The Sun.
London, England, 1829-01-24 00:00:00

In the Report of a case tried in the Common
Pleas in the Chionick of yesterday—Pedley v. Long
Wellesley—Mr. G. T. J. Ruthven is made to
state—'t lam a Police Officer ; I was employed to
accompany Mrs. Scott somewhere; that was in the
early part of last year; the defendant's coachman
sent for me to go to Mr. Wellesley's; I saw Mrs.
Scott and Mr. Powell ; there was a third person,
but I don't recollect whom; Mr. Powell directed
me to.go with Mrs. Scott to her husband's; I went
with her; Mr. P. told me she was going to her
husband's to get some letters; that her husband was
a passionate man, and she was afraid he would kill
her; I saw some money pass from the plaintiff to
Mrs. Scott, on her representation she could not get
the letters without money; Mr. P. directed me to
pay the coach-hire; I stopped outside the door while
she went into her husband's, and she afterwards said
she had got the letters; I saw Mr. Powell again
that evening, in Baker-street; Mr. Powell paid
me for my services ; I was employed on many other
occasions.

This is a very fair sample of the way in which all
;Artists are e.v.ecuted in England.
Mr. Ruthven is a police officer, no doubt very in-
adequately paid, and therefore under the necessity of
helping himself to other means of subsistence than
t hose derived from the public as well as he can. A
police officer very naturally considers the public as
an abstraction, and knows only individuals. Again,
of the individuals he knows he considers those only
as having a title to his services who can pay for
them. Indeed no man can suffer injustice in this
country who has not money to pay for obtaining re-
dress ; and a Bow-street officer knows as well as a
lawyer how to deal with those who sue in forma
paaperis. So completely is the officer's plan a sine-
cure, that there is not an old Dowager in London
who cannot, when she pleases, have one at her
command to stand at her door along with the tall
footman, or to perform any piece of mummery. The
employment of Ruthven in the above case had just
as much to do with the Police, or with the public
security, as it had to do with the business of the
man in the Moon; but he would have been a fool if
he had not accepted of a business for which he was,
no doubt, well paid.

But this is not confined to Police matters. The
whole system of England hinges on the activity of
individuals. That very activity immediately con-
verts every thing public into a private job; for the
public being an abstraction, except some individual
of that public has a❑ interest opposed to the par-
ticular job, it may be safely entered on. Thus, of
all money left in trust in England, in nineteen out of
twenty cases, the object of the trust has soon been
defeated by a job. Self-interest is ever on the watch
to grasp at occasions of advantage. The voluminous
Reports on Charters are in that respect a most in-
structive chapter in the history of human nature,
as modified by English notions. If the Bow-street
officers, as at present constituted, were to receive
1,0001. a year a piece, they would only be the less
serviceable; for, being such great men, they would
conceive themselves entitled to a still higher fee to
put them in activity, it never entering into the head
of any man that he ought not to take as much money
as he can get, and, as a consequence, that he ought
not to prefer taking a large sum from one man to a
small sum from another.

So completely is it understood that each man
must take care of himself in this country, and that
public money is merely taken for the exclusive be-
nefit of the individuals who receive it, that when
the inhabitants of a parish in the neighbourhood of
the metropolis complained, some months ago, to the
head Police-office, they were asked why they did
not associate to protect themselves ? The system
works, on the whole, better than strangers might
suppose. Property supplies the means of defend-
ing itself. A rich man has servants, dogs, and guns.
His servants sometimes rob him, no doubt, and
would oftener do so, but from the distrust of each
other; for where three or four confederate for
crime, as each knows that he is in the power of the
rest, lie is prompted, through fear of being informed
against, to inform. Those who have little property
are on that account less the object of attempts to
plunder.
It is with Law as with Police. There is no sen-
sible man at this day who ►will not admit that a man
had better at once consent to lose his estate than go
into the Court of Chancery for it. A man is safe
in England, merely because no one feels disposed to
harrass him. But if he have the misfortune to en-
counter litigious people, possessed of the means of
harrassing him, he is entirely at their mercy.
Mr. Peel has been writing to the City of London
to allow the warrants of Country Magistrates to be
executed in the City. We do not mean to say that
this would not be an improvement. But we fear
that improvements of such a nature are all that we
may expect from our Home Secretary. We have
our doubts whether the Right Hon. Gentleman have
even a conception of the real object of a Police. It
is pretty obvious, at all events, that we have no
Police at present. A Police supposes organization
—it supposes a head, and a body under the direction
of that head—it supposes co-operation, and the
means of acting with effect throughout the whole
country. When a Banker employs a Police Officer
to run after a forger or swindler, or country gentle-
man employs one to aid him in discovering the au-
thor of a robbery, this is nothing more than might
be done without any establishment whatever.—
Twenty or thirty active men could always find some
House of Call to which applications might be made
for their aid.

