The Sun.
London, England, 1831-05-25 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF TIIE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The first attempt to crush the Reform principle,
during the late Session of Parliament, was a direct
one, and made by an individual who has the just re-
putation of being a straightforward direct sort of
man,—we mean the Duke of Wellington. His
Gotee attacked in front, and said he would have no
Rtforni in England, just as his brother soldier, Die-
bnsch, made a front assault upon Warsaw, and said
he would have no rebellion in Poland. Both these
great officers were defeated nevertheless. Reform
went,on, and rebellion went on ; and then began
the war of manoeuvres arsonist the Poles, who resisted
their tyrant, and Engl.shinen, whose only crime was
that they followed the counsels of their King. The
second effort to overthrow Reform was by sap. A
pretence was raised that the " particular species"
of Reform recommended by his Majesty's Mini-
sters would never do at all. " Not," added the
enemies of the Bill—" not that we dislike Reform--
far from it—" there is nothing we so much approve
of—nothing for which we are half so anxious ; but
then, to abolish the rotten boroughs I call you that
a Reform ? That is quite horrible : any thing
but that,"—any thing but shut the back door
through which half a dozen men of talent at
least nose their way into the House of Commons
during each half century, and the front door,
which always stands wide open for the reception of
hundreds without either talent or character. " Why,"
they exclaimed, " it is downright corporation rob-
bery." Even so,—when the Allied Powers, occu-
pying Paris in 1815, laid their hands on the maga-
zines of iniquitous plunder by which the French
capital was then decorated and disgraced,—those
immortal monuments of art which the illustrious of
other times had transmitted to our days as records
of what the free genius of antiquity could perform
—even so, when the voice went forth that the fruits
of such outrages on acknowledged rights should no
longer be left in possession' of their barbarous
spoilers, but that policy and justice should be vin-
dicated, and every people should reclaim its own,
the outcry raised against this equitable act, was, on
the part of the French, like the present outcry of
the English depredators—" Why, these gems of
the classic world belong to Paris, you are perpe-
trating a municipal robbery." Pardon me, replied
the Duke of Wellington, it is simply restitu-
tion. The plea of " corporation-robbery" was aban-
doned, after a few hours' debate; and thus ended
the second Antisßeform stratagem. Next was flung
down the gauntlet of defiance to Lord Grey,—
" You dare not dissolve the Parliament whatever
you may threaten. The King is too prudent to
suffer such a coup d'etat ; and to punish you for
even thinking of so wicked an enterprise, you had
better have a care we don't treat you to a vote of
censure, and force your Lordship to retire." For
all that, King William authorised Lord Grey to
dissolve the Parliament, and the third operation of
the Tories terminated, like the former ones, in a
disastrous failure. Beaten, therefore, Ist, on the
principle of Reform, which the Duke of Wellington
deprecated, but the whole nation called for;-
2d, on the details of this specific measure, which
the people of England approved;-3d, on the
question whether there should not be a new Parlia-
ment, and on the composition of its Members,
the bulk of whom are advocates of Reform ;—the
despairing now quit the field of the House of Com-
mons altogether, and begin to play tricks with the
upper branch of the legislative body. They tell us
the Lords will surely throw out the Bill. Yes, just as
surely as the King prevented the dissolution. What
an estimate must these partisans have formed of the
powers of calculation possessed by the Lords of
Parliament. About fifty Peers enjoy (however
they may have acquired) certain peculiar privileges,
enabling them to influence the representation of a
number of boroughs. These privileges do no
tenure to their Lordships, because, of, or in propor-
tion to, the general extent of their property, and its
natural value. If they did, then all Peers, and all
Commoners too, would have similar rights, founded
on the same principles, and in the same proportions.
But the fact is, that some very poor Lords can
govern the elections for boroughs, while some ex-
tremely rich ones have no borough influence at all.
It is therefore manifestly for the general interest of
the Peers of England, as a great body of proprietors,
that poverty, assisted by local circumstances and by
usages of artificial growth, should no longer exercise
important powers over the borough representation
of the people of England, from which proprietary
wealth is altogether (where accident does not favour
it) excluded. This one argument we hold to be
fatal to the entire system of nomination boroughs,
when viewed from the eminence of the House of
Peers. If, again, we look at the representation for
counties, a similar mode of reasoning occurs to us.
Some Peers may have estates, of which, by chance,
the larger portion may be freehold. These, in the
ratio of their freehold property, will have the right
of granting freehold leases, and of influencing the
elections for their respective counties. Other
Noble Lords may have merely eopyhold estates,
and according to the present system be cut off front
every means of supporting a county candidate. Is
it not obvious that the greater number of descrip-
tions of property can be admitted to the elective
franchise, the better for property, and therefore for
the House of Lords, as a whole ? To us, therefore,
it does appear indisputable, that if there be any one
class or order of society more susceptible of benefit
than another, from the Bill proposed by Ministers, it
is precisely the Upper House of Parliament,—that
llouse of Peers, whose rejection of it is so fiercely
invoked by the tools of the Tory faction. There
are volunteer nibblers at the details of the measure,
who spend their time in projecting alterations, most
of them fanciful, many of them mischievous,—
whose schemes, if they were even to be discussed in
Parliament, would lead to au unsettlement of the
public mind, and would reduce the whole subject to
the condition of a quicksand, on no single spot of
which could one find a safe or consistent footing.—
inzes.

