The Sun. — 1864-03-28 (London, England)

GALLENGA. Such, in brief, is the situation of some among the chiefs of the Ministry now awaiting the announcement cf its future for good or evil, almost immediately, we may rest assured, after the renewal of the sittings of the Legislature at the close of these Easter holidays.  Another melancholy case has been added to the long list of deaths from cold and privation during the present season. That list is already too long for our wealth, for our humanity, for our elaborate poor law system; and feelings of shame, regret, and indignation have been excited in the public mind by their painful disclosures. Official neglect, underpaid labour, and similar causes have been the real murderers, and each tragedy in turn, whether of the poor widow who could not work fast enough to gain a living out of her miserable earnings, or of the unhappy creature who was found a few days ago dying of typhus on a door step, with the story as yet undisproved on his lips, that he slept at a workhouse the night before, and consequently had been sent out into the streets to shift for himself.  The case which has taken place within the last week has, however, some peculiarly distressing features, showing that inhumanity is not confined to union officers, and revealing a degree of quiet and apparently undeserved suffering that is most painful to hear. It seems that JOHN MYERS, a dock labourer, 42 years of age, and of very sober habits, was found dead on the floor of his room, on Monday morning last, his death, according to the verdict of the jury, being caused by inflammation of the lungs, accelerated by exposure, want of clothing and necessaries. Such a case is unhappily not so uncommon as it ought to be, but the most shocking past of the case remains to be told. The poor man had, it seems, been unable to work for the last five months, whether from illness or from not getting employment is not stated. Fer four of those months the rent of his room was in arrears. The landlord, judging him unable to pay the sum due, was resolved to turn him out, but MYERS, it seems, would not go. Ho probably did not know where to go to, and shared the horror of "the house" so common among the poor. Determined, however, to get rid of so profitless a tenant the landlord, whose name was ROBY —it deserves honourable mention  for his original and humane idea—Estructed a man to take the window out and the door off its hinges. This was done,..it must be remembered, in the cold weather some three or four weeks ago, and the severe snow storm which followed must have been hailed by Mr. ROBY as a potent auxiliary, on the principle that the Russian commander-inchief styled January and February his best generals. However, the plan, although ingenious, failed. The poor sinking and exhausted creature still clung to his old habitation till one night-his groans attracted the attention of his fellow lodgers below. A man and his wife who occupied the room underneath went up, although, as the man quaintly said in evidence, " they did not know him." Certainly it was no time to stand upon the ceremonies of introduction. MYERS was lying on a small piece of flock on the floor, with a sheet for his only covering. A table and a broken chair were the only articles of furniture in the room, from which the shivering occupant had tried ineffe-tually to keep out the bitter winds by fastening up two little pieces of calico to the empty window frame. He had not had any food, he said, since the previous Friday, and it was then Sunday afternoon. The other lodger, with the liberality so common among the poor, offered the sufferer some food, which he could not take, and some tea, and in answer to his pitiful complaint of c; It's very cold here with the window out," he brought him a coat to throw over him. MY ERs asked the woman to go for a parish order, but as it was Sunday she could not gat it. Elrly the next morning, as we have seen, ho was found lying dead on his floor, soon to be exchanged for a resting place which no one need begrudge him. There are several questions suzgested by this melancho:y narrative which are not very easily auswered. In the firs:. place, will!, is there butt a ;horror of the Work