The Sun.
London, England, 1831-01-10 00:00:00

ANOTIIE It PROCLAMATION.

(From the Second Edition of the Freeman's Journal of
Saturday.)

This morning a proclamation, headed Anglesea, and
signed E. G. Stanley, is posted through the city, prohi-
biting the meeting of the " General Association of Ireland
for the prevention of unlawful meetings, and for the pro-
tection and exercise of the sound right of petitioning fur
the redress of grievances," which was only formed on
Thursday. The ordinance was issued on the ground that
the Association was really intended for the purpose of in-
timidating the magistracy of Ireland, and controuling the
exercise of lawful authority, and for other dangerous pur-
poses. It runs in every other respect in the words of the
numerous proclamations of the late and present viceroy,
which have appeared in our columns, and disgusted the
public. Thus has Lord Anglesea regarded his written
declaration—thus has he kept faith with Ireland. Dis-
trust in the assertions and promises of every English
statesman will be the natural consequence of this fatal
step on the part of Long Anglesea. Out of office, he con-
demned the proclamations of the Duke of Northumber-
land ; in office, within the short period of two months, he
violates his own voluntary pledge, and follows the example
he reprobated, for the purpose of propping up the fallen
character of his secretary, who has displayed such con-
summate ignorance of the law and the principles of the
constitution.

The new ordinance will be obeyed ; but we will tell the
Government that the people will be protected from the
exercise of the unconstitutional and illegal instructions of
111 r. Stanley to the Irish magistrates. We must conclude
for the present. Want of time prohibits further com-
ment than to protest solemnly, we did not think Lord An-
glesea capable of such contempt for character and consis-
tency, as this unfortunate proclamation manifests—a pro-
clamation which will, we trust, after all, do injury to no-
body but himself and his government.

NORTIIAMPTON, JAN. 8.--On Wednesday
afternoon Lord 13noncHAm arrived in this town, and pro-
ceeded to Althorp Park, and dined with the CHANCELLOR
of the EXCIIEQUER. His Lordship returned to this town
on Thursday morning, about six o'clock, and immediately
proceeded towards Cambridge.

I observed the Marquis of ANGLESEA riding
yes'erday nu the North-wall, accompanied by an Aide-de-
Camp in plain clothes. One of the straps of his Excel-
lency's trousers broke, and the groom alighted to repair it,
but the Marquis galloped up to a public•house, at the
door of which he observed a handsome bar-maid. Ile
hogged to know if she would have the goodness to put a
stich in his strap, to which she readily consented ; and
while the operation was performing, a number of persons
collected round the Gallant Marquis, and repeatedly
cheered him. She was liberally rewarded for her trouble,
On preparing to renew his ride, one fellow roared out.
"Make way for the Marquis of ANGLESEA." "To be
sure we will," cried another, " sure in all Ireland we'd
make way for him." A third added, " Shure there's
nobody in the country that would'nt char the way for our
good Lord Leftennant."..-Morn. Herald Correspondetat.

SPIRIT OP THE PtlAlt-JOURI4ALS.,-.
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-6 _

