The Sun.
London, England, 1831-12-15 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

Our readers will see today the importance which
is attach even to the words and forms of the Re-
form Bill by the sevace which we allot for its inser-
tion. We mght have abridged its various clauses
or stated 'its general results, dwelling only on those
Pi'..es in which it differed from the last, but we e.'re
convinced that the public will be better tpiea,ed
avith their own reading of a document, which must
Afterwards become the subject of so mach hostile
discussion, if not of so many conflitting interpre-
tations. We may, however, aid the recollection of
some of our readers by a 'short summary al. the
particulars in which the. present Bill diners from its
predecessor. In the first place, schedule A contains
the same number of boroughs, brit not altogether
the same boroughs, in the present, as in the last
condemned list tinder this head. In both cases
there tire 50; but five which were in schedule A,
have been transferred to schedule B; arid live which
were under B, have been transferred to A. 2. In
the second place, the number of boroughs in schedule
11 has been reduced from 41, as it stood in the la'e
Bill, to 30. The following boroughs which were in
schedule B of the last Bill, are not to be found in
the same schedule of the present Bill:—Aldbo-
rough, Amersham, Bodlnin, Bridport, Buckingham,
Chippenham, Caelrermouth, Dorchester, Evesham,
East Grinstead, Guildford, Honiton, Huntingdon,
Lymington, Maldon, Marlborough, Great Marlow,
Okehampten, Richmond, Saltesh, :eudlrry, Thet-
ford, Wallingford. Five of them have been trans-
ferred to schedule A ;—fur instance, Aldborough,
Amersham, East Grinstead, Okeltampton, and Salt-
ash. The rest will of course have tww Members.
Both schedules have been altered in consequence of
the change of principle by which their relative im-
nortance has been ascertained in the respective Bills ;
56 ed. the most insignificant boroughs in regard to
their number of houses and their amount of assessed
taxes being substituted in this for the 07 placed ii
the two lists of the former measure from a regard to
their population returns. 3. Schedule D has like-
wise been greatly altered by an addition of twelve
Members, making up the complement of the 23 va-
cancies left by the former Bill. 4. In the fourth
place, by these changes the representation of Eng-
land will now consist of 500 Members instead of
477, as by the former Bill. 5. We need not
mention that schedule C is increased twelve, by
the towns taken from schedule D. 6. By the
late Bill Commissioners were to be appointed to:settle
the limits of boroughs in schedule B, after the
passing of the Act. By the present measure their
report, which will he ready before the Bill goes into
Committee, will make a part of the Act. 7. In the
present Bill the freeholders in cities and boroughs,
which are counties in themselves, retain their votes
undisturbed. In the last Bill they were limited to
their respective towns, and merged in the household
qualification. No freeholders for life, after the
existing lives, are to have a vote on less than a free-
hold of 101. value. 8. The necessity of a lease to
confer a vote on a tenancy of 501. is restored to the
present: Bill, being struck out of the last on the mo-
tion of Lord Chanties. 9. The ninth difference
which we shall mention is to be found in the clause
creating the 10/. house qualification. A house of
10/. value, whatever rent or rate is paid, will entitle
the tenant to a vote, provided it be registered ac-
cording to the Act,—provided the tenant shall have
occupied the premises twelve months previous to a
date to be named in the Committee,—and provided
he has paid his poor-rate or assess, d taxes up to a
certain time prior to the election. In cases where
the landlords pay the poor-rates, the tenant may
demand to be rated. The only other point of im-
portance in which the two Bills differ relates to the
privileges of burgesses, freemen, or liverymen, which
by the late measure were to terminate with the
existing generation, but which by the present are to
be preserved on the former footing.—Times.
Our attention has been called by an " Old Jury-
man" to the " solemn farce" performed at the close
of the Old Bailey Sessions, when the Recorder, as is
usual, pronounced the sentence of death on a consi-
derable number of persons, " not one of whom,"
as our correspondent says, " in all probability, will
suffer death, and the Recorder knowing at the same
time that most probably that will be the case."
Our correspondent has not ventured positively to
predict that not one of the persons of whom this
last batch of capital convicts is composed will not
be selected to undergo the sentence which condemns
them all to " die according to law'," because his ex-
perience in the character of a Juryman must have
taught him that, if our system of criminal law is
• reel, the mercy that mitigates its rigours is capri-
cious—that nine criminals convicted of a capital
offence may be reprieved, and the tenth executed—
that the capital punishment for a particular offence
may become obsolete for a time, and be revived
again in all its terrors—and that a victim may, now
and then, be selected out of a number, from no
higher motive than to show that, while a barbarous
law remains neon our Statute-book, it will he dan-
gerous to presume upon its not being carried occa-
sionally into barbarous execution. All London
saw with astonishment and horror last summer
the sanguinary law which inflicts death for steal-
ing to the amount of five pounds in a dwelling-
house revived against a solitary wretch, who was
:mangled with a sheep-stealer upon the same scaf-
fold upon which the "Burkers" underwent, the
other day, the doom of their enormous crimes.—
Yet, nearly 20 years ago, the law which sentences
the offender who steals 5/. in a dwelling-house to
the death of the murderer was abolished, as far as

