The Sun.
London, England, 1844-05-15 00:00:00

teltliAt Walt

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, MAY 15, 1844.

In the House of Lords, the Marquis of CLAN-
RICAEDE gave notice of a motion for Friday, on the
present state of the poor-law in Ireland.
The Marquis of NORMAN BY moved for certain
papers relative to the Irish constabulary force. His
object was to expose that revolting and odious system
commonly called the spy system, and which, he
feared, existed now to a greater extent in Ireland
than it had done for many years. The Noble Mar-
quis adducel numerous instances in which the police
had acted the part of spies. He then entered at
some length into the case of Mr. GREY, who held a
a situation in the police, and who had been dismissed,
shortly after the accession of the present Govern-
ment, for no reason, that he could see, but for fol-
lowing the- advice of the ATTORNEY-GENERAL and
Mr. BRHWSTER.
Lord WumiNcurrE defended the official authori-
ties in Ireland, and said, if the Noble Marquis per-
severed in his motion, the papers would he produced.
After some remarks from the Marquis of CLAN-
RICARLE, the Earl of ItiicKr,ow and the Earl of
WINCHILSEA,
the motion was agreed to.
The Earl of MINTO moved for a return of the
services of her MAJESTY'S ship Queen, built on a
new principle, and lately sent out to Malta, which
be contended had not had a fair trial.
The Earl of HADDING'AM Opposed the motion, on
the ground that the object of the Noble Earl was' to
throw blame on the Admiralty, Without adducing
sufficient reasons.
After some routine business, the House adjourned
till Friday; Wednesday being a dies nou in the
Lords, and the following day the Ascension.
In the Commons, a new writ was moved for the
Kilmarnock district of burghs, in room of Mr. JOHN-
STONE, deceased.
Mr. CHRISTIE postponed for a fortnight his motion
relative to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.
In answer to a question from an Hon. Member, Sir
R. PEEL said it was not likely that the Irish Regis-
tration Bill would come on before the Whitsuntide
holidays.
Mr. S. CRAWFORD moved for leave to bring in a
Bill to extend the Parliamentary suffrage, and to se-
cure the free representation of the people.
Dr. BOWRING seconded the motion, and, on a divi-
sion, it was rejected by a majority of 66.
Mr. WATSON moved for a Select Committee to

inquire into the orders for compensation made by the
LORD CHANCELLOR to the persons filling the offices of
clerks of enrolments, riding clerks, six clerks, and many
other clerks in Chancery, under an Act passed last
session. He pointed out the large sums received by
these parties for doing nothing, amounting, annually,
to 78,0001., and mostly paid by the unfortunate
suitors in Chancery. He contended that fees of this
kind should be paid by the public at large, and not
by the suitors.
The SOLICITOR-GENERAL admitted that many of
the statements made by Mr. WATSON were correct,
and would not uphold the system as perfect ; but still
the LORD CHANCELLOR was not to blame. If any
party were to blame, it was the Legislature who had
passed the Bill ; but he was not aware that any party
was to blame. The Bill had not passed through
Parliament, sub silentio ; it had been discussed by
Mr. WARD, Mr. C. BULLER, and also by Mr. HUME,
who stated that it was correct in its principles and
details. He could not see any benefit to be derived
by the appointment of a Select Committee, and he
must, therefore, oppose the motion.
After some discussion, in which Sir J. GRAHAm
took part, the House divided, when the motion was
rejected by a majority of 16.
Sir D. NORREYS moved the appointment of a
Select Committee on the Poor Relief (Ireland) Acts,
on which Sir J. GRAHAM moved that the order be
discharged, which was agreed to by a majority of 32.
The other Orders of the Day were then disposed
of, and the House adjourned at One o'clock.

