The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-12-22 00:00:00

CONTEMPORARY PRESS.

THE ABOMINABLE LAW OF LIBEL. •
(From the Preston Chronicle.)
We are rejoiced to learn, that an influential body of
gentlemen, connected with the newspaper press of this
country, are triaking arrangements for the purpose of
bringing before Parliament, in a shape likely to obtain
for the subject the attention it merits, the present un-
just and miseleevous law of libel,—with a view, of
course, to its thorough revision. . We need scarcely
say, that with such an effort we most cordially and
most keenly sympathise. There is not an editor in the
kingdom, who understands anything of his profes-
sion, and who has in his composition the spirit of a
min, and the honest pride and high-:Winded independ-
ence of a gentleman, that does not, with a perfect ha-
tredeloathe and detest these envenomed enactments.
Much as we differ in other respects, and though, on
almost every other theme under Heaven, we present to
each other the attitnde of strife" and alienation, we all
asree in the utmost concord of fraternal esprit du
corps in our inexorable hatred of the infamous libel
laws—for the huge drag chain ia hung alike around
all our necks like an accursed incubus. Questionless,
then, it is the high duty of all of us who are sensible
of the danger and degradation to which we are all ex-
posed in the present state of the law, and who feel
that it is unmerited in our own several cases, to join
heartily and zealously in the pursuit, now opened by a
portion of our brethren. Of one thing we may be
well aesured, that if we do not urge our own cause, it
will not, whatever they may promise, be urged by
others. Peers and members of parliament, judges and •
lawyers will pot protect us if they can help it; they all
impartially. and indiscriminately hate us, and wish to
retain us in that state of subjection and abasement to
which we are condemned by the present state of the
law. This may be saying a hard thing, but it is, as
every day's experience proves, the plain and incontro-
vertible truth. Strange, anomalous, and unjustifiable
as it may seem, hatred, to the press and to its conduc-
tors, is a point upon which all ranks of public men and
all political parties are agreed : they feel that the press
has some power to expose abuse, and to punish disho-
nesty in spite of them; and they prefer to check the
increase of that power by degrading laws, to giving it
a right direction, by placing us in our proper position.
The public may not know this, but those who are be-
hind the scenes know it full well and experience it
constantly. There are men who would almost crawl
to a newspaper editor in private, that is, in the place
where favours are now and then asked, and yet who
would not deign to recognise him in public ; still less
to render a kindness which could be detected, or to
pay a mark of esteem justly and richly merited. One
of our great, perhaps our greatest, poet, soliloquised,
in his unrivalled style, upon the inviry " to what base
purposes may we descend;" it appears, however, to
have been reserved for the enlightened churls of the
nineteenth century, to discover one• solution to the
query which far escaped even his keen and penetrating
eye. We do not recollecn that in all his catalogues of
criminals and crimes, he makes any especial mention
of our et present proscribed order,—an order indeed
to which it was. once considered the highest praise and
merit to belneg. And will any one believe that in this
our day, the interests of the country, to say nothing of
the interests of justice, do not suffer by the persecu-
tion to which we are. subjected ? That they do suffer,
and that roost grievously, requires little argument to
prove. There is no higher aim can be proposed to a.
pare and honourable ambition, than the direction of
the public mind to ends, which, in the judgment of
those to wheat the opportunity offers, seem to be just,
and conducive to the public good. In a country like
this where so much freedom in other respects pre-
vails, and where consequently so much depends upon
whatever iespression is made utters the public mind,•
the attraction of this most ambitious aim must he.
most powerful. The press, therefore, notwithstanding
the toils incident to its service, and even were it pro-
ductive of a less recompense to its labourers than it is,
would naturally engage the first talent and the best
dispositions of the country, were there not some pow-
erful principle counteractiag the natural tendency.
But the. question is, does the press engage the first ta-
lentsestsdethe btist dispositions of the country? If it
does, why is thensress degraded—why are all connected
with it studiously insulted in the courts of justice, and
proscribed as a polluted caste elsewhere ? If the press
does not engage, as rationally it ought to engage, the
first talents and best dispositions in the country, but
engages a class of men whom it is proper to insult and
proscribe—how does this happen ? The answer is,
the libel laws—laws infamously iniquitous in .them-
selves; but made worse as they are administered.
L•n us, however, leave the hypothesis, and do justice
to the press. There are connected with it, even under
the diseouragements to which all are exposed, some of
the ablest, the most learned, and the most honest men
of which the country can boast. It is, and always has
been; a location with which many of the most splendid
names in liter:attire and politics, that have adorned the
annals of our country since the invention of the art of
printing, are associated. In justice to our cloth, and
from that feeling alone, we state this fact broadly and
fearlessly. We assert, that looking at the writings of
many of our contemporaries (particularly those of the
metropolitan press) without at all regarding the diver-
sities ot nolitecal'npinions, the periodical press generally,
as one great department of literature, exhibits at least
as much ttalent; knowledge, argument, and eloquence,
applied to political controversy, and to the science of
governMent, as even the debates in the imperial parlia-
ment disclose.. But to those who would wield arms
atrainst our order—those who doggedly defend the
present conduct pursued towards the press, let us again
put the question—how happens it that respectable men
refuse to undertake the office of guiding the mind of
England ?—and if the men who undertake the office
are respectable men, why do you treat them as outcasts ?
We care not how the question is answered, and we
have at least the consolation of knowing, that such
injuttice and folly is not committed in any other
country. In despotic states indeed, the press is alto-
gether in bond; but nowhere, save in England, is the
.slrsurdity committed of letting the press enjoy freedom
and power, and then of insulting and degrading it.
Let, however, the libel code undergo a salutary and
searching --revision, and then with one accord we will
speed-rite purge the insult and wipe away the degrada-
tityi. Trtten there will always be a few croakers, cynics,
a s,- t o bellow out their miserable railing,
blit,;.hiipAk' it is of little consequence to a well-con-
da`ctotl:press, what such persons hate or love, admire
or despise. • Such 3 press can return their hatred with
interest, anti return their contempt in the forgiving
spirit of scornful generosity. •

