The Sun.
London, England, 1836-09-01 00:00:00

continuing quietly as they had in almost every in-
stance previously done, to be a court for the registry
of the acts of the People's House, attempted to set
themselves in authority over it, and to render it the
depository of their acts. The decision was no sooner
come to than it was acted upon. Every liberal mea-
sure sent up by the House of Commons was rejected
by them—not upon reason—not upon argument—not
upon any just, constitutional, or well-advised ground
—but because, on the one hand, it was a liberal moa-
sure, and, on the other, because it emanated from the
House of Commons. Proofs are unnecessary. The
history of the last Session tells the tale with unerring
accuracy and most eloquent logic. And what arc
consequences? Does any sane person now ask, with the
expectation of receiving an answer, " What will the Lords
do ?" Does any one care one atom what they may or may
not do—what they may or may not think? By no means.
The question now is, " What shall be done with the
" Lords ?"—and that question is re-echoed by so many
millions of voices, from one end of the kingdom to
the other, that that is not an insurance-office, or any
number of insurance-offices, in the kingdom, that
would guarantee their existence for twelve months to
come. Well and nobly have they earned the doom that
awaits them ! Thanks, Lyndhurst, that thou wert
once, if thou were not belied, a Republican, for thou
hast not failed the cause of the people !—and thanks
also, friends of constitutional freedom in Spain ; for in
the hour of our need ye have returned tenfold value
for all that we bled and suffered in your behalf. The
cause of the people is now safe; if the people be true
to themselves. The rotten boroughs have been swept
away—the Corporations are in " the tomb of all the
Capulets"—the representatives of the people are true
to their constituents, as well as eager, for the fray—
and what remains but that the people of the United
Kingdom
.shall say—" Let it be done r —Morning
Advertiser.

In the line of argument which we took during the
progress of the Poor Law Act through the Houses of
Legislature, there was no part of it to which we felt
more hostile than that by which certain Commissioners
were created and invested with an omnipotent and irre-
sponsible authority, to deal with all matters relating •
to the future administration of the new code of
Poor Laws. It required no very extended foresight to
prophesy that these gentlemen, in carrying their crude
and untried theories into execution, would at the same
time carry desolation and misery into those abodes
where already enough of both existed. The Act,
coming as it did from the loud-tongued professors
of liberal and charitable sentiments, sanctioned and
defended, too, by the individual to whom the great
Charity Commission was mainly due, deceived and
blinded the community, despite of the warnings that
were offered them ; and it was not until the law now in
operation was found to be diametrically opposed to the
spirit of benevolence and humanity which now so hap-
pily pervades our institutions, that the hard and grind-
ing effects of the regulations enforced by the Commis-
sioners excited the attention and execration of all men.
Scarcely does a day pass over without affording some
new proof of the inhumanity•and impolicy of the prin-
ciple adopted by the Commissioners to refuse all out-
door relief, under all circumstances. Wretches verging
on their eightieth and ninetieth years are dragged from
the obscure abodes in which they have not lived, but
vegetated, upon the parish pittance of half-a-crown a
week, and are compelled either to forego their relief or to
bee° iie in nates of the work-house. Many of these poor
creatures have perished in the face of day ; many more,
we fear, have sunk silently to their graves unheard of,
In-Titled. Indeed, the proceedings of the Commissioners
in this respect remind us strongly of the methcd adopted
by Captain Oakum and Doctor Macshane to rid their
ship of the sick list. These two worthies are described
in one of - Smollet's inimitable novels, as going to
work by ordering , all hands, in the hospital to
be turned upon deck ; and the result is, that
one-half (lie in the attempt to obey the order, and the
other half drop off one by one under the novel regimen
of making a man with an asthma run up the shrouds,
and another in a dropsy dance a hornpipe to the cat-
o'-nine-tails. The Oakum and Macshane system, as
enforced by the SoMerset House authorities, will very
soon clear the land of " the lame, the halt, and the
blind ;'' but we question whether the saving to the rate-
payers, by driving these miserable creatures to the
bourne whence none return, a few years before the
natural termination of their pilgrimage, will compen-
sate for the utter inhumanity of the proceeding. In-
dependentiv, however, of this consideration, the Com-
missioners have exceeded the moral, •if not the legal
bounds of their authority ; for although there are no
express limitations placed upon their decrees, yet the
rights of disabled paupers were reserved to them by
an admission of Lord Brougham, who, in his speech
on introducing the Bill into the Upper House,
said, " There can be no doubt that the aged,
or the impotent of labour, be it by age, or by a
premature failure of the bodily powers, is entitled
to .support, and the community at large is bound
to give it him." If, therefore, this claim be
(-rood and just, let us ask upon what prin-
cipleo do the Commissioners justify their refusal to
afford it, except upon condition that the person requir-
ing it consents to become the inmate of the workhouse.
How many of these aged paupers arc there who could
survive being torn away from the humble shed, where
they contentedly wear out lire's evening, and being
placed in a common receptacle for poverty, idleness.
and idiotcy, from which they are denied egress, and
even debarred from attending at a place of worship out
of the precincts of the workhouse ? To the workhouse
system, as enforced upon the young and able-bodied,
who slink to this resource as a means of avoiding honest
industry, we confess we have not any repugnance ; but
surely it oug-ht not, and must not be enforced indis-
criminately, after the fashion we have described. Hu-
manity, justice, and policy alike • condemn it ; and
what is of perhaps snore importance, the practical
men in most, if not all of the metropolitan parishes,
condemn it ; and, moreover, will not submit to its
being carried into operation. Meetings are con-
stantly held in these parishes, for the express purpose
of contravening and annulling the Commissioners' or-
ders in this respect ; and no longer ago than Tuesday
evening the parishioners, rate-payers of St. George the
Martyr, in Southwark, assembled in a large body, and
drew up a memorial to the Home Secretary upon the
subject, the sentiments embodied in which do equal
credit to their feelings and judgment. We have thrown
these few remarks upon paper, more with the view of
concentrating the sentiments of the community than
of entering at large upon the question at issue. We
trust that the Commissioners will see the necessity for
relaxing the severity of their proceedings ; if not, we
shall recur to the subject more at length at no distant
time.—Morning Herald.

