The Sun.
London, England, 1831-04-09 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.,

The cause of Reform goes on and prospers.
There are, undoubtedly, strange things said, and by
strange people, en this important subject, more
especially by some of them, touching the probable
effects of the Bill proposed by his Majesty's Mi-
nisters. One, for instance, whose opinions on mili-
tary questions ought to be received with much &-
ference, has told us that the reformed Parliament
will chiefly, if itot exclusively, be returned by the
shopkeepers of England. Whether his Grace of
Wellington, to w born this happy prediction has been
attributed, mean t to express an aristocratic slight
ton ards the middle gasses of his countrymen, or a
compliment to the nod taste of Buonaparte, who
called us "a natio: ," of shopkeepers; or whether
the gallant Duke es aisidered it a fair manoeuvre to
" blow the coals"' 17 etween the agricultural and com-
mercial bodies, amt I so deprive Ministers of part of
that support whit/ has been so profusely furnished
them by the lane ed interest of the kingdom, it is
not our business to pronounce. If the last men-
tioned was the • Noble Duke's object, sure we are
that it has bee
n signally defeated. In no single
county throught rut the United Kingdom has there
been an oPe' n meeting held, at which the
slightest ewe, sition worth mentioning„o "as
made--
no tie Fri, eciple of Reform, for that is wholly
out of t
.he t ion, but—to that precise quality and
measur e of ILeform which Ministers have embodied
in theii, Bill Ts► the other instances of ardour and
unanietity manifested by the leading counties of
(Great Brit ain on behalf of Government on this or-
'ssioun, welave now to add that of the county of
-an extensive county, eminently agricultu-
ral, veld rated for Toryism, and so difficult to rouse
to the e• tertion necessary for a public meeting, that
a correspondent informs us it is forty years since the
county of Sussex was before called together for any
politic Al object. The unusual extent of Sussex,
from • east to west, in comparison with the distance
'from the coast to its northern limit, seems to have
brobv el it into two separate communities, in so
mut' s that the public meeting, held on Thursday
last at Lewes, was unheard of by a considerable'
number of Magistrates and country gentlemen, even
up to the morning of that day. Notwithstand-
ing which, there was a full attendance of men
a the highest distinction and first properties of
county, who all (with one, not very for-
'at idable, exception) concurred in a cheerful and
iirited support of the entire measure of Reform
-oposed by Ministers. Lord George Cavendish,
sal I became so old a member of an illustrious house;
Ott ask the lead in these constitutional proceedings,
to ad moved, after a liberal and sensible speech, the
dslress to his Majesty, which was ably seconded by
asrd George Lennox, the Noble Lord treating with
acorn the sophisticated nonsense of this being a
'-"Aryolutionary" law, instead of one whose direct
teredesacy was to save the kingdom from revolution;
Wed..