In our Chancery Report will be found some
curious details as to a mode of raising money in
England, common enough, God knows, but in some
measure new, at least in all the circumstances, to
our Courts of Law and Equity. Mr. King, a son
of Lord Lorton, having occasion for money, and-
baying no available securities to offer in return, re-
ceives from Mr. Hamlet plate and jewels to the
amount of 8,0001., for which lie gives promissory
notes, policies of insurance, a judgment in England,
and another in Ireland. The goods, as soon as re-
ceived, are deposited with Mr. George Robins, the
auctioneer, who advances on them 2,500/., and they
are sold in course of time, when the sum realised
amounts to 3,0001. Goldsmith, till a comparatively
recent period, was hr England synonimous with
banker. Many of the principal banking•houses in
the me•ropolis were founded by goldsmiths. In the
present day it is understood that the chief business
of those who deal in plate and jewels is the ad-
N.anFl ng goods to necessitous people of quality, to
enable them to raise money on them. We have
here a striking instance of the ruinous consequences
gisloatf ee interference between borrowers and
lenders.
theosuarmse, no man would think of lending
money on
property,
terms to the Hon. M. King,
who is Without per 44 as. to a man who can give.
available securities.
for one case, death witliien theinsurances only provide
period of the policy ;
the lender has in realpiteyr,onoorotliier security than
his command over the
market,t ie borrower. But
were there a regular money
llend.er could
at once estimate the risk, and fix directly his terms.
thatf
In such a state of things no one weileltsyn4Toto)soei
a lender would think of demanding
3,0001. advanced, and 131. per cent interest' till?.
the 8,0001. is recovered. If the money were r-
paid within a twelvemonth, the difference between
the sum received and returned would be upwards o
2601. per cent. In some late Bankruptcy proceed-
ings mention was made of a description of goods not
'infrequently made the medium of loans, namely
books. It is well known that after a short time
most new boobs are disposed of to the trade at

trade sales, and retailed at a reduced price to the
public. A money-lender purchases a book, or
which we suppose the publishing price is 11.,
for ss. He charges the borrower the publishing
price of 11., and the latter, to raise money, must be
content to receive considerably less than what the
trade can purchase it for at the sales. Thus, per-
haps, he will agree to pay 1/. for 3s. 6d. There are
at this time various societies in England, Scotland,
and Ireland, formed for the purpose of making head
against the frauds which now enter largely, we fear,
inte most of the commercial dealings of this country.
We have just received a volume printed in Edin-
burgh, under the title of " Caution to Bankers,
Merchants, and Manufacturers, against a series of
commercial frauds prevalent throughout Great
Britain and Ireland ; by Friends of Commerce."
In this work, to which we shall advert more fully
on a future day, the following is mentioned as one
of the means by which the trade of the country has
become unsound :

