The Sun.
London, England, 1844-10-21 00:00:00

erb trti Ebttton

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THE FUNDS-(CLOSING PRICES.)
BRITISH FUNDS.
Bask 5t0ck..,.." ..... ex dlv. 205 ;Indian Stock ....
3 per Cent. Red 99 ;Ditto Bonds .......... ..... DI pm.
3 per Cent. Cons.
l% per Cent. Red
New 3q per Cent. lOl% Ix. Bills, 1,0001. I}id ... 73 Pm.
New 5 per Cent. —. Ditto 5001. ......... .....
Long Annuities to expire Ditto Small 'l3 pm.
Jan. 1860 l2 1-16 Bank Stock for Acct....
Oct. 1859 IIN Console for Act.... ...... :MS
Jan, 1860..„..." - India Stock for Acct....

FOREIGN FUNDS.
Austrian, 5 per Cent ......... Portuguese, 5 per Cent —
Belgian, S per Cent ..... -..... 104 Date, New Ditto... ........ —
Brazilian Bonds ..... —........— Prussian, 5 per Cent —
Buenos Ayres, 6 per Cent... Russian, 5 per Cent ..... —
Chili:in, 6 per Cent ............ 102 (Ditto, Metallic ..... - ..... —
Colombian, 6 per Cent ...... 14% Spanish,
_ 5 per Cent 23%
Ditto, 1824 ......... ........ . Ditto, 3 per Cent 34 %
Cuba Bonds, 6 per C0nt...., 'Ditto, Deferred..„.......„ Deferred,..,....,
Danish, 3 per Cent — (French, 5 per Cent. E. —c.
Greek, 1825, 5 per Cent —i Exchange ..„ ....... ..,.....r. .—c.
Mexican, 5 per Cent .. 34% French, 3 per Cent —f. —c
Ditto, 6 per Cent., 1837....... —ae Dutch, 2) per Cent 63
Peruvian, 1825, 6 per Cent,. Ditto, 5 per Cent 98%

SHARES.
Birmingham and Gloucester (100 paid) 102
Bristol and Exeter (70 paid)
Great Western (75 paid)
Ditto Half Shares, 50 paid
Harwich, 1 paid l%
Hull and Selby, 50 paid 62
Kendal and Windermere, 1% paid SIA
London and Brighton (50 paid)
London and York, 2% paid 3%
Midland Counties (100 paid) .............. „,.,......
Birmingham and Derby, £lOO paid 75
Newcastle and Darlington Junction, 21 paid 46
South Eastern and Dover (33 2s 4d paid) ..... ... 41 '
Yarmouth and Norwich (ld paid)
Central of France, 2 naid ..... —......
Boulogne and Millen's, 2 paid ..................
Orleans, Tours, and Bourdeaux, 1 paid

SPIRIT of th• PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TOM THE EVENING PAPERS OF THIS DAY.