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The private accounts whic we have receive fro 9
,
the two states of Europe, Poland and Belgiurn,
which have at their absolute disposal, and in their
sole keeping, the general tranquillity, are of very
considerable interest and importance. If the Poles
have been hitherto successful, and have got time to
prepare for a more organized resistance, they are in-
debted for this advantage to the indecision or pusil-
lanimity of their late Viceroy, as much as to their
own intrepid resolution or provident precaution.
The Grand Duke Constantine had been frightened
from Warsaw by the invasion of his Palace, and the
danger of assassination, and he seems not to have
recovered his senses, or to have got the better of
his alarms, till he reached the Russian territory. In
this state of alarm he agreed to terms which at St.
Petersburgh are considered the articles of a dis-
graceful capitulation, and which would probably
have subjected any other Polish Governor than the
brother of the Emperor to military execution, or to
a lodging in Siberia. On condition of being allowed
to retreat without molestation, he consented to send
back the Polish regiments which desired to remain
faithful to the Emperor; and to transmit no order
for any Russian force to march upon Poland. Had
his Imperial Highness at this time been deserted by
his own troops, or found his partisans in smaller
force than his enemies, a prudent regard for his own
safety might have been pleaded before the Emperor,
as an excuse for his disgraceful concessions ; but
letters from St. Petersburgh deprive him of this
apology. At the time that he agreed to the terms
which we have mentioned, his force is stated to have
been greater than that of the insurgents. We re-
joice to see that by the display of such incapacity,
or the commission of such blunders, the cause of na-
tional independence is likely to gain strength and
consistence. But this is not the only advantage
which the Poles have gained, by having to treat
with such a Viceroy at the moment of bursting
their chains. From his brutal severity they had
learned more and more to abhor Russian despotism,
and the corres,,ondence which they seized in his
possession, showed how far his oppressions had
been reduced to system with the consent of the
Court of St. Petersburgh. The Polish Provisional Go-
vei nment have now got into their hands attested co-
pies of every document relating to political affairs of
any interest, either external or internal, since the ac-
cession of the Emperor Alexander. They have thus a
history, or a programme, of the accumulated atro-
cities which have either been perpetrated or were
contemplated by the Russian bovernment for the
last thirty years. Let the Dictator of Poland pub-
lish this collection, as an appendix to his manifesto
of independence, and Europe, as well as Poland,
may profit by the communication. The proclama-
tion of the Czar, which we published some days
ago, having left to the Poles nothing but the alter-
native of unconditional submission or military
massacre, has deprived him of all title to the sove-
reignty of Poland, according to the principles of the
late revolution at Warsaw. It is said, therefore,
that the Poles, in order to reconcile themselves and
their national independence more easily to Europe,
have resolved to invite a Prussian Prince to the va-
cant throne. Intelligence had just reached St.
Petersburgh on the 21st ult., that 10,000 Lithua-
nians had gone over to the Polish standard. Great
events are at hand in that quarter of Europe. AN
Envoy from Warsaw has arrived in London, and is
of coursed watched with considerable jealousy by a
certain embassy. The affairs of Belgium become
every day more and more embroiled. Petitions
have been sent from Ghent and Antwerp in favour
of the claims of the Prince of Orange to the Crown.
Other cities and districts have transmitted to Con-
gress supplications as earnest in favour of an union
with France. The accession of the former in the
present state of Belgic feeling would occasion a civil
war, and the adoption of the latter would lead to a
European conflict. In the midst of these perplexi-
ties, the insolent manner in which the friendly Pro-
tocol of the Five Allied Powers has been treated
by the Belgic Provisional Government, and its in-
flexible pei tinaaity respecting the Grand Duchy of
Luxemburg, have become new elements of danger
and disunion. The Provisional Government is said
to have made proposals to a Bavarian Prince, who
is a minor, to occupy the Belgic throne under a
Belgic Regency. This fact is stated with apparent
confidence in the French Papers, which mention
that the Prince is 16 years of age, and that Count
de Merode is to be Regent. If a minor is to be
placed on the Belgic throne, why not have taken the
son of the Prince of Orange, against whom the Bel-
gians cannot bring the same allegations as against his
father ? Times.

