The Sun.
London, England, 1828-11-10 00:00:00

IFROM THE MORNING CURONICLE.)

A use in the Court of Exchequer, on Saturday,
in which a new trial was moved for on this, among
other grounds, that the Jury, disagreeing, came to
- the determinationof drawing lots for the verdict,
forms a curious commentary on the law requiring
unanimity in juries. It seems very hard on jurors
that they should be obliged to perjure themselves in
ail mses where opposite convictions are entertained,
by one part 14 ;
„ .v.;
ng way to another, and that evi.•
deuce should be received as to any of the various
devices by which they determine among themselves
which should give way. If •
it be urged that..raw-
ing lots may have the effect-of making she minority
give way to the
majority, we answer, that the law
considers it of no consequence whether the majority
yield to the minority or the minority to the majc,,o
rity, otherwise it would have declared that *thii
verdict should be determined by the nujority.—.
It not unfrequently happens that au obstinate fell„,
who makes nothing of a long fast, will conquer
the whole of his brother jurors, and conse-
quently force them to perjure themselves. The
law, by requiring unanimity, thereby declares
itself indifferent to ail but the fact of obtaining a
verdict; and the quo modo, seeing that Convic-
tion is out of the question, seems really not neces-
sary in any case to be known. In Ireland we be-
lieve it was long the approved practice to produce
unanimity by boxing; and an obstinate fellow, under
such circumstances, soon found it convenient to
give in. Drawing lots is not only an improvement
upon boxing; but in.tho opinion of many, we sus-
pect, would be deemed an improvement if made uni-
versal in law-suits. The difference between the
present mode of conducting a law suit and having
recourse at once to lots, is, that in the ferrner,there
is the same uneertainty as to result, With great de-
lay and a heavy expenditure superadded. At pro-
sent,it seems to be understood that there is in ge-
neral no law applicable to the case when the law-
seit is commenced, and that the object of the judi-
cial inquiry is to enable the:Judge to make the law
at the expence of parties. Drawing lot* would at.
once pet the belligerents out of pain. But because
drawing lots might be advantageously resorted to
in
the
very,
.00,54, it does not follow, when the
Jurors are enclosed, that they should not then hare
recourse to it. At all events, ere should think it
incumbent on those who object to jurors who dis-
agree having recourse to the rneaiate, to point out
another more rational. When convict:on menet
be obtained, there must be some mode of discover-
ing who are to give way, and when the giving way
is to take place.
At a Dinner of the- Friends of the Clotidalkin
Free School Charity, given on Monday last, Mr.

O'Connell observed
" The present degraded and fallen state of England,
connceted with her domestic i►npolicy, afforded a striking
mural and political lesson, and proved that the crimes of
nations as well as individuals contain within their own na-
ture their own penishrnent.—(Cheers.)—After victories
the most eplendi4--a career of acme
.jostly considered glo-

