The Sun.
London, England, 1850-10-24 00:00:00

Otttatlut A4it

LONDON, THURSDAY, OCTOBEPb 24, 1850.

It is generally admitted that " desperate cases re-
quire desperate remedies ;" that measures may be
adopted in pressing emergencies which would not for
a moment be contemplated under ordinary circum-
stances. These measures may sometimes prove suc-
cessful, the, results may surprise the parties by whom
they were suggeqted ; but they are at best but dan-
gerous expedients, that should rarely be resorted to,
never until every milder course had been tested and
found ineffectual, and it was clear not only that tio
alternative remained, but that there was no danger
of any ill consequences flowing from the fancied
cure, which wt,uld not certainly occur if it were
rejected. In public matter?, affecting the welfare
of the community, perchance the liberty of the sub-
ject, even greater caution is essential. Experimental
enactments are especially to be deprecated. Legis-
lative proceedings should be calm and deliberative, not
rash and hasty. Before sew restrictive or penal laws
can be sanctioned, it must be distinctly shown that
those already in operation are wholly inadequate, and
that the deeciency.lies in the law itself, and not in the
mode of its administration.

The numerous burglaries and robberies that have
recently been perpetrated, the outrages which deprived
Mr. ilonnesr of his life and to which Mr. Meetsroet
nearly fell a victim, have excited a panic in the
public mind., and loud demands are made for the
adoption of more effectual measures of prevention.
It is indeed desirable that every reasonable precaution
shoUld be taken to afford protection to person and
property, and to break up the organized bands of
r ufil 3.ns —the predatory hordes whose hands are
against the entire community, who live in open and
uniiigui.ed hostility to the law of the land, and make
a track of thieving, following it, as others do " tailor-
ing or " basket making," for a subsistence. But in
atttemp.ing to achieve this great object care must be
taken not to trespass on the limits which the law has
assignei fir the security of the innocent, of
those tlho are endeavouring to earn their daily bread by
tht ir honest industry. Let habitual plunderers be dealt
with on conviction as severely as the law permits—
send those who are found to be incorrigible out of
the country, as suggested by Mr. Marty WASON, or
keep th€m in prolonged seclusion, compelling them
to work harder within the prison wall; than they
would be ri.quired to do to earn an honest livelihood
without, as proposed by the Rev. JODN Davis,
the excellent ordinary of Newgate—do everything
practicsble to prevent youths from swelling the
ranks of the criminal population, er to reclaim them
SO long a 3 the slightest hoi.e can he entertained of
their reformation ; but do not substitute suspicion for
pioof, abrogate that which has long been considered
the palladium of British liberty, 'or establish a police
and magisterial despotism on the ruins of the Con •
stitution even for objects so• desirable as to diminish

