The Sun.
London, England, 1836-12-27 00:00:00

UNION-BALL.

On Sunday evening, between seven and nine o'clock, an
attempt was made to murder a man named John Arkwright,
who resides in Mason-street, Lambeth, and a young man
named John Way, was yesterday brought to this office,
charged on suspicion with being the person who committed
the offence. Arkwright has been so seriously injured,
having received several wounds on the back part of his head
from his assailant, that he now lies in a dangerous state.

The prisoner, who strongly asserted his innocence of the
offence, was remanded until the fate of the wounded man
is known.

SHIPPING INTELLIGENCE.

VESSELS ENTERED INWARDS AT THE CUS

TOM-HOUSE, DEC. 2G.
The Kent, Tune, from Boulogne ; Hope, Cousens, Har-
lingen; Nova Sophia, Gunderson, Sunnesene ; St. Miel, Lat-
kin, St. Petersburgh ; Lively, Finch, Harlingen ; Union,
Winter, Harlingen ; Marianne, Buckeles, Memel ; Ontario,
Hutleson, New York ; William Reed, Ayton, Amsterdam ;
Britannia, Downie, Hamburgh ; Charlotte, Daniels, Calais ;
Briton, Kenward, Guernsey ; Edgar, Hood, Amsterdam ;
Thames, Jeffrey, Quebec; Tobago, M'Phail, Quebec ; Flora,
Slangebye, Dram; Elizabeth, Norwich, Dantzic ; Sarah,
Sadler, Singapore ; Hopeful, Seward, Cape Coast Castle. ;
ENTERED OUTWARDS FOR LOADING.

The King George, Garner, for Ghent, &c. ; Dart, Det•
chan, Cadiz ; Aurora, Cox, Madras ; Undine, Smith, Amster
dam; Giraffe, Major, Rotterdam.
CLEARED OUTWARDS WITH CARGO.

The Union, De Jonge, for Ostend ; William Foster, Young,
Cape of Good Hope ; Margaretha, Burcham, Batavia ; Clara,
Wall, Jamaica ; Mary, Custance, Gibraltar.

SILLER IN THE BANK.—One of the old Town
Guard of Edinburgh (a Highlander, as many of that body
were) having fallen asleep while on duty, was sentenced to
be drummed out of the corps with his coat turned. As
the procession, with the disgraced guardsman, passed along
the High-street, the drum beating an appropriate march,
a woman in the crowd cried, " Oh! puir man, lam was to
see him."—" No sae puir, madam," exclaimed the haughty
Celt, tossing his head, and assuming a consequential air,
which contrasted ludicrously with his degraded condition—
" no sae puir, madam, I hae Biller in the Bank."
Persons sending newspapers by post must be most
particular in not having any writing on the newspapers or
their covers, except the bare address. New orders have
been recently issued, and newspapers are now most rigidly
examined at all Post-offices through which they pass, and
arc charged heavy postage if written on or marked in any
way on the newspaper or cover. No name, initials, date,
or mark, is allowed ; and if persons act contrary they are
liable to a Post-office prosecution, and the penalties will be
rigidly enforced.

