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

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LONDON:
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 6, IE4I.

The returns of the Revenue, which will be found
in another part of The Sun, are not so satisfactory
as we could wish, but quite as satisfactory as we
could expect. The scanty crop, with the high price,
of sugar, has limited the consumption of that
article, and of all other articles subject to excise and
customs duties with which it is used. A high price
of corn, combined with low wages and lessened em-
ployment, has necessarily compelled the labouring
classes to content themselves with bread and pota-
toes, considering themselves well off if they can get
enough of the coarsest food to support existence,
and has lessened the consumption of exciseable and
foreign commodities. The revenue this quarter
should, in consequence of the increase of taxation,
be one-tenth nearly greater in amount than in the
corresponding quarter of last year, the custom
duties, however, are 398,3991. less, and the
excise, instead of being a tenth, is scarcely
one twentieth more. But we cannot forget that
the deficiency in the excise last quarter was attri-
buted to a peculiarity in making up the accounts ;
And that a considerable sum properly belonging to
the last quarter, must in consequence be reckoned in
this. The taxes being not easily escaped from
seem to have yielded the calculated increase, but
the excise and customs duties, which men can
easily shirk, have not answered the expectation of
the CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER. The
worst feature we think of the whole is that, not-
withstanding the increase of 10 per cent. on all
the taxes and duties operating for five months, the
revenue for the whole Tear is 254,000/. less than for
last year. We are afraid from these facts that the
prosperity of the empire has attained its extreme
height, and that it is quite impossible for the people
to continue to pay, a; the Auti-Corn-law Circular
states, both the fund-holders' and the landlords' tax,
and provide for the Government. Such a condition
of the revenue augments our hopes of the abolition
of the bread-tax. One or other must be given up.
Either that tax must be abolished, or thegiven up.
Either that tax must be abolished, or the Govern
the expenses of which have been of late ne-
cessarily much increased, must give up its revenue.
In the present state of our foreign relations and of
our population we do not believe it is possible
much to curtail the expense of the State ; and the
conclusion therefore we come to is, that the bread_
tax must be abolished.

Two Tory journals of yesterday discovered for
the first time, and discovered by a paragraph in-
serted in the Lincoln Mercury, that the punish-
ment to which convicts, sent to Norfolk Island, are
doomed, is worse than death. If these best public
instructors were not themselves woefully ignorant)
while they pretend, with a most dogmatic air, to
teach all the world, they would know that the facts
stated in the Lincoln journal are borrowed from the'
evidence given before the Committee of the
House of Commons on Transportation. The

horrors which appear to have so much and
so suddenly revolted our Contemporaries were
a common topic of discussion in the press
many months ago, and made such an impression
at the time, that a change, if our memory does not
betray us, was almost immediately made in the dis-
cipline at Norfolk Island. We apprehend, there-
fore, that the horrors which our Contemporaries
have now written two long articles about,
have been properly put an end to. But this speci-
men of their ignorance, combined with the arrogant
manner in which they day by day lecture
other people must not be passed by without notice,
and without being turned to a proper account.
To the observations of the Herald, which will
be found in another part of The Sun, we have
nothing to object, except that they would have
been much better timed, had they appeared when
the Report of Sir WILLIAM MOLESWORTH'S
Committee was fresh in the public recollection. On
the able, zealous, and persevering exertions of that
journal to put an end to capital punishments, and
to save human life, we shall ever be ready to be-
stow our humble praise, though utterly unable to
reconcile such conduct with the support it gives to
the bread-tax, which kills a great many more than
the gallows ; and to the Tories, whose system of
government is wholly based on coercion and cruelty,
and cannot possibly co-exist with that extinction of
capital punishment, and that profound reverence
for human life which the Herald has for years
justly and wisely laboured to promote. Its fellow
Tory, the Morning Post, if it be much more igno-
rant and very foolish on the question of capital
punishments, is at least consistent. It knows that
the dominion of the Tories and the punishment of
the gallows are one and the same ; and, with a
true Tory spirit, it advocates shedding blood, as it
advocates starvation. On some occasions that

• 1,1
Bible ; it is loud against infidelity ; but when it suits
the policy of its party, it laughs to scorn the pre-
cepts of inspiration, and pleads for murder at the
gallows, as if murder bad never been forbidden.
This is some of the language with which it assails
that humanity, and that respect for life, which is
the great superiority of our civilization over that of
ancient Greece and Rome :

" is tlsis the practical result of those appeals to mor-
bid sensibility, those performances of gentlemen of seri-
ous habits upon public platforms, when false eloquence,
aided by hot rooms, wrou,ht upon dee hearts of women
and of men of effeminate minds, and produced so great
a sensation against the punishment of death ? A
strange sympathy with robbers, coiners, and forgers,
was created, and felony was made absolutely interest-
ing in the contemplation of the spuriously humane.
Numbers of people secretly praised themselves for their
tenderness of heart in abhorring capital punishments,
and in subscribing to carry on agitation against what
was classically called our Draconic code.' Not a few
considered that they exhibited much refinement and a
superior sort of civilization when they voted that it was
vu►gar and shocking to hang criminals by the neck till
they were dead.

