The Sun.
London, England, 1827-08-07 00:00:00

SPIRIT. OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS:

Unfeigned concern it gives us to state; that
nothing occurred in the course of yesterday to
diminish our fears for the precious life of Mr.
Canning. Never was solicitude for the fate of a

public man, in England, more intense or. uni-
versal than that which the King's chosen
Minister has on this occasion been the object
nor ever was such evidence afforded of cordial
and affectionate sympathy in their selection, be-
tween a discerning Sovereign. and an approving
people. Even the wretches whose existence
during the last three months has been consumed
in venomous and villainous attacks upon Mr.
Canning's reputation, now thaw: upon their
hypocrisy for • some homage to publiedecency,
and cant about the ".reverence'-' and " honour"
in which they have at all times held him ! The
old Tory intriguers of the Liverpool Cabinet
are in town--there is hardly one of them absent.
Here they are,—the vultures,--readyoin imagi-
nation, to pounce upon the remains-of him whom
a system of atrocious envy and calumny has gone
far to assassinate. But there:is' one who watches
their . sssoveinents, and whorl-) they must also
tiss'any by slander before their triumph cati be
The-King still lives, and liYes to 'fling the
tegis of his wisdom before the British nation.
.The King of England has authorized, and,
through his official servants, undertaken, a course
of policy for the relief of his people at home,
and for his own glory and theirs abroad, which
it would involve equal. miser 3 and dishonour to
relinquish. His Majesty has undergone. intlig-.
unties of whiCh he would but invite a repetition
by not marking with his high displeasure their
motives and their authors. Is it for the cast-off
Tories again to surround their Sovereign; and to
celebrate, by the licensed abuse of his preroga-
tive, their disgusting orgies ,over the ashes of d'
colleague whom they .dated, in derision of se
;Monarch whom they insulted, arid of the nation
whom they openly despise t A Cabinet
Council.sat yesterday, at which all the Ministers
in town attended. Another sort of-Cabinet was
also held, the deliberations of, which' might not
be unworthy of notice, were we inure at liberty.
.At half-past one-o'clock, Mr. Peel was admitted
to the Duke of Welliateon. But the thing
won't du, we suspects The Duke would not
object (why should be ?) to command the army
under a Whig Administrations when once- Mr.
Canning has soothed, by his deatl, an otherwise
unappeasable resentment.— Times.
A variety.-of incidents have occurred to make
'us acquainted with the present miserable state of
our criminal law. A short time ago, a man,
after many indications of premeditated .
and in the perfect possession of his senses, mur-
dered his own child by cutting off its head.' This
wretch escaped from justice, we believe, because
there were some
,doubts about the real name—
not about the identity of the child. Next, a
stage-coach is upset by furious driving, and one
passenger (besides many others desperately
wounded) is killed on the-spot. We certainly
bear no ill-will to ,the driver,' and, in the 'io-
n:larks we make, shOuld be sorry to prejudice
him in the case which 'still remains to be tried;
but he has been acquitted of the charge of man-
slaughter, because there was no sufficient evi-
dence to show how many mares and how many
horses were in the team which he drove ! Arid
we have observed in yesterday's journal, that on
the trial ofd man at York, for the 'atrocious
crime of poisoning his two illegitimate infants,
the Court was seriously occupied abodi the
names of those infants :. first, whether any names
had 'really been- given them at the baptismal rite ;
and next, whether the names- were and
James, as laid in the indictment, or only William
and George ; and had there been any error on
these weighty points, though there was the mo-
ther and all the parish to prove :the identity 9.f
the infants, still the Murderer must have 'beenacquitted, for. the very satisfactory reason, that the
innocent babes Whom he murdered had not got
names, whereas they • were laid in the indictment
as having each received a name ; or because,
though murdered by him, they were not
named William .and Jame, but William and
George! One' really, though the facts stale
• us in the face, can hardly believe that such ab-
surdities can be 'gravely administered to the peo-
ple under the name of law. -It May be said that
our criminal code is severe enough in all con-
science, and that by reducing these chances of
escape, we should' only render it still more Cruel.
The truth is, that if these foolish flaws let Off
only the less criminal, we should not bestOw a
remark upon them ; but as they afford an opening.
indiscriminately to the greatest villains and the.
tenderest culprits, they are a disgrace 'and a re-
proach to our criminal jurisprudence ; and if a
spirit' of lenity is to be infused into our criminal,
code,, let reason prescribe the rule, not chance
and nonsense. We expect nothing from profess
sional lawyers in this' case ; they are in general
sufficiently occupied in administering the laws as
they find them written, without turning their at-
tention to the improvemenrofthem ; but it were
greatly to be wished that some statesman; of a
really capacious mind and strong intellect, would
dedicate his time and talents to the improvement
of the criminal code of the realin.—Lids
A horse jockey, we' find, has been riding for
an attorney at Stafford, and has won the Libel-
plate, value One Farthing. In less technical
phrases a -person of the first named profession
has been induced by his worthy law-adviser, to
bring seven actions for the same. cause--s-viz. the
copying by one newspaper from another of a
statement that the jockey had played some tricks
with a mare which he rode, thereby losing a
race in which the beast might otherwise have pro-
ved successful. Notwithstanding a very Judge-
like charge against the -newspaper; the Jury, after
the worthy example oftheir Dorchester brethren
gave 'bet a " farthing'' damages; The Judge,
not choosing to trust the inimediate influence of
any sympathy with the liberal opinions of the
jury, but anxious that, in the course' of a night's
deliberation, the guardian devil of the attornies
should have fair play, took' time to 'consider,
whether this the seventh action for a' single libel,
was one in 'which he would or would not-certify
against the nominal plaintiff !. The fact is, that
whether Judge Best, and others after him, -con-
tinue• to discourage pettifogging prosecutions for
alleged' libel or not, the evil is one which, sooner
or later, the wisdom- of Parliament, or the spirit
of juries, must and will cure, in spite of him.—
/bide •