-rieier that he would at tend in his place at every
kri, progress through the House, arid that
Iw,e w
0,
ol
h o 4Aipport it in every clause," (that is the
tsetse policy), ,or risk by any alteration the safety
Mr. Partington, in
,f the whole 0104 i-sure
pro-
posing a petition to Cite House of Lords, asked the
shrewd and very vertireaot question, which, indeed,
has nes er received a eecoaci answer within our me-
-I:mory from any disinterested men, " whether there
-wire any abuses in our system requiring correc-
lion ?" We shall take the liberty to ask, in passing
A second question—viz., whether those abuses
are likely to be corrected by the same sort of Par-
diament under which they have sprung up and lion-
rish,edr' Lord William Lennox supported the former
speaker. The only "exhibition" of the day was the
unfortunate young gentleman who represents the pro-
prietol of Gattonas.ilr. Shelley,—a gallant specimen
of a Tory stripling, we admit, and exceedingly
adapted to various exercises, as well perhaps of
mind as body, but monstrously misplaced among
representatives of the people of England pretending
to have any particle of communion with that people
in political feeling or intelligence. The lad, how-
ever, had been trained at a public school, and stood
up to be badgered wiiiiout flinching. Mr. Shelley's
lamentation over the disfranchisement of the poor,
not one of whom, let it be remeiabcred, is to lose
tbo personal enjoyment of his vote (unissz he be a
non-resident elector), and his father's (Sir John
Shelley.'') advertisement to the people of Lewes,
denouncing the " disfranchisement of one whole
order of the State 1," meaning the order of righ
boroughmongers, may 47 laid together in amusing,
juxta-position, as a proof that the Shelley family
are somewhat difficult to plea,e. sit
Godfrey
Webster and Mr. Kemp hunted down poor Uetton
unmercifully. A petition to the House of Commons
was voted after that to the Lords. The only inter-
ruption to the satisfactory progress of the meeting,
was an attempt by a set of stupid or mischievous
radicals—instigated, we presume, by some Tory
incendiaries—to ingraft their otvn revolting extra-
vagance on the proceedings of the day; but the
trick was obviated by the joint good sense of the
High Sheriff and of the bulk of the assembly, and
the main questions were carried in a spirit short of
unanimity by the single dissent of the worthy repre-
sentative for Gatton.—Times.
The trials at the Old Bailey always afford a prac-
tical satire on the state of our criminal laws. In
that Court, at the close of the Sessions, the solemn
ceremony of passing sentence of death on a large
number of convicts takes place--sometimes as many
as thirty or forty persons appear at the bar together,
to receive, for crimes materially differing in malignity
and magnitude, the wholesale sentence of extermi-
nation. This would be a very awful proceeding, if
it had not necessarily become a mockery. We say
necessarily, because it is the inevitable result of the
progress of civilization that the laws which ore so
profuse of blood should be rarely carried into effect.
Enlightened opinion, controlling judicial power, saves
humanity many of those disgusting spectacles of
human sacrifice, for inferior crimes, which were some
years ago of frequent occurrence. If the criminal
laws cannot be generally or uniformly executed, why
are they not made conformable with the advanced
spirit of civilization ? If they were generally exe-
cuted, every Court of criminal justice in the realm,
to which belongs the power of trying capital of-
fences, would be a great abattoir, or slaughterhouse,
in which crowds of human victims would be periodi-
cally immolated by a moat compendious system of
legalised butchery. At the late special commission in
Hampshire no less than 101 persons were capitally con-
victed; but what power in the land would dare to offer
up this human hetacomb to the Moloch-sp:rit of our
criminal law ? It has been well observed that the
prevention of crime is better attained by certainty
than severity of punishment. Laws which cannot
be uniformly executed are bad in principle and in-
effective in practice. Under such a system offenders
are naturally taught to calculate on the chances of
escape ; while those who are selected from the mass
of capital convicts to perish on the scaffold suffer
not by the defined and certain authority of the law,
but are too often the pitied victims of arbitrary dis-
cretionwaintdh
aj:dudiciival caprice. Hence Judges are
bided with
conutes responsibility,
As and the laws
are brought into long as enaetmenta
denouncing death to rafferinte.es inferior to those of the
most dangerous and enormous magnitude disgrace
our Statute-book,
pauniseuemproportion of crimes, de-
serving of severe
punishment, not justifying the
extermination of the otfereseent
will
eyes of con-1
eiderate and conscientious /*nor:
go altogether
unpunished, from the repugnance- ~
jured parties
to put human life in peril, where the sentattle,! of the
law betrays more of the character of vengeance than
the spirit of justice. It is not an unesnximanprac-
tice of jurors at the present day, especially in this
metropolis, to strain points of conscience In eimo„rl
of humanity, and to contradict the evidence by
their verdicts, in their enlightened abhorrence of
sanguinary punishments, A remarkable instance
of this occurred at the present Sessions, in the
case of a youth of sixteen, who was charged with
feloniously breaking into a dwelling-house arid steal-
ing a watch. The evidence clearly showed that the
person who stole the watch must have broken into