The Sun.
London, England, 1857-12-17 00:00:00

30 li
28i al

THREATENED AM)LITIO '1 OF THE
HOUSE OP LO ;PS.

(Front Purclt 1

How did wo ever coma to live an hereditary
peerage ? How is it that we are bles3.2d with art
aristocracy, and enjoy the advantige of a House of
Lords ? These questions are suggcAel by a state..
ment made by Colonel North, speaking in the othep
house on the pension granted to Sir Henry Have.
lock. Colonel North is reported to have said

" Captain Havelock hail participated in all those
battles which had gamed for his father such world•
wide renown ; he had highly distin:luished himself
as an officer, and had received for his gallant con.
duct. the Victoria Cross. He thought., therefore, •
that this was a case calling most loudly upon' them
to follow the general practice, which was to grant
such pensions for two generations. (Hear, heard.)
He hoped the circumstances of Captain Havelock
would be considered by the Government, and that
the same pension so deservedly awarded to his die.
tiuguished father would be made to descend to
him."

If acts like those of Havelock Senior, accom-
panied by similar acts on the part of Havelock
Junior, ate not enough to ennoble and enrich all
future Havelocks, how came anybody in the House
of Lords, except Lord 0 verstone, the capitalist, to
be enriched and ennobled ? It may be a very sound
principle to reward deserving men in their own
persons merely ; but if this principle is to b 3 adopted
by the Government, of course they intend to let
the Peerage and the House of Peers die a natural
death.

Suppose the Duke of Cambridge had taken Delhi;
suppose the exploits of Havelock and Contralti had
been performed by the Earl of Lucan and the Earl.
of Cardigan, would not bii Royal Highness have
instantly received a truncheon like that which half
been wielded in the mouths of so many cannons by
another Royal Highness ? Would not two noble
earls have been exalted into two more noble dukes,
and would they not have been decorated with any
and every star, gayer, ribbon, cross, medal, or
other distinctive bauble which they had not earned,
or at least had not received, already ? _

A. thousand a-year is a good income in these
times, but if the services of such a mams Rani
•141.1.
bCk.--1•1
services, Mr. Bull, do you consider to be werth
five,—to say nothing of ten or twenty ? What has
any ex-Chancellor, except Lord Brougham done
for you that can be for a moment Lamed in com-
parison with the exploits of General Havelock
Of what use to you is any one of your Bishopsitt
comparison with that hero ? Either you underpay
him shamefully, or you excessively overpay them.
It is true that the dignity of a Peerage may necessi-
tate the difference, and Havelock's pension' may
suffice a commoner, but if Havelock is to remain a
commoner,-of course no more Peers wiil be created,
and the Upper House will be allowed to expire.

THE NEW REGIME IN WHITECROSS-STREET!

PRISON.

PROTEST OF THE PRISONERS.

To the Right Worshipful the Lord Miyor end Alder,
men of the City of London.

We, the undersigned, some debtors, others alleged to
be debtors, and all detained in the prison under civil
process, here protest against any and every enforces
went of a certain body of rules and regulations pro•
mulgated to us on the 12th inst. by certain members
of your honourable court, and then and there affirmed
to have been read and signed on the 7th Nov. last by Sir
G. Grey, her Majesty's Secretary of State.
1. Because they are a violation of oar rights as
defined for us by Magna Chaste and the common law of
England. The English debtor in the eheriff's keeping
loses none of his civil rights except in the indispensable
custody of his person, and is Exempt from, all restrictions
and obstructions not absolutely and indisputably re.
quired for his safe and orderly detention. To obstruct
access to him on the part of his family, friends, or busis
ness connections at reasonable times, to stand between
him and the reasonable amount of food or drink he or
his friends are enabled to pe.vide fur him, to classify
him with, and identity him in, the punishment of men
found guilty of fraud by the ordinary legal tribunal.
simply because his debt leads to a more protracted
detention, and to subject hitn to a vast number of
painful, injurious, and degrading restrictions not in-
dispensably and indisputably required for such safe and
orderly detention, is opposed to the whole spirit of
English legislation, both as regards debts and dobtors,
and is illegal and unconstitutional in the very proper.
don in which it is cruel and unnecessary.
2. Because they are a clear and palpable violation of
the 52,1 Geo. 111., c. 109, and 55 h Geo. o. 98, by
which the prison was built and regulated, and which
gave at once astatutory recognition, as well as interpre-
tatien of the Common Las Rights of the inmates of this
prison, which no subsequent legislation has ever im-
paired, much less repealed or annulled. By the first of
these statutes it is enacted that the power of making by.
lawsfor the government of this prison shall rest with the al-
dermen of the city of London, with the sanction and
approval of the Chiet Justice of the Court of Queen's
Beech, of the Chief Justice of the Court of Common
Pleas, or of the Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer ;
and that all by-laws made for such government shall be
null and void if not in conformity with the letter and
spirit of the said statute. It further provides, by ex.
press enactment, that any prisoner entering within these
walls shall be permitted freely and without molestation
to have brought to him whatever food, inclusive of
wine or beer, in moderate quantities, may be proper
and necessary for him. It likewise provides that there
shall be yards or airing grounds capacious enough to,
afford sufficient air and exercise to the prisoners, and
when it was found that the first yards so made (much
larger than those we now have) were too small and con.
fined to afford such sufficient air and exercise, the afore•
said second statute was immediately passed, which, after
declaring such defect to exist, distinctly provided that
certain of such airing grounds should be laid together in
order to give full effect to the just, reasonable, and emi.
neatly benevolent design which the legislature, speak.
ing by the mouthpiece of Sir Samuel Itomilly and Mr.
Wilberforce, and other eminent statesmen, bad so deli.
berately and solemnly intended.
3. Because at a moment when the enlightenment of
the age is so directly set against imprisonment for debt,
and the other phases of moral and sanitary deprivation,
it is the worst possible use of the Ci•y funds, required for
so many higher objects,to employ them for the purpose of
cooping up in narrower yards and under wore stringent
regulations, professional and business men, already under
confinement in the clwet and most densely inhabited
portion of the most populous city in the world. •
4. Because the severities levelled against prisoners
who omit to file their petitions or schedules are directed
precisely against those who have often the highest
claims to the sympathies of right minded men, its/Amuck
Ias--first, many have no means, and can obtain no hon.
ourable means, of defraying their passage through the
Insolvent .Court : secondly, same men would bear any
inhumanity rather than be deprived of their civil rights,
and publicly stigmatised by their country as insolvent
defaulters ; while, thirdly, others who have property
not available at the moment, or held it on the testamen.

