The Sun.
London, England, 1856-03-10 00:00:00

the corner-stones of any national system. Much
of the talking against the first is, of course, mere
cant, and deserving no answer ; but with a vastly
greater number it is the deep-rooted conviction
that religion ought to be the guide, and its mo-
tives the foundation of human action : a convic-
tion we fully share with them. We believe,
however, that all who do not want to use schools
as the instruments of sectarianism rather than
religion, will soon: open their eyes to the facts
of the ease. It is day schools, not boarding
schools, which are under discussion—places where
children are kept but a few hours each day, in
which they do not spend their mornings and even-
ings, nor their Sundays, unless the room be also
used on that day for entirely religious purposes.
There is no conflict between the secular and re-
ligious systems. One does not negative the ether ;
•n the contrary, the secular institution is the
handmaid of the religious teaching. In Scotland
learning to read in a Sunday school was, and we
hope still is, unknown. The proposition is that
what is paid for by rate or grant should be the
secular part of the teaching. Reading, writing,
and arithmetic, and we should say even history,
geography, and the sciences are strictly or sub-
stantially worldly studies. Time must be spent
in teaching them, and for that time only the secu-
lar system would pay, leaving the religious tuition
to the tens of thousands of willing instructors,
from the Sunday-school teacher. upwards to his
Grace of CANTERBURY.

The preference of local rating to Government
grants would seem inherent in Englishmen. At
present the Education Committee of Privy
Council, or rather its Secretary, is quite irrespons-
ible. Its administration and its highly salaried
inspectors, which Lord JOHN proposes so largely
to increase, may be immaculate, but there is no
proof of it. There may be the greatest jobbing
and favouritism. If so we have no means of
knowing it. We only know that the funds they
demand are rapidly increasing. The most remark-
able of Lord JOHN'S resolutions—te place all em-
ployers of children under the same regulations as
manufacturers—would merely remedy a gross in-
justice to which we have more than once adverted.
If the employer of town-children is required to
to have them educated up to a certain age, why
net the farmei and the landlord also ? It will
not be pretended that self-education is most pro-
bable in rural districts.

In our present impression will be found two
remarkable, not to say astounding, instances of
Justices' justice—the one occurring at the Dorset
Intermediate Sessions, and the other at Holt, in
Norfolkshire.

In the former case, it will be seen, a poor cot-
tager, named BYLES, his wife and daughter, were
charged before the Rev. H. F. YEATMAN and a
full bench of Magistrates with stealing two
bushels of wheat and a sack, the property of
THOMAS HOMER SAUNDERS, at Ower Moigne, on
the 18th ult. The prisoners were undefended.
From the evidence it appeared that the father and
daughter were in the employ of the prosecutor,
who allowed the former, as part of his wages, a
supply of grist insufficient for the support of hie
family. Conscious, doubtless, of this the prose-
cutor lent a ready ear to an allegation made to
him that more grist had been sent by the prisoner
to the neighbouring mill than could have been
honestly come by. He repaired to the prisoner's
cottage, and found in the pantry the wheat ana 1
sack in question. Asking the prisoner's Rife
where she got the wheat, she replied, " It is some
of the lease corn," viz., the grist ref-arred to.
Unfortunately for her veracity and honesty, it
contained wild oats, which were mixed
with the wheat in a field belonging to
the prosecutor, but not with the grist al-
lowed to the male prisoner. On questioning
the latter he denied all knowledge of any wheat
having been in his cottage, and called the prose-
cutor's attention to the fact that the grist allowed
him was insufficient, and that, as the prosecutor
knew, his wife, ELIZABETH BYLES, had been in the
habit of purchasing flour at the mill. On further
inquiry the prosecutor ascertained that some five
sacks of wheat in all had been conveyed by the
daughter in the dusk of evening to the mill for
grinding, and these, it appeared, she had received
from her mother, who, on being further interro-
gated, declared she had picked the wheat up after
the mows and ricks had been put into the barn—in
other words, " gleaned." This may or may not
have been the case, but there could be no doubt
the wheat and the sack were the prosecutor's pro-
perty, and ELIZABETH Brus the younger had op-
portunity to steal them ; while, on the other hand,
not a tittle of evidence was forthcoming to im-
plicate the male prisoner.

The result of the trial was, the daughter
was acquitted, and the father and mother were
alike found guilty of receiving, and sentenced
respectively to nine and six months' hard labour l
This was on the first, day of the sessions ; on the
second the Rev. Chairman urbanely drew the
attention of the jury " to one of the most remark-
able circumstances that during his experience, ex-
tending over twenty years (good Heavens !), he
had yet met with." In brief, the jury having
convicted BYLES, and the Court in its unimpeach-
able wisdom and mercy taking into consideration
the notorious fact that every owner of a house
ought to know what was in it, haing sentenced
him to nine' months hard labour—down came the
unconscionable prosecutor on the presiding magi-
strates with a declaration that in his belief the
man was innocent. Under such startling circum-
stances, the court was desirous, so far as it was
able, to reconsider their sentence ; but, careful of
its heavy responsibility, would, before altering
that sentence, put to the jury " the more or less
guilt or innocence of the prisoner." The jury,
thus challenged, recommended Joseph Byles to
mercy, and his sentence was thereupon commuted
to three months' hard labour ! The reader is in-
credulous ! It is, nevertheless, the fact. The
unfortunate man was aware of the wheat and
sack being there or he was not. If he was aware
he was guilty; if not he was innocent. If he was
guilty no extenuating circumstances were forth-
coming ; if innocent—and the party most inte-
rested next to himself in the fact, viz., the prose-
cutor, pronounced him to be so—.he was entitled
to nothing short of an acquittal. Yet, after an
anomalous reference to the jury, he was on their
unwarranted recommendation to mercy resen-
tenced to three instead of nine months' hard
labour !

Hardly less memorable is the Rabbit case at
Holt. An honest and poor man, in the exercise
of an hitherto undoubted right, is collared on a
public heath by a ,gamekeeper, and brought before

a bench of magistrates for having poached on his
own domains ; in other words, bagged a couplo of
his own rabbits. The magistrates meet once,
twice, a third time—when, by the aid of a strange

justice, they are enabled to come to a decision

and convict the prisoner, who is fined a week's
wages, and sentenced, in default of payment, to

one week's imprisonment ! Yes, in this free
country, individuals are to be found entrusted

with the administration of justice capable of
mingled absurdities anJ atrocities like these.