The Sun.
London, England, 1834-02-01 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

An occurrence took place yesterday, which
was of a nature to make itself felt and remem-
bered beyond the precincts of the Court which
was the scene of it—we mean the retirement of
Baron Bayley from the bench. This Learned
Judge was, throughout a long judicial life, dis-
tinguished by many qualifications which emi-
nently fitted him for his important office : he
was an acute and discriminating lawyer, diligent
and impartial in his endeavours to arrive at truth,
respectful towards the high functions of juries,
and firm in his protection of individual weakness
against wrong-doers of every denomination. The
bar of England has seldom furnished the bench
with a more laborious or conscientious Magis-
trate than Baron Bayley, or one who combined
more successfully those attributes which entitle
their holder to the attachment of a vigilant,
shrewd, and jealous profession,.with those which
are calculated to restrain, should it be necessary,
the pretensions of the forensic body, from inter-
fering with the rights of the community, by an
attempt to violate those usages and regulations
which prescribe the mode, while they recognize
the end, of all professional services. The public
has lost in Baron Bayley an honest, firm, and
liberal-minded Minister of Justice, except where
the Press was concerned, and there the prejudice•
of a bad school prevailed.— Times.

There is in Blackwood's Magazine for Fe-
bruary, a strange article on the progress of
crime, in which the.aim of the writer seems to
be to prove that murder and robbery and arson
are the legitimate off&pring of reading and
writing. First it is the irreligious education of
the people that causes the increase of crime ;
and there is no doubt that our higher classes
would be found stealing and picking pockets if
such great care had not been taken to instil re-
ligion into them. The higher ranks of this
country are, in fact, quite imbued with religion.
" A large proportion (says the writer) of the lower
orders of mankind have rushed in tumultuous crowds to
everything that was exciting, intoxicating, and vicious, to
the entire neglect of everything that was elevating, useful,
and ennobling ; they have neglected philosophy to devour
novels, laid aside history to dream over romances, aban-
doned sciencs to f ed themselves with journals, forgot the
Bible to read Carlile.

" That this has been the practical result of the heedles.,
and irreligiom education of the people, must, we fear, be
conceded even by the warmest advocates of the extension
of knowledge to the lower orders. i••

" The effect would be exact'y the same upon the higher
orders, if they were to be exposed without the influence
and preparation of previous and long-continued education
to the action of the same causes, and the sedulous care
taken at the great seminaries of education, to impress
them with religious truths. If the rich and affluent were
taught to read, and instantly turned adrift into the world
and the corruptions of great cities, sent to London, or
Paris, or Naples, without any farther preparation, or the
influence of any severer habits, the result would be the
same, though the process of corruption would he some-
what different. They would not, in all probability, read
republican or democratic journals, but they would devour
trash not one whit less demoralizing."
We have often been puzzled to account for
the pure morality and self-denial of our higher
ranks; but the writer in Blackwood has made
it plain that they have been so impressed with
religious truths, that religion is constantly pre-
sent to their minds. In London, in Paris, in
Naples, they live like so many apostles. It is
their religion which prevents the rich from being
as criminal as the poor. The author of " Old
Bailey Experience" is quoted to prove that the
national schools, in which nothing but Bibles
and Catechims are read, teach immorality.
They read the Bible only while they are receiv-
ing their education ; while the scholars of Eton
and Westminster, not only read the Bible at
school, but acquire such a taste for the Scrip-
tures, that a well-bred English gentleman has
always a Bible and Prater-hock either in his
pocket or on the table before him. Were En-
gland alone concerned, the question might be
more easily disposed of; but, unfortunately,
Scotland comes across the writer in Black-
wood :

" It appears from a return, 4th March, 1833, that, in
1832, there were—
Committed for trial in Scotland not less than 2,431
Convicted 1,577
Acquitted l6l
Liberated shortly after committal 539

" Now, the population of England and Wales by the
census of 1833, was 13,894,000
The committals
Population of Scotland
Its committals

" Thus the population of England and Wales is to its
committals as 14,000 to 19k, or as I to '7OO neatly,
while that of Scotland is to its committals as 2,350 is to
2i. or as 1 to 940 nearly. This of itself demonstrates
bow rapidly Scotland, within the last thirty years, has
gained on its more opulent neighbour in this unenviable
distinction. But, in truth, this difference in favour of
Scotland is apparent only, not real ; for it at ices chiEfly
from the greater care bestowed by the committing magis-
trates in Scotland, who are all professional lawyers, than
in England, where many of them serve gratuitously, and
are private gentlemen.
" It may safely be concluded, therefore, that the pro-
portion of crime to the population is as high in Scotland
as England ; an astounding and almost incomprehensible
fact, considering how large a proportion of Caledonia is in
a simple agricultural or pastoral state, where crime is ex-
tremely rare, and clearly demonstrating that the depravity
of its great towns, to make up the average, must be even
greater than in the great Babylon of the scuthern empire.
o' There is another deplorable fact which illustrates the
same change. In London the number of public houses is
one fifty-sixth of the whole houses. In Glasgow, it ap-
pears from Mr. C'eland's late invaluable publication, it is
now one-twelfth. In England crime has more than tripled
during the last twenty years; in Scotland it has, during
,the same period, at an average, increased at least five—in
the great towns probably eightfold. Whatever the school-
master may have done for our manufacturing population,
Le has at least proved but a feeble safeguard against the
temptations of vice and the passion for whisky."

