The Sun.
London, England, 1826-02-22 00:00:00

CORONER'S INQUEST.

Yesterday forenoon an Inquest was held at
the sign of the Sir IVilliam of Walworth public-house, in the'
Walworth-road, before R. CARTER, lisp., on the body of Jo.
seph Godfrey, who died in consequence oetaking a quantity of
vitriolic acid. Since the decease of the unfortunate man, his
wife has gone raving mad, and is now confined in a strait waist..
coat, in consequence of the shock she received on seeing him ex.
pire. Previous to the evidence being taken, the jury retired for
the purpose of viewing the body, which presented a shocking
spectacle, the mouth, tongue, and lips of the deceased being
burnt in a frightful manner by the poison, the greater part of
which forced its way through the lower part of the abdomen.—.
On the return of the jury, the folloWing evidence was taken :
Mrs. Richardson deposed, that the deceased worked latterly in
her husband's employment. On Thursday morning last, hit
wife, who is now insane, informed witness that her husband
was excessively ill, and complained of violent pains in
the bead. Witness at first attributed his illness to lasy
and indolent habits. Ilowever,.. she accompanied the wife
to see the deceased, whom she round in bed extremely un-
well. She conceived his sickness to have been produced by
gluttony us she knew him to be a monstrous eater, and que.stion.
ed hint on the subject, when he told her that he had taken
nearly a cur) full of vitriol. She wilted hint where he had
procured it; and he replied, at the shop of a druggist in
Rent-street. The witness added, that the deceased's wife,
previous to her having been afflicted with Madness, COM«
numicated to her that the deceased shortly before he took the
dose of poison left home for the purpose, as he said, of taking
a w.ilk. On his return, she mentioned that her husband made
use of the following curious remark--.." 1 shall never die hap.
py unless I die in Mrs. Richardson's debt." Soon after the
unfortunateetti ma apntiydertitenkie
tthhee
apodisouneg,
ttannAte, xwpairsede.xamJ atemeet
He stated that the deceased formerly belonged to that regiMent,
and did duty at the Cape of Good Hope in the year IBM.—
While on that station witness said the deceased exhibited
symptoms of derangement aye different times. On each of
which occasions he was tried by a Court Martial for pretended
madness, in the hope of getting his discharge from
the service altogether, and sentenced to be flogged,
which sentence was successively carried into effict. Witness.
added, that during the eleven years he served in the
above colony with the deceased, he always considered that the
unfortunate man was afflicted with derangement of mind, and
that the paroxysms, for which he had been punished by the
sentence of the courts-martial, were not shammed for the per.
pose of imposture, but were visitations of the Almiglity.
—Since his return to this country, the witness observed
in the deceased precisely the same symptoms of inesoitY
as when abroad. Mr. °tiling, a surgeon, residing in the
Borough, stated that he was sent for to the residence of the de.
cead, whomministeredinl
Ithregefoquunede
tiint
eas
idnyienntear mete iltrfaabginte
:hi
.w 4 a
ced od;
his stomach, but the remedies failed in circa, and the deemed
died soon afterwards of inflammation of the stomach and tiles-
a
vtienraesteptrod,
,u,cTethlabtyothwedemceinitetreald
iipiomitioino.coTrishettgiuuerice teotrulr4tZ'
vitriol, being of unsound niind at the time.

Cans EXCIIA N GE, FEB.
.;,,p2, --Yrhe Arrivals of all lduds
Grain and of hour are very swan, thitflY Owing to tilt:high
winds. There is little donig. and Prices generally my ilo
quoted nominally as on !(lost(*..
ARRlVALo—Ellirlisn Wheat, 1,7" ; Burley, 620' Chits
680 qrs. ; Flour, 050 sOciif. . .

TH E LONDON JOURNALS.
. .11
DAILY
Extracts fr©m the Morning Pripers,Feb. 22, 182 G.

