interesting
already that town, besides receiving
site of its church and of
its national school,s the
,b
_toained in the local Infirmary
a noble benefaction fromi
the. Marchioness of LON-
DONDERRY. mean
the people of Seaham
could preserve such remembrances
• asthese in regard
to its Founder, the Found
er of seaham
bear other facts in recollection, could happily
ill
reference to its
industrious and enterprising populatien
LONDONDERRY himself notified this Lord
fact the other
day, at the banquet referred to, he
avowed
with some emotion and emphasis, that not one of
his projects, however daring, and even hopeless it
may have appeared at the outset, but commanded
from the people of Seaham their earnest and ener-
getic co-operation. It is attributable to this
mutual confidence in each other's sincerity, that
the Originator and the Inhabitants of that
flourishing little seaport have so conducted
matters, since shortly after 1828, that already, in
1853, Seaham has, through its docks (two wet
docks, one dry dock, and one tidal basin); an an-

nual shipment of coal to the amount of 273,2881
chaldrons—between 2,000 and 3,000 vessels en-
tering each year for the purpose of taking in car-
goes-300 ships finding there, at any time, ample
accommodation the town itself containing
from 4,000 to 5,000 inhabitants, and pos-
sessing, besides, 700 inhabited houses, a church,
as before remarked, four other places of wor-
ship for Dissenters, one public and several
private schools, a news-room, and, as we have
moreover already noticed, an infirmary. Added
to all these advantages—advantages collected toge-
ther within the brief interval of a quarter of a cen-
tury—Seaham is about to possess the vast supple-
mentary benefit of a railway, connecting it with
the neighbouring port of Sunderland. Here again
the enterprize is traceable to the founder of the
seaport—to the courageous patrician who has
already achieved with his single, and, let us add,
singular energy, triumphs which have been hither-
to regarded as the products alone of the toil of
many laborious adventurers striving together for
years in association.

It is by no means discreditable to our States-
men, that they are, one and all, unprepared with
any complete scheme of secondary punishments.
When, through the benign influences of Chris-
tianity, society generally has advanced beyond
regarding legal punishment as merely the just
measure of revenge for crime, innumerable con-
flicting considerations begin to perplex us.
DRAES'S plan is the only short and easy one ;
but, indeed, that is an easy one only when DRAES
himself is prosecutor, constable, judge, and jury
in his own person. Civilisation, though not
Christian, never yet carried out the theory of
legal vengeance. The very next step to it, a
theory which regards consequences to society
merely, and not the personal guilt of the unfortu-
nate criminal, the theory of deterring by punish-
ment, brings with it much to hinder consistent
and decisive action. Too lenient sentences will
not deter from crime, too severe ones elicit dan-
gerous sympathy for the guilty ; and, in a coun-
try where trial by jury is the right of the accused,
severity tends to the acquittal of the guilty. The
extreme of this theory was tested by the now
universally reprobated law of hanging for forgery.
The immense consequences at stake, in a commer-
cial country, if signatures were allowed to be forged
at any risk but that of life, were painted to us in
the most appalling colours, with the almost mortal
miseries of deceived individuals, and families of
widows and orphans ; yet all without avail.
Public feeling revolted at rows of men hanging
on the gallows for imitating a signature. Juries
preferred perjury to what they deemed practical
murder, and even those who clung to the unmiti-
gated theory of deterring by terror for the good
of society, were compelled to join the disciples of
ROMILLY and MACKINTOSH. It is now found
that credit is as good as ever, though forgery is
not atoned for with blood, and even shops are as
secure as before, though an ELDON held that they
would be ruinously plundered if a woman were not
to be torn from her infant—given birth to after
sentence—and hurried to the gallows for stealing
a few pence worth of lace ! We look back now
upon such notions amongst London tradesmen
and the highest judges with horror. We can
hardly believe we are adverting to a generation
known to half the present one, and quite possibly
those who stand in a like relation to us, may
wonder at, what they will deem, our rude and
barbarous conceptions on the subject of legal
punishments.
