The Sun.
London, England, 1860-03-15 00:00:00

niE SUN, LONDON, THURSDAY EVENING, MARCH 15, kclB6o.

of law being reserved in cases of dissatisfaction with

the local decision.

The law gives to aliens who shall take the oath
of allegiance the same rights and privileges con-
ferred upon British subjects, so that any foreigner

who intends to become a British subject may take
up, purchase, hold, occupy, and enjoy land as freely
as any of her Majesty's subjects.
Such are the principal features of the land system
for settling the Crown lands in British Columbia.
Some of the details will, no doubt, require amend-

ment in practice. This can readily be effected on
further experience of the working of the measure.

The great feature—the beneficial character—of the
law is the reduction of the price from £1 to 10s.

per acre ; and the permission to occupy at once, and

without waiting for survey, so as to suit the conve
nience of settlers, is not less important.

The only objection I have to the principle of the
measure is that the price is too high. Incredible
as it may appear to persons accustomed only to the
_ _

transfer and business of land in the old country,
where a thousand circumstances go to raise the
value of land, yet 10s. an acre is really too high a
price for the wild lands of British Columbia.

The parties wishing to settle there are, as a
general rule, poor men, whose means will be ex-
hausted in the expense of transport, the cost of
implements of husbandry, of farm-stock, and of
buildings, and who, after these charges, or even
some of them, are defrayed, cannot afford to pay
10s. an acre for their land. And these are the very
classes most needed in the new country, whose only
capital is their labour, and who are the mast efficient
pioneers of civilisation and material progress. In
my humble opinion, it is a serious mistake in the
Government to attempt to make revenue out of the
public land. Cheap, or a free gift of land, upon
condition of improvement, ought to be the attraction
held out to immigrants, and the success of this plan
would in the end be a source of a much larger re-
venue to the State than a high, or even a moderate,
or indeed any, price put upon the land eandever be-
come. Statesmen overlook the fact that every
settler becomes a taxpayer direct, and a consumer
of taxpaying commodities. The result is inevitable
that if you increase your settlers you increase your
revenue, and that permanently. The amount col-
lected from 10s. an acre purchase-price soon vanishes
from the treasury. Taxation periodically replenishes
it. But, independently of a thousand arguments in
favour of a low price, we can never people the new
colony unless we compete with our neighbours,
whose land, in unlimited quantity, is as good as and
more accessible than ours, while it is also cheaper.
The fine phrases of " loyalty and attachment,'•
" admiration of time-honoured institutions," and
the like fall heavily on the ear of a poor man whose
means are so limited he must go to the cheapest
market for land to settle his family upon. It was
distressing to see hearty, stalwart men hanging
about the street last year waiting for a reduction in
the price of land in Vancouver's Island, and at last
forced to go to Washington territory and settle
there. Ido not mention these cases for the sake of
" effect." They are facts of which lam cognizant,
and gravo facts, which must not be overlooked.
It is sincerely to be hoped the Government will
take the matter up, treat it in a wise, patriotic, and
practical spirit, and authorise the Governor to re-
duce the price at once and finally to ss. an acre.
The land measure will not be successful else.
Several persons are availing themselves of the law
already, it is true ; but they are men already com-
mitted, who have been occupying land in expecta-
tion of a reduction, or who, being in the country,
cannot do better ; and it is proper to state dis-
tinctly that all who are settling on the land are
doing so under the impression that the price to be
demanded will be only ss. an acre. This conviction
is general, and I have heard nothing to impair its
accuracy or justification from the local Government,
although I cannot say how it got abroad. We want
the price so low as to attract strangers.
The progress of British Columbia in commerce is,
on the whole, considering the smallness of the popu-
lation, satisfactory. The value of the imports for the
year ending December 31, was £177,219 7s. 5d.,
as taken at the Custom-house. The Customs duties,
including harbour dues, in the same period, were
£18,464. The other sources of taxation are :
Miners' licenses of £1 a-year each ; spirit licenses,
in towns £23 a-year, and in rural districts £lO
a-year ; wholesale licenses, in town and country,
