The Sun.
London, England, 1829-11-21 00:00:00

SPIRIT OP THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

Our Dublin letter of this day goes over some
of the old grounds of Irish uneasiness, among
which stands conspicuous the administration of
justice by country Magistrates, which, even
when by accident correct, has seldom the good
luck to he satisfactory. It seems that a Catho-
lic of the name of Delaney had been deprived
of a gun by individuals personating policemen.
one of vvhom turned out to be an unauthorized

neighbour of his own. This man was after-
wards arrested ; but he was detained in the po-
lice-office for ten days before the examinations oE
Delaney were sworn, and the transgressor (by
name Ince) committed to prison. The state-
ment proceeds to say, that on a certain evening
Delaney received a summons from a Magistrate
who had taken his original deposition in him
case, to attend him the next day, and give fur;
ther evidence touching the same transaction
but while Delaney was about to attend the Ma-
gistrate, nine policemen are represented to have
be4t his house, making prisoners of him, his
wife, and children, and confining them all sep:i-
rately, with a view to their being examined.
Amongst a considerable number of Magistrates
who came, some of them from a distance, to take

a part in these examinations, was Lord De Vesci
(a Nobleman, we believe, of high respectability
and character). Delaney's wife was examined,
and nothing more appears to have transpired,
when our correspondent sent off his letter, than
that Ince was still in prison. Then comes the
usual dose of " dissatisfaction" at the opposite
modes of conduct pursued by the Justices with
regard to Protestant and Catholic offenders, to

the latter of whom the strictest measure of legal
severity is always shown, while the former expe-
rience every possible indulgence from the Ma-
gistrates, and are never committed, much less ex-
posed to punishment, until the most active ex-
pedients have been had recourse to, to discover
some outlet for their escape. We really cannot
find, on the face of the above proceedings, in so
far as our Dublin letter has described them, the

smallest justification of such surmises and indi-
rect reproaches against the Queen's county Ma-
gistrates. Lord De Vesci, we understand, is
not a person to deal out inconsistent measures

of justice to men because they have different
creeds. It is probable that some important com-
munication had been made respecting Delaney,
which subjected him and his family to a second
investigation ; but it is only throwing away fire,
to condemn authorities, as such, before they
have been convicted of abuses. It gives us
much pleasure to see the anti-union drama sink-
ing quietly into a dull farce.—Times.