Vidocq tells us, " Up to the moment of my quitt-
ing office, the Police of Safety, the only requisite
Police, and which should have received the greater
portion of the funds allowed by the Budget, because
it is on it principally that reliance has been placed—
the Police of Safety, I say, has never employed more
than thirty men, nor cost more than 50,000 francs
per annum, from which five were allotted to me."
" It was with a troop so small as this," he says fur-
ther, " that I had to watch over more than 1,200
pardoned convicts, freed some from public prisons,
others from solitary confinement ; to put in exe-
cution annually from four to five hundred war-
rants as well from the Prefects as the Judicial authori-
ties; to procure information, to undertake searches
and obtain particulars of every description; to make
nightly rounds so perpetual and arduous during the
winter season; to assist the Commissaries of Police
in their searches, or in the execution of search
warrants; to explore the various rendezvous in
every part ; to go to the Theatres, the Boulevards,
the Barriers, and all other public places, the haunts
of thieves and pick-pockets. • My agents had almost
the talent of übiquity, and I, to keep alive the
spirit of emulation and zeal among them, incited
them by unremitting exertions. In no expedition,
however perilous, did I spare myself
Such have been at the utmost the effective force
and the expence of the Brigade de Surete ; with
so small a number of auxiliaries, and means so
limited, I have maintained security in the bosom of
a capital peopled by nearly a million of inhabitants.
I have broken up all the associations of male-
factors," &c.

Thus it seems that the expence of one of our
numerous Police officers exceeds that of all the
Police of Paris. One single banker will pay a
single Police officer for a job nearly as much ns the
whole Police of Paris costs, who receive nothing
from individuals.—Morning Chronicle.

Sir,—l am too jealous of any little favour I may
have found before the people of Ireland, not to feel
anxious to reply to the observations you are reported
to have made in the Association, (on occasion of
Mr. O'Connell's resolution relative to the English
Catholics) upon my absence from England ; and as
you infer, upon the apathy which it evinces in re-
gard to the great question of the re-establishment
of the political rights of the Catholics of the British
Empire.
impressed with such a sense of the importance of
the struggle, as to overpower the soul with anxiety
for the result,—so harrassed with vexation at the
outrages daily offered to our religion, as almost to
subdue the pride which I feel in its profession, each
day of my existence embittered by reflection on the
wrongs of Ireland—l feel it a peculiar injustice to be
taunted with indifference in the glorious cause of
civil and religious liberty for which you are so nobly
contending. Sir, the very circumstance upon which
you ground your observations arises in great mea-
sure from the intensity of my feelings under
the calumnious accusations of the Taligners of
our principles, and under the crying injustice of
those to whose bigotry and selfishness we
are the daily and long-standing victims. At-
tached to my country by a variety of ties, I should
loug have hesitat©d to leave it, even for a season,
had I found myself on an equality with others of my
OW/4 station ; but the constant humiliations--many
real, and perhaps some imaginary—to which our
abject situation naturally exposes us, besides being
very little suited to the thing, were of themselves
sufficient to drive me from the walks of public life.
Under our manifold grievances, the retirement of
the country was my only consolation, together with
the occasional opportunities which a residence in
England might afford of lending my feeble aid to the
united efforts of a whole people for the restoration
of the rights, and of sometimes vindicating our
common religion from the foul aspersions with
which it is disfigured by our enemies. But circum-
stances of a domestic nature not permitting me to
persevere in this determination, I had no alterna-
tive but to sacrifice the scanty benefits which the
good cause might chance to derive from my services,
and for a time to retire abroad ; though even here,
lam happy to say, I find occasion to exercise the
small means I possess, in endeavouring to rescue
our fame from the atrocious calumnies of our ad-
versaries.

Lord Bexley's letter to the freeholders of Kent
has disseminated aspersions which appear to me to
merit a reply, and that reply could hardly be given
with effect but from hence. It occupies me at pre-
sent, and will, I hope, be taken as an earnest that
absence has not weakened my attachment to our
cause, or lessened the sense of our common wrongs.