In our report from Wiltshire will be found some
remarkable proceedings in the case of the Lookers.
On the second trial of Isaac Looker he was, of
course, acquitted, as it was established beyond the
possibility of doubt that the letters were written by
his son, Edward Looker, a youth of eighteen.
Brother Parke, who presided on this second trial, in
charging the Jury, laboured hard to make out a
' favourable case for Brother Alderson. " The case
(said his Lordship) brought against the father the
other day was so well proved as to lead to his con-
viction. It did not then appear that the sons were
grown up and capable of writing ; and the evidence
for the prosecution, which was placed before the
Jury that day, tallied exactly with that produced
on the former trial." The case was not only not
Nvell proved, as far as regarded the writing, but
worse proved than any case of the sort of which we
have any knowledge. The evidence adduced by
the prisoner was of a positive character, while that
for the prosecution was, of itself, the mere belief of
people who had not seen the prisoner write for
many years, and who, like most clodpoles, were
probably so little able to judge of resemblances, that
they would have sworn the Greek character bore a
strong resemblance to the Hebrew. Mr. Justice
Alderson, from the circumstance of a piece of paper
found in Isaac Looker's bureau forming part of the
sheet on which the threatening letters were written,
had arrived at the conclusion that Isaac must be the
writer (and it must be owned the presumption was
strong against him), and was not disposed to look
too critically at the evidence for the writing.
But the proper way of looking at the matter is— what
would have been thought of the evidence as to Isaac
Looker's writing the letter, had the piece of paper not
been found in his bureau ? We do not believe that
a July of the most stupid moon-rakers in all Wilt-
shire would, on such evidence, have found a verdict.
Now a Judge ought not to allow his zeal so far to
get the better of him, as not to give a dispassionate
consideration to every branch of the evidence in a
trial, if, without that branch, the evidence be insuffi-
cient for conviction. It is not enough that he is
satisfied of the guilt of the prisoner—he ought to
weigh every branch of the evidence with the same
scrupulous care as if no other evidence existed. We
consider, therefore, Mr. Justice Parke to have made
out a very lame case for Brother Alderson. 'We
cannot trust ourselves with expressing what we
think of the sort of feeling of this last Judge, when
he saw, after the appearance of Edward Looker,
that the prisoner was about to escape. We could
make the matter palpable enough by a simile or two,
in which certain voracious quadrupeds should figure;
but it is not prudent to take the lion by the beard.
If Isaac Looker had been a Prince Polignac, what
would have been said of the expression of indigna-
tion that a father did not, to establish his own in-
nocence, expose his son to certain punishment, that
he himself might run no risk of conviction ! Mr.
Justice Alderson knows little of the feelings of a
father, or is under a strange inability to make allow-

ance for them in others, if he supposes that a father
would not a hundred times over expose himself in
such a case rather than be accessary to the bringing
down the vengeance of the law on the head of his
son. However, what the father could not do—de-
clare the guilt of his son—it was proper that the
youth should himself do. When he found that
his father was about to suffer for a crime of
ward‘vhi and declaredchiiekiievv himself to b
himtobeinne hotcetnttl' he came fo,_
writer, thereby

subjecting himself to prosecution and certain con-
vxtion. On Saturday he was put on his trial, and
convicted accordingly. The Attorney-General.
who is a humane and considerate man, secondee
the recommendation of the prisoner's Counsel, that
`the punishment might be mild. Ili: youth
(eighteen), and his utter ignorance of what wa,
likely to ensue from his conduct, were urged. Mr.
Justic.-! Parke observed, truly, that " this crime is
one of great magnitude, for it is only by the propel
and prompt administration of those laws that
country can in its several classes of society be main-
tained; therefore, when persona are intimidated 1)
letters of this description, and through that intimi-
dation are induced to withhold themselves, either
as prosecutors or as witnesses, the veil-doing
of the country must suffer; and such en attempt
to interrupt the course of justice is cutting at the
very root of society." There can he no doubt of the
necessity of securing the administration of justice
by preventing all attempts to intimidate witnesses
But, under the circumstances of the case, it is im-
possible not to see that the public believe that he
ought not to have been placed on his trial,—that it
the Jury on the trial of Isaac Looker had estimated
at its proper value the evidence against him, and
the Judge had summed up with ability and discri-
mination that evidence in his charge, the prosecu-
tion of Edward would have been unnecessary. The
youth Edward, with such tuition as rustics in Eng-
land usually receive, could hardly have been ex
cted to view, as a heinous crime, the endeavour-
ing, to save his relations. Still we allow that, under
other circumstances, this alone would be a dange-
rous plea. We fear these trials of the Lookers will
cause much dissatisfaction. Mr. Justice Parke spoke
of the education Edward Looker must have received!
Education in England ! The only moral educatior
on which any reliance has hitherto been placed is
the gallows—and with the feelings of the people re-
specting sanguinary punishments, even that educa•
tin is not now given.—Morning Chronicle.

