The Sun.
London, England, 1842-03-01 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS

FROM !rim 'EVENING' l'A PER ft OF Ir,STERDAY.
GLOBE.—We hate seen with considerable as-
tonishment, not unmingled with -disgust, an account
in A cintemporary paper of the committal to prison
by a Magistrate in Gloucestershire, of two boy:
under the, age. of thirteen, for the truly juvenile
delinquency of -stealing a feW apricots. The igao
ranee of country Justices is often a •subject of, re-
mark, and sometimes ofridicule ; but when the ol;sti-
nate'Attipidity of these persons has an effect so awfu
as the ultimate destruction of all moral principlt
in the youthful mind; it becomes a matter no long-el
for sarcasm or contempt, but for vigorous interference
in order to check an evil so dangerous to the best in-
terests of society. It may be considered a grave accu-
sation that weare.about to make, but we hold respon.
-sible for every crime that a boyish culprit may in hi:
riper roguery commit, the Magistrate who has doome
to the contamination ofa prison a child who has perpetrat
ed some juvenile offence which the rod would have suffi.
ciently punished. To say nothing of the undue harsh
ness of sending to gabl the son of a poor person, for al
offence which in the child of richer parents would h
regarded as venial—to leave out of the question alto
gether the odious practice• of dealing out punishmen
to high and low by a most unequal measure—there is
besides the temporary injustice, a deep and permanen
wrong in dooming to moral destruction the youth if;
whom the seeds of error have begun to show them:
selves. But the wretched individuals themselves arc
not the only persons injured by the severe and injudi-
cious manner in which they are dealt with ; for society
also suffers by the great additional amount ofcrime that
is thus nurtured into maturity from the early seeds of
vice, which when transplanted into the soil of a prison
are sure to spring up in rank luxuriance. That such
wiThbe the case is no mere supposition, but a proved
andiadrnitted fact; for all who have paid attention
to the . subject of prison discipline. 'agree in testi-
fying' to.' the truth of our assertion, that the at-
maphere of a gaol communicates a deadly contamina-
tion to :the mind of youth, which, whenonce infected,
s2ldoin regains a state of purity.
STANDARD.-IVe have received a copy of the
Manahesta Guardian, containing a report of a mill-
owners' meeting, at which it seems to have been agreed
to assail the House of Commons with a forty-
Coh(feti power, and, failing that instrument of
dull .aggression, to commence a civil war.
Madness is a mild name for the furious
distemper into which the millowners have been
thrown by Mr. Ferrand's speech. The raving of
the millowners can be so properly compared to
nothing as to the agonies of the Domdaniel, when
visited by the destined destroyer—
" An anguish yell ensued,
And sure no htiman voice had scope or power
For that prodigious shriek,
pealing echoes thendered through the den;
Dim grew thy dying light."
Aye, and dimly burns the light of the factory
Moloch. An inference from Mr. Ferrand's ex

posure seems to have reached every one—it is, that
for the sake of the manufactur:ng trade itself, no less
than for the honour of the country, a much stricter
attention must be given by the Legislature to the
millowners. It will probably be thought necessary to
examine, and to brand manufactured goodi, intended
for exportation, as some kinds of provisions are exa-
mined and branded, in order to save the che-acter of
the country ; but more of this hereafter, when v,'e
can examine a little more in detail the Manchester
Guardian report.
COURlER.—Elsewhere we copy rrorn our able
Weekly Contemporary, the-. Conservative Journal, a
remarkable case of pauper felony which lately oc-
curred 'at Stockport, and of which the de-
_ _

tails are given, as they transpired in the Police
Court; in the respectable and leading:Paper of that
locality, the StochpOrt Advertiser. The facts briefly
are, that an unhappy pauper girl was taken before the
Mayor on a charge of felony, by the authorities of the
worAhouse, she having audaciously adventured, out of
her own pOor pittance, to hoard up 2lbs. of bread in one
week, Which, considering it to be her own property,
as being. the creation of her own savings at the ex,'
tense of her own craving appetite, she carried out of
the house, as a mite for the relief of a sister,
still more wretched and in want than herself; and
she carried it away not clandestinely, but openly,
and with the, fall knowledge of the matron at
least, to whom she exhibited the miserable prize
she was- bearing away. After a solemn hearing upon
the merits before his honour the Mayor, this extraor-
dinary culprit was discharged with an injunction to go
and sin no more,:- and the penalty of imprisonment
to which she was liable, according to the strict
construction of the law, was beneficently remitted.
We however should rather have considered this kind-
hearted subject of New Poor-law mercies richly en-
titled to a civic crown, not only as a tribute demanded
by such a noble and disinterested example of self
sacrifice' to the charities and affections of kind, but as
the rettkof. so remarkable and almost unparal-
leled anAchteikan ent, the forlorn hope of economical
enterpr,W2aent6 the • acommulation and abstraction
of a ristNvgft.iturisltis. of 2ltis. of bread out
of that hardimeasure of supply which, after long
and puzzling calculations and , endless paring,
down, tv, been, determined by the new Poor-law sages
of Someriwiiiouse and their cunning secretary, .to be
somewhtse about the exact point of demarcation where

soul and, 1164.r.inav- possibly be kept tbgether ; but the
merest line },e-ori(1 #hich enters within the domain,
and is the incipient stage of quasi starvation.

DREADFUL EXPLOSION AT

LA.MI3ETEI.

About four o'clock, after considerable exertion on the
part of the police and firemen on duty, the bodies-of all
the unfortunate persons who lost their lives by this
melancholy catastrophe were extricated from the ruins ;
their names and ages (as nearly as could be ascertained
in the confusion which prevailed) were as follows :
Mr, D'Ernst, aged 45 years, the owner of the ma-
nufictory; Mrs. Hampshire, his sister-in-law,
about the same age ; John Whiting, aged. 32, who
worked on the , premises ; and an errand boy,
tpd ahunt eighteen, . named George Tebbit,
alias Stanley.. As soon as shells could
be -procured Crom the Lambeth workhouse, they
were retivrted fßre to await the result of the
Coronere"rftigat. Up to the moment at
which write, no circumstances however,
have ti -t by which the origin .of the. me-
laziebelybacnc, .could be aseertainec :neither could
there be any accurate calculation made as to the •
amount of the property destroyed. It was stated to the
reporter by a person named Wall, who-worked in the
Lion brewery, opposite where the explosion
occurredf" that the unfortunate lad Tebbit passed
through tlic brewery with a piece of tinder-lighting in
his hand.;' and I,poii,.llis being, asked the hour he re-
plied twenty. minutes to twelve, and walked into Mr.
D'Et-2 Xs, inauttfactorv. About 'ten minutes afterward',
the first explosion took plaCe. 'Three of the bodies were
found atnidot the mass,'ot.Tuins, and the fourth was
found in alardcw about, tUtnty,yards from the prnnises,.
into whictb it
_bad been driven over a h‘gh wooden ,paling.
Crowds Were thronging every avenue leading to the spot,
and nothing but the gable end was left standing.