The Sun.
London, England, 1841-04-15 00:00:00

THE EARL OF CARDIGAN,

We eopy from the Morning Chronicle of yesterday, a letter
aelative to recent transactions at the barracks, Hounslow,
" from a correspondent," says our Contemporary, "implicitly
to be relied on." It records the flogging of a private of the
11th Hussars, in the riding school, on Sunday last, imme-
diately after the conclusion of prayers and a sermon. If the
story be true, there is no language of reprobation too strong to
be applied to so flagrant, indecent, and unnecessary an outrage
on the sacredness of the day—so unseemly an affront on the
solemn ceremonies which .had just before been celebrated.
Nothing but a sudden act of mutiny on the part of the of-
fender, or the circumstance of his regiment being in active
service, or in the field, or doing duty in a garrison
town, where it might be of incalculable moment to pu•
nish instantaneously every flagrant breach of discipline;
could lay a ground, we apprehend, even for the expe-
diency of so summary a course of proceeding under the cii -
cumstances stated. In one part of its publication of yesterday,
the Morning Chronicle, we observe, publishes "an old sol-
dier's letter," under the heading " The Earl of Cardigan."
In another it concludes an article on the same subject, with
these words—" Lord Cardigan should have been a Pagan and
not a Christian. He would have been the very man to stick
a knife into the victim beside the altar." This is pronouncing
a pretty strong opinion on a case, the whole of which does
not seem to be before us. We cannot find in any part
of the letter, or from any statement in the previous portion
of the Chronicle's commentary, that Lord Cardigan issued
the order for the infliction of this punishment, or was pre-
sent in the barracks at the time, nor do we learn under
what circumstances it happened that an offence, which
seems to have been committed at Brighton, should have
been referred to a district Court-martial, and the punishment
for it be inflicted in the quarters of the regiment in another
county. These circumstances, we dare say, will be in due
time sufficiently explained; but in the absence of further infor-
mation upon them, we think we shall best discharge our duty
for the present, by calling public attention to the facts, as they
are alleged by the Chronicle. Should it appear, on the other
hand, that the Earl of Cardigan has really rendered himself ob-
noxious to the imputations cast upon him, in this case, by the
Chronicle, we shall not be slow to call, with the latter, for the
most decided and stern expression of displeasure with which
the highest authority can visit, what we should then be justified
in denouncing as a most flagrant insult on the forms of eur
Church Service, and a most heartless desecration of the Sab
bath. —Morning Herald.

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS

FROM THE MORNING PAPERS OF THIS DAY.
(From the Morning Chronicle.)
In Alison's work on " the Principles of Population, and
their connection with Human Happiness," a curious attempt
is made to derive arguments for the Corn-laws from the great
population-law which the writer undertook to illustrate. Such
an attempt bears evidence of sophistry on the very face of it.
The inhabitants of this island have already multiplied beyond
the resources for their subsistence which, it produces. As an
attemat to raise the home supply to the demand, the Corn-
laws are a signal failure. We have imported, we do im-
port, and we must import. Nature and necessity have
settled that question, in spite of the monopolists.
It is true that we import irregularly, so as to do the
farmer the least possible good, and the manufacturer the
greatest possible harm ; so as to aggravate the fluctuation of
prices, instead of steadying them ; so as to prevent all regular
production of a foreign supply for our markets, and create oc-
casional drains of specie for the payment, instead of meeting
it with a regular interchange of the products of our industry ;
that is to say,
we import in the worst manner conceivable in-
stead of the best. S'e do it, nevertheless. If we did not,
there would be a surplus population to kill off; or to get rid of
t
in some way or other. Logically to apply the principle of po-
pulation to this state of things, is simply o show that the
Corn•laws are a means by which wretchedness, guilt, and de-
struction may be brought into play for the diminution of the
population down to such a number that the landowners can
furnish the required supply of food, and obtain their own prices.
( From the limes.)
Among the various causes which, without implying any dis-
satisfaction with the doctrine or ritual of the established reli-
gion, tend materially to diminish the attendance of its attached
adherents, the damp and dilapidated condition of country
churches is undoubtedly one of the most prominent and inex-
cusable. Few persons can have been much in the habit of
frequenting divine ordinances in certain rural disti icts with-
out observing the extreme dis-repair into which many of the
sacred fabrics have latterly fallen—a state of things,
which, besides being extremely discreditable to the pa-
rochial authorities, is by no means consistent with na-
tional decency in the service of Almighty -God. In vast
numbers of instances, the frail doors of the biiilding will hardly
turn upon their hinges, the broken panes of glass are stuffed
with straw, the walls supporting an insufficient roof are wet
with perpetual tricklings, and sundry puddles are often to be
found in the hollows of the clay floors. With such wretched
accommodation as this, it is almost too much to expect that,
when comfortable Dissenting chapels are generally to be found
in every
neighbourhood, the zealous cliurchmanship of the
parishioners shall induce them to encounter all sorts of colds,
rheumatisms, and lumbago;, rather than darken the
threshold of the unaccredited voluntary temple. On
the other hand, the architectural barbarisms, with
which numerous ancient churches have been disfigured, under
the hands‘of modern innovators, and the unecclesiastical style
in which many recent churches have been fitted up, have gone
far to destroy among us that consonancy of the spirit withthe
outward form of devotion, which approves itself equally to the
reason and the taste. For the purpose of arresting the further
progress of these evils two institutions very powerfully sup-
ported (the Camden Society at Cambridge, and the Architec-
tural Society at Oxford), are now usefully employed, in various
ways, in directing public attention to the subject, particularly
by the circulation of pertinent tracts addressed to the office-
bearers and friends of the Church.

( From the Morning Post.)
Our readers may perhaps remember that when a Whig-Ra-
dical dical gentleman named Alcock, who had been turned out of h
seat for Ludlow on account of bribery, was making an absurd
attempt to get into Parliament again for the county of Surrey,
he made about a hundred and fifty-seven speeches, in as many
different public-houses, on the subject of the repeal of the
Corn-laws. For these speeches he was very much applauded
by the Ministerial journals, and especially by the Morning
Chronicle. Now, his argument was (but then it was the far-
mers of Surrey he talked to, and hoped to bamboozle), that
the price of foreign corn would be so raised by a British
demand for it, that its introduction here would not
lower our price ! The value of British land, and of
British produce, he said, could not be deteriorated. While
enlightening the select company of all the Radical pothouses in