rious both by sea and land, once palmy England is now the '
scoff and scorn of the nations of the-world, and insulted I
by the most contemptible and tyrannical usurpers. Why
is England feeble? Because she is unjust.—(Chvers.)—
Her base streets, her crowded marts, her gorgeous luxury,
her apparent power, are found but a hectic resembling
health..--a seeming wealth, and a gambling industry.—
(Ifear.)—This truth is demonstrated, that fleets, and ar-
inies, and colonies, and cornmertv, and all the external ap,.
pirates of Governments, are find and unsubstantial, unless
consolidated by the affections of an united, happy, and free
people."
Now we object to this, because the description is
not in the least like the truth ; and such unmeasured
exaggeration produces an effect the very opposite
of what was intended. Mr. Sheil, in his speech at
the dinner -given to him in the Metropolis, dealt
also a great deal ton much in exaggeration when
treating of this subject. England would un-
questionably be much more powerful than she is,
were Iceland under the influence of a good govern-
ment and good laws, to have full scope for the de-
velopment of her capabilities, instead of 'wing a
burden on the empire at large; bat though England
is not so powerful as she might be, it is not the
less true that she is still the most powerful country
-in the world, without exception. There are many
vices in the social system of England, the prospe-
rity of the country is infected by monopolies un-
worthy of the nation, and the lower orders are far
from being in the condition in which we could wish
them to be; but these defects do not render her
" the scoff and scorn of the nations of the world;"
nor is it true that she is insulted by any Govern-
ment. Mr. O'Connell says, England "is insulted
by the most contemptible and tyrannical usurpers."
The usurper who should think of insulting Eng-
land, would thereby certainly earn for himself the
title of contemptible, because he would be thereby
taking the most effectual means to ensure his own
ruin. Thu Governments of Europe are no doubt
aware that it is so much the interest of England
to be at peace, that nothing but necessity will in-
duce her to have recourse to arms; but they know
also, that an insult would be deemed such a neces-
sity; and the nation that is by position secure from
attack, while in a very brief space it can, from its
naval superiority, make itself felt in every part of
the globe, can never be their " scoff and scorn."
These, tirades may provoke a smile on this side of
the water. A much more rational view of our situa-
tion is taken by the able author of the pamphlet on
our relations with Russia :—" As to this country
(ha says), I may assert, without fear of contradic-
tion, that since the period of the great territorial ac-
quisitions of Russia—since the Tnrks were tom-
pelled to cede Bessarabia and half of Moldavia—
since the second partition of Poland anti conquest
of Georgia, Great Britain has, notwithstanding the
enormous dilapidation of capital occasioned by the
intervening war of the French Revolution, made
strides in wealth and power, the consequence of
wealth previously, unexampled. What measure of
progress shall we take ? The extension of surface
under the plough, or the general improvement in the
arts of tillage; the growth of our commerce on
every sea and every part of the world, where
commodities can be exchanged for commodities; the
prodigious increase of the quantity of manufitctured
produce and of mechanical inventions yearly acce-
lerating the ratio of that increase; the progress of
building in every direction ; the constant. additions
to enjoyment and convenience; former luxuries now
become ordinary comforts, and the class. of those
enjoying them increased beyond precedent. Our
public establishments are nearly twice as large as
they were before the period referred to, larger far
than public safety or the service of the State de-
mands; yet they are supported with an effort bet
little greater, and prove, by their very wasteful-
ness, the extent of resources which could be dis-
played in a case or real necessity." How any person
ran proceed through England like Messrs. O'Con-
nell and Sheil, and see the abundance of all that
constitutes wealth, the produce of this the most
active and industrious of nations, and arrive at the
conclusion that England is weak, is to us incom
prettensible.

(FROM THE NEWS.)
THE BISHOPS; THE SUNDAY PAPERS; THE SUNDAY tiTAGE

COACHES; AND SUNDAY STEAMERS.

"'Two of a trade can never agreo."-Proverb.

The Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry's Charge
to the Clergy of his Diocese, has just appeared on
the counters of the booksellers within his Lordship's
Ecclesiastical District. (Good news for the trunk-
makers, as Cohbett would call it !) This pious
Prelate, as it is now understood, was the first, and
in all probability will be the last,--Ilethedistical
Bishop. 'He is said to be too strait-laced, even for
the Saints of the Establishment. A " Charge" to
the Clergy of a Diocese was formerly a sort of Re-
view of the sable corr of Gastronomes; the grind,.
pal feature consisted of a good dinner; and of which
the whole. Establishment, Clerical and Lay, from the
grave Bishop to the gormandizing Churchwarden,
liberally partook. Now-a-days, this charge, like the
Charges of the Judges, and of the Chairman of the
Quarter Sessions, to the Grand and Petit-Grand
Juries,—makes a sort of political public document;
being a running fire upon men and principles which
happen to vary from the selfishness of the ascendancy
ereate.-es of the day. But our object at present is
exclusively with the Charge of the chief Evangelical
Bishop. His Lordship proceeds in the first instance
to the increase of crime, and its causes ; and of course
to make it eut that the increase of Churches will
effect the decrease of crime. That there is nothing
like leather, has been a proverb of long standing; arid
men of all times seem. destined to illustrate the
truth of it. The Bishop is no friend to Poachers!
The offence of poaching prepares a regular school
of offenders ; this fact his Lordship brolc- his
shins upon; to have looked beyond the plunder
of his pheasant covers into the Game Laws, as
any part or portion of the operating causes of crime,
was a stretch of thought not coming within the scope
of a Bishop's Charge. His Lordship's next disco-
very is, the want of strictness in the heads of farni-
' lies, over their servants and dependents; and the
tu.Cury of the heads of households. Here is a fine
Plea for religious tyranny ! What have the heads of
ratnilies to do with coercing religious observances on
the part of servants ? As far as regards morality, or
the essence of it, common honesty in 'servants, the
;
world is'eapable of taking care of itself, without the
lecturing of Bishops
tar,:iktl
et a
an deet
parade go, o,
of i
rue i
irgeicoonm,
and we are sure that so far as
Int
heen servantsdeixnigmrience
of t h
that
times (which is the best schoolmaster at lust) would
rather tend to caution us against such an outward
garb of righteousness. All these causes, clubbed
together, according to this mitred authority, add
~ double force'. to the. vices springing from the
" lowered price of spirits," and the "profanation
of au Sabbath, through Sunday Newspapers !"
We take his Lordship to be a Gentleman,—as the
Evangelists of old were, as far as the term implied
' a ehivulrous value of troth, and a decorous behaviour
towards all wen. But what connection, in the name
of all that is wonderful, can there be between the
drunkenness resulting from cheap gin; and the ser-
vices of Sunday
neicsivicilr Supposing the n
fanation ascribed to the latter to be real (ndrits-
we
shall soon show that it is riot), the utter want of all
connection remains the same. Dram drinkers are
no exclusive readers of Sunday, or any other papers;
except they may be found in the readers of the
religious Sunday papers. (of which we have a fair
quantum.) But is the Bishop so ignorant iis not to
' know, that, taking the empire through,—ere
there is one Sunday Paper read on the Sundayi there
are MOM than ft hUhdred others read, which are printed
on the Friday and Saturday? The veriest common;
sense calculation of any man that" looks about him,'
can tell this, by an immediate appeal to fact. The
London Sunday papers, beyond a certain and very
contracted range of the Past within London, are
not read at all on the Sunday ; but are Monday.,
Tuesday, and even Wednesday papers; in the like
manner asThursdays,Fridays, and Saturdays papers,
I are read exclusively on the Sunday,as they may .hap-
I pan to fall on their Post distances. Independent of