However violent and unconstitutional the proceed-
ings of the COSTA CABRAL Ministry in Portugal have
lately become, we cannot refrain from expressing our
gratification at the evidences which we perceive of an
ameliorated tone and feeling in the mass of the Por-
tuguese population. The domiciliary visits, the vexa-
tious arrests, the seizures of private papers, the vio-
lation of letters by the authorised but most abject
agents of a most contemptible Government,
the suppression of all liberty of the press,
the arbitrary confiscations of property, the
treacherous kidnapping of individuals obnoxious to the
miserable faction in power, and especially of the pro.
prietors and editors of journals that have signalised
their opposition to the tyrannical follies of the Court ;
these are, undoubtedly, deplorable excesses. They
bespeak the establishment in the capital of the Por-
tuguese Monarchy of a system of terror and brute
force that must presently bring on a reaction terrible
to the very institutions for the security of which
these excesses have been, professedly, resorted to.
The stability of the throne which they have been
perpetrated in order to strengthen, will be shaken by
that reaction, to its very foundations. The attachment of
the Portuguese people to that Sovereign in whose behalf
they have been invoked and vindicated, will he weakened
and even annihilated by them. Yet all these viola-
tions of the Constitutional Charter of the kingdom,
these outrages on public opinion, these insults and
njuries upon a devoted and sensitive people, have
been resented hitherto with varying success, but with
a sparing of human blood most honourable to the na-
tion at large. This abstinence bespeaks a great ad-
vance in social and civil virtue in a people who have
been too lightly ranked among the most vindictive
of Europe. They had innumerable wrongs to com-
plain of at the hands of those in authority over them,
from the Regency of Dom MIGUEL, in 1828, his
speedy violation of the Charter of Dom PEDRO (of
1826), and his subsequent acts of political treachery
Ind personal baseness, to the abortive attempts
of the Duke of TERCEIRA and the Marshal SALDAMIA
to restore the Charter in 1837, and all the more recent
troubles which have agitated the kingdom down to
this period. To pass over all the exciting events of
the " War of Liberation," from the sailing of Dom
PEDRO'S squadron from Belleisle in February, 1832,
and the taking of Oporto, its triumphant defence
igainst MIGUEL, and the capture of the Miguelite
fleet by our gallant NAPIER, to the death of Dom
PEDRO ; we perceive in the history of these convul-
sions an honourable contrast of Portuguese abstinence
and forbearance, even in the season of success and vic•
-
tory, to the unbridled abandonment of Spain, within
the same interval of time, to the brutal intoxication of
that remorseless vengeance and insatiable appetite of
blood which have so disgraced her national annals at
all times, but never more so than within the last
twenty years.
If we recur to the history of that interval in both
countries, how immeasurably greater do we discern
the political, moral, and social guilt of Spain to have
been than the delinquencies of Portugal. In the
latter, the suppression of the Constitution by the late
Togo VI., in 1828, was followed by sanguinary dis-
, t-urbances, no doubt; and the insurrection of the Mar-
pis of CnAvns at Lisbon in 1826 ; and all the duplicity
and violence of the Miguelite faction, which, both before
and after the arrival of the British troops at Lisbon under
General CLINTON, in 1826-27, convulsed the whole
kingdom with factions and cabals, were not unpro-
ductive of sanguinary feuds. But the insurrection in
favour of Donna MARIA, of August, 1831, in which
300 lives were sacrificed, and the tumults of Lisbon in
1834, in which, perhaps, as many more were massacred,
are the only salient examples of popular movement
determining in wholesale slaughter, which we can
recal to mind, independent of the more frightful and
extensive, but "legitimate" (if we must so far com-
promise the rights of humanity to conventional
opinion) casualties of the civil war that ravaged Por-
tugal from the departure of the British troops in
1828, to the expatriation of Dom MIGUEL, by his em-
barkation at Evora for Genoa, in 1834. But let us
turn to Spain, and we must be horror-struck at the long
catalogue of crime and revolt, blood and treason, which
dates from the dissolution of the Cortes under the

faithless and execrable FERDINAND VII. in 1823

Then, the scaffo!d3 began to reek with the blood of
patriotic and devoted Spaniards, worthy of a nobler
fate. Then perished RIEGO ; and then commenced
that struggle for the succession of CARLOS, and the
disinheritance and dispossession of the QUEEN, which
resulted in one of the most bloody and perfidious
struggles recorded in history ; a struggle which
leagued father against son, brother against brother-;..1.
which violated the ties of kindred, the sacredness of
hospitality, the sanctuaries of religion, the obligations
of oaths, the pledges of private honour. That civil
war was a calamity which Portugal had equally to
encounter with Spain ; but in Portugal it was never
disgraced by that studied and demonlike aggravation
of its horrors which rendered Spain and Spaniards
the reproach of civilisation and the disgrace of Chris-
tendom. On either side were ranged master fiends

who offered up, on every possible occasion, whole
hecatombs of human victims in cold-blooded, wanton
sacrifice. Their's were the laurels, plucked like fire-
brands, from burning villages, and desecrated churches.
Prisoners led out to be murdered by sections, or set
apart and maintained for awhile, in revelry and en-
joyment, only to be murdered afterwards, with more
impressive effect (like the Mexican victims of
the old Aztec sacrificial priests), amused

the moody ferocity of ZUMALACARILEGUE. The
vet more infamous and atrocious MINA, having
information that a whole detachment of Carlists, who

