The Sun.
London, England, 1836-01-16 00:00:00

Correspondent, however, seem to be aware of the
existence of an Act of Parliament which provides for
the eritablishing of an effective system of watch and
ward in every parish of England and IVales that
chooses to adopt its provisions—a system not under
the control of the Home Office, nor of " Central
Commissioners," but raised and managed, as it should
be, by the rate-payers themselves. The Act to which
,se atlinl3, and which, we believe, is very little known,
is the 11th George 1 V., cap. 27, Which recites in the
• preamble, that it is desirable to make provision for
the lighting and watching of the several parishes of
England and Wales. It is therefore enacted " that
the Act, and the several provisions thereof, shall
apply to and may be adopted, under and subject to the
regulations herein contained, by all, or any, or either
of parishes in England and Wales." By sections
from the second to the sixth, the churchwardens are,
on the requisition of three rated inhabitants, to
call a meeting of the rated inhabitants, and if at
that meeting three-fourths vote for the adoption of the
Act, a maximum of expense is to he fixed, and in-
spectors appointed. Those inspectors, who are to be
in number from three to eleven, must . (by section
ninth) be rated inhabitants to the amount of 131. a
year, and are to continue in office for three years, but
may be re-elected. Need we observe that these in-
spectors are in reality a Police Committee, elected by
the rate-payers—the very principle which we con-
tended for in regard to the metropolitan police. By.
the 29th section of the Act, "the Inspectors may ap-
point such number of able-bodied watch house-keepers,
scrjeants of the -night, watchmen, patrols, street-
keepers, and other persons, as they shall think suffi-
cient for the proper protection of the inhabitants'
houses and property, streets, and other places within
the limits of this Act, by day and by night," and pro-
vide them " with clothing, arms, ammunition, and
weapons," and assign them their duties and wages.
By section 30, the watchmen, &c., have power to ap-
prehend offenders ; and by section 24 the money for
the expense of this police force is to be raised by the
overseer in the same manner as Poor's-rate. By sec-
tion 32 the inspectors are required to keep fire-engines
—and by other sections, power is given to the Inspec-
tors to provide for the lighting of the place either by
gas or otherwise. Now, here we have a statutable au-
thority for raising, organising, and paying as full and
efficient a police force, upon the principle of watch
and ward, as the necessities of any parish in England
and Wales may require. The provincial parishes, both
towns and rural districts, may avail themselves of this
Act whenever they please to appoint a Police Com-
mittee, under the name of Inspectors, and obtain all
the protection and security which can be afforded to
property and the public peace by a police force, under
the controul of such a committee of rate-payers, every
one of whom may be changed at the end of three
years, if the rate-payers do not approve of their con-
duct in office. This arrangement is more in accordance
with the genius of our Constitution, than a police
force, controlled by the Minister of the Crown.
By enacting the Beer.shop Bill the Legislature did a
great deal towards demoralizing the peasantry of
England. That Bill has been the inciting cause of a
great
deal of crime in the rural districts, as the pro-
ceedings in our criminal Courts at the Assizes la-
mentably prove. The enforcement of the Malthusian
Poor Law Bill, though not 3et carried out in all its
severity, has caused many parts of the country to be
infested with gangs of desperate men, who take to
plunder for a livelihood. It becomes doubly neces-
sary, under those circumstances, to have an effective
system of watch and ward ; and the Act to which we
have referred provides for its establishment. •The
prevention of crime is better than its punishment, and
for the prevention of crime an effective police is neces-
sary; but, that liberty may not be endangered by the
means taken to protect property, it is requisite that
the people who pay that police should have something
to do with its management and controul. In that case
the civil force cannot degenerate into a force semi-
political and semi-military—in other words, a French
gensdarmerie.—Morning Herald.

