The Sun.
London, England, 1844-01-11 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, THURSDAY MORNING, JANUARY 11, 1844

one of them. Of one thing, however, we think
we may venture to assure our readers—namely,.
that the Speech in question will exhitit much of
that specious show of liberality which the Tories
of late years have found it absolutely necessary
to their party interests to assume. Moreover, it
will carefully keep clear of too much point and
meaning, and instead of stating, like parson
COLTON'S Lacon, " many things in few words,"
it will be modelled on the reverse principle,
and state " few things in many words."
And yet, if ever there was a period when a
QUEEN'S Speech should be liberal—not merely
in show but in substance—and resolute and ener-
getic in its tone, that period is the present. The
drowsy torpor that has so long hung over the
public mind is fast yielding to a conviction of the
necessity of brisk action ; the national confidence
in the Tories is giving way to distrust, to be fol-
lowed in due time by utter alienation; Opposi-
tion, hitherto in a great degree quiescent from a
sense of its weakness, is again threatening to
exhibit a formidable front; and that powerful
confederacy, the Anti-Corn-law League, is daily
adding to its moral influence, and enlisting hosts
of recruits under its banners. As if these signs
of the times were not significant enough to con-
vince Ministers of the necessity of playing a
decided part ; many of their own partisans, on
whom they have been in the habit of relying for
support, have become lukewarm and distrustful ;
andothers have flatly refused to "march through
Coventry" with them any longer. Turn to what
quarter of the compass we may, we see clouds
blackening over the political horizon. Under
such circumstances, what is the course of conduct
that an enlightened statesman would naturally
be expected to pursue? Clearly a bold and libe-
ral course, grounded on principle, fashioned so
as to meet the wants of the age, and carried out
with vigour and alacrity. The country has had
enough of professions; the delusions of 1841 are
dispelled ; and action, not speechifying, is now
what is demanded from Ministers. And will the
Premier, for the first time in his life, undertake
to satisfy this reasonable demand; or will he
still pursue his old favourite shilly-shally
system, coquetting with this party to-day,
with that to-morrow—now throwing a sop
to the monopolists, and now to the free
traders—and hesitating between two courses
of action, like a certain animal between
two bundles of hay ? It is impossible to answer
this question, and equally impossible is it to
doubt—after the significant hints that have more
than once escaped him in Parliament—that Sir
ROBERT PEEL is quite aware of the right course
to be pursued. Other Tory statesmen may have
sinned from ignorance, and the desperate ob-
stinacy which ignorance engenders; but that is
certainly not his case. He is not so confirmed
an Ignoramus as to mistake the wishes of
a party for the convictions of a people. A
Parliamentary majority does not blind him
to the true state of things, even though it
moulds his conduct; for he is well aware of the
gross delusion under which that majority was
gained, and sees that it is fast giving way to the
steady day-light influence of common sense. If
then the Premier's failings are not those of ignor-
ance, in what do they have their origin ? In an
inherent want of decision of character—in a nerv-
ous apprehension of compromising a reputation
for prudence and sagacity by too great a display
of boldness. Sir R. PEEL is not the man
to take the initiative on any great
public question. He has nothing of the
fearlessness and energy of PITT in his constitu-
tion. He stands aghast at the idea of heading
a movement, but must be dragged into resolute
action by the uncontrollable force of events. No
man, we think, can doubt what will be the ulti-
mate policy lie will adopt as regards the corn-
laws ; hut he will not appear prominently on the
stage himself, until, by the strenuous exertions
of the Anti-Corn-law League, all is in readiness
for the performance of the drama of Repeal.