tad escaped from the field wherein he had defeated

their comrades, had taken refuge in a particular quar-
ter of a town to which he had pursued them, de-
manded of their relatives that they should surrender
to him these unhappy refugees within a given •time.
This infamy being declined, he actually set fire to the
quarter, and the poor fellows were consumed in those
lofty and ancient houses, in the highest chambers of
which, wounded and famishing as they were, they
h id vainly barricaded themselves. Their fate of
being burned to death they had not antici-
pated. The cowardly butcheries of MARoTo,
the bloody retaliations of CABRERA, have within
these few months, aye weeks, been rivalled,
by CONCHA, NARVAEZ, RODIL, and that contemp-
tible ruffian DE MEER, who " managed" the last
butchery exercised on the prisoners taken at Gerona.
In short, in Madrid alone, more blood has been
shed in the course of one emeute, than has been
poured out, in a whole campaign, in Portugal. In
g
the latter country, contending parties, after the ter-
mination of their conflicts, have sat down in peace
and good-will, returning into the ranks and occupa-
tions of private life, or abandoning, with what grace
they might, the honours and emoluments of public
service, of which the successful side has deprived
them. In Spain, the sale alternative in the most sacred
or the most sordid struggle—under circumstances
of the greatest or the least justification of the cause
embarked in—appears to be, complete success or im-
molation ;—on the one hand a savage and sanguinary
triumph; on the other, ignominious death. Contrast,

in short, the infamous avowal comprised in the re-
port of DE MEEK to the Spanish Minister at War,
announcing the execution of the Gerona prisoners
of war, with the conduct of the Portuguese authori-
ties in allowing the insurgent officers and garrison of
Almeida to retire into Spain (the one appears in The
Sun of the 4th, the other in The Sun of the Bth
instant); and the more manly and civilised bearing of
the Portuguese, as comparei with that of the Spa-
niards, must be at once admitted, to the great honour
of the former.

Two cases were heard at the Middlesex Sessions
yesterday, which exhibit the justice and humanity of
the Guardians of the Hackney and Lambeth Union
workhouses in no very enviable light. The first
case was that of ALFRED MATHEW, who pleaded
guilty to having stolen two pounds weight of pork ;
and when called on fur his defence, alleged that dis-
tress had driven: him to the commission of the act,
that he had not a bed to lie on, and that on applying
to his parish of Hackney for relief, he had received a
ticket admitting him to the stone-yard to break
stones, together with some bread, and had been
told that he was never to apply for further re-
lief. The prisoner added —and his statement
was not disproved—that he had formerly been en-
gaged in an extensive way of business, and had
maintained his wife and three children in comfort and
respectability ; but latterly misfortune after misfor-
tune had fallen on him, and "in a fit of desperation,
created by the fact that his wife and children had been
deprived of anything to eat for more than a day and
a half, he committed the theft of which he had been ac-
cused." A policeman who had visited the poor man's
abode, said that " there was n,-)t anything left in the
room, and the family slept on the bare boards.
The prisoner had been obliged to part not
only with his bed, but with nearly the
whole of his children's clothes as well as
his own. In fact, they were all in a state of the
greatest distress." The magistrate, after commenting,
in just and forcible terms, on the want of " mercy
and consideration" evinced by the Hackney Board of
Guardians, sentenced the poor fellow to a week's
imprisonment, with hard labour. The second case
was that of Joust GooDwIN, an old man, sixty-four
years of age, who was found guilty of having stolen
a putty-knife, of the value of one shilling, and or-
dered to be imprisoned and kept to hard labour in
the House of Correction for one month. It
appeared, from his own statement—which, as in
the preceding case, was not contradicted—that,
being unable to obtain a livelihood, he had gone into
the Lambeth workhouse, and, after being there some
time, was told by the Board of Guardians, in common
with several other paupers, that they had been there
long enough, and must therefore go out and work.
He had, upon this intimation—we quote his own
words—" said that he was very willing to work
for his living, but he thought that an old man
like himself had not much chance of obtaining an
engagement. Ile had in former days kept a house
in Lambeth, and had paid rent and taxes until mis-
fortuneshad compelled him to give up his establishment.
When he left the workhouse, he received one shilling
to carry him on his way, and, after wandering over a
considerable portion of Surrey and Middlesex, in the
vain hope of obtaining employment as a house painter
—during which journeyings he had frequently gone
forty-eight hours without a morsel of bread to eat—
he reached the neighbourhood of Hanwell, where
some persons, taking compassion on his exhausted
state, gave him something to drink ; it was not much,
but took an immediate effect on him; in consequence
of long fasting, so that, when he arrived at
the prosecutor's house, the cravings of hunger,
coupled with what he had drunk, drove him
to the commission of the theft." Now it will
be observed that in both these cases, the prisoners
were the victims of misfortunes, to which all classes,
the highest as well as the lowest, are liable ; there
was no proof that either had ever been guilty of rash-
ness, negligence, or extravagance; they were simply
unfortunate, and being so, no one can deny that they
were legitimate subjects for the kindly consideration
of the Boards of Guardians of their respective
parishes. In fact, the new poor-law—if we
are to place any reliance on the philan-
thropic asseverations of its originators—was ex-
pressly intended to meet such cases as those
which we have just been detailing, and to deal with
them in a lenient, charitable, and forbearing spirit.
It is a law whose avowed object is to protect and
cherish the pauper, made so, not by his own fault,
but the iron pressure of circumstances; while it repu-
diates the claims of the idle, the dissolute, and the
extravagant. And how has this object been followed
up in the two instances before us ? Has it been
carried out in a proper spirit? Far otherwise.
It has been wholly lost sight of, and ALFRED
MATHEW and JOHN GOODWIN have both been treated
as if they were unworthy to receive workhouse pro-
tection, as if, in fact, they were no better than lazy,
incorrigible scamps, whose legitimate destination is
the treadmill. Even the years and grey hairs
of the latter produce no effect on the in-
exorable Board of Guardians ; he is turned out of the'
work-house with as little ceremony as if he were a
dog; and the natural consequence is that, driven to
desperation by his circumstances, he, as well as
ALFRED MATHEW, have recourse to theft. We do
not defend their act; but this we will say, that they
are much more to be pitied than blamed; and that
the prime offenders have been the Hackney and
Lambeth Union authorities, whose brutal inhumanity
drove the prisoners to that state of reckless despera-
tion which induced the commission of theft. A
month's imprisonment with hard labour, or the disci-
pline of the treadmill for a week or two, would do a
prodigious deal of good to some of these heartless,
upstart Boards of Guardians, by quickening their
discretion and discrimination, if not their sense of
humanity.

