The Sun.
London, England, 1845-06-23 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDA I MORNING, JUNE 23, 1845.

fellow-countrymen. And it is equally little a matter of
doubt, that the vast—indeed, the enormous—fun•ls
annually assessed for the purposes of such relief, should
be faithfully and economically administered by responsi-
ble officers, on a well-organised and intelligible scheme
of management. But it is the peculiar misfortune of
the New Poor Law that all its executive officers appear
to imagine that they are administering some immutable
edict of the Medet and Persians, the decrees of which
may neither be detracted from nor added to by a single
syllable, however unlooked-for and unthought-of the
particular exigency which may demand their modifica-
tion in practically dealing with them. It has always ap-
peared to us, that magistrates, boards of guardians, and
relieving officers exhibit, in nine cases out of ten, where
any circumstances attach to a pauper case before tliem
that may happen to he thus removed beyond the
apparent scope, or of the express enactments of the
statute, an utter paralysis of the faculties of common
sense and clear judgment. They seem to ima-
gine that they have no discretion whatever beyond
or within the letter of the statute, and fall into a sort of
abject despair, or an apathetic indifference about any
degree of hardship, cruelty, or injustice which their
servile compliance with that letter may cause them to
inflict. There is scarcely one of her MAJESTY'S subjects
who does not, at least twice in twenty-four hours, con-
travene, without hesitation, some positive law
or other, about the breach of which he
gives himself no trouble, being sensible that,
could the Legislature have foreseen how such
law would operate to work a grievance to him, in con-
nexion with matters indifferent in themselves, it would
never have passed it. By reasonable analogy these func-
tionaries might surely suppose that they would be at
liberty to act, where the exigency of the case demanded
prompt and effectual relief, in the spirit with which alone
any system of poor•law relief can have been projected
and accomplished, however the letter of the law embody-
ing it might have omitted to prescribe a specific course
to be adopted in such specific case. If it be a sound
maxim that lex neminem cogit ad " impossibile," it is
surely as sound a one, that" lex »emblem ad erudele cogit."
A must extraordinary case appeared last week
in the columns of a contemporary, which will be
found fully to bear out these observations. It

even of Great Britain ; a capacity which the quick eye
of our undaunted DRAKE—whose judgment in these
matters was little inferior to his bravery in action—pro-
bably appreciated, when, sixty years after the Spanish
hero, he took possession of tbis singular and extensive
peninsula. It is of little moment, now, to inquire whe-
ther the title which he asserted to it under the confirma
tion granted him by the native King of the country was,
in any respect, more valid or binding than that by
which, in our own times, the King of the Mosquito
country devolved upon the Indo-British, or Spanish
Cazique, GREGOR APGREGOR, the sovereignty of
the Poyais territory. In a hundred years after
the confirmation granted to DRAKE, the Jesuits
had established their missions on the most happily
situated of these remote coasts, and by the vessels they
built in their distress, and the rude investments they were
able to send by them to the friends and compatriots,
whose aid they solicited from distant captaincies and go-
vernments in America, the sufficiency attested what
were the natural capabilities of the fine region also into
which they had passed, voluntary exiles from civilisa-
tion, and all the conditions of social life, to plant the
cross in the savage forests of a primeval wilderness, and
to preach the doctrines of peace and truth to the races
of the human family still wilder and more barbarous
than the gloomy solitudes to which they had banished
themselves. In a very few years these marvellous men
had outstripped in their career of useful benevolence
and reclaiming iedustry all that is fabled of the noble
lessons derived by the first husbandmen from Ceres or
Triptolemus. Thdy really carried with them grain and
seed to a soil which had never raised them
previously, but rewarded -in an incredibly short
period the infant labours of savages, who at first
could scarcely be made to comprehend the rudimental
principles or processes of cultivation, with abundant
crops. But they were a stupid and obdurate race ; and
very many of the good fathers were cruelly exterminated
by those who had derived from them this first of human
acts, and the most vital of all truths. Still, it is most re-
markable, that with these and a hundred other irre-
fragable evidences to the value of a region, which the
Jesuits had done so much to settle, amidst difficulties
and dangers of the most extrordirelry nature, Spain never
seems to have made a subsequent effort to " reap"—:as
well she might have done—where those Jesuits, who she
expelled, had " sown." During the sharp contest between
the Governments of Spain and Great Britain in 1771,
about the occupation of the Falkland Islands, there does
appear to have been an awakened interest in the former
i❑ favour of the neglected California. COOKE'S sagacity
was quickly alive to its importance ; and his patron,
Lord SANDWICH, responded to his ♦iews and opinions
upon this subject. Another long lull has succeeded to
this transient activity of geographical excitement; and
now political circumstances will probably raise the tide
of that excitement to a higher pitch than it has yet at-
tained. Beyond all doubt, our present extended com-
mercial position in China—its connexion with the still
unexhausted resources of the trade to be secured in the
North Pacific—and the accidents that invest the question
of the Oregon territory occupation—bid fair to commu-
nicate a new interest and importance to the destinies of
California.

