The Sun.
London, England, 1831-12-10 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

We have received a great variety of letters on
the Reform Bill, and on the conduct of its sup-
porters and opponents in Parliament, to which
we have not room to advert in detail. One of
our correspondents expresses his hostility to the
clause which confers a county vote on tenants at
will renting a farm of 501. He justly observes,
that men deriving their light from this qualifica-
tion are the least independent body of electors
that can be imagined,—that they are conscious
themselves of their dependent condition,—and
that they generally deprecate the fatal present in-
tended for them by Lord Chandos as a source of
oppression and a badge of slavery. A second
correspondent—after alluding to the remarks in
which we objected to the concession of repre-
sentatives to the literary and scientificinstitu-
tions of the metropolis, remarks which he pro-
nounces conclusive—makes himself a proposition
which we should think equally objectionable.
He divides society into classes, and while he
would maintain the 10/. house qualification gene-
rally, he proposes to add a Member for every
county to be elected by the poorer or working
classes renting houses below 101. There
could not be a piece of more incongruous and
bungling legislation. We have too many kinds
and denominations of electors already, in free-
holders, copyholders, leaseholders, 101. house-
holders, burgesses, citizens, and so on, without
adding to them cottage-holders or paupers, with
the exclusive power of returning a tribune of the
populace. In every other case we have a mini-
mum of property to decide the electorial quali-
fication, and therefore a mixture of all classes of
society with property above that amount may
approach the polling booth. In this case the
maximum would be below 10/., and nobody who
had the misfortune to own a house of that value
would be admitted to vote in a class exclusively
poor. The last correspondent whose letter we
shall notice expresses great impatience at the
slow progress of the Reform Bill, and at the
play of compliments kept up so adroitly between
the Ministry and their opponents in the House
of Commons. We may afterwards recur to this
subject. In the mean time, we may assure the
public that the Bill—the future charter of our
rights—which is to be introduced on Monday,
instead of rendering the constituency of Eng-
land more complex, as has been proposed by
some, or less popular as has been maintained by
others, will improve it both in simplicity and
popularity. With this assurance the nation will
rest satisfied, and treat with the contempt it de-
serves the lying trash of an Evening Paper, which
clothes its insane hostility to Reform in absurd
reports of a disunion in the Cabinet by which it
has been introduced and is supported.—Times.
The example of Colonel Jones and of Mr.
Goadby, who proposed, through our Paper, to
become useful after their death by bequeathing,
during their life-time, their bodies for dissection,
promises to become contagious among generous
spirits, who can rise above the prejudices of their
age, while they more than share its humanity.
We have received another letter on the same
subject, under the signature of " F. T." express-
ing admiration of " the manly and generous
conduct" of our two former correspondents, and
proposing that list should be formed at one of
the chief hospitals for inscribing the names of
such persons " as, actuated by a sense of their
duty to God and man," should be disposed to
take measures for insuring the delivery of their
bodies for anatomical purposes after their death.
Our correspondent " F. T." promises to enter
his name on this " great book" of science as
soon as it shall be formed. Nothing appears to
us more laudable than this sacrifice of present
personal repugnancec, for the future benefit of
those in whose happiness we cannot participate,
and to whose approbation we must necessarily
be insensible. After all, however, we are aware
that this must be only a scanty resource for the
supply of subjects to our anatomical schools,
and we hail the proposal not as the means
of rendering a legislative measure unnecessary,
but as a partial victory over those prejudices
which made legislation itself dangerous or in-
efficient. When the subject has hitherto at dif-
ferent times been brought before the public, it
has with mischievous industry been represented
as a question—not between the anatomical ex-
hibition of the dead and the benefit of ti e
living—but between the dissection of the poor
and the exemption of the rich—between the
honoured interment of the latter and the dis-
graceful mangling of the remains of the former.
This clamour, after being echoed from one end
of the country to the other two years ago, pene-
trated within the walls of Parliament, and af-
fected the majority of the House of Peers. It
was then a common exclamation, if anatomy is
so necessary to medical science, and if medical
science is so useful to mankind, why do not the
tipper classes of society—why do not the wealthy
and the enlightened consent to give their bodies
for dissection as well as the poor,—and why are
all the sacrifices for medical knowledge to be
confined to those who have enjoyed least of its
benefits ? The example of our three correspon-
dents in better circumstances, has answered this
appeal, and tends to destroy this prejudice.
But admitting the merit of such examples of al-
lowing that they ought to influence the pretended
sages who think themselves peculiarly entitled to be
,called the guardians of the poor, because they pan-
da: to their lowest passions, and foster their most
i.rirs!ztsonable suspicions, we are not of opinion that
they supply the strongest argument with the
poorer Classes for abandoning their present an-
tipathies to dissection and for giving their volun-
tary assent to a change in the existing law. That
strongest argument is, that they at present afford
nearly all the subjects for our anatomical
ttleatres—that they are the chief sufferers by the
imperfection of our surgical knowledge—and
f,hat they would be the chief gainers by an ex.
tension of medical skill. When a clamour is
raised against a proposition for giving up the
unclaimed bodies of those who die in hospitals
or in poor-houses to be dissected, it is of course
pretended that at present the poor are exempted
from this imaginary calL
+m t,. Now, what is
the fact ? Are not the poor as exclusively the
subjects of anatomical examination now, as they
could be under any change of law ? Where
do the body-snatchers go when they receive an
order for the exercise of their repulsive contra-
band ? Do they not bargain with some grave-
digger, or the porter of some charitable esta-
blishment, for their coonivance in seizing bodies
which belonged to the poorer classes ? The
rich are not often disturbed in their tombs by the
unhallowed intrusion of the resurrection-man.
They are allowed to slumber in their inaccessible
vaults, while their poorer neighbours are raised
and dissected for the benefit of posterity. If some
Bishop or Williams—unable to supply the trade
with the fruits of plundered churchyards—
think of making subjects, whom do they entice
into their den of murder ? Not the affluent, the
respected, or the known, but poor unfriended