The Whigs are as valorous and as prodigal of pro-
mises before the commencement of the Parliamentary
campaign as Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel Evans was
before he went to Spain.-- We dare wager that the re-
sult, too, will be very similar. Ireland is promised no
less than three measures of tremendously ameliorating
magnitude, and the'English Dissen‘ers are promised
an entire removal of their grievances. If we consi-
dered merely what the English Dissenters really have
to grieve for in the state of the law, we should not
estimate this last as a very arduous work ; but if
we take their own estimate, we are inclined to be-
lieve that it will puzzle even the mighty Statesman-
like mind of Lord John Russell to satisfy them
entirely. Is his Lordship prepared to abolish the Es-
tablished Church? Has he made up his mind to the
effort, and calculated the amount of force with which he
will accomplish his purpose? If he thinks that anything
short of this will entirely remove the grievances of the
Dissenters, as estimated by themselves, he is quite
as much mistaken as ever he was in his life, and that,
as his Lordship himself knows extremely well, is not a
little.. Satisfy the Dissenters !—empty the ocean ! The
one is just as easy and as practicable a task as the
other. The grievances of Dissenters are and must be
inexhaustible, their maxim being that whatever is, is
wrong. Give them all they want to-day, by this day
twelvemonths they would find that they wanted some-
thing more. Give them England, Ireland, and Scot-
land,- to build conventicles upon, they would come
whining, grumbling, and blustering next year, for the
Isle of Man to make a burying-ground. Their desire
to obtain what they have not, is as insatiable as grati-
tude for what they have is hopeless. Last year,
thousands of them grumbled at the change of the law
proposed with respect to their marriages. And what did
they grumble at ? Not that the proposed law was
inadequate to remove the inconvenience of which they
complained, with respect to themselves, but that it
did not apply to Church people as well as to them-
selves. Because the alteration did not interfere with
those who were perfectly satisfied with the law as it
stood, these tolerant, patient creatures, thought pro-
per to renew their complaints. And Lord John thinks
he can satisfy such people as these. Let him try it.
If he does not merely get laughed at for his paltry at-
tempt at reform, which was his fate when he tried the
same thing before, lie will be even in a worse plight,
for his friends will turn against him, and perhaps turn
him out of his place. We are well aware how ex-
ceedingly important to him, in every point of view, is
Lord :John Russell's place, and we do him a kindness
in warning him to take care how he meddles with the
entire removal of the Dissenters' grievances. He will
burn his fingers, he may depend upon it, just as surely
as if he assayed to handle red-hot iron. Should he
proceed, he will perhaps, when he hears the hiss of
the dissatisfied Dissenters, remember this warning.—
Morning Post.
The ability with which Mr. Fox discussed the sub-
jects of the previous lectures, some of which we have
already noticed, and of which this is a link, is a gua-
rantee of the acumen, candour, and sound argument
exercised on the present occasion. To an energetic
and almost impassioned gift of eloquence, he may be
said eminently to unite faculties of profound metaphy-
sical analysis, combination, and deduction, a compre-
hensive range of thought, and a heart overflowing with
the warmest impulses of benevolence and philanthropy.
No one better suited to the task could be found—no
one combining in a higher degree the great qualities of
intellect necessary to a moralist could have entered upon
the present disquisition. The following extract will,
we arc sure, be read with pleasure by all parts of the
community. It shews in a striking manner the elo-
quence, and the feeling, based on severe powers of
reasoning, of its celebrated author :
`° We can scarcely enter upon our present subject, The
Morality of the Press,' without first remarking, that the in-
vention of printing must rank among the first, if it be not
the very first, of those inventions and discoveries, by a suc-
cession of which humanity has been led on from its
lowest
condition to its highest advance, and by whichthereis
opened to it the prospect of greater and more rapid pro- .1
gress than has ever yet been made, either by individuals or I
in society. That wonderful invention acted at once upon
the world like a new creation of the past, of all the Ist,'
of humanity ; which, but for its influence, would have been •
but dimly seen, or altogether unknown to the great bulk of
mankind. All the acres that had gone by • the nations
that had arisen and that had passed away ; the philosophi-
cal minds which had been raised up, to diffuse abroad just ,

