The Sun.
London, England, 1844-10-22 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
PROM THE EVENING PAPERS OP YESTERDAY.
GLOBE.—The case of Mr. David Salomons is
likely to be the last of its kind. The spirit of the
age is, happily, hostile to religious tests, as qualifi-
cations for secular offices. The manifest inconve-
nience of the practice, no less than the flagrant in-
justice of the principle they involve, requires
that they be expunged from the statute-book.
In the present instance, a worthy citizen, whose
public and private virtues have obtained for him
the respect and confidence of the public ; who
has been selected by the citizens of London for
the office of Sheriff, which he served with honour to
himself and advantage to the community, and who
worthily fills the office of magistrate in two counties
—was elected as alderman of one of the City wards.
His election is pronounced void by the Court of Al-
dermen. Why ? He is a Jew ! The law—which
has been changed and modified, in order that profes-
sors of other religious sects may be admitted to office
in corporations—sets a mark of degradation on
a Jew, as such. A Jew may be virtuous, wise,
wealthy, charitable ; esteemed by all for his private
worth, and venerated for his public excellences ;
the community may deem him worthy of trust, and
his Sovereign may select him as a fit subject for
honour ; but corporations will bar their doors, and
refuse to admit him to office within their halls. Though
the magistrates of two counties actually receive him
as their equal, and concede to him the precedence in
their sessions, those of the city of London will
exclude him, as ineligible to be their associate, and
stretch the law to prevent him from occupying a seat
in their assemblies ! Such is the monstrous exhibition
which the public is compelled to witness and deplore
in the middle of the nineteenth century, but of which
it will exert itself to prevent a repetition. It may
not be either uninteresting or unavailing, if a brief
retrospect be taken of the course by which the pre-
sent invidious and injurious state of the law has
been arrived at. The injustice of the principle, and
inconvenience of the practice, will be thus clearly ex-
posed. The declaration which Mr. Salomons was
unable to subscribe, and for which inability he was
ousted by the Court of Aldermen from the office of
alderman, to which he had been elected, was in-
tended to protect the interests of the Established
Church. By binding those who are not members
of that Establishment under a declaration, made
" upon the true faith of a Christian," not to use
their influence, as members of municipal corpo-
rations, against its interests, a security, it was sup-
posed, had been obtained against the machinations
of evil-minded Dissenters who, if members of cor-
porations, might plot its destruction. When the
Tory Government of 1828 was compelled by
the progress of liberal opinions, to repeal the Test
and Corporation Acts, this declaration was imposed
upon all. Thus, while professing to abolish all teat,
it contrived to create a new test—lest repulsive, but
not less invidious and insurmountable than the old.
The practical operation of the new declaration was
loudly and justly complained of at the time. Many
persons, who had no objection to bind themselves
against offering injury to the Established Church, had
conscientious scruples about oaths. These regarded
the declaration of 1828 as partaking of the nature Oran
oath ; they consequently objected to this form of de-
claration. To meet the case of such persons, the Le-
gislature, in 1837, passed an Act making a special
exception in favour of three descriptions of persons;
and professing to relieve them alone. It left all the
rest in the same position in which they were placed
by the Act of 1828. The sects relieved by the Act
of 1837 are Quakers, Moravians, and Separatists. The
Jews, and all persons not of these comprehended sects.
bat who have conscientious scruples respecting oaths,
are still excluded. The words of the declaration, or
test, of 1828, " on the true faith of a Christian," ex-
cluded the Jew ; it excluded also the Quakers, and
others ; the latter objected to it, as partaking of the na-
ture of an oath, which it certainly does ; the Jew, who
does not object to any oath, however formal,was excluded
by the substance, though not by the form, of the
words. The new teat, or declaration, substituted by
the Act of 1837 for that of 1828, leaves out these
words; but contains a declaration that the party
making it is either a Quaker, a Moravian, or a Sepa-
rarist. This necessarily excludes all, whether Chris-
tian, or Jew, or Gentile, who belong not to these three
excepted sects.
