The Sun.
London, England, 1845-07-29 00:00:00

4:lm

LONDON, TUESDAY, JULY 29, 1845.

The Lords met at Five.
Lord PORTMAN brought up the report on the South
Wales Railway Bill.
The consideration of the report on the Dublin and
Galway Railway Bill was postponed until to-morrow
(this day).
The Earl of HARDWICHE moved that the report on
the Portsmouth (Atmospheric) Direct Railway Bill be
received.
The Duke of RICHMOND moved the recommittal of
the Bill, on the ground that the Committee had refused
to hear the South-Western Company in opposition to
the Bill.

Lord REDESDALE suggested that the report and evi-
dence should be printed, and the discussion should be
postponed until Monday.
The Earl of HARDWICKE defended the conduct of the
Committee.

The Duke of RICHMOND and the Marquis of CLANRI-
CARDE considered that it would be useless to print the
evidence, as the Committee had refused to listen to evi-
dence which was material.

Lord CAMPBELL thought the better course would be
for the Committee to re-assemble and hear the evidence.

The Earl of SHAFTESBURY thought thy Committee
ought to have heard the evidence.
After some further discussion,

The Duke of RICHMOND withdrew his motion for the
recommittal of the Bill, and moved that the evidence and
report be printed, and the subject be considered on
Friday next, which motion was agreed to.
On the motion of Lord CAMPBELL, the standing order
declaring it to be a breach of privilege to publish the
lives of Peers without the consent of their heirs and
executors was rescinded.

The House then went into Committee on the Com-
mons Inclosure Bill, the several clauses of which were
agreed to atter some discussion.
The Scotch Poor-law Bill also passed through Com-
mittee, and several other Bills having been advanced a
stage, the House adjourned.
The Commons met at Twelve.

The Removal of Paupers Bill, and the Court of
Chancery Bill were reported. The Libel Act Amend-
ment Bill was read a third time and passed.

The House then went into Committee on the Games
and Wagers Bill.
Mr. C. BERKELEY objected to clause 17, which
legalized subscription to horse-races, as a piece of one
sided legislation. On a division, however, the clause
was carried by a majority of 34 ; the numbers being,
for the clause 37, against it 3.
The Church Buildings Act Amendment Bill was read
a third time and passed ; after which the House ad-
journed to five o'clock.

On the re-assembling of the House, Sir J. GRAHAM,
at the suggestion of Mr. H. BERKELEY, postponed the
third reading of the Small Debts Bill until to-morrow
(this day) at twelve.

Sir B. PEEL announced that he should to-morrow
move that the House do sit every day at twelve o'clock,
and continue sitting throughout the evening.
Mr. EWART then brought forward the motion of which
he had given notice, namely :-1. That a statement be
made, on the part of the Government, on the condition
and prospect of such educational establishments as are
supported wholly or partially by a vote of this House.
2. That it is expedient that the formation of public li-
braries, freely open to the public, be encouraged. 3.
That it is expedient that schools for the training of
masters be more extensively promoted. 4. That it is
expedient that appointments to the subordinate offices of
Government be made (as far as possible) by examination
of the merits of the candidates for such offices.

Mr. WYsE seconded the motion.
Sir H. PEEL, as a proof of the solicitude of the Govern-
ment on the subject of education, would state that
150,0001. had this year been voted for educational pur-
poses, and that if necessary next year their might not be
any great objection to increase the grant. He did not
wish to hold out public employment as a reward, for mere
scholastic attainment was, he thought, no criterion of fit-
ness for business.
After a few words from Mr. HuatE and Mr. HAWES,
the motion was negatived without a division.
Mr. W. WILLIAMS moved for a Select Committee to
inquire into the allegations in the petition for the
students in the School of Design.
A long discussion followed on the subject of the
squabbles which have recently taken place among the
teachers and students in the School, and, eventually, the
motion was negatived without a division.
The House then went into Committee of Supply, when
several votes were agreed to.
The House having resumed, several measures were
forwarded a stage ; and the orders of the day having
been disposed of, the House adjourned at Two o'clock.

