The Sun.
London, England, 1845-01-09 00:00:00

efitrb Ntation

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
PRAM THE EVENING PAPERS OP THIS DAY.
GLOBE.--We add nothing in the way of argu-
ment
to the articles which have already appeared in
our columns on the injustice and impolicy of charg-
ing enormous fees on summary convictions which
involve merely nominal penalties, and allowing those
fees to be taken by the magistrates' clerks in lieu
of fixed salaries. The fines are apportioned by the
magistrates, according as the offences with which
they are called upon to deal are marked by
aggravating or extenuating circumstances. The dis-
cretion with which the law invests the magis-
trate is sufficiently wide. In cases of assault and of
trespass, the fine may range from the smallest coin of
the realm to five pounds. But, however frivolous the
charge, if conviction follow, and a farthing fine be
affixed, the costs upon the conviction are the same r s
they would have been had the highest penalty allowed
by the law been inflicted by the magistrates. This is
so manifestly unjust in principle, and, in the great
majority of cases, so oppressive in practice, that it
requires only to be stated in order to show the neces-
sity fur a more equitable mode of apportioning the
costs on summary convictions in trifling assault and
trespass cases. A correspondent supplies us with a
case which forcibly illustrates the observations we
have now made on the practice we have on former
occasions endeavoured to expose, with a view to its
abolition :
"At the Woodstock petty sessions, on Wednesday,
a trumpery charge was preferred against George Cooper,
a poor man, of Bladon, by Elliott, a gamekeeper to the
Duke of Marlborough. The magistrates showed their
opinion of the charge, which was not denied by the de-
fendant, by fining him one halfpenny, which, with the
magistrates' clerk's fees—thirteen and sixpence!—was
paid."
In this case, a fine of one-halfpenny was the penal
infliction for the offence committed by the poor roan
against the Duke of Marlborough's gamekeeper. And
sorely did the Duke's gamekeeper feel—who, doubtless,
thought the halfpenny fine was an affront put upon
him, and upon the illustrious individual of whose game
he was one of the authorised protectors. Our cor-
respondent adds !—" Elliott, the complainant, was
insolent to the Bench. He had the impudence to tell
the magistrates that he knew more than all of them
put together. The half-penny fine evidently did not
accord with the fellow's expectations." And yet the
complainant, had his stomach for revenge not been, of
most capacious size, might have been satisfied. The
Bench, it is true, had been considerate—perhaps
merciful—in its views of the charge against the
defendant. But then the clerk's fees were suffi-
ciently exorbitant to gratify the moderate desires, even
of a Duke's gamekeeper. Thirteen shillings and six-
pence is the average amount of a fortnight's labour
wages in that part of Oxfordshire. Had the poor
fellow not been able to pay, a fortnight's imprison.
ment, at the least, in a felon's prison, would have
been the alternative ; where he must have
been maintained at the county charge, and
his family out of the parish rates. Lord
Denman's Act for discouraging the practice which
had grown up, of bringisg actions for slander,
petty assaults, and insignificant acts of trespass, has
had a salutary effect upon the litigious propensities of
individuals who were prone to run to a lawyer upon,
every trifling provocation, and upon those members of
the profession whose appetite for costs prevail over
their desire to protect the interests of their clients. The
dread of verdicts which leave the respective parties
in the action to bear their own costs, operates as a
valuable check on vexatious litigation; and thus saves
the time of the Courts and the pockets of the foolish.
If petty cases of the same kind, which are frequently
brought before magistrates in petty sessions, were
governed by the same rule ; and a frivolous complaint,
which results in a fine upon the defendant of a few
pence, were to subject the complainant to a moiety of the
costs, or to the payment of the whole, many of the
trumpery charges which consume the time of the
Bench, to the postponement of more important busi-
ness, would never be brought before the magistrates.
The parties would settle their differences in a way
better calculated to obliterate the recollection of their
quarrel, and to restore them to the tranquillity which
a trifling altercation had disturbed.
STANDARD. —The stability of the present
French Ministry is of too much importance to the
peace of Europe not to render all thinking men
anxiously alive to any danger with which Marshal
Soult and M. Guizot's Cabinet may seem to be threa-
tened. In this, as in all other cases, our suscepti-
bility to apprehension bears a direct ratio to the
value of the object in hazard. It is only upon this
ground we can account for the fears entertained
for the safety of a Ministry enjoying the most
ample and unreserved favour of the Crown, the full
confidence of the Chamber of Peers, and, clear of all
actual or possible defections, a working majority of
at the least sixty in the Chamber of Deputies, which,
comparing the numerical difference of the two assem-
blies, is just equivalent to Sir Robert Peel's majority
of ninety in our House of Commons at the com-
mencement of his auspicious administration. /n
such a state of affairs in France, we have
not the slightest apprehension of danger to
the present Cabinet, and we think that even the op
position to it that exists will sink rapidly in proportion
as its structure and design shall be developed ; the
nucleus of that opposition is the slave-trading interest.
There is at this moment sitting in Paris a committee
composed of delegates from all the slave-holding
states of the world, in communication with Al.
Billault, and the other French slave-traders. The
slave-holders have taken fright at the English
law of last year, which, by giving a large prefer-
enoe to sugar, the produce of free lobour,
holds out a strong temptation to the French Govern-
ment to imitate our Emancipation Act; and it need
scarcely be said that ware France to take this course,
she would give the death-blow to slavery all over the
world—we believe as much to her profit as to her
own honour. Great Britain and France united
may govern the world, to the utmost extent
that free and enlightened nations can desire to
govern ; they may command universal freedom,
and when a few years shall have thoroughly conso-
lidated the union, we trust that they will command it.
France, too, will have much less to pay for her half'
of this proud position as joint guardian of the liberty
of mankind, than England has paid; because, as the
accession of France would extinguish slavery at once.
there would be no after competition with slave la-
bour, such as England has been necessarily engaged
in. We repeat it, that independently of the honour,
France would reap a great profit from the imita-
tion of our Emancipation Act. The French
slave-owners, however, would have only a common
share in this national gain, while they would lose, or
think they would lose, in the deprivation of their pro-
perty in human flesh. They therefore, stimulated as
they are by the suggestions of their brethren of the
United States, of Cuba, and of the Brazils, will
employ every exertion to overturn a Ministry which
they believe to be too honest and too philanthropic
not to detest slavery. 'Were these persons more nu-
merous than they are, they would, however, fail in
an assembly of Frenemen ; and, indeed, we know
of no weapon that could be employed against them
more likely to ensure their failure than the eloye
upon the human flesh trade, and invective against the
Christian religion and natural humanity, forwarded
to the American Minister at Paris by Mr. Calhoun.
France has long since purified herself of the dross
of her revolution, but the noble spirit of freedom
and of universal philanthropy which adorned it still
remain. There is no danger, it is true, that France
will repeat the error committed in the case of St.
Domingo, turning an uneducated race loose to govern:
themselves. Perhaps she will also avoid some errors
committed in our Emancipation Act, which left
an uneducated race too free from the neces-
sity of paving for their support and their liberty
by their labour ; but that, sooner or later,
she will govern the coloured population of her
coloniv.s as citizens, and not as slaves, we have
no more doubt, than we have of her maintaining
her high position among nations. Meanwhile, it is
not by a conspiracy of foreign and domestic slave-
owners, that free and generous France will allow
a Ministry to be overthrown, even though that
conspiracy conciliate the aid of the parti preire,
and obtain the accession of the French Lord
Palmerston, Count Mole—the French Lord Pal-
merston in his political versatility, in his greedi-
ness of place, and in his Russian' predilections.
France will not submit. to a coalition like this. As.
regards the right of search question, there can be
little doubt that the British Government would be,
merely for the sake of the peace of the world, and to
gratify the King of the French, disposed t
make every concession, and will make every con-
cession that can reasonably be demanded. And
independently of these considerations of more ge-
neral policy, it is plain that by coining to a per-
fectly good understanding with a nation so powerful
as France, and, as a nation, so resolutely bent
to suppress the slave trade, our Government will
adopt the course best calculated to effect our
common object. Let the officers of the British
and French navies cordially co-operate, as if they
were engaged in one and the same service, and
the slave trade will soon be at an end, despite
the slave traders of the Brazils, of Cuba, of the
United States, and of Nantes. For our own part, we
would, to secure such co-operation, be disposed to
submit to anything short of an indignity, and that
we are quite certain the present French Govern-
ment would not be likely to offer. Here is the state
of the case—the slave trade exists at present only
on account of the jealousies of Great Britain and
Fra.ece, though the Governments of both coun-
tries are most anxious to suppress it. What
sacrific e possible in the case would be too great for

