The Sun.
London, England, 1856-10-28 00:00:00

L)NDON, TUESDAY OCTOBER 28, 1856'

Shall capital punishment be retained in the
National Statute-book, and, if so, shall it, in ac-
cordance with the recommendation of the Com-
mittee of the Rome of Lords, be carried into
execution within the precincts of the gaol, in the
presence only of certain official and selected
witnesses ? These are important questions, that
have recently attracted the attention of many
wise and good men ; and from the weight of
opinion that has been brought to bear on the
subject we are bound to examine carefully
and dispassionately the prevalent views, so as to

arrive at a sound conclusion on the important

question.
Without being advocates for great severity, we
have always deemed that capital punishment was
indispensable in extreme cases. Where any
person wilfully and deliberately, with malice afore-
thought, shed the blood of his fellow-creature, he
ought to expiate the terrible offence by enduring
the extreme penalty of the law. Whenever ex-
tenuating circumstances could be established
there would be ground for mitigation. But in
cases like those of PALMER, DOVE, CYLV.STINA
SUMNER, and others, to which we might allude,
there could be no claim for clemency. The
offenders had by their own atrocities placed them-
selves outside the pale of humanity—were rabid
animals, who should no more cumber the earth ;
and whose removal would, at the same time, afford
a salutary example, and remove offenders who had
forfeited every claim to sympathy or forbearance.
We are, however, bound to consider the con-
flicting views of those who honestly aid con-
scientiously believe that no man is authorised to
deprive his fellow-man of life, and who also ques-
tion the expediency and policy of the proceeding.
If any point has been established, we should ra-
ther say admitted, on all sides, it is that the law
is not one of vengeance. It is merely as an
" example," to prevent others from committing
similar outrages, that the fearful exhibition which
some good men have not refrained from terming
a judicial murder, has been tolerated. A new
advocate has now published his opinions on
the interesting question—one whose antecedents
have entitled him to pronounce, ex cathedra, on
the point. Never, perhaps, was there a more
efficient and experienced advocate in criminal
cases than Mr. Commissioner PHILLIPS. During
the period of his practice he was concerned in
every great case, and the tact and eloquence in-
variablydisplayed secured an eager competition for
his invaluable services. He necessarily possessed
the confidence of his clients, and thus had access
to sources of information hermetically sealed to
the community at large. He had thus unques-
tionable data on which to found his judgment,
and when we find the result of his experience
given to the public, we are bound to bestow on it
the attentive consideration to which it is so emi-
nently entitled.
It has been clearly a " labour of love," with
the learned Commissioner. He has entered
heart and soul into the question on which he is
SO well qualified to speak, and has certainly
made out a case sufficient to induce any unpre-
judiced person to ponder seriously on the point.
The matter is treated in a manly and straight-
forward manner, without any of that maudlin
sentimentality that too often disgusts the reader.
Every point is fairly grappled with ; Mr.
Primmes respects the views of his opponents, and,
treating them as conscientious men, endeavours
to show that they have been led astray by evil
xample, when the hangman was the great school-
master of the nation, and when, what was in
the language of the initiated, designated as
" nibbling a wipe," or " lifting a calico," was
leemed worthy of death on the scaffold ; and
" hanging was civilised, Christian England's uni-
versal panacea—her legislative specific !"
Mr. PHILLIPS not merely questions the expe-
diency, but the right, to deliberately take the life
,f a fellow-creature under any circumstances.
He argues, and with great apparent foundation,
that inasmuch as a man has no right to take his own
life under any state of affairs, he cannot confer
upon another or others a privilege which he does
not himself possess ! He thinks that the divine
ulmonition, "Thou shalt do no murder," is as
binding on a nation as on an individual, and that
the exemption to CAIN should be extended to dl
hose who have followed the awful precedent.
But the main part of the argument is directed to
the policy and expediency of the law. On this
,art of the case the learned Commissioner is
peculiarly felicitous, and be strengthens his
arguments by a reference to a clarum et
cenerabile nomen, the late Mr. HARMER, whose
experience in criminal cases had seldom beon
quailed—never surpassed. Into all the details
As to the effect on society and on the culprit, the
learned gentleman has fully entered. He has
pointed out the possibility of mistake—a fear-
ful error, indeed, when the life of an innocent
person may be sacrificed under the colour of law.
He has shown that such things have been,
and, therefore, proves that they may again
take place. Without saying anything ourselves,
we earnestly commend Mr. Commissioner PHIL-
LIPS'S admirable brochure, " Vacation Thoughts
on Capital Punishment," to the attentive conside-
ration of our readers. We promise them that
it will well repay perusal, and that it will place
an old question in a new and very interesting
point of view.