£lO a-year ; trading licenses in the mines, 10s.
a month; which will in the aggregate, and added
to the Customs duties, bring up the total revenue
of this year to about £50,000, and which will leave
a surplus, after defraying all the civil and judicial
expenditure of the colony.
There are taxes upon carriers, &c., lately im-
posed, but their produce is to be speeially applied
to the improvement of river navigation and the
making of roads in the interior—both objects of the
first necessity, but which, I fear, the taxes -set
apart for them will not be sufficient to accomplish
I fear much misconception on the true state and
condition of the new colony prevails in England.
The kind interest taken in its affairs, and the
generous efforts made by the most distinguished men
in the mother country to provide the means of re-
ligious instruction and of education, entitle them to
information upon the subject of crime, which, I
doubt not, they fancy prevails to a great extent.
I applied to Mr. Begbie, the Judge of Columbia, for
information on this head, he being the most re-
liable source of information ; and I will trespass
on your space so far as is necessary to make a
few extracts from a paper with which the judge has
kindly furnished me.
The Judge writes :
"It is a legitimate subject of no small congratu-
lation that in a country so wild and almost path-
less (certainly roadless) as this, with a population
generally pointed at as the refuse of California—
with a magistracy weak in numbers, weaker in
their great inexperience, from the judge down-
wards, every one of them new to judicial and ma-
gisterial business—with a police never 20 in num-
ber, and never more than four or five in one place
—the population all armed, and all engaged in the
most exciting and demoralising pursuit which men
can follow (namely, gold-hunting), there should
have been in the whole of the present (now last)
year not one murder, not one attempted murder,
not one duel, and but one assault with a deadly
weapon at all in the whole of British Columbia.
Under Providence, this wonderful result, unexam-
pled in the history of new gold-mining countries,
has been without doubt produced by the firmness
of the Governor, and the unhesitating sternness with
which one or two difficulties' which occurred at
the close of the past year had been met and
punished. It has been thoroughly impressed upon
our whole 'population that the cowardly and ruf-
fianly outrages perpetrated to so lamentable an ex-
tent elsewhere, under the above euphonism, will
here consign the offenders without the hope of
mercy to the gallows, or a life-long imprisonment."
The Judge remarks with reasonable pride that
Blackstone is more regarded in his jurisdiction than
Judge Lynch; and while he draws an accurate and
just comparison between " the statistics of blood"
on the south and those on the north side of the
49th degree of north latitude favourable to the
latter, yet he does ample justice to the Californians
who have come to British Columbia. Of them he
reports that they have always—
"Manifestede:anagreat apagtireenaete desirewit to
with the
see
difficultiesu s t c e
whichf ai fairly
done,
magistrates and the judiciary have had to con-
tend with. I have frequently complimented my
rough auditory—sometimes 150 miners—on the
pod order and manly respect observed in my
court."
Much of the Judge's paper I must omit out of
n d eration of your space, and only cull a few
consideration
oo
itu
scattered sentences in conclusion, on two subjects
of Chinese,i,nritiehreeestff—ecttlioefthis ordearnldy theeon Indiansductu o:
general,
n te3s tf
immigration cannot fail to be felt. Here alone
t
all mining countries will you find Chiname
protected, but standing in no need of protection,
unmolested."
This is gratifying in view of
7ahe Chinesecounry s het
immigra-
tion
The greatexpectcdtNoicseet a in shortly
sin
iin the
•.
sale of liquors to Indians. And how to quell this
seems a secret unknown as yet to the police. It is
perhaps not to be quelled by police. It must be
left to public opinion and public feeling, which it
is to be hoped will soon be definite enough and
powerful enough to put it down for ever.
" It is to be hoped that order and economy, of
which an excellent example is given by all the offi-
cials, will bear good fruit and preserve a homely

English feeling, which is every day solidifying it
self throughout the colony."
The Judge's statistics of crime refer to white
men. During the year two Indians were executed
for murder, and one sentenced to imprisonment for
life, for wounding with intent to murder. Two
Indians are at present under examination or trial at
New Westminster on a charge of having murdered
two Italians on the Fraser River some months ago.
JAN. 27.

