The Sun.
London, England, 1842-11-16 00:00:00

,r5,11,n,

LONDON :
WEDNESDAY MORNING. NOVEMBER 16, 1842.

We have already stated that the number of
persons punished by summary conviction and
by hpprisonment, in only nine prisons, in the
last year, was no less than 3,147. Those persons
belonged to eight counties, the population of
which. is about one-eighth of the whole population
of England and Wales. There were probably
more persons summarily punished in those coun-
ties thariawe have stated, but there could not be
less ;' 'and assuming that number as an index to
the pniiisliment similarly inflicted in other parts
of England and Wales, it follows that about
4,0.00 persons are annually punished by sum-
maryconvictions who are not heard of at Quarter
Sessions or •Assizesi. whose names never appear
tai atirealendar, and who are not included, we
belititt rli any criminal returns presented to
Parliament, or annually published.— lhey teach
US tshie the ~ariminalit y of the people is double
what; it, usually appears to be, and that the
punishments inflicted by the law are more than
numerous as those (,fficially promulgated.
We `'state the nun iber however, only as ap-
pro;ymative towards the truth. On seeking for
the name kind of info) •mation in the Report of
the 4nspector of Prifions of.the Northern and
Eastern District, as Ni .e, have found-- in the Report
for the Southern and .Western-Districts, we can
find.hothing of the sort. We do not censure that
Report.
:Sire have allready borne favourable
testimony' to' the,
we mu;
and care of Mr.
WiLtiA MS, but we mu; it say that it 'vonld be '
more for the public advani'age if the Prison In-

spectors were supplied with a model of the statis-
tical informatiOn they are required to furnish,
and if each one were to supply exactly
the same kind of information. That not
being the case, we find in the Report of
the Inspector for the Southern and Western
District, the curious information we quoted as to
the number of summary punishments, and we
are unable to confirm or extend it by any cm.-
' responding information in the Report of the In-
spector for the Northern and Eastern District.
Looking, however, at the certainty of many
omissions, and the impossibility of any exaggera-
tion as to the number actually punished summa-
rily in the nine prisons we have referred to, our
approximation obviously falls far below the
truth and yet we state it as a somewhat start-
ling fact, that upwards of 24,000 persons are an-
nually punished, in England and Wales, by im-
prisonment, varying from fourteen days to four
months, by the mandates, of Magistrates, and
without the instrumentality of a Jury.'
What a severe punishment imprisonment now
is we need scarcely remind our readers. It is not
mere detention, mere' restraint, mere exclusion
from all that man calls enjoyment;- it is
that, indeed, but it is much more. It involves,
generally, the degradation of cropping, and
wearing a prison dress ; exclusion front all so-
ciety, hard and monotonous labour—(in many
instances totally foreign to the prisoner's ordi-
nary habits of muscular exertion, as in the case
of the sawyers committed to Northleacb, pre-
viously accustomed to stand almost still, and
work 'exclusively with their arms, but there set
to walk up stairs continuously for hours on the
tread wheel)—cold, and sometimes damp cells,
and insufficient food. At the same time, it is
frequently combined with other punlslunents,
such as shutting up in the black-hole, stopping
the allowance of food, solitary confinement, and
extra labour. In some cases these subsidiary
punishments arc very numerous and varying, so
that this kind of torture depends very much
on individual Magistrates and gaolers, and on
the system adopted. For example, under one sys-
tem, in Northallerton House ofCorrection, the ad-
ditional punishments in 1839-40 were 879, while in
1840-41 they were, under a new system, 23:2.
rn 1839-40, therefore, 647 punishments or little
acts of torture were unnecessarily and wantonly
inflicted on an average of about 63 prisoners.
We impress it on our readers that the imprison-
ment to which Magistrates summarily condemn
upwards of 20,000 of the people per year is de-
grading, utterly cheerless, and debasing to both
body and mind, an both of which it inflicts a
slow torture.

In - the Police-courts of the metropolis, and
some of the larger towns, these punishments arc
inflicted by professional gentlemen, who are
accustomed to sift evidence, and have, perhaps,
no strong interest to give them a systematic
bias against the houseless vagrants, the un-
thinking trespassers, the hungry poachers,
the shivering hedge-breakers, • the petty
thieves, who constitute the bulk of those
thus summarily punished. They administer.
this sort of law, too, which is erroneously named
justice, under the eye of reporters, awl they are
kept in check by the Press. Notwithstandi g
these restraints, we hold the immense power en-
trusted to them of inflicting summary punishment
to be dangerous and injurious to the people.
Every objection to the system applies with four-
fold force when that power is exercised by coun-
try gentlemen, more likely to give way to temper
or passion than sift evidence and make allow-
ance for motives,who have a strong interest and sys-
tematic bias against the persons they punish, who
exercise their authority uncontrolled by the pre-
sence of the public or the Press, and who are sur-
rounded almost exclusively by menials or humble
dependents. Such a system, we do not hesitate
to say, is, in principle, a great and a grievous
tyranny, and the: immense mass of pain inflicted
under it shows how oppressively and how-cruelly
it is worked.

