The Sun.
London, England, 1829-12-12 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

We observe with pleasure the instances in
which landlords are throwing back to their
tenants a certain per tentage upon their rents :
we wish the instances were more numerous.
Neither is it a temporary accommodation of this
kind that will satisfy. Rents must come down
—they must come down to the state at which
they were before the great war beg-m, during
which war they were forced up in CI.; most un-
natural manner ; and it is evident that the de-
crease of rents, so far from preventing or ren-
dering more difficult the payment of the interest
of the national debt, will greatly facilitate the
performance of the sacred obligation. Taxes
also must be diminished, but how ? By eco-
nomy ; and by cutting oft needless expendi-
ture. If so large an army be necessary, which
we shall not at present dispute, from the diffi-
culty of knowing how to employ the men who
might be discharged, there is no necessity that
its pay should remain undiminished. That
ought to bear a just proportion to the wages of
the labourer and mechanic in agricultural and
manufacturing employments. Rates, both paro-
chial and county, but more especially the former,
have declined very materially in amount ; and
parish rates being the severest of all taxes, their
alleviation must be most beneficially felt. All
these are reasons in our mind for not tampering
with the circulating medium, or attempting any
other plan of finance than that of simply prac-
tising economy, and introducing retrenchments
wherever they are practicable. Neither do we
believe that any new project is in contemplation,
though certainly we know not the intentions
of Government. But both Ministers and the
public will recollect with what confidence it
was asserted, some six weeks ago, that Such
was the distress of the country,—the overwhelm-
ing, confounding, annihilating, distress of tin
country,—that Parliament must be called toge-
ther immediately, before Christmas, for the pur-
pose of discovering some ready expedient to save
the sinking realm. We spoiled this conceit of
the sudden assembling of Parliament. Th;it
body is not yet met, nor will it meet before the
usual time ; and we are sure that our distresses
have not been aggravated during the interval.
Our commerce and manufactures are silently and
successfully creeping on. We are the more
earnest in urging a total abstinence from all
measures of an untried character,—from all finan-
cial coups detat,—not only because the present
evils are tolerable, or admit of gentle methods of
alleviation, but because we have never heard any
experimental project recommended that would
not have an immediate operation in producing
tenfold evil. Were the national creditor,—the
tithe consumer,—and the rent consumer,—all at
once to be plundered by some revolutionary act of
violence, the misery of the people at large would
but be aggravated by the robbery.—Tinzes.
We this day resume the interesting topic of
the evils existing in the present state of the ju-
dicature of our West Indian colonies. Tlie
result of the inquiry of the Commissioners into
the administration of justice in the West In-
dies, as collected from their diffent reports, may
be stated, with sufficient exactness for our pre-
sent purpose, to be as follows :—First, as re-
lates to the laws. " There is throughout the
islands," says the reporter, " a total want of any
fixed, principles of jurisprudence."* Again,
" the principle upon which certain laws of the
mother country are operative and held binding
in her colonies, far from being clear and precise,