is the more remarkable, moreover, inasmuch as the
communication, although an anonymous one, is stated to
be made on the authority of a magistrate, who declares
his reason for bringing such facts before the public in
such a shape to be. that he knows very well if he were
to move the grant of the relief which the case he nar-
rates imperatively calls for, " he should be outvoted at
the Board of Guardians." So that here is a magistrate
and a member of a Board of Guardians, so worked upon
by this species of unworthy weakness, that he is afraid to
move his own proposition to a board of which he is a
member, because the fear of the Commissioners of
Somerset House and their rescripts is ever before its
eyes. Here is a magistrate who, having a case of sin-
gular harshness and inhumanity, occurring within his
own cognizance, to urge against the administration of
the poor-law, resorts to the vicarious aid of a
newspaper, in order to make known those facts,
and his opinions upon them, which might have
been so much more impressively given by him from the
bench. It seems that in the Hardwick (near Reading)
union, at the board of which this magistrate acts, there
dwells one WILLIAM WELLER, of the parish of Whit-
church, in the county of Oxford,—that be is between
60 and 70 years of age, and has been confined to his
home for these last five weeks with a bad leg. The
doctor in attendance upon him, and humanely so attend-
ing without any union order, gave a note to WELLER'S
wife to take to the relieving-officer, stating that the man
was very poor, and being in this dangerous state required
to have better and more nourishing food allowed to him.
This case was brought before the board, who refused
relief, except on the condition of its being acknowledged
as a loan, and to be repaid by WELLER. This the poor
woman refused ; and, remonstrating with the board, she
told them " that the poor mat], even when he was
comparatively well, was unable, by re:son of
his malady, to work for intervals of many days, and
on some occasions, of many weeks together :—that were
they, at his age, and under these circumstances, to
undertake to repay any amount of relief that should be
extended to him, as a " loan," they must be half-
starved in order to do so, or must go the workhouse.
In the workhouse, the man would lose his business,
after being compelled to abandon his home ; so the poor
man—a person of very good reputation—still lies in
this precarious state, unrelieved, and without the
chance of relief by the union, except under one of these
two hard conditions ; either, that he take upon himself
to discharge whatever may be disbursed on his account
in the name of relief, (he being already in that utter
poverty which has left him without the means of subsist-
tence, and has compelled him to make his reluctant ap-
plication for relief from the poor-rate ;) or, tha he
go, with his wife, into the Union house, as
the proper punishment for their advanced age—for their
good character—for their reluctance to invoke parish
assistance—for their desire still to support themselves,
to as great an extent as possible, by honest industry—
for their praiseworthy attachment to their humble but
honest home—and for the " unpardonable and reckless"
improvidence of an artisan, at 60 years of age, being
afflicted with so chargeable an ailment as a bad lt g !

Madrid journals of the 14th have been received. Ac-
cording to the Esperanza, a Cellist paper, the French
Government had granted Don CARLOS passports for the
Department of the Lower .Ups, where, it is said, he will
take up his residence for some time. General PRIM had
left Madrid for Paris, and the Count DE BRESSON, the
French Ambassador, was at Bayonne on the 16th, also
on his way to the French capital, The Madrid Gazette
of the 13th publishes the estimates for the year 1845,
amounting altogether to 1,184 millions of reels, or
11,843,771/. The following are the estimates for the dif-
ferent departments in English money :—Civil List,
435,000/. ; the two Legislative Chambers, 11,423/. ;
Foreign Affairs, 102,132/. ; Department of Justice
187.882/. ; the Interior, 1,226,104/. ; Army Estimates'
3,223.3401. ; Navy, 884,2261. ; Finance, 3,527,5511. ;
Sink epg Fund. 991,1561. ; the Church and Nunneries,
1,254,9511. Accounts from the Baqque provinces st&to
that the abdication of l)on CARLOS had been received
favourably in those districts, and was regarded as the
precursor of a marriage between the QUEEN and the
Prince of ASTURIAS.