" TRADE OF UNDERSELLINC.—A number of general
merchants, who may be considered the general receivers
of the treasury of fraud, here solicit the public favour.
Through many advertisements, these men proffer to ad-
vance money on marketable commodities of every descrip-
tion, and pledge themselves to secrecy in every case.
Having large and commodious warehouses, they are ever
ready to take in goods agreeably to their advertised pro-
posals, and soon are the stores of fraud opened to their
view. Not only daily, but almost even hourly, a variety
of rnerchandize arrives from almost every quarter of the

three integral parts of the United Kingdom. The ven-
ders, on such occasions, are by no means disposed to be
very particular in these secret contracts ; for rather than
part without selling the goods, they frequently accept of
one third of a fair market-price.
" The merchants, well aware that all the goods which
are thus brought to them haveeither been obtained through
fraud, or taken from the stock through some needy trader,
who is about to fail, take special care to diminish the
sum to be paid for the different purchases, by making it
an usual practice to settle the account of all goods bought
in secret confidence, one half in money and the other half

in bills, which, although useful to knaves, cannot be nego-
tiated by any honourable man. Thus we have a solution
of the wonderful trade of underselling—these general
merchants disposing of their cheaply-purchased goods to
the public at moderate prices, either in wholesale or re-
tail. Let our honest merchants and manufacturers, then,
be no longer surprised when they at times discover their
own merchandize selling in the shops of retail twenty and
thirty per cent. below prime cost.
We thus see that all attempts by Usury Laws to
protect the poor against the rich only tend to ag-
gravate the evil. The insolvent tradesman as well
as the man of fashion at the west end of the town,
contrive to obtain goods on the same terms, and
these are easily converted into money. The punish-
ment of death for depredation can now only reach
the stupid, when a grain of sense enables a man to
plunder with far more ease, and with perfect im-
punity. On a future day, we shall enter more fully
into this subject.—Morning Chronicle.
We feel it necessary to advert once more, and for
the last time, to the cases of the men who are or-
dered to suffer death this morning—not that any
thing we can now say can possibly avail them, but
with a view to exposing the fallacious arguments
which hays been used in defence of those sanguinary
and disgusting spectacles, by which, for offences
like those in question, England alone, of all the na-
tions of the civilized world, is disgracefully distin-
guished. When we first stated that the offences for
which these men were doomed to suffer did not in
any point of view—whether a moral or social one—
whether one of justice or expediency—deserve
death, we are told by the Courier, that inquiry had
been made into their characters, which being found
to be bad, they were selected for the vengeance of
the law ; for even the advocate of this melancholy
selection condemns the law as inhuman, and thereby
admits that its punishment rather partakes of the
nature of vengeance than justice. We answered,
that, to bang convicts for bad character would be to
hang them, not upon evidence given on oath openly
in a Court of Justice, and determined on by a Jury,
but upon statements made under no responsibility,
and by a mode of proceeding which was arbitrary
and extra-judicial. Now we are told that the rigid
enforcement of the law, is, not in consequence of the
badness of character of the convicts, but that their
having bad characters prevented the extension of
mercy. Is not this merely putting, in other words,
that the men were selected to be hanged, not on
account of the offences of which they were found
guilty in open Court, but on account of another
charge, that of being of ill reputation, of which they
were not found guilty in any judicial Court what-
ever. The argument stands thus :—The men's lives
would have been spared, notwithstanding the ver-
dicts against them, if their general character had
been good; but the badness of their character
caused them to be selected for execution ; therefore
they were ordered to be hanged because they had
bad characters. Nothing can be clearer than this.
It was not the sentence of the law which, upon this
admission, fixed their doom, but another sentence of
which the law, as it is, knows nothing; fur the law
condemns no man to death for having a bad cha-
racter. We are glad to have such a high authority
to refer to in support of our position as the late Sir
Samuel Romilly, a man who was, in his legislative
career, deservedly the oracle of the members of the
present Government, on all questions touching
the reform of our criminal jurisprudence—a sub-
ject to which he devoted for a long time
the best energies of his great mind, and the
honest zeal of heart which no political tempta-
tions ever caused to swerve from vindicating,
against the doctrines of a tyrannical expediency, the
eternal principles of justice. In his speech on
moving for the total repeal of the Shoplifting Act,
and two other Acts, which made it death to steal
to the amount of forty shillings in a dwelling-house,
or on board is vessel in a navigable river, he says
in reference to the sort of arbitrary discretion,
which has been exercised in the cases of Widgett
and Broach, by selecting them for execution on
account d something extrinsic to the crimes of
which they wet' n .convicted—" A man is convicted
of one of those larcenies made capital by the law
(such as sheep-stealing, or privately stealing in a
dwelling-house), and is besides a person of very
bad character. It is not to such a man that mercy
(according to the present system) is to be extended,
and the sentence of the law denouncing death, the
remission of it must be called by the name of mercy