IMPROVEMENT of the DWELLINGS
OF THE LABOURING CLASSES.
(From the Builder.)
The master carpenters and builders residing in and
near the metropolis have resolved upon petitioning
Parliament early in the ensuing session for such a
modification of the window duties as will insure a
better system of ventilation than that which at pre-
sent exists, particularly in the dwellings of the, la-
bouring classes. The following is a copy of the
petition resolved upon at a meeting of the " Society
of Master Carpenters," held on the 23d ult., at the
Freemasons' Tavern, Great Queen-street, and which
has already been very numerously signed.
" To the Honourable the Commons of the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in
Parliament assembled.
"The petition of the undersigned Master Car-
penters and Builders residing in and near the
metropolis,
" Humbly showeth—
" That your petitioners are desirous of adopting
every improvement in construction which may tend
to promote the healthfulness of dwelling-houses, in
accordance with the valuable evidence laid before
your Honourable House by Sanatory Commissions,
out that your petitioners have daily reason to observe
that a fatal obstacle exists to the improvements most
needed, in the present mode of assessing houses to
the window duties.
"'That the window duties, as now assessed, operate
as a premium upon defective construction, the occu-
pier having a direct interest in blocking up every
opening intended for the admission of light and air
that can possibly be dispensed with, to lessen the
burden of taxation.
" That under the existing system, an unglazed
aperture only seven inches wide cannot be made for
purposes of ventilation in a cellar in London without
the payment of an average duty of Bs. per annum,
although such an opening is now permitted to be
made free of duty in the town of Liverpool, by a
local Act of last session, 7 and 8 Vict., cap. 51.
" That your petitioners are deeply impressed with
a conviction that the influence of light and air are
intimately connected with the moral as well as the
physical state of the whole population. That the
exclusion of light is unfavourable to habits of per-
sonal cleanliness, and that the crowded lodging-houses
of the poor become necessarily abodes of diseases
when rendered by fiscal enactments gloomy recepta-
cles of dirt.
" Your petitioners therefore pray your Honourable
House to put an end to the serious evils arising from
this cause, by either a repeal of the window duties or
by such a limitation of their present burden, that
taxation may no longer keep pace with improvement,
and that there may be no check or hindrance to the
construction of light, cheerful, and well•ventilated
dwelling-houses for any class of the community.
" And your petitioners will ever pray," &c.

AMERICAN Saws.—The Sheffield Mercury of Sa-
turday last says :—" Many of the artizans of this town,
as well as other individuals, have had their attention
arrested during the last few days, by the display in the
window of Mr. Eadon, the carver and gilder, In Fargate,
of a large lithographed show-bill of the firm of Worrell
and Co., machine and tool makers, New York. Some
of the lookers on contented themselves with admiring