wretches, for whom nobody is supposed to sails,
and whose loss nobody will deplore,—the vety
parties, in short, who would, most probably, be
borne to their grave at the public expense froin
the wards of an hospital, or tl.e cells of a poor-
house. It is not likely, notwithstand'n, Sir A.
Cooper's remark, that persons possessed of pro-
perty more valuable than their bodies would,:le
killed to obtain their bodies. Neither an Alder-
man, a Bishop, nor a Member of Parliament
could be supposed to labour under any appre-
hension of being "Burhed;" and therefore this
source of supply—to whatever extent it pro-
ceeded—remained exclusively with the poor.—
Nor could the poor avoid being almost the only
sufferers by the deficiency of surgical skill
which an insufficient supply of subjects for
dissection would necessarily occasion. The
wealthy can always purchase the best portion
of knowledge and experience which is in the
market. They are not likely to submit their
limbs or organs to a bungling operator, or to
take advice from an unskilful physician ; and
if scientific medical practitioners cannot be
educated
sat home, they can pay them for the
accomplishments and knowledge which they
must acquire in foreign countries ; but the
poor must be contented with ignorance and in-
experience, if their prejudices debar the less
wealthy portion of the profession from the means
of acquiring anatomical science. We therefore
think that it would be chiefly for the benefit of
the lower classes themselves that those who die
in hospitals, in workhouses, in prisons, or in
penitentiaries, and whose bodies are not claimed
for interment by any relative, should be distri-
buted among the anatomical schools, under such
sanctions, and with such formalities, as religion
and decency require. The supply of subjects
from this source would be sufficient,—and from
none other. We recommend to attention a letter
of Sir J. Sewell on this subject, in which other
classes of supply are enumerated, though we
think several provisions of his measure are un-
necessary, and one or two would be injurious to
his object. The suggestion which he makes of
giving up the bodies of suicides for dissection
would be a good one, if any thing like an ade-
quate supply could be furnished by such a course ;
but as this would not be the case, great injury
would result from a plan which would aggravate
the already existing prejudice arising from the
intimate connexion in the public mind between
dissection and ignominious punishment.-- Times.
One of our contemporaries (the Standard)
thinks that the continuance of the present tithe
system of Ireland, without change or modifica-
tion, is an object of so much importance to the
nation, that it would not be too dearly pur-
chased by a civil war. The process by which our
contemporary arrives at the conclusion of the
expediency of a civil war is curious. It seems to
be this—they who combine to resist the pay-
ment of money for one thing, will resist the pay-
ment of money for all other things ; and there-
fore, as the refusal to pay tithes will be followed
by the refusal to pay taxes, and the refusal to
pay taxes would lead to anarchy and disorder, to
avoid this possible evil, we should rush at once
on the certain evil of a civil war. But we will
allow our contemporary to speak for himself—

