The Sun.
London, England, 1844-05-16 00:00:00

"'Aretc

LONDON, THURSDAY, MAY 16, 1814.

The House of Commons met at the usual hour,
and, after a number of petitions had been presented,
as Hon. Member moved that the House be counted,
ancir as only thirty-four Members were present, the
House adjourned.

At the weekly Covent-garden meeting of the
one
League last night, Mr. JAMES WILSON, who wads
the
of the principal speakers of the evening, quote
following remarkable pas,:age, in direct recommenda-
tion of free-trade, from a speech which was delivered
-by the Earl of CHATHAM, eighty years ago, in the
Rouse of Lords :—" I do not despair of my country,
And I have no objection to state what, in my opinion,
would restore it to its once flourishing condition.
Give freedom to commerce, lighten the pressure
•of • taxation, and you will have no complain-
ing in your streets. As commerce is al-
v,ays a change of equivalents, ':a nation that
will not buy cannot sell, and every restriction to
ii:nprts is an obstacle to exports. On the other hand

the more we admit the productions of foreign nations,
the more extensive becomes their demand for our com-
modities. Let the system of our corn-laws be cautiously
and gradually abrogated, and allow the cheap agricul-
tural produce of the north of Europe and America to
be freely introduced, and we shall obtain an ex-
tended vent for our manufactures." These are, in
every respect, memorable words, full of plain, prac-
tical truths intelligible to the obtusest ca-
pacity ; and when it is borne in mind
that they express the calm, deliberate con-
victions of one of the most illustrious statesmen
that this or any other country every produced, we are
quite sure that they will be perused with the deepest
attention by our readers, and make a permanent im-
pression on their minds. Though nearly a century
has elapsed since they were spoken, during which pe-
riod—a brief one in the life of nations—the commerce
of the country has increased a hundred-fold, and it
has raised itself to the proud position of the first mer-
cantile community in the world—though, as a neces-
sary consequence of this astonishing progress, ques-
tions of trade are infinitely better understood than they
were in the days of Lord CHATHAM, yet these remark-
able words of his Lordship are quite as liberal and much
more intelligible than any that have been spoken by Sir
ROBERT PEEL or his colleagues on the same sub-
ject—a striking proof how little benefit our states-
men have derived from the bustling, practical, com-
mercial experience of the last eighty years, and how
small is the advance that sound principles of legisla-
tion have made among them. Lord CHATHAM with,
comparatively speaking, little or no help from experi-
ence, seems to have known quite as much about free
trade as our present Premier, notwithstanding that the
latter has had a thousand practical advantages which,
from the character and circumstances of the age in
which he lived, and which, for some years, he
moulded at his will, were wholly denied to the
former. But the truth is, CHATHAM was in many
respects a statesman in advance of his time; while
Sir ROBERT PEEL is a statesman behind, rather than
before it, and unable to mould or discipline it, from a
want of capacity fully to appreciate and sympathise
with its stirring and eventful character. Hence his
mind is in a perpetual state of vacillation and bewil-
derment, and he only maintains his position by oscil-
lating, like a pendulum, between the free-traders and
the monopolists, now throwing a sop to one and now
to the other party, and keeping both in a constant
state of suspense and uneasiness. Unable to play a
commanding and decisive part on the political arena,
he must perforce content himself with playing a
small one ; and seems to think—a very pleasant re-
flection to a timid and distrustful statesman—that
Government has no other duty to fulfil than to keep
itself at the helm, by dint of a majority in the House
of Commons, which though at present undoubtedly
large, cannot be relied on with any confidence for the
future. Mr. BRIGHT, who took the chair at the
League meeting, alluding to the approaching election
contest for South Lancashire, observed He was
quite certain there were thousands within those
walls, at that hour, who were anxious that the
great contest, which was now commencing in Lan-
cashire, should end in the signal triumph of the free
trade cause. Yes, the present meeting sympathised
with that contest. It was anxious to convey to the
Lancashire electors its sense of the importance of
that contest, and he found that even they, anxious as
they were, did not regard the struggle as of the im-
portance which it merited." We should hope that
there are but few free-traders who are not fully alive
to the paramount importance of having a Member of
their own principles returned for South Lancashire.
Such a return would at the present crisis be a
triumph for the good cause greater even than
that achieved a few months since in the me-
tropolis ; and we trust therefore that every man
who has a vote to give, will make a point of giving it
in favour of Mr. BuowN. That gentleman's pros-
pects of success are, we are happy to assure our
readers, exceedingly encouraging ; still, the mono-
polist party—who are quite shrewd enough to see
that the struggle is one of life or death to them—are
actively on the alert throughout the county ; and
not an hour must be lost in the attempt to counteract
heir exertions.