A paragraph purporting to be an extract from
the President's Message on the San Juan affair has
just been brought to me in anticipation of the Mes-
sage itself, which has not yet arrived, in which
General Harney's absurd charge of an attempt
having been made last summer by Mr. Dallas,
Governor Douglas's son-in-law, to take an Ame-
rican from the island by force is reiterated. If the
Message does contain such a statement there is
not a word of truth ix it. The whole story is a
fabrication, refuted long ago by the Governor. I
was myself on the island when the circumstance
which forms the groundwork of the story oc-
curred. Mr. Dallas is at this moment in
such distress by the death of his only child, not yet
buried, that I will not speak to him on the subject,
but I am sure he will set this unfounded charge
finally at rest in due time.
'e were very much grieved at the death by
drowning of Mr. Bloomfield, the late ➢ishop of
London's son, on the wrecking of the steamer
Northerner, the other day. The deaths in all were
35. The ship was so old and rotten that she went
to pieces very quickly. The mails were saved.
The mail bags were washed on shore.

2,229 deaths from all causes, of which 592 were by
diseases of the zymotic class.

It may be instructive to compare the fatality by
some of the diseases of London now and in the 17th

century. In the 20 years 1660-79 the mortality in
Southwark and in the city within and without the
walls was at the rate of 7 or 8 per cent. ; so the
mortality within the bills may be set down at the
rate of 7,000 annually in every 100,000 living, of
which 3,400 ware by zymotic diseases.
The diseases were not always distinguished ac-
curately. But by putting them in groups any fal-
lacy from this source will be obviated, and the de-
crease of some of the worst forms of mortal disease