" There is no general combination—there is a combi-
nation here and a combination there, but no general com-
bination. If there were a general combination, it would
be put down in six weeks by ten thousand men, or lees,
with the aid of the law and the Protestant yeomanry in
Ireland, were the law honestly administered, and the yeo-
manry placed under the command of men in whom they
could repose confidence—the necessity of a civil war in
11 Ireland would not be in the slightest degree obviated by
the destruction of the .hurch.

" When people have been taught that by combining
they can defeat the legitimate sovereignty of the country
as represented by the law, will they not avail themselves
of this ascendancy given by combination for all purposes ?
It is idle to deny that the continuance of a legislative union
with Great Britain is immeasurably more unpopular in
Ireland, and with a far greater number, than tithes ever
were, or ever can be. Now, if the populace be taught,
that by combination to refuse a payment of tithes, they
can get rid of tithes, can there be a doubt that they will
carry the lesson a step further, and force a repeal of the
Union, by combining to resist the payment of taxes? It
comes then to this—if a war with Ireland we must have,
let it he taken on the strong ground, while we still possess
it. To yield any more, in order to resist with more effect
hereafter, would be to imitate the blunder imputed (falsely,
we believe) to the Magistrates of Lyons, who were said to
have tried to purchase peace of the insurgents by a pre-
sent if cartridges.
" Stupid as the Ministers are, they see this. Why then
is this project of robbing the Trish Church pressed so has-
tily forwkrd ? To conciliate the association ; to prevail
upon it to send over its contingent of twenty-seven, with
King O'Connell at their head. The Ministers sell the
Irish Church a year sooner, for seven and twenty votes—
that is the whole. Will the venerable and respected
Bishop of Bath, and Wells support such a Ministry upon
any Bill?"
It may be true that " the continuance of a
legislative union with Great Britain is immea-
surably more unpopular in Ireland, and with a
far greater number, than tithes ever were ;" and
yet though the people of this country might
prefer war to a dissolution of the Union, it
does not follow that they would prefer war to
the improvement of the Irish tithe system.
The Union is not so popular as we could wish
it to be in Ireland, and the reason is, that the
Irish have hitherto derived little advantage from
it. They have been misgoverned for centuries,
and at this present day the evils of which they
complain remain still unremedied. Of these
evils the tithe system is one. To remedy the
evils suffered by the Irish is to diminish the
motives for a repeal of the Union ; and there-
fore the substituting a rational mode of paying
the clergy for the present most irrational mode,
will not increase the desire for a repeal, but pro
tanto, diminish it. It does not follow, there-
fore, that because we do not fight for the con-
tinuance of church abuses, we must fight for
something else ; while it is highly probable that
by removing church abuses, and adopting other
measures of a healing nature, we shall deprive
the Irish of all disposition to do what would lead
to the necessity for recurring to force. In the first
place, the Irish have right on theirside, in combin-
ing to resist the payment of tithes. Admitting even
that the Irish Protestant Church was the church
of the people of Ireland, and that it answered the
purpose for which the establishment of a church
is justifiable, it does not follow that that church
should be supported by a tax, tl:e iniquitous and
oppressive nature of which is admitted by all
writers,—a tax which, amongst its other evil
effects, places :the clergyman in a state of hosti-
lity to his flock, and deprives him of the power
to resider that service for which he is appointed.
But the Irish Protestant Church is not the
church of the people, it is the church of a small
fraction of the people. If Scotland had been a
conquest of England, we should no doubt have
seen a Protestant Episcopal Church established
in it for the 50,000 Scotch Episcopalians,
while the two millions of Presbyterians and
100,000 Catholics would have been in the situ-
ation in which the Irish Catholics and Presby-
terians now are. But Scotland not having been
a conquest, the people obtained the establish-
ment of the church to which they were attached.
On the other hand, the Irish have been

