The Sun.
London, England, 1847-12-07 00:00:00

THE THIRD EDITIONS

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INTELLIGENCE,

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:!IL WEATHEIL—Stx Orricm, DEC. 7.
MARX ;METER, Lowest, 40; Highest. 49 ; Noon, 40
BAROMETER, 28.9.—K1ND W.; hazy.

111,411 WATER AT LONDON-BRIDGE THIS DAY.
Iforninz.. 26 ndiutes after 1. Evening .. 46 rninntcs tfter 1.

LOND,)N, TUESDAY. DFcEMBER 7, 1847.

The House of Commons was last night occupied
in the discussion of the recently-introduced measure
for the prevention of crime and outrage in Ireland.
The debate was not founded on the second reading of
the Bill, but upon one of those ingenious devices by
which the forms of the House are made use of to
obstruct the progress of business, and converted to a
Purpose very different from that contemplated when
they were originally framed. It is just and fitting
that a small minority should be enabled to defeat any
attempt to obtain by surprise the legislative sanction
to a controverted principle, and to secure a proper
hearing for all those anxious to be heard in opposition
thereto previous to its adoption. But those pri-
vileges should only be brought into operation
on rare and extraordinary occasions, and when there
is some unfair advantage sought for by the pro-
moters of the measure under consideration, and
which, therefore, it h desirable, under any circum-
stances, to postpone until a better attendance of
Members shall insure that the propositions which
may be adopted are in accordance with the deliberate
opinions of the majority of the House. If those
forms are, however, to be resorted to on every occa-
sion—if an inconsiderable minority are to be thereby
enabled to defeat the wishes of the great majority,
and to delay the progress of any measure to which
they may be opposed—a necessity may arise for a
revision and alteration of those regulations which,

when moderately used, are exceedingly valuable,
but, when abused, become positive nuisances. Every
ptorecaution bas been adopted by the Legislature
i_
Proper
insure that every measure should receive
:twice
beforep shairte of attention.. .A Bill must be read
it forms aocl goes into Committee ; on each reading
egicastnatbeesubject of discussion, and may
on either
rejected. It must then come
before a Committee the whole House, when each
clause is to
Thel:l yp
report
considered,pwohr t
of t
h e and
Committeethe
is
details discussed.
then to be brought
veto; another debate may
take place. This is re
lthe third reading,
and on the question that theoll
s h Those
with .
are, surely, abundantly sufficient ttol do pass.
additional
tee that no measure can be smuggled through
debates are
guaran-
out due investigation. But if
to take place on every occasion that the order
day is read, the proceedings will be intermi:arvll°f
the whole business of the nation brought to a stand_ and
still.
The Hon. Member for Limerick (Mr. J. O'Coa.
BELL) last night adopted this course, and in the ab-
sence of Mr. SMITH O'BRIEN moved an amendment
to " the order of the day." We regret to find that
a very great change has taken place in the feelings
of the Hon. Member with respect to the Bill since
its introduction in the preceding week. Then " he
Was greatly and agreeably disappointed at the ex-
position he had just heard of the Bill. He had been
prepared on entering the House that night, acting on
. What: he had heard out of doors, to oppose what it
fiall bselilptimated to him would be a severe and
etiliwintinbasure. He was glad to have to thank the
ro

Right Hon. Baronet (Sir GEORGE GREY) for the
Bill he had proposed. He could not pledge
any Hon. Member, he could only speak for himself;
and while he would not say that at another period he
would accept the Bill, he could not now see any
reason why they should refuse the usual courtesy, or
oppose the Bill being laid on the table and read a
first time." We know not what may have taken
place in the interval—in what manner his memory
may have been stimulated as to certain gratuitous
pledges, uttered in another assembly, " of dying on
the floor of the House before he would allow a mea-
sure of coercion to be carried." Whatever may have
been the causes of the change, he was last night ani-
mated by a very different spirit,—" he was only able
to recognise one single point of which he could ap-
prove, and that was the clause giving
power to the Lord-Lieutenant to enable
him to send additional police into dis-
turbed districts. The other provisions of the
Bill were so unconstitutional and arbitrary, that he
should oppose it, not only at this stage, but at every
future stage of its progress ;" and so far from " thank-
ing the Right Hon. Baronet for the Bill he had pro-
posed," or " not seeing any reason why the usual
courtesy should be refused," he wasted the entire
evening in his opposition "to the reading of the order
of the day."
The Hon. Member for Tralee was scarcely more
consistent than his brother, nor very happy in the
lecture he thought fit to read the Hon. Member for
Mayo, for what he termed a change in the opinions
he put forward in the early part of last year. Last
week, in addressing the House on the first reading of
the present Bill, he himself said, " He should certainly
not offer any active opposition to the measure which
the Right Hon. Baronet had asked leave to bring in.
It was so little a stretch of constitutional principle
that he considered the House ought to assent to its
introduction, and give it a first reading ;" and subse-
quently, that " with a good Landlord and Tenant
Bill, he did venture to believe that, after all, no great
exception need be taken to the measure brought for-
ward in the present session." Last night, "He felt
deep'shame and humiliation that an Irish Member should
now rise in that House and advocate doctrines which
twenty months ago he had repudiated with scorn and
indignation." And again—" He would give the
measure the most determined opposition in every stage,
because, though he would do everything in his power
to repress crime, he could not, on the part of
the people of Ireland, consent to a violation of
the Constitution such as it proposed, without
some adequate advantage in return." Surely
changes have taken place in the circumstances of the
country, and there is such a difference between the
measure proposed when the Member for Mayo put
forward the sentiments referred to and that now before
the House, to justify the Hon. Member in taking a
very different view, and pursuing a different line
of conduct; but we cannot discover anything, either
in the circumstances of the nation, or in the Bill itself,
to warrant the great alteration that is apparent in the
opinions of the Member for Tralee between the 29th
of November and the 6th of December in the present
year.

