Star. — 1822-07-30 (London, England)

FRANCE.  Although the Bastile has long been destroyed, and the 4i Most Christian King" can no longer resort to Lettres de Cachet, yet France has loathsome prisons, secret tortures, and a tremendous engine of despotism and oppression in the Police, which appears to have not only regained, but even surpassed the activity which it displayed during the Reign of Terror, in the Revolution. The abolition of Trial by Jury gives rise to acts of the most flagrant injustice; and if a disposition to complain is manifested, the refractory person is handed over to the Police, and made to bear in silence what the Constitution declares no one has a right-to inflict even on a condemned criminal: nor has the sufferer any relief; it is true, he may appeal to the Chamber of Deputies, but this is a mere mockery ; for whenever accusations are brought against the Government or its agents, they are either treated with contempt or rejected as unworthy to occupy the dignified attention of the Chamber. In no instance was this denial of justice more unblushingly manifested than in the rejection of the Petition of Colonel DUFAY, recently presented to the Chamber. A copy r.f. this Petition, which the French Journals have not dared to publish, has reached us. It states, that _  " Ott Tuesday, June the 4th, 1822, at five o'clock, the Petitioner went to the Prefecture of the Police to demand the release of his friend Captain De!tour, whom the gen. d'armes had arrested for bathing in the river opposite the' quatre Nations.'— Detained a prisoner without crime, mandate, without pretext, by the caprice of the agents of the Prefect, the Petitioner was taken to the prison called Salle St. Martin." He was afterwards removed to a dungeon at the bottcm of the Court of the Prefecture of Police, in which there was camp bechtead, with iron rings fixed into the wall. " The whale furniture consisted of a chair and an epen trough, filed with the most offensive materials. In this horrible place was confined, at six o'clock, the Petitioner, formerly a Colonel in the army, covered with honourable scars, and to whom, after a month's confinement, not a crime had been ascribed, to serve es a pretext fur the commission of such cruel acts." lie W.AS bound to his bed, severely beaten, a: d on complaining, gagged almost to suffocation. " While opposing the forcible opening of h mouth, the Petitioner bit one uf his torturers ; immediately a cord with a running noose was placed round his neck, he was thrown upon his bed and beaten with redoubled violence—the cord was tightened till he became Insensible, mid during his swoon his mouth was opened with a piece of iron, which nearly forced out several of his teeth. The gag and strait waistcoat were then applied, his head was fixed tiS one of the iron rings, and his fret to the other. The Petitioner, during his tortures, implored the pity of the 13:igadier of Gendarmerie, who coldly answered' this does not concern me.'  " The mattress having slirped away, the body of the Petitioner being without support, remained suspended between tls, two rings by the head and feet ; his hands being muffled up in the strait waistcoat were not of any avail to him, and the gag prevented his cries for assistance being heard."  Such were a few of the hardships suffered by the Petitioner, and for which he vainly demands justice; the Petitioner concludes, by obset ving, that " It remains for the Deputies of France to know whether the right of arrest tetthoutwirrant, and of destroying in dungeons the prisoner whose complaints it is desired to stifle, are the inherent lights of the Prefecture of Police."  A shocking murder was recently committed in Perris, on the person of Richard Yarworth, a fine young man, aged twenty-four, son of Mr. R. Yarworth, of London, an industrious pressman, and father of a large family. The unfortunate victim of barbarity was a compositor, and had been employed for two years in a printing-office in Paris, where he gave perfect satisfaction, and was esteemed and beloved by all who knew him. The details of this hocking affair are communicated in a letter from his brother to his father in London, of which the following is an extract : _ _ _  " Wednesday, July 17, 1822. "