GLOBE.—The case of Mr. David Salomons is
likely to be the last of its kind. The spirit of the
age is, happily, hostile to religious tests, as qualifi-
cations for secular offices. The manifest inconve-
nience of the practice, no less than the flagrant in-
justice of the principle they involve, requires
that they be expunged from the statute-book.
In the present instance, a worthy citizen, whose
public and private virtues have obtained for him
the respect and confidence of the public ; who
has been selected by the citizens of London for
the office of Sheriff, which he served with honour to
himself and advantage to the community, and who
worthily fills the office of magistrate in two counties
—was elected as alderman of one of the City wards.
His election is pronounced void by the Court of Al-
dermen. Why ? lie is a Jew ! The law—which
has been changed and modified, in order that profes-
sors of other religious sects may be admitted to office
in corporations—sets a mark of degradation on
a Jew, as such. A Jew may be virtuous, wise,
wealthy, charitable ; esteemed by all for his private
worth, and venerated for his public excellences ;
the community may deem him worthy of trust, and
his Sovereign may select him as a fit subject for
honour ; but corporations will bar their doors, and
refuse to admit him to office within their halls. Though
the magistrates of two counties actually receive him
as their equal, and concede to him the precedence in
their sessions, those of the city of London will
exclude him, as ineligible to be their associate, and
stretch the law to prevent him from occupying a seat
in their assemblies ! Such is the monstrous exhibition
which the public is compelled to witness and deplore
in the middle of the nineteenth century, but of which
it will exert itself to prevent a repetition. It may
not be either uninteresting or unavailing, if a brief
retrospect be taken of the course by which the pre-
sent invidious and injurious state of the law has
been arrived at. The injustice of the principle, and
inconvenience of the practice, will be thus clearly ex-
posed. The declaration which Mr. Salomons was
unable to subscribe, and for which inability he was
ousted by the Court of Aldermen from the office of
alderman, to which he had been elected, was in-
tended to protect the interests of the Established
Church. 13y binding those who are not members
of that Establishment under a declaration, made
" upon the true faith of a Christian," not to use
their influence, as members of municipal corpo-
rations, against its interests, a security, it was sup-
posed, had been obtained against the machinations
of evil-minded Dissenters who, if members of cor-
porations, might plot its destruction. When the
Cory Government of 1828 was compelled by
the progress of liberal opinions, to repeal the Test
and Corporation Acts, this declaration was imposed
upon all. Thus, while professing to abolish all tests,
it contrived to create a new test—lest repulsive, but
not less invidious and insurmountable than the old.
The practical operation of the new declaration was
loudly and justly complained of at the time. Many
persons, who had no objection to bind themselves
against offering injury to the Established Church, had
conscientious scruples about oaths. These regarded
the declaration of 1828 as partaking of the nature of an
oath ; they consequently objected to this form of de-
claration. To meet the case of such persons, the Le-
gislature, in 1837, passed an Act making a special
exception in favour of three descriptions of persons,
and professing to relieve them alone. It left all the
rest in the same position in which they were placed
by the Act of 1828. The sects relieved by the Act
of 1837 are Quakers, Moravians, and Separatists. The
Jews, and all persons not of these comprehended sects,
but who have conscientious scruples respecting oaths,
are still excluded. The words of the declaration, or
test, of 1828, " on the true faith of a Christian," ex-
cluded the Jew ; it excluded also the Quakers, and
others ; the latter objected to it, as partaking of the na-
ture of an oath, which it certainly does ; the Jew, who
does not object to any oath, however formal,was excluded
by the substance, though not by the form, of the
words. The new test, or declaration, substituted by
the Act of 1837 for that of 1828, leaves out these
words; but contains a declaration that the party
making it is either a Quaker, a Moravian, or a Sepa-
rarist. This necessarily excludes all, whether Chris-
tian, or Jew, or Gentile, who belong not to these three
excepted sects.
STANDARD.—An Evening Contemporary has
admitted an article upon the insolvent laws, the
spirit of which may be easily apprehended from the
following passage, with which it commences :—" An
persons in the land (i. e. all the honest) are indignant
at the laws which have been growing up of late
years respecting insolvency, and which have reached
the very top of vice and error in Lord Brougham's late
Act." In this strain the writer proceeds through
a full column of " money lenders' lament ;" but,
though our Contemporary has thought the composi-
tion deserving of the distinction of leaded lines
and large type, we must decline proceeding to
examine its trite fallacies. According to the
writer, money lenders are all suffering inno-
cents, debtors all knaves, a view very different
from what we should collect from the doctrine
of the Scriptures, and from the opinions of
moral writers. The truth is, that the old debtors'
law was so monstrously oppressive as to compel its
mitigation. Sixty-four years ago, as Mr. Burke
declared, at Bristol, its " savage operation " had
reached those physical limits that it could not pass ;
there were not in the kingdom gaols enough
to hold the debtors whom the merciful cre-
ditor class would consign to' dungeons ; and
hence some insolvent Act became necessary.
During the 64 years of interval tlse insolvent laws
have been gradually ameliorated, with the constant
accompaniment of unparalleled improvement in the
morals and in the commercial credit of the country.
At length these laws have reached that point,
that character, and character only is the
foundation of credit. The man of substance,
or of known probity, industry, and pru-
dence, can now certainly obtain credit as easily
as when the debtor law was in most savage operation ;
nay, more easily, for the money formerly staked in
otherwise desperate credits, relying upon the security
of the debtor's body, is now turned into that channel
in which it can be lent upon the security of character.
The moral importance of this change can hardly be
overrated; but its effects are not as obvious as soon
they must be. Many persons who gave credit
upon the security of the creditor's flesh and bones,
find themselves losers by the loss of that security, and
complain, with some plausibility, that they are
cheated. For example—the writer to whom we have
alluded tells a story of a creditor, who, " after immense
difficulty and expense," procured the arrest of a debtor
who owed him 2001., the debtor obtained an interim
order, and escaped to Antwerp. " The immense
difficulty and expense," fixes the date of the debt
at some period prior to the late insolvent Acts.
Now this may be a hard case, though we
confess that our impressions are not in
favour of one who bestows immense expense
upon the capture of a creature so very poor as
to fly his country for 2001. Be this, however, as
it may, such cases are not likely to recur in the
present state of the law. Creditors will not
inconsiderately trust men so dishonest or in such bad
circumstances as to be likely to fly to Antwerp from
debts of 2001. The present wrong must therefore be
submitted to, for the sake of a far more extensive
exercise of justice, and a far greater good. One
knave has escaped to Antwerp ; thousands of
honest and industrious, though unfortunate men,
have been rescued from the cruelty of hard-hearted,
or vindictive creditors. The Jew has lost " his
pound of flesh," but the pecuniary value of character
has been greatly enhanced—almost the greatest bles-
sing that can be conferred upon a nation.
Consoled by this reflection, we turn to an-
other matter connected with the subject. Sixty-
four years ago, as we have said, Mr. Burke
indignantly declared that all the gaols of the
kingdom were insufficient to contain the vic-
tims with whom relentless creditors would load
them. And now we find our Contemporaries en-
gaged in a hot dispute as to the disposal of
the oldest, and we believe the largest, debtors'
prison in England, the Fleet, which has for more
than a year been unoccupied, and is now " to

