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

ever, admit that we think defiance of the law
ought always to be considered a serious offence.
But the great evil in England is, that every
\Tagistrate makes himself both lawgiver and
judge,—that the poor labourer may find himself
one day praised and another punished for the
same act. The Magistrates now conceive that
the struggle between them and the labourers is
one of life and death, and they may be inclined
therefore to punish severely all attempts to set
their authority at defiance. But unfortunately
they have begun too late. We lament to see,
from the country papers, that, with the long
nights, the fires have become fearfully frequent.
In short, the Magistrates will find it difficult
now to undo what they have been doing these
forty years.—Morning Chronicle.
Gratifying proofs throng in upon us from all
sides, of the advantages resulting from infant
schools (whoever may have been the original
founder), and of their continued increase.
With regard to the instruction given we do
not value it very highly. It is a subordinate
concern, though still no burden. But we do
most highly value the moral superintendence,
and we are inclined to think that if these
schools become general in large towns, and if
the plan, on which they are conducted were
sufficiently understood to find its way to the
extremities of the country, they might prove
of the the greatest benefit to the population.
There appears something so artificial in the
prima facie proposal of taking children of
two or three years old from their parents, after
the fashion of Spartan legislation, and teach-
ing them to follow a prescribed track, that
the first impression is naturally against
them. People are inclined to look on
them like Mr. Owen's villages of parallelo-
grams, as better adapted for the regions of
fairy land than that of every-day matter of fact.
A prejudice may also be excited on the score of
the children's unhealthy confinement. But surely
any confinement of this modified description is
better than allowing them to pine in a garret, or
fight in the street. It is a common-place objec-
tion that the mother is the proper guardian of
the child. This might be admitted if all mothers
could attend to the moral and mental wants of
their offspring. But what is the fact ? In
manufacturing towns most mothers are from
home the greater part of the day, and the chil-
dren are left under the care of an elder sister,
who is detained from school at an age when
education is most indispensable. In the agricul-
tural districts the mothers are engaged from home
for the greater part of the day in field-work, and
the children (too young for a parochial school)
are probably huddled together under the charge
of some old woman, who, because she is unfit
for any other labour, is charitably supposed to
be peculiarly fitted for this most important of
all human avocations and duties.—Morning
Advertiser.

It is to be hoped that Government, taking
into consideration the whole of the circum-
stances connected with the case of the four
labouring men convicted at the Norfolk sessions
of forcing some other labourers from their work
to procure a rise of wages, will be of opinion
that the severity of the sentence exceeds the
offence, and that a much less amount of punish-
ment than that inflicted by the Norfolk magis-
trates %aill be sufficient to vindicate the insulted
authority of the law. Had the culprits, in the
wantonness of over plenteous feeding and swilled
debauch, sallied forth to intimidate the peaceable
and to violate the law, the punishment allotted
them would certainly not be too little for the
crime, seeing that, although they used menaces
to accomplish their object, no personal injury
was inflicted. When, however, it is considered
that the unfortunate offenders were in a state of
the deepest distress—that their earnings, or the
pittance received from the parish, could hardly
keep them from starvation, and that the treat-
ment which they received when applying for
work or for relief, was enough to raise the
blood even of an Africa slave into some
feeling of resentment, surely the Executive will
think that to inflict upon three of them an in-
carceration for eighteen months, and on the
remaining one for twelve months, is not to
administer justice in mercy. Men who act as
they have done, whatever the provocation, should
be taught that they cannot do so with impunity;
but, in our opinion, one-sixth of the punish-
ment would have been sufficient to vindicate the
majesty of the law. The erroneous impression
being removed, full weight ought to have been
given to the extenuating circumstances. Justice
is never so dignified as when dispassionate.
Her sentences never command so much respect
as when they avoid all suspicion of being vin-
dictive. Those who represent the season of
England's distress as being past will find it dif-
ficult to reconcile the deplorable condition of
the labourers of England with a state of
general and solid natural prosperity. To avoid
the charge of telling the public disagreeable
truths we would not unite with the sycophants
of power in performing the more pleasing
but less honest work of flattering, the
nation with false hopes, and contributing
to the public delusion. Let those who fawn
upon the smiles of power, or receive the wages
of corruption, execute the servile task of paint-
ing the sepulchre and colouring in mockery of
health the squalid form of misery and decay.
We know that the possession of power has a
wonderful influence in changing the vision of
patriots, whose eloquence when out of place was
never so powerful as in portraying the melan-
choly consequences of those errors of Govern-
ment of which the intoxicating draught of power
induces them to become enamoured. When it
was the interest of the present Ministers to re•
present the country as distressed they did so ;
and their slavish organ, the Edinburgh Review,
was as anxious then to prove that England was
on the verge of ruin, as it is 110 W to make the
public believe that we have reached an era of no
common prosperity. If we only substitute the
word " Whigs" for the nation, the proposi-
tion is undoubtedly true. The Whigs have
now all that prosperity which arises from holding
the purse-strings of the nation. But the strength
and sinews of the country, its agricultural and
shipping interests, are in a state of rapid decline,
and its labouring population are worse off than
the serfs and enslaved boors of some of the
despotic countries of Europe. Where the foun-
dation of society is rotten the superstructure
c anno t
eat,
(vhearryi
ssme c
ou
vr ee r
tci oren
that offence, forms a mournful comment T
counh y, ire
p :,
notwith-
standing the merciless application of the law to
in-
creaset
y
1
the fictions of increasing prosperity with which
the public are amused. The Duke of Welling-
ton, lik
oef fireal the Whigs,
" demonstrated" the pros-
perity hiigsnte'rests of England in his time.
We then stated that, so far from the country
being prosperous, the state of agriculture, and
the condition of the peasantry dependent upon
it,indicated something like the approach of a