The Sun.
London, England, 1833-11-02 00:00:00

tions to which we have alluded. They took
into their own hands the feeding of the people,
and disregarded the warning voice of Burke—
that if they ever accustomed the people to be so
fed, they would never be able to retrace their
steps. The great cause of the evil is the exist-
ence of a body of men who, to the very great
power and influence they possess as landowners,
unite the judicial power. An ordinary Judge
is merely an expounder of the law ; but a confe-
deration of great landowners invested with large
discretionary powers, and judicial authority at
the same time, set all opposition or control at
defiance. No mere Judge could, as an ex-
pounder of the law, have dared to dissent from
it as the English Magistrate-squires have done.
But the English Magistracy knew that the
canons laid down by them from the bench durst
not be disobeyed.—The poor laws of Scotland
and England are substantially the same ; but the
local Judge in Scotland, the Sheriff, could only
act as an expounder of the law,—he durst not ven-
ture on any pranks, like those exhibited in England.
If the Scotch had benches of Squire Magis-
trates, the poor laws, would, no doubt, have been
equally perverted as in England. So much for
the share which the Magistrates of England had
in plunging the labourers into their present con-
dition. With regard to the amount of punish-
ment inflicted by the Norfolk Magistrates on the
four labourers, our objection was not so much
to that amount, as to the arbitrary manner in
which the labouring people of England are dealt
with. Law ought to be a rule ; but how can
that be a rule, which is the emanation of magis-
terial caprice,—may be one thing at one place,
and another thing at another place--one thing at
one time and another at another time ? It may
be proper to consider the forcing labourers to
join a strike or combination a most heinous
crime ; but it has not been usually considered
in that light by Magistrates. So far from it,
we could in this very county of Norfolk point
out several instances of Magistrates actually
encouraging labourers to act as these labourers
acted. In the Rev. Mr. Brereton's pamphlet of
" The Subordinate Magistracy and Parish
System Considered," he complains bitterly again
and again of Magistrates encouraging the la-
bourers to injure the overseers in person and
property. Alluding to one case, he observes—
" The conduct of the justices is not only
directly oppressive in acts and orders like these)
but the whole mode of sustaining their power
is no better than common barratry, mainte-
nance, and champerty in law. It would be most
desirable that there should be nothing more than
an order founded upon an oath, however false
and impious. But every one knows, that re-
sistance even to an intimation of a Justice ex-
poses the parish officers, and the parish, and the
property, to the danger of insult, plunder, and
conflagration. After the order was given, in the
Snettesham case, seventy able-bodied labourers
appeared at the Petty Sessions, ready to swear
impotency, and to intimidate in any way that
might be suggested. A gentleman once told us
that, imagining the parish officers in his parish
were too lima, he determined to act as overseer
himself. He soon received a summons ; he
declined to relieve on the direction of the Jus-
tices, without an order. The Justices imme-
diately rose, and said, " We do not intend to do
business in that manner ;" and, with a frown to
the gentleman-overseer, left the Court : the next
morning the gentleman's servant came to inform
him that his horses were all " flanked." The
fact is notorious, that 19 times out of 20, in
such a case as the recent one of the four Norfolk
labourers, the Magistrates would, instead of
punishing the labourers, have assailed the over-
seer in some such way as this Why, you
know that these poor men have families, and
that they must live, and that it was impossible
for them to live on the small sums they have
earned. To drive these poor men to the neces-
sity of a step like this, is on your part wicked
and gratuitous inhumanity." The men would
have gone home triumphant, and the overseer
would have been insulted by them all the rest of
the year. We could furnish abundant evidence
of this from a hundred sources. The volume
of extracts from the reports addressed to the
Poor Law Commissioners furnishes abundance
of them. The Standard does not meet the
real difficulty in the Norfolk case—namely, the
subjecting the English labourers, not to a rule
of law, but to magisterial discretion ; but at-
tempts to show that all resistance to authority, or
crimes committed in defiance of the law, should
be severely punished :

" A clear distinction (he says) must always be observed
in the apportionment of punishment between crimes com.
mitted in neglect of the law, and crimes committed in
defiance of it. In propriety of speech, crimes are all vio-
lations of the sovereign authority; but crimes in neglect
of the law, which, perhaps, are best described as delin-
quencies, do not necessarily imply, on the part of the
criminal, hatred or contempt of the Legislature. Crimes
in defiance of the law are direct acts of hostility against
the settled order of society, and, in many cases,
if not all, deliberate usurpations upon the authority of that
power by which society is held together. Where this dis-
' tinction, which will be admitted to be founded in the na-
ture of things, is clearly observed, a very different rule
will prevail in the punishment of the two classes of of..
fences. Crimes committed in neglect of the law will be
punished according to their peculiar cireumstances--si.
lowauces wid be mercifully made for ignorance, for human
frailty, for extraordinary temptation ; and the M igistrate,
where he can find no other extenuating motive, may inno-
cently pause to consider whether the inutility of severe
punishment, in the particular case, may not justify his
withholding that infliction of suffering which is alto iys
painful to the agent. With respect, however, to offerwes
committed in defiance of the law, we contend that the Ma-
gistrate has no such latitude of discretion. Every such
offence, how light soever may be the guilt of the act ab-
stractedly, is rendered, by the insolent temper in which
it is committed, an act of high treason against society.
The offender, in fact, to the utmost of his power, de-
poses the legislative authority, and, as far as lie may,
dissolves the social union, He is, therefore, to be dealt
with, not as an erring subject, but as an alien enemy.
We may pity the misery which he thus draws upon himself ;
but we, too, betray the interests of society if we fail to visit
him with all punishment which the law authorises ; just
as we may, and doubtless often do, regret the calamities
which the policy of public war compels us to inflict ;
though, if necessary for the defence of our country, we
cannot innocently dispense with the infliction of them.
The truth is, that, in principle, the cases are identical,
both being reducible to the one hard condition of self de-
fence-. Amongst crimes committed in defiance of the law,
however, there is one class in which, mote than in any
other, the marks of treason against society are direct and
unequivocal; and that case arises when men en•er into eon-
spiracii-s to resist legal authority, and exercise tyranny over
their fellow-subjects, whether by menaces or by actual
violence, ti compel them to associate in the same con-
federacy."

In a treatise on the theory of penal law these
observations of our contemporary may not be
displaced. We are not, however, going to
discuss with him the soundness of his theory.
Should any Member of the Legislature propose
next session a comprehensive law, in which the
various cases of defiance might be provided for,
we shall be ready to enter on the subject. We
are ready to admit that the Trades'Unions occa-
sionally act not only in a most tyrannical manner,
but in a most savage and brutal manner. We
fear, however, the worst cases will with difficulty
be reached. We may, in the meantime, how-