is involved in considerable obscurity, and often
found very difficult of application."t "We
acknowledge," say the Judges, " the common
law of England ;" but the reception is qualified
by, " so far as it is applicable to the circum-
stances of the colony." The case is the same
with the statute law of England. "We are
bound," was the answer, "by Acts of Parliament
passed before the settlement of the colony, and
applicable to its condition." Now the settle-
ment of the different islands was at considerable
intervals, and the rule makes, as is shown by the
Commissioner by a table in his report, a diffe-
rence of two centuries in their statute law be-
tween two neighbouring islands.t Then as to
local laws. Barbadoes, Tobago, St. Vincent,
Montserrat, St. Christopher, and the Virgin
Islands, stand most pressingly in need of a pub-
lication of their respective Acts of Assembly.
In Barbadoes there were 247 laws in manuscript
in 1822, and there are now probably as many
more ; and the Judges, who were ex-officio
bound to know them, however inaccessible, were
not lawyers. All the Colonies require to have
their laws carefully revised—first, with a view to
their retrenchment, and then to their consolida-
tion and amendment. A curious account is
given of the manner pursued in the settlement
of Honduras, in introducing any new regulation
which is to undergo the solemnity of an enact-
ment. The proposition is discussed in a meet-
ing of the Magistrates and inhabitants assembled
after notice. If the measure agreed to at such
meeting receive the assent of the superintendaut,
it is considered as binding, and having the effect
of lavo.§ Secondly, the administration of the
laws was found by the Commissioners to be very
defective, and is stated!' to require great amelio-
ration and an extensive " change of system."
The constitution of the Court of Chancery is
shown to be very objectionable. Either the
administration of equity is intrusted to the Com-
mander-in-Chief (usually a naval or military
officer), or the Court is composed of all the
members of Council as well as the Governor,
the .Governor being only prima inter pares,
and the votes being taken in regular order, begin-
, ning with the junior councillor. In the latter
case, the administration ofjustice is less dignified
and more uncertain ; " and," says the Commis-
sioner, is in general distrusted and hated,
in a degree commensurate with its power
of doing mischief in the Colony.s This
want of confidence in their decisions is
attributed to the frequent connection of the
' Equity Judges with the litigant parties, an in-
' evitable evil in such small communities, and
their want of legal education. In Tobago the
Master in Chancery receives upon sales in his
office the shameful fee of 6 per cent. Receivers
in too many islands, do not account regularly
for proceeds ; and giving no other than their
personal security (without sureties) against mal-
administration, when they die insolvent, having
wasted the effects, a very common case, there is
no remedy over. In the common law Courts
the Chief Justice very often, and the Assistant
Judges, always consist of persons. who are not
lawyersland the consequences, as might be ex-
pected, are frequent misconceptions of the law,
constant liability to error: total want of confi-
dence in their decisions, and universal discon-
, tent. In the Criminal Courts the law is ad-
' ministered, in most of the colonies, with little
solemity, by a bench of magistrates, who are not
•3d Dwarris's Report, p. 97. § Honduras Report, p, 4.
' t Id. let Report, p. 112.
3d Dwarris's Report, p. 98 13d Report, p. 99.