Ireland, after so many years of suffering and
desolation, after all the turmoils of a long
political agitation, after having been decimated
by famine, and in p. great measure also depopu-
lated here and there by the effects of' a wholesale
and systematic immigration Ireland so long
squalid, hopeless, disaffected, and poverty-
stricken, may at length, thank GO) ! be spoken of
in the year of grace, 1856, as—tranquil—happy
—loyal—and prosperous ! Her prosperity, too, is
not merely temporary, and so far illusory, but
permanent and substantial. Her tranquillity is
net simply partial or superficial, but profound and
universal. Her happiness is neither assumed nor
local, but genuine and complete. Above all, her
loyalty is by no means either affected or excep-
tional, but entire and enthusiastic. As glaringly
and resplendently demonstrative of all this, it is
only necessary to direct attention to the magni-
ficent, and we may venture to add without any-
thing at all like exaggeration, the wholly unex-
ampled banquet given on Wednesday the 22d of
October, in a grand temporary building erected for
the occasion, in the Irish capital—the great Dublin
Banquet to some 3,500 of our Crimean Heroes,
bronzed and bearded, wounded and decorated—
brave sons of our soil, who fought, and bled, and
starved, and conquered in front of the deadly
saThrerethvrorks of the beleaguered city of Sebastopol.
can be no question at all about this —that
the Crimean Banquet given by the Dublinites
totally and Signally eclipsed the previous one given
to the brothers in arms of the feasted soldiers by
the open-handed, large-hearted, but bungling
Londoners ! Added to which the speech of the
evening, on the. 22d October, far surpassed any
one of the many successful and characteristic
harangues indulged in by any one of the variou s
orators who spoke upon the occasion of the earlier
but in every way subordinate ovation--the admir-
able and even inimitable speech delivered upon
Wednesday last to the assembled soldiers from
the Crimea, by his Excellency the present popular
and gifted Lord-Lieutenant ! That brief but
thrilling and trumpet-tongued oration we take to
be so very masterly in its way, especially as ex-
pressive of the significance of the great Dublin
Demonstration, that we do not apologise for re-
produnin. g it here once again, in its eloquent and
heart-stirring, and soul-exciting completeness.
His Excellency said
fsneeotbteo.
spe"akSollodnigers,
bout tlhoeudC. riml ewai,s—h is
Ihya t wish
ry nnrn

fore me could hear me say how proud I feel to be one of
them this day. (Cheers.) In the place I fill I have the
right to tell you, in the name of the good Queen I serve,
that her fine troops are welcome. (Tremendous cheering.)
I have the right to tell you in the name of the Irish
people—(cheers)—that they love brave men—(hear and
cheers)—that they know that you, one and all, have
fought, and toiled, and bled, and would have died at
your posts—(cheers)—and so they have wished this day
to fill your cups to the brim, and to give you the fat of
the land—not for the worth of the thing ; not by way of
gorging you with food, not for the stir of one short hour ;
but to show you, and those who will come after you, and
who dome day will march under the same flag, that—
(here some confusion occurred)—I say the Irish people
have spread the board to-day to show you and all who
will come after you, that your countrymen—aye, and
countrywomen too—(lond cheers)—that all wish to
thank you for what you have done, and to show you
that they remember you still in peace when the din of
war is over, and that they will toast you in their feasts,
and remember you in their prayers. (Tremendous
cheering.) We are here upon Irish ground, and Ire
land has a right to give a welcome to heroes, be-
cause many and many she has sent forth to every
grade in your ranks. (Hear, hear.) But Irish
hospitality is not stinted to her own children'.
As it was not asked when the cheer rose loudest in your
charge whether it had most of the English, or Scotch,
or Irish accent—(cheers)—as it was not asked, when the
red blood flowed from the field and from the trench,
whether that red fluid gushed from English, Scotch, or
Irish veins—so here to-day you are seated side by side
at the same board—(cheers)—and you need no other
passport but the bright medal which glows upon your
manly breasts. (Cheers.) It is, indeed, a deep cause
of thankfulness to see you here thus—you who have
breasted the steep slopes of the Alma—you who have
dashed along the fatal pass of Balaklava—(cheers)—you
who have held the blood-red heights of Inkerman—
(cheers)—you who have survived the midnight trench,
and thundering rampart, and death-filled hospital—it is
matter for deep gratitude to see you thus under a roof
of peace, and before a board of plenty. (Cheers.) I
know well, my friends, that your strength and your
blood would be again given to your country if your
country should require it of you. (Cheers.) But I
humbly trust it may be so ordered that those faces I now
see lighted up with such an honest glow may never again
be darkened by a frown upon an enemy, but may ever
beam with good-will to your fellow-men, and gratitude to
your God. (Hear, and cheers.) I have now only to
add that, in my belief, neither a Lord-Lieutenant of Ire-
' land, nor any other person, ever heard his health drunk
by such a body of men; and I have only one word more
to say—which I do from my very heart to one and all
of you—May God bless you., (Loud and prolonged
acclamations.)"

