The Sun.
London, England, 1850-12-30 00:00:00

~bb'~a~~TAl `Abfl~

LONDON, MONDAY. DECEMBER 30, 1850.

The retreat of Mrs. SLOANE has not as yet been
discovered. She is still at large, and laughs at those
who speak of prosecutions while neglecting
the obvious precaution to properly insisted on
by Mrs. GLASSE of " first catching their
hare." Nor have any active exertions been
made to render her amenable to justice and to
ensure her presence at the time appointed for the trial
of her husband. The warrant officer, it is true, oc-
casionally saunters down to Pump-court and inquires
at the chambers whether she is at home. He may
also ask a few questions of the porters and
laundresses as to whether she has been
seen in the neighbourhood, and receiving answers in
the negative, thinks that he has done all that could be
expected at his hands. Alderman HUMPUERY appears
to be contented with, not a distinct assurance, but
" being given to understand that Mrs. SLOANE will
surrender at the Old Bailey to take her trial ;"
while the guardians of the 'West London Union,
who at the eleventh hour were induced to come for-
ward as prosecutors, did not receive with approbation

the suggestion " that a reward of twenty
pounds should be offered for her apprehension."
Nothing, in fact, is done. The law is left
to execute itself, and if Mrs. SLOANE chooses to come
forward to abide the investigation into her conduct it
must be altogether of her own free will and accord.
We confess that we are not quite so credulous as
Alderman HUMPHERY—we do not believe that she
will make her appearance at the Central Criminal
Court on the appointed day. Her friends, who have
hitherto advised her to keep away from the police
office, will think it desirable that the opinion of a
judge and jury should be previously taken on
her husband's conduct ; and the learned
counsel, who on the first hearing, when poor JANE
WILBRED was in so precarious a condition, and when
Alderman HUMPHEUT issued his summons to Mrs.
SLOANE to attend en the following week, made so
many objections against the admission of evidence
respecting matters that took ploy in the absence of
his client, will see the great advantage of having an
absent scapegoat to whose shoulders the principa
atrocities may he transferred with impunity. We
are, therefore, fully convinced that Mrs. SLOANE will
not be forthcoming unless acme more energetic steps
be taken than any that have hitherto been
tried. It is manifest that the Temple is the
last place she is likely to visit, while desirous of re-
maining in concealment, and ROE, the warrant-officer,
has no time to trace her out, from point to point in
her wanderings—that is to say, if she has deemed it
necessary even to leave the metropolis. If there be
really any anxiety on the part of the guardians, or of
the magistrate—whose singular leniency enabled her
to make her escape—that she should be brought
before a jury of her countrymen, the matter should
be placed in the hands of the detective police, and a

suitable reward proposed to stimulate them to the ut-
most exertion. We can only say that large sums

have been subscribed and offered for the capture of
accused parties in cases of far less importance.
The proceedings during the adjourned examination
on Friday principally related to attempted justifica-
tion by the guardians and by the presiding magis-
trate of their own conduct in the transaction. The
former were desirous of showing that there was no
want of alacrity on their part in vindicating the cause
of the unfortunate girl who had been so long under
their care and protection, the latter, of proving
that he was not guilty of any oversight in affording
an opportunity of escape to the female defendant. It
is for the public to say whether they, or either of
them, have succeeded in their objects.
The case of the guardians is, that the first exam'.

nation took place on Saturday, the 7th of December,
the report of which was published in all the daily
papers of the 9th instant. On Tuesday, the 10th, the
usual meeting of the board was held, and the case
brought under their notice. " After some delibera-
tion, they came to the conclusion that the matter
was sufficiently important for the guardians to
take it up" (this, be it remembered, is the
statement of their own Counsel) ; " and a spe-
cial meeting was called for the following Thursday."
On that day they entered into a correspondence with
the Poor-law Board on the subject, and determined
" that their clerk should attend at the next hearing of
the charge, and inform the :magistrates of the great
anxiety they felt with respect to their improper treat-
ment of the girl JANE WILBRED, and of their willing-
ness, should it become necessary, to conduct a prosecu-
tion on her behalf, if they could legally do
so (what reasonable doubt could be enter-
tained on this point ?) and that the Poor-law
Board had been communicated with, and their answer
requested at the earliest possible moment." Even on
their own showing there was no great alacrity exhi-
bited. There was, it appears, " some deliberation"
before the conclusion was arrived at that " the matter
was sufficiently important for the guardians to take it

up ;" and this with the full knowledge of all the hor-
rible and disgusting details contained in every public