principles, to analyze their o vii ,•;iistitution and that of
their fellow-creatures, and to make it evident to man in
some degree what he was, and to what destined,—all were
covered with a veil of impenetrable obscurity : they were as
if they had never been, except in some unconscious influ-
ence to the millions ; they were only discerned by here and
there an inquiring and learned spirit, who had ascertained
their existence, and who had traced their agency. Bu with
the application of the press, and with the multiplication of
books, the facts of the past_ became identified with the
then present, and yet more and more identified with the
present of subsequent generations. There was at once a
display of the order in 'which humanity had been advancing
from its very origin. It was as if a traveller had gone over
a long and winding track in the darkness of night, uncon-
scious of what objects he had passed in his journey, of their
grandeur, their beauty, their variety, and then the sun arose
upon the world, whose light not only beamed around him
at the position which he bad attained, not only enabled him
to discern something of his way for the future, but revealed
to him all that had hitherto been, showing hint the path in
which the race to which he belonged had been led by Pro-
vidence through its past history, and created for him a new
world, a world of human beings, who had had their day
and departed from the earth, and sunk into oblivion, but
now were regenerated from that oblivion, and presented to
him for the delectation of his mind, for the exercise of his
feelings, and for the formation of his character.
" Not only did the press operate as a discovery or reve-
lation of that which had been, but it had a strong action
upon the then present state of things, and put men at once.
in a different relation towards each other. It freed im-
prisoned thought, and gave wings to knowledge. Men's
views were confined, either to themselves, or to small
circles of their personal associates, or to that very limited
diffusion which oral communication, or the copying of
manuscripts could give, and they found themselves vested
with a power to reach their fellow-creatures at the utmost
remoteness either of time and place, or of rank and station.
There was at once a diffusive principle set at work, which
made the thoughts of gifted individuals the common pro.
perty of hundreds, of thousands, and of millions, and which
was a creation for the present, similar to that which was
realised in reference to the past."

Speaking of the temptations and sufferings which
beset the literary avocation, Mr. Fox next inquires
into their causes ; and it is under this head we find
the following passage :—" The common tolerance and
encouragement of the anonymous system is disgraceful.
The world ought not to endure the shrouding of their
names, who come forward to claim its attention in
matters of importance and interest, involving, A for
the most part they needs must, some claim of
confidence in the writer for information, integrity,
and public principle." With this opinion, however,
we cannot yield implicit concurrence. If truth
be indeed invincible, we cannot see what resist-
ance can be offered to its progress by anonymous
writing. The fact is, take away this privilege from
the columns of newspapers, for instance, and at once
you strip them of their power. The evil in this case
—as not in what other ?—must be borne for the sake
of its good. Besides, we think Mr. Fox launches into
invectives upon the subject, from which in a cooler
moment he would have refrained. Newspaper writing
would become perfectly ridiculous with the name of
each author attached to its several paragraphs. It

is also to be remembered that a newspaper is in-
variably the representative of a certain class. It is
the opinions consonant with that class to which its co-
lumns are dedicated, and a moment's reflection would
serve to satisfy, that as in the case of Members of the
House of Commons, whose public votes, not private
sentiments, are of importance, so the opinions of the
class of which a newspaper is the organ, and not of its
writers individually, is the question of interest. If
the opinions which appear in its columns be fallacious,
it is the opinions, not the writers of them, which must
be assailed. In the progress of time, of what conse-
quence will it posSibly be whether this or that member
of the community held one order of views or motives ?
It is not the individual, but the opinion, which
matters. However, as if to palliate the severity of
his strictures under this head, he winds up with the
following splendid peroration :

The press remains the great reformer and improver of
the world ; not only in its stern rebuke of corruption ; not
only in exploding prejudices ; not only in putting down
this or that abuse ; but by leading the world onward
towards positive good, and yet higher and brighter good.
It enables individuals—and there are always such—to
start forward from the ranks of their fellows, with some
bold thought which has fixed itself on their minds, to
which they find fit • audience, though few at first,
ever enlarging its numbers ; and if there be but sym-
' pathy in the world they attract it ; and where there is energy
they arouse it ; and the time will come, more rapidly, per-
haps than we anticipate, the time which transforms the ge-
nerally scorned into the universally received. All things
have their appropriate powers ; those of evil and those of
good ; those of darkness and those of light ; but happily
we perceive at a glance where the strength lies, the pre-
vailing strength. We see where is the temporary, where
is the enduring ; and hence our hopes are placed on a foun-
dation which cannot be shaken, amid all the changes of life,
the convulsions of nations, and even in the agonies of death.
The Press is, and must remain, the great improver of the
world, in spite of all conflict, all opposition, all opposing in-
fluences, which are doomed rapidly to pass away. We have
this gift of God for us, and what can be against us ?
Tyranny has physical force, a guard of armed hosts ; vain
distinctions and titles have the base servility that cringes
before them, or aspires to their possession ; for legalised in-
justice there is antique precedent ; superstition is sustained
by credulity and hypocrisy ; and truth, wisdom, virtue, free-
dom, and humanity—they have the Press."—Morning Ad-
vertiser.