the amount of crime, and afford additional security
to property.
Mr. limn:to whose excellent intentions and ex•
emplarxpotivej we bear willing testimony, is Mtn-
self fully aware of the danger of legislating to meet
a preNing emergency. 5J have no confidence," said
the Learned Gentleman, " in the wisdom of laws
which are prompted by exigencies. I have ever
found that the eyes of the legislator, and of
those who call upon him to act, are fixed at
such junctures exclusively on the particular mis-
chief against which he is urged to provide ; and
that he and they are prone to neglect the danger of
letting in unconsidered evils, in their ardour to keen
out the one which by the force of circumstances has
obtained a great and undue hold over their minds."
So far as Mr. limn is concerned this peril will not be
encountered, for he declares that " the question is
one which for years has engaged no small portion of
his thoughts ;" but with the public generally, with
even the representatives of the people, the matter is
otherwise. Few, indeed, had until recently taken the
subject into consideration ; and any decision at the
present moment would necessarily be influenced by
" the excitement and anxiety created by the difficul•
ties into which we aro so unexpectedly plunged,"
and should, therefore, be carefully weighed, and even
distrusted, before it could be acted on with any degree
of safety.
Mr. HILL declares, and unfortunately his state-
ment is too well founded to admit of contradiction,
that " it is notorious to all the world that a numer-
ous class exists among us, known individually to the
officers of justice, as persons who followed crime a 3 a
calling, and who have no other means of subsistence
than the remuneration which belongs to their nefari-
ous course of life. For a time, not unfrequently, ex-
tending over several years, they follow this calling
with impunity, because no opportunity has
been found 'to bring home to them any
particular act of crime." It is known that
they must necessarily commit almost deily
offences, that they must plunder in order that they
may live. The Learned Recorder speaks of this un-
toward state of affairs with the indignation it. so
justly merits :—" That bands of enemies, to whom
even the laws of war are unknown, or by whom they
are disregarded, should be permitted to wander from
town to town, making no secret of their contempt for
justice and its guardians, braving the opprobrium of
their calling, and only refraining from the most ap-
palling violence when they can secure their plunder
without its aid, and while such bands are indivi-
dually as well known to the police as to each other, is
a state of things which would disgrace an age of
barbarism, and which nothing but long familiarity
could enable us to contemplate without horror and
astonishment !" These are sentiments in which all
right-minded persons must concur. But what re-
medy can be adopted for the acknowledged evil which
may not be even worse than the disease it is at-
tempted to cure ? That is the question—the im-
portant problem—the judicious solution cf which is tb
be anxiously looked for.
In order to meet the rapidly increasing evil, Mr.
HILL proposes that " when, by the evidence of two or
more crediMe witnesses, a jury has been satisfied that
there is good ground for believing, and that the wit-
nesses do actually believe, that the accused party is ad-
dicted to robbery or theft, so as to deserve the appellation
of thief, he shouid be called upon in defence to prove
himself in the possession of means of subsistence
lawfully obtained, either from his property, his la-
bour, or the assistance of his friends. On the failure
of such proof, let him be adjudged a reputed thief,
and put under high recognizances to be of good con-
duct for some limited period,"or, default of responsible
bail, let him suffer imprisonment for the same term ;
and until the experiment had been tried and found
successful he would confine the operation of the law
to persons who had already been convicted of felony,
or of such a misdemeanor as necessarily implies dis-
honesty in the guilty party, as for instance obtaining
money or goods under false pretences."
The adoption of such a law would undoubtedly in-
flict a heavy blow and great discouragement upon the
criminal population. The police noted easily get rid
of obnoxious individuals ; but it would do more--it
would prevent the possibility of reformation by any
who had once unfortunately fallen. The first con-
viction would seal their doom. They would infallibly
be followed with a keen and persevering animosity
that would banish hope and drive them into renewed
crime. They would practically be outlaws, and far
better that they should he sent into perpetual
banishment for the first offence than that the
sword should be perpetually suspended over their
heads. On this point, Mr. DAVIS, in his admirable
report to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen on the
state of Newgate, says—" I have known some very
cruel cases, where information has been given that
has thrown persons out of their honest livelihoods
and plunged them into fresh trials, which some have
successfully resisted, and others have, by the over-
officiousness of officers, been driven into their old
courses by despair of ever doing well, and transporta-
tion has been the consequence."

