The Sun.
London, England, 1820-01-04 00:00:00

CHARITIES.

The Margois of EXETBR gave donations last
week to 300 poor het sons in and round Burgh-
ley, and. Lady Mary Flydger
gave beef, bread, and money to the poor of
Tbide'on, Ayston, and Woidley, Lincolnshire,
sufficient for a week's consumption of each
fanuly.—The Honotsraitle Charles Noel gave 501.
to the poor of Oalsham —On Christioas.day,
the Heads of Colleges and_ Halls, at Oxford, as
perpetual visitors of the Grey Coat and Gene-
ral School, upon the national system, provided
the boys educated in their school s.tr;ll) a dinner
of roast beet and plum pioldiNg, as e reward for
the progress they have made during the year.—
Ors Christmas-day. Air. Bowerman gave Isis an-
nual donation of bread and beef, at the village of
Ensham, Oxon, amongst nowaids of ninety fami-
lies Forty pounds were' last week given by Mr.
Willer, of Colchester, for supplying the neees-
sit poor of two parishes with beef, and a
forHoo-, donation for cods ; anti Mr. Simons,
late of &r,ooead-ntaiket, liberalky bestowed upon
the poor inhabitants of the parish art St. Mary Matt-.
(Talon, nearly the s•li,;le of two his:locks; DW.
Hat vey, rvl the Borough, distri-
buted 500 isoshris of (yolk- ,so-olgst the resident
free burgesses. lienevole.•o Food of Chat-
ham. On January, 1819, exi7eeo,or its atuo4ost and
distriblition of clothing, etc.. .any former year,
since its commencement. The find exceeded 1301.
and the number of persons te!ieved, icaelted near-
ly 100. One-fifth of the sum was cow, ihuted
by the poor (Ist-two:lves, which is an excellent
principle in institutions of this kind, havitig
die effect of preventing the pauperizing system,
too often connected It charitable iustitut
The Contorts of Glasgow ordered forty carts of
coals and five bulls of meal to be di,.,tributed, in
the mOidle of December, among poor families,
chiefly in the south-east part of the Abbey Parish
Patsley : and, on the 24th of the month, her
Ladyship ordered her yeady Christmas gift, on au
exteoded scale, by sending servants with carts
contaitsiog butcher's-meat, potatoes, meal, guar
tern-loaves, tea and is,tgar, to many aged, sick,
and indigent 'families. Lady Jane Boyle in
the same mouth, ord,red eight guineas to •he
laid out on warns eloalhing for the poor in that
district.—Mr. Finlay of Tree ,s, in the parish of
Nerhoon, has bestowed between 50 and 60 carts
of coals on the poor is, the villages of that palish ;
and Messrs. John Wilson and Sous of Hurlet,
have gi•en a donation of 175 carts of coals ro the
poorest inhabitauts of Barrhead, and of the south-
east part of the Abbey parish of Paisrey. Great
quantities of these coals have been carted by far-
mers, free of expense.

PETMON OF THE IRISH LABOURERS.,

fuilowing is a--(7nrrect and official copy
of the curious, and certainly not uninteresting,
Petition, Maid, was resented to the House of
Commons on Thursday Last by Mr. W. Wit.-

LIAMS :--•

House of Commons, Jovis 30. die Deeen►bris, 1919.

A Poking' ot the thtre-tintlersigned Irish La-
bourers, of the parish of Sr. Giln, on behalf of
themselves and the other uneinrAnyed Irish La-
boot CI'S in Great Britain and Ireland, was pre-
sented, ant! read, setting for!h,

That the Petitioners are able and willing to
work, but cannot get employment in Great i-
tain, and that the Petitioners do not complain in
that respect, as there are many British in the
same condition who ought to he employed in
Great Britain in preference to Petitioners, as
charity b -gins at home ; and that Petitioners are
therefore most desirous to be employed in Ire-
land; and the House will learn with great pleasure,
that there are tour millions of Irish acres which do
not now, and for ages past, have not added one
farthing to the wealth of the coutory, and which
four millions of acres the Petitioners and their
fellow-labourers will, with the assistance of the
Boose, make good and profitable land ; that by
this noble work employment will be given not only
to all Irish labourers in'whatever part of the Empire
they may be,but to many -English and Scotch ; and
the Petitioners, having handled a good deal of
British money, »ill be happy to see British, la-
bourets in Ireland, for one good turn deserves
another ; and Petitioners, with the greatest hu-
mility, submit to the House, that if the Petition-
ers had been set to work at their bogs a few years
ago, that Irelasild would have produced as lunch
corn as woold have supplied bread to the whole
Empire, and prevented all the beautiful gold so-
vereigns from going out of the country to France
and elsewhere, to pay for foreign corn, and the
Banks of England and Ireland would have plenty
of gold to pay their bank-notes; and the Peti-
tioners most humbly beg pardon of the House
tor venturing to say a word on so knotty a point ;
but so much bother has been made even in Saint
Giles for the last few years about bullion and
bank-notes, about gold and paper, that it was im-
possible for Petitioners not to know something
about the matter ; and before Petitioners come to
an end, they beg leave to offer a hint upon another
subject, of which they would be ashamed to be
ignorant, for they have heard a great deal about
it in Saint Giles, from folk who, instead of earn•
ing their bread honestly by the sweat of their '
brow, as the Petitioners wish to do, spend their '
whole days in prating about what they call Radi- '
cal Reform ; and the Petitioners make bold to
say, that the best way to cause a radical reforma-
tion is to give the Radicals plenty of work, end
the harder the better; the sooner, therefore, that
the P tit loners and the other Irish labourers in
this country are sent to the bogs of Ireland, to
make way for the Radicals, the better wilt it be
for the country at large ; and most humbly
begging pardon for making so free, and hoping
that their case will be taken into speedy consi-
deration.