will be placed beyond doubt. To render the com-
parison easy, the number living is taken to be the
same in the two periods-100,000 in 1660-79 and
in 1859. The annual deaths by small-pox were 357
in the first period, 42 in the second period ; by mea-
sles 40 and 47 in the two periods. Medical science
was imperfect, and the science existing in that
century was very imperfectly applied. Croup and
scarlatina were not generally recognised, but were
confounded with measles and fever. The mortality
by fever, continued or remittent, and ague was at
the rate of 749 and 59 in the two periods ; or, in-
cluding scarlatina, quinsy, and croup, the mortality
was 759 and 227. Thus a person was in four times
as much danger of dying of these diseases at the
Restoration as a person living in London now.
Women are not yet entirely exempt from peril in
childbearing ; the mortality by that disease is now
17, it was then 86. Again, a few (8) in 100,000 die
now of dysentery ; then, out of the same number,
763 died annually of that disease. By diarrhea, a
milder form of disease, 11 died then, 120 die now ;
eholera was fatal in 1859 to 7, and the 201 ears
1660-79 to 130 annually. Syphilis was twice
as fatal as it is, the numbers being 21 and 12.
Scurvy and purpura bear testimony to the im-
perfect nutrition of the population ; the annual
deaths were then 142 and are now 2. Vegeta-
bles, fruit, and fresh meat could with difficulty be
procured in winter. Worms and all parasitic crea-
tures that crawl over, bite, and prey on the body
of man were prevalent ; 10 deaths were ascribed
to worms.
Dropsy, a result and sign of scurvy and fever,
was exceedingly fatal; 298 died of that disease
then, and 26 now. Apoplexy, paralysis, epilepsy,
affections of the brain, and suicide are more fatal
now, according to the returns, than they were in
the proportion of 57 then to 151 now.
Consumption and diseases of the breathing or-
gans were uncommonly fatal ; 1,079 then and 611
now are the figures of the mortality. Diseases of
the digestive organs were fatal then and now in the
proportion of 146 and 91. Stone and diseases of
the urinary organs are now as fatal as they were
then ; the deaths being 21 and 30. Children were
rapidly cut down ; of convulsions and teething
1,175 died then, 136—t00 many—now.
Of the violent deaths some are now more fre-
quent, as the forces by which they are occasioned
are greater; of fractures and wounds 19 died then,
25 now ; of poison, more accessible, 2 now and then
only 1; of burns, as fires are probably more common
and dresses more inflammable, now 13, then 3 ;
drowning and suffocation were then twice as fatal
(23 and 20) as they are (10 and 10) in the present
day.
Five in 100,000 of the people were executed then
annually ; now 1 in the whole population.
In addition, the inhabitants of London were then
destroyed by the terrible plague ; which, upon an
average of the 20 years, carried off 1,132 lives.
In 1655 nearly a third of the population perished
by plague. It is difficult to conceive this frightful
destruction of human life; the imagination, the
wailing notes of writers, the details of Defoe in a
work which would have immortalised any writer,
fail to bring all the horrors before our minds.
The mortality was at the rate of 7 per cent. on an
average during the 20 years. If the mortality of
London had been at the same rate in the last year,
instead of 61,617 about 194,204 deaths would have
been registered.
The plague was the more appalling as the mor-
tality overwhelmed the people in particular years ;
thus the burials from 15,356 in 1663 rose to 97,306,
" whereof 65,596 were by plague," in 1665; and
this was equivalent to more than 600,000 deaths by
plague in the present population of London. In the
third week of September 8,297 deaths were regis-
tered, which represents a rate of mortality equiva-
lent to about 85,000 deaths in a week on the actual
population of London.
In these recurring plagues vast numbers of people
fled in panic terror from the fatal city ; servants
and workpeople were discharged in great numbers;
commerce was paralysed ; few ships ventured up
the river, and merchant vessels were occupied by
their owners as asylums on the water. Sextons,
gravediggers, bearers, bellmen, and drivers of death
carts were in demand. The dead were buried in-