ANNIVERSARY MEETING OF THE PROTES-
TANT ASSOCIATION Al' SHEFFIELD.
(From the Dublin Evening Mail.)
We have been reluctantly compelled to defer the re-
port of this meeting, which was held on the 3d inst.,
from the impossibility of procuring the important do-
cuments adduced there by the Rev. R. J. M`Ghee,
except. through the medium of the Shejleld Mercury—
Mr. M‘Ghee's engagement to proceed to hold a similar
meeting at Whitchurch having precluded the transmis-
sion of them to our office ; and, as even at Sheffield,
the editor of the Mercury could not procure them in
time for his paper of the sth—Mr. M`Ghee's speech
having occupied four hours in the delivery—but was
obliged to defer the half of his report till Saturday,
thi! 120,1 i-it-will he seen that we present our readers
with the earliest report that could reach this city.
There was considerable interest excited in Sheffield,
in consequence of the charge made by the honourable
member for that borough, Mr. Ward, in the House of
Commons, against the Rev. Messrs. W.Neile and
M'Ghee, that, at the meeting of last year, they had
propagated calumnies and falsehoods there, and his
being consequently invited, by the latter of •these gen-
tlemen,. to substantiate his charge on the platform at
Sheffield. This, as• may well be supposed, the hon.
member thought prop r to decline; and, having writ-
ten to Mr. l'il`Ghee to that effect, and his letter being
delivered just at the commencement of the meeting,
the answer to this letter, and the exposure of his
sophistry and evasion, will probably be heard more of
at tho'n77:t general election—having been received,. as
the first 'part of the report specifies, with the greatest
err.linasin by the most crowded auditory that the
:lliisi -nail could contain.
Pint the part of Mr. M`Ghee's speech, the report of
which was deferred till Saturday last, is of an interest
so far transcending all local considerations, and extend-
irtg In ifs application so intimately to the vital existence
of British- empire, that we deliberately exclude every
other section and topic of that, gentleman's address,
and confine ourselves to that which is to he found in
the report of Saturday ;_ and we feel no hesitation in
adopting Mr. M`Ghee's own language, that "the sub-