a solemn decision of the House of Commons could

abolish it, and a law framed by the enlightened Sir
• Samuel Romilly, substituting secondary punish-
ments for death, was carried, which the opposition
of Lords Eldon and Ellenborough were but too

successful in throwing out of the House of Lords.
Who could have supposed that the law which a
House of Commons, under a Tory Government,
had pronounced a disgrace to the Statute-book,
should ever have been deemed a sufficient warrant
for the shedding of human blood by a If'big Mi.
nistry ? The revival of that sanguinary law, as well
as the execution for sheep-stealing, we deprecated
at the time on every ground of rational justice,
moral principle, and sound policy. Our sentiments;
we know, were responded to by the just feelings of
a Christian people, whose reason and whose hearts
revolt at the inhuman spectacles sanctioned by laws
that strip " august and god-like justice" of her
moral attributes, and a:m her with the weapons of
vengeance ! But as long as such laws continue
on the Statute-book, what guarantee have the
public that, although, since the execution of Widget
arid Broach, no criminals convicted at the Old
Bailey, with the exception of murderers, have suf-
• fered death—what guarantee have the public, we
say, that similar sacrifices may not be thought expe-
dient, and that Mercy ph ading with all the powers
of reason on her side, may not be too weak to save,
while ferocious laws say " destroy?" The law of
forgery too, like that relative to stealing in the dwell-
ing-house, has been condemned by a deliberate and
solemn decision of the House of Commons after three
debates. The sanguinary Bill of Sir Robert Peel
was then rejected, and the present Lord Chancellor
had the glory of leading the opposition to which the
country is indebted for that decision ; and never did
Mr. Brougham, during his long career in the 'louse
of Commons, more distinguish himself for the elo-
quent and splendid advocacy of enlightened principles
of legislation than in opposing that Bill which Lord
Lyndhurst had the unenvied honour, under the
Duke of Wellington's Administration, of restoring
to legislative existence, and to the place which it
still holds in the execration of public opinion.
Yet it is not long ago since the present Govern-
ment were on the point of offering up two vic-
tims to the destroying spirit of the law of Sir
Robert Peel—the two first that would have suf.-
fered under it, for its author shrunk from the
execution of his own law. Thank Heaven ! that
evil was averted—the example was not given,
on whose sanguinary consequences no one could cal-
culate—that crime against the principle which the

House of Corniv'iohB, under the most adverse curd,

stances, recognif:ed, has yet to be committed. Wh
therefore, our correspondent, the '6 Old Jurymai
advises that, instead of the Recordel- passing
sentence of death vim voce on ill the *cdpital ei
victs at the Old Bailey, who 'IcnOW It is a mocke
ant; who treat it as such the practice at those s
signs in the city could be assimilated to the "pract
on the cie,:mits, where, in cases in which it is not
tchtled that the law should be aliled into executi

