The Sun.
London, England, 1845-03-04 00:00:00

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LONDON, WEDNESDAY, MARCII 5, 1845.

The House of Lords met at Five o'clock.

The presentation of a petition by Lord ASHBURTON,
praying for a repeal of the law of last session, abolish-
ing imprisonment for small debts, gave occasion to a
lengthened conversation, in the course of which Lord
BROUGHAM; while admitting that the law required
amendment, stated that, on the whole, it had worked
well; and Lord CAMPBELL said that, while he would
be happy to support a measure for remedying the
grievance, he could net consent to repeal the Act and
restore to creditors the power of imprisonment.
The Marquis of NORM AN3Y postponed his motion
on the subject of the Irish constabulary force until
Friday, and gave notice that at the same time he
should move for a return of all the outrages com-
mitted in Ireland during the period to which the
other return referred.

Lord DENMAN, in presenting a petition from a
person who had been in prison for three years,
because he refused, in consequence of conscientious
scruples, to take an oath which he had been required
to take under a Commission of Bankruptcy, said that
with regard to the Act last session, abolishing impri-
sonment for small debts, the effects of it were not as
yet fully evident. He believed, when WO had full
experience of its influence, the Act would be found
beneficial to all parties, The ill effects that were at
present experienced ought decidedly not to be charged
to this measure.

The Earl of DALHOUSIE presented several Railway
Report*.
In answer to Lord CAMPBELL, the LORD CHAR•

CELLOR said that it was not his intention to intro-
duce any measure on the subject of the Ecclesiastical
Courts this session.

Their Lordships then adjourned.

The House of Commons met at Twelve.

Various amendments were agreed to in the Corn-
panics Clauses Consclidation Bill, which was read a
third time and passed.

The House then resolved itself into Committee on
the Railway Clauses Consolidation Bill.
Considerable opposition, however, arose to the
20th clause, and ultimately Lord GRANVILLE
SOMERSET consented to postpone the further con-
sideration of it until Thursday, on the morning of
which day, the Railway Clauses Consolidation
(Scotland) Bill, and the Land Clauses Consolidation
(Scotland) Bill, are also to be considered. The
House then adjourned, and afterwards assembled at
Five o'clock.

After several private Bills had been forwarded a
stage, and several petitions presented,
Lord GRANVILLE SOMERSET rose to propose the re-
solutions which the General Committee on Railways
had recommended to the House for the regulation of
the railway business of the session. One of these re-
solutions went to the exclusion of Members locally in-
terested from serving on Railway Committees.

Mr. CHRISTOPHER moved the omission of the
resclution.

A lengthened conversation ensued, and the gallery
was cleared for a division; but, ultimately, Mr.
CHRISTOPHER'S amendment was negatived without a
division, and the resolution was agreed to.
On the seventh resolution being put,
Lord GRANVILLE SOMERnET stated, in answer to
Mr. GISBORNE, that no railway Bills of consequence
would be committed before Easter.

Mr. HAWES expressed his dissatisfaction with the
present constitution of the Railway Committee of the
Board of Trade, and suggested the propriety of
making it an open tribunal.
Sir R. PEEL deprecated any attempt at altering
the constitution of the Board as far as the present
year was concerned. He knew nothing of their pro-
ceedings except from their published reports, and
looking to them he thought they had elicited infor-
mation on the sub;ect of railway matters, which
never could have been elicited before a Committee of
the House.

Mr. J. S. WORTLEY thought the constitution of the
Board could not be altered for the better, and suggested
the propriety of postponing the further consideration
of the subject until a later period of the session.
Mr. HOUSMAN thought the present a very inoppor-
tune time for discussing the question.
Mr. CURTEIS complained of the shortness of the
time all9wed for the inspection of plans of proposed
railways, and of the exorbitant charge made for such

inspection.
The resolution was agreed to, as were several
others ; but a resolution being p:oposed, making the
attendance of Members on Committees compulsory,
Mr. BERNAL rose and opposed the resolution on
the ground of the, hardship and inconvenience it
would inflict on Members. He thought a tribunal
ought specially to be appointed to adjudicate upon
railway matters.
Mr. WARBURTON and Sir R. PEEL both considered
the appointment of any such tribunal would be an
abdication by the House of its powers, and could not
but operate prejudicially on their character with the
country. A desultory conversation ensued on the
neglect by Members of their duties as Committee-men,
and ultimately the resolution was agreed to.