We live in an age either of the most Pharisaical or of
the most inconsistent humanity. Our sympathies arc
like the saccharine principle of some fruits, of which it
is difficult to say whether the sweet or the acid most
predominate. For some years past, it seems to have been
tha ambition of the Legislature to earn for itself a cha-
racter of tardy justice, or of repentant humanity, by re-
sponding to the demands of public feeling and opinion
for the abolition of imprisonment for debt. In the career
of mei a/ advancement in the science of adapting modern
legislation to the tone and wants of modern society,
the House of Lords lately took a prominent
lead. From that House, the first great remedial
mea,ures issued, which had for their object to put down
a barbarous practice, on all hands admitted to be the scan-
dal of our modern social institutions. The hold and
decided s'ep which it took in advance of the other House,
as to imprisonment for debt, was hailed with grateful ac-
clamation by all the most enlightened and humane men
of every party. Nor have the Peers themselves shown
any indisposition (so far as we have ever heard) to ac-
cept the credit which was given to them for this generous
impulse. We have perused, therefore., with surprise,
the ded
securing in Committee,
m it tee
pay-
ment of small debts." It has long been the
,
ethnetitfilersdt d,r,aAunght
2o:eta
better for asamended
fashion to consider that the more searching investiga-
tion and more careful forms of the House of Lords provide
the only effectual counterpoise to the slovenly, hurried
and often reckless processes of Committees of the House
of Commons. " Thank God there is a House of Lords
has been an ejaculation of grateful acknowledgment, to
which the high authority of Mr. COBBETT has long
given a wide and authoritative circulation. But if the
Lordsintend to produce many fellows to the Bill before
us, the converse of the proposition will obtain with the
people : an expression of thankfulness on the part of the
public that "there is a House of Commons." We
are at a loss to understand on whatrinci le
iii 1845. the Peers of Great Britain canl Jive
been induced to launch so fierce a decree as this
Bill contains—against that class of debtors who,
we think, are already most within the effective reach of