Meetings are about to be held in many of the
populous towns throughout the country, for the
purpose of 'petitioning Parliament to •reduce or
remove. the House and Window Tax ; and this
exampleis 'bklei7 to be followed by the parishes
of the metropolis and its vicinity: They have
been urged not to delay this measure till the
meeting of Parliament; because before that
period the financial plans may be finally arrang-
ed ; in which case, if pushed by those popular
petitions, Ministers will have a prompt answer,
that they conic too late, and that compliance

with their prayer :would derange the measures
which Government had already resolved to exe-
cute. Nothing certainly could be in ore pleasing
to the country, ,or afford so effectual relief to a
numerous class of industrious and- respectable
people as the repeal of those taxes. It has been
well observed, that it is incredible by those who

have net actually known and seen these things,
how large a portion out of the whole number of
the houses in London are underlet in lodgings,
and how many decent and respectable" people are
enabled to keep a roof over their heads,who
otherwise would fall from necessity into a very
different class of society. Fifteen or twenty
pounds per year, the result of removing the
House and Window, Tax, would be to these
tieeple a little fortune ; and the heart of the tax-
gatherer himself is not unfrequently wrung
by the necessity of taking such a" sum
from persons, who, as he himself well knows,
the very often compelled to submit to the
most distressing privations. , The inhabitants of
-Country towns, who would be relieved in a simi-
lar manner, although not perhaps in an equal
'degree, are of a class justly entitled to respect.—
The removal of the Assessed Taxes would, in
fact, add to the comforts of all -the resident
housekeepers in the kingdom ; to the comforts
of a description of persons, against whom it can-
not be ribiected that they have been led astray by
demagogues, or are only urged on by factious
feelings to annoy and embarrass the Govern-
ment. In a word, petitions of this kind would
tic the petitions of a class of the community who
have given pledges to the State of steady and
constitutional loyalty and attachment. England
is now the only country in which this system of
domestic and personal- o.xation is suffered to
exist, In Ireland,, there Is no such thing as a
Rouse and Window itax It is unknown also

in Frahce,_.Spaiu, Germany, and all the Conti-
nental nations. It exists only in the most free
country in the world. To get rid of it would be
an achievement of political good, such as has
never been experienced during the fast century.
To be able to shut our doors, and to keep them
shut, in the face of the tax-gatherer ; to have the
peace and privacy of our dwellings to ourselves ;
without having our brick and timbers valued,
and our windows counted and measured, would,

indeed, be a blessing. This would, in reality,
inake an Englishman's dwelling-house, in the
hearty and liberal language of our laws, his castle.
—Morning Post.

Mr. Canning still lives ; but the reports of
_ .

