The Sun.
London, England, 1841-01-06 00:00:00

of human beings, they will not fail to act up to the
character thus artificially created. When hope is ex-
cluded from the human mind, what is there to check
the most terrible and guilty suggestions of despair ?
Of the criminals in the penal settlements which we have
mentioned it may be truly said-
- Hope never comes
4t Th comes to all, but torture without end
*,,,, ver-burning ierieittide u`n`coliSunie:d.-
This is not the system of enlightened justice. It is a
mode of punishment, brutal and ferocious, savouring
more of the wild rage of insatiable vengeance than the
usual severity of judicious coercion. Who that hears
of such foul cruelties committed, in the desecrated

name of public justice, can wonder that to the help-
less, hopeless, agonised victims of such infer❑al tor-
ment, " so indifferent had even life become, that mur-
ders were committed in cold blood—the murderer

afterwards declaring that he had no ill feeling against
his victim, but that his sole object was to obtain his own
release." Thus the offender who had stolen a sheep,
or committed a robbery on the highway ►cithout per-
sonal violence, is stimulate:l_ to dip his hands in the blood
of his fellocw•creature, for the purpose of getting rid or
the earthly torments inflicted in the name of justice, and
thus—still more horrible—are immortal souls qualiflcdf,r
•

perdition ! If such a picture of a miscalled system of pe-
nal justice had not been given on the high authority of
the Vicar-General of New Holland and Van D:emen's
Lind, we could cot have credited its horrible accuracy.
We are aware, indeed, that of late years the Judges in

Eogland have been accustomed to tell persons sentenced
to transportation for various offences, more especially it
the term of banishment was for life, that they were

•
about to go to a land of slavery, where their time would
passed in the terrible servitude and degradation of
ironed gangs, &c. ; but we did not know, we could not
imagine, that a system of cruelty prevailed at those
penal settlements so dreadful arid savage in its nature,
as to be truly diabolical, and only productive of diabo-
lical deeds. Let the civilised and Christian people of

Eagland only thick what the system of punishment
must be which causes the convicts to determine upon

committing murder upon some person (perhaps a fellow
convict), against whom they have no malice whatever,
and having conspired to commit murder, then to cast
lots to ascertain who is to perpetrate it, that they on
whom the lot does not fall may have a temporary res-

pite from their torments, by their being taken to the
court at Sydney to appear as witnesses against the
gutty wretch who has been their instrument in commit-
ting the deed of blood! We have then the testimony
of the Rev. Mr. M'Everal, that of seventy-four con-
victs whom he saw executed within four years, many
declared on the scaffold that they preferred suffering
death to being sent to Norfolk Island. Hero wo
find such is the system of wholesale butchery of human
beings in New South Wales, that one clergyman has
Lad to attend seventy-four cons kte. to the gallows in
the course of four years ! With such exampler, of
barbarity in the sy tem which disgraces the name of
pubic justice, who can wonder it the result be to
multiply crime by familiarising the population with such
brutal and terocions practices? What a specimen of
the enlightened policy of our Colonial Government.
(From the Morning Post.)

