The Sun. — 1853-08-16 (London, England)

LONDONDERRY. mean the people of Seaham could preserve such remembrances • asthese in regard to its Founder, the Found er of seaham bear other facts in recollection, could happily ill reference to its industrious and enterprising populatien LONDONDERRY himself notified this Lord fact the other day, at the banquet referred to, he avowed with some emotion and emphasis, that not one of his projects, however daring, and even hopeless it may have appeared at the outset, but commanded from the people of Seaham their earnest and energetic co-operation. It is attributable to this mutual confidence in each other's sincerity, that the Originator and the Inhabitants of that flourishing little seaport have so conducted matters, since shortly after 1828, that already, in 1853, Seaham has, through its docks (two wet docks, one dry dock, and one tidal basin); an an nual shipment of coal to the amount of 273,2881 chaldrons—between 2,000 and 3,000 vessels entering each year for the purpose of taking in cargoes-300 ships finding there, at any time, ample accommodation the town itself containing from 4,000 to 5,000 inhabitants, and possessing, besides, 700 inhabited houses, a church, as before remarked, four other places of worship for Dissenters, one public and several private schools, a news-room, and, as we have moreover already noticed, an infirmary. Added to all these advantages—advantages collected together within the brief interval of a quarter of a century—Seaham is about to possess the vast supplementary benefit of a railway, connecting it with the neighbouring port of Sunderland. Here again the enterprize is traceable to the founder of the seaport—to the courageous patrician who has already achieved with his single, and, let us add, singular energy, triumphs which have been hitherto regarded as the products alone of the toil of many laborious adventurers striving together for years in association.  It is by no means discreditable to our Statesmen, that they are, one and all, unprepared with any complete scheme of secondary punishments. When, through the benign influences of Christianity, society generally has advanced beyond regarding legal punishment as merely the just measure of revenge for crime, innumerable conflicting considerations begin to perplex us. DRAES'S plan is the only short and easy one ; but, indeed, that is an easy one only when DRAES himself is prosecutor, constable, judge, and jury in his own person. Civilisation, though not Christian, never yet carried out the theory of legal vengeance. The very next step to it, a theory which regards consequences to society merely, and not the personal guilt of the unfortunate criminal, the theory of deterring by punishment, brings with it much to hinder consistent and decisive action. Too lenient sentences will not deter from crime, too severe ones elicit dangerous sympathy for the guilty ; and, in a country where trial by jury is the right of the accused, severity tends to the acquittal of the guilty. The extreme of this theory was tested by the now universally reprobated law of hanging for forgery. The immense consequences at stake, in a commercial country, if signatures were allowed to be forged at any risk but that of life, were painted to us in the most appalling colours, with the almost mortal miseries of deceived individuals, and families of widows and orphans ; yet all without avail. Public feeling revolted at rows of men hanging on the gallows for imitating a signature. Juries preferred perjury to what they deemed practical murder, and even those who clung to the unmitigated theory of deterring by terror for the good of society, were compelled to join the disciples of ROMILLY and