treated as a conquered people. The char
of the conquerors has been imposed
them—or rather a sinecure clergy has
be
imposed on a people, nine-tenths of whom are
hostile to them. An Irishman, therefore, must be
poor in spirit, and worthy ofbeing treated as a slave
if he remain satisfied, so long as that badge of his
nation's degradation remains in existence. They
who wish the continuance of the Union should
abandon all that supplies the Irishman with no-
tions for disliking the Union—all that reminds
the Irishman that in his own country he is not
the same man that an Englishman or a Scotch-
man is in his respective country. We are not
aware that force leads to affection. Were it so,
the Irish should be prodigiously attached to the
English, having hitherto experienced little kind-
ness, but abundance of coercion. There are in-
stances, no doubt, in which a good drubbing in-
creases the attachment of a wife to her husband,
and the story goes that the Russian wives, on
their marriage day, used to present their hus-
bands with a whip, and that they afterwards
deemed themselves unkindly used if the hus-
bands did not occasionally belabour them lustily
with it. But, in ninety-nine cases out of a hun-
dred, nevertheless, blows serve to extinguish, ra-
than to increase affection. At all events, if we
must attempt the beating system with the Irish, let
us first try what kindness will do. It would be odd
if the Irish were so differently constituted from
other people, that all kindness would be thrown
away on them. But if we must have an Esta-
blished Protestant Church in Ireland, we ought
to consider in what manner the establishment
can be rendered most efficient. Now, there are
few points better understood, than that if a
clergy are overpaid, they will be inefficient in
the proportion in which they are overpaid. A
Bishop, with 20,0001. a year, has just 19,0001.
too much ; for there is no one point on which
greater stress is laid by Christ than that riches
are a bar to the entrance into the kingdom of
Heaven ; and they who show the way to the king-
dom of Heaven, ought not themselves to be in a
condition to exclude them from it. A rich clergy
are necessarily a lazy clergy ; a rich clergy are,
besides, in a state of disobedience to the injunc-
tions of Christ, and ill suited for their duty,
even if disposed to discharge it. A decent in-
come for one Archbishop and four Bishops, and
for a working clergy, would render the Protes-,
tant Church much more efficient than it now is.
By employing force against the Irish, to pre-
serve the tithe system from alteration, would be
to rush on a great evil, not for the effecting of
any benefit, but for the effecting of another
evil. The land alone possessed by the Protes-
tant Establishment of Ireland is far more than
equal to the payment of all the clergy of all the
denominations in Ireland. If, therefore, the
tithes were to be valued and permanently settled,
as in Scotland, as a tax, it ought to be applied
to the extinction of the national debt. The
object of Government ought not to be, to give
100,000 acres to one scion of a noble family in
the capacity of a Bishop, and 800,000 acres to
another, but to take no more from the people
than is required for the efficient services of men
necessary for the defence of the country, and
the preservation of order. As means of pre-
serving order, religious teachers are appointed
by the State ; but the cramming these teachers
would render them inefficient servants. The
day is gone for enlisting the people in a
crusade in behalf of sinecures, lay or ecclesi-
astical. The people of England, so far from
being disposed to abet Government in any cru-
sade against the Irish, are anxiously looking for
such improvements in their own church as will
render it more compatible with the temporal and
spiritual welfare of the flocks.—Morn. Chron.
It seems that Dr. Doyle and Mr. O'Connell
are quarrelling with each other, the layman and
his associated agitators, insisting that the present
Ministers of the Crown are not fit to be trusted
by any body whatever, and the Right Rev. Pre-
late affecting to maintain very stoutly the opinion
that the enemies of the Church Establishment in
Ireland may very safely trust them. That the
fight is a sham fight, and intended merely for
the purpose of raising a cloud of dust through
which the people of Great Britain shall be unable
to penetrate what is really going on, we have no
doubt whatever, and shall therefore make no at-
tempt to apportion to the combatants different
degrees of praise or of blame. Each is a con-
summate performer in his way, and although the
position in which they now choose to stand to-
wards each other in the public eye is different
from that in which we have been accustomed to
behold them, they are actuated no doubt as here-
tofore by a common zeal, for a common pur-
pose, and will each exert to the utmost his peculiar
and pre-eminent talents for the promotion of the
cause of both. Those who, between the acts or
after the falling of the curtain, can get a peep
into the green-room will see that the Irish Jesuit
and the Irish Demagogue are enemies only upon
the stage. So long as the Doyles and the
O'Connells of Ireland formed only one party, the,,
conciliatory Government of Great Britain had to
please and pamper only one; now that they are,
or pretend to be, divided, it must please and
pamper both. To the O'Connell division of the
Popish plotters it must surrender all the Pro-
testant Corporations, and such a Bill of Reform
as will secure the return of a hundred Roman
Catholic Members of the House of Commons
from Ireland. For the Doyle division the least
that can be done is to abandon and root up the
Protestant Church in that country. The principles
of the late Reform Bill went far, although not far
enough, to satisfy the insatiate spirit of the lay
demagogues towards accomplishing the former of
those objects. The latter object, that which is re-
quired for the especial gratification of the Doyles,
who praise Ministers, and carry their adulation
even to the extravagant length of affecting to
trust them, cannot of course be postponed or
neglected. The threats of the agitators and
the blandishments of the Jesuits impart recipro-
cally a new importance to each other, secure,
when played off against such a Ministry as the
present, the separate purposes of either, and pro-
mote, in an incalculable degree, the final and
common objects of both—objects which cannot
be mistaken, and which all who are not stricken
with judicial blindness must perceive to be no
other than a separate Legislature and a Roman
Catholic Hierarchy. Of the separate Legislature
which the lay demagogues of Ireland so anxiously
desire they have no very distant prospect, since
the Reform Bill for that country, which was in-
troduced in the last session of Parliament by his
Majesty's Ministers, would have secured the re-
turn of such a body of Irish Members as could not
have failed to give every English and Scotch
Member of decent character and habits a strong
personal interest in promoting the separation.
The sublimest degree of public virtue which has
ever existed in, any assembly of men- would
struggle in vain against the temptation to vote
for a measure, however in other respects per-
nicious, which promised to relieve the body of