rBRITISH, PRESSd
Ministers, in their endeaVoura to remove the
evils of an excessive paper currency, have wisely
provided against the ill consequences that Might
arise from a too extensive and sudden reduction
of its-by permitting the issue of one and two-
pound Bank of England notes until the 10th of
October next ; by yvhich measure the temporary
deficiency that might take place in the circulating
medium from the disappearance of country bank
notes will be supplied, and supplied by bank•pa-
per, in which the public have the fullest confi-
dence, fromits being at anytime convertible into
metallic value. The enemies of Government are
sadly disappointed by the adoption of this line
of policy. They had hoped that Ministers would,
by proceeding with undue precipitancy, have
involved the commerce of the country in inextri-
cable difficulties, and; have brought down. upon
themselves a great share
,of popular odium. T hey
were, fully prepared to descant upon the fright-
ful train of evils that must inevitably arise from
the sudden contraction of the issue of bank
paper, and to have denounced it as utterly
at ,war with
.every sound principle of financial
policy. But the caution and prudence of Minis-
ters, having deprived them of all the grounds of
attack upon whichlhey had relied, they have no.
resource left but to apply the .same abuse to the'
course they have pursued which they had in-
tended to apply had that course been the directly
opposite. It is in this spirit that the Times of
yesterday vents its malignity in the following
comment :----64 We cannot help reverting to the
mischiefs and even cruelties likely to ensue
from the exclusive issue of, small paper ,by
the Bank. Country banks are now calling in
their one and two pound notes ; time and use
also are wearing them away : nod no fresh stamps
are allowed. The small notes of the Bank will
begin, therefore, to protrude . themselves into
all the provinces as the exclusive medium of
barter among the manufacturing classes." As to
these mischiefs and cruelties that arc to arise from
the *apply of Bank of Englund notes, as they ore
not enumerated, we can pronounce no opinion
upon there; if the small notes of the Bank should
become, as hero asserted, " the exclusive medium
of barter among the .manufacturing districts," it
can only arise from the entire confidence placed
in the stability of_the Bank, which could thus in—
duce all the maimfa during classes to receive them
as readily,es „cash, and the conviction universally
felt that they are at arty time exchangealde into,
money. If any doubt were entertained, on this
point, it is quite certain that they, could- not be-
come 44 the exclusive,.medium of the barter," but
that,gold, would he demanded in, payment in all
the transactions in trade, in, the payment of wages,
and in elt the dealings. of every kind both between
the manufacturer and themerchaut, and between
the merchant and the consumer. No higher corn-
pijMellt can therefore be paid to the „Bank of
England than this, „lamentation over the high
credit svhich its notes will everywhere. obtain, and
the readiness with which they will be received
even in preference to gold, which might at any
One 'tdp lied in lb of them. Great credit is due
to Ministers for the anxiety which they have
manifested to guard against increasing the :diss
tress of the Mercantile world by withdrawing too
suddenly the means of accommodation ; and they
must be .sadly at a loss for a subject of complaint
agalast them, who can thuS attempt to distort to
their prejudice a measure the must worthy of
praise,

rrnE PUBLIC Leboca.l
ToAhe satisfactory intelligence we 'published
yesterday from Russia, we have nothing further
to add to-day ; and though there has been an
arrival of French and German Papers, they con-
tain no news we had not announced before.—ln
the German Papers there is the usual quantum
of gross exaggeration and downright falsehood,
under the head Constantinople; and as a sped
Mel), we shall mention the account that is
given of a tile that had broken out in Galata,
one Of the suburbs of that. Capital ; the loss
which the Christians who reside there have'
sitstained is estimated at, fifty millions of
piastres (about 800,000 pounds sterling), and
thit'nurnloer of houses destroyed at several thou
sands! Now the plain fact is this, that not more
than from 9.0 to 30 houses were destroyed, and
these, with all they contained, not worth as many
thousand piastres as there are millions in the
Germati estimate. Our computation is derived
from WSJ. or the private letters that reached this
country by the last Turkey mail ; and if the
Continental Journals cannot treat a matter of
this kind without being guilty of the grossest, ex.
aggeration, the excessively perverted view they
usually give or military and political transactions
may be easily imagined.

e TIM ES.]
t Is now clear that the total measure of a re-
turn to cash payments has failed it cannot be
executed and all that is now proposed is an
issue of Bank of England small notes, the issuers
of which will not hold themselves responsible
for forgeries, in lieu of the country small notes,
the forgeries of which were paid by those whose
notes were imitated. Mr. Iluskisson—who, for
a man of business, made the strange mistake that
the larger notes of country bankers were not made
payable on demand, and alleged as the reason for
his error that be had heard the Member for Staf-
fordshire (Sir J. Wrottesley) say so—Mr. Ilus.
kisson, we say, spoke with great naivete to the fol.
lowilig pithy purpose :--64 That "there appear-
ed at present a very great disposition' to with-
draw country small notes from circulation ; but
iC they were withdrawn, how was the vacuum
to be supplied ?" Lord Liverpool could tell him,
that there were at least. 15 millions of gold coin
in the country to supply a deficit of not more
than livo. But how, we ask, are the country
bankers to withdraw their small notes, but by
giving sovereigns for thew singly, or, larger notes
s4o4Vertibla into sovereigns at the will of the
bolder, for au accumulation of them Gold