discriminately; some bodies lay in forsaken houses,
others across the paths in the streets no longer
traversed by carts or coaches. At the end of the
summer grass was growing in Bishopsgate-street
and Cornhill, where the people thronged no longer.
The loud voices, shrieks, and sobs of the delirious,
the desolate. and the dying were heard in the
streets; at times too disturbed by reckless revellers
and by raving patients, who had escaped from their
dwellings, converted into prisons. For according
to the regulation " infected houses" were shut up ;
a red cross and "Lordhs.ve mercy upon us!" were in-
scribed on their portals ; while watchmen jealously
guarded the doors. These quarantine regulations
were at first rigidly carried out and were only
gradually abandoned when they were found useless,
pernicious, and impracticable.
It is: of some use to ask whether these past oc-
currences possess merely a historical interest for the
inhabitants of London. Are the diseases of those
times ever likely to recur ? The answer must be—
undoubtedly they will recur, if their causes come
again into action, and not otherwise. If a comet,
if the stars, if volcanic action, if some mystical tel-
luric influence destroyed the population of London
at the rate of 7 per cent. annually, and at times in
paroxysms at the rate of 20 and 30 per cent. in a
single year, such powers are evidently beyond the
reach of the will and of all human effort. The
population must resign itself to its fate. Vesuvius
may perhaps be extinguished artificially; but the
cause of the volcanic action which pervades the
world is inaccessible.
All the evidence, however, goes to show that
comets, stars, and volcanic action had as much to
do with the mortality of the population of London
in the 17th century as with mortality of the British
troops in the Crimea ; and no more. The supply
of food, and particularly of vegetable and fresh
animal food, in certain seasons of the year, was de-
fective, so that a large portion of the population
became scorbutic. The houses were nearly as close
and dirty as the houses now are in Constantinople
and Cairo ; the water supply was imperfect, as
London-bridge Works and Hugh Middleton's New
River were for many years unappreciated. Water
has in itself little attraction for people unaccustomed
to ablution. Parasitic insects and diseases of the
skin betrayed its impurities. The dirt of the houses
struck foreigners. The sewers were imperfect ; and
the soil gave off marsh malaria in some parts, and
in others was saturated with the filth of successive
generations.
The high rates of mortality which then prevailed
still attend cholera and current epidemics in certain
localities. The nature of disease and the climate
are still the same as they were in London before the
Revolution ; and it is evident that if plague has dis-
appeared, other zymotic diseases, but notably dysen-
tery, scurvy, and fever, have declined. Cholera
was on an average then as fatal as it has been re-
cently, and probably much more fatal than it will
be again if London be supplied with pure water.
The nation exults justly in the progress of its
manufacture. But the progress of its manufactures
is surpassed by the progress of the health of its
capital.
The improvement in the health of London has
proceeded step by step with the amendment of the
dietary, the drainage of the soil on which the
houses stand, the purification of the water which
the people drink; with the sweetening of the air;
and with the progress of medical science, which is
the source of sound doctrines.
So long as these improvements are maintained,
the diseases of the 17th century will not recur, and
all further progress is in the hands of the people.
They can work out their ova. salvation with God's
blessing. The causes of disease are numerous ; but
every one that has hitherto been discovered can be
to a certain extent controlled. If by persevering
in the exact observation and analysis of the dis-
eases of the population science succeeds in bringing
to light the evils of unnatural diseases still existing,
we may hope confidently that those evils will be
averted ; and that, rising from the Thames, the
site of London, which was pronounced in the 17th
century a field of blood and terror, will be a field
of health, concourse, and security to the population
of the metropolis of the empire.
r'