On the 19th resolution, which is to the effect,
" That parties promoting railway projects which have
been grouped together by the Classification Coni-
mittee, shall be permitted to appear before the Com-
mittee on any railway belonging to that group, and
to ( ffrr evidence either against the Bills immediately
under the consideration of the Committee, or in sup-
port of their own pre ject," being put,
Mr. BANKES again urged the propriety of appoint-
ing Members possessed of local knowledge to serve
on these Committees.

A long discussion ensued, but ultimately the reso-
lution was agreed to.
The following resolution was then proposed :
" That in Committees on a Bill or Bills, .when such
evidence has been given, it shall be within the com-
petency of a Committee to adjourn their proceedings
until tl.e Bill or Bills for such other project shall be
before them, care being taken by the Committee of
Selection that in all such cases the Bills for the so op-
posing projects shall be referred to the Committee by
which the first Bill or ails had been considered,"
which after a short discussion was agreed to.
Various motions standing on the paper were post-
poned, and the public business of the House com-
menced at a late hour by Mr. COWPER moving for
leave to bring in a Bill
,:luthorising and regulating
the granting of garden allotments to the poor.
Mr. MILES seconded the motion which, after a
short discussion, was agreed. to, and the louse
Adjourned at a Quarter to Twelve o'clock.

The House of Commons is about to record, on the
motion of an Honourable Member, its deliberate opinion
on the expediency or impropriety of allowing the prac-
tice of interring human bodies in churches and burial
grounds within the boundaries of large towns and
cities. Since the appearance of the last two reports
of the Select Committee on the Health of Towns, we
have, on more than one occasion, endeavoured to
direct public attention to the immense imp )rtance of
the statistics therein developed of disease and mor-
tality in the most crowded seats of our population.
_ _

The Committee had before them the evidence an

reports of many intelligent witnesses, speaking from
continuous series of observaticns long and assiduously
journalised. From the more recent results, arrived
at by their personal investigations and inquiries,
conducted under every dscouragement to the r:...-
volting and disgusting exhibitions and exposure to the
influences necessary to be encountered of malignant
and revolting maladies; from their own expe-
riences, therefore, as well as the testimony of others,

the Committee in question accumulated and classified
some of the most appalling facts that were ever
brought forward to illustrate that great feature in any
scheme of the domestic economy of a populous nation
—its system for the disposal of its dead. If there
ever existed, since the first civilisation of organised
society, one city of the world in which the disposal of
the dead must necessarily affect, and almost govern,
the health of the living, it is to be found in the re-
dundantly peopled London, with its present popula-
tion of about 3,000,000. Notwithstanding all the
vast improvements already effected, or in course of
execution, in the drainage, sewerage, and ventilation
of particular districts comprised within the extensive
area it occupies—the widening of the thoroughfares
and the removall'of obstructions, and the cleansing
and purification of many among the most confined
and filthy quarters to be found in it within these
twenty years—the surface over which this march of
improvement has, as yet, been effected, is necessarily
of very contracted dimensions compared with that
which still remains unvisited by it. And in these
latter there still subsists, in its widest extent, its most
uncontrolled and unmitigated action, and its most
hideous aspects, that productive source of typhoid and
malignant fevers, ulcerated sore throats, habitual
nausea terminating in paralysis and death, which the
Committee, concurring in the strong opinions of Mr.
WALKER and other medical authorities whom they
had examined, reported to the Legislature as the
mc3t active causes of what may be called the local
Mortality of certain districts carefully indicated by
them. It will be seen that we allude to the crowded
state of our metropolitan churchyards, and the
continued practice of interring in them. In many of
our more populous borough and manufacturing towns
the same evil prevails in a degree more or less miti-
gated. But we hope that from the notice which the
matter is about to receive in the House of Commons,
it will first be dealt with effectually at present, and
permanently for the future—in London and its au.
burbs. 'We have no intention, on this occasion, to
dwell upon the horrors which have been several times
so prominently brought before the public; on the
noxious exhalations from the burial-ground in Por-
tugal-street, which swept out, like the besom of des-
tiny, the entire of the inmates, saving one, of a house
with windows that opened upon the reeking and cor-
rupting Golgotha beneath ; or the Wych-street Cha-
pel, with its burial cellar and yard beneath and behind
it, wherein, year after year, bodies were received and
buried, till they reached within a few inches of the
surface and the flooring, and the process of adapting
the impassable limits of cubical capacity and superfi-