the presence of Mr. O'Connell and the half!
hundred such Members as would by that Bill
have been sent from Ireland under his wing.
With respect to a Roman Catholic Hierarchy,
the prospect of its establishment, dependent of
course upon the condition that the present Mi•
nisters remain some time longer in office, seems
still nearer. Already the Ministerial Journals,
the accredited organs of Administration, begin
to abuse every man who believes that the Pro-
testant Establishment in Ireland ought to be or
can be maintained, and to insinuate that the
King of England, by keeping their patrons
in office, intimates his readiness to violate
the sacred and solemn oath by which he
is sworn to maintain it. The leading Mi-
nisterial Journal has begun to prepare the Pro-
testants of the Empire for what they are to
expect, and to denounce those as no Statesmen,
but as men out of their senses, as persons wild
and extravagant in the extreme, who think the
Constitution of the country or the oath of the
King considerations of any value when placed
in competition with tl►e demands of the Irish
Jesuits and Agitators, and the violence of the
ignorant multitudes whom they inflame and go-
vern. "No man in his senses," says the Times,
" now talks of maintaining the Church of Ire-
land by tithe raised upon the Catholic population,
No man is wild enough to suppose it possible
that Irish Bishops should long enjoy such reve-
nues or exist in such numbers as at present. No
Statesman imagines that the clergy who minister
to the spiritual wants of about four-fifths of the
people (the Roman Catholic Clergy that is)
.should continue separated and estranged from
the political institutions of the land." Surely
after this Dr. Doyle cannot allege that his ad-
vances to Government are coolly received, or
complain that his sham-fight with O'Connell
promises to procure a scanty harvest of gratitude
from those on whose behalf he wields his mimic
' sword.—Morning Post.
We find it is in contemplation to erect new
barracks in St. James's Park, large enough to
contain two battalions of Guards and a train of
Artillery. We had hoped that the rage for
building—it was certainly more of a rage than
a taste—had gone by with the last reign, and
that we should hear no more of public edifices
for many years to come. The rage for building,
we doubt not, has gone by, so far as the pro-
pensities of the Monarch are concerned ; but
still it seems there is a hankering after the
science of architecture somewhere, and these
new barracks are the result. Accustomed as
the people of this country have been to the vot-
ing away of thousands and tens of thousands of
the public money, for the gratification of the
most extravagant and monstrous fancies, under
the name of taste, it is not improbable that the
notice of a small transaction such as this will
appear to many of them to be little short
of trifling. But whatever magnanimity there
may be in expenditure, or rather in extra-
vagance and waste, one would think we
must have had enough of it already, and
that it is now high time, to try whether a little
economy and prudence may not suit our
circumstances quite as well. As for barracks,
what do we want of them ? There are too many
of them, as Sir Francis Burdett well knows, or
used to know, all over the kingdom ; and it is
not now, when the public are calling for reduc-
tion in every establishment, and in none with
more eagerness or more propriety than in that of
the army—it is not now that a single shilling
should be demanded which can be spared, or
that any thing should be done which looks like
a postponement of reduction at this important
crisis. In the conversation which took place
in the House of Commons last night respecting
Buckingham Palace, it will be seen that even the
expense of additional furniture, for the comfort
and convenience of the Royal Family, became
a subject of remark. Will Mr. Hume give his
consent to an estimate for building barracks with
more readiness ? We certainly think not. And
there are other Members in the House, as well
as a great portion of the people out of it, who
will look as sharply after the means of saving
money, and, by so doing, compel the Govrn-
ment to look as sharply after it, as former Go-
vernments used to look after pretexts and occa-
sions for picking the pockets of the community.
—Morning Herald.

