The Sun.
London, England, 1841-11-17 00:00:00

AND THE

PARLIAMENTARY SUN,
ARE STILL ON SALE,
PRICE SIXPENCE EACH.
Sun Office, Nov. 17, 1841.

,_-_----
THE WEATHER.—NOON, NOVEMBER 17.
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Tlermometer.32.s 1 Highest 3:3 I Lowest . 2l
Barometer 29.60.—Wind S.E.—Freezing Point 22 Peg.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE THIS DAY.
Morning 37 intnutes after 4. I Evening.... 5i minutes after 4.

the Yublioation a the Evening Edition of Tim Sus com-
menced at 10 minutes after Three.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

Mr. Barton's Lecture esC;ied our notice, or we should
have given a brief account of it. We have not seen any
mention of it in any other Journal. The work he has
_ _

in hand is good, and he should not be easily discouraged.
We must decline inserting any letters commiserating the lath
of the murderer Blakesley. The sooner the horrible crime
is forgotten the better.'

and dispositions of such an offender, gathered
from an intimate acquaintance with him from
the hour of his birth, what the strictest
and wisest use of parental authority, which
can withhold food, and is naturally armed
with an almost irresistible power, cannot effect
for an individual child, political schemers expect
to accomplish in the mass by some rude kind of
general system, which is necessarily not equally
applicable to the cases of different individuals.
The habitually depraved, the hereditary weak,
the hereditary criminal, the victims of an inci-
pient madness, the wild youth hurried away by
a gust of a first-felt passion, which knowledge
may hereafter lead him to control; the easy
lad, whose disposition takes any impression, and
who is led into crime by the chance company he
has fallen into ; he, whose education has been
wholly neglected, and he who has been nurtured
and taught with the tenderest care, and has
never witnessed in his parent's abode one alloy-
ing example, but who has within him evil pro-
pensities which no skill hitherto possessed can
eradicate ; allthese, and a countless number more,
whom great diversities of disposition and of cir-
cumstances, have made trespassers on the laws,
are to be cured and reformed by one general
and indiscriminate system of punishment and of
discipline. We doubt whether that which family
discipline cannot accomplish when the plant is in
the greenest state, will ever be accomplished by
any system of penal or convict discipline when
age, when the sun of prosperity, and the storms
of adversity, have hardened the green sapling
into the tough tree. The devisers of numerous
schemes of convict and other discipline are of a
totally different --opinion, and we are not ac-
quainted with any subject on which the human
nind has for many years been more active, and
.as laboured more signally in vain.

On this account, we rejoiced to see in the Times
the passage we have quoted, and we hope that it
will henceforth be clearly understood, and always
remembered, that the onus of proving the great
advantages of any system of punishment—of
showing the great public pleasure which results
from the infliction of individual pain, lies on
those who propose it, or carry it into execution,
not on those who object to it. For them the
simple fact that punishment is a pain, is suffi-
cient to justify the objection; to prove that it is
outweighed by advantages, that public necessity
commands it, is the duty of those who advocate
or inflict the penalty.

We were much astonished, however, to find
the Times, after adopting this rational principle,
putting forth a totally different principle to jus-
tify the punishment of death. " If we would
have," it said, " no handsome and interesting
murderesses," &c., " we must continue to main-
tain and act upon the law, that whoso shed-
deth
man's blood, by man shall his blood be
shed.'" Now, without entering into the very
large subject of the utility of capital punish-
ments—merely remarking, however, that as long
as they are continued, it will be difficult to find
many criminals more worthy to suffer death than
• BLAKESLEV,—We beg leave to notice a discre-
pancy in the arguments of the Times. If we
" must maintain " that law, which it quotes,—
if that means, as those who quote it imply, that
the State is bound, by the overwhelming autho-
rity of the Bible, to put every murderer to
death,—that the " State must act," regardless
of the consequences, on this brief and
emphatic command,—why does the Times
supply us with another and a totally different
rule for our conduct, and tell us that we are not
to inflict the smallest pain on individuals, much