ject is capable of demonstration as perfect as it is pos-
sible to lay before the understanding of man; and
whether we consider the unquestionable sources from
whence the evidence is derived—the high authorities
from which it emanates—the completeness of the proof
on which the facts are established, or the tremendous
nature of those facts—whether considered as corrobo-
rating all that has been stated by us as to Popery, or
as exhibiting the real condition of the British empire—
it is impossible that any subject more worthy of devoted
attention can be submitted to a meeting of Protes-
tants." We refer our readers to the report, to justify
this, and we know not whether more to commend it to
the consideration of the' Protestants or the Roman
Catholics of Ireland, for it demonstrates the latter to
be the veriest slaves of Papal despotism in all Europe.

THE PUBLIC HEALTH.

(From the Times.)

It has been clearly established that there is a much higher
rate of mortality in towns than in the open country. During
the first half year of registration the difference between the
diseases in a dense and scattered population was remarkable.
Is this discrepancy of a transitory, accidental, or permanent
character ? Mr. Far states that the year 1838 afforded un-
usual facilities for solving this problem.
The population of the city districts in 1830 is estimated at
3,726,221, and that in the counties at 3,539,008. The city
was to the rural population as 1,053 to 100 ; and to this ex-
tent (5 per cent.) the deaths in the counties should be aug-
mented to render the mortality strictly comparable.
The excess of deaths in cities, besides the 70,410 who died
equally in the dense and in the more scattered populations,
was 30,609; 9,970 from epidemic maladies, 7,474 from dis-
eases of the nervous system, 10,465 from affections of the
organs of respiration, and 3,144 from diseases of the digestive
apparatus. The annual rate of mortality in the cities was
2.7—in the counties 2.0 per cent. ; and the mortality in the
cities 1.36 to 1.10 in the counties. The mean duration of
life in the two sets of circumstances would differ nearly in the
ratio of 37 years and 50 years. In order to arrive at a cor-
rect conclusion as to the relative amount of disease in cities
and counties, it will be necessary to examine in each depart-
ment an extent of country embracing the same amount of
population. This course Mr. Far has adopted, and the fol-
lowing is the result of his observatioins :—The diseases that
are most prevalent in crowded cit es are asthma, erysipelas,
convulsions, and teething, inflammation of the lungs, air-
tubes, and pleura, delirium tremens, or drunkard's delirium,
typhus fever, smallpox, heart disease, affections of the liver,
rheumatism, gout, hernia, and the diseases incident to partu-
rition. _ _ _