L

to`

AV.

betel
livery in a year : yet the gaol was in such a state
that if a prisoner were conned iii it, he must
be put in irons for security. The Courts of
Error appointed to review the decisions of a
lawyer Judge (in those islands in which the
Chief Justice is a barrister) are composed of a mi-
litary or naval Governor and three or five planters,
and the latter, as is shows in the reports, when
delay will serve a friend, can never make a court.
That this is a faithful picture of the judicial sys-
tem of nearly all our Vest India colonies, (to say
nothing of the enormous fees charged on legal
proceedings in the public offices, as at Demerara,
for instance), reference to the Parliamentary
Reports will sufficiently establish. Jamaica,
however, we must say, deserves to be exempted
from this reproach, The Report of the Commis-
sioners on that island shows few instances of
those abuses in the judicial system which so
abundantly prevail in her sister colonies, and the
measures of reform suggested are therefore few.
The principal we believe to be, the appointment
of a professional Chancellor from England, and
of two barristers to act as Puisne Judges in the
Supreme Court, in the room of the present As-
sistant Judges. We do hope that the evils
enumerated will be corrected,—that the nuisance,
as the Court of Chancery in the island of Mont-
serrat was voted, will be abated,—that the remedy
will be applied, and will be delayed no longer.
Though, from the nature of some of the dif-
ficulties with which they have to contend, (as
where the Courts are established by confirmed
acts of Assembly, &c.,) the Commissioners
cannot always adopt the compendious wisdom of
that Attorney-General, (we believe of Domi-
nica), who, when asked how to improve a parti-
cular Court ? replied, " Abolish it altogether !'
yet we think that much good might result from
carrying into effect many of the recommenda-
tions of the Commissioners. Such are the sug-
gestions for the appointment of professional
Judges from England, the ascertaining by a de-
claratory law what acts and what parts of acts
of Parliament shall be in force in the colonies,
and extending to the plantations the benefit of
such part of the English statute law as shall be
considered advisable, to the latest possible period.
The preparation of these, and of other necessary
acts, of new tables of fees, of an improved code
of practice, &c. should be set about immediately.
A considerable portion of the reports is devoted
to slaves and slave courts, and very properly, as
forming three-fourths of the population subject
to the laws, or to be affected by their administra-
tion. Slaves who, under any circumstances of
slavery, should be subject to the same mode of
trial as free persons, are tried differently in dif-
ferent colonies. Slaves labour under cruel dis-
advantages. A slave is under a personal disa-
bility, and cannot sue in any court of law or
equity, not even in respect of injuries done to
him by other slaves. A slave cannot prosecute
in the criminal courts. He cannot enter into a
recognizance, and can therefore only be bailed by
free persons, when they can be found so far dis-
posed to assist him, which the master commonly
is, and no one else. Slave evidence was not at that
time admitted against freemen, white or black,
even against wrongdoers. In those courts and
cases where slave evidence was admitted, it very
often was not upon oath ; and, as opposed to
the unsuspected testimony of sworn witnesses,
was consequently, to a certain extent, disregard-
ed. The Commissioners finally report their
firm conviction, that the foundation of every im-
provement, both as regards the whits and black
population of these colonies, must be laid in an
impriived administration of justice, and in the
admission of slave evidence.=afrie's Third
Report.—lbid.
Mr. Sheil's letter to the Editor of the Dub-
lin Evening Post, in refutation of the silly
charge made against him, for accepting a re-
tainer from -Lord George Beresford, will be read
with very general attention; The offence of which
Mr. Sheil is accused amounts to this, that- he
• has not been sufficiently actuated by hatred and
vengeance against Lord George Beresford,
and has not continued to carry on the war of
party spirit against his Lordship and his family,
after the object °Nile war had been gained.--
after the triumph had been won—after hostility
had ceased- to bp wise to any public end, and to
have any recommendation but-that of pure ma-
lice. Mr. Sheil's address, through the Dublin
• Evening Post, to his countrymen, contains an
animated representation of the degree to which,
• and of the purposes for which, the Roman Ca-
tholic people ofireland had been excited by the
popular leaders previously to the passing of
emancipation. His reasoning upoit the good
policy as well as right feeling of a forgetfulness
- of old animosities afterwards, is equally striking
and unanswerable. -What, in fact, but utter
stupid blockheadism, could iethice any Ca-
tholic who has been relieved by the late Bill,
to falsify the anticipations of hiS Protestant
friends, who foretold -that it would be favolir-
• able to national tranquillity, and to confirm those
of his enemies, who insisted that it would-have
•no such conciliatory or kindly consequence, by
either-Continuing the topics of ancient strife, or
opening fresh sources of agitation and. disturb-,
-,ance, from the moment in whiL-11 that which.had
so long—deluged the kingdom with factious
hatred .was •:closed Thtil such -vicious at
tempts will eventually faili—nay, that they have
already proved in a great measure abortive,—We'
-have -the concurrent authority of our Dublin
correspondent, and of numberless well-informed.
letters from all:parts of_lreland,4or asseverating.
elsiternal .peace gains advocates every hour,—
. for it is, a blessing to which no class of society,
not even the lowest, can long remain insen-
sible,—though • drunken vanity, Or blind malig-
nity, may seek an imagined interest in procrasti-
-nating its arrival.—lbid.. • •