let." This we must think a salutary and even
a glorious clung; ; blit our immediate subject
is the disposal of the prison. The Times takes up
the proposition to convert the late prison into baths
and laundries for the poor, tind iestows more
than a column of highly animated rebuke
upon those who hold the site and buildings
are too valuable to be applied in specie to that
object. At the risk, however, of incurring share of
the censure of the Times, we must agree with those
who think that the locality is not well adapted
to the proposed object ; and, further, that even were
the locality a more indifferent matter than it is,
there would be a great want of true economy in
converting the Fleet into baths and laundries.
Every one knows that the value of ground
varies greatly in this metropolis, and the value of
ground, to say nothing of the building, is perhaps six
or even tenfold greater in Farringdon-street, than in
the less affluent districts, the very places where baths
and laundries for the poor are most wanted. Supposing,
then, that there was good ground for saying that the
value of the Fleet is in an especial manner due
to the poor, it is plain that the economical way
in which to go to work is to sell the old prison, and
from the proceeds provide baths and laundries for
the poor in the several quarters in which they can be
at once most cheaply and most usefully provided. Even
if the neighbourhood of Fleet-ditch be desirable, a
great deal of waste ground in the neighbourhood
of that agreeable stream can be had within a few
hundred yards northward of the prison, in the
middle of a much poorer neighbourhood than that
of Lower Farringdon-street. We are, however,
probably wrong in treating the article of
the Times as really relating to the question
of disposing of the Fleet Prison ; we ought,
perhaps, to consider this topic as " a peg" upon
which our Contemporary would hang an invec-
tive against the indifference to the comforts and
the claims of the poor, which it supposes to
prevail ; if so, the topic is as ill chosen as
most of the topics which the Times employs
on the same or kindred subjects There is
nothing disrespectful or indicative of a want of care
for the poor, in saying that the site of the Fleet Prison
is too valuable to be applied to the construction of
baths and laundries. Some of the frontage on the river
hank is said to let for a guinea and even two guineas
the inch ; would not this frontage though admirably
indeed adapted for baths and laundries, be much
too valuable to devote to the object when, by retiring
a hundred or two hundred yards from the river, a
perfectly suitable site could be obtained for a tenth
or twentieth of the money—would not (supposing
a specific sum provided for baths and laundries) the
selection of the river frontage be to rob the poor of
nine-tenths or nineteen-twentieths, as the case may
be, of the benefit designed for them.

