ENGLISH NEWS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume I, Issue 26, 5 July 1851, Page 3

ENGLISH NEWS.

A few paragraphs of interest remain unextvactecl from the English papers, the following being the principal. The Attoknei-Generax v. the London Dock Company.—The allegations of fraudulent malpractices which the Board of Customs has charged the London Dock Company with systematically encouraging and countenancing, on th.c part of their servants, for the Company's b l/iefit, and to the injury both of the mercantile community and the Customs' revenue, have been at length submitted to the test of a trial W jury. The trial, which has been of extraordinary duration—having commenced on Thursday the 6th, and not having concluded until Tuesday the 18th February—took place in the Court of Exchequer, before the Lord Chief Baron and a special jury. The case presented ■was an information filed by the Attorney-Gene-ral, with reference to 8000 lb. of coffee, 250 cwt. of ginger, &c, landed by the Dock Company without duly reporting them to the Customs' authorities. The first count in the information charged the defendants with having landed these goods without a due report having been made. The second, with landing them without the duty being paid or secured. The third with delivering them out without the duty being so paid or secured. The fourth and fifth, for warehousing them without due entry; sixth, for clandestinely moving the goods from one warehouse to another; seventh, for fraudently concealing them in a warehouse; eighth, for fraudently moving them from the warehouse. A vast number of witnesses were examined in the course of the trial, the evidence for the Crown seeking to establish against the Dock Company the practice of a system of breach of legal regulations, fraudulent abstraction of goods, and evasion of duties to an extent of several pounds sterling a year. Many of the witnesses for the Crown were formerly in the service of the Dock Company, but previously to, and during the trial, were supported by funds supplied by the Customs; ancl, according to their testimony, it was quite an usual practice on the part of the Dock officers to abstract from every cargo of sugar a quantity varying from half a ton to three or four tons, and apply it to the service and benefit of the company in various ways, a locality named Davies's-corner being especially mentioned, where good sugar was customarily adulterated and prepared, so as to make refuse or molasses, to sell to refiners and scum-boilers at a profit. Several of those witnesses, however, on cross-examination, proved to be men of indifferent character, and their testimony not to be very worthy of credit. Sir Fitzroy Kelly, who was the leading counsel for the defence, and whose opening speech lasted six hours, showed that the whole case, as regarded its main features, was a fabrication ; and that whatever peculations had really occurred, were of a very trifling nature, and had been committed by subordinate officers of the Dock Company, wholly unknown to the directors and managers of the Company. The evidence adduced for the defence went far to sustain Sir. F. Kelly's address. On Tuesday Feb. IS, the Lord Chief Baron summed up the whole case for the jury. His Lordship said: "It is satisfactory to think, that as this case now stands, no charge is made on the personal honour, character, or conduct of any of the directors of the London Docks. I should have thought it a national misfortune if anything like a system of plunder had been carried on in which the directors, or any of them had participated. But I understand that the Solicitor-General disclaims any charge against the directors of the London Docks of having, as a body, acted dishonestly or dishonourably, or that their superior officers have sanctioned any frauds, either on the merchant or the revenue; but he says, that a certain lax system has prevailed in the Docks which it was incumbent on the Customs to put an end to. I say again, that it is satisfactory to know that he has entirely abandoned—not abandoned, but disclaimed— any such charge as that which he was supposed to have brought against the Company." His Lordship then went through the whole of the evidence, his address lasting from ten o'clock -fTyi.-ihe morning until three in the afternoon, ts.lif.n the jury retired to consider their verdict. Softer a short absence the jury returned, and delivered the following verdict:—"We find for the Crown on the 7th and Bth counts as to the two boxes of sugar; as to the remaining 27

casks of sugar, and as to all the 57 packages of cocoa, for the defendants ; at the same time we couple with the verdict a recommendation that greater strictness should be observed by the Company towards their subordinate servants, in order to prevent irregularities which have occurred."

A Juryman: We find for the Crown as to the two boxes upon your Lordship's that the putting them into a cask was a clandestine and illegal removal.

His Lordship then asked the jury whether they did not find that the two boxes had been fraudulently concealed, within the 9th and 10th counts ?

The Foreman : Yes, but we find no intention to defraud the revenue.

The Society of friends have, it is said, agreed for the future to pay all tithes due to lay improprietors ; to such imposts, when demanded by clergymen, they will offer the same strenuous opposition they have hitherto done.

Amongst the occupants of the space below the bar of the House of Commons during the debate on the Papal Aggression Bill, were Cardinal Wiseman, the Duke of Argyle, the Bishop of Oxford, the Earl of Carlisle, Lord Monteagle, and several Roman Catholic Bishops.

Mr. C. B. Adderly, M.P., has written a pamphlet entitled "Transportation not necessary." He asserts that transportation as a penalty is neither efficient nor required; that the usual arguments for its necessity are fallacious and untenable; and in short, that it is an altogether unjustifiable and unreasonable makeshift. He begins by setting forth the increase of crime, and thence proceeds to prove that many of its sources are removeable. He adduces the general argument upon this topic, and states that cases of destitution, offences of ignorance, or of compulsion, come under the head of crimes reducible by stopping their causes. He observes that the still unrefonned prisons, beer houses, the want of proper amusements, game preserving, and the checks on legitimate emigration, form a prolific, yet by no means an irremoveable source of crime, and consequently create a part of the supposed present necessity for transportation. Having shown that crime is extensively reducible, he asks, may we not also believe that transportation may be dispensed with, and punishment sufficient found at home without it? What is to be the substitute for transportation ?

v Three kinds of secondary punishment would remain in our statute-books on the abolition of transportation—namely, imprisonment, corporal inflictions, and fines. But under the varieties of these three heads, almost all legitimate secondary punishment ranges: as all our crimes must be committed against either person, reputation, or property, so all their co-relative punishments may partake of a similar three-fold division. Under the first head our laws deprive of liberty or inflict pain; under the second, they subject to shame; under the third, they pronounce partial or total forfeiture of possessions. The first mode of punishment, namely— imprisonment, is itself capable of an infinite number of gradations and varieties, from simple deprivation of freedom through all sorts of aggravations, by combined infliction of labour or mortification, up to the climax which England ever shrinks from—perpetual incarceration. Fines and forfeitures are of limited applicability, as punishments of crimes chiefly committed by the poor, but are useful as the alternative sentence to be used in many cases of rich offenders, in which imprisonment would prove the lesser evil. Tbey are, however, most applicable for State offences, and in the sense of* official degradation and deprivation of offices and station. Corporal punishments appeal efficiently to two very different characters of men ; to those who are upon low motives, and to those who are sensitive to disgrace. The fear of pain deters in the one case, of humiliation in the other. It is however, that the gaol with its various embitterments is our Pandora's box of penal resources. But our physician must first heal himself. We must correct our own house of correction. Pandora's treasury of ills, had hope, notmalice, lying at the bottom, and it would be monstrous indeed, were we so to prepare our principal resource for punishment, that it should not correct, but only increase, the evil it is meant to cure."

Such is the drift of Mr. Adderl/s pamphlet. He proposes prevention in the first place, reformation in the second. He argues i'or the poor and for the colonies—for the poor because he

considers our criminals the most favoured; for the colonies, because we sacrifice the best interests of commerce and industry, in order to devote all our extensions of empire, to the exigencies of crime.