An attractive and anecdotal paper on "The Last
Days of Louis PHILIPPE" lends a peculiar interest
to the current number of the Quarterly. Not the
least surprising among the changes effected by recent
occurrences is the circumstance that we should peruse
in the English organ of Conservatism a memorial no-
tice of his late Majesty the ex-King of the Barricades
couched in language su singularly generous and
beneficent. It would be a violation of all sincerity
to deny that we have read this tribute of admiration
to the memory of Louis PHILIPPE with a very pro-
found gratification. The heinous guilt of the departed
as a Sovereign, the many criminal acts of his political
life, the execrable policy which led first to
the estrangement of the French multitude,
and ultimately to the annihilation of his go-
vernment, have never blinded us at any period
of his career to those extraordinary qualities
which illustrated the brighter phases e,f his character,
and imparted a beautiful fascination to the marvels of
his vicissitudes. His domestic merits, throughout
the whole of his long and chequered history, were ever
conspicuous. His munificent patronage of genius and
virtue was only surpassed in modern times by that of
the Emperor NAPOLEOZI. His simplicity of habits,
even during the days cf his greatest pomp, when
seated on the throne of Louis the Magnificent, in-
vested his presence with a dignity beyond that of any
ordinary potentate. His ripened scholarship, his
eclectic tastes, above all the wonderful and yet unos•
tentatious versatility of his accomplishmenta, added
One loftier charms of intellect to the animated
mannerisms of his conversation. At all timer,
durirg the latter portion of his existence,
upon all occasions without distinction, under every
possible variety of circumstances, whether he received
his visitors in the galleries of the Tuileries or in the
saloons of Claremont, in the drawing-rooms of St.
Cloud or in a bed-chamber of the Star and Garter at
Richmond, Louis PHILIPPE displayed those qualities,
sometimes brilliant, sometimes serene, which are the
characteristics of a certain order of greatness. Men,
however prejudiced, never failed to admire that Prince
of an ancient and decaying race, who as far as his
individual powers were concerned had drawn the
gold of experience, thrice purified, out of the fires of
misfortune, and who, in spite of all the mutaticns
of a revolutionary epoch, had, nevertheless, found
leisure to cultivate to the very highest point
of development those large and various talents with
which his nature had been unquestionably invested.
Estimating thus impartially the merits as well as the
demerits of the deceased Monarch, it has been only a
source of pleasure to ourselves to find "his many
great qualities, his varied talents, his vast public ser •
vices, and the unblemished virtues of his private
the subject of commemoration in the pages of the Tory
Quarterly.

Perhaps no Sovereign since the class c f his proto-
type ULYSSES was ever afforded such repeated and in-
estimable opportunities of learning wisdom by his
wandering?, or of deriving the loftiest truths from
the depth and singularity of his vicissitudes. Louts
while yet a stripling, had tasted
the sweeti of knowledge from the tuition of Madame
DE GLISLI:‘, and the bitterness cf glory under
the banners of Dumonair z. Ile had,:as it were, wit-
nessed the decapitation of an infamous parent by the
blade of that avenging guillotine to which he bad de-
dicated the pufest tud the best Or Kings, out of a
miserable truckling to Democracy. Driven from his
native country by these event., he had found the

who:e of his vast patrimonial estates coufiscated to
that Liberty which, in ri,ing from its long attitude of
prostration, had shaken (-Len the pomps Fn d the in-
stitutions the weight cf whose very gorgeoMseess had
hitherto kept it in a state of eb,ssement. Exiled
frog: France, and hes:gaud in his fortunes, the yourg
Prince acquired for an interval a mean but honour-
able subsistence, by performing the duti=s of a school.
master in one of the mathematical academies
of Switzerland. It cannot be forgotten that
but very recently, on the occasion of his de wise in his
second banishment, we trued in these columns the
line of his protracted peregrinations. We followed
him from country to country, from continent to con-
tinent, from the rivers of Gsrmany to the forests of
Canada, from the Arctic regions, already trodden by
the foot of his countryman, CHATEAUBRIAND, to that
palatial residence in Italy, where he claimed the
hand of the Neapolitan Princess. Almost every one
of the principal countries of Europe were traversed in
this manner by the man whose ambition was destined
to affect the interests of the world in 1830, to reign over
the French kingdom for upwards of seventeen years,
and ultimately, in 1848, to be crushed by an over-
whelming retribution. During his travels it: is not
surprising to find that the Due D'OaLEAres
acquired a multiplicity of accomplishments—speak-
ing with the fluency of a native, besides his mother
tongue, the German, English, Spanish, and Italian
languages. Insomuch was the ex-King remark-
able for this skill as a linguist, that the Quar-
terly Reviewer observes, as it were in illustra-
tive corroboration, " We have heard that last
year, at a private concert, he (Louis Puiniers)
surprised Mademoiselle JENNY LIND, by making her
a compliment in very good Swedish" (p. 567).
While thus sedulous in developing his intellectual
faculties during the period of his wanderings, Louis
PHILIPPE was careful in like manner to use those fa-
culties in one respect, at any rate, to the advantage of
France during the period of his seventeen
years' sovereignty. We allude to his adornment
of that country with superb monuments and national
edifices, the most splendid fruits of a glorious and
prolonged tranquillity. In as far as he completed
many of the sumptuous public works began
either by King Louis XIV. or by the Emperor
NAPOLEON, the departed Monarch has conferred
inestimable advantages on France by the judicious
employment of his regal and cultivated magnificence.
The palace of Versailles alone would be a seicient
attestation of this, were no other proof in existence
—that gorgeous palace, which may be called the un-
written history of France, or a history written only,
so to speak, by the brush and the chisel.
The eulogiums pronounced over the tomb of Louis
PHILIPPE by the English Quarterly have no reference,
however, to this, being restricted principally to those
more domestic excellences which reflected honour
upon the deceased as a man. His equanimity under
the pressure of misfortune is especially parti-
cularised, and is described as having been con-
spicuous during the days immediately following
Isis expulsion from France in February. In illus-
tration of this admirable amenity of temperament,
says the reviewer—