BRITISH EXPORTS TO FRANCE.--A return to
the House of Commons exhibits the declared value of the
produce and manufactures of the United Kingdom ex-
ported from the United Kingdom to France for the last six
years. It appears from this return that we exported to
France in 1854 goods worth £3,175,200; in 1855,.£6,012,658 ;
in 1856, £6,432,650 t in 1857, £6,213,358; in 1858,
44,863,131; and in 18a9, £4,754,354. Her Majesty's cold.
pies during the same years exported goods the computed
value of which was in 1854,0,216,175 i in 1855,4409,223 ;
in 1856, £4,038,427 ; in 1857, £5,113,465 ; in 1858,£4,379,070;
and in 1859, £4,500,504. From this summary it appears
that the home and colonial exports increased in one year,-
viz., 1855 to £1,030,416, and that this ittefease steaoy pre.
gressed for the next two YeaTs2 rea,4ill&• 14 1857, the sum
of £11,326,823. In 1853, however, they declined to
0,242,201, a decrease of £2,084,622; and exhibited only at
total
Very slight
9,2541858 , recovery during the last year of £12,6571 on 5
of
• 1

ASSIZE INTELLIGENCE.

NORFOLK CIRCUIT.—BEDFORD, March 14:
CROWN COURT.
(Before Mr. Justice Williams.)
MURDER.
Joseph Castle was indicted for the wilful murder
of Jane Castle, his wife, at Luton, on the 9th of
August.
Mr. Sergeant Tozer and Mr. Abdy were counsel
for the prosecution ; Mr. Henry Mills defended the
prisoner.
The learned Sergeant, in his opening statement
to the jury, said that the case against the prisoner
at the bar was remarkable for its extreme simpli-
city, and the facts were such as would be exceed-
ingly easy to arrive at a determination upon. All
the circumstances connected with the commission
of the offence showed great and careful premedita-
tion. The prisoner and the deceased woman had
been married about two years, lodging in a house
belonging to the prisoner's uncle, at Ware, in Hert-
fordshire. They had not lived happily together,
and a day or two previous to the Bth of August
there had been some wr Ingling between them, and
she had then determined to return to her mother.
It would appear that jealousy on the prisoner's
part was the cause of ill blood between them. The
deceased accordingly on the morning of Monday,
the Bth of August, left Ware on foot, accompanied
by a young girl, a cousin of the prisoner, who car-
ried a bundle of clothes for her, " repeatedly," as
the girl said, " looking back, dreading lest her hus-
band should be following her." The girl left her
at Hertford, and shethen went on to Cromer Hyde,
stopping two hours at the house of a person she had
known before her marriage. She then got a lift in a
waggon to Wickhamstead. Very shortly after shehad
left Cromer Hyde the prisoner was there making in-
quiries about her. In the meantime the deceased
had arrived at Luton, and then went to her mother's
house. She slept there that night, and appeared in
great distress. The next morning the prisoner came
and found her in bed at about half-past six o'clock,
and endeavoured to persuade her to return with
him. What passed between them that morning is
not known, but at about half-past 10 o'clock they
left her mother's house together, and were shortly
afterwards seen ascending a rising ground called
Semmeries-hill. On the side opposite to that on
which they ascended is a mound and old chalk-pit
called the Dell. Here it was that the body of the
deceased was found before 12 o'clock that morning,
about two hours after Rho had left her mother's
house. The body when found was still warm and
bleeding, the knees were doubled back under the
body in a kneeling position. There was a superfi-
cial cut across the throat, and about the middle of
this cut a deep stab, dividing the arteries and reach-
ing the vertebrae. There were some other slight
superficial wounds, and some cuts in the hands, as
if an attempt had been made by the deceased to
wrest a knife from the hand of an assailant. There
were marks in the road about 27 yards from where
the body was found, as if a severe struggle had
there taken place, much blood at this place, and
tracks of blood thence to the body. Her shawl and
bonnet were lying about six feet from her, and a
small piece of the shawl near the place of the strug-
gle, from which place there were also marks of
blood in a direction towards Sommer's-castle, and
on a style across a footpath leading there. In a
barley field, seven yards from the bcdy, that after-
noon a knife was found covered with fresh blood.
This knife was shown to have been used by the
prisoner's uncle, and to have been used by the pri-
soner and the deceased while lodging in the uncle's
house. That same afternoon the prisoner went on to
IVelwyn, 13 miles distant, and gave himself up to a
police-constable, saying, "I am your prisoner. I have
had a row with my wife, and cannot tell what the
consequence was." Shortly afterwards a constable
from Luton arrived, and told the prisoner that
he had come to take him into custody on the charge
of murdering his wife at Sommeries. The prisoner
replied, " Murder, murder!" He appeared much
excited at the time, and on his way back to Luton,
while in custody, he said he had never been in
trouble before in his life, and this would not have
happened if she (meaning his wife) had kept away
from Luton. On being asked where his wife was,
he said, " I left her on the road-side, but she is
found before now, I only struck her." The police-
man then said, " Your wife is dead, you have cut
her throat." He replied, "No ; if her throat is cut
the did it herself; but she has cut my hand." There
was some blood in the front of his trousers, and a
fresh cut on the thumb and finger of his right
hand, which was then bleeding. The mother of the
deceased, on cross-examination, stated that her
daughter had told her that her husband was a
jealous man ; that on one occasion when she had
attempted to leave him he tore her clothes to pre-
vent her coming away ; that he had shaved off his
whiskers, and slept with knives under his pillow,
and on one occasion had told her she had better
leave him ; that he had strange feelings in his head
and might do her some harm.
Mr. Mills addressed the jury for the prisoner,
and urged that the cuts on the prisoner's hands
showed that a struggle must have taken place, and
that the whole of the evidence was consistent with
a supposition which would reduce the prisoner's
offence from murder to manslaughter, supposing
tkey were satisfied that she met her death by his
hand; but that there was no evidence to show that
the blow was not self-inflicted; that the state of
mind of the deceased was such as might have in-
duced her to destroy herself after a quarrel with
her husband, and therefore the account he gave on
delivering himself into custody was a correct de-
scription of what did take place, and which no
other living person had seen.
The learned judge having then concluded his
summing up,
The jury found the prisoner guilty of wilful mur-
der, and sentence of death was passed upon him.