,urnal of the Bth or 9th December ; and

even then, in place of acting with the prompti-
tude and decision that might have been ex-
' petted from any body of Englishmen, they
only called a special meeting, at which they de-
cided on entering into a correspondence with the
Poor-law Board to know whether they could " le-
gally" take up and conduct the prosecution against
Mr. SLOANE. Alderman liumraEav, however, com-
pletely overturned this defence, such as it was, by
showing that the original statements of Mr. PuILLI-
MORE and Mr. Far, en applying for a summons, ap-
peared in the public journals of Thursday, the Sth
instant, the hearing of which took place o❑
the 7cb, but without any notice on the part of
the guardians until the second hearing (ten
dip after the matter had been made public),
and then they only sent their clerk to the
office, but without any instructions save to be present
at the hearing. We fear that the community will
feel disposed to agree with the worthy Alderman, in
thinking that, " to say the least of it, it showed a
want of feeling on the part of the guardians."
We cannot, however, say that Alderman Hum-
?Haar was so successful in vindicating himself as he
was in overturning the defence of the guardians. All

he said was, that " had he known that Mrs. SLOANE,
was so deeply implicated at first, he would have taken
such precautions as would have insured her apprehen-
sion." We beg the Alderman to refer to the depositions
or even to the published reports, to which he himself
alluded, of what took place on the first examination
(we shall not pollute our columns by a repetition of
the revolting narrative), and to say whether every
point was not brought out as clearly and distinctly
against Mrs. SLOANE, as it has been at any time since.
He cannot say that such was not the case, or seriously
endeavour to justify himself against the charge of gross
and culpable apathy. In trutb, both Alderman and
guardians have been singularly negligent, and we
can only hope that they will by their future activity
make the only reparation in their power for their
former omissions.

At a season when the wealthier portion of the
community is most charitably disposed, when the
wants of the living are more gen erously cared for
than at any other period of the twelve months, it
may not be amiss to urge upon general attention the
wants of the dead, or, in other words, the necessity
of providing decent sepulture for the indigent. Hitherto
no provision whatever has been made towards the
alleviation, in this way, of the impoverished and in-
dustrious classes of the population. Last session, it
is true, a Bill passed through Parliament with a view
to prevent the indecorum of further burials in the me-
tropolis, and to provide for the humbler section of its
inhabitants the advantages of economical interment.
Unfortunately, however, by this time the utter ineffi-
cacy of that measure has become apparent. Instead
of preventing in any manner the contamination of the
atmosphere of London by the crowding yet more of its
intramural churchyards with decaying masses of cor..
ruption—it has taken to itself the shape of a kind of legis..
lative shield under which that iniquitous system may still
flourish. Several of the most pestilential of our metro-
politan pits of death—(pits of death, alas ! in more
senses than one)—have been re-opened since the pas-
sing of the above-mentioned enactment; and in one
or two instances the record of fatal cases of cholera
in the vicinity has been the consequence. The reality
of this is unhappily attested in the gloomy circulars
of the Registrar- General. Such being indisputably
the case, it must be sufficiently manifest, we presume,
that precautionary arrangements must be adopted
for the dissipation of a source of wretchedness so
fruitful in its character by some means more efficient
than a feeble and paltering effort on the part of the
Legislature. The truth is, neither the Government
nor the Parliament are as yet adequately im-
pressed with a conviction that the maintenance of the
custom of intramural interment is destructive to the
health of the living, injurious to the sacred associa-
tions connected with the dead, pernicious to the cause
of public morality, and baneful to the interests of
religion. Yet such it unquestionably is, and such it
has long shown itself to be in the judgment of all
true sanitary reformers.
So important, in fact, are the evils resulting from
the infrequency of the patronage afforded to ex-
tramural cemeteries as the fittest place for the repose
of the departed, that some of the principal advocates of
sanitary innovation have accorded to the reform of our
system in this particular the most prominent place
n
in the catalogue of their improvements.
Neitheria
,
ke
have they in so doing been in any way mistaken,
or carried away by an exaggerated sentiment
of entbUsilism• Before any good can be effected for

