The Sun.
London, England, 1845-01-24 00:00:00

£flørithg

LONDON, FRIDAY, JANUARY 24, 1845.

not unfavourably disposed towards the experiment!
These were his very words :—" The doctrine of free
trade is the doctrine of common sense." "It might
be so," added Sir CHARLES KNIGHTLEY, " but the
agriculturists had not as yet sense enough to under-
stand it." The speaker is right. The agriculturists have
not sense enough fully to appreciate the advantages of
free trade; and GOD only knows when they will have,
for intelligence crawls among them quite at a snail's
pace, notwithstanding the indefatigable exertions of
the Anti-Corn-law League, who for years past have
been doing all they can to illumine them on the sub-
ject of their true interests. Poor Sir CHARLES
KNIGHTLEY ! He must he in a grievous state of
tribulation and perplexity, for nothing that Minis-
ters say or do, seems to give him the slightest plea-
sure. Nothing is right, but everything is wrong in
the political world. Society is turned quite topsy-
turvy, and men scarcely know whether they are stand-
ing on their heads or their heels. As for the present
Parliament, it is but a " compact of saints and sin-

ners—such a shoal of New England, and scarcely a
representative of Old England among them !" As
we are far too polite to venture seriously to differ
‘with the Hon. Member for Northamptonshire, we
‘‘ ill allow that there is some justice in his descrip-
tion of the House of Commons. It is really and
truly a " compact of saints and sinners"—the latter
preponderating—nevertheless, like another illustrious
personage, it is not so black as it is painted, but con-
tains within itself not a few of the seeds of good,

which, under favourable auspices, will, we trust,
bring forth fruit in due season.

The laws relative to debt, and to the protection of
game, are certainly among the most remarkable ano-
malies to be found in the institutions of this country.
The juxta-position in which we place them on the
present occasion is no more anomalous in itself, than
almost every aspect under which these laws present
themselves to the consideration of the statesman, the
le;islator, or the moralist. In the "Ninth Report of
the Inspectors of Prisons," just issued from the Par-
iementary Paper-office, we find these laws of debt
and of game, in ominous combination, among the most
prolific sources of supply from whence the inmates of
prisons in the northern and north-eastern dis-
tricts of England—are furnished. The law of debt
was certainly ameliorated to a certain extent, if, as
we believe, to mitigate its severity was to ameliorate
it ; by the remarkable acts of the two last sessions of
l'arlianient. But the vicious principle, we are fully
prepared to show, still remains in full vitality, which
assumes the fact of debt to raise the inference of
crime. For debt is still visited, irrespective of any
considerations of the circumstances under which it may
have been contracted, with a penalty at least as severe
as that awarded to very heinous offences and mis-
demeanours, with this aggravation of its intensity—
namely, that the unhappy debtor who has endured
the ruinous infliction of personal imprisonment (with
all its concomitants of severance from his family and
friends, disorganisation of his household, exile from
his home, loss of time, health, spirits, and good re-
pute in society, and does not clear himself even if he
he so fortunate as to collect the wherewith to pay the
(!ebt he is incarcerated for. Twenty shillings in the
pound will not suffice ; twenty-five shillings more in
the pound are frequently the amount of law ex

lenses incurred under our humane and honest system
—ten shillings more, or fifty per cent., is quite a
common supplementary claim on this account. If he
cannot pay these expenses, he may rot in his prison,
notwithstanding that he could pay his debt. A re-

tarn from all the prisons and "lock-ups" in the king-
loln of those who still remain in confinement for
costs, after finding the means and making the offer
to settle their principal debts, would be a most fear-
ful one. Now this, again, is an anomaly ; the fur-
tiler imprisonment of men whom you have clapped
up for not paying twenty shillings justly due from
r:lein, till they have paid ten shillings more for the
:uxury of being clapped up. But it is not more re-

marl:able than that which, to the commission of a
larceny with violence in a dwelling-house, assigns a
far less period of imprisonment, on the average of
.rases, than is usually endured by a declining but
well-principled tradesman who is precluded, by cir-
curnstances beyond his control, from promptly satisfy-
ing, the demands of his creditor. This inconsistency,
Lich is a feature common both to the law of debt
and the law of game, is heightened, in the case of
tie former, by its reaction on the social affections. We
may thus advert—it would be painful to dwell upon

—the exhibition which Mr. Commissioner FON-
nLANQuE's Court presented in the beginning of this
week. Lord HuNviNoTowEa being again brought
before that jurisdiction, his counsel indignantly di-
rected the attention of the judge to the fact that that
very foolish, but much harassed person, was in the
receipt of no other moneys but the allowance which
he derived from the spontaneous kindness of his mo-
ther, the Countess of DYSART, out of her separate
maintenance. The Earl, his father, who was present
at this appeal, is stated to have returned for answer—
" a smile ;" although as the Commissioner observed,

By way of enlivening the members of the North-
amptonshire Agricultural Protection Society, who held
their first anniversary dinner on Wednesday, at North-
, ampton, Sir CHARLES KNIGHTLEY, one of the repre-
sentatives for the county, indulged them with a
somewhat lengthy speech, which was filled, like one
of Cassandra's prophecies, with all sorts of horrors.
Considering that this speech was a post-prandial one,
we are surprised at its gloomy tone, for, generally
speaking, a good dinner works a most cheering revo-
lution in a man's spirits, and he is never so ready to
forget or make light of his troubles as when, like
Shakspeare's Justice, "his belly is with fat capon lined,"
and lavishly baptised with the generous juice of the
grape. When once " impletur veteris Bacchi pinguisqur
ferince," away go his grievances, whether public oe
,rivate, and all that is lively and hopeful in his nature
sprouts into leaf. But such was not the case with
Sir C. KNIGHTLEY at the Northampton dinner. The
good things on the table seem to have had no enliven-
ing influence on his spirits, and he addressed the
co7npany in as triste and morose a tone as if he had
been dieting himself on crab apples and vinegar. The
a4riculturists, he said, had been shamefully used by
Ministers, who had trampled on these injured inno-
cents, just as if they were so much dirt beneath
fteir feet. There was first the Corn Bill, then
the Canada Corn Bill, then the Tariff—all these
iniquitous measures had been passed by Govern-
ment without the slightest regard to the delicate
s?nsibilities of the monopolists, and there was not
one of them but was fraught with the deepest in-
j.try to their pecuniary interests. But the Tariff was
the great nuisance—the knock-down blow to the
agriculturists. They might have stood up against the
t ,vo Corn Bills, but the Tariff had fairly floored them,
and he, the speaker, very much doubted whether they
would ever be able to get upon their legs again.
Meat which, in the good old times of monopoly, was
sixpence and upwards per pound, was now only four-
pence-halfpenny—a reduction not to he thought of
without dismay ! True, the country at large gained
by such reduction—more especially the poorer
classes—but what of that ? The agricultu-
ri is suffered by it, and what are the inte-
rests of the many compared to those of the few ?
But not content with inflicting this prodigious amount
of mischief on the meek, unoffending monopolists,
the stony-hearted Premier had actually gone the
length of speaking of free trade with respect ! Yes,
he had positively expressed himself—the monster