Considerable fluctuations took place on the Madrid
Bourse on the 13th. The Three per Cents. closed at
31i for cash, and 32i account, and the Fives at 23+ ac-
count. O❑ the 14th the Threes declined to 314 cash,
and 32* account ; and the Fives closed at 23k.

The Paris papers are still occupied in discussing the
statements made by Sir C. NAPIER and Lord PALMER-
STON, relative to the steam navies and fortified ports of
the two countries, and the writers seem not a little puz-
zled what to make of them. The Journal des Debuts
claims cre.lit for the present Government, from the very
fears expressed on this side of the Channel at the grea
strength of France, and especially her means of attack
and defence, and ironically attributes all the glory to M.
TRIERS and the Left Centre. "It was easy," says that

journal, " to conceive the embarrassment into which our
opposition journals have been thrown by the speeches of
Sir C. NAPIER and Lord PALMERSTON ;" but it is curious
to observe how they try to get out of the dilemma. Is

our naval position improved ? Yes, it is so undoubt-
edly ; but then this has been done independent of our
Ministers, or rather in spite of them. The traitor:,

We take it there can be no sort of doubt about the
main features of this case. The correspondent of our
Contemporary (the Times) took the precaution of making
a formal application to the relieving officer of the union,
who admitted, in reply, that the application had been
rejected, except on the stipulation that the relief should
be granted as " a loan," and be repaid by the
poor old applicant. A loan, indeed ! Why the
board, or their relieving officer, might have
granted all that was asked and necessary in this matter,
without one instant of hesitation. If the Somerset-
house Council of Three had even addressed one of its
awful missives of censure to such offenders in the cause
of humanity—the latter would still have survived it !
The public would only laugh as heartily at its prepw-
terous attempts to enforce unifomity " of con‘trueti.,n'
in the interpretation of its crude " irsttuctions" and its
sleepy "minutes," as they have already laughed at its
attempts to enforce uniformity of diet. And with the
saute result too, the common sent.e and right feeling of
the public would ride over the most express authority
conveyed by a dozen such ill-digested concoctions as the
" Amended Poor-law," to a body so excessively uncon-
stitutional in the principles and the powers of its esta-
blishment as the Poor-law Commissioners, in favour of
the constitutional as well as inherent title to the sort of
relief claimed and refused in this case, and which is
still the indefeasible birthright, we are prepared to
maintain, of every Englishman.

would have willingly left us at the mercy and discre-
tion of England, but they were not allowed. The)
have raised the fortifications of Paris, they have laic
down railroads—but all this against their own will
They still remain as mean and miserable as we have re-
presented them to be ; and if France has a navy, al.
army, railroads, and steam ships, the honour belongs to
the Radical party alone. To the Radical party ? IsTe,
indeed ; to M. TRIERS and the Left Centre. Who has
governed the country for five years ? The Left Centre,

to be sure. Who has obtained the abolishment of the

right of search ? M. BILLAULT and the Left Centre.
Who passed the Fortifications Bill ? M. THIERS and the
Left Centre. Marshal EOULT and M. GuizoT have been
merely the puppets of the Left Centre. The part taken
by the Ministry is this—it makes fine speeches about
peace, and then goes
.to sleep in infantine security ;
while England, foreseeing war, is providing to meet it.
But read the two speeches of Lord PALMERSTON and
Sir CHARLES NAPIER, and it will be found that they
make the same reproach to the Tory Cabinet as is made
here against the Conservative Cabinet. It is accused of
leaving the means of defending the country to perish,
while France, they say, under the direction of an able
and powerful Government, is placing herself in a posi-
tion to invade England, and burn and destroy her ports
and arsenals !" The Presse takes a very different view
of the question, and treats the fears of Sir CHARLES
NAPIER as purely imaginary. We give the following
extract as a specimen :

The report which the last advices from America
have brought to England of the declaration, by Cali-
fornia, of her national independence, is on.. of imme-
diate moment by no means commensurate with the pro-
bable importance of such an event on the future relations
of the Old and the New World. Already we perceive
our excitable friends, the citizens of the United States,
are revelling in the anticipation of the new State
" knocking at the doors of Congress to be admitted into
the Federal Union." Already does the prospect of a
new dismemberment of the vast elements heretofore
comprising the immense Mexican territory stimulate the
unscrupulous passion for territorial aggrandisement,
wbich is so eminently characteristic of the " Annexing
Republic." This is all very natural, perhaps ;—a feel-
ing compatible enough with the notion which its
citizens have lately taken up of absorbing,
within the area of their own federation, all the
inhabited or habitable regions of the continent
on which they are established. For ourselves, disap-
proving on general principles of the policy of giving
further extension to our own territorial possessions,
we should be sorry to see our Government establishing
—by the treaty and accommodation of course—its
ancient pretensions on California, although there is,
perhaps, no country on the shores of the " Vermillion
Sea," (as that portion of the Western Waters of
America are called), on which the capital, energy,
and commerce of Great Britain could realise a more
speedy or profitable development. And, probably, there
is no country on the surface of the globe in which
we have done less to improve the advantages offered by
an ancient connexion with it. Its pearl fisheries,
though long discontinued, or very inadequately worked,
there is good reason to believe from very recent observe-