Yesterday morning a poor little chimneysweeper was
employed at the house of Mr. Watkinson, military tailor,
Tdvistock-street, Covent-garden. On reaching to nearly
the top of one of the chimnies a large piece of mortar
dropped upon him, and so completely jammed him in, that
he could not extricate himselE The poor little fellow's
cries disturbed several of the neighbours, and his master
being sent for, another boy was sent up after him, but his
endeavours to extricate him proved ineffectual. Persons
then commenced cutting away the chimney near the attic,
but it was upwards of three hours before they could reach
the part where the boy, was confined. On his being taken
out life was nearly extinct. Means were taken to restore
animation, and after some time they succeeded. The poor
little fellow is now likely to recover.
CHANGE IN COURT COSTUME.—The season of
drawing-rooms and levees is returning ; and a fit occasion
is offered (which has been taken up in the Court Journal of
this day) for remarking on the disadvantages of the present
full-dress suit of English Gentlemen, in contrast with the
costume of other European Courts, as well as kr pointing
out the improvements that are so much needed. It is uni-
versally remarked by foreigners visiting the Court of St.
James's, that our uniforms are as much distinguished by
good taste as our Court dress is by rusticity ; and, during the
last 20 years, while the Court costume of the Ladies of
the creation has been reformed altogether, that of the Lords
has degenerated from bad to worst.
CAB ACCIDENT IN OXFORD-STREET.—Yes-

terday evening, between five and six o'clock, the following
dreadful cab accident occurred in Oxford-street, to Mrs.
Nl' Allison and her daughter, a young lady 18 years of age,
residing in Great Tichfield-street, Cavendish-square :—lt
appears that the unfortunate ladies were crossing the street,
on their return home, when they were knocked down by a
cab horse, and the wheels of the vehicle passed over them.
On assisting them off the ground, it was discovered that
Mrs. M'Allison's right arm had received a compound frac-
ture above the elbow, the bones protruding through her silk
dress ; the daughter hal also received some very severe
inward contusions. It is feared that amputation of the arm
must be immediately performed. The driver effected his

escape.
• HISTORY OF THE LANDED GENTRY OF GREAT
BRITAIN AND IRELAND.—This most useful and most va-
luable work, illustrated with the armorial bearings of the
several families, has now reached its eleventh number. Five
more parts will complete the work, which will form an ad-
mirable book of reference, besides being highly interesting
in itself, an interest which will increase every day, as every
day is adding to a conviction, now pretty generally felt, that
everything that is worth knowing in genealogical history is
not confined to the Peerage, and that there are individuals
amongst the Commoners, in whose history and descent the
public will feel fully as much interest as in some of those
distinguished by heritable honours. Such a work as this

was really a desideratum, and both thanks and encourage-
ment are due to those who have supplied it, and supplied it
so well. With the admirable I'eerage and Baronetage of
the same author, we have thus a complete History of the
British Nobility and Gentry.
EFFECTS OF TIIE LA E FIRE AT NEW YORK.

--The accounts of this most calamitous event have pro-
duced a great sensation in Manchester. Immense orders
have, in consequence, been countermanded. One house,
by far the, most extensive purchasers for the American
market, has, it is said, received accounts of no less than
15 of their correspondents being literally burnt out. Some
merchant:,' however, are preparing to send out goods with
their ,own supereargoe6, not knowing, of course, in many
cases, whether they could safely iPP"II4 their consignments
to their former friends, till they have ascertained lieW they
are likely to be affected by this dire calamity,