his medical advisers almost exclude the hope of
his recovery. Our readers will find in another
column, the various accounts received from time
to time in the course of yesterday and last night,
and down to a late hour this morning. Faint,
however, as is the prospect of this valuable life
being preserved to his family and the country,
we are unwillin to consider his earthly career
terminated, while the possibility of recovery is
not excluded. We will not, therefore, at this
eventful moment, enter on the past, as if to him
there was no longer a future, nor speculate on
the consequences to which his death might lead.
There is, indeed, we believe, but one opinion
throughout the country, among all who have the
welfare of the nation at heart, as to the talents
and virtues of Mr. Canning, and the
_benefits
which not. England alone, but Europe and the
New World, have derived from, his truly liberal
and enlightened administration. We were
among the first' to anticipate from his accession
to office, ,on the death of Lord Londonderry,
the blessings which have been so amply
realised, and, which his opponents as well as
admirers now admit to have been chiefly due
to his influence in the Cabinet. To the feeling
of rancour borne by different classes of the com-,
rriunity towards each other all at once succeeded,
as if by enchantment,- a spirit of mutual for-
bearance and charity ; the fairness of intention
discoverable in the acts of the Government were,
instantly met by a corresponding spirit
,of confi-
dence in the people; and the jealousy of those
who derived their importance from the divisions
and misunderstandings of the rest of the com-
munity, which from the first was directed towards
Mr. Canning, and latterly assumed the character
of the most rancorous hostility, afforded the most
unequivocal test of the value and importance of
his services, and left no doubt as to the source
whence the advantages reaped by the nation were
chiefly derived. We were not afraid of the charge
of inconsistency when we bore testimony to the
merits of Mr. Canning. at 'a time when the dif-
ficulties of his position prevented him from giv-
ing full effect to his wishes ; and if we do not
110; when our anticipations have been amply
realised, dwell on the virtues and talents with the
Loss of which we are threatened, we are not re-
strained by the dread of a charge of flattery, for
flattery will hardly be suspected of ,a wish to
select the death-bed hour for paying her tribute
to the powerful:. We can only hope that, should
the country be deprived of this distinguiShed
Statesman, the policy which has so much bene-
fitted and conciliated the nation will be conti-
nued. In a matter necessarily involved in. un-
certainty, it would ill become us to speak with con-
fidence. We- can only express our earnest desire,
which we are sure is the desire of 19-twentieths
of the people of England, that the existing system
of administration may be perpetuated, • and that
we may be preserved from the misery which a
change of men and measures would necessarily
entail on the country. The present Cabinet,
though it must severely feel the loss of Mr.
Canning, cannot be replaced by any public men
now in existence, who would enjoy the confi-
dence of the country. All those in time late
Administration, who were of any weight for
character or talents (with the exception of an
individual), entered into the new ; and we have
therefore too high an opinion of the good sense
and the intentions of the Sovereign, to suppose
for a moment that he is insensible to the disad-
vantages which would result from any at.
tempt to place the'reins of Administration in
hands which would render power contemptible,
because exercised in opposition to the interests
and feelings of the nation. This would indeed
be a dreadful calamity ; but we will not antici-
pate it. We shall keep the Press open for in-
telligence from Chiswick to the very latest hour.
—Morning Chronicle.

It gives us great pleasure to observe that
Juries in all parts of the country are, at length,
beginning to be alive to the iniquity of peo-
ple (led on by pettifogging attorneys) bringing
actions for tlic same article against a variety of
newspapers, for the sake of procuring damages for
themselves—or, at all events, of securing costs
for such attorneys as are so unprincipled as to
recommend to clients such a course of disreputa-
ble proceeding. Juries have nothing to do but
to leave such attorneys in the lurch. We hope,
that whether a defenaant's.plea be one of justifi-
cation, or what is called the general issue, when
Juries see palpably that there is an understand-
ing between the client and the attorney, they will
sachille the plaintiff with costs by giving a verdict

for the defendant. If he be rich, the attorney
will make the client pay them, which would be a
proper punishment, and might deter other men
from doing the same thing ; or, if the client be
poor, the attorney will be obliged to pay. It is
a lucky thing for this country that the trial by
Jury remains, or we know not what would be-
come of the Liberty of the Press. It is also lucky
that among the Judges there are such men as
Chief Justice Best. We hope, however, that
Juries will persevere in the good cause that they
have begun, and that they will preserve to the
country the freedom of the Press.; and rescue it
from the devouring maw of such hyena-like at-
torneys as we have of late witnessed.—Morning
Herald.

We can imagine with what consternation the
unexpected and alarming intelligence which • it
was our painful task to communicate yesterday,
would be received by the whole country. At
no period could the probable loss of such a man
as Mr. Canning be contemplated without deep
regret and alarm ; but, at a moment like the
present, it would fidl upon us like a grievous
visitation: And the more so, because we look
around in vain to find the Statesman who could
adequately supply that loss. Mr. Canning
stands forward, we will not say among, but the
foremost spirit of the age in which he liveS—
one of those master-minds, in the production of
which nature is not too prodigal. Recent events
have concurred to identify him with the
dearest interests of this great Empire ; and
though we are not prepared to say his death
would entail a hopeless calamity on the nation,
we do feel that it would. "cause such a derange•

meat. in public affairs, as may well inspire a pro-
found anxiety on the subject. If we abstain
from adverting with more minuteness to the
many deep and important considerations which
connect themselves with the possible issue of
Mr. Canning's alarming situation, it is not be-
cause we are insensible to their magnitude, but
because we still cling to the hope that our worst
fears may not be realised. We shrink, indeed,
from the discussion of circumstances contingent
upon an occurrence we dread, with something
of that repugnance which the mind feels to con-
template a course of proceeding which can be
rendered necessary only by the occurrence of a
greater calamity. That greater • calamity, we
trust, may be averted !—New Times: