The Sun.
London, England, 1844-08-26 00:00:00

antve

LONDON, MONDAY, AUGUST 26, 1844.

The Morning Herald declares that it notices, once
more, "with no unfriendly spirit, a charge" which it
distinctly stated, a month ago, against Lord MEL-
BOURNE and his Cabinet—namely, " that his Lordship
and his Whig colleagues were in the habit of opening
Mr. O'CoNNELL's letters in the Post-office." This
charge our Contemporary "regrets to say" rests on
such authority as it cannot hastily reject;" for "the
confession was made by Lord MELBOURNE himself in
the most august presence in the country, and in the
presence of too many witnesses of inferior, though
still of exalted, rank, to be retracted." And it is very
delightful to find the Herald discoursing thus em-

phatically on the monstrous practice it now repudiates;
.... we are most unwilling t) believe, implicitly, an
accusation which, if true, must brand the Whig
Cabinet with an indelible and eternal mark of infamy
and dishonour. To open the letters—of a Member of
Parliament—of a man entrusted by the people with
the solemn charge of their interests—is clearly a high
crime and misdemeanour against the constitution."
\\re entirely concur in—and have, on many recent
occasions, in specific terms, advocated—these senti-
ments. We denounced, in terms of equal strength
and reprobation, the scandalous offence to which Sir
JAMES GRAHAM pleaded guilty, of having issued
official warrants to authorise the detention and open-
ing of letters in their passage through the Post-office.
But the Herald found no offence on account of this
in Sir JAMES'S conduct. We, too, contended, in sub-
st ince, that the practice of clandestinely opening
letters whilst they were within the assumed sacred
trusteeship of the Post-office, was "a high crime and
misdemeanour against the constitution." But that
which the Herald perceives to be manifestly such in
Lord MELBOURNE, it would seem never to have sus-
pected in Sir JAMES GRAHAM. Although it holds
that this species of delinquency in a Whig Premier, if
truly charged, "must brand a Whig Cabinet with an
indelible and eternal mark of infamy and dishonour,"
it cannot see that the same offence, in. any way, should
affix to the Home Secretary of State of a Conservative
Administration any such stigma. If our memory
rightly serves us, the Herald was quite facetious at
the idea of imputing that to Sir JAMES, as officially
flagitious, or in itself indefensible, which had been no
toriously done by all his predecessors in office. But
it appears that, however convenient it may have been
for the purpose of our Contemporary when this grave
charge, in the case of M. Mazur(' and others, was
brought forward against one of its Ministerial patrons
by Mr. THOMAS DUNCOMBR, to shirk the enormity
of the specific violation by falling back on the whole
stream of official precedents (bearing on its tide
Cabinet Ministers of all parties, and all shades of po-
litical opinions, for more than one hundred years
past), it afterwards discovered that it had been too
precipitate. By this generalizing, it had lost an un-
foreseen opportunity of "branding" a special delin-
quency, and this, too, committed by an enemy. Here
was a fault to be repaired at the earliest opportunity.
It had allowed a whole flight-of butterflies to escape,
in order that one, in which it was interested, might
not be folded in the net of a Parliamentary inquiry.
But it soon found, that among this flight, there was
another, a bigger, a more important individual, whom
it could not afford to lose. It resumes, therefore, in
its own person, the very chace which it had depre-
cated in others. Lord MELBOURNE is an "Emperor'.
of the largest class ; and so he is caught, and solemnly
pinned, and ostentatiously displayed, in the Herald's
newest specimens of political entomology, in opposi-
tion (we suppose) to Sir JAMES GRAHAM, impaled in
a similar manner in the "glass " cases of the Opposi-
tion Collections, as " Papilio inspiciens—(Giu-
nAm)"—a description which we humbly tender for
adoption.