The fate of the six unfortunate men left for exe-
cution at Winchester, and three at Reading,
under the Special Commis,ions, excite a stronger
and mote general feeling of pain and sympathy iii
the public mind than any event connected with the
stiict administration of penal justice within our
remembrance. Nor is this to be wondered at ; for
the people of England are not a sanguinary people,
and cannot be reconciled to the miserable spectacles
which are the consequences of the unrelenting en-
forcement of sanguinary laws. Besides, they reflect
upon the causes which led to crimes for which the
lives of those men arc declared to be forfeited to the
law. They find in those causes, not what can justify
violence on the part of any class of the people, but a
great deal that ought to operate in mitigation of the
punishment which the law has decreed to the of-
fences of which the individuals now awaiting their
doom have been convicted. We will not now enter
into political considerations connected with this un-
pleasant subject—but we do say that political causes
have led to those crimes ; and that, for whatever
blood shall be shed judicially, or otherwise, States.
men and Legislators will be deeply responsible—
responsible before a higher tribunal than that of man,
where the actions of those upon whose conduct the
happiness or misery of millions of human beings
depended will be tried by an infallible Judge,
and the band of Omniscience itself holds the
balance of Justice. But whatever may have been
the precise nature of the political errors which have
led to this calamitous result, there is no unprejudiced
person in the community who doubts that distress
was the immediate cause of the disorders which the
Special Commissions have been appointed to punish.
Distress produced excitement, and excitement led to
crime. But acts of disorder, and even of petty
plunder, committed under such circumstances, are
of a very different character of guilt, at least, in a
moral point of view, from those violations of the
lairs of order and property which are the result of
a cold and deliberate depravity of disposition. Such
acts must, indeed, be punished; but, if punished in
a manner that causes the public detestation of the
offence to merge in sympathy for the fate of the
offender, the example can have no salutary result.
For high treason and murder men can only suffer
death ; but the rioters and breakers of machines in
the late disturbances have not done any thing to
confound them in the guilt of the traitor or mur-
derer, and should not be confounded in their punish-
ment. It is true that when the advocates of san-
guinary examples are driven from every position of
morality, reason, and religion, they entrench them-
selves behind that of expediency. But expediency
was of the doctrine of Pilate, who, on that prin-
ciple, which is so much in acceptance among modern
statesmen, put one in whom lie " found no fault"
to death, in preference to the murderer Barabbas.
There is no crime in statemanship, no vice in legis-
lation, no error in the administration of justice.
that expediency cannot sanction ! It is the doc-
trine invented by knaves to impose upon
fools. When men abandon the immutable
principles that distinguish right from wrong, and
tell us that i: is expedient to do a thing which
it is not right to do, we think very contemptuously
of such men's understandings, or very unfavourably
of their hearts—for either folly or dishonesty is the
source of their actions. The late Ministers of France
thought it expedient to subvert the Charter, though
they were well aware that it was illegal to make the
attempt. They sacrificed thousands of lives in pur-
suance of their wieked intentions, yet the justice of
their country has spared their lives, and the very
persons who approve of the execution of the rioters
in the counties of Hants and Berks approved of the
sentence which inflicted only a secondary punish-
ment on the greatest criminals that have held up their
hands attire bar of public justice in modern times !
HoW•cart men reconcile themselves to such contra-
dlieions ? If the crimes of the Ex-Ministers of
Prance had their origin in political considerations,
so had those of the English rioters. But the Ex-
Ministers of France sacrificed thousands of human
beings to their ruthless ambition, and the rioters in
England did not destroy a single life. Even the
doctrine of expediency does not ap,ily in this case;
for, as public opinion is against the infliction of death,
it would answer no conceivable purpose to inflict
it. The survivors will hear more pity expressed
for the fate of their comrades than horror at their
offence—they will hear the merciless enforcement of
the law condemned by those whose opinions have
influence upon their own—and all the salutary effect
of example will he lost. It is, therefore, neither
aiVit nor expedient that the intended executions
should take place; but it is expedient that the moral
force of another sort of example should be given to
the people. The example we mean does not cause
any tears to be shed, or bring painful recollec-
tions to the conscience. It makes no wife a widow,
and no children fatherless ; above all, it does not
teach the people the lessons of cruelty and revenge
by spectacles of blood. We speak of the example
of mercy ! To that noblest prerogative of the
Crown of England we now appeal. Graciousness
and affability of manner becomes a King, but his
most endearing popularity is to be derived from ad-
ministering justice in mercy. The justice of the
law may be executed by many; but the mercy,
which governs, controuls, tempers, and we may add,
civilizes the law, is intrusted but to one, It resides
in the breast of a King—it is the noblest and most
beautiful flower of his constitutional pre-eminence
Judge Bale has said, arid modem Judges have re-
echoed the sentiment, that " Christianity is part
arid parcel of the law of England." Need we add
that mercy is the most sublime and glorious attribute
of the Christian dispensation.—Morsung herald.