the sentence is re;:rely recorded. We say " No.".
Phis pratTi.'e Wag introduced by an iiet of Parlia-
ment made for the purpose, and we ask if it would
be worth while to pass another Act of Parliament
merely to substitute one sort ofmockery in a Court
of Justice fir another, as far as the city is con-
cerned ?--for the pronouncing the sentence of death
in the one teie is, at least to the great majority of
convicts, an ora fiction, and recording it is but a
Written fiction. The former practice shows the
absurdity of our present fierce and ineffective code
of laws a mare marked and stronger light than
the loiter, and therefore we would rather see
it retained, with the view of facilitating a
real—a substantial—a beneficent, and not a
merely formal and deceptive change in our
criminal laws. We e,ee that, notwithstanding all
the diffieelties in which France is involved (and
ceetainly her Government has quite as much to
struggle with as our own), her Legislature is now
employed in the great and glorious work of still
further mitigating a criminal code which the legisla-
tion of Napoleon, amid all the cares and vicissitudes
of incessant wars, bad already made incomparably
more mild than our own. We see that the Chamber
of Peers have adopted a proposition for abolishing
the punishment of death in two cases of high trea-
son, which our law punishes with hanging and sub-
sequent decapitation. Every species of treason is
by our law punished with death—even that of
countoleiting the gold or silver coin of the realm—
though that is, properly speaking, no treason what-
ever towards the kingly power, but a fraud upon
the public. Let us, then, not set about "improving"
the law one move, as Sir Robert Peel did, by rub-
bing off some of its excrescences, and giving a
smoother exterior to its barbarism, while, in all its
dangerous and malignant properties, it remains the
same—but let it be so thorougly reformed in essence
and in spirit that it may obtain from a civilized and
Christian people the veneration due to a wise and
effective system of criminal jurisprudence, wherein
pure and passionless Justice shall see the reflection
of her own eternal principles.—Morning Herald.
We have inserted at length the new Reform Bill.
The persuasion is general that the Bill will become
the law of the land. The Anti-Reformers seem to
think that the new Bill is greatly indebted to them,
and that they are bound to show the natural partia-
lity of parents to their own offspring. If the child
be well-begotten, it is hardly worth while quarrelling
about the paternity. A little delusion in these mat-
ters often contributes to the peace of the commo-
n:ly. The worst part of the new Bill is the perpe-
tuation of freemen. " This change (justly observes
a contemporary, the Globe), so far as it goes, is
mischievous To preserve a caste of

electors, who may be destitute of all requisite quali-
fications for their trust, impairs the simplicity of the
new system, and is only to be defended became it
may be expedient to preserve some grotesque relic
of the old system from which we are about to be
relieved. The freemen will remain, like Gog and
ilfagog at Guildhall, to show what the ancient
rulers of the isle were. Ministers, however, have
taken care to confine the privilege of voting to the
persons who were freemen before the introduction
of the Bill, and their descendants, as otherwise the
corporations would have set themselves in many
places io swamp the ten-pound voters, by indiscri-
minate extensions of the right of which they have
heretofore commonly been so frugal." Our contem-
poraly is wrong, however, in supposing the privilege
of voting is confined to the persons who were freemen
before the introduction of the Bill, and 0161 descen-
dants. The words of the Bill are—" or who shall
hereafter be elected cr made a burge•s or freeman
otherwise than in respect of birth or servitude, &c.;
provided also that no person shall be so entitled as a
burgess or freeman, in respect of birth, urd, ss his
right be originally derived from or through such
person who was a burgess or freeman previously to
the Ist day of March, in the year 1831, or from or
through some person, who shall since that time have
become a burgess or freeman in respect of servitude."
Now, in all those boroughs in which men become
freemen through servitude, it is well known that
Ihe jobbing has been chiefly carried on through the
raking apprentices. In vain the respectable trades-
men have set their faces against this practice ; there
have always been found persons sufficiently indif-
ferent to character, to carry on the trade of making
apprentices. This trade will go on as much as ever
under the new Bill.—Morning Chronicle.