Now, there is something, in all this, more than
amusing, though the fun is not small of seeing politi-
tical disingenuousness reduced to the shameless incon-
sistency of decrying in its opponents, to-day, as "
high crime and misdemeanour against the constitu-
tion," that very offence which, yesterday, in it,
friends, is not only considered venial, but almost
went out of its way to vindicate. There is, beyond
this absurdity, a legitimate moral to be deduced from
such party-serving tampering with principles. It is,
that the attempt to compromise truth is sure to entail
the discomfiture of him by whom it is made. The
practice so loudly and universally complained of is
right, or it is wrong. There is no halting between
its justification and its condemnation. Even if its
defenders rely on the miserably humble plea of ex-
pediency, that plea is consistent—intelligible so far as
it goes. But it is not intelligible or consistent for
one man to-day, and neither consistent nor intel-
ligible for another to •morrow. If the Herald had
had the frankness and the manliness to admit, on a
recent occasion, that the opening of sealed letters was
a gross and detestable perversion of official privilege
in Sir JAMES GRAIIAM, it might now, with perfect
consistency, denounce it—as we do, without hesita-
tion—a gross and detestable proceeding in Lord
MELBOURNE. The difference between us is this
that, writing under no trammels of party, or inte-
rested feeling, we as indignantly and distinctly pro-
test against the constitutional misdemeanour in Lord
MELBOURNE, as we have protested against it in Sir
JAMES GRAHAM. But the Herald, after overlooking,
or palliating, or defending this course of action in its
political client, the Right Hon. Baronet,.turns round
upon it, and holds it up to public execration, when
resorted to by its political adversary, the Noble Vis-
count. The fact is (for reasons which, having urged
in former articles, we will not press again upon our
readers), the: power of sealed letter-violation, whe-
ther authorised in the Secretary of State by the Act
of ANNE, and continued by Mr. LABOUCHERE'S Post-
office Acts Consolidation Bill—or not—is morally
inexcusable in theory ; whilst for reasons of sound
policy, as well as on the ground of immutable rights,
and national honour and public faith, and even on
the much-relied one of political expendiency itself, it
is absolutely indefensible. The accident of Whig or
Tory connexion cannot affect, by one jot, the strength
of the principle. What was thus tainted with wrong
and fraud in the official acts of Lord MELBOURNE,
cannot have been more pure or less to be execrated in
Sir JAMES GRAHAM.
But it may be that the Herald's emphatic instance of
the letters " of a Member of Parliament," is meant to
suggest a difference between the case of Mr. O'CoN-
NELL'S correspondence and that of M. MAzzINI. Be
it so. The " difference " is even then worthless, for
it leaves the case established against Sir JAMES
GRAHAM untouched. It was charged by Mr. Dusr-
COMBE that his own letters had been opened at the
Post-office. The charge was not answered, but it
was not denied. Mr. WALLACE stated, in the broadest
terms, that his letters for some time met with the same
treatment. The accusation was not repelled, for it
was true. Besides, it was admitted that diplomatic
correspondence of foreign Ministers had been, shall
we say, habitually opened, under a Conservative Go-
vernment. The Herald surely does not mean to in-
timate that it was a greater crime in a Whig Go-
vernment to have violated Mr. O'CoNNELL's corre-
spondence ? Again, we say—in few words—the
NN hole practice, from beginning to end, with its sta-
tutable authority, Ministerial precedents, and official
usage, is in all respects base, pitiful, and inexcusable
—a degradation to the Minister who resorts to it, a
reproach to the country which tolerates such a
Minister.

We perceive in a recent number of the London
Medical Gazette some sensible observations on the
pernicious tendencies of certain societies (exceed-
ingly common in the most densely-peopled localities
of all great towns, but more especially in those which
are situated within the manufacturing districts),
called " Burial Clubs." The scheme of these clubs
assures to the parents of an infant child, subscribing
from the period of its birth a few pence per week to
the society's funds, a certain large amount in the
event of the infant's death, to provide—in nomine ex-
pensarum—as it were, for its funeral. The rate of
the subscription and the amount of the reversionary
sum thus assured, vary, of course, with the circum.
stancess of the case, the amount of the latter being
determined, in most cases, by such considerations as
whether the subscription was commenced immediately
after the birth, or at a later period, the rate of the
weihly premium contributed, &c. But, at any rate,
it would seem that where one or both of the parents
are in constant employment, they frequently sub-
scribe to two, three, four, even six different clubs of
this nature. On the death of the child who has been
thus " entered" of such associations, the parents may,
in this way, become entitled to—and may actually re-
ceive—sums varying in the aggregate, from 101. to
501. even. Thus in these parents there is created and
vested an unnatural money interest in the death of
their own offspring. Are the most precious ties of
kindred always strong enough to bear and resist tile
terrible force with which the iron-grasp of avarice, or
the gloomy energie3 of hopeless poverty, will occa-
sionally attempt to rend them asunder? Here is a
dreadful question for their consideration, who devote
themselves to the patient study of the causes of great
crimes in combination with great poverty,
appalling
ntown
populations. There is no disguising the
truth that must form the answer to the question we
have asked. Infanticide, on a scale of fearful magni-
tude, is the result of this organized, though unin-