tary condition of not going through the court, or who
suffer under other cau es equally anomalous, do not
present the cases to which the present state of our in•
solvent legi,lation applies.
_

G. Because these new rules and regnlations wantonly
interpose a number of mischievous obstructions between
the irnpris.med debtor and the tna,nagement of these
business transactions on which the safety of his house.
hold and his own liberty immediately depend ; while
they involve a crui-1, heurtless, and most iniquitous vio-
lation of all those affections of domestic lite which are

dearer to the poor debtor in the ht ur of his utmost need
and bitterest affliction than even to the w.althiest of hie
legislators. The debtor, suddenly snatche I away from
his family, his home, and his most pressing business en.
gagements, as imp rtant perhaps as they may be multi.
famous, is prohibited from receiving his wife, children,
relations, or indeed any visitor on the Sunday, or front
seeing them but on certain special days in the week
during short intervals of time, and then only in a publio
reception room, under the direct surveillance of the gaol
authorities. ,
6. Th-cause, in a great commercial city like this, the
ill-fortune that has visited our hearths, and which yon
thus, perhaps, make fatal and incurable, may reach at
any unforeseen moment any family in the community;
and it is not well that the prospect of so horrible an
eventuality, as that now presented by Whitecross-street,
should exist in the social atmosphere of, we will not say
a free and Christian country, bub even of the most bar.
barons of empires, under the most despotic of legielatures.
7. Because the position of certain classes of prisoners
suspected of nothing worse than debt, and sometimes
undeserving,f e
r thanus u
nn the
seea
not guilty even of that is made so penal by those regu.
lations that the great incentive to order—fear of
punishment, will, for many minds, be wholly destroyed,.
for confinement in the refractory ward, unless it be
:hut
which
h,
at
thee:,
but new
hwair tsdy mael
sytyra youb
not
w be worse
ors
thed
to
preposterous name of an improvement, condemns
large auv
rergnr
eye
body
liye a
off unfortunate,
torture,
citizens.
8 and finally. Because whatever additional rules and
required
regulations were required in this prison
so far only as they might increase ti e
were
comforts
ail
enlarge the privileges of the inmateq \Vhatever the
irregularities that have marked its past history, they are
traceable not to the system, but to the negligent and
indiscreet taanuer in which it has been acninistered,and
just as you would smile at the John Gilpins who would
break the fine spirit of the
steed because they cannot
ride, so must we grieve over
the incompetency or malice
of men who, when asked for the bread of a wise and
careful administration, averge the impertinence of the
demand by giving us the scorpion of a venomous and
tyrannical coercion.
[Signed by Ninety-three Prisoners confined
in Wards 6,7, and 7 Right.]

ye
m a n respected.
connected
—We regret. to state that a young
gentleman with the
Indian service about a
.year since, has just returned, not
only widowed, but terribly mutilated. The Sepoys have
cut her tongue out, and inflicted other injuries. The
lady,thicri t:yhToe ewi thUoELT
O marriedf
aa
melancholy circumstance has created much sensa-
tion, for it Las brought the horrors of the-war before
us in their reality, and not the least in the parish
from whence the lady went forth, so short a time since,
in the bloom of beauty, to the enjoyment, as it was
believe, of a very happy lot in life,--Bristol Mirror.