With the exception of the exterior walls, which have not
been perforated in more than fifty places, there will be' two
completely new houses for the Legislative Chambers to
meet in on the first day of the approaching Session ;
perience having proved, as we said at the time it would,
that the expensive vampings and clumsy contrivances- re-
sorted to by the conjurors of the " Woods and Works,"
with their architectural adjutant, would never answer the
purposes intended, so far as legislative business was con-.
corned ; what other purposes they did answer for, we must
leave the Treasury solicitor to explain. The 5:3,0001. ex-
pended in patching up these Houses being thus nullified, a
new and still grander scheme of operation has been resorted
to to make the said Houses more beautiful, comfortable, and.
convenient, if possible, than they were last year, To effect
this triple object, and another which our readers will un-
derstand, the assistance of a great northern philosopher
has been solicited, and most fortunately, we suppose, ob-
tained ; and now it may, we presume, be fairly expected,
that such scientific and permanent arrangements will be
made as to render any occasion for new houses wholly un-
necessary, for at least the next twenty years. This is said
to be the scheme now on foot ; and it would be very desi-
rable for its economy, as well as that it would put a stop
for the present to the extravagant job, which a set of mere
amateurs would have inflicted on this tax-eaten people,
under the auspices of the " Knight of the Tower and
Sword." With respect to the present alterations, the House
of Lords has not been turned inside out so completely as
the Commons, because it is said that the movement party,
with the " schoolmaster," who is again abroad, at their
head, intend to set aside the hereditary Peerage altogether,
and then they can turn the room into a bear garden, &c.,
for the accommodation of the Hon. Members and their
chores antics, as allowed by the recent Act, to retire from
the fatiguing operations of legislative wisdom, to refresh
their weary senses with the interesting, though somewhat
fierce gambols of those hyperborean huggers.
The House of Lords, then, being of such minor conside-
ration, the philosopher and architect have not expended
much attention, and but a few thousand pounds upon its
alterations ; its gallery has been curtailed about-two thirds,
and some perforations for aerostation and ventilation have
been made in some parts of its floor. But it is the House
of Commons on which all the riches of scientific speculation
have been poured forth. Its whole floor has been bored
into holes by a quarter inch auger, at the space of an inch
from each other, consequently there are some millions of
those conductors of hot or cold air, right to the soles and
lungs of the Hon. Members, which will better enable sena-
torial wisdom to blow hot or cold, as may suit its pleasure
or interest, than could be done without the aid of science.

'his honey-comb-fashioned floor or lungs, is to inhale its
warm or cold air from cellars beneath it ; the hot air is to
be generated in stoves connected with hot water spiral
pipes, in Perkins's manner of heating ; the generators are in
the angle formed by the junction of the exterior walls of
" The Two Houses." The operation of changing the
temperature is to depend upon what the majority of the
House may think " too hot" or " too cold ;" and after
the majority has decided, the stoker can open or shut
the cocks and valves, and let in a supply ad lib., and
the minority can leave " the House" if they do not relish
the atmosphere. Then, to carry off the foul air, or car-
bonic acid gas, which it is said rises rapidly and con-
stantly from all sides of the House in proportion to the
numbers present, a covered gallery has been formed, com-
mencing a few feet above the Speaker's chair, it thence
passes along under the ceiling, over the strangers'
gallery, takes a direction outward over the Vote Office,
descends by a tunnel to the entrance of the great
glass-house chimney-shaft, erected for this occasion ;
and in the basement of this chimney is another
furnace and stoker—here the foul atmosphere having
arrived, is to be prevailed on to pass through the fiery fur-
nace, and ascending 140 feet to the top of the shaft, there
" to precipitate itself into the atmospheric fluid in the shape
of finely levigated charcoal," commonly called " the soot of
legislation," of which the Radicals arc said to be remark-
ably fond. The tower itself, through which this chemical
process is is to be conducted towards the clouds, has been,
with some aptitude, denominated the Tower of Babel, or
Babble, for reasons which, perhaps, our readers can supply ;
but some think that neither the hot or cold air rising from
the cellars, and the low and damp atmosphere generated,
in some degree, from bilge-water, can be wholesome, forced,
as it will be, directly from its reservoirs into " the House,"
without mingling with the common atmosphere, purified by
the winds of heaven. An attempt very similar to the pre-
sent was made in the arrangements of the House of Lords
about 30 years since, by no less a man than Sir Humphry
Davy ; the floor was bored, and all the rest of the ma-
chinery was set up as it i 3 now, with the exception of the
glass-house chimney ; but even in the hands of that able
man, the plan was a failure, with this remarkable difference,
that Sir H. Davy was not allowed his actual expenses!
There is, along with all the other contrivances, a false ceil-
ing in the Commons House ; it is about 10 feet lower than
the real ceiling, and, except about eight feet along the
centre, is composed of framed glass work, very much like
unto a conservatory, which it so much resembles in every
other respect, that it seems more like the contrivance of a
horticulturalist than of an architect. So that with the
glass-cap ceiling and hot air benches, the plants arc likely
to flower luxuriantly, whatever their fruits may be. It
ap-
pears, from all their present doings, that our legislators have
arrived at a high state of effeminacy, very opposite to the
hardihood of their forefathers, who not only laid the foun-
dation of our country's greatness, but did really build up
the very edifice which seems, unfortunately, now to have
fallen into feeble though noisy hands. The Speaker's chair,
or rather, sentry-box, was removed, because its ponderous
and unmeaning bulk and pediment quite broke the conti-
nuity of sound,* so that in the reporter's gallery it was dif-
ficult to hear anything distinctly. A smaller chair having
been placed in its room, without its iopediments, the Mag-
nus Sylvanus of Scotland-yard went thither himself, and
having had the chair removed, replaced the old lumbering
machine where it had been, so that amongst so many di-
rectors we may guess what the sound will be. The effect
of the new plan was tried upon some 300 or 400 soldiers a
few weeks ago. The soldiers (somewhat ominous) sat on
the benches, while Dr. Reed harangued them from the
chair, to their great merriment, and, of course, edification ;
that profound philosopher, no doubt, is of opinion that sol-
diers must be the ablest judges of what is best suited to
Members of the Hon. House, and the said Members must
now take care not to differ with men of war in matters of
legislation. Having got the military at his side, the Doctor
may snap his fingers at every thing but ridicule, which is
still above, even military prowess.
- -