The robbery of Mr. Serjeant D'Oyley's house
in Argyll-street, of which we gave an account
in our report from
°the Marlborough-street Office
yesterday, seems one of the most daring and
audacious that has taken place for some time.
We do not attach much importance to the cir-
cumstance of the Serjeant's house being near
the Police- office, and still less to its contiguity
to the Earl of Aberdeen's, the Foreign Secre-
tary. Burglars, we apprehend, attach but very
little respect to name, rank, or office ; and the
contiguity to the Police-office during the night
is, of course, of no more value or security than
the fact of a man living next door to Westmin-
ster Hall or the Chief Justice. But the mode in
which this robbery has been effected is of conse-
quence, and must, we should imagine, g',-e rise to
much astonishment and remark. Here, in the
course of the night, in a street which is neither
a very public nor a very private one, has an en-
trance been made by breaking through the front
wall in the area, so as to make a space large
enough to admit the bodies of several persons
7--a work which must, of necessity, haves occu-
pied much time and labour. Through the open-
ing thus made the :thieves enter, ransack the

p:2

inside or out being a whit the wiser. Even sup-
posing it to have been what is termed a " put-
up" robbery—of which we do not learn that
there is any suspicion—we do not readily per.
ceive how the front wall of a house is to be partly
pulled down, and the police know nothing- of
the matter. We thought that each man was to
pass every point on his beat once in every
ten minutes ; we thought they were not
to cry the hour, that thieves might not
know where they were. Yet, with all these
precautions—and when the system has been
just long enough at work, one would think, to
be matured, without having fallen into lassitude,
is a burglary committed quite as disgraceful as
any, the blame of which was ever fixed upon the
most sleepy of the old race of watchmen. We
shall be curious to see how this affair is ac-
counted for. We believe, ourselves, that the
new police are, in point of numbers, quite ina-
dequate for their night department, and that
their labours are greater than the animal strength
of most of them can bear. Of the system, in
point of principle, our opinion is pretty well
known. That opinion, though it remains un-
changed, we have not lately reiterated, willing
to see how it would work ; but if thieves can,
under its surveillance, break through the front
walls of our houses, and carry off the spoil un-
molested, more persons than ourselves will be
apt to imagine that we have only exchanged one
imperfect safeguard for another more expensive,
and quite as inefficient.—Morning Herald.
The conduct of the High Sheriff of the
county of Lincoln, in refusing to convene a
Public Meeting of the Freeholders, for the pur-
pose of taking into consideration the Malt and
Beer Duties, upon the requisition of a compe-
tent number of the Gentlemen and Yeomanry
of the county, has exposed him to severe ani-
madversion and rebuke from many of our con-
temporaries.. While on the one hand we can-
not agree with those who appear to think it the
bounden duty of the Sheriff of a county, upon
every occasion when required so to do by a cer-
tain number of the respectable inhabitants, to
convene a public meeting for the discussion of
any political subject, we readily admit on the
other that very peculiar circumstances only can
fully justify his refusal. If he sincerely believe,
for instance, the proposed meeting likely to en-
danger the peace of the county, he would no
doubt be warranted in witholding his sanction to
such a proceeding ; but we are at a loss to con-
ceive any other consideration which ought to
induce a High Sheriff to adopt a line of con-
duct which must either operate to obstruct the
exercise of the right of petition, or be, as in the
present instance it is likely to prove, wholly in-
effectual. That no public benefit can be ex-
pected to arise from the discussion in popular
assemblies of the merits of particular taxes, or
of the existing system of taxation, may or may
not be true, and however true, it can afford no
justification to the Sheriff who refuses to con-
vene a Meeting of the. county over which he
presides, since the question is one upon which
he derives from his office no peculiar right or
qualification to pronounce a judgment. His
functions with respect to county meetings are
merely ministerial ; and respect to the right of
petition, not to speak of the courtesy which is
always due to a respectable body of requi-
sitionists, seems to demand that they should be
freely and impartially discharged, unless when a
reasonable anxiety fur the ;public. pea3e,,Jhe
conservation of which is the paramount duty
of the. Sheriff, restrains and Controuls him.—
Although
we cannot commend' the-conduit'
of the High Sheriff of Lincoln'
we entirely concur in the opiniah. he
,has 'ex-.
pressed, that it is inexpedient at Vie preAent
ment to urge upon the Goverrimen. t or Legis-::
lature the repeal or mo,
taxes. We think the c,

fide in the disposition of
ters to reduce the pub!
lowest point that is conf
the dignity, and the obli,
that if any abatement
found compatible with a