A case which was brought on Monday, before the
Sitting Magistrate for the Clerkenwell district, calls
for a few words of animadversion. It related to the
misconduct of one of the New Police Force. From
whatever cause the fact may arise, it is the fact—that
a considerable section of this well-paid constabulary
have lately been earning a disgraceful notoriety for
all kinds of scandalous misconduct. We have strong
misgivings that a yet more numerous body of
offenders, of the same cloth—between the timidity of
individuals who are afraid to appear as complainants
or witnesses against them, and the somewhat over-
strained leniency of certain magistrates towards those
officials when brought before them as culprits—is
concealed from public reprobation. In the course of
a very few weeks we have had one police-officer de-
nounced for giving information to, and being bribed
by, keepers of houses of ill fame ; others for indecent
and violent behaviour; not a few for intoxication;
another for a robbery committed on a comrade, by
ransacking the pockets of his trowsers while he thought
him asleep ; and on Monday a policeman was charged
with an outrageous assault on a brother constable,
er " officer," as they be-dub one another. It is really
high time that the morale of this force should be
rigidly inspected and revised. Indeed—regard being
had to the extremely liberal scale of their pay, ac-
commodation, and indulgences—for, of all these, they
are the recipients—any offences against decorum or
morality, any breaches of the peace or violation of the
law, on their part, so far from being screened or
lightly visited by the justice, under whose cognizance
such instances of misconduct may come, ought to be
most uncompromisingly dealt with, and punished
accordingly. Any one who remembers the very
numerous cases that are, from time to time, occur-
ing of scandalous behaviour in this "corps," will con-
cur with us in thinking that there is no class of the
metropolitan population which, in reference to its
limited numbers, supplies a larger average quota of
candidates for offensive notoriety than the metropoli-
tan police.
We have always borne a willing testimony to their
general usefulness, and—until within these two or
three years—their general good conduct; but, of late,
some individuals among them are constantly exciting
public indignation by the excesses proved against
them. In the criminal courts they are rebuked by
counsel and judges, for over-officious and mischievous
meddling between parties—tampering with witnesses
—prompting evidence, or unduly obtaining it by im-
proper promises, &c. On duty, they are justly re-
proached with the pruriency of their attentions to
servant girls and nursery maids, and a consistent ne-
gligence of the public thoroughfares, and the removing
of the bad characters who infest them. We have wit-
nessed, ourselves, in the newly opened Trafalgar-
square, the impunity which, for some days, they ex•
tended to the idle and noisy vagrants, of ages from
fifteen to twenty, who climbed over, and ran along,
and defaced the parapets of the terrace, and polluted,
with all sorts of rubbish and dirt, the water in the
basins of the fountains ; at the same time they ex-
pelled, with boisterous and most unnecessary harsh-
ness and insolence, every little group of unoffending
children, who were seated about the square. It was
only on a personal remonstrance being addressed to
him, that one of the A division desisted from this
process of worrying the little girls, and betook him-
self to abating the nuisance of the ruffianism which
was going on at his elbow. In short, we see constant
complaints of a proneness to bullying, or the neglect
or the misconception of their duty, on the part of the
police, to an extent which is becoming the subject of
very general and grave complaint.
The case brought forward on Monday was of this
kind. A police constable of the C division (whose
name is suppressed in the reports) deposed that be-
tween nine and ten o'clock on the previous evening,
he had found one Join.; Asbnxws "creating a distur-
bance" with five or six females at Cow cross; that he
desired ANDREWS to desist, but that the man became
only the more violent, struck him on the breast two
or three times, and was only secured and taken to the
station-house with the aid of another policemen, whose
assistance this "letter G" was obliged to invoke.
But, " mark how plain a tale" was to " set him down."
This we give in the language of the report :
The prisoner solemnly denied having struck the officer ;. he
was talking to some female acquaintances, w
hen the police-
man came up, and pushed him away. He went into his own
house, a manna-store shop, in Cow-cross-street. The police-
man: was quite drunk, and behaved in a most insolent.. 11d
boasting ma.nser, fioprishing his batan over witnees's and

