The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-08-30 00:00:00

tibtrpool

TUESDAY

MORNING,.i.,

tUCUST 30,1853

TEM metropolitan police reports 'teemed with so
many instances of brutal cruelty towards wives

and helpless females, by fiends in human form

that the HOME SECRETARY, deeming the law im-

perative for the due protection of these hapless

creatures, increased the penalty from two to six
months' hard labour. For this tardy attempt at

justice he received credit, and it was hoped that
the terror of increased punishment would have led

to the diminution of a crime so revolting to hu-
manity. So great is the regard, in a commercial

nation like ours, for the security of property, that

the law has threatened its violation with a series
of severe punishments, and the abstraction of a

simple article, even where destitution has prompted
to the theft, subjects the offender to a lengthened
incarceration, in many instances followed by trans-

portation; while it is not many years since break-
ing into a dwelling-house by night, or taking
by threats of violence on the highway, was deemed
to be a capital offence, and punished with death.
though not less
am now
sfaraslepsrsospanertguinay is ---iYcon'cerned, but our
Oeffiurcielanwts
refined civilisation has ignored the sanctity of
Divine laws, and allowed them to be ruthlessly
violated with an impunity which seeks in vain for
justification or apology. A man has sworn in the
sacred presence of his Maker, after the most
solemn adjurations to give sanctity to the obliga-
tion, to love and cherish the being who has con-
sented to link her fate with his until death shall
part them. He may treat her with undeserved
neglect and cruelty, prove the tyrant in every pos-
sible way, reduce her from happiness to the most
abject misery, and render her existence a living
martyrdom, until death terminates her wretched-
ness and the contract she unhappily entered into ;
and yet, for all this, our Act of Parliament laws
hold him harmless. But he may do more than
this : he may beat and kick her in the most savage
manner, until her body is covered with bruises and
her limbs disabled, and, if he has only just kept
within the verge of killing her, the law, less re-
gardful of her than of the security of a pocket-
handkerchief, imposes on the savage brute an
imprisonment of which the limit has only
recently increased to six months. That the length-
ened period has no more efficacy than the former
limited time, is shown by the daily reports of
similar cases ; and attention is imperatively called
to the urgent, necessity of providing some more
effectual check against crimes which would dis-
grace the lowest horde of savages. Much of the
evil arises from gratifying a sickly sentimentality
and morbid philanthropy respecting the degrading
influence of corporal punishments. A soldier or a
seaman, for a comparatively trifling offence, may
be scored by the lash of the whip, but the vile
wretch who disgraces humanity by his brutal pas-
sions is protected from
the only suffering which is
intelligible to his savage nature. The memory of
JOHN HOWARD is held in veneration for his exer-
tions in behalf of prisoners,but, while we admire
the mercy which he laboured to enjoin, we may be
allowed to question its wisdom or justice with re-
gard to the cases we allude to. A mob in South-
wark made a cowardly attack on an Austrian
general because one of his officers, who was not
glen under his controul, had submitted a female
to the punishment of flogging ; and yet, within a
few hours afterwards, and within a few yards of the
place where this ebullition of female sympathy was
made, a man beat his wife so savagely that her life
was despaired of, and the ruffian was with difficulty
apprehended, owing to the protection afforded him
by the mob. Amidst our vaunted civilisation, it
is a degrading blot that such wretches should
exist ; but the law, if it is to be of any value,
should interpose its strong arm, or it may be that
outraged humanity will supply the defect by what
is known as Lynch law, and mob vengeance, roused
into fury, prove the shield to helpless woman which
is denied to her by our Statute-book. It is
miserable trifling to talk of the degradation of the
whip, when such fiends in human shape are to be
its victims. The punishment of flogging may be
degrading, but the offence to be punished is far
more so ; and we have had an instance of its
efficacy in its having been imposed as a penalty for
assaults upon Her MAJESTY, who has ever since
been free from such attacks. We mistake the ob-
ject of punishment when we limit it to mere con-
finement, or what is falsely called hard labour.
The sentence of the law should be the terror of
evil-doers, in order to deter from the commission
of crime ; but this will never be the case until it
is made proportionate to the offence, for many a
one who has little dread of incarceration would
hesitate to run the risk of the punishment being
applied in the only way which he could really feel.

EVER since Lord JOHN RUSSELL'S sudden fit
of ultra-Protestant zeal, which evaporated in the
celebrated Durham letter, the attention of the
public has been more directed towards the state
endowment of the Romanist college of Maynooth,
and the feeling has become general that such a
grant is a worse than useless expenditure of the
public money. As, however, it was secured by
Act of Parliament, and engagements entered into
on the belief of its permanence, it was deemed that
a withdrawal of the endowment, without a previous
official inquiry into the disposal of it, would be a
breach of public faith, unworthy of the honour of a
great nation. Accordingly, a motion was made in
the House of Commons, for a committee or a
commission of inquiry, and a majority of our
representatives was in favour of its being proceeded
with ; but it had to meet the cunning of
parliamentary tacticians of acknowledged expe-
rience in such matters, and the unscrupulous
opposition of the Romish brigade, who are by no
means particular as to their proceedings when
they have a point to gain. Its supporters were