SUICIDE COMMITTED BY A YOUTH.--An In-
quest was held hef,,re Mr. STIRLING, Coroner tor
blidd!esex, at St. Giles's Wollchousei on the body
of Tisornai Cummings, a youth IG years of age,
which lay at his master's house in Tottenham-
court-road, who put an end to his existence by
cutting 1)13 throat vri h a knife.—After a great
deal of discufsion, the Jury returned a verdict—
" The 'deceased died by Lis own hand in state
of derangement."

POLICE INTELLIGENCE.

MANSION-HOUSE.

ATTEMPT TO ovE.EsET THE DFPUTY WATRR•EAI-

LIFF AND HIS MEN IN THE THAMES.

Mr. Howell, the %Vater-bailiff, having received
information that illegal fishing wits carried on to
a very great extent in the' Thames, near Purfleet,
made such arrangemeots at the latter end of
last week as were calculated at least to limit the
practice.
After a very hazardous experiment, which had
nearly ended in the loss of tour lives, Mr. Nel-
son, the Deputy Water-bailiff, succeeded, with
the assistant e of his small crew, its getting to
!And a number of nets, the value of which is esti-
mated at -1.501. The account given before the
Lord Mayor was as follows :
Nelson stated, that the fishermen, many of
whom were very desperate fellows, having al-
ways, when employed in their illegal labour on
the Thames, a look-nut for him and his men both
night and day, he determined to go down by land
to the place where he understood the work was
going forward. He accordingly went, accompanied
by his men,- to Estill, where begot aglass, through
which be observed five sail ofboats in a spot called
Havely-bole, near Purfleet. The boats were well
manned ; and Nelson, in expectation that resist-
aoce would he made, revested that some of the
lands7nen in rite neighbourhood would assist
him in the perform tune_ of his duty. Tris was
refused, more fr't.in fear !ban from favour, and the
deputy was obliged to row off without any as-
sistance but that of his three men. They found
a number of nets lying in Havely-hole. The
owners of the nets did not offer the slightest op-
position to Nelson. On the Contrary, they as-
sisted hint in lifting up the nets, which could not
have been done by a few hands. Soots after-
wards Nelson saw a Gravesend hatch-boat beating
flown upon his boat, which was very and
lr.y within anipcli or two of the surface of the
water. He cried out to those on hoard to lutf,
but they paid no attention to the call, and press-
ed upon lint apparently with the desperate inten-
tion of sinking his boat ; again he cried out, and
asked whether they meant tr, drown him and his
men, but this appeal was also disregarded. The
Gravesend boat approached with great speed, and
threatened to•overwhelm the other in an instant,
when the, small crew .made a tremendous effort
with their oars, and got under the !Aim Of an-
other boat that lay in Cie river, where the enemy
could not reach without danger to all. It was '
supposed that the hatch-boat was the out-scout,
appointed to watch the suotioe.s of the Water-
bailiff in the river, and that, having missed in her
object, she was determined to make up for the
oversight by sinking him.
The LoaD MAYOR expressed Isis astonishment
at this stak. ment, and declared that he should
adopt the rues decisive course for the protection
of the %Vater-bailiff, and the punishment of such
:esperate characters as had been desciihed. His
Lordship asked,. whether' the persons who were
engaged its running down the boat could be re-
cognized? This was answeted in the negative.
Ilis Lordship then addressed the owners of the
nets, who had beets in waiting, and assured them,
that if any thing fatal had taken place, they would
in all probability have a heavier responsibility
upon them than that for the violation of the Fish-
ing

The defendants declared that those in the hatch-
.boat were nut acting under their directions, but
that it was impossible they could have borne
down upon Mr. Nelson with any bad view. It
must, they thought, have been wholly uninien-
tional.

Nelson said, it was absurd to state that there
was no had intention. He had been very fre-
gn►ently threatened by some of the illegal fisher-
men, and he had no doubt of their general dispo-
sition towards him. Had not his men rowed un-
der the bow of the moored boat, his boat must
inevitably have gone down, and after that their
lives would not.have been worth a farthing. The
MeII on hoard the hatch-boat, he added, seamed
to know those in the fishing-boats, for there had
been some conversation between them.

John Aldridge, one of Nelson's men, stated the
circumstance as Nelson had done. He could not
say whether it was the intention of those in the
hatch-boat to drown the deputy or not, but cer-
tainly if the moored boat had not been at hand to
afford protection under her bow, lives would have
been lost.
John Glover, another of the water.bailiff's men,
stated, that the danger was extreme, and that had
it not been for very great exertions all must have
gone down. The words of• Mr. Nelson were
wholly disregarded, upon which witness took up
a broomstick and pointed it at them, swearing,
that he would stand no nonsense, and that he'
would give them a pill. At that moment, front
the efforts of witness's comrades, the boat was
got under the bow of the moored boat, and those
on board the hatch-boat showed symptoms of fear
that the broomstick was a gun.

The Deputy Water 13414 said, the defendants
were, in his opinion, by no means accessary to
this desperate attempt. They were nil respecta-
ble men, and were never before detected in ille-
gally fishing. There were, however, several cha-
racters upon the Thames, from whose violence he
had every. thing to apprehend, and against those
he claimed the protection of the Lord Mayor.
The LORD MAyoa declared, that the most rigor-
ous measures should be adopted towards the ruf-
fians who bore such enmity to the officers, and
issued directions which are calculated to add to
the security of those whose lives were in such im-
minent danger.
The nets were of course condemned. At Mr.
Howell's request, the men were not fined. The
owner of the hatch-boat has been ordered to at-
tend at the Mansion•house.