How to restrain under-graduates from running
into debt has been recently broached as a question
of University reform. A very interesting
question it. is, as not a few unhappy parents
throughout the country already know to their
cost; and ninny a poor curate, atoning by a long
life of penance for the thoughtless expenditure
of his youth, will be ready enough to assert that,
of all the many items of complaint which are
alleged against the conduct of his Alma Mater,
this one, relating to the financial affairs of
her offspring, is by far the most important.
Primiumpeettnia qucerenda est.
Well, but how are matters to be improved ?
There has been no lack of suggestion, and if
only a tithe of what has been said to hare been
attempted has been carried into practice, we can
only wonder at the lamentable deficiency of
good resulting, and attribute to the very atmos-
phere of an university town a tendency to en-
courage this highly aristocratic epidemic. But,
rely upon it, the evil is curable, and it only re-
quires proper treatment to eradicate this shame-
ful vice from the constitutions of our university-
educated youth. One recommends the adoption
of public registries, in which the tradesmen
might easily ascertain the rank, residence, and
resources of the aluminzts he is asked to trust.
Another suggests a vigilant system of surveillance
on the part of college_tutors. A third would have an
Act of Parliament constituting a new Statute of
Limitations, for the benefit of all, in statu pu-
pillari. We don't really know how many recom-
mendations have even been made beside. We
believe his Grace the Duke of WELLINGTON,
when he first assumed the Academic toga, and
became invested with the office of Chancellor of
Oxford, threatened the most severe measures
against all in any way concerned in the propaga-
tion of debt amongst the junior branches of the
University. Nevertheless, we have never heard
that even his Grace's denunciation had much
effect, and we are even inclined to believe
that just at the present time there is
more credit given to Oxford under-graduates
than there was even when his Grace began his
Chancellorship. At Cambridge we know very
well matters are by no means mending; and,
judging from several circumstances that have
recently come to our ears, we should fancy the
tablets of those engaged in supplying the extra-
vagancies of the youthful Cantabs are more co-
piously filled than ever.
But then it is the fashion to fasten all the
blame upon the tradesmen of Oxford and Cam-
bridge. Judging from the invectives which have
been so unsparingly heaped on this devoted
order of men, one would infer that they really
were a race of veritable human harpies. Now
we happen to know, from some four years' expe-
rience, something of the character of these gentry,
and we confidently assert that they are not the
monsters they are represented to be. Our ex-
perience is of course confined to the tradesfolk
of one university, but we are also able to speak
with something of cosmopolite facility of the
idiosyncrasies of the race located at the other of
the " eyes of England." Indeed we found them
all of the very same genus, and, strange to say,
that genus is precisely the same as one finds in
other parts of the country. Seriously, they have
only one pair of eyes; their legs are neither diffe-
rently constructed, nor more numerous than
those of London tradesmen; they have nails, and
not talons, as some have alleged, and they do
not run about, and inveigle fresh men into sub-
terranean emporiums for contracting debt.
Fathers and mothers, the cure for the evil of
which you are all so ready to complain, is in
' your own power, and rely upon it it resides no-
where else. Set a avholesome example to your
offspring under your own roofs—inculcate the
moral turpitude of getting into debt, which
is now by so many deemed a venial
and highly fashionable vice —limit your
own expenses to the resources which
you have it in your own power to command, and
commit the education of your sons to the care of
those who at school will enforce your instructions.
By doing this you will supply your sons with a
healthy bias, which even the noxious influence
of bad example will with the greatest difficulty
overpower. And if, in addition, you watch over

the moral characters of these young linen, when
they from time to time revisit the parental abode,
you will have done the most, and that will be
effectual for repressing the tendency to contract
debt during their university career.

