The Sun.
London, England, 1826-08-08 00:00:00

From those netutat tailings,, which, - however nulated
or controuled by education and religion, will on some
occasions peep torth
_in spite of both. One such
instance is sufficient to sanction general charges on
the whole profession, and the liberality and disin-
terestedness of. the many, are forgotten in the indi-
vidual example produced in support of the accusation.
• Not so, .with an instance of a contraty character. If
a splendid example of right feeling, and the absence
of all interested motives, occur in a member of the
Established Church, a.4aiikle paragraph at most,
records the act,---the individual is scarcely praised for
his conduct--,4114, as for any
general observation in
favour of the
I;:rofession 'to wiiich he belongs in con-
sequence, i never is dreamt of. We shall, however,
make a':l exception to this rule, and in recording the
act 'Aich has done such honour to the venerable
DEAN of WINCHESTER, we shall take the liberty of
observing, that this adds another to the many proofs
which are daily given by our Clergy, of the conscien-
cious motives which influence their conduct. Dr.
lIENNELL, finding his advanced age and increasing
infirmities to disqualify him from the discharge of his
Own duties as Master of the Temple, has resigned
that valuable piece of preferment! l'his act requires
no comment. It speaks for itself, and its reward will
be in that feeling of conscious rectitude from which it
sprang. The Mastership of the Temple, has usually
been conferred on men distinguished for their learning
and powers of preaching; and we arc happy to under-
stand that the patronage of the Crown, is to be
bestowed on the present occasion also, on a divine,
distinguished for his deep research of the Scriptures—
his eloquence in expounding them—and his amiable
character as a Parish Priest. Report, at least, has
assigned the Mastership of the Temple, to the Rev.
C. BENSON, the Rector of St. Giles s. 1

Every age has its characteristic, and the charac-
teristic of the present age is excessive sensibility, and
double refined humanity.- Not that these virtues are
of better growth or greater strength, than those which
adorned -the bosom of our manly ancestors, but
fostered in a soil become rank by over-manuring, they
shoot into existence a large weakly leaf, at the ex-
tremity of a long, thin, and sickly stem. Time was,
when this excessive sensibility was confined to the
higher orders of society, and there for a time it did
4,00 d, because it helped to open the purse-strings of
the rich, and to pour their superabundance into the
lap of poverty. Although the idle and wicked,
equally with the industrious and virtuous, shared the
blessing, it mattered not, the circulating medium
was disseminated through unusual channels, but large
enough to contain a more copious supply, and thus,
upon the whole, the country was benefitted. Since,
however, nervous diseases went out of fashion, exces-
sive sensibility receded to the middling ranks, and
then instead of money, the poor only had precept ;
and hence arose a most vehement clamour against the
cruelty and blood-thirstyness of the laws, the abomina-
tions of the prison-house, and lastly the dreadful in-
humanity of indicting and punishing criminals ; a
clamour so much the more deafening, as it became
necessary to quiet the call upon the humane in theory
to be humane in practice also. Such may be said to
be the origin of this bastard virtue, as far removed
from the light of real and unaffected piety, as the gor-
geous glittering of tinsel is from the steady and supe-
rior lustre of the intrinsic metal.
We have been led into these remarks, in conse-
quence of reading certain effusions of the weekly
Press, commenting upon the conviction of HANNAH
GROVE, and sundry idle boys at Weymouth. Of
course, both fit subjects for the lucubrations of weakly
Papers, (pardon an antique pun). The feelings of
these gentlemen are most violently outraged by the
conviction and punishment of a young lady, and seve-
ral young gentlemen, who were so unhappy as to take
a fancy to the goods of other people, which fancy
they gratified by appropriating the .same to their
own ,use ; the young lady by stealing (we beg par-
don for the offensive expression), removing the lace
of another, not her mistress, but one who, for sundry
pounds sterling by the year, she condescended to as-
sist in the discharge of divers domestic employments,
as sweeping, washing dishes, Sec. The young gentle-
men robbed the parson's orchard. Old habits are not
easily got rid of, and again we transgress ; we mean
to say, that the young gentlemen, unhidden, entered
the parson's orchard, and helped themselves ; and re-
gardless of the maxim that their polite education might
Dave taught them to eat as much as they would, but
pocket none, they. carried off a few—hats full, and,
what is worse than all, for the sake of the lucre of
gain ; once a very unfashionable occupation, but now,
alas I legitimatized, and ranked as a necessary gentle-
manly attainment : so much so indeed, that we can
remember a very fashionable young man and soldier,
who boasted third he contrived (how, we don't pre-
tend to say), to spend 8001. in a year, with an in-
come of 3001., and never owed a sixpence.
But to return to these convictions, we should be
just as little disposed to treat these cases with levity as
any of our contemporaries, but, we think, the affected
gravity of the articles we have alluded to, deserves little
other notice. Guilt, in our eyes, is not the less guilt be-
cause the perpetrator is a child, or because the object
of it is of trivial value, and we hesitate not to say, that
the facts displayed in the case of the boys stealing
the apples, were not such
'as to leave us the alterna-
tive of regarding it as a boyish and childish trick
to satisfy a present longing
,
of their own, but no-
thing less than a systematic
piece plunder, under, for the
sake of the money the sale of the a
duce, and not for the sake of eating gees' pwlou:ld pdrio-
inct i o n which goes the whole way of showing thea
ne-
cessity of punishment to' check an aptitude t
in after-life render theseoso,oisittsteitalh:
which might otherwise
ful depredators, hoary headed sinners, and e
them to the public executioner, the disgrace of thegirri parentS, the scorn of the 'public.
With reference tn the case of HANNAH GROVE, we
admit that the 'proof was hardly Sufficient. But if the
Judge were blameable in the course he pursued, how
ruch more so must the jury be, who, in spite of
their' opinion, that the evidence-was not complete, for-
get their oaths, forget their respectability and their
duties, and bring in a verdict of conviction to satisfy
the 'impetuosity, or the partial direction of tha e
PresidiVudge, and thus leave for
punishment
Person t ey must believe to be innocent. ROW, we
therefor,
cannot' think that any jury could he led to do this,
e
much he driven to it ; and although,
the conduct of the Judge was not free' Iron objectioli
we ma be t'
si 1 Y sa isse. tt tis HANNntyyr not thewi victima of a 'falseinstance verdict. AH

,xtraet of a letter, dated Nitwit, July 27 c---" A
privateer captured four.slays ago a ship from the Ha-
}
anna°op, the crew h, bound t
ic taxidand likewise a Biscayan
of mthkwas pus on shore, with the