dispensible objects, the
in that particular mode

likely to promote the gel
consideration of all the

ation, and of the mann

they respectively intere,
the community. Assuml
mitring a given amount
lieve is more certain than that popular assem-
blies convened in different districts of the king-,
dom would arrive at very difFerent conclusions
as to what particular tax might most advantage-
ously be repealed or reduced. 13ut it is not
equally certain that the particular description, of
relief, which might appear the most popular"
when the national suffrages had thus been imp
perfectly collected, would be precisely that which'
a wise and prudent Legislature ought to adopt.
The repeal or reduction of any tax whatever is
no doubt a public benefit ; but in a complicated
system of taxation, like that from which the
British revenue is derived, to determine which
particular impost may be remitted more bene-
ficially than any other, requires all the experi-
ence and sagacity of accomplished Statesmen,
and a degree of minute, various, and compre-
hensive information, which is accessible to few
indeed of those who can be expected to take
part in the deliberations of ppular eseemblies.—_
Morning Post.
In directing the attention of our readers to an
article in another part of our paper, entitled
" The History of the One Pound Notes," we
own that we return to the subject of the cur-
rency with the same sort of feeling that we
should continue a story which we had previously
told, and only recollected that we had told when
we had got half-way through it—we mean a
fear of wearying our readers with an account of
facts which must now be well known to them.
The subject, however, is of far too great im-
portance not to justify us in returning to it again,
and in endeavouring to make the public as
thoroughly conversant with it, as a knowledge
of it is indispensably necessary to a right under-
standing of our real situation. The Leeds Mer-
cury of Saturday last, though we believe it advo-
cated at the time, along with many other
journals, the necessity of having recourse to
a gold standard, does all but admit that
the late interference with the currency has
been productive of great embarrassent and
inconvenience to mercantile men, and pro-
poses a reduction in the price of certain
hill stamps, as a means of alleviating it.—
This is all very good and very proper, and we
doubt not that the increased transactions of the
community world amply reimburse the Govern-
ment for the reduction of the duty, as well as
prove a seasonable relief to the former ;
but that relief would not be sufficient. The
return to a metallic currency has increased
the pressure of taxation at least one-

1V Ul4ll
.1111 V{. iViJ, 111111, 14
means of meeting it in a still greater ratio. In
that year, as is shown by the table in the letter
to which we refer, the pound note was only worth
14s. 5d., and could only procure to its holder
301bs. of beef—now it is actually what it pur-
ports to be, and will purchase 401bs! After
reducing all the great departments of the public
service to a peace establishment, the taxes for
the ordinary service of the state ought therefore
in justice to the ptiblic to have been reduced at
least one-fourth ; and if twenty millions were
then only necessary for the necessary expenditure
of the state, the amount ought in April last,
when the Small Note Suspension Bill came into
operation, to have been reduced to fifteen mil-
lions,—for the plain reason that fifteen millions
now of the present circulating medium, will pay
for as much food and labour as twenty millions of
the currency of 1813. This is a view of the
question which we are most anxious to press
upon the attention of our readers, and which, we
trust, will be pressed upon that of his Majesty's
Ministers, when Parliament meets. The Go-
vernment, without apparently making an ad-
dition to taxes on any article, has, in reality, by
means of the recal of the small notes, added
one-fourth to the amount of all taxes whatso-
ever : and yet the public wonders why money is
scarce, and the taxes more difficult to be paid
now than at any former period !—Morn. Adver.

POLICE INTELLIGENCE.

)dification, of any of _the:
) o u n tryAii.W'safely tn.;
of his Xiejisq's "Mmis-!
)Ico -%:;',i,1,,,,p0t..". ~to• the
isist• ,' , --7'L - ,safetyi
igati cf. ~
k:, '.."Wate, and
of -I"
~.,3'.: * should be
a due t---.- - to these in-
e re ', will be afforded
whtiti4ll seem most
,-•
3ner after a full
diffdpirit jeets of tax-
)er at "d tee in which
'st die vats classes of
ing tliii*Piaci ability of rel
of taxes, nothing we be-,