It seems as if the Vandals of modern times were
resolved to wage a barbarous and exterminating
war against whatever beauties of ancient art the
Vandals of an earlier age had spared. Nothing has
suffered so severely from the ignorant rage fur inno-
vation, under the name of " improvement," as our
ecclesiastical architecture. The blind and furious
zeal of the iconoclasts was not so destructive to our
temples and the monuments of genius which en-
riched them, as the " improving" vanity of modern
projectors and their tasteless patrons. A few years

wince we bad to interpose between St. Saviour's
Church, in Southwark, and the parochial jobbers,
who hail already laid their plots and raised their
iickaxes for its demolition. We saved it from
uin, and England from the misfortune of having to
leplore the untimely loss of one of the noblest abd
nost venerable specimens of architettural glory which
t splendid antiquity had la-aveathed to her. Now
we are threatenrat with the still more grievous
adamity of the defacing of York Minster, and that
oo by means of a subscription obtained utizkr pre-
enee of its restoration to the state in which it was
tiefore the sacrilegious incendiary gave it to the
dames. The great project of the " improvers" is to
,emove the organ-screen from the position which
hat antique and interesting work of art now oc-
cupies to another, in which it will have the injuri-
airs effect of shortening the choir=- -art act of preme-
litated folly which it in intended to repair by a
ecoricl one, that of shifting the altar-screen the like
distance nearer to the great east window, by which
,he space, called the Ladye Chapel, must, in turn,
he shortened. This is sad work ! One fantastic
error is committed to serve as a pretext for the per-
petration of another, as if a doUble blunder could
constitute improvement ! We inserted a judiciousand
animated communication on this subject from Mr.
Etty, the Royal Academician, the other day, who
Opposes the fine and intelligent enthusiasm of genius
o the barbarous spirit which meditates each havoc
upon the sacred and magnificent pile which has just
escaped, as if by a miracle, from the fate of the
Ephesian temple a We hope Mr. Ltty will not
content himself with putting upon record his protest
lgainst the intended misapplication of the funds,
which were raised for the renovation of the noble
edifice, but that, if the power of public opinion can-
not scare the architectural vultures from their prey,
he and others, who have liberally subscribed to the
professed object of restoring not defacing, the roost
elorious of our Cathedrals, will take such legal
areasures as may prevent the impending calamity.
The principal, or rather the only argument on which
the advocates of such profanation rely is that the
organ-screen interferes with effects much more im-
portant than its own, and that it comes in contact
with works of a different period and style. But Mr.
Savage, than whom there cannot be, in point of
taste and research, a better awthority on such sub-
jects, puts the question at rest, and proves, from the
style of the decorated door-way, and a reference to
the ancient organ-screen in Rochester Cathedral,
which is placed exactly in the same way as that in
York Minster—namely, against and between the
Eastern pillars of the central tower, leaving in like
manner only the angle-column of the cluster exposed
ro view, that it is coeval with the pillars, and placed
in its present position by those by whom both the
pillars and the choir were erected. Indeed, as far
as the circumstantial evidence of art can be relied
upon, he.proves beyond a doubt that " the stone-
screen was built by Archbishop Thoresby and
Walter Skirlaw, at the time of the choirs and the
pillars to which it adjoins," and certainly they who
guilt best knew where to place it. The attempt to
defor m a structure which claims the unbounded ad-
miration of all enlightened men, can best he charac-
,erised by the poetic illustration that " fools rush in
where angels fear to tread."—Morning Herald.