It would be improper to close our observations
on the debate of last night without expressing
our entire approval of the manly and straightforward
addresses of the Hon. Members for Meath and Mayo
(Messrs. H. GRATTAN and DILLON BRowNE). If
the Irish representatives generally followed a similar
course, they would find themselves possessed of much
greater weight in the House, and that more attention
would be paid to the suggestions they might think
proper to offer. We trust that many will follow the
example thus afforded, and in like manner earn for
themselves the ut.qualified approbation of the House
and the country.

We are rejoiced to observe that there is a very
practical character in the first report, just.blished,
of the Metropolitan Sanitary Commissioners. The
information accumulated in this most interesting Par-
liamentary document is precisely of that description
which is best calculated to confirm all preceding im-
pressions as to the necessity for the interposition of
the Legislature, though there is ample room for the
continuance of the inquiries which have been so ably
commenced in the official apartments of Gwydyr
House, 'Whitehall. " Much has been done, but more
remnins to do," could never be pronounced with such
peculiar veracity as in reference to the labours of
ROBERT GROSVENOR, Of EDWIN CHADWICK, Of
SOUTH WOOD SMITH, Of RICHARD OWEN, and of
LAMBERT JONES. They have only drawn a pail-
rul the oc:an of those social grievances
which are perpetually increasing the sufferings of the
people, and decimating the most populous districts of
the United Kingdom. They have, nevertheless, tes-
tified, by an extraordinary amount of additional in-
formation, that although the average duration of life
is, in Condarut, 18 years, in Sologne, 22 years, and
in Holland 25 years, whereas in England it amounts
to somewhere about 29 years, there are a surprising
multiciplicity of evils prevalent in the last-mentioned
country, by the removal of which evils the destruc-
tiveness of disease would be marvellously diminished.
The principal portion of the fifty-two pages, com-
prising this preliminary report, is devoted to the
narration of facts end the enumeration cf statistics
bearing immediately upon the ravages effected
throughout the metropolis during 1831 and 1832,
by the perillous agency of the Asiatic Cholera, ex-
plaining in particular the most notorious character-
istics of that virulent and pestilential epidemic, such,
for example, as the circumstance of its invariably
following the course taken by putrescent drains, not
merely in these islands, but from one extremity of
the continent to its opposite. The Commissioners
demonstrate by the evidence elicited from very com-
petent authorities, that the Cholera is not merely alto-
gether of as uncontagious nature, but that the most
prominent fact proved throughout its ravages is, that
the vast majority of its victims are individuals whose
constitutions have been impaired by the constant in-
halation of the noxious gases reeking from
uncovered cesspools and other receptacles of- feculent
matter. Better, indeed, than the most beneficial
remedies afforded by the Pharmacopoeia, not only for
the prevention of death by Asiatic Cholera, but for
the dissipation of more ordinary and not less destruc-
tive maladies, such as scrofula, consumption, bron-
chitis, typhus fever, and the whole catalogue of
syrnotic affections, are such simple precautionary
measures of cleanliness as the improvement of the
present ventilation of our households and the re-
arrangement of the existing system of sewerage.