the living multitude some such benefit as the one
here indicated must be secured to the remains of the
dying multitude. To act other wiee would be in the
gravest sense of the word reprehensible. So long, for
example, as the spots selected for the reception of the.
departed were allowed to remain within the limits of
our great cities, in the midst of the dwellings of the
people, reeking with pestilential vapours and scat-
tering poison over the air inhaled by the surround-
ing inhabitants, so long would it be idle to
attempt anything like a purgation of our
crowded localities from the destructive influence
of contagious and infectious maladies. It would be
as it were healing one wound at the moment of in-
flicting a variety of others. The truth of this,
with the generality we are rejoiced to think,
is by this time so obvious as to preclude us from
the necessity of further argument. To the Go-
vernment and the Legislature, however, vs e have
uofertunatcly yet to bring home a similar con-
viction. We have yet to force upon them a
just appreciation of the stain we are solicitous
to aid in obliterating. We are compelled, for this
purpose, to reiterate again and again assertions, the
repetition of which has rendered them for some time
past familiar to the mass cf the population. Unsa-
tisfactory as this constant revival of a most painful
theme must appear to many, we are sanguine that
the remembrance of our pertinacity upon the subject
may ultimately prove not unpleasing to ourselves.
Nor can we induce ourselves to imagine that it will
be different with our readers—with that earnest
portion of them, at least, whose sympathies are in-
volved in the progress of the sanitary move-
ment. Let them call to mind the man-
ner in which the most remarkable changes
have been brought about in our social and
political systems, and they will recollect that in all
the means adopted by the successful Reformers
have been invariably those of unflagging determi-
nation and inexhaustible perseverance. So it must be,
we are conscious, with this long .desired innovation.
From the first we recognized the labours that would
have to be accomplished, and the disappointments
that would have to be incurred before the time of its
ulterior acquisition. That time, we are satisfied,
though long delayed, is now rapidly approaching.
Many imagined that last session was the period in ques-
tion, and that from the passing of the late enactment
might be dated the extinction of intramural
interment. Those who have even cursorily watched
our arguments on topics of a sanitary ten-
dency cannot but have observed that we
have sedulously kept ourselves aloof from
the influence of any such illusion. Throughout
the whole of the various stages of its progress
through the two Houses of Parliament we protested
against the Bill as one almost certain to be inopera-
tive, or, if in any way operative, operative only
to the injury of the population. Scarcely a
quarter of a year has elapsed since the legis-
lative transformation of the measure into
an enactment, and already our predictions
have been lamentably verified. They have been
verified by the continuance of intramural burial in
the metropolis, by the keeping open of those most
unwholesome dens of abomination, which are not
less curses to the contiguous multitude than they are
insults to the sacred name of Christianity.

THE FRENCH REPUBLIC.

We have received the Paris journals of Saturday
and of yesterday.
The discussion on Friday in the Assembly, of some
amendments proposed by M. D'ARBLAY, in the
Algeria Commercial Regulation Bill was interrupted by
The Minister of the Interior, who regretted the neces-
sity under which he was placed to give some explana-
tions relative to a personal matter. A letter, signed by
M. Pascal Duprat, appeared in one of the morning jour-
nals, in which that gentleman formally contradicted a
statement of his respecting an alleged repo' t, which he
(the Minister) declared on Saturday ho had never re-
ceived or seen. That report described abuses occasioned
by the lottery of the gold ingots, and which M. Pascal
Duprat maintained had been addressed to him by one of
the chiefs of his administration towards the close of
October. The style of that document sufficiently demon-
strated that it could not emanate from his administra-
tion. Nevertheless, on his return to the Ministry, he
directed search to be made in order to ascertain if any
trace of that document could be discovered in his office.
He had examined the chiefs of the different branches of
the Home Department, and, being satisfied that it had
never existed, he inserted a note to that Effect in the
Moniteur of Tuesday. Now:this morning a letter pub-
liihed in a journal, and signed by M. Pascal
Duprat, asserted that the report had been drawn
up at the request of the Allinster, and affirmed
that the latter had read it.—(Murmurs in the
Assembly.) After reading that Latter he ordered
fresh investigations, and requested the Prefect of Police
to snake similar inquiries in his offices. An hour before
the sitting the paper he held in his hand was disco-
vered. It was not a report, it was a mere note, ad-
dressed to him by Messrs. Dumartroy and Lasalle, who
asked to be authorised to establish a lottery of 6,000,000 f.,
as a complement to the lottery of the gold ingots, the
proceeds being intended to afford the emigrants means
of subsisting in California after their landing. That note
bad been addressed to the chief of his Cabinet, M.
Mauroy, who after perusing it transmitted it to the Pre-
fecture of Police, with a letter stating that some useful
information might be found in it respecting the lottery of
the gold ingots. Now, he was justified in affirming that
the document in question was not a report, but a mere
petition, addressed to him by a speculator. (M. Duprat,
here interrupting the Minister, said. "Name a jury of
honour to examine the affair.") The Minister replied
that the jury of honour he would appoint was the Na-
tional Assembly, to whose esteem he attached the
greatest value. That note had, no doubt, been given to
M. Duprat by the man whose speculation had been de-
feated, and a colleague should have considered before he
ventexed to direct an accusation against a man of honour
and offered him an unjust, unmerited, and calumnious