The Walsall election is a source of great pain to
nor Ministerial Contemporaries, and threatens to in-
fl,ct a mortifying (may we not, in their present state
of weakness in the House of Commons, call it a
ruinous ?) discomfiture upon their official patrons.
What makes this the unkindest cut of all is that the
the fatal wound is ascri&d to the Anti-Corn-law
League, a confederacy which the Ministerial party and
its cunning emissaries and agents called into being in
tho expectation and for the purpose of drawing rein-
forcement from its strength at every election contest.
Mr. Spencer Lyttelton Ives the Ministerial candidate,
and the Anti-Corn-law League having sent a deputation
front Manchester to ascertain how he intended, in the
event of his election, to act in Parliament upon the sub-
ject of the Corn-law, he, not being able to pledge him-
self, to the extent of their views, withdrew from the con-
test. This is all that can fairly be called narrative up to
the time of Mr. Lyttleton's retirement. \\ lien, how-
ever, the Chronicle and Globe add to this that
the return of the Whig candidate would have been se-
cure but for this int( rference of the Anti-Corn-law
League, they plainly cease to narrate, and begin to sur-
mise or invent. Mr. Bolton, who, in a lever to the
Chro:licic, describes himself as the professional agent of
Mr. Lyttelton, tells a very different tale ; to wit, that
from the first Mr. Lyttelton had but an indifferent
chance of success, in consequence of the inherent weak-
ness of the Ministerial cause. "It is well known," says
this gentleman, " that Mr. Finch was returned by a
small majority. The borough registration on the part
of the Liberals has since been almost totally neglected ;
while on the part of the Tories active preparations
have been made to increase their numbers." And again—
" It became obvious to Mr. Lyttelton's friends that
a candidate of Radical opinions stood not even a chance
of success, while nothing but the most perfect unity
of all classes of Re formers, and their indefati-
gable exertions, could effect the return of a Whig
candidate." And this union having been ef-
fected, and these exertions made—what then ? Tne
certainty of success to the Whig candidate ? By no
means. M. Bolton, though the professional agent of
the discomfited candidate, and naturally, therefore.
more annoyed and disappointed than any body else by
the sudden termination of a contest which was at least
good for him, has too much regard to truth to say any-
thing like this. If such was the state of the Ministe-
rial cause at Walsall in the hands of Mr. Lyttelton,
what mutt it be now ? The retirement of this gentle-
man was the signal for a search after a candidate more
active, anxious, and indiscriminate than party zeal or
party despair ever before occasioned. The very lanes
and hedges of political life were eagerly visited to see
whether some guest to the electioneering feast of the
men of all grades of political opinion" at Walsall
might not be found and trepanned. Even Dr. Bow-
ring was sent for, and, if our Ministerial Contem-
poraries spoke truth, was silly enough to go down
to see the state of preparation for the Liberal banquet.
The view seems to have affected the free-trade and
polyglot Doctor with a considerable degree of nausea,
for he suddenly vanished out of sight, and has been
heard of no more. The affair at Walsall stands as well as
the Conservatives could desire, for, in addition to a certain
triumph, it promises them a good deal of fun, a fore-
taste of which it already yields. Our Ministerial
Contemporaries the Globe and Chronicle are labour-
ing to persuade the Liberals of Walsall that, as those
among them who are for the repeal of the Corn-
laws would :not co-operate in the election of a re-
presentative, with those who are not for a repeal,
it is the duty of the latter to co-operate with the
former ; that it is for the interest and honour of all
to be unanimous to-day in support of a care
didate who is a repealer, though it was for
the interest and honour of all yesterday to be
unanimous in support of a candidate who is an anti-
repealer ; that, in a word, the Corn-law question, upon
which for two years they have been labouring to agitate
the country, which they always describe as the question
upon the decision of which the prosperity of the country
and the material welfare of the great masses of its
people wholly depend, is so utterly worthless and in-
significant a question that it ought not of itself, and in-
dependently of the party object of keeping the Whigs
in place, to determine. so much as a single vote at
a popular election. This is very droll ; but, at the same
time, very contemptible drollery. It is a remarkable illus-
tration of the party characterand motive of theAnti-Corn-
law agitation that not one of the Ministerial grumblers at
the conduct of the Manchester delegates who interfered
in the matter of the Walsall election ever ventured so
much as to hint at the true, rational, and constitutional
objection to that interference. There would have been
sense and spirit in telling the Manchester deputation of
Anti-Corn-law Leaguers that their interference with
the Walsall election was an impertinent and unwarrant-
able intrusion into an affair which which they had no-
thing to do. This is what the Conservative candidate,
when they proposed their test to him, did tell them.
But whosoever expected the same straightforwardness
from a \Vhig candidate, or a Whig journal, was fore-
doomed to a necessary disappointment.