The Sun.
London, England, 1832-03-16 00:00:00

e. .. _. .
reruch deeper hold of them than some tionourah'e
iGentlemen may imagine.—Morning Chronicic.
i; The daeger to which the lives of poor persons,
I. more especially of farming labourers, is exposed in
the rural distrues, where the crime of arson prevail-
`; by false and malicious charges of that nature, can.
not be too strongly impressed upon the public mind.
• , Such is the rasa Tor conviction, that the most inno-
cent reta in humble life, who is once accused, may
consider himself exceedingly fortunate if his inno-
cence avail burn upon trial. In the days when the
laws against witchcraft prevailed in this conntry, the
sacrifices of human life that were judicially made,
upon the accusation of an offence which had no ex-
istence, but in the imagination, was not the fatal
consequence of the ignorance atn credulity of Juries
alone; the ermined rifepensers of justice, whose edu-
cation and habits of reflection ought to have• taught
them better, lent themselves to the vulgar prejudice,
encouraged the outrageous persecutions of the wretch-
ed and helpless objects of the popular fury, and dese-
crated the altars of justice by offering upon them
the victims of a benighted and cruel supperstition.
One of the most extraordinary circumstances con-
nected with the trials for witchcraft was, that many
of the miserable objects of superstitious ignorance
were induced by the excitement of the times to con-
, fess their participation in a crime which never
existed, and to describe even the particulars of that
appalling intercourse with demons which ell en-
lightened persons now admit could never have
existed but in the distempered minds of the weakest
and most infatuated of human beings. But the
crime of arson is not, like that of withcraft, an ima-
ginary crime; yet we may learn a lesson of caution
from what occurred in the prosecution of pr-reens
charged with the latter offence. Many suffered,
even under Judges of high authority in the English
law, the penalty of death for a crime which, it is
now admitted, could have no existence, and, conse-
quently, the evidence to substantiate which must
have been wholly false. This surely ought to teach
Judges as well as Juries to be very careful how they
allow their sober reason to be influenced by an in-
dignant feeling, and decide the awful question
which affects the life of man, not by the calm
force of dispassionate conviction, but by the
eager and uer,flectieg impulse of excitement. The
length to which the effect of mere suspicion has •
been carried, with regard to the crime of arson, may
be, in some cegree, understood by the circumstance
that there were no less than four commitments for
this crime in the calendar of-the Cambridge Ass'res,
in every case of which au intelligent and considerate
Grand Jury found their duty to throw out the Bill.
In two of these cases the individuals against whom
this charge had been brought, for which there was
not a shadow of proof, had been in custody five
months! In another case the term of imprisonment
was one month, and in the fourth instance four
months. What a •tate things have come to in this
cwce great and flourishing country, that British sub-
jects can he for such long periods deprived of their
liberty, and treated as felons, although the charge
against them is so groundless that a Grand Jury
cannot even find a bill! Yet, if these four men, or
any of them, had been convicted upon evidence ever
so slight, we have reason to think, from what we
have seen, that they would have been executed.—
Morning Herald.

The discussion of last night on the %Vest India ques-
tion, that part of it, especially which referred to the
late apalling events in Jamaica, demands the utmost
attention. Mr. Burge, followed by Mr. Baring, by
Mr. Douglas, and by Lord Sandon, energetically
and unanswerably proved that the moment bad ar-
rived when a longer perseverance by the Govern-
ment in its present course of policy towards our in-
valuable yet grossly misused West India posses-
sions, must lose to us those colonies for ever,
and must involve ourselves in their ruin. In the
last Session Lord Howick, with a display of petu-
lance and menace, announced that he had prepared
and was about to promulgate an Order in Council,
which each colony should be required,in the teeth of
its own constitutional privileges, to adopt, word
for word and letter for letter, as internal law, rex
piste their' factious obstinacy by the imposition
of fiscal penalties. He now appears to be conscious
of his error, and ingeniously attempted last night to
escape the well-merited rebuke which Mr. Burge
administered to him, for conduct so unbecoming a
Moister, and so calculated to aggravate, by insult,
the deep injuries irfficted on those colonies, by as-
suring the Hen. and Learned Gentleman and the
House that all this menace was no threat at all, but
that he had intended to hold out a boon I Again
and again we repeat, that unless Ministers, already
on the brink of a fearful precipice, abstain from their
mad course of colonial policy, and apply themselves
not to aggravate as they have hitherto done, but to
En al the wounds through which the colonies are
bleeding at every pore, those colonies are for ever
lost—lost to England, and gained by some rival
Powet—and the sun of Britain's commercial pros-
perity is set for ever.—Morning Post.
The most pressing political duty at ibis moment
is that which binds the reforming Members of the
House of Commons to be, every man of them, at
his post, until the Bill shall have been fairly launched
into the other House of Parliament. If those " re-
presentatives of the people," who have any in-
dependent constituency to represent, be anxious
that the passage of the Reform Bill through the
House of Lords should be uninterrupted and suc-
cessful, they will exert themselves industriously to
impress upon the minds of their Lordships a faithful
image of the feeling entertained by the people of
this country generally, as well towards the vices of
the old system of representation, as in favour of this
great and manly scheme :for its amendment. To
effect that object, there is nothing within the com-
pass of the House of Commons but a large and decisive
majority for the third reading of the Bill. No mat-
ter what may be the composition of the Peers,—
whether neutral or hostile towards Reform,—there
are but two instruments whereby a certain ascen-
dency can be obtained in that assembly over the
staunch boroughmonger power—the voice of the
people, and the King's prerogative. So strong is
the enemy, that it is obvious we must draw rein-
forcements, not from one only, but from both of
these auxiliaries. The public cause, we say, de-
mands that recetitie shall.be had both to the people

. .
through its representatives, and through its preroga-
thie to the Crown. But,,. earnest. and solicitous. as

we have shown ourselves that his Majesty's Minis-
ters should perform their part vigorously, and,aid
without flinching or hesitation the public-spirited
minority of the- House of Peers, by such an exercise
of the indisputable rights of the Crown as might
secure a victory to the longing people of England; it
never could slip from the consideration of any rea-
sonable man how important it is for the country
that the burden of the battle should be lightened as
much as possible for the Sovereign and his advisers,
by the most strenuous co-operation that the
popular branch of the legislature can afford them.
So natural, though not absolute, is the operation of
one estate of Parliament upon the other, that
although we have seen a considerable majority in
the Commons fail of inducing the Peers to receive
with favour a Bill which had passed the former

House, there can be no question that the more or
less of opposition in the Lords will bear a certain
proportion to that displayed by the Commons ; and

hat, even as ennstitutea in the last session,, the

Peers would have presented a still more overwhelm-
ing farce against the Reform Bill, had it been carried
in the Lower House by a majority of but 30, in-
stead of 130. \Vhatever obligation, therefore, may
press upon Lord Giey to ensure the socctseul
passage of the Bill this time through the
Peers, it is the uudoubt..d duty of gentlemen
in the House of Commons to facilitate for the
Minister the fulfilment of that inevitable but en-
terprising task, by producing upon the under-
standings.. of their Lordships the strongest possible
rouvictiori"olthe .Tnational. unanimity with regard
to- ihe- Reform qiiestion, and, therefore, establish-
iug an influence over the dispoitions of the Lords
now actually entitled to vote, independent, thOugkin
aid, of the anal effect upon the number of" contents"