Thy information here gathered together by the
Sanitary Commissioners, in allusion to the drainage
of the metropolis, is, perhaps, the most important
information of a sanitary character that has yet been
submitted for consideration to the two Houses of
nrliament. The indisputable superiority in drain-
age of the oval or egg-shaped channels over the
angular or flat-bottomed excavations formerly made,
are shown not merely by verbal evidence, but by
explanatory diagrams. The necessity for sufficient
supplies of water, whether from land springs, from
the fall of rain, or from that furnished by the vari-
ous water companies, is demonstrated beyond all
contradiction. But the most remarkable facts con-
nected with this subject are, that the smaller the
branch-drains are, the more effectual is the drainage,
and that with the diminution of the cost of their
construction, the simultaneous diminution of the
chances of pestiferous exhalations are inseparable.
This is the kind of information which is the most
likely to obtain the attention of the public, and to
excite the activity of the local authorities. It is
proved, for example, before the Sanitary Commis-
sioners, that the sewer of communication which has
been laid down under the pavement of Langley-court,
Long-acre, would have been immeasurably more
efficacious if constructed as a six-inch tubular drain,
instead of an ordinary sewer of five feet six inches
high, by three feet wide—a difference of magni-
tude which would have entailed a difference
of expense such as 5/. 17s. 6d. less per house, or an
aggregate reduction of just 991. The improved con-
dition of the byways of
if manner
our cities is shown, there-
fore,
tendency,
nr edy
, e to
uo be
in
only a d
carriedonble out of a most economic
witih proper attention to
the rules of architecture
an
nafrrorowed on
hydraulics. The question becomes
bee principles of
every additional investigation ; and
protracted interval has expired in the career eofe letrhY
new Commission established at Whitehall thee
alternatives which will be submitted to the dif-
ferent parishes throughout the kingdom will

be something after this effect : Shall we
expend our parochial moneys in drains or in coffins ;
in the maintenance of hospitals, dispensaries, and
other eleemosynary establishments of a similar cha-
racter, or in abattoirs and wash-houses ; in affording
opportunities for swelling the tables of morbility and
mortality, or in calling for the publication of returns
to show the sanitary advancement of the population ?

Accounts from Vienna of the 28th ult. announce
the appearance of the cholera in the circle of Tar-
nopol, in Galicia.

The trial of the Polish conspirators at Berlin was
brought to a close on the 3d instant. Louis Misito-
SLAWNEI, WLADISLAS KOSINSKI, FELIX SODOWdLI,
SEVERIN ELZANOWSHI, STANISLAS LOBODSKI, FLO-
RIAN CEYNAWA, and JOSEPH KLESZCZTNSKI were
sentenced to death as traitors, others to various terms
of imprisonment in fortresses, and eighteen were
acquitted.

It is said that the Duke of MODENA has abandoned
his claims on the territory of Lunigiana to the
Grand Duke of TUSCANY, from whom he has ac-
cepted a pecuniary compensation.
On the 27th the King of SARDINIA signed the
Organic Law of the Municipalities and of the Pro
vincial Councils.

Madrid papers of the 2d inst. have arrived.

The debate on the Address was continued in the Cham-
ber of Deputies on the 27th and was again adjourned.
In the course of it Senor CoRTINA uttered a furious
philippic against the Pacheco Ministry, and attacked
the present Ministry also, for professing to observe a
neutrality as regarded the amendment to the Address.
Several Carlists, said to be the remains of TRIS.
TANY'S baud, have been arrested in Catalonia.

We have received the Paris papers of Sunday.
On Saturday Sir STRATFORD CANNING left Paris
for Berne, taking Neufchatel ea route. He is the
bearer of the English copy of the note by the
Great Powers, and is the representative of Great
Britain at the conference on the affairs of Switzerland.
Count DE COLLEREDO, the Austrian Ambassador to
Russia, is to be the representative of Austria, and N.
BOIS LE COMTE will represent France.
The rumour of a split in the Cabin2t continues to
gain credence, but is said that no modification will be
made in the Government until after the meeting of
the Chambers.

The gerant of the National, M. DELANOCHE, was
on Saturday condemned to one year's imprisonment,
and to pay a fine of 8,000 francs, for publishing an
article containing an offence against the KING, and
an adhesion to another form of Government.

The Three per Cents were done in the Passage de
l'Opera on Sunday at 77f. 22ic.
MARSEILLES, DEC. I.—Marseilles and Avignon,
503 f. 75c.; Northern, 570 f.

BUSINESS DONE IN FOREIGN RAILWAYS AT THE
LONDON STOCK EXCHANGE, DEC. 6.

Boulogne and Amiens, 15—Dutch Rhenizh, 214—Namur
and Liege, 04—Northern of France, 121—Orleans and
Bordeaux, s%—Over Yssel, 114 dis.—Paris and Lyons, 6
—Sambre and Meuse, 714—West Flanders, 114.

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