Several of the witnesses examined by the
Commissioners for enquiring into the Law of
Real Property express the opinion that primo-
geniture is best suited to a Monarchy. Mo-
narchy itself, however, like every other Govern-
ment, must be tried by its tendency to promote
the general good, and it is on that ground alone
that it has the regard of the people of this coun-
try. This is, however, a question which we are
not called to discuss when trying the merit of
any law. Is the law itself beneficial or other-
wise? To recommend a law injurious to the
community, because it is most in harmony with
Monarchy, is placing Monarchy in an unfavour-
able light, without placing the law itself in
a good one. We have often thought that the
law of succession to real property in this country
has very much retarded the improvement of Ire-
land. In the Dublin Morning Register of
Wednesday last there is a letter from Sir Chas.
Morgan, in which there is the following passage
that bears upon this subject. He is comment-
ing on a letter from M. Ensor, in a previous
number of the same Journal, in which more im-
portance, he thinks, is attributed to Absenteeism
as a cause of the distress, than it is entitled to :
—" There are many circumstances peculiar to
Ireland which lead men to expatriate themselves.
Ireland is neither the focus of business, nor of
pleasure, nor of Government; but it is the focus
of many domestic disquietudes, from which a
reasonable man may wish to remove his family.
The number, however, of absentees does not alto-
gether depend upon such causes, but upon another
peculiarity, which concerns the constitution of for-
tunes. I t is not every man who chuses that can
become an absentee. The merchant, the trades.
man, the professional man, the manufacturer,
must stay at home and mind his
cannot go to London or Paris, and 'leave his
affairs in charge with an agent. In any country,
therefore, which can be considered in a whole-
some and thriving condition), an excessive and
41 moral impossibility.
dangerous
therou
rai
sbisient eesabsentee;Pisare matter of complaint
and outcry, is but the outward and visible sign
of another and more difficult evil—the unequal
distribution, of national wealth. The whole
riches c‘f Ireland centre in the landed aristocracy ;
and whenever that is the case, the people are of
necessity paupers. tor the fact itself is a proof
that land is the only instrument by which the
population can gain their living ; and they must,
therefore, give more for it than they ought,
through undue competition. If the bcross pro-
duce of the soil were divided in equal and just
lroportions between landlord, capitalist, and
abourer, the sums exported by the existing num-
ber of absentees would be so far diminished as
materially to lessen the evil; and the portion
leis at home would alim,ent the industry of the
country, by being expended by 21 class whose
wants are const:nit and steady. The peasantry
would then be fed and clothed as human beings
in a civilised country should ho, and the manu-
facture of their clothing would employ and feed
a numerous class that at present has no exist-
ence in Ireland, " For it is obvious that this
reasoning is not confined to the absentees, but
applies p the whole class ofland.holders, present
or absent, including, in au extended meaning of
the term, tithe owners and place holders, whose
emoluments ultimately are derived from the pro-
ducts of industry and of the soil. To the la-
bourer it makes very little difference who gets his
share of the produce, provided he does not get
it himself. The resident landlord, not less than
the absentee, receives the difference between his
just proportion of the harvest and that which
the competition of a struggline, population forces
into his hands. Compared with this, the crumbs
which fall from the rich resident's table in the
shape of employment, and which figure for so
much in the calculations of the milers against
absentees, go for very little indeed. The reason
why so small a quantity of the earth's produce is
consumed at home, is not so much the number
of absentees, as the high rate of land, and the
charge laid on the industry of the country, which
leave the labourer in a state of starvation. The
resident landlord is an exporter as well as the
absentee, and he sends abroad all that the mar-
kets at home cannot tale (41' his hands. For
this he receives the wine which he drinks him-
self, the clothes that he wears himself, and a va-
riety of b forei,n commodities which he enjoys him-
self; and by which his tenantry are no more be-

flatted than the tenantry of the absentee. This
would be no evil, if the landlord got no more
than his share ; but it is everything where lie
gets all above the mere subsistence of the human
animals on his estate. As it is, the resident at
present is but an absentee in disguise, and it is
that fact which makes the question of absentee-
ship assume so fearful an aspect. The same phe-
nomena occur in Poland, and wherever agriculture
is the sole employment of the people, and the land
is in the possession of an Aristocracy." A very
ingenious book was published at Edinburgh,
in 1814, by the Father of Scotch Agriculture.
Mr. Dawson, then an old man, under the title
of " An Inquiry into the Causes of the general
Poverty and Dependence of Mankind," in which
he shows that the tendency of a law: of primo-
geniture is to reduce the body of a nation to
the condition of slaves. " When the whole land
of a country," he observes, " is the private pro-
perty of a few individuals, those who have no
land must, to obtain food, serve those who have
the food to spare, or they must obtain land from
those who have it to spare, for raising food them-
selves, by giving the owners a share of the pro-
duce, or labour, or attendance. And where
there are no common protectors appointed by
the community, with sufficient power to defend
the weak from oppression, even those who have
some land, but not sufficient power to protect
their property, must also attach themselves to some
more powerful neighbour who can protect them.
The estates of the weak will, in such a state of
society, decrease in size from poverty and op-
pression ; whereas those of the powerful, par-
ticularly if the law of primogeniture is the law of
succession, will be increased in various ways, and
the power of the owners must increase in propor-
tion. . . . . In a populous country,

where the people live in a simple state, and can,
not better their condition by emigration, it is
evident that as they increase in number, land
and food must become more scarce, and those
who have no land must, in the character of me-
tayers or as tenants, give a greater part of the
produce for liberty to occupy land ; or, in
that of labourers, a greater part of their
.time for food. They will he obliged to
submit, as their numbers increase, to harder
conditions of various kinds, for food, or for
liberty to occupy land. And when a country
becomes very populous, and food very scarce, so
many labourers are seeking employment, that
the competition reduces the wages of labour so
low that the weak and infirm are not able to earn
even necessaries.
_ _