would thus have taken the place of paper; and
never so easily as when (we are assured) there
i
is a great quantity of the former n the country,
and much of the latter witted rais'n from circulation.
But now paper is to be substituted for paper; and,
which is worse, paper of one universal face or ap-
pearance, and the imitation of which,. though an
offence of death, is therefore easy, for paper of
various aspects, in various districts, the imitation
of which but rarely occurred, and was but little
profitable. We really look , upon this subject
with despair. We can merely treat with contempt
the assurance (and those who are gulled by it)
that the Bank is only to issue its small paper till
next October. If it stops its issues in October,
it will open them again in February, or as
soon as Parliament, meets ; or as soon as its small
notes in circulation are beginning to wear out.
Why, but a week ago, a metallic currency was
to be resumed by the bill now in the committee.
By that very bill it is to be removed from us for
three-quarters of a year. Every step taken in
this affair is deception. Our only hope, as in all
affairs of moment, is in the people :—that the
frequency of the forgeries. which must take place,
will render them shy of accepting the Bank small
notes.

[NEW TIMES.I
We last night received the Etoile of Monday,
with the journals, of Sunday, by express, from
Paris. Several o.f the journals are filled with
declarations against the proposed revival of the
law of Primogeniture. After existing in France
for 1000 years, it was abolished by such sages as
Robespierre, Sieges, &c. The consequence has
been, that landed property in France has been
divided and subdivided to a degree almost incre-
dible. Every man of common sense, and of the
slightest experience in those matters, sees that this
must ultimately be destructive of the national
resources. It is contrary to the plainest prin-
ciples of political economy, and it tends di-
rectly to the degradation of the cultivation
of the soil. Nevertheless we find a revo.
luntary writer in the Journal des Debats,
gravely arguing that the subdivision of landed
estates is a source of comfort to the poor, and
even improves the health of the people ! This
reasoning is attempted to be substantiated by
some documents which we elsewhere insert,
stating the ratio of mortality in two different
classes of departments, and the division of lands
in each class. .The documents are curious in
themselves, but wholly inconclusive on the
point in question. There is doubtless a point
at which the division of lands is favour-
able to health and comfort ; and the revolution-
ary laws may for a time have tended towards that
point ; but it is forgotten that these are laws of
perpetual subdivision, and, therefore if it were
admitted, that under their operation the lands'
of France were beneficially divided now, it would
follow, as a necessary consequence, that in three
or four generations to come, they would not be
divided injuriously. Laws of primogeniture anti
entail, may, doubtless, become grivances if car-
ried to an extreme ; but some such laws are ob.
solutely essential to the existence of a constitu-
tional monarchy.

[mourrtNa POST.]
The business in Parliament last night was not
important. The Committee of Privileges made
their Report upon the subject of Members of the
Rouse of Commons being summoned to serve on
Juries. Their right of exemption was clearly
proved ; and we are only surprised how any
doubt could have been entertained in this re-
spect ; as their attendance in Parliament is clear-
ly a duty paramount to every other consideration.
Mr. Martin's motion for leave to bring in a Bill
to prohibit bear and badger-baiting, dog-fight-
ing, &c., was rejected by a majority of 76 to
37. Leave was given to bring in a Bill to amend
the present 'Act for preventing cruelty to cattle.
I—Mr Denman, after Counsel had been beard in
the case of Mr. Kenrick, summed up the evi-
dence against that Gentleman, and moved some
crimi•atory resolutions upon the subject. The
motion was very ably opposed by the Attorney-
General, in a soundly reasoning and legally
argumentative speech ; which made an impres-
sion upon the House that was decisive of the
question, and the resolutions were of course ne-
gativPd without a division. On the Report of the
Committee of Supply on the Navy Estimates hav-
ing been brought up,M r. Ilume, if possible more
unhappy than ever in his flounderings, took that
strange opportunity of moving an Amendment,
a pledging the House to a concurrence in the re-
commendations of economy contained in the
Eighth Report of the Finance Committee of
1818." The intent of this motion was nothing
short of that of stopping the necessary Supplies
for the Navy ; and so little expected was so
extraordinary a proceeding, that none of the
Cabinet Ministers considered their attend-
ance necessary in the House. Well and
truly observed Mr. Berries, on the occasion,
that the proposed Amendment was caleu-
lated to arrest the progress of any Admi-
nistration, and ho would ask the House whe-
ther there was any thing upon the Estimates to
justify such an attempt. it was said the Estimates
were not like those of 1817; but the circumstance
of the country had changed every year. Could
any man suppose that the Committee of 1817
could see what might be the proper expence of
1828. ? Was it reasonable to suppose that an in-
crease in the Estimates rendered necessary by
the circumstances of the country was sufficient to
justify the stoppage of supply ? Mr. flume, how-
ever,,encouraged by the thinness of the House,
persisted in his amendment ; on which a division
consequently took place, when it was lost by a
majority of 43 to 15.