In the cities the mortality is less in the following cases :
consumption, croup, violent deaths, mortification; stone,
apoplexy, malformations, hemorrhage, &c.
It appears that those chronic diseases in which there are
new deposits, new formations, or new secretions, prevail to
as great an extent in the country as in citi:s. This class in.
chides scrofula, cancer, jaundice, diabetes, &c.
Parturition is 63 per cent. more fatal in town than in the
country, in consequence of its being more frequently follow-
ed by a disease which annually destroys many valuable lives,
viz., puerperal fever.
All injuries are more fatal in cities than in the country.
The surgeons in the rural districts trust more to the resources
of nature than to the results of operations ; and when it is
deemed necessary to mutilate the body, the patient has a
better chance of surviving the effects of it. In the metro-
polis, and in many of our provincial towns, the chance of re-
covery in these cases is lessened by the patient being exposed
to the crowded and often impure air or an hospital.
That the mortality should be greater in densely populated
districts than in places where the inhabitants are scattered,
and have the advantage of inhaling an uncontaminated at-
mosphere, a priori reasoning would have led us to conclude.
Early writers on this subject took a gloomy and fanatical
view of the question. Cities were said to be the vortices of
vice, misery, disease, and death, in fact " the graves of man-
kind." The attention which has been paid of late years to
medical police, as well as to the study of the cause of disease
in cities, justifies us in anticipating an amelioration of those
evils which now appear to be inevitably connected with a re-
sidence in thickly populated districts.
It has been clearly established that the aggregation of
mankind in towns, provided the density be not carried be-
yond certain limits, is not necessarily disastrous. Health
and life may be preserved under these circumstances, pro-
vided attention be paid to certain laws upon which the dura-
tion of life depends.
The following remarks of Mr. Far deserve the serious con-
sideration of every person interested in the promotion of the
health and happiness of their fellow-creatures :—" Great im-
provements in the physical condition, and in all the circum-
stances upon which the health of the metropolis depends,
. have been made within the last few years, or projected with
every prospect of being carried into effect. The primary ob-
jects to be kept in view are the careful exclusion of all unne-
cessary animal and vegetable matter ; the immediate removal
' of residual products ; and the dilution of inevitable exhala-
tions. The dead should no longer be buried where they are
surrounded by crowded dwellings. Unwholesome manufac-
tories should be excluded from densely peopled districts ; and
there is assuredly no reason why thousands of cattle, sheep,
horses, and animals of every kind, sometimes affected with
epizootic diseases, should be gathered together in market
places within the city, or slaughtered in houses where the
blood and offal can never be effectually removed." Mr. Farr
suggests the removal of all slaughterhouses from the city, and
that great attention should be paid to the supply of pure
water and the sewerage of the metropolis. He observes, that
"if a survey. were made of the districts of the metropolis,
and the levels, the sewers, the drains, and the nuisances
known to be pernicious, were accurately laid down upon a
map, it would be found to agree very remarkably with the
table of relative mortality."
In estimating the mortality of cities, we must not leave
out of our calculation the influence of moral agents. Mr.
Far has not, however, touched upon this important subject.
It is possible for the body to stand up against the operation
of physical evils for a considerable time with impunity ;
hut when in addition to these the mind becomes worked upon
and depressed, dreadful are the results.
The poor, by their peculiar position in society, their want
of education, &c., are less exposed to the influence of mental
excitement than those who move in the higher walks of life.
Co a certain degree, however, they become the victims of
unruly appetites and ill-regulated emotions, and by mixing
in the turmoils of political and party strife, they foster a
morbid condition of mind which ofteh lays the foundation
for serious mental and physical disease.
Very few must have failed to observe the marked differ-
ence between the care-worn, haggard, and anxious counte-
nance of the London and Birmingham artisan, and the ruddy,
happy, and apparently thoughtless face of the inhabitant of
one of our healthy rural districts. The moral atmosphere
which they respectively inhale is of a very dissimilar charac-
ter, and to this circumstance must we attribute, to a certain
extent, the high rate of mortality in towns.
Atmospherical variations materially affect the, duration of
human life. The reduction of temperature alone is fatal to
the inhabitants of a city on a favourable site, furnished with
sewers, or to an agricultural population occupying a dry soil ;
and summer to the inhabitants of marshy districts, or of
cities in which the refuse organic matter is exposed to putre-
faction. In proportion as the severity of the weather or
malaria preponderates, the winter or summer will be the
unhealthiest season. _ . _

The conclusion to which Mr. Far has arrived is opposite
to the views entertained by the early English writers, and of
the Greek and Roman physicians. Celsus observes, " Sa-
luberrimunt ver eat ; proxime deinde ab hoc, Mem ; pcii-
culosior testes; autumns longepericulosissimus." In Eng-
land summer is the healthiest, and winter the most fatal,
season. This rule has prevailed in this country since the
beginning of the last century.
In the winter of 1838 the deaths were 15,611; in spring,
13,109; in summer, 11,397 ; in autumn, 12,581.
The following diseases were rendered more fatal by the
influence of cold doting the winter of 1838 :—paralysis, apo-
plexy, asthma, diseases of the head, influenza, inflammation
of the lungs, air tubes, and pleura, &c. The cold carried off
many old people.
Consumption destroyed the greatest number in spring.
Males suffered from the disease in winter more than females.
Diseases of the digestive organs and nervous affections pre-
vailed to a greater extent in summer.
The most appalling fact that the registration tables of 1838
bring under our notice is the great increase of the number of
deaths from that pestilential scourge the smallpox. It is,
indeed, alarming to contemplate th mortality which pre-
vailed from this disease alone.
" When the Registration Act came into operation," says
Mr. Far, " the epidemic of smallpox had commenced, and
was rapidly advancing. It' was raging at its height on the
western side of the island. In Liverpool and West Derby
1.44 individuals perished in the first three months. • Bath,
with its small population, lost 154; Leicester, 43 ; and
Shrewsbury, 35."
The epidemic prevailed in the south-west counties in
autumn, extending to the districts around Bath, and then
pissing from Somersetshire to Devonshire, where it destroyed
131 lives in Exeter, and half as many more in the surround-
ing districts ; and to Wiltshire, where 40 died in Caine,
Marlborough, and Pewsey, 48 in Devises, and 22 in Salis-
bury. In Wales 711 perished in the third quarter of the
winter of 1838. The disease spread over London at first,—

