The Sun.
London, England, 1844-01-10 00:00:00

$ adding to its moral influence, and enlisting hosts
of recruits under its banners. As if these signs
of the times were not significant enough to con-
vince Ministers of the necessity of playing a
decided part ; many of their own partisans, on
whom they have been in the habit of relying for
support, have become lukewarm and distrustful ;
and others have flatly refused to "march through
Coventry" with them any longer. Turn to what
quarter of the compass we may, we see clouds
blackening over the political horizon. Under
such circumstances, what is the course of conduct
that an enlightened statesman would naturally
be expected to pursue ? Clearly a bold and libe-
ral course, grounded on principle, fashioned so
as to meet the wants of the age, and carried out
with vigour and alacrity. The country has had
enough of professions; the delusions of 1841 are
dispelled ; and action, not speechifying, is now
what is demanded from Ministers. And will the
Premier, fbr the first time in his life, undertake
to satisfy this reasonable demand ; or will he
still pursue his old favourite shilly-shally
system, coquetting with this party to-day,
with that to-morrow—now throwing a sop
to the monopolists, and now to the free
traders—and hesitating between two courses
of action, like a certain animal between
two bundles of hay ? It is impossible to answer
this question, and equally impossible is it to
doubt—after the significant hints that have more
than once escaped him in Parliament—that Sir
ROBERT PEEL is quite aware of the right course
to be pursued. Other Tory statesmen may have
sinned from ignorance, and the desperate ob-
stinacy which ignorance engenders; but that is
certainly not his case. He is not so confirmed
an Ignoramus as to mistake the wishes of
a party for the convictions of a people. A
Parliamentary majority does not blind him
to the true state of things, even though it
moulds his conduct; for he is well aware of the
gross delusion under which that majority was
gained, and sees that it is fast giving way to the
steady day-light influence of common sense. If
then the Premier's failings are not those of ignor-
ance, in what do they have their origin ? In an
inherent want of decision of character—in a nerv-
ous apprehension of compromising a reputation
for prudence and sagacity by too great a display
of boldness. Sir R. PEEL is not the man
to take the initiative on any great
public question. He has nothing of the
fearlessness and energy of PITT in his constitu-
tion. He stands aghast at the idea of heading
a movement, but must be dragged into resolute
action by the uncontrollable force of events. No
man, we think, can doubt what will be the ulti-
mate policy he will adopt as regards the corn-
laws ; but he will not appear prominently on the
stage himself, until, by the strenuous exertions
of the Anti-Corn-law League, all is in readiness
for the performance of the drama of Repeal.

We have never concurred in that sort of unrea-
soning outcry which has been so universally
excited against the new poor-law by a large
class of individuals, whose humanity—for which
we are willing to give them full credit—leas, in
that outcry, prompted them to a course of in-
justice,—which they themselves can have had
no intention of committing. This injustice
has consisted in denouncing, on account of
partial defects of application, the whole prin.
ciple of the measure—because of occasional
delinquencies in the official subordinates charged
with duties of supervision and superintendence,
the whole system of its economy and manage-
ment—and, by reason of a few examples of care-
lessness on the part of boards of guardians,
and of more inexcusable harshness on that
of relieving officers, the whole body of
official functionaries in any way connected
with pauper management and parochial relief.
At the same time, it is evident, from the most
cursory consideration of its multifarious enact-
ments and provisions, that there is not, on the
statute, book one Act of Parliament more open
to abuse, to evasion, to overstrained construction
against the candidates for, or actual recipients of,
poor-law relief. On this account we hold that
they who have excited so general a jealousy and
vigilance in the;public mind, touching its prac-
tical working, have done, and continue to do,
good service to the public cause.
In the Times we read, under the heading of
" Last Days of an English Peasant," one of those
very cases of " official delinquency" is su-
bordinate functionaries, of " carelessness in the
board of guardians," and of " inexcusable harsh-
ness" in the party who should have been the "re-
lieving officer," which too fatally—excepted cases
although they be—confirm the prejudice of that
large community we speak of against the " rule"
under which they occur. If we may assume the
facts to be true, this is one of those instances of
the maladministration of a law, necessarily
more or less stringent and painful in its ap-
plication, that are calculated to elevate a
local and individual wrong into an element
of fearful and hostile operation against the
best interests of society. It is a case apt
to incite every better feeling of our nature
to an indiscriminating and passionate resent-
ment, among the labouring poor, and within the
particular district of the vicinity in which it hap-
pened. Now we have not only the account
published on the responsibility of the correspon-
dent by whom it has been communicated to the
Times, but we have before us, also, a succinct
summary of the evidence given before the Coro-
ner's inquest, on the collapsed and exhausted
frame of the unhappy deceased.
We know not how to condense the state-
ment for our present purpose, and render it,
at the same time, sufficiently intelligible to
enable the reader to furm his judgment upon it.
But we will endeavour to do so, thus :—On the
afternoon of the 20th of December last, " a raw,
damp, and foggy day," an open cart arrived at the
gate of the Billericay poor-law union house,
accompanied by the assistant overseer of South
Weald. On the porter of the union attempting
to remove from the cart its pauper passenger, he
found the venerable man in his last mortal
agony. The assistant surgeon of the establish-
ment immediately attempted to administer some
hot brandy and water, but the dying man was
unable to swallow it; so he was removed to a bed
in the infirmary, where at eight o'clock the same
evening he expired. The medical officer, who
said at once that his removal would prove the
immediate *precursor of his death, deposed be-
fore the Coroner that, on the pauper being taken
out of the cart, he was quite stiff, insensible, and
in a state of collapse, his extremities cold, and
no chance of his revival after rejecting the prof-
fered stimulant :

" He was suffering from old age and general debility; but
witness was of opinion that his removal on a damp, foggy day,
and the time he was on the road, hastened his death. He
might not have lived many days, but an old person in his con-
dition could not bear removing."

The poor sufferer proved to be one JONATHAN
WHITE, who had passed a long life of ninety
years ( !) as a labourer in the same parish in
which he,had been born—South Weald, Essex;

and this industrious, hoary-headed, time-ho-
noured representative of that race, whom GOLD-
SMITH, in his ingenuous simplicity, described as
- "A bold peasantry, their country's pride," (!)
had been, on that inclement morning, forcibly
removed from his sick bed to the union house of
_ __

Billericay, through such weather as we have
described—the journey occupying four hours,
and the conveyance in which was stretched this
ancient husbandman being an open cart ! So
much for the respect paid to a class that may
have formed " its country's pride"—precisely at
the commencement of his mortal pilgrimage,
but who arc fast sinking, in our days,
into the same forgotten gulf as the
hundred years he had so nearly numbered ! On
the inquest, two benevolent women of his own

class, we believe, whose recollection and know-

ledge of the deceased extended to the utmost

period ;which their memories could recur to, de-
posed to the sad incidents which marked his

declining years ; his long sickness, his decay, his

gradual utter helplessness; their own generous
humanity in tending and nursing him being

rather elicited from, than deposed to, by