CORONER'S INQUEST.—Yesterday afternoon a
very lengthened inquiry took place at the watch-house of the
board of Farringdon Without, Newgate-street, of citizens,
to inquire touching the death of Robert Beech, aged 39, late
barman at the Rainbow Tavern, in Ne yr-gate-street, whose
death was occasioned by injuries received from a man named
Robert Storey, a butcher. It appeared that the prisoner was
intoxicated at the time, the deceased being perfectly sober ;
and that although the deceased immediately appeared stunned
by.
The deceased
blow the serious consequences did not instantly occur.
shortly
h _deceased was soon after takers with a strong fit, arid
thatthat death was occasioned by the blow, but could not speak
positivelyroun.bt to the fact. The Jury, after a long consideration,
who was
in a verdict of" Manslaughter" against Robert Storey,
committed to Newgate.
About twelve months since an experiment was tried
by a tradesman's son at Hampstead of immuring a toad in a
small flower-pot, sunk deep in a garden, to ascertain the fact
of that animal's living without food. A few days ago the
light of day was allowed to illumine his darksome cell, when
the contented inmate hopped out with as much careless indif-
ference as if he had only retreated there for an evening's
repose. The prisoner was re-committed for further trial.
POLISHED GRANITE.—We have for some time
past been watching the progress of a machine for polishing
granite, worked by a steam-engine, which has been set a-going
by our enterprising townsman, Mr. Alexander 11,14 Donald,
stone-cutter. Splendid pedestals, urns, tablets, columns, and
chimney-pieces, are to be seen at his work, polished in the
most beautiful manner. We understand it had hitherto been
believed that the blue-grey granites from the best (parries in
this neighbourhood, viz., Rubislaw and Dancing-cairn, would
not receive such a fine polish as the red granite from Peter-
head, but the operation of Mr. M'Donald's machine has com-
pletely belied this, as will be seen by the many elegant spe-
cimens now at his work.—Aberdeen Hcrald.
The quantity of iron required for the railroads, for
which Acts have been passed during the late Session, amounts
to upwards of 220,000 tons.