The Sun.
London, England, 1828-09-24 00:00:00

danger. It is the concentrat ionboth of passion
and of power in hands altogether irresponsible.
it must end in mischief.—Times.
If we were to enumerate all the evils arising
out of the practice of imprisonment for debt,
we believe- the detail would nearly exhaust the
catalogue of human miseries. This cruel and
absurd practice, which confounds misfortune
with crime, is a relic of barbarous times. It
ought not to continue to be a reproach npon
civilized and Christian legislation. If the abo-
lition of arrest for debt had no other effect than
to cut up and destroy a vicious and dangerous
facility of credit, whereby people of small and
moderate incomes are tempted to live beyond
their means, and ,are ensnared . into extrava-
gance, it would be productive of great advantage
to society. But that is not the only benefit that
would result from the abrogation of this unchris-
tian law ;—the penalty of imprisonment being
inflicted only upon crime would carry along with
it a stronger moral stigma than it does at pre-
sent, when the terrors of the gaol are so applied
as to confound poverty with guilt. Many an
unfortunate debtor, who is driven from a state of ,
difficulty and embarrassment into-irreparable ruin
by being locked up in a prison, would be able,
by persevering industry, to retrieve his affairs,
and itidischarge the just demands of his credi-
tors. Many such a person, who comes forth
from the contaminating influence of a gaol, des-
titute and Cltaracterless-, to plunge from despera-
tion into crime, might be a worthy and useful
member of the society which he disgraces until
his career is closed untimely. Many a man who

raises his hand against his own 1&, and goes
down to the grave with the brand of the suicide
upon his memory, might live to be the support
of a numerous family, and die in competency
and peace. But this inhuman law, which gives
the body of apan as a pledge for his debts, for-
bids the improvement of those circumstances
which adversity has once laid its iron hand
upon. Hence it is the fruitful and fatal
source of crime as well as calamity. A
correspondent has called our attention to
the " deplorable state of those unhappy
victims who have lost their reason from impri-
sonment for debt." He states that there are no
less than three or four persons at this time con-
fined within the walls of the King's Bench
Prison, deprived of the blessing _of reason from

confinement. We have heard. of many such
cases from time to time ;—they are " part and
parcel" of the inevitable evil of the system ; and
we do not envy the feelings of that creditor who
finds that he has availed himself of the cruel
privilege which the law invests him, only to
deprive his ill-fated debtor of the inestimable gift
of reason ! But who can tell the various horrors

of imprisonment to those of the female sex who
are left to struggle with misfortune ? A virtuous
woman locked up for debt among the depraved
inmates of a gaol, exposed to the insults
that most can woutub and the oppression that
least can spare, is a melancholy instance of the
humanity of our laws. But it Sometimes
happens that unprincipled men use the terrors
of imprisonment for debt as a means of ex-
torting from females in adversity a compli-
ance with their licentious desires. Our corre-
spondent mentions an instance. He says
there is " a worthy man in the King's Bench

Prison, whose creditor wanted to seduce his
daughter ; on resisting such infamous' conduct
the father was arrested, sent to prison, the goods
all taken in execution by the same creditor, and
the bed. taken from the intended innocent vic-
tim 1" Here is an-instance which proves what
we have often maintained, that imprisonment for
debt serves more for the purpose of private vin-
dictiveness than public justice. It is not long
since sYe heard of a similar instance of the profli-
gate application of this law ; it was that of an
attorney, who, having conducted a Chancery suit
for a widow lady had a large bill of costs against

her, which the lady was then unprovided— with
means to discharge. She had an only and a
beautiii►l daughter, in her fifteenth year— and
the hoary villain (for he was an old man) pro-
posed try release the mother from the debt, if she
would consent to a proposal that would stamp
her with infamy and her daughter with disho-
nour. His proposal met the indignation it de-
served, a►►d the mother was consigned to a pri-
son. This is a practical commentary on the
law of imimisoltment for debt !—Morning
Herald.

The affairs of Ireland are now universally
allowed to be in that state that we no longer re-
main passive. The question is now very much
simplified ; for even the opponents of the Catho-
lic Claims do not now pretend that things can
remain as they are. The late elections have
produced this result. The word is now, ad-
vance or retrograde. 'What no one would have.
dreamt of maintaining a year ago, is now seriously
advocated by a party among us; and the Bruns-
wick Clubs are the consequence. Well, then,
let us suppose it possible to retrograde—let us
suppose the franchise is taken from the forty-
shilling freeholders—that in the three provinces
Of Ireland, in which the Catholics are fifty to one
to the Protestants, the counties shall be con-
verted into so many rotten boroughs, the one
Protestant virtually voting for himself acid the
fifty Catliolies—that, the Catholics, provoked,
are either intimidated or. cut down—what shall
be
have gained ? The Catholics, of course,will
be more discontented than ever, and stronger
'flea:tires must be adopted to keep them down.
Would any man in his senses contemplate the
perpetuation of a atate of things in which the
resources of one country are to be constantly
employed in keeping down the population of
another ? It is not in human nature that the
Catholics can ever. be reconciled to the treatment
gravely proposed by the Duke of Newcastle.—
We have often looked into the History of ire-
jod, and been shocked to find, even in histo-
from religious prejudices, as Hume
rianfifrgt3
for instance, a cpla.blooded indifference as to
the natives,which 1:
the wrongs of religion was
This actually speaks of
great man
the pretext.
the spoil of their lands' as if it was a favour to
them, it being so, much more advantageous to
have them cultivated m the English fashion than
in their own way of commonalty; A late
Ame-
• • iced the doctrine t.lat
rican President coolly advanced
the white men had a right to root out the, red
men, because the latter goghl not turn the soil to
i
good accou»t. It is a very convenient doctrine,
no doubt, this, for people who are tt want of
land ; but are we to be astonished that the Irish
shOuld be as eager to keep their possessions as
the English were to take them, and that they
should retaliate on their oppressors when the op-
portunity favours? What astonishes us is not so
n)uelt that the English, being the stronger of the
two, oppressed and plundered the Irish,. because
history -is one continued record of the .wro»gs.,
suffered by the weak from the- powerful, but that