The Sun. — 1850-10-03 (London, England)

STERNE— " They manage these things better in France." Our ideas in regard to the liberties of every Englishman, no matter what his position in the ranks of the community, are nevertheless so profoundly fixed and so wholly unfluctuating, that we can never consent, without raising our voice in remonstrance, to see the dearest rights and privileges of British subjects juggled away simply for the delight of adjusting our criminal code with the tyrannical police system more or less in operation throughout the European continent. • It is one amongst the most sacred and beneficent principles of our Constitution, as we took an opportunity to remind our readers only the other evening, that until a man has been formally convicted of an imputed crime by a jury of his countrymen he is presumed to be innocent. Yet, in flagrant defiance of this principle, it is now-a-days proposed that, simply upon suspicion that such and such an one is burglariously proceedings shall be forthwith taken against him by the police authorities, as in the case of persons engaged in defrauding the revenue by illicit distillation, or of insuring the national currency by a fraudulent coinage. In obedience, of course, a to such suggestions, no honest man would be safe from the irksome surveillance of an over-privileged police, prying into their domestic retirement, and rendering their homes little less transparent than the glass-hives introduced into w -fan gled apiaries. Unquestionably the pret ntic r of crime is an object deserving of all reasonablE precautions ; but in the endeavour to protect society it seems rather preposterous to lay it open to all kinds of despotic interposition. It is paying out with the one hand, and hauling in tighter than ever with the other. The notion would be simply ridiculous for its extravagance, but that it is calculated to be so signally pernicious in its operation. Instead of acting in any manner so absurdly and ineffectively, we would witness the increase, not of powers to the police, for already they have ample in all conscience, but of the inducements to successful detection. We would gladly recognise, moreover, a more energetic course of proceeding in the way of bolding out rewards to such malefactors as might be disposed to batten on the evil gains accruing to Queen's evidence—adding to the crime of conspiracy, it is true, the atrocity of treason, but at the same time shielding the community by playing false to their accomplices. At the thirteenth hour, as it were, when the victim is actually sacrificed, the Government comes forward with its proffered recompense of 100/. for the discovery of the murderers. Pity it is such an inducement to disclosures, when those disclosures might have proved eff‹ctual in preventing instead of avenging an atrocious assassination, was not held out sooner by her Ma a EST Y'S Government ! Supposing:such to have been dons, the unhappy gentleman, whose life has just been sacrifioed in his gallant attempt to wrestle with three armed housebreakers, might still have been spared to his afflicted family, instead of being shot down like a dog in the very bosom of his home, and dying a lingering death, after two days of excruciating suffering. It were idle to pretend that no sufficient reasons had been given for the adoption of any such decisive course by the Administrative authorities, when it is remembered that for months past this particular quarter of England has been in a state of perpetual dismay in consequence of the daring exploits of an organized gang of burglars. Incited by their previous and prolonged immunity from punishment to yet more atrocious acts of audacity, some of the members of this conspiracy have now covered themselves with the additional and damning guilt of murder. Only then doeti the Government come forward with its temptation of 1001. blood money, when the unfortunate Mr. HOLLEST is lying dead in his outraged home in Surrey. It would be unfair to confound together in character the impudent robbery and attempted murder in the very heart of the busiest part of the city of London—the robbery and attempted•murder which very nearly ended in the death of Mr.