are not only ruinous to labourers, hidiminish-
ing the quantity of subsistence and the demand for
'labourers, but they have also a powerful tendency
to make them slaves. For as a proprietor can
turn out any person who may occupy a part of
his estate without a lease, if it is very extensive
and lying contiguous (like the estates of the
Barons formerly in Britain, and at present in
Poland and Russia), he can by that means
banish such person from his native place ; nor
can the friends or relations of the banished per-
son give him a house or shelter, but at the risk
of being banished themselves. Nor will neigh-
bouring landlords lessen the power of their
order by allowing such persons an asylum upon
their estates. In such situations, therefore, the
best laws can have little effect in protecting the
people fiom the tyranny of great proprietors of
land, and of their stewards and favourites, as the
people must expect to be banished if they apply
to a Court of .Justice for redress. But where
laud is much divided, if a person is turned out
of possession of land or employment by one pro-
prietor,
he may get a possession or employment
from another in the same neighbourhood ; so
that no individual has it in his power to
banish an individual from his friends and
neighbours, or can commit rapes, murders, or
any other atrocious crime with impunity, such
as have been, and are too frequently committed
on very extensive estates, where the people
depend entirely upon the owners of the
land for employment and a residence. The
more that the land is divided among the
proprietors in a simple state of society, the
better it is cultivated, the greater is the demand
for labourers, and the proprietors have less power
over the occupiers. Hence the miserable slavish
situation of the people, and the absolute power
cf the great owners of land in Britain in former
apes, and in Poland and other nations of Eu-
rope at present, and the comparatively indepen-
dent titnation of the poorest people in the an-
cient Roman Republic." The Roman Catholic
Church, by jut ieceiving the younger sons and
slaughters of the 4ristocracy, enabled the pro-
prietors of great estates to keep them unbroken,
and thus greatly retarded the progress of civili-
zation in Europe, in those countries in which
primogeniture was the order of succession. In
Ireland, where the Protestant Church has less
ample means of maintaining younger children
(not extinguishing them by celibacy), the estates
must have been more cut up, but for the con-
nection with England. 1. he servility of the
Aristoctacy has enabled them to quarter their
children on the public, and thus to perpetuate
the monstrous state of things with regard to
property, and thus the English connection has
been unfortunate to Ireland in perpetuating the
iristocraey, as well as in furnishing that Aris-
tocracy with the means of keeping down the
servile population. When there is an overgrown
Aristocracy, and a large servile population com-
peting for land as a subsistence, and giving all
to the landlord, all that is raised will be exported
for luxuries to the landlord ; and it is true, as
Sir Charles Morgan observes, that counts42s
like Ireland or Poland, may go on for ever in a
vicious circle, without improving. Whether
the Aristocrat live in Ireland or out of it, is of
little consequence to the country. • The dia.
culty is to destroy an Aristocracy, which, where-
ever it prevails, seems to render all itupeowereent
impossible.—Morning Chronicle.
The mystery which still hangs over the fate of
the late Mrs. Phillips, for want of some known
and responsible power to undertake or compel a
thorough and searching inquiry into the. circum-
stances of this extraordinary case, induces Ls
once more to remark upon the inconveniences ,
which result from there being in reality no such
appointment as that of public prosecutor. We
showed the other day how widely different the
duties of the Attorney-General, as at present
understood, are from those which an officer
appointed to inquire into and prosecute crimes
not coming within the range of State offences,
or violations of the laws affecting the revenues
of the Crown, would necessarily have to per-
form. The fiction that makes the King the
nominal prosecutor in all penal cases, and gives
to the Attorney-General, as the King's immedi-
ate law officer, an imaginary superintendence
over the whole scheme of criminal justice, is
ornamental enough to our system, but not of
much actual utility. Another constitutional
principle, not in exact conformity with this, has
made the King the fountain of mercy ; and thus

