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

THREATENED ABOLITIO V OF THE
HOUSE OF LORDS.

(From Puna.)

How did we ever come to have au hereditary.
peerage ? How is it that we are blessed with an
aristocracy, and enjoy the advantage of a House of
Lords / These questions are suggested by a state-
ment made by Colonel North, speaking in the other
house on the pension granted to Sir Henry Have•
lock. Colonel North is reported to have said :
" Captain Havelock had participaied in ail those
battles which had gained for his faller sutth world-
wide renown ; he had highly di.,tinf-Jtished himself
as an officer, and had received for his gallant con-
duct the Victoria Oro:is. He though', therefore,
that this was a case calling most loudly upon thenz
to follow the general practict., 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 dis.
tinguished father would be made to descend to:k
him."

If acts like those of Havelock &miler, accom-
panied by similar acts on the part of Havelock
Junior, ate not enough to ennoble and enrich all
future Havelocks, how came anyt,ofly in the flousa
of Lards, except Lord 0 verAone, the capitalist, to
be enriched and enu,,bled 7 It may be a very sound
principle to reward deserving men in their owa
perdous merely ; but if this principle ii to b.) 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 Outram had
been performed by the earl of Lucan and the Earl
of Cardigan, would not his Royal Highness have
instantly received a truncheon like that which has
baen wielded in the mouths of su many cannons by
another Royal Highness ? Wo&d not two noble
earls have been exalted into two more noble dukes,
and would they not have been decorated with any
and every star, gar er, 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 gool income in those
times, but if the services of such a man as Have-
lock are worth only one thousand a year, whose
services, Mr. Bull, do you consider to be worth
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 earned in coin-.
parison with the exploits of General Havelock t
Of what use to you is any one of your Bishops in
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, ant Havelock' pension may
suffice a commoner, but if Havelock is to remain a
commoner, of course no more Prers svi;l be created,
and the Upper House will be allowed to expire.

THE NEW REGIME IN IVIIITECROSS-STREET'

PRISON-.

PROTEST OF THE PRISONERS.

To the Right Woriihipful the Lord Nliyor and Alder;
men of the City of Loodeu..

We, the undersigned, soule debtors, others alleged to
be debtors, and all detained in the prieon under civil
process, here protest against any anti every enforce-
ment of a certain body of rules and regulations pro•
inulgated to us on tee 12th inst. by certain members
of your honourable court, and then and there affirmed
to have been read and signed on the 7th Nev. last by SiS
G. Grey, her Majesty's Secretary of State.
1. Because they are a violation of our rights as
defined for us by Magna Charts and the common law of
England. The English debtor in the sheriff's keeping
lo,es none of his civil rights except in the indispensable
custody of hiS person, and is ex:npt hum 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 busi-
ness connections at reasonable times, to stand between
him and the reasonable amount of food or drink he or
his friends are enabled to prevde for him, to classify
him with, and identify him in, the punishment of men
found guilty of fraud by the ordinary legal tribunals
simply because his debt leads to a wore protracted
detention, and to subject him to a vast number of
painful, injurious, and degrading restrictions not in.
dispensably and ie.disputably requ,red for such safe and
orderly detention, is opposed to the whole spirit of
English legislation, both as regards debts and debtors,
and is illegal and unconstitutional in the very propor.
tion in which it is cruel and unnecessary.
2. Because they are a clear and palpahle violation of
the 52d Geo. 111., c. 109, and 65,h Geo„ c. 98, by
which the prison was built and regulated, and which
gave at once astatutory recognition, as well as interpre.
tation of the Coalmen Law 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 Loudon, with the sanction and'
approval of the Chief Justice of the Court of Queen's
Bench, 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 atatate. It further pro)ides, by ex.
press enactment, that any prisoner entering within these
walls shalt be permitted freely and wiihout 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 t&
afford sufficient air and cxerciee to the prisoners, and
when it was found that the first yards so wade (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 ire
order to give full effect to the just, reasonable, and emi.
uently benevolent design which the legislature, speak.
ing by the mouthpiece of Sir Seniv,i Itomilly and Mr.
Wilberforce, and other eminent statesaien, had 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 tui,d,, required for
so many higher objeets,to employ them for the purpose of
cooping up in narrower yards and under more stringent
regulations, professional and business men, already under
confinement in the clo,et an i most densely inhabited
portion of the most populous cAy in the world.
4. Because the eeverities levelled against prisoners
who omit to file their petitions or schedules are directed
prebisely against those who have often the highest
claims to the sympathies of right minded men, iraamuch
as—first, many have no means, and can obtain no hon-
ourable means, of defraying their pa,,sage through the
Insolvent Court ; secondly, some 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 testanaen.
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 legislation applies.

6. Because these new rules regulations wantonly
interpose a number of mischievous obstructions between
the imprisoned debtor and the management of these
business transactions on which the safety of his house-
hold and his own liberty immediately depend ; while
they involve a cruel, heartless, and most iniquitous vie.
lation of all those affections of domestic life which are
dearer to the poor debtor in the hour of his utmost need
and bitterest affliction than even to the wealthiest of hia
legislators. The debtor, suddenly snatchel away•frora
his family, his home, and his most pressing business en.
gagements, as important perhaps as they may be multi-
farious, is prohibited from receiving his wile, children,
relations, or indeed any visitor on the Sunday, or from
seeing them but on certain special days in the week
during short intervals of time, and then only in a publics
reception room, under the direct rvedlacce of the gaol
authorities.

6. Because, in a great commercial city like this, the
ill-fortune that has visited our hear,bs, and which you
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
but even of the moat bar.
empires,abaronsaonfdC
the position hrtis
under Christian
y'
souu b o
eitoithterf tamuoesrt lnclasses despotic
se ofe
eof
legislatures.ouer
7. free
Because
suspected of nothing worse than debt, and sometimes
not guilty even of that is made so penal by those rept.
latione that the great incentive to order—fear of
punishment, will, for many minds, be wholly destroyed,
for confinement in the refractory ward,
uuennodlneedssseerarivtni
condemns
everydayturned
e to
whichthe can n hardlyem ayiitl2) ertaoeyymbene w
moy
teonnbeto,orsffe tberur theunder
at
uffinea toef, abnu imt
large
preposterous
body
o f u
nf
onr
citizens.

8 and finally. Because whatever additional rules and
regulations were required in this prison were required
so far only as they might increase the comforts sod
enlarge the privileges of the inmates. Whatever the
irregularities that have marked its pat history, they are
traceable not to the system, but to the negligent and
indiscreet manner in which it has been adininistered,andd
just as you would smile at tha John Gilpies who would
break the fine spirit of the steed hecaugo they cannot
malice
ride, so must we grieve over the incompetency
ay
wise and
of men who, when a,leed for the " breadperotinence of the
careful administration, averge
the scorpion o
demand by giving us
tyrannical coercion.
t -three Prisoners confined:
the. lin'a venomous and
[SignedinbyvvNaTes y,
d "6 7, and 7 Bight]

respected tchleartgyarulliniff
tbii lady,city, who married a gentleman connected with the
SIIP
t°ble
to
Indian service about a year since, has just returned, not
CdnautiEgLi
daughter of
fr, We et
hriegghr
le;
only
cut her tongue out, and inflicted other injuries. The
widowed, but terribly mutilated. The sepor have
melancholy circumstance has created much sensa-
tion, for it bag 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 wgel
believe, of a very happy lot in life.--Bristol Mirror.