tended, temptation I Some months ago, in comment-
ing on the important matters comprised in Mr•
CHADWICK'S very interesting Report on the Sanatory
Condition of large Towns, we pointed out the evi.
&nee given as to the wilful destruction—the
p )sitive murder—by processes more or less sum-
mary, of infant children who have been made the
objects of subscription in burial clubs, by parties re-
siding in the cellars of Manchester or Glasgow, and
the squalid alleys of many other towns. That Re-
port was prepared under the instructions of, and
addressed to, the Right Hon. the Home Secretary ;
yet, up to this moment, no step (so far as we are
aware, at least) has been taken to put down, or
even to subject to the most stringent regulations and'
control these burial clubs. Nor is this all. The

highest medical authority has confirmed the reports
and sanctioned the opinions of Mr. WALKER'S inva•
luable testimony to the deleterious effects of our pre-

sent system of sepulture on the health (perhaps,
also, on the morals) of thickly populated
cities, &c. The crowded and disgraceful condition of
many of our church-yards and burial-grounds, as well
some belonging to Dissenting proprietory chapels, as
to chapels and churches of the Establishment, after
impregnating the atmosphere with noxious and
loathsome vapours, generating virulent fevers, and disse-
minating disease and death wherever the ventilation is
imperfect of the street and neighbourhood in which the
putrescent gases are exhaled—compels the parties in-
terested in the fees upon interments to close their
grounds, or to become accessories to the offence
against society of poisoning the living, by subject-
ing them to the fatal influences given out by the
corrupting dead. As a middle term—a compromise
of some sort, between their duty to their species, and
the claims of their own purses—they permit their ser-
vants to violate those decent observances which the
precepts of education and religion, not less than
the instinctive prejudice of our common nature, con-
spire to make us regard as sacred. Long before
the work of decomposition has advanced to that point
at which the buried body is resolved into the dust of
its original elements—it is exhumed, chopped up,
mutilated, dishonoured, shovelled and thrown about
and mixed up with all other masses of undistinguish-
able mortality—vile and revolting in the general
hideousness of its decay, indeed ; but once—and that
perhaps recently—organised in all physical beauty,
instinct with life and passions, informed by intellect,
and embodying immortal souls. The relics of mor-
tality are thus torn from their last resting place, and
thus desecrated by the grave-digger or the sexton,
who i 3 so to economise the capacity of the Golgotha
of which he is the steward, as to find the means of
making it swallow up more coffins, although their
over-accumulation has already upheaved the sepulchral
soil a foot or more above the surrounding locality.
Let those who may imagine this description to be
exaggerated peruse the Commons' Report on the
means of preserving the health of towns, &c., the sub-
sidiary report of Mr. WALKER, or the able article
contributed on this shocking but most important
subject, about two years ago, by the Westminster
Review, and the much more recent narratives in our
own columns of proceedings at the ground in Por-
tugal- street. We would refer more particularly to
the horrors proved on the evidence of witnesses, but
too competent and too credible, as to such practices
in the church-yard and the burial-ground of St.
:_lement Danes, and the disgusting receptacles in
Drury-lane and Portugal-street. And yet, on
the face of that evidence, of those reports, of
the dreadful experience supplied at intervals, pre-
cisely in these localities, according to Mr. WALKER,
and the sextons or grave-diggers examined, of spotted
anti other malignant fevers, consequent on the open-
ing of graves in ground saturated and still absolutely
reeking with the corruption of death, we see that
graves are still opened every week in the most
crowded part of the Strand,—for example, in Saint
Clement's Church-yard. We remember it was given
in evidence either by the able surgeon, whose name we
have mentioned, or before the Commons Committee,
that there was one remarkable family vault, even—
within the walls (however), of that Church,
which had never been opened within the
memory of any inhabitant, without consequences
more or less fatal to those who came within the ma-
lignant operation of the gases thereby disengaged.
Now, we cannot help thinking that the practices we
cp:lak of, as incident to these attempts to keep up the
"burying business " in grounds, long since become,
and still acting as, pestiferous nuisances to their
neighbourhoods, must hare a baneful effect upon the
mural perceptions, and the natural feelings of those
poorer and more hard-faring classes of the labouring
community with whom the workmen employed in
such outrages to the dead are most likely to come
into contact. The finer sympathies which may well
subsist, and are so generally found, in the bosoms of
the humblest of our fellows, are soonest worn out by
collision with more callous natures. A medical prac-
titioner, examined before the Committee we have