cial area to new contributions, week after week, of / present session, but simply to discuss it, and prepare the
human corpses, could be carried no further, except by public mind for a scheme of such importance. The
the burning of old coffins and the removal of forgotten following is an outline of the Bill :
bones to make room for new corners.
"The Minister of Finance is authorised to reimburse, at
the rate of 100 f. for each sf. of stock,' all holders of Fives,
It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader of who within a month from the time fixed by royal ordinance,
that similar receptacle (of a few square yards) in
should not formally, by a new inscription, demand the con-
version. This reimbursement is to be effected in series, and
Cannon-street, and the swarms of noisome insects is not to be obligatory on the State, but to the amount of the
series called on. Such holders of stock as think fit to de-
mand the conversion are to receive for cash sf. cf Five per
Cent. Stock. 4f. 50c. in Four-and-a-Half per Cent. Stock,
with a guarantee against the exercise of reimburse-
ment for ten years, and with the enjoyment of the
interest of five per cent. for the half-year after the day on
which the operation shall have been terminated. The Minister
of Finance is to be authorised, in order to effect the reim-
bursement of the Five per Cents., Ist, to negotiate Treasury
Bonds; and, 2dlY, to have inscribed, if necessary, on the
grand livre of the public debt, Four per Cent. Stock, the
negotiation of which is to be effected by public competition,
and in no case below par. - The part attributed for the Sink-
ing Fund to the stocks which shall have been reimbursed or
converted, shall be transported to the stocks substituted for
them, dating from the day of the inscription of these new
stocks in the grand livre of the public debt."
At TORTONI'S, on Sunday, the Three per Cents. were
quoted at 85f. 15c.
Swiss papers of the 27th ult. have been received, from
which we are glad to find that things wear a better
aspect, and that the agitation is on the decrease. -

and flesh-flies that it supplied for the annoyance of
the children of a neighbouring national or parochial
school. The story of that gravedigger in the church-
yard of St. Ann's, Soho, to whom an incident oc-
curred,—in the way of his profession,—which the
Westminster Review declared might, in point of over-
whelming horror, have suited the terrible fancy of
EURIPIDES or LESCHYLUS,—may form a good exem-
plification of the hideous casualties attaching to the
system of parochial interment which we are still con-
tent to tolerate. One of the several gravediggers
whose evidence was taken—a wretched man in the
last stage of a wasting disease, external and internal,
brought on by the fearful necessities of his calling,
which had constantly subjected him to the mephitic
gases and noxious putrescences of decomposing bodies
—described the chopping and breaking-up operations
by which coffins and the bodies within them bad
been habitually disposed of, to accommodate the
current demands for new sepultures. A colleague of
the mattock had probably been specially employed
in these clandestine operations without his knowledge,
for he seems to have had no expectation of such an
evidence to what had been going on as he was pre-
sently to meet. On the occasion referred to, the wit-
ness was digging a deep grave, several feet below the
first one, which he had dug through, very near the
surface. Whilst in the progress of his excavations
the loosened soil from the end of a coffin not long
before submitted to the curtailing violations we have
described fell down, and a female corpse, in a shroud,
still fresh and undiscoloured, fell int.) his arms; and
his first shock was succeeded by one of still greater
intensity on discovering that it was—headless ! But,
to the best of our recollection, no churchyard in Lon-
don or Westminster was described as being more
disgustingly crowded, mare horribly desecrated by
the wholesale lopping and disturbance and carting
away of coffins and bones—more alarmingly dan-
gerous to the health of its very densely-populated
neighbourhood, from the putrescent exhalations pro-
ceeding from it, especially on occasions of opening
what is called the " Rector's Pew," than that of St.
Clement's Danes, in the Strand.