"• There is a scarce print, a view of the House of Com-
mons, when Sir Fletcher Norton was Speaker, between 1770
and 1780. In this view the Speaker's chair appears to be no
more than a good-sized fauteuil, and he is represented speak-
ing to a member who is rather behind the chair. It was then
the custom also for the Speaker, when tired, as Speakers will
be, to send for a pot of porter, and help himself to it with a
relish.—Morning herald.

The Hon. Spencer Cowper, youngest son of Earl
Cowper, and Private Secretary to Viscount Palmerston,
also holds the appointment of Clerk in the Foreign Office,
which is generally preparatory to an appointment of Secre-
tary of Legation to an Embassy abroad.
DECREASE OF MORTALITY IN GREAT BRITAIN.
—Supposing the burial registers to have been all the while
about equally accurate, it appears that, during the 5 years
ending with 1800, 1 in every 48 of the population died an-
nually ; during the 5 years ending with 1810, the ratio of
mortality was 1 in 49 ; during the 5 years ending with
1820, it was reduced to in 55 ; and during the 5 years end-
ing with 1830, it again increased, as already observed, to 1
in 51. There can be no doubt that the rate or mortality
in England has been materially diminished since the Arne..
rican war. The number of burials, estimated by averages
of 5 years, did not differ considerably during the entire pe-
riod from 1780 to 1815, though the population increased
about 3,300,000 in the interval. There cannot, in fact, be
a doubt that the value of life in England and Wales, regu-
larly increased from 1740 or 1750 down to 1815 ; and
there are good grounds for thinking that it then exceeded
its value in any other country, with the exception of Scot-
land. Mr. Finlayson has calculated three Tables, which set
this improvement in a very striking point of view. The
first gives the expectation of life, as deduced from the ages
of the subscribers to the Million Tontine of 1695 ; the
second the expectation of life among the government an-
nuitants, in the interval between 1785 and 1825 ; and the
third, the expectation of life for the whole population, as
deduced from the deaths and ages recorded in the parish
registers from 1813 to 1830 : distinguishing, in all cases,
between male and female life. Those on whom the estimates
in the first two tables are founded, being annuitants, and,
generally, therefore, in decidedly comfortable circumstances,
must be regarded as picked lives ; whereas the latter em-
brace all sorts. Now, it appears from these tables that the
probable life of a male annuitant, 20 years of age, in 1695,
was 29-34 years ; while in 1830, the probable life of a male
of the same age, taken indiscriminately from the mass of the
population, was 39-65 years ; exceeding that of the former
by more than ten years ! The improvement in female life
has been equally great ; but, for obuious reasons, it is not so
great when we compare females taken from the mass of the
people with female annuitants. This wonderful improve-
ment must, no doubt, be ascribed to a variety of causes :
partly to the drainage of bogs and marshes, by which agues
and marsh fevers have been entirely banished from many
districts ; partly to improvements in the diet, dress, lodg-
ings, and other accommodations of the mass of the people ;
partly to the greater prevalence of cleanliness ; and partly,
and, since 1800, chiefly, perhaps, to the discoveries in me-
dical science, and the extirpation of the small pox.—M'Cul-
loch's Statistical Account of' the British Empire.