We have never concurred in that sort of unrea-
soning outcry which has been so universally
excited against the new poor-law by a large
class of individuals, whose humanity—for which
we are willing to give them full credit—has, in
that outcry, prompted them to a course of in-
justice,—which they themselves can have had
no intention of committing. This injustice
has consisted in denouncing, on account of
partial defects of application, the whole prin-
ciple of the measure—because of occasional
delinquencies in the official subordinates charged
with duties of supervision and superintendence,
the whole system of its economy and manage-
ment—and, by reason of a few examples of care-
lessness on the part of boards of guardians,
and of more inexcusable harshness on that
of relieving officers, the whole body of
official functionaries in any way connected
with pauper management and parochial relief.
At the same time, it is evident, from the most
cursory consideration of its multifarious enact-
ments and provisions, that there is not, on the
statute, book one Act of Parliament more open
to abuse, to evasion, to overstrained construction
against the candidates for, or actual recipients of,
poor-law relief. On this account we hold that
they who have excited so general a jealousy and
vigilance in thejpublic mind, touching its prac-
tical working, have done, and continue to do,
good service to the public cause.
In the Times we read, under the heading of
" Last Days of an English Peasant," one of those
very cases of " official delinquency" in su-
bordinate functionaries, of " carelessness in the
board of guardians," and of " inexcusable harsh-
ness" in the party who should have been the " re-
lieving officer," which too fatally—excepted cases
although they be—confirm the prejudice of that
large community we speak of against the "rule"
under which they occur. If we may assume the
facts to be true, this is one of those instances of
the maladministration of a law, necessarily
more or less stringent and painful in its ap-
plication, that are calculated to elevate a
local and individual wrong into an element
of fearful and hostile operation against the
best interests of society. It is a case apt
to incite every better feeling of our nature
to an indiscriminating and passionate resent-
ment, among the labouring poor, and within the
particular district of the vicinity in which it hap-
pened. Now we have not only the account
published on the responsibility of the correspon-
dent by whom it has been communicated to the
Times, but we have before us, also, a succinct
summary of the evidence given before the Coro-
ner's inquest, on the collapsed and exhausted
frame of the unhappy deceased.
We know not how to condense the state-
ment for our present purpose, and render it,
' at the same time, sufficiently intelligible to
enable the reader to form his judgment upon it.
But we will endeavour to do so, thus :—On the
afternoon of the 20th of December last, " a raw,
damp, and foggy day," an open cart arrived at the
gate of the Billericay poor-law union house,
accompanied by the assistant overseer of South
Weald. On the porter of the union attempting

to remove from the cart its pauper passenger, he

found the venerable man in his last mortal
agony. The assistant surgeon of the establish-
ment immediately attempted to administer some

hot brandy and water, but the dying man was
unable to swallow it ; so he was removed to a bed
in the infirmary, where at eight o'clock the same
evening he expired. The medical officer, who
said at once that his removal would prove the
immediate precursor of his death, deposed be-
fore the Coroner that, on thepauper being taken
out of the cart, he was quite stiff, insensible, and
in a state of collapse, his extremities cold, and
no chance of his revival after rejecting the prof-
fered stimulant :

" He was suffering from old age and general debility ; but
witness was of opinion that his removal on a damp, foggy day,
and the time he was on the road, hastened his death. Ile
might not have lived many days, but an old person in his con-
dition could not bear removing."
The poor sufferer proved to be one JONATHAN

pauper of ninety years, must appear an
amazing spirit of contumacy to a parochial
relieving officer !") Had the parish pro-
vided a proper nurse, GATES declared she
would have kept the poor man to th, Ist.
The district surgeon never saw him fter
his first visit, till the morning he Wfka re-
moved, when, according to the evidence of the
assistant surgeon at the union, he was in a
condition altogether unfit for so barbarous an
experiment. On the certificate of the former,
however, dated four days previously, and signed
" CORNELIUS BULLER, surgeon," impoeting

"that JONATHAN WHITE could be safely re-
moved," the removal took place on the 26th."
From the evidence, at the inquest, of
RACHEL BRADFORD, it is clear that WHITE
was in articulo mortis when carried into
the cart. He could swallow but a drop of the
cordial administered to him ; his eyes welt,
closed, his teeth clenched, and he was speech-
less. The man who drove the cart deposed to
the same extinction of all active functions and
perception, and " did not think him in a state fit
to be removed." The relieving officer deposed,
in opposition to RACHEL BRADFORD, that he
had never received any order " or application"
for nourishment. He admitted, however, that
he inquired of the two women whether the doctor
had ordered him any—that they replied in the
negative; and that he observed, " should the
doctor order it, the sick man should have it."
Mrs. GATES pressed for a nurse, and he (ALEX-
ANDER) suggested that the man" should go into
the house, but was informed that he objected to
do so. On the 26th of December witness re-
ported the case to the board, and applied for a
nurse. The board made an order to remove
WHITE into the house. Witness at the same