less put them to death and expose them to all the
horrors of a coming execution, which fill the
time between the sentence and the death, unless
that infliction be justified by public necessity ?
If we must obey the Biblical law, to inquire
into its effects on the public is wholly superflu-
ous, and may, perchance, result in questioning
the authority of the Bible. If we must not in-
flict pain without its being proved that it pro-
duces public advantages, why refer us to a posi-
tive law, which shuts out all such consideration ?
One or other of the principles referred to by the
Times ought alone to be adopted, otherwise, as
the one overrides the other, reason or revelation
will be brought into contempt.

We admit that we hold with the proposition
which the Times lays down from reason. The
law it quotes from the Bible was given when
society was in so very different a condition from
the present; it is so extremely general, rather
justifying the Arab habit of taking life for life,
by private revenge, than applying to the solemn
acts of a State and to modern legislation; it in-
cludes shedding blood by accident, or in chance
medley, as well as shedding blood by design—
which our people never regard as proper to
be punished with death ; and it is so differently
explained by different commentators, that as
a rule for legislation we decidedly prefer
the principle the Times lays down from reason
to that it quotes from the Bible. Indeed, we see
with great and unmingled regret an attempt at
this period, in a popular Journal, to found our
criminal jurisprudence on the cruel laws of a
people which were expressly adapted, not to
abstract right but to their hardened hearts; and
we read with pity and disgust the hideous per-
version in that Journal by which all the beauti-
ful philanthropy of the age is ascribed to infi-
delity. The friends of the Bible can be little
pleased with the Times for justifying cruel pu-
nishments by its authority, and for ascribing to in-
fidelity, as the foster-nurse, that desire for the mi-
tigation of sanguinary laws which has so honour-
ably distinguished the most religious men of mo-
dern times.

We are now pompously told by the advocates
of monopoly and starvation, that the " seasons
defy human control, and mock human pru-
dence;" but if our memory does not cruelly de-
ceive us, the same gentlemen have defended the
Corn-law because it equalized the effects of
the seasons, which Sir ROBERT PEEL, OR one oc-
casion, said it had effectually done. That the
seasons defy human control we admit, but they
no more mock human prudence than do storms,
against the effects of which men provide, though
the storms themselves are entirely beyond the
control of man.

seasons alternate so regularly, that
Both are known phenomena; and badd goodtheyaanresub
.
jeet-to calculation. Though human prudence can-
not control the seasons, therefore, it can provide
against their evil effects. It could, for example,
without any difficulty, but simply by doing what
justice and honesty require, open our ports at all
times to the free importation of food ; and it would,
by that means, ensure our people a much greater
supply than at present. If the people could
command plenty of food, and there is no reason
whatever why they cannot, but for the law, they
would consume a great deal more; the standard
of comfort would be raised throughout the
country, and when bad seasons came, as come
they
will, the well-fed people would have a con-
siderable superfluity to fall back upon, and a
barren year would not be tantamount to a Feu-
fence of death by starvation.

Then the class next above the very lowest
have and most likely to relieve them, would
some-
thing to give their suffering neighbours, and the
extremely- wretc lied would not be thrust out as
now into the streets to display the worst features
of Italian beggary. Under the present Corn-law
aided by the Poor-law, which is expressly intended
to beat down the standard of comfort, and so de-
grade the labourer, the bulk of the working
classes, both in the agricultural and manufac-
turing districts, are reduced on ordinary occasions
to the lowest stage of existence, and a bad season
is a sentence of death to ,-- --

of the suffering
poor. 'the seasons do indeed mock the prudence,
or rather avarice, of our Corn-law makers, and
fix upon it the stern and indelible brand of GOD'S
reprobation. He has given to man the power of.
equalizing the_ effects of the seasons, so that no
evil result from their changes ; but the landlords
I have placed their veto on the exercise of the:

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