M. Pascal Duprat maintained his original assertion,
and said that if he did not disclose the means by which
that document had come into his hands, it was for the
sake of some public functionaries, two of whom, he un-
derstood, were now menaced in their existence. The
report he alluded to lied been deposited in the Home-
office on a Sunday, when the Minister was in the country.
Three Honourable Generals, members of the Assembly,
had taken the new lottery under their protection, and
consented to become members of the committee. The
Minister was fully aware of the petition, for he had
written from the country to demvid a report upon it—
that said report had been consequently drawn up at his
special request—that he had read it, and that it must
exist in the office of the Home Department. If it had
disappeared, it was the duty of the Minister to order
fresh inquiries, and for his part he declared and main-
tained that he had not produced at.the tribune a forged
document. There was no interest on his part, whilst
there was one on the part of the Minister to deny having
seen that document. His affirmation was as good as
that of the Minister.

M. Barocbe, who followed, maintained that M. Pascal
Duprat had positively declared that the note in question
was a report emanating from functionaries of his depart-
ment, who protested against the immorality of the lot-
tery and, no doubt, of the Minister who had sanctioned
it. Now he repeated that no such document existed, and
that, consequently, he could not have ordered it to be
prepared, nor read it. M. Duprat forgot the courtesy
he owed him, not as a Minister, but as a colleague. He
had gratuitously directed against him an accusation
which be could not prove, and defied him to prove. The
Assembly would judge.
M. Pascal Duprat next rose, and contended that the
note or report, as it might please the Minister to call it,
emanated from his offices and not from a stranger to his
department.

At.
Baroche contended that the document in question
was in the handwriting of the individual who claimed
the authorization to establish the lottery.
M. Pascal Duprat, in conclusion, declared that he ac-
cepted without fear the appeal the Minister had made to
the country.
M. Clary here ascended the tribune, but cries of
" Enough! enough!" echoed on all sides, and the As-
sembly being consulted passed to the order of the day.
M. Anthony Thouret, who had been called to order in
the course of the discussion, begged leave to explain. Ile
had interrupted the Minister and asked him who had
signed the article inserted in the Moniteur. The law
was equal for all, and ;the depositories of power should
be the first to obey it.
M. Dupin, President, replied that M. Anthony Thouret
had interrupted the Alinisur; that he had not to inquire
into the quality but the fact of his interruption—
(Laughter)—and he had called him to order after he
had thrice repeated his interruption.
M. Anthony Thouret explained, after which the As-
sembly resumed the discussion on M. Darblay's amend-
ment, which was rejected.
Tb e Assembly then commenced the discussion of
the v arious articles of the Bill, and consented, without
a division, to the importation into France from Al.
geria of horses, cattle, canes and timber, duty free.
It leas then proposed that corn should also be ad-
mittF:d duty free; this propoaition was opposed by M.
BA2E, and supported by M. PA.S.Y, and was carried
on a division by a majority of 282, the numbers being
for f ree importation of corn from Algeria 428, against
it 147.

In the sitting of Saturday the Ministers suffered a
&feat of a most damaging character, and one which
will, ppobably, eventually lead to a modification it not
to a change of the Ministry. It appears that on
Thursday M. MAUGUIN, one of the representatives of
the people, having been arrested fcr a sum of 1,093 f.
50z., u rged his non-liability to arrest as a member
of the National Assembly, and demanded to be taken
en refiri before the President of the Tribunal. The