PORTUGAL.

By our Lisbon correspondence of the 26th ult., it appears
that her Majesty was likely to carry into effect her anxiously
desired purpose of granting an amnesty to the persons en-
gaged in the late revolt, and now in exile in Spain and else-
where.

The accounts of her Majesty's health continued favourable
The baptism of the young Infanta took place on the 20th ult.
The Bill for the Abolition of the Conservatorial Courts. in
its definitive form, had been laid before the Chamber of Depu-
ties. A project of law for the abolition of slavery in all the
Portuguese possessions, in the case of children barn after the
date of the promulgation of the proposed law, was presented
to the Chamber of Peers, and transferred to the Special Anti-
Slavery Committee.

Another project of a very different kind, imposing penalties
of inordinate severity in cases of smuggling of corn into the
country, was introduced by Ministers. The Custom-
house receipts of Lisbon, Oporto, and Sete Cases, for
the month of January, had greatly fallen off. The prosecu-
tions for libels on the Government had again commenced
The first of six state prosecutions against an editor was
heard on the 17th ult., and terminated in an acquittal.
A new financial statement, and a project of the
capitalist Roma, on an extraordinary scale of magni-
tude, for the eonversion of the interest of the fo-
reign debt, and habilitating the Government to effect
that object and meet outstanding engagements, had been
submitted, it was reported to the Minister Cabral, and had
been sanctioned by him. It was likely to be laid before
the Cortes, notwithstanding the ministers Castro and
Tojal. were said to be unfavourable to it. The matter was
supposed to be the subject of differences between Senhor Ca-
bral and his colleagues, and of altercations between the Count
Tojal and Senhor Roma.

Now, it is notorious that, for some months past, the
average mortality of the metropolis has in many
weeks exceeded that of the corresponding period last
year. Will any man venture to say that the in-
, creased aggregate of fatal disease in the metropolis
has had no connexion with the continuance of the
abominable abuses of interment, which have been
already so strongly reported upon to the Legislature ?
It is not above half a year ago since a feeling of in-
dignation was excited in the public mind by a scene
in the Portugal-street burying-ground—if we are
correct in our remembrance of the fact—by its being
found impossible to bury a coffin, over which the
service had been already performe,i, and which was
left to stand on end, about a foot deep in the ground, till
the remonstrances of an agonised relative induced the
interference of the minister, or some other autho•
rity, to procure a grave of adequate capacity to be
dug, in which it was finally interred. The excuse of
gravedigger and sexton was, that the ground was so
full the corpse could not be buried deeper than in the
hole they would have committed it to.
Now we earnestly invite the attention of Members
of Parliament to facts like these---to the weekly
exhibition of graves newly opened, and bodies
newly buried in the over-gorged and reeking church-
yard of St. Clement Danes, and other metropolitan
receptacles of the kind, already denounced by the
highest professional authority as saturated with
human corruption, and giving out, daily and hourlc•,
the principles of infectious• disease and death. The
nuisance has really become as flagrant as it is in-
tolerable; and whether its existence arise from the
avarice of interested incumbents, or of interested paro-
chial authorities, or from the carelessness and apathy
of the incompetent supervision in other quarters,
to which that- supervision has been entrusted ; we
implore the Legislature to interpose the most strin-
gent measures of prohibition and penalty, which may
seem best adapted for its entire suppression.

At the bottom of every financial measure in Portugal, a
small incidental proposal for a large loan is usually found; in
the present case, no doubt, Senhor Roma will not disappoint
his patrons, or forego the opportunity of doing a little business
with them.— Chronicle.

