The Sun.
London, England, 1838-09-08 00:00:00

MALL.UNION-

Yesterday morning a reipcctable looking man, accompanied
by his wife, applied to the Magistrate to compel his wife to
return to her husband's home. The wife, however, avowed
her preference of concubinage to wedlock, and said she would
remain with the man and master she was then living with.
Mr. TRAIL!, after stating that he had no jurisdiction in this
case, informed the applicant that he could bring an action
against the person with whom his wife was living in adultery,
and procure a divorce in the Ecclesiastical Court.

A tall, stout man named Lizers was brought up in custody on
the following charge:—
From the testimony of several witnesses, it appeared that
on the preceding evening the defendant laid himself down at
full length in the street, and at the same time expressed his
iwention to allow his body to be passed over by the first
vehicle that came along. Attenip's were made to induce him
to alter his dcterminatim, but he was resolute in his intention,
and on the approach of a dray 'wavily laden he still remained
extended at his full length, until three or four cracks of a
whip applied over his posteriors by the drayman made him
jump up with great alacrity. The defendant made the most
horrible grimaces from the pain produced by the lash ;
and, on gaining his legs, instead of attacking the drayman who
had inflicted the chastisement upon him, be ran most furiously
at a mere spectator, and: " pitched into him right and left,"
exclaiming, " Take that, you vagabond, what business had
you to interfere if I wanted to kill myself?" When the police
came up the defendant tried to trip up their heels, and con.
ducted himself with great violence throughout.
The Magistrate inquired whether the defendant was under
the influence of liquor at the time he laid down in the road,
and said that be wanted a vehicle to pass over his body ?
A policeman in reply said that he did not appear to be dis-
guised in liquor, but that he might have had a drop in him
at the time.

,
The Magistrate asked the defendant what he had to say in
explanation of his extraordinary conduct.
The defendant in answer said that he had been drinking,
and that he supposed it was all the effects of liquor.
The Magistrate said that the defendant ought to be much
obliged to the brewer's drayman for exercising his whip on
the occasion, and preventing the foolish man from being run
over and killed.

Defendant—lf your worship will look over it this time, I
shall never be brought here again under similarcircumstances.

The Magistrate being satisfied with this promise, the de-
fendant, [whose clothes were covered with mud, was dis-
charged.

THAMES- OFFICE.

Yesterday Richard Macdonald alias Trotter, the mate
of a collier brig, and who was stated to be the son of a
shipowner, and John Brown, the mate of another coal
ship, were brought before Mr. Brodcrip and Mr. Green-
wood, charged with committing a violent assault on Mr.
J. Pelham, the solicitor, of Old Gravel-lane, who practises
at this and.other police offices, and also with assaulting Wm.
James Adams, his clerk. .

At the conclusion of the hearing of the case,
Mr. BRODERIP and Mr. GREINWOOD said, from the evi-
dence before them, it appeared a very savage and unprovoked
assault had been committed on a respectable solicitor and his
servant, and if the prisoners had no answer to make to the
strong prima facie case against them they deserved most se-
vere punishment. Any sentence the Bench could inflict
would fall far short of the punishment the prisoners ought to
be subjected to. It would-be a farce to fine them 51. for such
an assault. They should, therefore, call upon them to find
bail, themselves in 601. each, and two sureties of 301. each in
each case, to appear and take their trials at the next Sessions,
for assaulting and beating the complainants.
The prisoners, not being prepared with the bail, were
locked up.

THE BIRTH of a GREAT PRINCIPLE.

(From the Scotsman.