The Government having, with the approbation of
the public in general, sent Special Commissions of
assize into those counties in which disturbances had
prevailed, and where it had not been customary to
hold assizes in the winter ; and the labours of those
Special Commissions, after the development of the
most desperate system of outrage, violence, and de-
predation upon person and property, having been
nearly brought to a close in thtee counties, by the
conviction of numbers of criminals liable by the law
of England to capital punishment, and a small pro-
portion of the ringleaders, convicted of these crimes
im repeated instances, having been left without re-
commendation to the mercy of the Crown—a very
small proportion if we consider the number convicted,
the magnitude of their offences, and the injury done
to persons and property, and the mischievous example
by the perpetration of such crimes—no sooner is this
publicly known, than Mr. Wier and a committee at
Whitechapel think proper to interfere with a peti-
tion to his Majesty, to extend the Royal mercy to
all the prisoners. We have not yet seen the peti-
tion; but from the speeches delivered at the meet-
ing we conclude that its prayer will be founded on
the asset don that these outrages which have dis-
graced the country are to be attributed to the dis-
tresses of the lower orders. This fact is positively
contradicted by the evidence on the trials, and by
the dictum of one bench of the Learned Judges.
These venerable persons declared that none of the
men brought to trial before them were in distress.
They were not agricultural labourers, and did not
belong to that elms of society which could have felt
distress. But surely Mr. Wier and his associates at
Whitechapel are not such good judges of the expe-
diency of exercising the Royal prerogative of mercy
its the King and his confidential servants. For what
purpose do these gentlemen interfere ? For that of
raising a cry in favour of desperate criminals, and
thus intimidating the Government:if possible; and if
this should fail, the Judges and Juries upon the
trials and sentence of the prisoners still to be tried
in some of the counties which have been disturbed.
We are now arrived at this point, that the Execu-
tive Government of the country can perform none
of its functions in which some individuals do not
assume the right to interfere. Mr. Wier and his
associates at Whitechapel interfere in this instance
on the score of policy. Are they acquainted with
the origin of these outrage:. ? Do they know the
mode, the time, the extent, and the duration of their
appearance and existence in each of the counties dis-
turbed ? Can they tell whether the rioters were
connected with conspirators of a more elevated class
in the metropolis or elsewhere ? Or whether those
convicted of robbery, assault with intention to com-
mit murder, and destruction of property, are con-
nected with those who have secretly destroyed by
fire valuable property in different parts of the
country ? If Government are not to be permitted
to allow the law to take its course in these in-
stances, have Mr. Wier and his associates considered
in what manner the lives and properties of his Ma-
jesty's subjects are to be protected in these coun-
ties in future ? By the army, by the yeomanry ?
Is that the law of England? But we forget ; we
are to have Reform and a cheap Government ; and
rye must throw away all the means of preserving
tranquillity and of protecting property and life which
the laws afford us, and seek for other modes which
are unconstitutional, uncertain, and expensive.
Morning Post.

We regret to perceive from the provincial papers,
that the spirit of insubordination still continues to
spread among the working classes—that demands,
accompanied by threats of violence, are still made
on the farmer and employer—and, what is more,
that there are Magistrates foolish enough to comply
with them, and to order the payment of additional
wages. We sympathize deeply with the distress
which prevails among all classes, and we should re-
joice were the circumstances of the times such as
to enable any one to pay higher wages in any cne
department of industry ilian are now given; but
we object to the mode of proceeding now in prac-
tice respecting them, first, because it is subversive
of the very foundations of society—secondly, be-
cause those Magistrates, who make orders, or give
recommendations, to pay higher wages, act illegally,
and have no power to do either the one or the other
--and, thirdly, because the rate of wages, like every
thing else, is certain to find its level, and if com-
pulsorily raised beyond what the profits of the em-
ployer will allow, must again recede, and give
rise to the enactment of similar and equally
deplorable scenes to those which we have already
witnessed. Such a state of things, it is evident,
could not exist for twelve months; and why ? Be-
' cause there is no one who possesses capital, who
would think, under such a state of society, either of
embarking it in new enterprises, or of lending it to
be employed by others; and also, because those
whose capital is already embarked in trade or agri-
culture would withdraw it, lest they should not

only lose the profit which ought to result from its
employment, but the principal also. We address
these brief observations to the ‘vorking classes in the
purest spirit of kindness and good will—of sym-
pathy with their distresses, and anxiety that they
should be mitigated. The Magistrates ought to
know better than that they have it in their power to
raise or to lower wages at their will ; and if the
working clQsscz mill btu think for a moment how
they would he likely to act if placed in the situ-
ation of the employer, we are confident that peace-
able means would be immediately adopted by them
for obtaining a proper and just remuneration for
labour, and that the disturbances which have lately
disgraced the country, would speedily and wholly
cease.—Born. Advertiser.