The truth is, we are, nationally, on the threshold
of the last and most benevolent theory of punish-
ment, that, namely, which feels as deep an inte-
rest in the reformation of the criminal, as in deli-
vering society from crimes incompatible with its
comfortable existence, or with its existence at all.
Nor is this due merely to perceiving the incon-
venience we suffer from the liberation of unre-
formed criminals. This has been indeed severely
felt, and felt perhaps most painfully by its
increasing the difficulty of obtaining employment
for those who would gladly return from prison to
honest industry. The really reformed have no
chance in society, belonging as they do to a class
which is generally unreformed. We attribute the
new wish of the community, however, to a wider
diffusion of genuine Christian sentiments. The
unrevengeful, the benevolent moral code of the
Gospel, has leavened society during the last fifty
years, and especially during the latter half of that
period, in a degree unprecedented before. Not-
withstanding all the jeremiads of sects and eccle-
siastics, we believe that at no past period of our
history have the current moral views of society
approached half so near to the Christian standard.
The feeling of universal brotherhood ; the con-
sciousness that the majority of criminals are
fellow-sinners, more tempted, perhaps, from
childhood, than ourselves ; the unlawfulness
of revenge ; the selfishness of regarding social
interests merely ; the duty of seeking to reclaim,
as Christianity itself comes to reclaim us.
Elevated, manly, and Christian sentiments, such
as these, have spread from a few superior minds of
literary or legislative reputation, and become the
moving principles of the many.
Our enlightened legislators, therefore, find
now, not only no opposition, but a public asking
them to give effect to its wishes. No reasonable
expense is grudged which may be required ; the
thing wanted is the plan, and the men to carry it
out. But here comes the real difficulty. Of all
the objects of punishment, reformation is the
most difficult to secure. In some few cases it is
impracticable—in none can it be effected by
merely mechanical arrangements. Every father
of a large family knows the discretion needed to
deal individually with each one of his charge, and
almost with each domestic offence. But how is
the difficulty increased when the subjects of re-
formatory discipline are adults, less educated often
than our children, never taught in younger days
the imperative necessity of self-control, with
habits inflexible by many years' growth,
it may be, in one direction, and brought
possibly for the first time in contact with the voice
of Christian kindness and sympathy, when they
listen to the chaplain of the gaol, or to some bene-
volent visitor. Reformation is a moral, a religious
business, and small, necessarily, are the means of
Government in that department. The means of
coercion and restraint are in its power ; military
government can awaken sentiments of honour and
of courage, but civil government has only very
imperfect aptitude for aught but negative good.
It can prevent evil, it seldom can create good.
This is the fundamental cause of the difficulty be-
fore our legislators. All who have taken a part
in the discussions on transportation we believe to
have been actuated by the best motives. Lord
PALMERSTON had friendly counsel only, not oppo-
sition from the usual opponents of Government,
and he cordially accepted it as such. He was
justified in so doing. All agreed that transporta-
tion, from the state of our colonies, must cease ;
that places of convict detention, if needful, had
better be on some island of our coasts which
would cost us less to reach than the Falkland
Islands. All desired some plan by which the crimi-
nal, if reformed, could return to society with a
prospect of the reception his altered character de-
manded; and all agreed, almost tacitly, so general
is the sentiment, that reformation is the grand
ultimatum to be sought by secondary punish-
ments. Fears were expressed whether the
" ticket-of-leave" system at home, in connection
with labour first on Government works, could be
made to answer the purpose. Lord PALMERSTON
hopes that it can. We confess we like the expe-
riment to be in his hands at present. An expe-
riment it must be, but the Noble Lord has no
reason or inclination for pertinacious adherence to
it should it fail. No one has suggested anything
preferable, and he will now have the counsels of
manys practical prison reformers, men of benevo-
lsetionie many
to
nnybe and great
reached
at skill in their department. All
must be, and we trust are inclined to be, candid
on this question. We must all be the scholars of
varied trials, and through the sincere efforts of
honest and dt minds,lainstelliHgeitnhtei we h
tarvuet h
had is
but a few self-taught, supernaturally-gifted prison
reformers, but a kind of normal school for them is
now virtually forming, and we may hope that ere
long we shall have au adequate supply of men