The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1833-04-05 00:00:00

The following is from a still greater authority :

" The Duke of WELLINGTON 'Complained that the provisions
of the bill were now inconsistent with the preamble, and that those
meetings against which it was• declared in the preamble that
some extraordinary measure of legislation was necessary, were
now not included in the operation of the bill, but was submitted
to a differerent mode of punishment. .If, however, his Majesty's
ministers conceived that the measure, in its present form, was
sufficient for the purpose in view, he, for one, would not wish
them to carry it one iota further. He did not complain of the
amendments, but he complained of the inconsistency. of the pre-
amble with the provisions."

Lord Brougham gives the finishing stroke in these
most extraordinary words:— •

" lie must say, with respect to the provision introduced in
the fourth clause, that with all due respect forth° other house,'
he could net at all discover any just or satisfactory reason for this'
amendment. Be certainly could say nothing in its praise. It
would be absolutely and utterly inoperative. It could not by any
possibility produce the result he supposed it aimed at, of crip-
pling the powers of the clause, or save any wrong doers from a
particular mode of punishment. Besides, the provision in the
clause was utterly inconsistent with the clause itself. The clause
did not give any power of proclaiming a district, unless it were
really in a state of disturbance; yet the provision set forth,'
that if any act of insubordination did prevail in a district, it
shall not be lawful to declare the district' merely on account of a
peaceable opposition to pay tithes—a peaceable opposition to
tithes ! Why, they might as well say that no proceedings should
be taken upon a peaceable resistance to pay the King's taxes;
or, if any persons attempted, in a peaceable way, to withhold:
the payment of their tradesmen's bills, or any thing else ! ! !

All this is amusing enough. The Lord High:Chan-
cellor is unsparingly sarcastic. He does not absolutely,
call Lord Althorp a blockhead, or the King's attorney
general a fool, or the House of Commons an assembly of
dunces, but he leaves the world to infer that such is the
noble and learned lord's pqrate opinion of these illus-
trious senators. But the commons, after all, are not se-
riously culpable. Their offence is in tolerating such stu-
pidity,—in tolerating as ministerial leader in that house
a 'gentleman who hardly seems to know his right hand
from his left,—who is perpetually blundering, and ex-
posing the government to universal derision.
After this severe, but well-merited chastisement .from
the Chancellor, the rebuke of all his colleagues, and the
silent censure of his friends, it is • impossible that Lord
Althorp can remain another day in his present office:. If
he do, he must have feelings as insensible as the nether
millstone, and callous to •all the natural impulses of pride
or shame. The well bred dog always knows when to
avoid being kicked out 'Orany particular place,• and it
Would be well for Lord Althorp to take the hint,—" the
creature from the cur," as Lear expresses it.

THERE are in England some very well-meaning en-.
thusiasts, " who are most assured where they are most
ignorant," and who are incessantly meddling with sub-
jects beyond their. comprehension. Formed into parties
of numerical potency they find no difficulty in sending to
Parliament an advocate whose only business there is to
embody their. absurdities into a legislative enactment to.
remove some ideal grievance. For years past we have
been pestered with • tirades against the sanguinary cha-
racter of our criminal code and the barbarous severities
of our prison discipline. To silence this clamour, frOm:
time to time, these have been ameliorated, and, strange
to say, crime has increased! Jails have been made more
comfortable, condemned cells have been converted into
drawing rooms, fetters have been lightened, and yet,
strange to. say !—crime is increasing. • Forgery is no
longer punishable with death, and, imost strange of .all,
the crime of forgery is frightfully on the increase ! At
the examination of Richard Coster, at the Mansion-
house, London, the Lord Mayor observed; that,

" Forgeries were most frightfully increasing and that Mr.
Freslifield had the other day stated that if the law substituting
transportation for the extreme punishment were not in exist-
ence, Coster would never have attempted anything of the kind."
And other forgeries of a wholesale character are almost
daily exhibited at the London police offices.
In the rage for legislation, England is cursed with
worse than an Egyptian plague ; the people are taught
by it to be •discontented.with the laws as they are, and,
thereby, encouraged to violate them, while the spurious
.and ill-directed sympathy for criminals operates as a pre=
mium for the commission of crime. In. its punishment,
no one would watch more vigilantly or exclaim more
loudly or indignantly against the exercise of any undue
severity than ourselves; . but we cannot help reminding
oar readers, that se Verity in individual cases is frequently
an act of mercy •to the community. This applies more
particularly to military flogging. In the debate on this
subject, on. Tuesday night, Lord Palmerston said, that

" Cases had been cited to show how admirably particular re-
giments had been governed without flogging ; but they prove
nothing.; they were, at best, exceptions to the general rule, and,
to prove anything, it should be first shown that they would have
existed if the power of inflicting this punishment had not re-
mained vested in the commanders."

We would ask, in all sincerity, whether the ameliora-
tions (as they are called) of our criminal code, have im-
proved or deteriorated public morals ?