The Sun.
London, England, 1829-01-13 00:00:00

would have been wofully disgraced by any at-
tempt to stifle inquiry into these horrid proceed-
ings, whomsoever it may affect. Slime surprise
has been expressed at the apathy or Burke under
his sentence, his undisturbed sleep by night, his
unimpaired appeOtc, &c. But they who have
reflected on the power of habit on men, can
hardly be surprised at this. The man who first
imbrues his hands in the blood of his feAow-
creatures has his mind filled with the horrid act.

But familiarity with blood produces a reckless
it“l.:Terence. We have been assured by Officers

of high honour that, in campaigns, soldiers be-
come at length so hardened, that in their ma-
rauding excursions they will take the lives of poor
unoffending creatures, whom they pillage with-
out the slightest necessity, and without the
slightest compunction. We have heard anecdotes
of the French soldiers, more particularly in
the Peninsula, that would hardly be credited.—
With great propriety, therefore, has our inimi-
table Hogarth, in his " Stages of Cruelty," begun
with a boy indulging in cruel sports at the ex-
pence of the interior animals, and ended with
the man, a murderer, stretched on the dissecting
table. The savage comes at length to take a
creel delight in torturing his victims. We all
know the delight with which the Romans viewed
the fights of gladiators, and the horrible spec-
tacle of human beings torn to pieces by beasts
of prey. In all colntries in which, either from
the absence of law or the want of confidence in

it, men are judges in their own cause, there is a
most alarming indifference to human life. A
dead body seen in the streets hardly ever pro-
vokes an inquiry. The influence of habit in
hardening communities and individuals ought to
impress on us the necessity of promoting, as far
as we possibly can, a reverence for human life,
by removing the motives for taking it away.—
The comparative rarity of executions among us
has certainly contributed greatly to the change
in the English character with respect to reve-
rence for life which has been wrought of late
years. Whatever faults we may have, we cer-
tainly are any thing but a bloodthirsty people.
But should the bloody combats which are
now fought every day between poachers and
game-keepers, which are converting our pea-
santry into armed marauders, continue much
longer, and should the present prices continue to
be given for dead bodies, murders will again be
frequent, and consequently cease to be viewed
with the abhorrence which is now one of the
best safeguards of the citizen. Some very
striking instances of the influence of habit in
communicating to men even a horrid enjoyment
in human sufferings, are given in a very affect-
volume written against Torture, by John
Grawius, a Remonstrant Clergyman, who, hav-
ing been banished with his brethren of the Ar-
enenian persuasion from Holland, was appre-
hended when visiting by stealth his friends, and
thrown into prison at Amsterdam, where he was
doomed to witness the frequent infliction of tor-
tore. The book was published at liamburgh in
1624. " Good God," he exclaims, " what
kind of man must he be who can bear to look
on these doings with delight, or at least without
the utmost horror, the most heartfelt detesta-
tion ? TO see a man worn down with his
squalid and lengthened imprisonment, naked,
trembling, pale at the severe aspect of the Judge,
already half dead with fear, bound hands and
feet, and dragged to the instrument of torture ;
where the horrible apparatus every where of
pulleys, suspended ropes and weights, hot
irons, pincers, tie., the terrible threats of the
J udges,the cruel language used,thebitterlaughter,
and more than all, the fiend-like eyes of the
executioners fixed on the victims, rejoicing and
bounding as it were :cith eagerness to lay their
cruel hands upon them, inspire them with an in-
expressible sinking of the heart.- After de-
scribing processes, with the recital of which we
will not shock our readers, he adds, when the
torture ceases because the victims can suffer no
more, " the Judges laugh at the frequent groans,
lamentations, and dreadful convulsions of coun-
tenance of these miserable victims, and treat
with contempt the tears end prayers of the poor
wretches to mitigate the severity, and exhort,
every now and then, the executioners to omit
nothing which may add to the violence of the
anguish ; nay, they occasionally point out in
what- part the victims feel moat exquisitely, what
part should be cut, what part burned, what part
flayed ; and were they not withheld by shame,
they would themselves tear off the clothes of the
criminals, and flog, burn, and torture them them-
selves, and supply the places of the executioners.
Ab, greater 3 tilt! cruelty of the torture which is
daily shown in the torturing poor wretches, than
language can express, and it never can be prac-
tised but by those who are already strangers to all
humanity ; never can be approved of hut by
those who will approve of any thing, however in-
human. So often as Christian men proceed to
this excess of cruelty, pursuing some obscure
offence with such horrid tortures, they seem de•
generated into savages. Who will not say that
these Christians gratify the Devil, by whom they
have been so far blinded, as to believe that the
torture is the palladium of justice, and that with-
out torture justice would he at an end ?" This
description is instructive, as it shows how soon
men are brought to ctke a savage delight in in-
flicting pain on their fellow-creatures. The moral
is obvious, Let us destroy as much as we can
all those pursuits which produce this woeful
change in the human character. We have fos-
tered a class of truculent men—at best violators
of the law—familier with the spectacle of dead
bodies in their progress towards decomposition,
hunted down as wild beasts, and, or course,
ready to retaliate on society, especially when
personal safety would be thereby promoted. Let
these horrid practices be put an end to by consi-
derate laws, which, without violating the regard
of the living for the remains of relations, may
supply the schools with those who have none to
bury them, and who are themselves indifferent to
the use which may lie made of their bodies after
death —lbad.
A Sunday Paper professes to be exceedingly
indignant at the slur which, it says, is attempt-
ed to be cast upon the general body of bankers,
owing to the ignominious frauds and flight of
one of the body. Nothing, we agree with our
contemporary, would be more unjust than such
a proceeding. The Church might 'as wear be
judged of by the case of a fugitive Bishop, se
the trade of a banker by the solitary instance of
Rowland Stephenson- Bnt, when the premises
are false, the conclusion mast necessarily he er-
roneou-s. Stephenson's, doubtless, is a peculiar
eaze, though unfortunately, even in its enormities
not an unprecedented one ; while the mall point
to the public, the insolvency of the concern, so
far from being an unusual occurrence, is enlv a
corroboration of this fact, that within the last five
years more banking houses have failed than the
same proportion in any class of business whatever.
We not court this avowal, but, as it is winner=
us, we make it. We state, moreover, as a pro-