named, remarks :
" I used often to observe great apathy in a certain
class about the death of their children. They did not
seem to look on the death of the young as the great evil
which it is commonly regarded ; they said, God took
care of young children who died ; that their death did
not matter much ; that life was full of hardships and
misery, and that the child was provided for when it
Hod.' This feeling I found to be rather common."—
(3,313, p. 203.)
how short an interval, in the mind of a parent
thus reasoning, must be interposed between a passive
obedience tothe decrees of PROVIDENC a, and an impious
nacrifice of its manifestation in the gift of life I The
wholesome prejudices that honour, or revere, or
respect tb e memory, and even the ashes of the dead,
once extinguished by the coarse example of the prac-
tices we have hinted at—even the bosom, it seems, of
the father or the mother is inaccessible to the claims
of helpless infancy upon the most universal
affections implanted in all nature. Sordid ava-
rice expedites, by wilful murder, the term of that
infant life, which but for its intervention would have
been, perhaps, extended into many years, to accom-
plish, who shall say, what destinies ? Surely these
are crying evils, demanding (as we have ventured on
former oouasions to urge in the strongest language)
the instant and most emphatic interference of the law
and its authorities. The one of these evils
is, we apprehend, cognisable at common law,
(as an offence against the public health),
by indictment or otherwise. The other—these
burial clubs—as being in the nature, perhaps,
of benefit societies—it may be more difficult
to deal with. A more specific remedy—by statute,
possibly--z nay be acquired ; but that infant murder
follows on these burial fund associations, is a con-
nexion of cause and effect not more palpable to our
judgment than that a brutalising demoralisation is
consequent on the notorious desecrations of the sanc-
tuary of Elie grave, rendered indispensable by the still
permitted and disgusting practice of continued inter-
ments in our over-gorged church-yards and burial-
grounds.

Accounts from Madrid of the 17th inst. state that
the most perfect tranquillity prevailed in that capital
TI e Duke of OssuNA was dangerously ill. The QUEEN
arrived at Valencia at four o'clock on the morning of
the 15th. The Madrid papers contain no news from
Morocco. _ _ _ _ _

The Thar .e per Cents. closed at 27 1-16, at sixty
days ; the -.Floating Debt at 591; and the Coupons,
at 241, at :sixty days.
Madrict journals and correspondence of the 18th
have been. received.

The Court will return to Madrid on the 20th. The
reason wltich has determined General NAR VABZ to hasten
the return of her MAJESTY i 5 not known, and it is con-
sidered by many that he must have some very pressing
cause for so doing, and in hurrying on the Royal
pal ty in spite of the fatigue occasioned by the great
heat.

The authorities thought it necessary to adopt some
fresh precautions for the preservation of order, which
were continued through the night, but nothing took
place Can any way to account for this apparent useless
demonstration of force.
We are without fresh accounts from Morocco.
The Tiempo contains a letter from Gibraltar of the
10th, ;:i3 which the English are openly charged with
having prevented the conclusion of peace between
France' and Morocco. The letter concludes by charg-
ing E.ng land with the intention of seizing upon Tan-
gie:s, in order to have an ;entire command of the
Sti al ts. The Gazette publishes a royal decree of the
14th, organizing a naval force for the repression of
smuggling. The vessels employed on that duty are
to be commanded by officers of the royal navy. The
ford, is to consist of 2 steamers, 6 brigs, 2 schooners,