It has been prov.ed that our system of prison
discipline has been of late years increased in
,severity; it is proved that the number of persons
doomed to undergo that penalty has been much
aug-Mepted. Thus, while the public has been
vaunting of its increased humanity—while great
"and good men have. exertedtheinselves to me-
lioraee our sanguinary code,.and,have boasted of
.their success, its punisidnent hii; in'. secret been
amazingly increased and sharpened. It is no
longer an instant pain, it is slow and excru-
ciating torture.. Our philanthropists have struck
.the; sword out of the hands.,of .tho, executioner,
l'bitt it has been only to place in the hands of the
:Jrlagistrate and the gaoler' the means of slowly
and painfully accomplishing the extermination
of criminals. In truth, while the public has been
pleased to [suppose that cruelty was disappear-
ing, there has been retrocession from humanity,
and a furtive enhancement of the punishments
inflicted by the laws.
Severe and terrible, however, as is now im-
prisonment, still there are some of the popula-
tion who court it as a refuge from greater
calamities. It is better than to die, like JOHN
LAVENDER, of filth and hunger. It is better
than to live surrounded by men as hungry as
famished wolves. When great masses of the
community must subsist on less than a penny a
day, when gaunt hunger stares thousands of
families in the face, they are reduced to
the condition of wretches famishing on a
raft at sea—alls sympathy is at an end, they
are almost ready to devour each other, and
from such a terrible state of society even
the horrid prison of Northleach may be a
welcome refuge. Into that condition have our
political experimentalists plunged the people.
They have become reckless. The thousands
who are condemned yearly to imprisonment
shows how terribly they are degraded. It is im-
possible to go on consigning forty or fifty thousand
persons annually to prison, leaving their wives,
families, and relatives a prey to destitution, and
to shame, without spreading from them, and by
,
weir means, a great and increasing mass of cor-
ruption upwards in society, and without making a
prison a welcome home to many. Accordingly
we learn that as the punishments have ex-
tended, the moral condition of the people has be-
come more deplorable; the most pitiable thing
of all being that this vast extent of cruel summary
punishment is inflicted to no good end, fbr it
does not prevent, and probably increases, offences..
How totally at variance the system of hasty
arbitrary punishment, inflicted at the will of one
man, is in. its nature and principle with that
charity which thinketh no evil, we need not say.
How contrary it is in spirit from that doctrine,
that all'are liable to errors, that all are 'sinners,
and that we should love one another like'bre-
thren, needs no elucidation. There is,no touch of,
forbearance, of mercy, or of kindliness in it. It is
directly opposed to the pro:ept—Do unto others
as you, would be done unto : for what rich man
would like to be judged by a poor vagrant, and
ousted at his bidding, for want of charity per-
haps, from his luxurious home, and consigned
to a damp cell and the tread-mill at Northleach?
It is as opposite as possible from those precepts
which the clergy try to enforce, much more by
their words than their conduct. We denounce
this great and terrible despotism of summary pu-
nislitnent as opposed alike to freedom, justice;
and religion.

CONVICTS.—Last week forty-two Scotch convicts,
under sentence of transportation for various terms, and
principally from Glasgow, arrived. in London by one
of the Leith steam-ships, and were landed at St.
Katherine's Wharf, and afterwards transferred to the
hulks at Woolwich, and to a convict ship lying off
Deptford, about to sail for New South Wales.
The convicts were mostly young men, and many
of them had been convicted of uttering base coin,
They were chained together in gangs of three or four
each, and the heavy irons on their legs precluded the
possibility of escape. One desperate fellow, who
was manacled to two others, committed
yiolent as-
sault on one of his partners in crime on reaching the
A
wharf, for which he was threatened with a severe flog-
ging, and stoppage of.some of his rations, on his arrival
at the hulks.
GOVERNMENT COUMISSIONER.---It is reported that
a Commissioner, appointed by Government, is at
present in town, with the design of getting informa-
tion respecting the effect which the new American
Tariff is likely to have. on the manufacturing interests
s nei,rhbourhood --
of Glasgow and it . Gtasgow Argus.

COURT CIRCULAR.
Her Majesty the Queen Dowager ;-ode out on
horseback in the vicinity of Canford House, Dorset-
shire, on Monday, attended by her suite, Earl
Brownlow arrived in the afternoon at Canford House
on a visit to her Majesty: The Dowager Lady
Clinton and Miss Seymour paid a visit to the Queen
Dowager on Monday. The Earl of Denbigh was
expected at Canford House yesterday evening on a
visit to her Majesty.
Count de St. Aulaire, the French Ambassador,
transacted business yesterday at the Foreign-office.
Dispatches were received yesterday at the Colonial-
office from the Governors of New South Wales, South
Australia, New Zealand, and the Mauritius. Dis-
patches were sent off last evening for the Governors
of the West India Colonies.

FASHIONABLE INTELLIGENCE.

ARRIVALS.

George Dodd, Esq., M.P., Mrs. Dodd, and Miss
Sanders, in Montagu-square, from the Pyrenees ; his
Excellency General Cass and Mr. Lewis Cass, at
Long's Hotel, Bond-street, from Paris ; G. Y.
kinson, Esq., and J. Malneck, Esq., at ditto; S.
Cowell, Esq., of Trinity College, Cambridge, at ditto ;
John Portal, Esq., from Freefolk Priors ; Rev. W.
Maskell, at ditto, from Devonshire : G. Ferguson,
Esq., at ditto, from Sussex; D. Floyds, Esq., and F.
R. Rives, Esq., at ditto, from New York ; - Mr. and
Mrs. L. Faits and family, at Markwell's London Ho-
tel, Albemarle-street, from the Continent; J. Pain,
Esq., at Nelson's Hotel, Portland Tlace, from Christ-
church; the Misses Sutton, at ditto, from Cologne ;
Mrs. Owen and family, at ditto, from Hastings ; J.
Jenkins, Esq., and Mr. Jenkins, at ditto, from Car-
digan, South Wales ; J. Bourne, Esq., and family,
at ditto, from the Continent ; Lyndley Purcell, Esq.,
at ditto.

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