The Sun.
London, England, 1846-03-10 00:00:00

seat, and Moden, until removed, persisted in occupying the
same place, saying, amidst the laughter of the Court, " he
had as much right to sit as the other gentleman."

SINGULAR FORCE OF VEGETATION. There is
singular instance of the force of vegetable growth, in penetrating
"through a brick wall," now to be witnessed in the garden of Mr.
John Owen, solicitor, Stretford, near the Cornbrook toll•bar. A
mushroom bed is bounded by a fence wall, and some of the mushrooms
growing close to the wall have forced their way; through the inter-
stices occupied by the mortar, and though the brickwork is fourteen
inches thick, some fine mushrooms may be seen protruding from the
opposite side of the wall.—Manchester Guardian,.
THE MILDNESS OF THE SEASON, AS AFFECTING
ITgALTH.—The Registrar-General's Quarterly return shows an extra-
ordinay diminution in the average amount of the mortality for the
past quarter. From the return, it appears that the mortality has
been below the number in the December quarter for the last five
years, but in the corresponding quarter of last year, this difference is
nearly double that in any previous year. The actual mortality for
this quarter amounted to 31,178, the calculated mortality to 43,647 ;
so that the number of deaths was less by 6,469, or nearly ene-seventh,
than the estimate.

IMP_ERTA.I4 PARLIAMENT.
I/OUSE OF LORDS, March 9.
PROTECTION OF LIFE AND PROPERTY (IRE•
LAND) BILL.
Earl GREY could not help believing that the Noble
and Learned Lord who had just'-sat down had entirely
misapprehended not only his Own motion but the amend-
ment of the Lord Chief Justice. He thought the Noble
and Learned Lord had conceived that the feet of an
individual being out at night was a far more serious
offence than it was ; and unless there" was also the ad-
dition of very suspicious circumstances, the serious sen-
tence of transportation was far to grave fur the offence.
Now it was very easy to create suspicious circumstances
where they never existed. A man might go out under
the pretence of meeting a friend, whereas his real ob-
ject might be to join a party cf Whiteboys. Another
might go out wish the real intention, it might be, to
commit an act of Whitebeyism ; and he thought it was
too heavy a punishment to subject a man to trans-
portation for a mere act of thoughtlessness, and for
leaving after nightfall the miserable cabin to which
during twelve or sixteen hours they confined him, The
more he considered the subject the morn he felt it con-
trary to justice that en heavy a punishment should be
givea to So slight an offence. They might say that it
would not be a slight offence if a man were found out
at night with a pistol and a dagger in his pocket, and
evidently going to the commission of some offence. If
he was taken up there could be no ditllculty in providing
that he should eearehed, and if he was found to be
armed or disguised, it would be easy to make that a se-
parate offence by a clause to that effect. It was not just
that so severe a punishment should be given equally to
men guilty of a serious offence and men only guilty of
a brew ;h of police regulation. He had-been surprised at the
way in which the Noble Lord had bolstered up his view
of the (lase, but while he had had the honour of a seat
in that or the other Hou, e, he had never seen so slight
an offence visited with a heavy punishment.
Lord BROUGHAM said, that if the Noble Lord
lived much longer, he would see much stranger things.
He had taken to himself all the credit of the proposi-
tion of the Lord Chief Justice, but he should remember
while he was talking of heavy punishments for slight
offences, that for the venial offence of being out after
sunset he had proposed that a man should be imprisoned
for three years.
Earl ST. GERMANS suggested that the discussion
of the measure should be postponed until to-morrow,
when several amendments would have to be taken into
consideration. The Noble Lord, while complaining of
the power given to the Lord Lieutenant, had proposed
to give him a larger discretionary power than the Bill as
it at present stood allowed him. It seemed to him that
the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland might take, upon his
own responsibility, the power of proclaiming any par-
ticular district ; and he thought it was a sufficient limit-
ation that he could not proclaim any district in which
the crime of murder, or a crime approaching to murder,
had not been committed. He confessed, then, that he
did not see the advantage of adopting the suggestion
made by the Noble and Learned Lord ; but he at the
same time was free to confess that he would like to see
the amendment which the Noble and Learned Lord
proposed on the subject. With regard to changing the
venue, he had taken the liberty of suggesting to the
Noble and Learned Lord on the woolsack to withdraw
his amendment, because he considered that the matter
called for the general consideration of Parliament,
whether they should not make this a general measure,
as he was convinced that the amendment did not do
justice to this important subject. With regard to the
20th clause, he coincided in the opinion expressed by
the Noble Lord, and if the Bill which the Noble and
Learned Lord had introduced were passed this session,
he should altogether agree with him that there was no
necessity for this clause. But they all knew that the
passing of any measure through both Houses of Par-
liament in the course of a session was a matter of great
uncertainty, and therefore he thought it better that the
20th clause should be allowed to remain in the Bill.
With regard to transportation, he also agreed in a con-
siderable degree with the Noble and Learned Lord.
The Noble Earl who sat opposite had drawn a very
forcible picture in.his speech the other evening, and he
had been so much pleased with his own performance that
he had again presented the same picture to them. He
had presented a picture of an innocent ;nen, who had
been out after sunset for the purpose of seeing a sick
friend, and of a guilty man, who had used the same pre-
text, but had been really out for the purpose of joining a
party. The Noble Earl asked if it would not be very
hard to transport the innocent man who had been found
out under such circumstances, but in his conscience he
(Earl St. Germans) believed that the Noble Earl's own
amendment of three years with hard labour, was much
worse than seven years' transportation. He to a certain
extent agreed with what had fallen from the Noble Lord,
for he had supported the alteration of the clause to the
form in which it now stood. He also concurred in the
observations of the Noble and Learned Lord (Denman),
in regard to the introduction of his Bill, and would be
happy to see what he wanted done in the present session.
Lord STRADBROKE made a few observations, which
were perfectly inaudible.
Lord CAMPBELL would support the Bill of the
Noble and Learned Lord '(Lord Denmar). Its object
was to prevent the intimidation of juries and witnesses ;
and any person who was guilty of such an offence, in his
(Lord Campell's) opinion, deserved transportation. It
was a Bill that ought to be made a permanent law, and
applied to every part of the United Kingdom. He re-
joiced that he had the concurrence of the high authority
of his Lordship iu the objections he (Lord Campbell)
had made to the Government Bill. He had alo to corn
plain that important amendments, which had been agreed
to on Friday night last, on two clauses, and that one
especially where "suspicious circumstances" had been
agreed to be inserted, were not to be found in the Bill
as it now appeared. In neither the one clause nor the
other did these amendments appear. The 21st clause
also had been amended, but the alteration had not been
made.