this, nearly three fourths of the Country Papers are
printed on the Saturday (that being the more genes
rid market.day) and are principally read by country
people on the Sunday: If his Lordship be bent on
putting an end to the reading of newspapers on a
Sunday, he must abolish all the Journals; and be-
ginning on those which are printed at the latter end
Of the wOrking Week, he will have to tread back-
wards up to Sunday. If his Lordship does not
know this, we recommend him to sit down on one
of the forms of his Eccleshall Sunday School,
and taking up a slate unit a map, put the matter at
once to an arithmetical test. His Loidship is a
decided opponent to travelling on a Sunday, either
by Stage-coach or Steam. * The Sabbath-breaking
boilers, that
" Ask no aid of wind or tide;"
are not responsible moral agents; and they would
make a knotty point in a legal prosecution. What
would his Lordship do in the middle of the Atlantic
Ocean ; or hoer would his Lordship proceed by
exclusive week day travelling, when on a trip to
" either Ind ?" Could he command the currents,
the tides, and the winds, to wait on his hours of
worship ? Or where would his Lordship draw the
line of distinction ? We should like to see one of
the steam boilers brought before Sir Richard Birnie,
for traversing the River Thames, or " following its
worldly calling" with passengers, on the Lord's Day,
contrary to the statute in that case made and pro-
vided.
The action could only lie against the agent,
as the ostensible offender. We may be told that
the steersman at the helm would be liable, in the
same way as.the coachman on the box. This we
should deny ; the coachman (bites; there is an
overt-act of constant labour; the steersman of the
steamer, and the pilot of the merchantman, stand on
the same ground ; they do not propel, nor rid in
propelling. The ostensible acting agent is the only
one cognizable by the statute. Let the Saints try
the question, by summoning the weather-cock be-
fore the Quorum, for following its worldly calling
on a windy Sabbath; it would open new channels
of business to the world of law ; and we might
possibly live to see an action of Fi Fa brought
against a bottle roast-jack. The discovery of per-
petual motion wonld impugn the wisdom of Pro-
vidence; and eight day clocks would be put down
by an Act of Parliament, as Deists or Atheists.—
His Lordship proceeds to an eulogy on the
Commissioners for building New Churches ; and
commends the notable project of begging from door
to door, in aid of their funds. But does not his
Lordship know that this is an act of vagrancy : and
is punishable' by the statute ? But let his Lordship
reserve kis praises, until the fact is made known as to
how
.far this begging system has succeeded. We
would bet his Lordship the long odds,—bet we beg
his pardon; %ve would only wish to speak in the
general figure of full confidence, in what we say ;
when we affirm that these collections will be so
thoroughly contemptible in amount, that the Com-
missioners will never ',lake them known; they will
be ashamed to do it ; and they have taken a very
proper way of informing themselves of the extent to
which public feeling accompanies them in their pious
spirit of taxation ; for holstering up a Church which
prostrates every true Christian feeling, and righteous
principle, in the scandalous appropriation of its enor-
mous revenues, among the tools of the "Powers that
be ;" while it leaves all the operative agents of the
Pastoral (Ace, ill clad and meanly paid; following
at an humble distance, in worldly comforts and in
personal respectability, the great mass of Dissenting
Ministers! Every year will serve to show these rich
pluralists; and fat, lazy, and sleek followers of the
humble Saviour of men, that they have separated
t hemselves from their flocks ; who have either found
fresh shepherds, or acquired the more paramount
wisdom of taking care of themselves. The new Act,
instead of beim/ " a vehicle for all the pious charity
of the country," as his Lordship holds it to be, will
become a mark to point the infidel finger at, with
one class of men; and a subject of scorn and deri-
sion for others. The Church would have done
better without all this thick coat of Evangelism ; the
plaster of a spurious cement on good stone. We
should have had the advance of practical piety first;
arid the new churches after. As a kind of coup de
,
grace to the bead roll of the Bishop's arguments,
he foretells a great access of religious and moral
agency, in the counteraction of vice and crime, florn
the increase of Chin di Parsons, called forth by the
appointments to the New Churches. As his Lord-
ship ought to know something of the most populous
part of his Diocese, we would ask him as to what
proportion the acting Ministers of the establishment
will bear to the acting .Ministers of Dissenters, when
the new structures are all completed? Will they
rank as one to fifty? No. as Lordship knows it ;
and he knows, that the longer they labour to over-
take the Dissenting interest, the more they are
behind. The cause is obvious enough ; it stares
every man in the face; and his Lordship would con-
fess it, as well as see it, were it not for the See of
Lichfield and Coventry, which has optics of another
description. In conclusion, we recommend his Lord-
ship to look to his own Sunday labours, and let
those of the newspapers alone; or learn,. when dis-
posed for receiving the truth, that the operative
profanation of the Sabbath, by the Press, rests
chiefly with the mornisig pipers of Saint Monday;
which are, sad must be, essentially prepared on the
Sunday. The " increase of crime" is a subject
little cognizable by the clergy; it rests with poli-
tical causes, which are out of their province; and
taxing the people fur new churches, and fresh par-
sons, is not the happiest way of reducing those causes.