The accounts from Spain, which are to the 7th
inst., hold out little prospect of peace or security for
Spain. The new Cabinet leave the public in
ignorance as to their plans of government, but these
may be guessed from the feelers put forth by their
organs. The Heraldo, for instance, says that the
principle of the NARVAEZ Ministry is legality, while
the only principle of action is military despotism.
After this statement about " legality," it then pro-
ceeds to state what course the Cabinet probably will
pursue, which is simply this—to call the Cortes to-
gether, to register the unconstitutional acts committed
by the BRAVO Ministry, and also to sanction a
system of organic laws such as NARVAEZ and
his party may consider necessary. If the
Cortes obey these modest commands, they are
afterwards to be dispensed with, all their work of law-
making being accomplished. If they refuse, they
will be abrogated at once, so that either way their
fate is sealed. Of this there can be little or no
doubt, judging from articles in the Ministerial papers,
both French and Spanish, as well as from the line of
policy pursued by the various Cabinets since the
downfal of ESPARTERO. In the meantime the Funds
continue to fall, there is no money in the treasury,
and the country is bankrupt.
On the 7th the Three per Cents. had fallen to 284
for cash, 291 at sixty days ; and the Fives at 20 9-16
for cash, and 21* at sixty days.

Some of the Paris papers, for want, probably, of
domestic subjects of more importance, have lately
been discussing the affairs of their neighbours. The
Journal des Debats has an article of four columns, on
the recal of Lord ELLENBOROUGH, and the appoint.
ment of his successor, which is not without in-
terest, as it shows the view taken by foreigners of
the management of affairs in the vast British Em-
pire in the East. The Globe, another Ministerial
paper, has an article on the Spanish Ministry, of
rather an ominous character. M. GUIZOT, of course
knows what is the intended policy of the new
Cabinet, and that journal, which is said to be almost
excluiively under his influence, intimates, in rather
plain language, that there has been such a rapid suc-
cession of new Cabinets, and affairs have succeeded so
ill under a Constitutional Government, that her Allies,
including France among the rest, may begin to think
that such a system is totally inapplicable in Spain. The
history of the seven last Cabinets, which had
all been formed within the last year, is curious.
"At the moment," says that journal, " when a
new Cabinet has assumed the direction of affairs in
Spain, it may not be uninteresting to recal to mind
the various Cabinets which have succeeded each other,
during one
year, in that unhappy country. They are
seven in number, without including the Fri:Mama