We alluded yesterday to the doctrine of our cor-
respondent 0. P. Q., tha because the French na-
tional debt is a heavy burden on the people, there-
fore it must be swept away—i. e. that the property
of ore class of subjects should be confiscated for the
benefit of all the other classes. If the interest of
the debt due by a whole nation to a part of that na-
tion forms a burden beyond endurance, and what is
called an adjustment becomes indispensible, every
description of property should bear its share of the
sacrifice. The holder of an estate of the value of
100/., and the proprietor of stock of the value of
100/., should be made to contribute in the Fame pro-
portion to the extinction of the debt. 0. P. Q.
tells us that the debt has been created since
the abdication of Bonaparte, to maintain the
Treaties of the Holy Alliance—to remunerate
the scoundrels of emigrants— -to pension the Peers
of France—to defray the expense of the war
against liberty in Spain, &c. This may be true, and
yet it does not follow that the debt ought not to be
paid. It has sometimes been made a question, whe-
ther any Government is justified in mortgaging the
resources of a nation. However, this opinion has
hitherto had but few partisans, because it is obvious
that occasions may arise, when, if a nation could not
borrow, it might be at the mercy of an enemy. In
war, an invading enemy demands a contribution from
a town, under a threat, that if not paid without de-
lay, it will be abandoned to the soldiery. To avert
this calamity, the authorities borrow money either
from some rich individuals of their community, or
from some of their neighbours who have confidence
in their means and their integrity. What happens
in the case of a town, may happen in the case of a
nation. The allies conquered France—they might
have squeezed the country, as the French squeezed
Germany, and particularly Pruss'a, from which last
country they extracted fifty millions sterling in the
course of nine years; but they allowed the French
to ransom themselves from this calamity, and the
means was a loan, which remains yet to be dis-
charged. If Governments may contract debts, the
responsibility of determining whether a Government
is a good or a bad one—whether the object for
which the money is wanted is beneficial to the na-
tion or otherwise—ought rot to be thrown alone on
the creditors who advance the money. It is enough
for the creditors, that the Government has power to
make itself obeyed by the people. If we say that
the obligations of a bad Government ought not to
be discharged, we open a door to endless chicanery;
for a superseded Government would always, in that
ease, be a bad Government, and the Govern-
ment de facto a good one. The truth is, that
if the Government be a bad one, it is in-
cumbent on all the people to resist it, and not
on the creditors in particular. If the people submit,
they have no right afterwards to challenge the acts
of the creditors in contracting with the Govern-
ment. We shall suppose two individuals in the re-
ceipt of 3,000/. a year from the French Govern-
►nent, paid out of the taxes, from the Abdication to
the Revolution of 1830—that each of these indivi-
duals saved 2,000/. out of his income—that the one
purchased land with his savings, and the other pur-
chased stock—why, we ask, is the one description
of property to be sacrificed more than the other ?
All property is the creature of law. During the fif-

teen years in question, the law, backed by the public
force at the disposal or Government, secured
the possessor of a real estate against those who
might have been disposed to scramble for it with
him, as much as it secured to the /?;_intier the pos-
session of his 'Proerev. Under a bad Government,
land is the •:vorst of all property, as it cannot be re-
if,oved, while the owner cat be removed from it ;
and hence throughout the Levant, as is well ob-
served by Burckhardt, a person in trade can never
withdraw from it, from the insecurity of estates in
land. The best property is that which can be most
easily concealed and removed. But owners of land
and other property, who owe the possession of that
property to the protection afforded them by a
Government, are not entitled to benefit by that
Government, and at the same time refuse to
recognise its acts. But while we condemn
all juggling with contracts, we do not justify
the continuance of a taxation beyond the means
of the people. If the French are too heavily
taxed, that is a reason for reducing the burthens.
The public ability ought to be the measure of the
public expenditure. If the French people arc too
poor to be able to afford a monarchy, let them try a
Republic. If the interest of the debt be too great
for their means, let it be diminished at the expence
of all property whatever. Retrench—economise—
anything rather than confiscation. In this country,
the suffering from taxation is great in the extreme;
but we should never think of taking a farthing from
the public creditor more than from other owners of
property. We have immense masses of public pro-
perty, beyond the necessities of the services to which
they are assigned—as Church property, for instance
—applicable to the wants of the State. Before
touching this description of property, however, the
value of existing interests must, of course, be de-
ducted. The rector who possesses a living of 500/.
a year has as good a title to that 500/. for his life, as
if the 5001. were secured to him as a rent-charge on
the best estate in the country. When economy and
retrenchment have been carried as far as possible,
then, if the burthens still be intolerable, the debt
must be thrown on the property of the country. Mr.
Ricardo proposed this long ago; and we are mistaken
if it be not found indispensible, ere long, to comply
with his recommendation.—Morning Chronicle.

SECOND EDITION.
SUN OFFICE, Seven a' Clock.

PERIA L PARLIAMENT

OF THIS EVENING.

HOUSE OF LORDS.

The LORI) CHANCELLOR took his seat on the Woolsack
at Twenty Minutes past Five o'clock.
Mr. To►nline, from the Treasury, presented the Herring
Fishery Report.
On the motion of the Earl of SHAFTESBURY; it
was ordered, that the Hostse would not receive any peti-
tions for Private Bills after, Friday, the 30th of March, nor
any Judges' report on such petitions after Monday, the 7th
of May.