the. same authority is invested with the opposite
prerogatives—to prosecute and to pardon. Of
these two attributes of Majesty, the one severe,
the other amiable—the latter mil). practically
exercised, except in cases of high treason, where
the Attorney-General superintends the initiatory
proceedings; and is instrumental to laying the
bill of indictment before the Grand Jury ; or in
offences touching the Revenue Laws, or sediti-
ous and flagrant misdemeanours, where he has
the power to put the offender on his trial with-
out the intervention of a Grand Jury, by
filing ex-oSicio informations. All capital
crimes, in the punishment of which the pub-
lic, as contradistinguished from the King and
his Government, are interested, he leaves to
any private or other prosecutors, who choose to
undergo the trouble, expense, and vexation of
bringing them under the cognizance of the law.
In cases of murder, the parish officers are gene-
rally the prosecutors, though there is no power
to compel them to commence proceedings.—
When the King loses a subject by wilful vio-
lence of any sort, and the Coroner's Jury return
a verdict of murder or manslaughter against any
person, the Coroner issues his warrant to ap-
prehend that person. When the person is ap-
prehended, he is taken before the Magistrates,
who, if they think the evidence strong enough
to justify a committal, bind over the witnesses
to give evidence at the trial. In a case like that
of the death of Mrs. Phillips, there is no verdict
of a Coroner's Jury inculpating any person.—
The parish are not compellable by law to insti-
tute any proceedings, neither are the relations of
the unfortunate lady, nor the executors to her
will. There is, indeed, a moral responsibility,
which attaches in a greater or less degree to all
of those parties, and ought to make them
ashamed of allowing the matter to rest where it
does at present ; but a moral responsibility, not
enforced by a legal penalty, is often, as in the
present case, of no weight at all. The parish

of Finchley, nut being quite so public-spirited
as the parish of Polstead, that investigated the
case of Maria Marten, and rested not until they
brought her murderer to justice, may allow a
silence as deep as the silence of the grave to
cover this fatal occurrence, without being liable
to any earthly tribunal for dereliction of duty.
So it is with the relations and the executors :

there is no motive why they should take pro-
ceedings to satisfy the public mind whether the
yet unexplained death was the result of accident
or design, except the claims of affection—the
ties of kindred—the sense of moral duty—the
voice of nature ; and such inducements are un-
happily sometimes weaker obligations on the
human mind than the dread of personal inconve-
nience, or the apprehension of pecuniary loss.
Yet it is upon the option of persons so cir-
cumstanced—so liable to he governed by influ-
ences and feelings which countervail a sense of
duty, that the first movement of the process of
criminal justice in this country mainly depends.
It is as useless to talk of the perversion of the
office of Attorney-General from what it was in
its original institution, as to talk of the perversion
of the office of Justice of the Peace ; a species
of Magistrate whom the Constitution originally
never intended to possess a judicial power; and
who now adjudicates upon offences in a variety
of instances without the intervention of a Jury.
Our idea of a public prosecutor comprises the
duties of an officer who would take up the case
where the private prosecutor now takes it up ;
who would inquire, collect, and arrange proofs,
and -set in motion the machinery of criminal
law. We also wish the power of committal in