—the man, therefore, is hanged—but in truth it is
not for his clime that he suffers death, but for the
badness of his reputation. Another man is suspected
1 of murder of which there is no legal evidence to
convict him; there is proof, however, of his having
committed a Weeny to the amouat of forty shillings
in a dwelling-house, and of that he is convicted.
He, too, is not thought a fit object for clemency,
and he is hanged, not for the crime of which he has
been convicted, but for that of which he is only
suspected. A third, upon his trial for a capital
larceny, attempts to establish his innocence by wit-
nesses whom the Jury disbelieve, and he is left for
execution because he has greatly enhanced
his guilt by the subornation of perjured
witnesses. In truth he suffers death, not for
felony, but for sutornation of perjury, although
death be not the legal punishment of this offence."
If the advocates of the practice of executing inhu-
Man laws on the ground of circumstances extrinsic
to the legal crimes of the convicted persons, will
not believe our view of the subject right upon this
testimony, neither would they believe us, although
" one had risen from the dead." In fact, where the
crime as proved in all its circumstances before the
Jury, is not such as to deserve death, no other con-
sideration call justify the inflic!ion of it. The dan-
ger which the apologists of sanguinary puni,liments
apprehend from the badness of a convict's character
can be sufficiently guarded against by the punish-
ment of transportation for life ; but perhaps that
n
\
t necessary
e t,ahrbagetuc
argue this
society from the possible return
of the convict
to the error of his ways is objec,
jeet im
‘,a
Isieeisrie t, sleds no blood ! There are
somematter as if it were absolutely
amongflagrant
reighteen u
nature
rti
ov idc,t ss„
eno
e
crime was of a sufficiently
death,GOVerfirtient were still bound to select some fur

execution, lest it should be for once said that the
Court of the Old Bailey had a bloodless Sessions.—
When we said that the stealing• of .pigs and asses,,
though as serious moral crimes as stealing horses or
sheep, was not punished with death—and yet that
sort of property was sufficiently protected—we
meant, protected by the law—for, in fact, the poor
man's ass that browses on the bare-worn common,
is still less protected in point of fact, than the
rich man's sheep, who can afford to keep a shep-
herd to take care of them ; but the ass or the pig
is frequently the whole of the poor man's live stock
—and one sheep, or ten sheep, is a very small part
of the rich man's stock—but to steal the whole of
the poor man's stack deserves a moderate punish-
ment, and to steal a small part of his wealthier
neighbour's calls for extermination.—Morn. Herald.
The occurrences that have already taken place in
Antigua afford another example of the direful effects
which must ever attend the officious and ignorant
meddling of a set of persons in this country calling
themselves Philanthropists. Is it philanthropy to
excite the once happy and contented slaves in the
West Indies to insurrection against their masters,
and thus to create scenes of confusion, massacre, and
destruction, which all who really have love for their
fellow-creatures must shudder to contemplate ? Is
it rational or honest to accuse our countrymen in
the West Indies of injustice and cruelty, not only
without evidence, but in defiance of well-established
and undeniable facts ? Is it patriotism to risk, nay to
insure the loss of those splendid possessions by driv-
ing the colonists to desperation ? The capital in-
vested in our West Indian Colonies amounts to
130 millions ; they take a twelfth part in value of
the whole of our exports, and transmit to us nearly
a fourth in value of the whole of our imports ; find
that branch both of our exports and imports has
been shown, by official documents, to exceed in
value the united amount of all that ‘ve send to
or receive from the East Indies, the Indian
Archipelago, China, and New Holland. Who-
ever then should calmly look forward to the
separation from Great Britain of Colonies such
as these, Colonies too in which the English lan-
guage, English feelings and manners, are predo-
minant, must at once be pronounced either an
idiot or a person whose utter disregard of the inte-
rests and glory of his country renders him wholly
unworthy of consideration. The planters have ma-
terially advanced, by their own spontaneous exer-
tions, the intelligence, morality, and corporeal com-
forts of the slaves. The amelioration that has taken
place in every respect within the last thirty years is
familiar to every one who knows the West Indies ;
if, therefore, there were any regard for justice in the
" anti-slavery" party, they would admit what has
been done as a guarantee for what will be further
effected, and leave the care of the slave to those
who feel it to be their duty, as it is their obvious
interest, to provide by every possible means for his
happiness and well-being.—Morning Post.