If honour is duo to those who have broken the chains of
mental bondage, and established truths prolific in happy conse-
quences to mankind, few have such strong claims on the admi
ration and gratitude of the human race, as Roger Williams, of
New England. To him belongs the imperishable glory of
having first asserted the great principle of Religious Liberty in
its full extent, not in words only but in deeds ; not in leisure
and tranquillity, but amidst severe persecution, at the expense
of every worldly comfort, and at the hazard of his life.
There are mysteries which arc only revealed to the pure in
heart, and cannot be discovered by the understanding alone.
The fervent benevolence and innate love of justice of Wil-
liams, led him to the knowledge of a truth which was hid
from the eyes of Luther and Calvin, of Knox and Crenmer.
Christianity at its birth was almost necessarily the religion of
martyrs, but it became the ascendant creed in the age of Con-
stantine; and had " the sanctity of conscience" been en-
throned with it from that moment, how pure, happy, and
benign, in comparison, had been the history of the last fifteen
centuries I Who can recount the bloody wars, the sanguinary
deeds, the vice, misery, and crime, the dishonour to religion,
which have flowed from the spirit of persecution ? We boast of
Using in an age of light, but this evil spirit is still in full acti-
vity. It is still supported in Protestant countries to a certain
extent by the arm of the law ; and where this fails, it is often
able to crush its victim by the force of banded factions. We
have long been convinced that nearly all the evils of parse-
' cution have resulted from the association of religion with
temporal power. If the Voluntary system, as it existed in
the three first centuries, had never been departed from; if the
Roman Government, instead of taking Christianity into its
foul embrace, endowing it uith wealth, and loading it with
corruptions, had merely protected its professors in the enjoy-
ment of their civil rights, its history would have been very dif-
ferent. Its great truths would have been sooner known ; its
true spirit sooner discovered; it would, to use a Scripture
expression, have sent peace into the world instead of a sword.
We would not have had the delusive unity of doctrine, of
which the Catholics sometimes boast; for the varieties of
human intellects will produce varieties of religious opinion
to the end of time. On the contrary, we would have had at
a much earlier date the diversity of sects now witnessed;
and out of their mutual controversies and conflicts, when
confined to words by the neutrality of the civil power,
the true principles of religious liberty would speedily have
emerged. That a principle so obviously just and reasonable
should have been first promulgated only in 1634, and that it
shou!d be so imperfectly and rstood two centuries later, are
extraordit,ary facts for which we aro unable to account, sx.
cept by assuming that Christianity was subject to some per-
verting and corrupting agency in every country wherever it
was established. Now it has existed since the ReTormation
under a wide variety of forms and c:nviitions in Europe : and,
amidst that variety, only one feature of uniformity can be dis-
covered, namely, that it was everywhere a state engine, or at
least the paid servant of the Government, and independent of
the people. Honour. then, etern Al honour, to the memory of
Roger I a Voluntary of the. purest order, and the
apoatle of true and entire liberty of conscience.

DEATH OF A GOOD MlsEß.—Died, on Wed-
nesday evening, in Water lane, Rotherluthe, Joseph Bawnian,
better lirtown in that neighbourhood by the appellation of
f• (y4l liags,o ftc,!tt the number of these appendages he
d
usually carried, Ile was alwaya miserably Flab', and obtaine
a livelihood by collecting pieces of old rope, rags, and bones.
The latter articles he has been known to stew down, with
onions and piee, sof bread, fur his meals. A short time pre-
vious to his dissolution, when he felt poescioug hi; end wag
approaching, Ito sent for his nephew who wap, eonaidering
his uncle in bad circumstances, allowed bibirda shilling a
(
week out of his earnings as a labourer in the Wee,
India Docks), and on his arrival t Id him where his
rooriev ilia,: come who, waz, up in the blanked,
coverlid, and llNl,saaing, wad g tieantity of halfpence
and farthings under one of the boards of the goofing,
but the greater part was sowed up in the patches of
his clothing, and consisted chiefly of half sovereigns. The
lit had accumula ed exceeded 230/., all of which he
gave to him with the eaaeption 9f Lit. That he presented to
an old woman, who was very atFentiye to hint durlog litst
Hines-, The rent of his apartment he punetuarly p4id every
week in halfpence. lie was an nneseally clean peraan for his
way of life, and had the greatest avesalioi to repeiye 4ny ag-
aistar;ee from the parish. Two or three days before his death,
on being *4?i/dtl tu obtain an order from the parochial autho-
rities, he worked hitoseir foie w groat. nassion, and actually
sent for and paid a surge(,n (told; attendanee and ttiedi,..*eri.,
And spared himself no nourishment tie could obtain. Alert
he was aware he could not recover, his last request
was that the cost of his burial should not exceed 21. lOs ,
and that he should not ba ieorre4 in the ground appropriated
for paupers.
most striking instance of the uncertainty of hu-
man life Gould scarcely be afforded than that which o?currcd
in Ayr on Wednesday, in the case of Sandy Andersoncoach-
beenl n thoen service
of being
coach-
porter, a man of about 60 years of age. On Wednesday we
saw him walk past the Malt Cross towards the bridge, and in
less than five minutes afterwards he was a corpse I He reached
the stable-yard of the King's Arms Inn, where he fell from
carriedcomplete
into
t hle exhaustion,stable
eand adjacent.died almostne had immediately
wrehcielentilny
tdbeecenarmsl,
wSiitrh‘wVbilolimamhewasagreat Maxwell,
of
favourite,Monreith
Bart.,
and has thus survived his old master by only one week.—Ayr
Advertiser.
Advertiser.
artth.,s
The Bedfast News Letter, a pacific, do-nobody-no-
harm Paper in general, has been induced, by Mr. Sharman
Crawford's last attack on Mr. O'Connell, to mingle in the
political fray, and take up arms in defence of the former gen-
tleman. On Tuesday our Irish recruit went through ilia exer-
cise in a most exemplary manner, fired away for a long time at
the Melbourne Administration, looked fierce, spoke loud, and
after having flourished his heartless pen until he could flourish
it no longer, he floundered in the dirt, uttering these words
The Irish patriots,' too, have made an edifying exhibition
of themselves ; and if it be true that
supplementary' compen-
sation' is in reserve fur some of the unendowed, as Mr. Craw-
ford supposes, it will add new and interesting features to the
already overcharged picture of political delinquency."
STATE OF TRADE (MONDAY).--,..T0-day we have
had a good attendance of buyers, and some kinds of pieces
have met with a ready sale, at a small advance in price.
The stocks in the manufacturers' hands are unusually light,
and it is hopea that this will lead to an advance of the hand-
loom weavers' wages,_fi4olern tstandard,
ThiouTHY 1—" Guidman," said an 414 sober wo.
man the nine, tjay to her husband, who is the very reverse, `fl
daursay ye hae drecken homeryPr time. dauratty
hae, guidwife, but I'm thinkingkecl! a thacJ age, for f fin
the stow' o' the ruif i' my throat yet,"