capital cases to be taken out of the hands of the
ordinary Magistrates, and intrusted to the more
intelligent and responsible authority of a duly
qualified public prosecutor. When we first
touched upon this subject, we were not aware of
the existence of a treatise upon this subject by
a Mr. Stephen, who speaks from professional
experience of the serious inconveniences and
frequent failure of justice which the present
system, or rather want of system, occasions; and
displays a great deal of practical knowledge and
good sense in his mode of treating the question.
The pamphlet of Mr. Stephen has been pub-
lished nearly a )ear, but did not happen to fall
under our notice until it was forwarded to us
since this discussion of a public prosecutor arose.
This gentleman says, " It is almost incredible
how much depends on the tale's!, activity, and
honesty of the prosecutor, or rather of his pro-
fessional adviser, in the succsssful prosecution of
criminal's in this country. It is left entirely to the
prosecutor, or his agent, to procure the requisite
evidence, and also to sift the degree of credit
due to the witnesses themselves." Again—
" Professional ignorance or inactivity, or a pro-
sccutor's poverty, may, in the very first stage
of the proceeding, ensure the offender's impu-
nity—and still greater is the risk at that stage
where the prisoner is tried, when an acquittal
would immediately follow on a necessary link in
the evidence being defective, or on its being ob.
served that any essential witness was undeserving
of credit, or incapable of giving evidence. But,
if such may be the consequence of ignorance or
poverty on the part of the prosecutor, still more
certainly is it in the power of a dishonest soli-
citor to ensure the acquittal of the prisoner."—
He then proceeds to show how a dishonest soli-
citor may defeat the ends of justice, as by the
suppression of material evidence, by purposely
liasons the indictment incorrectly prepared for
the Clerk of the indictments by the introduction
of legal or clerical inaccuracies. To remedy the
evils which he describes, he proposes the ap-
pointment of a public prosecutor, and observes
the duties of such an office cannot, for obvious
reasons, be effectually and properly discharged by
any indisidual filling the situation of his Ma-
jesty's Attorney-General ; but to prevent unne-
cessary innovation in point of theory or principle,
the public prosecutor might be considered as the
density of' the Attorney-General, exercising as
hisi substitute the office of criminal prosecutor,
except hi the esse of Stale yrences, or ex-offcio
informations:' Mr. ,9 t pp h en does not propose,
as we did, that the public prosecutor should have
the power of committing, but recommends a
division of the duties of Justices of Peace, so
as to cristitute two classes—namely, judicial
Magistrates, 4n4 Magistrates of inquiry,—the
former exercising the power of adjudicating on
such offences as fall within a surc,rsiary jurisdic-
tion, while the duty of the latter would be to
take tha examinations of prisoners, and discharge,
I commit, or hold to bail, as the case might be, and
as the evidence warranted. This arrangement
would, in our opinion, very much simplify and
lighten the duties of Magistrates, and thereby
I enable them to discharge their office with more
satisfaction to themselves and the public, than
while they are called upon to exercise functions
complicated and inconsistent. The preparations
1 of criminal cases for trial is the task which Mr.
Stephen considers the peculiar duty of the public
prosecutor, and for that purpose he suggests that
such officer, or a- competent deputy, ought to sit
as an assessor of the Magistrates of Inquiry, to