the females' heads. Were it not for another policeman who
came up when the rattle was sprung, 54 G would have been
much more violent. When pnsoner went into his own house
the constable came in, and dragged him out, and then took
him to the station-house.
A decent looking mechanic came forward and deposed to
the correctness of what the prisoner stated, whose conduct he
said was quite inoffensive. The policeman's manner was
bullying and offensive, and he was quite drunk.
Mr. LONG (to the policeman)—Did you obtain the assist-
ance of another officer? Constable—l did; 192 G.
Mr. LONG—Why is he not here? The constable made no
reply.
Mr. LONG-Did you, as stated, go into this man's house
and drag him out of it ? Policeman—l did go into his house.
Mr. LoNo—And you took him out of it ? Policeman—
Yes.
Mr. LONG—Then why did you not state this on your direct
examination? The policeman made no reply.
Mr. LONG—The prisoner is discharged. I believe his wit-
ness, and I am sorry to say that I do not believe much of
what has been stated by the policeman, whose conduct has
been most improper, and will, I hope, be made the subject of
inquiry elsewhere.
Sergeant Boysen promised to report the policeman's con-
duct to his superior officers.
It would be useless to point this narrative. It
carries with it its own confirmation, and its own com-
ment. We will only observe that whereas poor JoHN
ANDREWS is discharged, after a night's locking up,
and the brutal treatment described, having been him-
self the victim and not the offender, he gets no redress
for such an infamous outrage. Letter G, " the name-
less one," who is the offender and not the victim in
the case—who adds to the scandal of his "drunken
and bullying" deportment the mean subterfuge of a
false deposition, is told by Mr. LONG that he does not
" much believe him," and is recommended for a report
upon his conduct to the Commissioners. We suppose
it is about an equal chance whether this report be
made or not.

Now, something must be done in the shape of better
discipline, and securities for better behaviour, in this
very costly force. A little of the systematic attention
paid to the dressing and getting up of their clothes
should be devoted to a rigorous and impartial scrutiny
into their deportment, and offences such as we have
referred to should be punished, on proof, by instant
dismissal, in the first place. At present, in too large
a class of cases, they as little resemble keepers of the
peace in the discharge of their duties, as they do sol-
diers in their bearing or movements. They ought to
know that carrying a baton and making a diurnal re-
port to the superintendent or inspector, will no more
sufficiently qualify them for their employment, than
stand-up collars, and worsted braiding, and glazed
hats will give them that " air military" which they
all ludicrously affect—in defiance of impracticable
legs, unsorted feet, and that grotesque awkwardness
which are the characterics of so many among them!

A. connected, intelligible, and faithful statistical '
memoir of the principal elements of her material
power and political strength, is almost a debt of in-
struction which the Legislature of Great Britain owes
to posterity. Our advance in all the arts of peace
and war, prodigious as this has been, and directly in-
strumental in establishing us in our present position
of paramount influence, authority, and force among
all the nations of the world, is but a common-place
reputation by the side of that nobler renown which
we shall have achieved by the stupendous results of
that spirit of discovery which we have fostered and
protected in all the branches of moral and physical
science, of philosophic investigation, of political go-
vernment, and civil polity. In reference to each and
all of these subjects we shall have left landmarks to
guide, and provided havens to shelter, those who shall
be our successors in future ages, in following out
the same good works. Among the evidences of
unwearied industry, and of an enlightened liberality,
in ascertaining with scientific accuracy, and illus-
trating, by all the aids of trigonometric and hydro-
graphical surveys, the topography of these islands,
none will probably be deemed more remarkable or
found more useful and important than those surveys
which have been conducted, of late years, under the
superintendence of one branch of our ordnance service.