the law. The first clause enacts that—" Creditors ob-
taining judgments or orders in respect of debts not ex-
ceeding 201. each, may summon such debtor before a
Commissioner of Bankrupts or Court of Requests."
Clauses A, B, C, provide how the order of such Court
shall be executed; that the imprisonment of the debtor
may cease on payment of the debt, and that certain
Courts shall have the like power on original suits. By
subsequent clauses it is enacted that where several
Courts exist in the same town the business is not to be
transferred from one to the other; that application to
the Commissioner of Bankrupts or Court of Requests
need not be made by counsel or attorney; that affidavits
in bankruptcy or insolvency may be made and sworn
before keepers of prisons. Under clauses D, E, and F,
the jurisdiction of such Courts may be altered ;
judges of inferior Courts may be removed
for misconduct or incapacity ; that in the
absence of any sufficient number of Com-
missioners to hold a Court, according to the con-
stitution of such Court before the passing of this Act, a
single Commissioner being present shall be coml•etent
to proceed and in all respects to hear and determine
causes as judge, &c., or a deputy may be appointed ;
execution of process in Westminster and. Southwark is
duly secured; power given to judge of Court to frame a
table of fees, but fees under existing Acts are not
hereby aiTected; poundage to be demanded from suitors
upon sums claimed; lists of unclaimed moneys of suitors
to be made out, and all such moneys paid into court and
unclaimed for six years to go into the court fund; power
reserved to remove suits exceeding 10/. into superior
courts, and power given to execute warrants and levy
executions out of the jurisdiction of such courts. This
Act to apply only to England.
Such is the marginal outline, extracted from the
Bill itself, of the anomalous and excessive powers created
under it. If the House of Commons could possibly be
induced to stultify their past proceedings on the law of
debt (from those touching the abolition of arrest or
mesne process down to the act abolishing arrest for debt
under 201., exclusive of costs, under certain limitations);
it would, by affirming the present Bill, create the most
unheard-of powers in petty courts, which have
hitherto exercised the limited jurisdiction they
already possess, by no means to the satis-
faction of the public, and with general indecorum,
and frequently in violation of all law and equity (we
mean " Courts of Requests") ; but it would give a Par-
liamentary sanction to such enormities as general war-
rants to be issued under the authority of tribunals, for
which it is impossible not to anticipate the least possible
degree of respt et or confidence on the part of the public ;
we speak of those which the Bill proposes to reinforce or
to create. Now, with regcrd to the parties against whom
this Bill is directed :—" Any person indebted to any other
in any sum not exceeding 201., besides costs of suit by
virtue of judgment obtained, or of any order for the pay-
ment thereof, or of any costs in any court." It is obvi-
ous that now-a-days, when judgments can be so easily
"snapped up," as it is called, the scope of this measure
might just as reasonably have been extended to all simple
contract debtors as to debtors under judgments. And
this being so, we are struck with the folly of pulling
down the Fleet Debtors' Prison, which has been actually
accomplished, and the similar project or contemplation
of removing the debtors' wing of Horsernonger Gaol.
Pass this Bill and you must build a new debtor's prison,
in at least one hundred different districts of England ;
for to " England " only, by the last line and proviso of
the Bill, is the precious gift of its enactments to be ex-
clusively appropriated. " Happy land ! Happy land !
But that other principle of limitation which directs the
enactments before us, against debtors under judgments
not exceeding 201. each, without costs, supplies the most
striking illustration of its cruelty. Why should the
Lords levy war on this class of small debts, in so in-
vidious and special a manner ? The presumption surely
is, that where a debtor, in a sum not exceeding 201.,
allows proceeding to go till a judgment is sued out
against him, he really cannot pay his creditor, for other-
wise he would never subject himself to the accumulated
costs incurred by the creditor's going on to judgment.
The debtor may be able, in a little time, to scrape to-
gether the 20/., but the same causes which have made
him leave that amount undischarged, will, in nine cases
out of ten, leave it utterly out of his power to defray the
charge of the proceedings ou which the judgment is
granted. But this Bill is, from beginning to end, an
Attorney's Bill. It is prepared under a total in-
difference to all considerations of humanity, or
even of the common motives of human con-
duct. It is to create new sources of litigation, to
multiply fees, to multiply Courts, to multiply office
patronage, by strengthening the hands of judgment cre-
ditors. It seems to be devised with a view to neutralise
opposition by the origination of such new powers
and places as we allude to. By clause I the debtor
shall be " interrog..ted before such Commissioner or
Court by the creditor summoning him, touching the
manner and time of his contracting his debt, the means
or prospect of payment he then had, the property or
means of payment he still bath or may have," &c If
this proviso be not duly modified and guarded, the
debtor is to be subjected to the vexatious and intolerable
browbeating of any irritable creditor, to an extent not
permitted to counsel on the examination of a criminal
arraigned for felony. Is such a process calculated to
refresh the debtor's memory—to prompt his candour ?
or to put him upon exercising his ingenuity and decep.
tion, to withhold all the information he can from a party
who proceeds by such means to extort it from him ?
It will be evidence of much the same value as that
given by a culprit under torture. The examination by
counsel or by Court, on the application and under the
suggestion of creditors, would not be liable to these grave
objections. But if the debtor " appears to have the
means of paying the debt by instalments, and
shall not pay the same at such times as the
commissioner or court shall have ordered," he shall " be
committed for any term not exceeding forty days to the
common gaol," &c. This is law that attaches to the
suspicion of dishonesty a penalty far more severe than
follows on conviction for very heinous crimes. For a
debt of forty-cne shillings, without costs, the " Learned
Gentlemen" who play at judges in courts of request in
the borough of Southwark, in the cities and liberties of
London and Westminster, or under this Bill are to be
empowered to do so in any other locality "limited to
England," are to have the power of condemning any of
the QUEEN'S subjects brought under their petty juris•
diction to "fo, ty days' imprisonment," if only they shall
" appear" to have the means of paying down the debt
and fail therein. The mere question of construction—
the power to judge of the intention—is one with which
a judge of the superior courts would not trust himself.
He would leave it to a jury to determine that which
this Attorney's Bill unhesitatingly ascribes to a commis-
sioner of requests an intuitive faculty of discerning.
Clause 10 creates a " power to execute warrants, and
levy executions out of jurisdiction :" that is, an officer
charged with a warrant of execution against the goods
or chattels of a defendant who shall be out of the juris-
diction of the court granting that warrant, may call on
a justice of the peace in another jurisdiction, where the
officer declares upon oath, " that the person or goods
and chattels of such defendant are believed to he," to en-
dorse his warrant, which he is therefore empowered to
execute in any part of such other jurisdiction. A power
is thus originated, as large and as loose, surely, as that
of the most objectionable general warrants. The
patronage-creating features of the Bill are not a whit
less objectionable. The sole security devised for the
poor creditor if, that he is to have the satisfaction of
knowing that the court issuing the warrant or order
is presided over, whether it be one of bankruptcy or re-
quests, by " a judge, who shall be either a barrister at
law, special pleader, or an attorney, of not less than
ten years' standing, of one of her Majesty's Courts at
Westminster." A wonderful condition, no doubt ; but
the next clause, after empoweringevery "bailiff and mes-
senger and officer of the High Bailiff of Southwark or
Westminster, holding such order," &c., to take the body of
such debtor, declares that "no protection, or certificate,
or interim order, issuing out of any Court of Bank-
ruptcy, or for the relief of insolvent debtors"—" shall
be available to any debtor imprisoned under such
order." So that the law jurisdictions called into exist-
ence, like mushrooms in an August morning, by this Bill
are to be superior courts to the last created tribunals in
bankruptcy ! The other clauses of the Bill contain the
usual powers of this class of modern statutes for building
new courts, creating new offices, levying new fines to
defray in part the expenses thereof, &c., &c. In short,
the Bill is one of those lawyer-jobbing affairs that are
the disgrace of modern legislation, from the costly and
excessive patronage they create, with this superadded
distinction in the present instance, that it involves great
violations of the principles of humanity and justice, as
of the liberty of the subject, by confounding the princi-
ples of civil with those of criminal compensation, in the
excessive and arbitrary character of its penalties.

The Levant Mail has arrived, bringing accounts from Con-
stantinople of the 7th instant.
The district of Lebanon still continued in a disturbed state.
A dreadful fire had broken out in Smyrna on the 3d, which
had lasted eighteen hours.
The accounts from Athens were to the 10th inst. M.
PETSALI had been murdered at Negropont, on the terrace of
his own house. He was talking to some peasants who reside
on his property, when he was allot at, and killed, mid the
assassins escaped ; this happened at eight o'clock at night.
At Chalcis, the house of the Receiver-General had been
broken open by an organised band of robbers, and 47,000