Glorious words those--►every one of them—words
that Ireland may well exult in hearing articulated
in her name by her own most conspicuous imper-
sonation, her chief ruler and representative, the
Viceroy of her beloved SOVEREIGN ! Attestation,
visible, audible, tangible, palpable—this Crimean
Banquet given in Dublin on the 22d of the
present October—that Ireland is in truth in 185 G,
as we have said, tranquil, happy, loyal, pros-
perous !

Elsewhere in our impression of this evening
will be found, in extenso, another of those im-
pressive orations periodically addressed to the
Grand Jury at Hull by the learned and eloquent
Recorder. Ultimately, we doubt not, destined to
be grouped together—these Juridical, or rather,
more strictly speaking, eminently Judicial Ad-
dresses—in the form of an Appendix to the col-
lected writings of the gifted and philanthropic
Member for Midhurst. Addresses affording evi-
dence of Mr. WARREN'S fervour as a moralist, and
of the glowing ardour and the practical application
of his benevolence, not less strikingly, to our
thinking, than his genius as a pathetic writer is
revealed through its earliest manifestation in th e
"Diary of a Physician," or than his exquisite
powers as a Humorist are displayed through their
most perfected development in " Ten Thousand
a Year." A selection at least from these earnest
Addresses to the Grand Jury at Hull by the
present learned Recorder of that borough must in
the fullness of time complete the Collective
Writings of SAMUEL WARREN almost as inevitably
as the Sermons appended to the more perfect
editions of the works of LAWRENCE STERNE, as
constituting a not wholly inapt sequel to the
pathetic descriptions of the " Sentimental Jour-
ney," and the comic plaantasies crowded together
in the laughter-moving extravaganc3 of " Tris-
tram Shandy." The "Sermons" of STERNE being
the tribute offered to letters in his professional
character by the Divine : the " Charges" of Mr.
WARREN being also in some sort the tribute
offered to letters in his professional character as a
Lawyer, and not merely so—but signal evidences
likewise of his judicial capacity, constituting
at the same time a striking earnest at once of his
aim as a legislator, and of his aspirations as a
philanthropist. Perhaps, all things considered,
the most remarkable of these same periodical
Charges to the Grand Jury at Hull, is precisely
the very one to which our journal of this evening
gives the advantage of so much additional circu-
lation. Certainly—one of the most impressive of
all Mr. WARREN'S orations as Recorder—as it is
also one of the most eloquent, encouraging, and
comprehensive.

A correspondent, signing himself Humani-
tas," recalls to general remembrance, through our
impression of this evening, the claims of the
widow and orphans of a laborious and deserving
man of letters, upon public consideration. The
children and the relict, we mean, of the late un-
fortunate Mr. JOSEPH HAYDN, the ingenious editor
and industrious compiler of th© " Book of Dates"
and of the " Book of Dignities''—two of the most
useful, as they are also two of the most popular
and standard works of reference recently contri-
buted to the treasury of our National Literature.
Productions, both of them, henceforth to be re-
membered in the same category with BURKE'S
" Peerage," and CRU DEN' S "C on cordan ce." A
life honourably and usefully spent is the piling
up of such monuments of research and erudition
is surely entitled to some respectful and grateful
recollection. And what more signal evidence of
this respect and gratitude could be possibly
afforded than that of securing some provision for
the offspring of the ruined scholar—ruined and
wrecked in fortune, though triumphantly success-
ful in reputation. It will be seen that our corre-
spondent, in the course of his appeal in behalf of
Mrs. HAYDN and her partially orphaned children,
makes due mention of the laudable but fruitless
efforts made by that hapless lady to recover her
position, and to afford her poor boys the advan-
tage of something at least bearing the semblance
of a respectable education. Honourable and
touching endeavours on her part, hitherto, alas !
entirely unsuccessful. Cannot something be done
for these children of the late Mr. JOSEPH HAYDN
—the eldest a daughter aged fourteen, the second
a son one year younger, and the third a little
child of nine, in whose behalf a fruitless appeal I
was recently made with a view to his admission
into the St. Ann's Charitable Institution ? Cannot
a speedy entrance be accorded to the two boys
either into that school or into the more notable
scholastic establishment of Christ's Hospital ? The
present really appears to us exactly one of the very
cases to which the eleemosynary boons held out by
those kind of benevolent institutions are the most
peculiarly and gracefully applicable. Every one
who has a vote at the next vacancy, either for a
scholarship at the St. Ann's Home, or at Christ's
JOSEPHthei r re gi rAdy
Do
Nfthe
do rbpyh as:
ds ooni
ns
go fc tnht er
contribute
Hospital, should bear in mind the claims upon
Mr.n
one
more noble event to his " Book of Dates,"
securing to themselves, by so doing, a virtual
right for remembrance in connection with his other
master-compilation, the " Book of Dignities."

What are the London Omnibus Company about?
After all the flourishes of their .magniloquent
pros;!_ectus, which launched the metropolitan