STANDARD.—An Evening Contemporary has
admitted an article upon the insolvent laws, the
spirit of which may be easily apprehended from the
following passage, with which it commences :—" All
persons in the land (i.e. all the honest) are indignant
at the laws which have been growing up of late
years respecting insolvency, and which have reached
the very top of vice and error in Lord Brougham's late
Act." In this strain the writer proceeds through
a full column of " money lenders' lament ;" but,
though our Contemporary has thought the composi-
tion deserving of the distinction of leaded lines
and large type, we must decline proceeding to
examine its trite fallacies. According to the
writer, money lenders are all suffering inno-
cents, debtors all knaves, a view very different
from what we should collect from the doctrine
of the Scriptures, and from the opinions of
moral writers. The truth is, that the old debtors'
law was so monstrously oppressive as to compel its
Mitigation. Sixty-four years ago, as Mr. Burke
declared, at Bristol, its " savage operation " had
reached those physical limits that it could not pass ;
there were not in the kingdom gaols enough
to hold the debtors whom the merciful cre-
ditor class would consign to dungeons ; and
hence some insolvent Act became necessary.
During the 64 years of interval the insolvent laws
have been, gradually ameliorated, with the constant
accompaniment of unparalleled improvement in the
morals and in the commercial credit of the country.
At length these laws have reached that point,
that character, and character only is the
foundation of credit. The man of substance,
or of known probity, industry, and pru-
dence, can now certainly obtain credit as easily
as when the debtor law was in most stage operation ;
nay, more easily, for the money formerly staked in
otherwise desperate credits, relying upon the security
of the debtor's body, is now turned into that channel
in which it can be lent upon the security of character.
The moral importance of this change can hardly be
overrated ; but its effects are not as obvious as soon
they must be. Many persons who gave credit
upon the security of the creditor's flesh and bones,
find themselves losers by the loss of that security, and
complain, with some plausibility, that they are
cheated. For example—the writer to whom we have
alluded tells a story of a creditor, who, " after immense
difficulty and expense," procured the arrest of a debtor
who owed him 2001., the debtor obtained an interim
order, and escaped to Antwerp. " The immense
difficulty and expense," fixes the date of the debt
at some period prior to the late insolvent Acts.
Now this may be a hard case, though we
confess that our impressions are not in
favour of one who bestows immense expense
upon the capture of a creature so very poor as
to fly his country for 2001. Be this, however, as
it may, such cases are not likely to recur in the
present state of the law. Creditors will not
inconsiderately trust men so dishonest or in such bad
circumstances as to be likely to fly to Antwerp from
debts of 2001. The present wrong must therefore be
submitted to, for the sake of a far more extensive
exercise of justice, and a far greater good. One
knave has escaped to Antwerp ; thousands of
honest and industrious, though unfortunate men,
have been rescued from the cruelty of hard-hearted,
or vindictive creditors. The Jew has lost " his
pound of flesh," but the pecuniary value of character
has been greatly enhanced—almost the greatest bles-
sing that can be conferred upon a nation.
Consoled by this reflection, we turn to an-
other matter connected with the subject. Sixty-
four years ago, as we have said, Mr. Burke
indignantly declared that all the gaols of the
kingdom were insufficient to contain the vic-
tims with whom relentless creditors would load
them. And now we find our Contemporaries en-
gaged in a hot dispute as to the disposal of
the oldest, and we believe the largest, debtors'
prison in England, the Fleet, which has for more
than a year been unoccupied, and is now "to
let." This we must think a salutary and even
a glorious change ; but our immediate subject
is the disposal of the prison. The Times takes up
the proposition to convert the late prison into baths
and laundries for the poor, and bestows more
than a column of highly animated rebuke
upon those who hold the site and buildings
are too valuable to be applied in specie to that
object. At the risk, however, of incurring share of
the censure of the Times, we must agree with those
who think that the locality is not well adapted
to the proposed object; and, further, that even were
the locality a more indifferent matter than it is,
there would be a great want of true economy in
converting the Fleet into baths and laundries.
Every one knows that the value of ground
varies greatly in this metropolis, and the value of
ground, to say nothing of the building, is perhaps six
or even tenfold greater in Farringdon-street, than in
the less affluent districts, the very places where baths
and laundries for the poor are most wanted. Supposing,
then, that there was good ground for saying that the
tovalue of the Fleet is in an especial manner due
the poor, it is plain that the economical way
in which to g'e, to work is to sell the old prison, and
from the proceeds provide baths and laundries for
the poor in the several quarters in which they can be
at once most cheaply and most usefuprovided. Even
if the neighbourhood of Fleet ditch be desirable, a
great deal of waste ground in the neighbourhood
of that agreeable stream can be had within a few
hundred yards northward of the prison, in the
middle of a much poorer neighbourhood than that
A Lower Farringdon-street. We are, however,
y. wrong in treating the article of
.es. time. ic 'really relating to the question
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