22 died in Holborn, 10 in Whitechapel, 16 in St. George's,
Southwark ; 29 in Lambeth, 47 in Greenwich. The deaths
from it were doubled in the second quarter. The smallpox
mortally attained its maximum in the spring of 1838. The
metropolis saw 1145 curried to premature graves ; Surrey
lost 83 by the malady; Kent, 132; Berkshire, 64 ; Wilt-
shire, 93 ; Somersetshire, 222 ; Glocestershire, 142 ; Wor-
cestershire, 89 ; Warwickshire, 107 ; Lancashire, 442 ; York-
shire, 282 ; Durham, 88 ; Cumberland, 44 ; Monmouthshire,
82; Wales, 551. In three months 4489 deaths from small-
pox were registered. The epidemic paused, either because
its strength was exhausted, or it had no more victims to
sacrifice;. but 3685 died of smallpox in summer, 3851 in
autumn. The epidemic destroyed more than 30,819 persons.
When the smallpox does not prevail epidemically, it is calcu-
lated that only 5 die weekly of•the disease in the metropolis.
The problem for solution is, as Mr. Far justly observes, why
do the 5 deaths become 10, 15, 20. 31, 58, 88 weekly, and
then progressively fall through the same measured steps ?
Of the laws which regulate the course and modify the
character of epidemic diseases we know little or nothing.
That the contagion of smallpox is readily diffused in certain
states of the atmosphere is an undoubted fact, but the con-
stitution of the air which appears to favour its propagation is
neither appreciable by the thermometer, the hydrometer, nor
the barometer. It may, as Dr. Gregory. suggests, be de-
pendent upon some electrical condition of the air which has
hitherto eluded the researches of philosophers, but which
time and closer observation may eventually succeed in dis-
covering.
It has been supposed by some that epidemics are caused
by the generation of many insects, which are transmitted
from one individual to another; but this hypothesis is devoid
of anything like the semblance of facts f,r its support. The
most rational modes of arresting the progress of this fearful
malady is, first, by making vaccination more general than it
is, and secondly, by doing our utmost to remove these
causes which experience informs us predispose the system to
the influence of contagion. That the small pox and many
other. fatal diseases should make such rapid strides in dis-
tricts inhabited by the poorer classes of the community need
excite but little astonishment. Few have sach opportuni-
ties of investigating the degraded and miserable condition of
the poor in this metropolis as the members of the medical
profession. Callous, indeed, must be the hearts of those
who can look upon the sufferings to which thousands of our
fellow creatures are exposed, particularly during the incle-
ment seasons of the year, without feelings of intense emotion.
Deprived of the common necessaries of life, destitute of
clothing to protect them from the piercing cold, friendless,
forsaken, contemned, thousands are (homed to perish an-
nually in a city which is designated as the centre of European
civilization.
It may be bid down as an indisputable axiom, that just in
proportion as we elevate the moral and physical condition of
the poorer classes of the community, we shall succeed in di-
minishing the mortality of disease, and prolonging the dura-
tion of human life.

3r, near Dur-
An explosion took place in Shincliffe Collier
ham, on Thursday morning, when some workmen was un-
happily killed, and another severely burnt. The colliery has
not sustained much damage.--Newcastle Journal.
An eagle was shot on the sands, near Redstone. on Mon-
day last, by Samuel Taylor, gamekeep
Cresswell, Esq., which measured from tip to tip eight feet ;
in height three feet two inches,
etude Journal.
and weighed 9lbs.—Netv_