I am fully convinced that I should be guilty of a
most unpardonable presumption were Ito fancy for
a moment that I were entitled to the importance
which you appear, in your reflections upon my re-
tirement, to attach to my poor and undeserving efforts.
It is not in this spirit that I have undertaken to jus-
tify my conduct : but, because I revere my religion,
and am mortified at the taunts of her enemies—be-
cause I cherish truth, and detest calumny—because
I love justice, and hate tyranny; so am I anxious not
to be condemned as wearied with the contest, but
rather to be deemed worthy still to bear my shield,
and hold my place in the ranks of honourable war-
fare against the cruel destiny which oppresses us.
Permit me to tuke this opportunity of saying,
that I have seen with infinite sorrow the mention of
what are miscalled securities. The very name is a
sign of our dishonour; and I have never heard of any
which were not unconstitutional, or mischievous, or
both. The principles of a pure religion, the honour
of true patriots, the affection of good subjects to-
wards a just and impartial government,—these are
the securities we tender—these only does it comport
with our dignity to offer; and such I am sure are
the sentiments of the Catholics of England. If,
however, there be arrangements,comparati vely harm-
less and inoffensive, which, in a spirit of justice and
conciliation, are considered necessary for the satis-
faction of tender consciences and groundless fears,
and as an offering calculated to appease the dying
spirit of bigotry and fanaticism, these even we
should deem rather as evils that we ought to endea-
vour to avert, than as a boon that it becomes us to
solicit. A total and unqualified restoration to our
rights is our just and natural inheritance. This only
can ever make amends for the wrongs we have en-
dured : against any thing short of this we should
never cease to protest. _

Allow me, Sir, to express my deep sense of the
eternal obligation you have .conferred upon your
country. Your efforts have been signal and unceas-
ing—your success has been commensurate with
them, while your chivalrous heroism on Penenden-
heath has engraven your name with honour in the
brightest pages of history.
I beg leave to enclose my small annual subscrip-
tion of 101. to the Association of Ireland, and I have
the honour to be, Sir, with the highest respect, your
most obedient servant,
SEIREWSBURY, WATERFORD, and WEXFORD.
Richard Sheil, Esq.

Richard Peake, Esq., who died lately at a
geod old age, at Boulogne, where he resided with his sis-
ter, Mrs. Watkins, widow of Jeremiah Watkins, Esq.,
the eminent optician and mathematioal-instrument-maker,
at Charing-cross, was, upwards of forty years Treasurer of
Drury-lane Theatre, to which office he succeeded on the
retirement of Mr. Westley. Mr. Sheridan was Peake's
early patron and friend, and Peake did ample justice to
the selection, by a life of devotion to the interests and for-
tunes of that distinguished individual. Mr. Peake lived
in Charlotte-street, Fitzroy-square, during the greatest
portion of the time he superintended the finances of Drury-
lane Theatre, and at his house Sheridan found an asylum
in every moment of personal danger (and they were nu-
merous), especially after he retired from Parliament.
Sheridan and his friends were constant guests at the hos-
pitable but frugal table of his treasurer. The writer of
this little notice has frequently been present, when Sheri-
dan, forgetting his cares and his embarrassments, has
kept the conv►vial table in a roar for hours together, by
his sallies of wit and humour. Peake married early
Miss Downes, daughter of the well-known undertaker of
Piccadilly, by whout be had several children, and all those
that survive are in comfortable circumstances, either through
the influence of their excellent parent, or by the exertion
of their own talent. The eldest son, Riehard Brinsley
Peake, to whom Sheridan stood god-father, Secretary and
Treasurer of Mr. Arnold, of the Lyceum, is the author
of many successful dramas, especially The One Hundred
Pound Note, and Comfortable Lodgings.--Peake was
succeeded in his office by the present highly respectable
treasurer, who had long been connected with the establish-
ment, and is well-known in the world by the name of
honest Billy Dunn.

SCOTCH MURDERS.—We have received the
following article from a valued correspondent at Edin-
burgh, who, is a private communication brwhichit is ac-
companied, says---" What think you of the march of in-
tellect now ? What with being Burke(' on this aide of the
Tweed,' and Stephensoned on the other, we must surely
he very near the climax of intellectuality. In the mean
time it fully proves the truth of this axiom, that to be
virtuous requires an effort ; for our nature, if inert or un-
assisted, will slide towards depravity.
The mind of mortals in perverseness strong,
Imbibes with dire docility the wrong.'''
Edinburgh, Jan. 14. Nrighton Gazette.