collect such evidence as, at the first discovery of
a crime, appears essential to discover and convict
the criminal, to prepare bills of indictment, to
arrange the evidence to sustain such bills, to pro-
duce such evidence before the Grand Jury, to
prepare the requisite instructions for Counsel,
to furnish the Judge with the depositions of the
witnesses, and, lastly, to tax the costs Of the
witnesses, and make the necessary arrangements
with the Treasurer of the County for their pay-
ment. However we may differ from the author
of this plan, with respect to some of the details
of the measure, we fully concur with him in the
i
necessity of adopting its principle. It s clear
that the Attorney-General, though nominally
presiding over the criminal justice of the realm,
is not a public prosecutor, and it is as clear that
so important an office ought, as we have before
stated, be lodged with an intelligent and respon.
sible person, and not left to be exercised or ne-
glected according to the ignorance, malice, timi-
dity, or caprice of private individuals. We re-
peat it, that, if such an appointment were in ex-
istence at the present time, the public mind
would not be left to this moment in dark and
fearful uncertaintyas to the cause of the untimely
death of Mrs. Phillips, which, whether it was
the result of calamity or crime, reflects great dis-
grace upon the justice of this moral and intelli-
gent nation.--Morning Herald.

A pamphlet has just been published by Ef-
fingham Wilson, entitled " A Review of the
Arguments and Allegations which have been
offered to Parliament against the renewal of the
East India Company's Charter," which is likely
to excite no small sensation among those who
take an interest in the important question to
which it refers. Who the author of the pam-
phlet may be comes not within our sphere of
knowledge; but however we may differ from
him in some of his conclusions, it is but justice
to observe that he has handled his subject with
great tact, and no inconsiderable portion of
talent. The object of the pamphlet is to de-
fend the East India Company against the asper-
sions which have been directed against it by
certain ill-advised and ill-informed persons, to
prove that its monopoly has been any thing but
detrimental to the national welfare, and that
those who anticipate a great vent for our manu-
factures, or a greatly diminished price of the
articles imported from India to China by the
Company, on the trade being thrown open, are
likely to deceive themselves to their loss. With
regard to general invectives against the Com-
pany, the writer might well have spared himself
the trouble of replying to them. With the ex-
ception of their last resolution to cut down the
pay of their military force, there is no govern-
ing body in any part of the world, whose general
conduct would bear a more close and severe
investigation, whether in regard to its servants
or its 'subjects. That it has always acted wisely,
would be to predicate more of it than could be
averred of the wisest individual who at any time
has ever illumined our planet ; but that it has,
in almost every case, taken justice for its guide,
we may safely appeal not only to those who
have served it, but to the millions who live
under its sway, and are happy under its govern-
ment. In the same manner, also, the writer
might have spared himself the trouble of endea-
vouring to convince us that great and almost
universal ruin would be the portion of those
speculators who, on the opening of the trade to
China, should anticipate enormous profits from
their adventures. The rational portion of the
public cannot, we think, but be aware that for a
year or two, perhaps even for a greater length of
time, the same fate would befal them which they
unluckily experienced some years ago in South
America, and at a later period, in India; but
such results, let us remark, are by no means pe-
culiar either to the contemplated and much-de-
sired trade with China, or any other,country,
but, on the contrary, common to all countries
with which it is hoped to carry on a gainful
traffic. Every one is eager to grasp the golden
prize, and in the common haste to appropriate
it, it invariably eludes their grasp. But to
come to what is more properly, as it ought
to be, the subject of the pamphlet in
question, the degree in which the East
India trade throve under the Company's
management, the degree in which it has
thriven since it was thrown open, and
the state of the trade with China, both as regards
the commercial transactions of the Company it-
self, and of the United States, and other nations
trading with China. If the results at which the
author arrives, and the data on which they are
founded, be in every respect correct, assuredly
the country would gain nothing either by the
throwing open of the trade to China, or the
wresting of the Goverment of India out of the
hands of the Company. We fully epee with
the writer on the latter point ; but with regard
to the trade with China (why should not the
truth be spoken ?) all tile conclusions at which
we had previously arrived, with the exception of
those which rest on general principles, have ap-
parently been so overthrown by the returns ex-
hibited by the author, that we must beg for fur-
ther space to consider the subject, and in the
meantime to suspend our opinion until we have
had time to examine his statements satisfacto-
rily. That there are some sad glossings in the
author's arguments we have already discovered,
but they are not sufficient, we own, to affect ma-
terially the general result, and it would, in such
case, be injustice, both to the author and to our
readers, were we, in contradiction to the facts
and statements which he has adduced, to adhere
to conclusions which the latter would appear to
demolish. The most curious, as well as the
most important, parts of the pamphlet are those
which refer to the trade of the Company, and
of the United States, with India and China,
and the prices of tea as imported by them re-
spectively. We extract the documents and ob-
servations respecting the first point ; and must
defer those which relate to the other for another
day. The following is an abstract statement of,
the amount of exports from British India by
American ships, from the year 1815-16 to the
year 1826-27 :
Years. 1 Bengal. Bombay.

Madras.

Holland

Dollars.
230,137
235,471
337,a11
209,252
80,164
216,336

Dollars.
39,566
123,159
325,410
126,019
41,236
117,054 f•

Gibraltar
Hansa Towns and Ports of Germany
France on the Atlantic
Brazil
All other places

Total

1,309,694

772,443

Calling to mind the exaggerated statements of
the petitioners, as to this part of the question be-
tween themselves and the East India Company,
let sober persons look, first, at the vast amount
of this trade in tea, from which the British mer•
chant is so shamefully excluded ; and secondly,
at the state of it. If the trade was a profitable
one, if there really existed a demand for tea on
the European continent, is it to be imagined
that the supply would be what it is, and that it
would not increase in the sole hands of the
Americans, in a prodigious degree, considering
the flatness of the markets in respect to all articles
where there is competition.—lbid.

M Oriental Commerce, vol. ii. p. 486.
t The official account states only 17,051 dollars, which
is evidently Wrong.

A Huddersfield correspondent writes thus
I am sorry to inform you that stealing in all its branches
appears to be getting preva'ent in this neighbourbood."—
YorA Chronic?