COMMERCIAL CHANGES NOW
IN PROGRESS IN THE NORTH OF EUROPE.
A plan has been some time in contemplation for
effecting a junction between the river Elbe and the
Baltic Sea, by the enlargement of the harbour, and
by the construction of wet docks, on the best English
principles, at Gluckstadt, a port situated a few miles
up the lbe, in the deepest and most accessible part
of that river, and by a railroad, nearly finished, from
the new docks to the deep and capacious harbour of
Kiel, in the south-western quarter of the Baltic.
Kiel, one of the finest harbours in Europe, is the most
commodious station in the Baltic, for steam -packets
to Copenhagen, Stockholm, Stettin, Dantzic, and all
parts of the Baltic, and to St. Petersburgh and all in-
tervening places. This new and efficient line of rail-
road will not only connect Gluckstadt with Kiel
northward, but also with Altona eastward, above the
dangerous and difficult shoals off the Schleepsand,
Schulan, and Blankenese, which renders the naviga-
tion of the Elbe, above Gluckstadt, so tedious and
expensive ; and, at the same time, being below the
Hanoverian port of Stade, will save all the onerous
dues levied on vessels and merchandise that pass the
guard-ship placed there by the King of Hanover for
collecting them. An English engineer of eminence
has surveyed the locality, and made plans and esti-
mates for the enlargement and improvement of the
harbour, and the construction of the wet docks, which
are to be executed under the control of a company
now forming in that part of Germany and in London ;
half the capital to be rained in Holstein and half in
England, with a joint board of governors in the two
countries ; that in England to have a veto and a ge-
neral controlling power. To this co-operation the
Government of Denmark have made several im-
portant and liberal concessions. By these means the
long and circuitous voyage :round the Shawe and
through the Cattegat, by way of the Sound to the
northern shores of the Baltic, will be shortened nearly
eighty degrees of latitude, and render the arrival of
merchandise from England, France, Holland, Italy,
and places southward by steam-ship to Gluckstadt,
and by railroad from that part to either the Baltic,
via Kiel, a distance of about forty English miles, or
to Hamburgh and the Upper Elbe, by similar con-
veyance, via Altona, a distance of about thirty
English miles, far more certain, and much shorter in
time than by the present route. It will also avoid
the slow and dangerous passage between Gluckstadt
and Hamburgh, which often detains large sea-going
ships many hours out, and in waiting for water to
carry them over the bars between those cities. Be-
tween the months of November and January last,
upwards of 160 vessels which sailed from Altona
and Hamburgh, were detained, as is well known, for
six weeks in the Elbe, by the prevailing
and westerly winds that then prevailed, whereas
had they loaded, and taken their departure from
Gluckstadt, the same wind which brought them from
Hamburgh to the Kraustsand, opposite Gluckstadt,
would have taken them to the open sea. This im-
portant junction of the east and north seas will
effect a junction between Great Britain, the greatest
manufactory in the world, and those countries which
border on the Baltic, and whose rivers empty them-
selves into that sea on the north, and into the Euxine
on the south, the granary of Europe, and the most
productive of timber, hemp, pitch, tallow, iron, and
other materials used in ship building.
It will thus open new sources for the reception of
British manufactured goods, and new supplies of
grain, cattle, and raw materials in return, entirely
free from and out of the jurisdiction of the anti-Bri-
tish impost of the Prussian Zollverein (Customs Union)
from which Denmark, Holstein, the Hanseatic repub-
lic of Hamburgh, Lubeck, and Bremen, the kingdom
of Hanover, and the empire of Austria are at present
free. The Government of Hanover, alive to the import-
ance of keeping free from the shackles of the Zoll-
verein, have also resolved to make a port in the Elbe, and
the same English engineer has reported to them
thereon, recommending one at Brunchauven, at
the mouth of the Swinge, a tributary stream run-
ning through Stade into the Elbe, in preference to
Haarburg, opposite to Hamburgh, for similar rea-
sons, as being below the before-mentioned shoals
and in deep water. Also a railroad from that
place through Stade, with a branch line to Faarburg,
to the city of Hanover, where there is already a rail-
road just opened to Brunswich, which will shortly be
connected by railroads with Magdeburg, Dresden,
and Southern Germany, so as to make a railroad com-
munication between the Elbe and the Rhine, through
the metropolis of Hanover. The consequences of these
projects to the commerce of Great Britain is easier fore-
seen than detailed within the narrow limits of a
newspaper announcement. Since the above became
known, a company has been formed at Harwich and
London, to run a steam-boat daily from Harwich
to Gluckstadt, which can be accomplished in twenty-
one hours. It is called the European Steam-packet
Company, and they propose building five iron
steam-ships of five hundred tons burden, as
a commencement of their operations. A public
meeting of this Company was held last Saturday
in the Town Hall, at Harwich, the mayor, R. Cob-
bold, in the chair. The hall was crowded to an
overflow. The meeting was addressed by Mr. Bag-
shawe, the chairman, Mr. A. Bauer, of Hamburgh,
the deputy-chairman, Mr. Crofts, and other Directors
of the Company, Captain Deane, of Harwich, who
for years commanded a vessel from Harwich to
various parts of the North and Baltic Seas, and
who confirmed the facilities of the plan,
and by Mr. Elmes, the surveyor of the Port of
London, and engineer to the Gluckstanck Harbour
and Dock Company. A meeting of the London
friends of this latter company was held yesterday at
the London Coffee-house, which determined that, as
they were thus supported by a projected as by exist-
ing steam-packet companies, and by the Government
of Holstein, to complete the London arrangements
forthwith.