time reported that he had seen the doctor, and
that the man was capable of being removed."
We have no hesitation in declaring it to be
our strong conviction, notwithstanding the ver-
dict of wholesale acquittal of all parties con-
cerned, involved in the finding of the Coroner's
inquest, that the gravest blame attaches to the
union surgeon of the district, the assistant over-
seer, the relieving officer, and the board itself.
Under the new poor-law, the board may freely
dispense out-door relief to parties in the condition
of JONATHAN WHITE. There was, in this case,
an evident reluctance, even in the last hopeless
extremity of his disease, to exceed, in appor-
tioning relief to this dying man of ninety years,
the miserable pittance of two shillings and a
quartern loaf and a half per week ! The very
medical officer who declared him to be in that
state that medicine could do nothing, that
nourishment was what he wanted, orders no
nourishment, and certifies that. his removal, in
that inclement season, may be effected with
safety. The proffered bounty of the clergyman
is averted by the menace that its extension shall
be followed by the withdrawal of the starving
pittance of the union ; the dying man's terror
of being taken off to the union house is shame-
fully worked upon by the threat that the only
alternative will be the cutting off from him of
the bounty of his parish. He weeps, he raves,
he remonstrates, he prays, he supplicates ! The
grey hairs of a century are moistened with the
tears of his last anguish. The surgeon, the
officials, are alike inexorable. He is borne, in a
dying state, from the home of his long remote
infancy and the fields of his ancient labours, to
the dreaded portals, which he is carried
through—unresisting, unconscious, helpless—
only to turn upon his face—and die 1
A more barbarous and heartless proceeding, as
it seems to us, could not disgrace a Christian
land ! Is it supposed that the poor will long
submit—ought they to submit —to the con-
temptuous, hard-handed, begrudging, revolting
administration of charity decreed by the law,
and provided by the nation, but dishonoured
and poisoned, as it were, in this mode of throw-
ing it to, or forcing it upon, human beings, as if
they were dogs? .
Why could not the village labourer of ninety
years have been permitted some little " nourish-
ment," in addition 'to the disgraceful pittance
assigned for his weekly wants, in the last hours
of his misery, in the pangs of his last illness ?
Why was he not allowed to die in peace, and
with the consolation—(dear, at all times, to the
hope of rustic age)—of knowing that his bones
should be gathered to the dust of his fathers in
the same churchyard, among whose green knolls
—two centuries before—they, like him, had gam-
bolled in childhood, or meditated in age ? We
have heard Sir ROBERT PEEL eloquent on the
subject of permitting this hope, in all possible
circumstances, to the rural poor—and in his pic-
ture of the pleasure with which they descry the
tower of their village church rearing itself
amidst its clump of ancient trees. Did lie ever
k neighbouring
on the church
Braintree,
of
South Weald, or of
theo
tree, answering and loex-
ceeding, in all the beauties of its locality and
accompaniments,—this description built on
a fine eminence, and belted with bold oaks and
towering beeches? If be has once remarked
that interesting object, he may appreciate the
additional affliction which broke the heart of this
old pauper, in the last moments of his con-
sciousness, at the thought of finding a grave be-
tween the dreary walls of a poor-law union-
house, instead of in the churchyard of his native
parish.

