The Sun.
London, England, 1845-07-04 00:00:00

wt triOntllS '74111.

LONDON, FRIDAY, JULY 4, 1845.

The Lords met at Five o'clock.
On the motion of Lord WHARNCLIFFE, the Gaming
and Wager Bill was read a second time.
Lord Bum:runAm then proposed certain resolutions for
the regulating the passing of Railway Bills, to be added
to the standing orders. The further consideration of
these resolutions was, after a short discussion, postponed
till to-morrow (this day).
The Earl of ABERDEEN brought in the Slave-trade
Treaties (Brazil) Bill, which was read a first time.
The Irish Banking Bill passed through Committee.

On the motion of Lord DENMAN, the Administration
of Criminal Justice Bill was read a second time, after a
short discussion.

Their Lordships then adjourned.

The Commons met at Four.

Sir G. CLERK, in answer to Mr. HUTT, stated that it
was his ittention to introduce a Bill for continuing the
Flour and Biscuit Act.

Mr. DivETT then directed the attention of the House
to the case of Mr. PARROTT, against whom an action had
been brought fur evidence given by him before a Com-
mittee of the House, and moved that the party bringing
the action, and his agents, be summoned to the bar.
At the suggestii n of Mr. WINN and Sir R. PEEL,
AUGUSTUS HENRY MoonE, the attorney to Mr.PARROTT,
was called in, and proved that the declaration in the ac•
Lion had been served on Mr. PARROTT on the ;26th .of
June, in the name of KETTLE, BARER, and GRANT, of
34, Lyon-street, for EDWARDS and FRY, solicitors.
Totness.

On the motion of Mr. DIVETT, Messrs. KETTLE,
BARER, and GRANT, were ordered to appear at the bar
on Monday.
On the motion that the order of the day for the House
going- into Committee on the Poor Law At
(Scotland) Bill be read, a lengthened discussion ensued,
but on a division thero appeared, for going into Com-
mittee, 76, against it, 33 ; majority for going into Com-
mittee, 43. The House then went into Committee, and
several clauses were agreed to.
After some conversation a division took place on an
amendment proposed by Mr. Fox MAULE for the omis-
sion of part of the 18th clause. The amendment was
lost by a majority of 34. The numbers being for the
amendment, 30 ; against it, 64.

Clauses up to 34 were agreed to, when, or► the motion
of Mr. WATSON, the Chairman reported progress, and
asked leave to sit again.

Sir T. FREMANTLE brought in the Drainage Acts
(Ireland) Amendment Bill, which was read a first time,
and the House adjourned at One o'clock.

Nothing can be of more mischievous consequences
than that the severity of a law, admirable in its prin-
ciple, but in its operation, perhaps, inevitably unequal,
and occasionally cruel, should be aggravated needlessly,
and most offensively, by the heartlessness or stu-

pidity—or the operation of both these causes—of churl-
ish officials charged with the duties of its administra-
tion. The Poor-law Amendment Act has enough to
answer for, HEAVEN knows, in its sins of omissior,
which are many—and of commission, which are more.
But we should scarcely have credited the fact, had we not
seen it so particularly announced—that a Statute which,
whether its intrinsic good or evil preponderate, has
certainly received an unusual degree of support from
humane and upright men of all parties, could be per-
verted to so manifestly oppressive an application of the
letter of its enactments as in the instance we are about
to refer to. It is a tale of those social anomalies among
us, the horror of which is only blunted by reason of their
frequency.
If a foreigner were now, for the first time, to arrive
in England, unacquainted with our laws, and the ge-
nius of our Constitution, with the professed respect
both for the personal rights and privileges of the subject ;
but thrown into the midst of that profusion, opulence,
and luxury, which are concentrated in such masses in
this metropolis ; what would be his first and very natu-
ral impression of the people and the institutions among
which he then found himself ? Surely—that he had
come among a people with whom wealth was all but uni-
versally diffused, or by whom property was univer-
sally respected, even among the more indigent classes
of society. The magnificence of the shops, the bril
liancy of the equipages, the sumptuousness of the enter-
tainments, the almost careless display of valuable and
precious property on all sides—and, above all, the ge-
neral patience and forbearance of those who had
least in respect of those who enjoyed the most
of these felicitous conditions of existence—could not

ftil to impress the foreigner with lofty notions of
the humanity which the poorer and more miserable sec-
tions of the community must receive from the higher, to
secure that respect for property which its exposed con-
dition, its abundance, its accessibility, in every dire ction,
would at once lead him to infer that property, in t ffect,
must realise. Without that sort of experience, which
only opportunities for nearer observation could afford
him, he might be seduced into the dangerous delusion
of moralising on the happy influence of equal laws for
the rich and for the poor in producing, among the latter,
an unlimited respect for the possessions of the former ;
in the former, an unbounded interest and sympathy for
the condition and feelings of the latter. If this foreigner
were told that, from a variety of causes, some of them
inherent, as it were, in our social system, our laws and
usages, regarding the descent and distribution of pro-
perty, and many more identified with, or neces-
cessarily resulting from the accidents of our
commercial relations with foreign states, and the fluctuat-
ing character of our domestic trade, there was a tendency
to pauperism in some classes, commensurate with the
tendency of the population to numerical increase ; he

would readily comprehend the beneficence and the policy
of a poor-relief law. But what could be his estimate of
the equity of the charity—of the wisdom with which the
Legislature rewarded in the indigent and labouring
million this respect for the rights of capital and pro-
perty in others, this upright abstinence from spoliation
under the strong temptations of appalling want, of
squalid misery, and the bitter contrast of their own con-
dition with that of the possessors of lands, money, and
lucrative investments ; if he looked into the practical
operation of that law of relief, which in the abstract he
would rightly conclude to be intended for the succour of the
" helpless and infirm, the aged,"„impotent and destitute ?"
Would he not blush with natural indignation at his
own simplicity and credulity in believing that England
was a land of Christian charity, of humanity, of mercy ?
What would he think of such a case as that which oc-
curred at the Greenwich Police-court, only a few days
ago ? A gentleman was riding, with his father, over
the estate of the latter, in a direction from Blackheath
towards the river, and behind a bridge, in a field, detects
a human figure, almost in a state of nudity. The
wretched object proved to be a female, with a
fragment of clothing thrown about her shoulders.
After giving her a piece of money, the gentleman
humanely rides to the Greenwich Union Workhouse, and
informs the master of her destitute and perishing con-
dition. This happens on a Sunday afternoon. The
master assures the gentleman (in that strain of official
slang or pedantry, which seems, to us, never so dis-
gusting as when employed by poor-law officers,) " that
it is not the province (!) of the parishes to interfere.
The police should take the woman into custody, and then
the magistrate would deal with the case, formally."
No doubt, a very proper and delicate technicality. But
the woman—the homeless, shivering, forlorn, naked
creature, crouched under the "shelter" of a bridge arch—
is this woman to wait to be rescued whilst the long chain
of official formalities, link by link, is strung together ?
Well, a policeman is found ; in due time he visits the
miserable creature ; X 999 is satisfied that it is a case ;
X 999 returns, and applies to the union-house for some
kind of apparel before he can legally remove her. Having
procured at the workhouse a worn-out covering and
bonnet, he hies him back to the field, causes her to dress
as well as she can, and marches her off to the station-
house, where he gives her into the charge of an inspector
on duty. Having thus been moved through three appli-
cations and two custodies, she is brought up to the
Greenwich Police-court ni?st day, and then states that,
being utterly destitute, she had wandered about the