Tuts KING.—The most contradictory reports re-
specting the state of his Majesty's health continue
to be circulated—one party stating his perfect re-
covery—the other, that he will never live to occupy
his splendid Castle of Windsor, as a resident. In
the absence of all regular or official information we
can only reason from analogy, and that reason lends
us to the conclusion that his Majesty is much worse
than is generally imagined. The party which states
the King's perfect restoration to health has commit-
ted itself OH so many points connected with that
subject, that it is hardly worthy of belief as to its
future predictions. If however the King is as
well as some of the Windsor letters represent
him te be, why do not his Ministers advise him to
come by easy journeys to town, if only..to bear the
Recorder's report. To the poor wretches under
sentence of death in Nevrgate—who, in bitter ex-
pectation, are dying daily a thousand deaths—this
horrible delay is peculiarly distressing. Rather than
keep them thus on the tenterhooks of despair, it
would be humanity to admit the King's illness, by
which these miserables would be able to live at least
one day in some degree of certainty—whereas now
every minute teems with some dreadful foretaste of
what the next may bring forth.

" These people, in the furtherance of their fanatic
notions, would put a atop to all the business of the nation.
It is well known that in the country, Sunday, is a general
post day—on which letters are received and of neoeesity
answered as on other days. All this, however, the Saints
would, by law, prevent. In many provincial places they
have succeeded in preventing the journeying of local
coaches L—but we have never yet hearth of their tanning
their heads against the mails on any other of the London
long stages : though after all, these have no more law for
travelling on the Sunday than the others have.

INTERESTING CASs.—Four fishermen, from
Pair Isle, three of whom have wives and families, were, on
the 18th September, out at sea, pursuing their usual occu-
pation ; and being a considerable di dance from their Wand,
a thick fog coming on, they lost sight of land. After row-
ing for along time, they heard the sound of a bell, and
rowing in that direction, they fell in with, and were kindly
taken on hoard of a Prussian barque, named the SUccess,
from Liverpool. Having got their small boat hoisted in,
scarcely two hours had elapsed when a severe gale came
on, and the sea rising very much, their boat was dashed to
pieces, even' though .on the deck. The Success landed
not only supplied their numer•
them et Elsinore 2. the 26th, where the British Consul,
paseage•to Leith for them. A
has been begun for their sup-
soCumliAcwi
subscription,
Extt Fnibn: sub u
rxwt wepsir
ochE e
cle
Ida.
understand,u
chromdc.
port.--

POLICE INTELLIGENCE.

MANSION-HOUSE

Alderman GARRATT called at the Mansion-hcuse
at the latter end of the week, in consequence of
having seen in some of the newspapers a paragraph
attributing to him the fault of encouraging the
watch to
,phrshh a systeiri which it is well known
those gentry derive considerable pfok frorn,—that
of apprehending in the streets at night individuals
who have committed no offence whatever against
morals or the peace. He denied the irepstation,
and referred to those who had observed for several
years his public conduct, whether he had not upon
all occasions endeavoured to protect the public from
tiny abuse, either in the shape of extortion or under
any other form. Upon the occasion referred to, he
reprehended the watchman for the course pursued;
but he found, upon looking at the Act of Parliament,
that he had no power to inflict any punishment upon
the person who had so misconducted himself.
Mr. Hailer said, he recollected that Alderman
Garrett, in the course of the examination into the
case alluded to, referred to the act, in order to ascer-
tain whether he could not order the vratohman into
the place of the accused, for the apparent outrage
committed by him; but the act stated that watch-
' men were to take up persons whom they saw at
night under suspicious circumstances, and the de-
fendant certainly might be considered by the watch-
man as coming under that denomination, for he was
carrying a large bundle at a very late hour. Mr.
liobler further stated, that the more respectable the
appearance of a person was who was seen under
such circumstances, the more liable he was to sus-
picion, as a gentleman could scarcely be supposed
likely to employ himself in carrying about a bundle
of clothes, either by night or day.
It is but justice to Alderman Garrett to say of
him, that he has always investigated, with a greet
deal of particularity, every case before him in which
the liberty of the subject has been attempted to be
invaded by the guardians of the night, and that his
indignation at being supposed for a moment to be
capable of encouraging so injurious and intolerable rt
system as that which he so warmly condemned,
does him great credit.