EXECUTION OF GEORGE MASKE-
LYNE ALIAS MASLEN, AT DEVIZES.

(From our Second Edition of last night.)
THURSDAY, t Err. 6. —Our readers are doubtless aware of
the circumstances of this case. The wretched man who this
day und, rwent the extreme F enten ce of the law in front of the
new p, ison, Deviz:,s, was tried at the last Wilts Summer As-
sizes, held at Devizes, by Mr. Justice Parke, for having, in the
month of January last, shot at Mr. Bryan Rumbold, his em-
ployer, at Lyneham, on his master's return from market. The
confession made by him, August 25th, is as follows:
" On Monday evening, two days before I shot at Mr. Rum-
bold, I borrowed Mr. Fregard's gun,' for the purpose of de-
stroying rabbits. On the Wednesday following I was working
in the wood for Mr. Fregard. After dinner-I made up my mind
to shoot Mr. Rumbold, as he came from the market, and rob
him of his money. I charged the gun a little before it was
dark, and then went and placed two hurdles across the gap
through which Mr. Rumbold had to pass, and waited at the
corner till he came up to the place. In about ten minutes he
came up to the place, and I immediately shot at him. It was
dark. I could not see him, at least not clearly. I think I was
about four yards from him when I fired the gun. Mr. Rum-
bold's horse jumped round, and went down the ground at a
smart pace, and I went round the wood to go home. I got
home about eight o'clock that night.

The M of GEORGE MASKELYNE.
Witness, THOMAS HEYWOOD.

At an early hour this morning Devises was crowded to ex-
cess, and the numbers which lined the streets would have led
the stranger to believe that some great merriment was the
cause. However, twelve o'clock, the fatal hour, at length ar-
rived, and shortly after, the wretched man, by the assistance
of the officers (for he appeared entirely unnerved), was placed
under the deadly noose. At this time not less than 23,000
persons were present, some hundreds of whom were from the
neighbourhood where the act was committed. The execu-
tioner having adjusted the rope, and the Lord's Prayer having
been said, the culprit hastily exclaimed, " Oh dear I when
shall I drop the handkerchief;" and immediately the bolt was
drawn, and he was launched into eternity. Maskelync was
born at Woodborough in the year 1804, and of poor parents.
His premature death seems to have been the effect of a licen-
tious course of life ; but we are happy to add that he was an
unmarried man, and we may add, that be was a very ignorant
man.