" We have, through the indulgence of a sickly sen-
sibility, refused to cut short the career of the criminal
by a speedy death, before our own eyes ; but we have
sent him away thousands of miles, to a sort of hell
upon earth, where every dreadful passion of his de-
graded nature is wrought up to the utmost pitch of in-
tensity by misery and despair, and then the hangman
has to do his office upon the miserable wretch, who is
sent to his account with ten times the weight of guilt
upon his soul that he had incurred when convicted in
this country.
" If c ipital punishments did but harden the hearts of
some, upon the far greater number they produced an
effect of terror—terror of the risk of such a punishment
which they well knew would be incurred by certain
crimes. The punishment of death is a dreadful thing,
but wholesome, if it produces dread of doing what has
been visited with such punishment. The new system,
however, does not produce the terror which was pro-
duced by the old, for the class of penplo who generally
commit great cffences against the criminal law confuse
the notion of transportation beyond seas with mere exile."

We do not defend the cruel punishments substi-
tuted for the punishment of death ; on the con-
trary, we heartily condemn them, and not now for
the first time. That they have not succeeded is
another proof of the general fact stated byt PALEY,
that all punishments have failed. They constitute
another plod of the deplorable ignorance of those
who are ever ready, reasoning from some theory or
other, slowly and diliberately to embrue their hands
in the blood of an unhappy !criminal, or consign
him, utterly regardless of the consequences, to
some horrors like those of Norfolk Island. Here,
for example, is the Tory Post, which just learns
from a provincial paper two years after the investi-
gation has taken place, that these cruel punishments
have failed, as the equally cruel punishments of
death and imprisonment, and every other device to
torture men have failed ; but while its ignorance is
so profound it has the hardihood to sneer at bene-
volence as sympathy with criminals, and to recom-
mend the committal of murder as " a wholesome
thing." But we will leave the Post with its Tory
mockery of humanity, and its Tory advocacy of
capital punishments, to the Tory Herald, which
will be better able than we are to punish its love
of bloodshed, and its sly insinuations against the
persevering exertions of the Herald itself.
We cannot, however, leave the subject without
saying that we are glad to see our Contemporaries
provoking a discussion into the rationale of punish-
ment. We infer from the general failure of crimi-
nal law, that the subject is very ill understood.
Men have first acted from their blind passions, and
then have invented a theory to justify their own
conduct. Punishment, particularly corporeal
punishment, even when administered in a private
family, where the parents have every possible op-
portunity of studying the disposition of children,
of adapting it to circumstances, and of watching its
effects, very seldom answers the end proposed, and
very often, if administered with severity, produces
the most disastrous consequences. If it fail there,
how can it, when blindly and in the lump inflicted
according to some general rule, without the least
regard to character or circumstances, be otherwise
than a complete failure ? We know from expe-
rience that it is ; and as it is also, as now admi-
nistered, of itself a cruelty pregnant with evil, and
a Source of great expense to the country, and the
parent of much misery, it is high time that our
law-makers took the whole matter into their serious
consideration, with a belief that they may possibly
be wrong, and that they have no right to organize
a'great scheme of punishment for whatever they
may deem an offence, unless they can clearly de-
-1
monstrate—not fancy—that it will be for the be-
nefit of the community.

The retirement of Mr. LYTTLETON has en-
tirely changed the character of the election for
Walsall. It is no longer a mere party contest be-
tween a Whig and a Tory, but a fair fight between
a Pro-Corn and an Anti-Corn-law candidate.
This alteration puts an end to all prior engage-
ments, and leaves the electors at liberty to vote as
they shall deem best for the public good. Scores
of them preferring a Tory to Whig may have
pledged their vote to Mr. GLADSTONE, who at
the same time may desire to be represented by a
sturdy Corn-law Repealer. The appearance of Mr.
G. SMITH in the field puts an end to the promise
they gave the Tory, and they cannot vote for a
Pro-Corn-law man without breaking their first
pledge, given,
their children, and
perhaps, to their own hearts and
the Corn-laws.
without being false to the one
true faith of abolishing
The electors of Walsall are called on to decide
for or against a bread-tax.
They arc asked to say
whether or not that hostility
which now exists be-
tween the different classes shall grow
into
To them an appeal is made whether the
civil
m :i Iu war.
t.ae..
tures of England shall be permitted to flourish and