The Sun.
London, England, 1845-10-15 00:00:00

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tni , cull( Ant..
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,LONDON, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 184

Except, in those countries of the East, where two or three
saperior cartes absorb the whole wealth, power, and property
of the State, leaving to the mass of the population a wither-
ing equality of slavery and poverty, there is, perhaps, no
empire througLout the world in which the extremes of opu-
lem?, and destitteion are brought into such close habitual

contact, a 3 v.ngland. The most luxurious magnificence is
everywhere to be met with, in connexion with our social
insaitut ions ; but everywhere ails elbowed by the most squalid
misery. It is in the most sumptuous capital, as it is iu the
must beautiful provinces which are to be found in Europe,
that this fearful contrast obtrudes itself on the most indifferent
.or careless observer. The presence of poverty and distress,
-ender their most appalling aspects, amidst the most elaborate
refinement, and the unstinted exhibition of riches and
of pomp, is so remarkable in England at this day,
that it seems to reconcile itself to our ideas as a
healthful qualiticati.at of that passion for display which is
daily assuming more decided development in the national
,sharacter. We are insensibly habituating ourselves to the
example of those old Egyptians who imposed an impressive
aint on the growing hilarity of their festive meetings by
s veiling, at a certain period of their symposiac festivities, the
Embalmed corpses of their ancestors. In England the juxta-
pu-iiion of the highest and the lowest conditions of social
existence—of the capital which is so largely etnployed to
procure all enjoyments fur the former, and of the penury
-which denies the most ordinary necessaries of human life to
the latter—is a perpetual miracle. That capital, those en-
joyments, subsist, expand, multiply, under no more im-
tnt.diste protection than the moral guarantee of public
upinton, winch, in its turn, is the only true form of
This wretchedness, with all its sufferings, and the ter-
rible strength of the physical wants that surround it, con-
i.ittws religiously to respect that moral protection. Tenapta-
tiod, in a thousand forms, and with all its importunate
.activity, from week to week, day to day, hour to hour, is
constantly bringing under the eye of famine the well-spread
bo,nl of luxurious plenty, and placing within the reach and
cry to:!ch of destitution, the easily-accessible and

aasv.

:was treasures of opulence. But the effort is vain.
_l\liery respects the rights that are denied to itself, and turns
from the excess of that abundance, of which not even h
'frac:ion is doled out to itself, to the mournful
haitudes of its snaring and its despair. But it
human charity is thus indifferent to—or from their
*m,iss and variety incompetent to relieve—the distresses or
the destitute, surely human laws ought to protect and even
to reward these latter for their abstinence, their patience,
their good conduct. Among the numerous cases on which-
-we have felt it from time to time our duty to animadvert,
:Li illustra*.ing the 04igraceful and painful fact that the ten-
dcncies of the law, in this country, point in just the con-
trary direction, we know of none in which legalised oppres-
sion has attained to so mons'rous a height as those which
arise t•ut of decisions by our petty magisterial sessions, on

-snp

summonses against the very poorest class of cottage holders,
for non-payment of the parochial or district poor-rates to
which they stand assessed. Often as we have found ourselves
compelled to bring these matters under public notice,
.we ,
shall nerer relax cur efforts, humble though they be, on the
one hand to awaken the indignant reprobation Of
the pubiic to the wanton cruelty of poor-law unions
and parochial authorities in pressing such assessments against
decayed householders, if we may so term them, who cannot
find bread even for themselves or their wretched children—
and to urge upon the attention of Parliament Ate scandal, as
well as the absurdity, of permitting any laws to remain on the
statute-book, under the letter of which those more hopelessly
.poor than the parochial paupers are required to contribute out
of their own destitution towards the support of all the other

destitute of the union within the limits of which their cot-
- tines are situate. To the competent and the rich on the po-
licy,- independently of all other considerations, of securing the
continued forbearance and respect of the poor, whose masses,
from their increasing number and the extent of their priva-
tions, are every day becoming more formidable, we can urge
no stronger appeal than that which we have already renewed
on this occasion.
.... Just six months have elipsel since some feelings, stronger
than those of astonishment, were excited by the report of
some t:...temetits made in Parliament connected with the case
of a poor, but very industrious labourer, against whom cer-
. taiu Leicestershire magistrates had granted a distress war-
, rant for non-payment of a poor-rate. This man, together
with a poor female, charged with the same crtrate:—" inabi-
lity to ['ay"—was sent, there being no gods and chattels
' left to hint in his miserable cottage wherewith to defray
the levy, to Leicester County Gaol, till such rate should
be paid. Some charitable individual (who " Did good by
stealth, and blusli'd to find it fame") paid the rate for them.
. And what ensued? They were committed to the House of
Con ectioa for one month—" with hard labour". (!!)—for
this contumacious inability to pay costs, aggravated by the
yet more intolerable offence or having, under the pressure
pr,3vious misery, parted with all the " goods and chattels"
tint the distress-warract mull have been levied on. On
the f es corning before the Houses of Parliament, the Lord
i
Chancellor in one of' them, an.l the Home Secre'ary in the
other, expressed strong opinions, we find, on the illegality, as
well as the inhumacity, of the decision which thernagistrates
had arrived at, and the man LAND; was released three