The Sun.
London, England, 1844-05-10 00:00:00

.-"Z)atut

LONDON, FRIDAY, MAY 10, 1844.

In the House of Lords a brief discussion took
place on the motion that the Dissenters' Chapels Bills
be read a third time. It was moved by Lord
WIIARNCLIFFE and opposed by the Bishop of EXETER.
The Earl of WINCIIILSEA, Lord KENYON, and Lord
MOUNTCASIIEL, also opposed the Bill ; one on the
ground that he was a Christian, and another that it
was an act of spoliation. Their Lordships, however,
did not pay much respect to these pleas, for only nine
voted against it. The numbers were for the third
reading 44, against it 9.
The Duke of RICHMOND postponed his motion re-
lative to the duty on wcol till this day ; and the
House adjourned at Half-past Seven.
In the Commons, the Leeds and Bradford Railway
Bill was read a third time and passed.
Lord
JOHN RUSSELL gave notice that, on the
House going into Committee on the Sugar Duties
Bill, he would move that the duty of 345. per cwt. be
levied on all foreign sugars.
Mr. lIUME moved an address to her MAJESTY for
abolishing the office of Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.
He was always opposed to a repeal of the union,
and be made the motion with a view to produce a
change which would render repeal unnecessary.
Under the present system, Ireland and Great
as distinct kingdoms.
Britain were treated
Remove this anomaly—place the three coun-
tries en the same footing, and the cry for repeal
would soon cease. Ireland was treated as a colony,
and until she was treated as an integral portion of
the empire, entitled to the same privileges, and go.
verned by the same laws, she would have a right to
complain.
Captain BERNAL seconded the motion.
Lord ELIOT opposed it. The system, he said, had
been in existence for 400 or 500 years, and those who
proposed a change should show some good reason for
it, and offer some better substitute. The abolition of
the office of Lord-Lieutenant, he believed, would
cause great dissatisfaction in Ireland, and that, inde-
pendent of other circumstances, would make him op-
pose the scheme.

Lord JouNitUSSELL also opposed the motion,
while at the same time he believed the abolition of
the office would be productive of much good ; he
wished, however, to leave the affair to the Executive
Government.

After brief speeches from Mr. Susw, Sir ROBERT
PEEL, and others, Mr. HumE withdrew the motion.
Mr. BUTLER moved for a copy of an opinion given

by Mr. PENNEFATHER, the present Chief Justice of the
Queen's Bench in Ireland, on the 28th of February,
1820, in the case of PEMBROKE V. KINGSMILL, in
which Mr. PENNEFATIIER advised his client to avoid
finding a certain charter of JAMES 1., with reference
to the corporation of Kilkenny, and thereby to defeat
the ends of justice.
Lord ELIOT understood that the circumstances
were these :—The corporation of Kilkenny claimed
certain tolls in right of a charter granted by
JAMES I. Subsequently JAMES 11. granted a second
charter, which the corporation rejected, and Mr.
PENNEFATHER merely advised his clients not to pro-
duce this rejected charter, as it would only throw
doubt on the question. He saw nothing in this to
impugn the integrity of this upright Judge, and re-
gretted that the motion had been brought forward.
Mr. SHAW, Dr. BOWRING, Mr. DARBY, and other
Members, made some brief remarks, when the
motion was negatived without a division.
The House adjourned at Half-past Nine.

The proceedings at the Old Bailey yesterday fur-
nish a remarkable instance of the blessings con-
ferred on the country by the " wisdom of our
ancestors." By these wise men it was decreed that
juries must agree to an unanimous verdict, or be
starved to death. In the case of CROUCH, who mur-
dured his wife, the fact was proved by incontestible
evidence, but surgeons or mad doctors were called on
the other side, who proved that he had, at a certain
time, received a concussion of the brain, and that a
man who had sustained such an injury, on taking
ardent spirits " would run amuck." This statement
puzzled some of the jury. They believed
he had taken ardent spirits, and was not
capable of distinguishing right from wrong,
and they therefore resolved to acquit him, on the
ground of insanity. Some of them, however, took
a more sane view of the question, and would not
admit the plea, that a man who had committed such a
deliberate murder under the influence of liquor,
should be acquitted. The parties joined issue ;
neither would yield. They were locked up for the
night. They were debarred from wine, and ale, and
bread—all refreshment, in fact, was forbidden—and
were placed in durance more vile than the prisoner
himself; with the exception that they were allowed
pen, paper, ink, and candles. We presume, after
trying to agree, they fell asleep on the question,
and next morning they all awoke of the same
opinion, and at half-past eleven o'clock they
respectfully sent a message to the Bench,
soliciting a glass of water, as some of them
had not tasted food, or taken refreshment of
any kind for thirty hours, and they were all nearly
exhausted. The Court was inexorable—they must
agree in their verdict, or starve. They returned to
their cell, and, after mature deliberation, we presume,
they thought it was better that one man should die
than twelve, and they unanimously returned a verdict
of guilty. No instance could exhibit the folly and
immorality of the present system in a stronger light.
These jurors were all sworn to deliver a true verdict,
according to the evidence and their conscience, and
from mere inability to sustain the struggle longer,
the weaker party was compelled to give way, and de-
liver a verdict, on their solemn oath, contrary to
their conviction. These men are perjured. to all in-
tents and purposes, and they are perjured,
not from any fault of their own, but from
the defect of the criminal law. This is not
the only evil, however, springing out of
the "wisdom of our ancestors." Had the struggle
been carried on for a few hours longer, a doctor
would have been called in, and on his oath he would
have assured the Judge that the lives of the least
robust were placed in the greatest danger, and that
they could not survive another night. The Judge of
course would have discharged them, and CROUCH at
the same time, so that a man who the doctors swore
" would run amuck" when he tasted liquor, must
have been let loose on society to commit some fresh
murder. It is needless to make any additional com-
ments on such grave facts, further than to say that
immediate steps are imperatively required both for
the ends of justice and making oaths sacred. No other
country exhibits such an absurd anomaly in its
criminal code.

At the last Borough Sessions at Carmarthen, a
man named Joux CHARLES was indicted for unlaw-
fully obstructing the path leading through certain
meadows called the Royal Oak fields. It appeared in
evidence that the defendant, being in possession of a
field in which there was an old stile leading to a path
that had been a public one for sixty years and up •
wards, had caused the stile to be removed, and an
iron gate placed there instead, which was always
kept locked. At the close of the trial, the jury
found CHARLES guilty ; but as the prosecutor did not
press for punishment, he was liberated, on entering
into his recognisances to appear, when called on,
for judgment, and on the understanding, also,
that he should erect, within a week, a proper
and convenient stile in the place where the
old one formerly stood, and give the neigh-
bourhood the same right of way through the
field which they had always had. At the recent
Hertford assizes a somewhat similar case was heard
before Lord Chief Justice DENMAN. The plaintiff
was the owner and occupier of Rickmansworth Park,
and had taken it upon himself to close a path which
runs near his house, and which had been used for se-
veral years by his neighbours as a short cut to some
mills in the vicinity. He contended that there was
no public footpath, strictly speaking, for though people
had long been in the habit of making use of it, yet it
was only upon sufferance, the legal right being
against them. On the part of the defendant it
was urged, that by the usage of many years
the path in question had become a public one,
and the right of people to pass through it could not
now be disputed. The result of the trial was that a
verdict was returned for the defendant, thereby esta-
blishing the right of the public to the disputed path.
We trust that these two important verdicts, which do
infinite credit to the jury who delivered them, will
have the effect in some degree, of putting a stop to
that jealous, selfish spirit of isolation and exclusive-
ness which for some years past has been creeping in
among our provincial gentry. Whoever is ac-
quainted with our rural districts, especially with
those in the neighbourhood of cities and towns,
cannot fail to have remarked with disgust
and vexation the gradual disappearance of those
delightful field paths which, for many years,
were the sources of such convenience and
enjoyment to the inhabitants of the vicinity. How
many a narrow, winding path leading away from
the dusty high-road, through meadows carpeted with
the freshest turf, and enamelled with all sorts of
fragrant wild flowers, have been recently stopped up,
merely to gratify the absurd pride and paltry selfish-
ness and jealousy of some " respectable" country
gentleman, who hail purchased a " respectable" estate
in the neighbourhood, and thought it necessary to his
" respectability" that his neighbours should be shut
out from the " old familiar" meadows which formed
a portion of his newly acquired domains ! How many
a poor man's quiet, healthy, evening stroll with his
family, after the day's labours are at an end, has
been rudely put a stop to, in order that
the rich man of the parish—frequently some retired
merchant or thriving attorney—may have the oppor-
tunity of exhibiting that love of exclusiveness and
tyranny, which are the unerring characteristics of
a petty, vulgar, upstart nature ! It may seem
to many people a matter of little or no public moment
whether field-paths are stopped up by the score or not;
but in reality it is not so; it is a question of grave
importance, involving far more than merely ephemeral
considerations--a question whether the humbler classes
of the prpvincial community shall be still further
alienated from those above them by a continued
manifestation, on the part of the latter, of a spirit of
jealous e
it xclusiveness and arbitrary power, a 3 ungene-
rous asis impolitic; or whether by a mutual dis-
play of good-will and forbearance towards each other,
a kindlier feeling shall be generated between the two
classes. A question of this sort is, we repeat, one of
no trifling moment ; and it is for the higher orders to
take the initiative in the matter, and make the first
advances towards the poor, for they have been the
great aggressors.

No subject of more grave or extensive importance can
address itself, at any time, to the profound attention of
the Legislature, in a country circumstanced as Great
Britain is with regard to colonial connexions, than
Emigration. But there are certain anomalies in the
present condition of this country, and in her political

relations, which fearfully enhance that importance.
The enormous multiplication of machinery power has
at least an immediate tendency to diminish
the demand for human labour; whilst the excess of
manufacturing production (unrelieved by any active
principle of-distribution to the masses) has the double
effect of glutting the market, and thereby reducing
prices to an unnatural extent, and of depreciating
wages in proportion to the competition for employ-
ment occasioned by such diminished demand for
labour. The continual recurrence of these causes, in
this order, has at length, a sort of cumulative opera-
tion, which the occasional impetus given to labour
and production can neither overtake nor sensibly
countervail. The seasons of depreciation and depres-
sion which our industrial community have had, of
late years, to encounter, are, out of all proportion,
either more numerous or more permanent than those
of revival and energetic action. These last represent
a power say of one, and increasing only by units,
which has to compete with a power of five, or seven
or ten, even, increasing from time to time by quanti•
ties equally large. For, besides the general elements
of depreciation and depression just noticed, we must
allow for the coincident increase of our population,
and the growth of competing foreign machinery and
manufactures; the one reacting on the already over-
crowded supply of labour, the other on the already
diminished demand for it. Nor is this all; we have
yet to take into the account the consequences of
those fatal errors of our legislation which virtually
overwhelm with taxation the poor, and lightly visit
the rich, by the customs, the imposts, or the
monopoly supply of articles and commodities the
most indispensable to human subsistence. Had Great
Britain possessed no colonies, or had she longer
withheld even that cold encouragement and those in-
adequate facilities which she now extends to free
emigrants, a crisis must have arrived, ere now, in
which we should have had the misery of subsiding
into the social condition of some among the more
Southern States of Europe. We should have had a
fourth power in the State ;—a lazzaroni population,
too fiercely excited by distress to respect the rights of
property, whilst they were unable to satisfy the
cravings of nature; too abjectly poor, in the wealthiest
country of the world, not to levy a war of brigandage
and spoliation upon the capital so largely possessed by
others. But, instead of these incalculable horrors, the
tide of emigration has annually removed from our
shores and landed on those of Africa or Asia, of
America or New. Holland, many thousands of our
surplus agricultural hands, farmers, and labourers;
and a number, little inferior, of our unemployed me-
chanics, masters and operatives; also, of able-bodied
paupers and servants. But emigration of a new
character and on a larger scale—emigrants not from
England, nor from any part of Continental Europe—
not destined for Africa, nor for Asia, nor for New
Holland ;—emigrant labour of a totally novel descrip-
tion from any to which it had been applied under the
auspices of former Governments of this country ;
these have become among the most vital necessities of
the empire, in relation 'to the integrity of its colonial
dominions.

Owing to the magnificent generosity with which
we have extinguished the condition of Negro Slavery
throughout the whole of our possessions in the West
Indies, and on the American Main, the emancipated
black races have long manifested so engrossing a
preference for the unrestricted enjoyment of their
new condition,of social existence, over any amount of
regular wages for field labour, as to occasion the most
serious apprehensions for the future productiveness
of those fertile regions of which this compulsory
tillage had heretofore developed all the prodigious
fertility. Free labour was becoming, as to the eman-
cipated slave, a mere speculative theory. In practice
it was so uncertain, so partial, so interrupted, and so
expensive, that the planters and owners (whose in-
vestments of capital in the-land, in works, machinery,
&c., &c., and in the shipping customarily engagedin
the West India trade, ara enormous) are compelled
to turn their views to other quarters, from whence
they might hope to draw the necessary supplies of
human labour, to keep their estates in proper
cultivation, and to raise such crops as might
adequately compensate them for the risk of
their capital, and the annual amount of their
outlay. Free labour exclusively (Heaven be
thanked !) it was, and is still, necessary that they
should employ. But the burning climate of those
tropical regions has ever interposed an insuperable,
because a physical, obstacle to the efforts of European
agricultural industry within them. The intensity of the
heat, the exhausting nature of avocations in parts neces-
sarily pursued beneath its fiercest action, the hostility
of the rainy season to European health, and the dele-
terious influences of vegetable decomposition, are pa-
ralysing to the mental powers even, but fatal, in a
greater or less degree, according to the modification
of external circumstances, and of the physiology of
individual constitutions, to the bodily health of natives
of our temperate countries. Only people of the copper
coloured, or the yellow races, can replace, or labour
with, the negroes in the out-door occupations
of West Indian husbandry ; as it was once imagined
that only the negroes could be substituted -for the
red Caribs, or indigenous population of the Carrib-
bean Archipelago, whom the brutal avarice and
cruelty of their white invaders and masters have
long since utterly extirpated. Meanwhile, soil ex-
hausted or not, our West Indian position is one which
political exigencies would compel us to retain even if
commercial discretion should prompt us to abandon it.
These islands, by their geographical position, supply
a chain of posts of observation ranging along a vast
extent of the eastern coasts of the two Americas.
They are advanced works " from whence the Old
World regards the New." It is now, at length, per-
mitted to us to arrive at the second bright page in
the death and blood-stained annals of our settlements
in the West Indies. We have given freedom to
900,000 blacks, who were, some years pre-
viously, of no higher legal or political importance
than the lowest serfs, the meanest adscripti glebe;
namely, human chattels—whose lives were measured
as they were consumed, by the amount of physical
labour performed. They were machines animated—
but still brute, and fed and sustained only because exist-
ence was the indispensable ingredient of their value,
and because that value was proportionately enhanced
with the vigour and healthfulness of that existence.
Those who are now to replace them are-1. Volun-
tary labourers. 2. Well paid, protected, and enter-
tained. 3. Term servants only, capable not merely
of leaving their employment at a given period, pre-
viously specified and agreed upon with the employer,
and guaranteed by the local Government; but even,
on reasonable cause shown, before the expiration of
their contract. 4. They are in all respects, both as
to their private positions and comforts, and as to their
social condition, not degraded below, but elevated
above those which they occupied in their far distant
homes, from which they have been, on their own ap-
plication, or with their own free consent and desire,
imported into these British islands and possessions.
It is long since we have perused any of the Parlia-
mentary Papers with more pleasure than we have de-
rived from an examination of the " Blue Book,"
entitled " Correspondence relative to Emigration of
Labourers to the West Indies and the Mauritius,
from the west coast of Africa, the East Indies, and
China, presented to both Houses by command of her
MAJESTY in the course of the present session." The
first class of correspondence, documents, returns, &c.,
relates to the emigration of labourers to Jamaica,
British Guiana, and Trinidad. The second—to that
of (East) Indian labourers to the Mauritius. The
third—to that of Chinese labourers to the West In-
dies. The fourth—that of (East) Indian labourers
to the West Indies. We hope shortly to find room
for some detailed abstract of their contents.

Madrid papers of the 2d instant have been re-
ceived. In some of them it is stated that the fall a
the Ministry was brought about in consequence of
their demanding the suspension of the sale of the pro-
perty of the secular clergy, which had not already
been disposed of. Two Ministerial journals declare,
from authority, that there is no truth in the state-
ment ; but they do not condescend to add more. The
anniversary of the rising at Madrid against the
French, in 1808, was celebrated on the 2d by solemn
services in most of the churches, and the Bourse
remained closed.

The discussion in the French Chamber of Deputies
was a little enlivened on Tuesday by a speech of M.
ARAGO. The Marquis DE LA ROCREJAQUELIN OR
the previous day had made an attack on the members
of the Committee appoWted to superintend the con-