The accounts from Madrid are to the 2d inst.
Mr. BULWER had been presented to the Pre-
sident of the Council, GONZALES BRAVO, and
the first interview, the friends of the Ministry
say, was very satisfactory. The capital con-
tinued tranquil, and the accounts from the pro-
vinces were also favourable. We learn from the
Phare des Pyrenees of the sth inst. that the fort
of Figueras had capitulated. The terms were
agreed to on the 30th ult., between the Baron
DE MEER and General AMETLER, and would be
carried into effect on receiving the QUEEN'S
sanction.
The Three per Cents. were done on the 2d inst.
at 231 cash, 2.3 t at 60 days, with the current
coupon. The Fives at 181, at 54 days.

On Monday the Duke of BROGLIE presented
to the French Chamber of Peers the draft of the
address in reply to the KING'S speech. It accords
entirely with the sentiments expressed by his
MAJESTY. The name of the Duke of BORDEAUX
is not even alluded to, but a few words are added
at the close of the address, which evidently refer
to the exhibitio►►s in lielgrave-square. These
are—" France promised to be faithful to the
KING. The KING has observed his oath—where
is the Frenchman that could forget or betray
his allegiance 7" This called up the Duke of
RICHELIEU, who stated, that in going to London
to pay his respects to an unfortunate Prince he
was fulfilling a duty of honour, while at the same
time he was entirely innocent of any ' criminal
intention. M. GuizoT, in adverting to the same
subject, said the French Government, when the
Prince visited Vienna, Berlin, and other Conti-
nental capitals, had remonstrated against his
presence there, and their remonstrances were
immediately attended to. The same course had
beenadopted when the Prince went to England—a
note was transmitted to the English Government,
which was replied to in the most satisfactory
manner, but in a country which enjoys liberty of
publicity to such an extent there were not the
same means of repression. The Queen of EEG-
LAND, however, and the Ministers, did every-
thing in their power to mark their disapproba-
tion. Her MAJESTY would not receive the Duke
of BORDE Aux at Court, and manifested her dis-
pleasure against those parties who, presuming on
the liberal institutions of the country, had exhi-

hited " such scandalous scenes." The address
was adopted, with some slight additions, by a
large majority. Most of the papers give an ac-
count of the reception of M. RATTI MENTON by
the Chinese authorities at Canton, with copies of
two State papers—one addressed to M. GUIZOT,
by KY-INa, High Imperial Commissioner, and
KY-KoNG, Viceroy of the Two Kwangs, and the
other to M. ItATTI MENTON, both showing the

most friendly disposition towards the French
nation—no other country, they say, shall be

more favoured.
BOURSE—PAms, MONDAY, JAN. 8.
First Highest Lowest Last
Price. Price. Price. Price.
French Five per Cents. 124 30... 124 30... 124 25... 124 30
Threes B2 50... 82 55... 82 45.. 82 55
Bank of Frances 3210 ...3210 ...3210 ...3210
LatEtte Bank I,ooof 1110 ..1110 ...1110
5,000 f 5075 —.5075 ...5075 ...5075
Belgian Bank 698 75... 698 75 .. 698 75... 698 75
Belgian Fives
1840 loB* ... 108* ... 108 ... 108
1842 lO9 ... 109 ... 109 ... 109
Spanish Active . ..... 291 ... 291 ... 291 ... 291
Passive
Old Deferred 51 ... 51 ... 51 ... 51
Portuguese Fives ...
Neapolitan
Roman ...... 1041 1041 .. 1041 ... 104/

RAILWAY SHARES.
Versailles, L. 8... .... 180 ... 180 ... 178 75... 178 75
Rouen
Rouen to Havre 642 50... 648 75... 640 ... 647 50
Orleans.
Strasburg to Bale 213 75... 213 75... 212 50... 213 75
Avignon to Marseilles 670 ... 672 50... 670 ... 672 50
RAILWAY SHARES, FOR THE ACCOUNT.
Versailles, L.B lBO ... 180 ... 175 ... 175
Rouen
Rouen to Havre......, 645 ... 650 ... 645 650
Orleans 835 ... 836 25... 830 ... 835
Avignon to Marseilles 670 ... 672 50... 670 .. 672 50