So then Scotland has been advancing at a
still more rapid rate in criminality than Eng-
land. But reading and writing are no novelties
in Scotland. We will venture to say that, with
a►~e exception of a few wild districts in the
fligitlands of Scotland, the whole population
for these hundred years past have been able to
read. We remember more years ago than we •
like to name, when in a rich lowland country,
one poor Highlander who had settled in it, was
spoken of in such a way as people speak of a
sheep with two heads, because he could trot
read. The Scotch are great Bible readers, and
dap in general quote from it readily. The change
from complete ignorance to the ability to read,
is not therefore the cause of the progress of
crime in Scotland. There are such assiduous
Church-goers, too, that the poet Crabbe, a few '
years ago, was quite edified with an Edinburgh'
sabbath. If the Whigs, as the writer in Black-
wood contends, are the cause of the in-
crease of crime in England, by teaching
the people to read, without making re-
ligion a second nature with the poor, as it
is with the rich, who is to blame for the
increase of crime in Scotland ? Not the Whig,
surely'. No doubt the Whigs have not at-
tempted to pass laws making it penal in Scot-
land to teach reading and writing to the chil-
dren of persons having less titan 2001. a year.
The people acquired their taste for reading from
John Knox, and it be no easy matter to
cure them of this taste. The writer in Black-
wood seems to be very imperfectly acquainted

with the theory of thieving. Did it never
occur to him that poverty and opportunity have
something to do with the matter ? A man who
lives six miles from any object he can appro-
priate, and forty miles from any place in which a
stolen object can be disposed of, is more likely
to be honest than one who cannot stir from
his door without seeing something to tempt
him, and who can find a receiver at every
corner, or at the worst a pawnbroker's shop, in
his difficulties. A medical officer in the navy
purchased some land in New South Wales, on
which he resided a year or two. His house-
keeper was a Cumberland thief, and his overseer
a highwayman ; but he had perfect confidence in
their honesty because there was no gin shop, or
pawnbroker's shop, within a hundred miles.—
Morning Chronicle.

It has been the misfortune and curse of Ire-
land that successive Administrations have en-
deavoured to strengthen themselves with one
faction or another, and neglected the substantial
interests of the great mass of the people—one
time leaning to Orange ascendancy, and at ano-
ther encouraging the utmost arrogance of Popish
agitation. The Anglo-Hibernian Government
has alternately excited the ambitious hopes and
exasperated the hostile feelings of conflicting
parties, until all sensible, moderate, and impar-
tial persons have become disgusted with the
narrow, partial, and inconsistent policy, almost
invariably acted upon, and left the Government
and the factions to struggle for the mastery of
the divided and distracted country as they best
can ; and that struggle is not likely to come to
either a speedy or a happy termination. We
confess that we augured better things from the
appointment of AIN Littleton as Chief Secretary
than from that of any of his more youthful pre-
decessors for many years past, who seemed to be
selected for that office merely because they wanted
experience, or were violent partymen, or for any
other reason than that they were qualified to
govern a country which the folly of its rulers has
reduced to a condition which it would require
the exercise of a clear and enlarged capacity for
civil affairs—a passionless judgment—great po-
litical firmness, and moral rectitude to repair
and retrieve. Though we did not give Mr.
Littleton credit for those high qualities of
statesmanlike wisdom which can create a beauti-
ful order of civil society out of a political chaos,
yet we did think that no secretary for a long
time past had been sent to the sister island
whose character, habits, temper, and attain-
ments so well fitted him for contending with
the peculiar difficulties which that country pre-
sents, and which, as we have observed, are the
bitter fruits of that system of policy that go-
verned on the maxim of divide et impera, until
its own power was shaken to the foundations
by the repeated convulsions of society that it
has produced. Mr. Littleton is a man in middle
lire, of cool judgment, and considerab!e expe-
rience as a public man•—;.a Whig., it is true, but
not one of loud and boisterous professions, and
therefore less likely to betray the principles
which obtained for him a certain share
of popular favour ; apparently without that
sort of ambition which is apt to make
public . men swerve from the path of rec-
titude, and destitute of that silly self-con-
ceit which renders politicians of moderate
abilities waspish, petulant, and impatient
of reproof, we expected that he would look at
Ireland with the eye of calm, reflecting good
sense, if not of superior talent, and commence,
at lea,t, an era of more just and impartial policy
for that unhappy country. His intentions we
believe to be good ; but we cannot say that the
conduct of the Irish Government, since he ac-
cepted the office of Chief Secretary, has realised
our expectations. It is true that he is yoked
with the Marquis of Wellesley, who has been
for some years past too feeble, both in body
and mind, to be adequate to the cares and du•
ties of civil government in such a country as
Ireland. But the Chief Secretary is more the
actual ruler of the country than the Lord Lieu-
tenant, the office of the latter being more for
ornament than use. Why then does he not
exercise the great powers which he has to put
down the pretensions of both factions ; and to
prove that the British Government, disregarding
everything but the good of the country, is at
last convinced of the truth that, to increase its
strength and preserve its power, it must la-
bour for the improvement, and deserve the af-
fections, of the people ? Now what great object
of national improvement has Mr. Littleton pro-
moted ? Has he recommended any measure to
remove the greatest evil of Ireland—the misery,
and consequent desperation, of its unemployed
millions ? Has he devised any plan to check
absenteeism—that curse of a fertile country that
strikes it with destitution and famine, while na-
ture pours forth her abundance upon the fields ?
A rate upon the land, and heavier upon that
of absentees than others, to set the poor to work
in bringing under cultivation those immense
tracks of unreclaimed bog and mountain land
that spread over about one-third of the surface
of the island, would be a surer means of esta-
blishing tranquillity, by removing the chief ex-
citing cause of rural outrage and political agita-
tion, than a thousand successful prosecutions for
political libel or sedition.—Morning Herald.