POLICE INTELLIGENCE.

MANSION-HO USE.

A woman named Mary Hudwn was brought be-
fore the LORD MAYOR, charged with having com-
mitted a very impudent fraud upon the officers of
one of the parishes in the city.
The churchwarden said there was a pauper of the
parish named Thurston, who had been for some
time supported by the parish. The man was taken
ill. In June last the prisoner applied to the witness
in behalf of the pauper, stating that he and his
wife lay both ill of a fever in the Fever Hospital,
and requested some assistance. Witness, having no
suspicion of the correctness of the statement, imme-
diately sent relief by the prisoner, who called again
and again, and never went back empty-handed. At
last the prisoner said the man had died, and that the
wife was almost at the point of death, at the same
time that their two children were starving. Wit-
ness then gave treble the usual sum required, and
took the children under the care of the parish. A
few days ago, however, in walked Thurston himself,
as if from the grave, and asked fur relief. " No,"
said witness, " you have been dead for some time,
and cannot want any thing." The churchwarden
naturally looked upon the %%hole matter as a trick,
but the pauper swore he never was dead, and he
would prosecute any body who said any thing of the
kind. When the impostor was described, he said
that he would find her if she was upon earth. For
.some time she eluded all pursuit, but at last she was
discovered with some inveterate people of the same
description, drinking " warm ale and eggs," and
taken into custody.

Prisoner—My. Lord, I know nothing at all of the
business. I never received a halfpenny in my life
fur Thurston. _

The LORD MAYOR—What ! I suppose you
don't know who Thurston is? Prisoner—Oh dear
yes, I never denied that ; I know he is on the pa-
rish, but I am mistaken for another she. I never
handled his money ; it's all a mistake. Here's my
husband here what knows all about it.
The LORD MAYOR—WeII, I ask your husband,
as an honest man, whether you have done this or
not? Husband (with a long sigh)—Oh dear, I
know nothing either way, please your Lordship.
The LORD MAYOR—Then I suppose she is guilty.
Husband—Where there's a doubt, my Lord,
you'd better put her down for innocent.
The churchwarden's servant—l'll swear she's the
impostor.
The LORD MAYOR---Then I am afraid she's
guilty ; so we'll send her for six weeks to Bridewell.
—Committed accordingly.