Of the Ordnance Survey of " Great Britain," how-
ever, admirable as it is in the conception of its plan,
the details of its management, and the manner of its
execution, the publication of the maps, charts, &c.,
seems to halt somewhat unaccountably. We are not
unaware of a portion of the difficulties which have
protracted its progress to completion. The necessity
of producing it, after certain portions of it had ap-
peared, on one common scale, raised formidable diffi-
culties in dealing with other portions still to be pub-
lished, or to which subsequent discovery and expe-
rience had shown that the adoption of an altered and
enlarged scale would have been most advisable.
Again, in the outset of this vast undertaking the ex-
pediency of incorporating into the construction of
the maps, the indications, and district, and boundary
lines of a geological survey, which might have been
conducted contemporaneously with the superficial
one, had been overlooked. In a later period of the
work this geological survey has been undertaken by
order of the Government, and so far as the public have
yet had the benefit of the data and information col-
lected by it, they have reason to be highly gratified
with the mass of invaluable facts and phenomena
which has been thus accumulated. A further diffi-
culty, of course, occurs, as to the earlier maps of the
Ordnance series for Great Britain, touching the mode
of communicating to them the same geological fea-
tures which, we trust, will claim everybody's admira-
tion in the more recent maps. Then, there are the
several claims of the mining counties of the south-
west and western districts of the island, and of the
northern and Scotch counties, to be pourtrayed on a
much larger scale than the Government have laid
down as that which shall be common to all the other
countries. There are, undoubtedly, perplexing pre-
tensions ; but where they are not conceded they can
scarcely be allowed in accounting for the delay which
has attended the consummation of this great national
work. The votes of Parliament on account of it

have been, moreover, continuous and most liberal;
So that we may speedily look, we trust, for the final
execution of the maps, and some general explanatory
Memoir to accompany them. The utility of such a
memoir it would be, we suppose, quite a supereroga-

tory labour to enforce. Without it, the value of their
labours, who have had the practical conduct of this
surrey, can never be adequately appreciated. With
it, that value will be enhanced a hundred-fold to the
present generation and to posterity.

Of such a "Memoir" as we suggest, a good ex-
emplar is supplied in the recently published "Report
of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the
facts relating to the Ordnance Memoir of Ireland,"
including Minutes of Evidence, Appendix, &c. From

the " Memorandum" by Sir R. PEEL, prefixed to the
report, it appears that the Right Hon. Baronet referred
in June, 1843, to these Commissioners, a certain
paper or representation which had been delivered to
him by a deputation of noblemen, gentlemen, resi-
dents, and proprietors of estates in Ireland; that a
similar representation had been addressed to the Lord-
Lieutenant of Ireland by the Council of the Royal
Irish Academy ; and that the principal points to
which the Premier directed the especial attention of
the parties to whom he deputed the inquiry (namely,
J. YOUNG, Esq., M.P., Captain BOLDERO, M.P., and
Lord ADARE), were the twelve enumerated in his
memorandum. These points regarded the nature of
the general information previously collected respect-
ing the geology, natural history, and statistics of Ire-
land; its collection, arrangement, collectors; the
money taken for the safe custody of the MS. volumes
comprehending such information ; present state and
future progress of the geological survey commenced
in Ireland; the digestion of a memoir for each county
of Ireland, connected with its statistics, history, and
antiquities, &c. We perceive that the minutes of the
evidence taken by the Commissioners arrange them-
selves under no less than forty-two heads ; of which,
the following are the most important :—Agriculture,
Antiquities, Botany, Census, Contouring, Drainage,
Economic Section, Education, Fossils, Geological
Surveys (French and English) of various districts,
County Histories and Inquisitions, Maps, Museums,
Railroads, Registration of Births, Deaths, and Mar-
riages, Statistics, Topography, Triangulation, and
Geology. We have been thus particular in our
abstract, because such an enumeration powerfully sug-
gests the extreme variety of their topics, their bear-
ing, and their interest, which a memoir, illustrative of
the Ordnance survey of Great Britain, adapted to our
moral, physical, and social condition in the present
times, could not fail to embrace. Such a work would
form an Indispensable text-book in the library of any
institution devoted to the purposes of economonic and
statistical instruction. Such an institution, organised

on popular principles, would ultimately produce an
incalculable amount of public benefit by the informa-
tion it would diffuse, by the curiosity it would excite,