" Sir C. Napier has fallen into most ridiculous exaggerations,

He has underrated beyond measure the power of his country, and
swelled up beyond all bounds that of France. Such hyperbolical
assertions cannot obtain credit without danger. It is so much the
more necessary to re_establish the truth in this respect, that our
Ministerial journals have affected to take for gospel the fantastical
speech of the Gallant Commodore, proudly opposing it to those per.
sons who say that our naval resources are not what they ought to be,
and who urge the Government to increase them. That Sir C. Napier
should give proofs of ignorance when speaking of our affairs, is not
very astonishing, although he has abused somewhat too much the
permission he might lay claim to of being raistals en, as we shall
show just now. But the French journals must not be permitted
to fall into the same errors, and there is no excuse for their echoing
his assertions. Sir C. Napier has maintained two things; first,
that our coasts are in a formidable state of defence; and, se.
condly, that our navy, and, above all, our steamers, had reached
such a point of development as to leave the navy of Great Britain
far behind. To state this opinion is almost to criticise it sufficiently.
As to the new packets that are being constructed, that is a fact due
to the imagination of Sir C. Napier. No order in this respect has
been given or could have been given. Nothing will be done until
after the vote of the Bill now pending, and then the packets that
are to be built will belong altogether to commerce, and not to the
Royal Navy."

In the Chamber of Deputies the estimate for improv-
ing and strengthening the harbour of Algiers came under
discussion, when the Members showed themselves more
lavish of the public money than even Marshal SOULT.
The Minister of War had demanded only 1,500,000 f.
for that purpose, but the Committee thought the sum
too small, and recommended a grant of 2,000.000 f.
(80,0001.), which was voted, after a slight opposition.
The strike of the journeymen carpenters still con-
tinued. " Two weeks," says the .Reforme, " have now
nearly elapsed since the strike' commenced, and we
are afraid that this will not be the last. The workmen
are determined not to abate their demand ; they have
even enhanced their original propositions, and now claim
for journeymen of all grades uniform wages of five
francs a day." M. GulzoT had a long conference with
Lord COWLEY on Wednesday, at the English embassy.
On Thursday Marshal SEBASTIAN! read the report of
the Committee appointed to examine the Slave-trade
Convention Bill. The Committee fully approve of the
t rms agreed to, pay high compliments to the nego-
tiators, the Duke DE BROCLIE and Dr. LUSBINGTON,
and recommend the most scrupulous and faithful exe-
cution of the treaty, and the adoption of every means at
the disposal of the French Marine for rutting down the
infamous traffic in slaves. This is a gratifying result,
as the new treaty, we are convinced, will be infinitely
more effectual than all those that have yet been nego-
tiated.

tions by European travellers, who had, like Lieut. HARDY,
for example, peculiar opportunities of communicating
with and mixing among the native divers and fishers,
might be rendered at least as productive as in the best
periods of its yield in past years. But passing over its
other and more imp ,rtant products, vegetable and
mineral, we confess that we should like to have some as-
surance that in any new political position which Cali-
fornia may be about to assume, she may be induced to
treat with our own Government on terms which shall
giv,o us ready access to, and the unlimited facilities of,
her barbours for our fleets and our merchantmen. No
more extensive or perfect harbours, so far as tl.eir na-
tural features, as yet unimproved by art, are concerned,
have presented themselves to the research of commerce
since these were first discovered by the intrepid CORTEZ,
now three hundred and ten years ago.
One of these, as we had often read, and have lately
been assured through the official dispatches of a French
admiral, would suffice to accommodate the vast navy

The Three per Cents. closed on the Bourse on Thurs-
day at 84f. 15c. ; the Five per Cents. at 122 f. 10c. ;
Orleans Railroad Shares, 1,215 f. ; Rouen, 1,085 f. ;
Vierzon, 780 f. Uastre, 870 f. ; Avignon, 1,022 f. 599,