' Wo have heard a curious anecdote which was
brought to light by a gentleman's jocularly calling him
Mr. William Smith, in alusion to his having made bis
escape fr:;rn France in that character which his knew-
ledge of English enabled him to support so well. Oh!'
staid the King, gaily, I h :so another and earlier
English name: I am also Mr. Geo-ge White, at
your service." How so, Sir?" Why, after the
Hundred Days I drew up a relation of my own
share in the transactions of that time, and I wished
to have it printed for a very limited and confiden-
tial circulation to a few friends. So I had a press
set up in my house at Twickenharr, and hired a couple
of journeymen printer=, who worked it under lock and
key; but after ad these precautions, I was taken quite
aback by being told that if any single copy should get,
either by treachery or negligence, into strange hands,
the volume might be reprinted and published with im-
punity; and that the only remedy for this was to enter
the book at Stationers' Hall. So I lost no time in
hastening to Stationers' Hall, where for, I think, the fee
of two shillings, I entered my work as the property of
George White, of Twickenham?'
The anecdote is interesting, for inasmuch as it be-
tokens an agreeable suavity of disposition and a homely
regard for the practices of English life. The whole paper,
from which this account of the incident is extracted,
will be found equally pleasant in perusal, and we
can direct the attention of our readers the more
readily and the more earnestly to its perusal from
our appreciation of its pervading magnanimity. Both
for its generous feeling and its ability the article is
honourabla to tin Quarterly.

We direct attention to a communication in another
part of The Sun respecting an Irish Packet Station
for the arrival and departure of packet-vessels to the
West and East Indies, America, Spain, Portugal,
the Mediterranean, &c. &c. Let Government
throw all local and party considerations overboard
in selecting the most eligible situation, and if they
have the courage and the honesty to do so, we think
they will fix on Berehaven, in thu noble bay of Bantry,
ou the western coast of Ireland, as the very best for
safety as well as the nearest for distance.

am FRENCH REPUBLIC.

We have received the French journals of yesterday,
but at a very late hour.
The Moniteur announces the appointment of Gene-
ral D'HaUTPOUL to the Government of Algeria, and of
General SCHRAMM to the War Ministry. It remains
to be seen whether the new Minister-at-War will be
more yielding to the exigencies of General CHANGAIt,
MER than his predecessor has been.
The Bourse was agitated in consequence of these
Ministerial changes, v.r.d the price of Government
Securities declined.

The cholera has disappeared from Marseilles.
PARIS BOURSE, OCT. 23 —Latest Prices.—Five per
Cents., 92f. 90c. ; Three per Cents , 57f. 50c. ; Bank
Actions, 2,300 f.
BUSINESS DONE IN FOREIGN RAILWAYS AT THE

LONDWS STOCK EXCHANGE, Ocr. 23.
Boulogne and Amiens, 81/2—East Indian, 99 —Namur
and LiErre, 7%—Paris and Roues, 241A)—Paris and StriLs-
boarg, 7%—Sambre and Meuse, 3'.