Mr. WAKLEY, in our humble opinion, has displayed
more zeal than judgment or discretion in his attacks
upon the p'dice magistratcs,'and governors of gaols, and
the Home S, cretary, for not cordially entering into his
views with regard to the production of prisoners at a
coroner's inquest. This court was established originally
not for the trial of persons accused of murder, but
simply to iveertain, when there were reasonable grounds
of suspicion, by what means the individual, on whose
body the inquest is held, lost his life. It was for the
purpose rather of satisfying the friends of the deceased
and the public as to the manner in which death had
been caused, than for investigating all charges
that might be brought against individuals. That
task is 1. ft for police magistrates and judges
and when the different stages " through which
a process of this kind passes is considered, the
formalities on which the Coroner for Middlesex so
ardently insists appear altogether uncalled for. The
verdict of his jury, in fact, decides nothing. It merely
adduces grounds for further trial, and the accused
has every chance of fair play. He is brought before a
magistrate, is allowed to hear evidence and defend
' himself ; and if there are reasonable grounds of
suspicion he is committed fir trial. But two more
investigations take place. The case must be heard
before a grand jury, and if
.no sufficient evidence
is furnished, the bill is ignore:l ; but if the Co-
roner's jury has returned a verdict against him, he is
not discharged, but arranged before a petit jury. lie
has thus three, or at least two, chances of fair play—
as many as any man can reasonably desire ; but
to carry on four separate investigations, and to
bring up the unfortunate person, with all the wit-
nesses, and solicitors, and agents and friends, in
each instance, appears to every unprejudiced mind
a work of supererogation. Nay, it is a wanton
waste of time, and the public mind is kept in a
state of excitement, without one good purpose being
served. The case of this man llocKett is an instance
in proof of the fact. The affair has been kept
before the public for ten days, and it has only
arrived at the second stage yesterday ; and at
the Central Criminal Court the whole business must
again be brought before the pubic. It is an ab-
surd syrtena, and the sooner the Coroner is convinced of
the fact the better, both for the accused and the good of
the public.

The Madrid journals of the 24th ult. contain no news
of interest. Senor CASTELLO Y AYENZA. was about to
return to Roble with a higher title—that of Minister
Plenipot( ntisry from the. Court of Spain.
MADRID BOURSE, Fun. 24.—Three per Cents., 33
11-16 cash, 34k at 60 days ; Five per Cents., 254-, at
60 days; Coupons, 26k, on the 28th current; Passive,
7 5-16, cash; Exchange on London, 7 9.16.

The parties in the French Chamber of Deputies on
Saturday had another trial of strength on the passing of
the Council of State Bill. A ballot took place, when
there were for the Bill 197, against it 170, giving a
majority of 27 to Ministers. In the Committee on the
Budget AL LACAVE LAPLAGNE, the Finance Minister,
explained, as we stated yesterday, the views of the Go-
vernment on the conversion of the Five per Cent. Stock,
and announced that unless some material financial changes
should take place in the meantime, a Bill to that effect
would be introduced next session. His reasons for not
presenting such a Bill this session are thus stateda—
The situation of the country as regarded public
credit was •satisfactory, and seemed favourable to the
measure, but the Government was engaged in
considerable expenses for railroads and other works of
public utility; that it had just submitted to the Chambers
a new system for the execution of the railroads; and that
it would be injudicious to change the economy of the
finances before the additional charges they would have
to bear were exactly ascertained ; he also urged that a
considerable loan had just been raised, which was
not yet classed, and that a feeling of delicacy towards
the contractor did not permit the Government to under-
take a financial measure which might compromise
the success of his operation." " After all," he said
in conclusion, "a discussion begun this year in the Cham-
bers, would perhaps possess in other respects some ad-
vantages: it would prepare matters for the measure
and would enable the Government and the Chambers to
see their way more clearly in the questions which are to
be resolved ; the Bill could in this way be voted more
rapidly next year."
Towards the close of the public sitting on the same
day, a Bill was presented to the President for the con-
version of this stock by M. MIIRET DE BORT, who is
understood to be in the confidence of the Government,
the object of which is not to carry the Bill during the