Earl ST. GERMANS intimated that it was an
omission in one case, and that the other clause had been
postponed.
Lord CAMPBELL was happy to know that there
was a mistake, as he felt much annoyed that the Bill did
not appear with the amendments which had been agreed
to. He hoped that the suggestions made by the
Noble Earl who had just sat down, would be attended to.
These suggestions entirely agreed with those which he
(Lord Campbell) had made when the Bill was under dis-
cussion a few days ago. What he most anxiously wished
for was an amendment in reference to the change of
venue. No doubt it would be very desirable that in cer-
tain cases the venue should be changed, but then it
would be only fair that the prisoner should have the ad-
vantage of being able to avail himself of this privilege as
well as the pr( s tutor ; and it would also be very de-
sirable that the power of changing the venue should be
vested in the Court of .Queen's Bench, before which
good cause should be shown before the change was
made.
The LORD CHANCELLOR said it was quite
apparent that the Noble and Learned Lord who
had just sat down, was not in the House upon
the occasion of the proposal of the amend-
ment to which he had alluded, or he would not
have addressed the observation that had fallen
from him to the House. He (the Lord Chancellor) en
tirely concurred in the necessity for this Bill, and
therefore he would give it his most hearty support. He
'begged to remind his Noble and Learned Friend that a
similar Bill, introduced by him three years ago, had a
clause in it condemning a person convicted of being out
at night to three years' imprisonment, and he was to be
tried, not by the ordinary courts of law, but by a court
martial.--(Hea^, hear.) The Noble Lord talked of the
limits of discretion, and he said that they might impose
an imprisonment of three or four years for lighter
offences ; that they should limit the punishment in all
grave cases to seven years' transportation. Now he con-
ceived that the law in this country was carried out with
leniency and great discretion ; and he thought that it
might be safely left to the ordinary functions of the law
to understand with what severity they should visit the
offenders who might be brought befcre them, whether
for the simple offence of being out at night, or whether
it should be established to their satisfaction that the
parties have been guilty of a mare heinous crime--for
instance, individuals that had been brought before them
might have surrounded the house for the ostensible pur-
pose of demanding arms, but for the ultimate intention
of murdering or ill-treating. He would readily admit
with the Noble Earl, that the simple offence of being
out at night in a proclaimed district would be sufficiently
punished with two or three years' imprisonment ; but
as these offences were to be tried by judges of the ordi-
nary tribunals of the country, who had always admi-
nistered the law with great lenity and kindness, he
thought that cases subject to the charge of aggravation
might be safely left to their own discretion.
Earl St. GERMANS thought that ti .e case was
materially affected by the peculiar circumstances of
it, as for instance, a number of individuals might be
out, not armed, with what are called weapons, but in-
struments of husbandry, that he thought vi ould meet
the objections of the Noble Duke on the cross benches,
whose observations would always be entitled to the
utmost consideration and received with the utmost re-
spect. But he believed that the remarks had been fully
answered ; and he, therefore, proposed to bring up the
reports as soon as possible; not to-morrow, but Thurs-
day, or Friday at the latest.
The Duke of RICHMOND said, he gave an unwill-
ing support to the Bill ; but he did not like to see the
postponement of it, for the purpose of making it more
palatable to the House, and he hoped the measure would
not be made more stringent than was absolutely neces-
sarynbblee
to meet the state of Ireland.
o theagreed
B illw
shouldit with the Noble
Duke,Ear thatt GERMANSthe provisions quite
f
more stringent than the state of crime in Ireland de-
manded ; and he was as anxious as any one to make it
meet the present exigencies, without, if possible, in-
fringing the liberty of the subject.
The Marquis of CLANRICARDE said that if the Bill ,-
was necessary, no time should be lost in carrying it ,/
through the House, and if unnecessary, he thought the .t