An CHAP.

1731.

reform were introduced about this time. excellent law was passed, that all proceedings of XVI. courts of justice should be in the English instead of the Latin language. "Our prayers," said the Duke of Argyle, "are in our native tongue, that they may be intelligible; and why should not the "laws wherein our lives and properties are con"cerned be so, for the same reason?" * The charter of the East India Company was renewed on prudent and profitable terms. Some infamous malversation was detected in the Charitable Corporation, which had been formed for the relief of the industrious poor, by assisting them with small sums of money at legal interest; but which, under this colour, sometimes received ten per cent., and advanced large sums on goods bought on credit by fraudulent speculators. Penalties were now inflicted on the criminals, and Sir Robert Sutton, the late ambassador at Paris, being concerned in these practices, was expelled the House. An inquiry into the Public Prisons of London laid bare a frightful system of abuses; we find the Wardens conniving at the escape of rich prisoners, and subjecting the poor ones who

* Most of the lawyers were greatly opposed to the change. Lord Raymond, in order to throw difficulties in the way of it, said, that if the Bill passed the law must likewise be translated into Welsh, since many in Wales understood no English. (Parl. Hist. vol. viii. p. 861.) The great Yorkshire petition on this subject complained that "the number of attornies is excessive." (Ib. p. 844.)

+ See Coxe's Walpole, vol. i. p. 326.

XVI.

CHAP. could not pay heavy fines to every kind of insult, oppression, and want. The Report of the Select 1731. Committee of the House of Commons is full of such cases—thus one Captain Mac Pheadris, having refused to pay some exorbitant fees, "had irons put upon his legs, which were too little, so that, in putting them on, his legs were "like to have been broken. . . . . He was dragged

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away to the dungeon, where he lay, without a "bed, loaded with irons, so close rivetted that they kept him in continual torture, and mortified his legs." From such usage the prisoner became lame and nearly blind; he had petitioned the Judges, who, as we are told, "after several meet

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ings and a full hearing," agreed to reprimand the gaoler, but decided, with infinite wisdom, that "it being out of Term, they could not give the "prisoner any relief or satisfaction!"*.... Another Report declares that "the Committee saw in the "women's sick ward many miserable objects lying, without beds, on the floor, perishing "with extreme want; and in the men's sick ward yet much worse. On the giving food to "these poor wretches, (though it was done with the utmost caution, they being only allowed at "first the smallest quantities, and that of liquid

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nourishment,) one died; the vessels of his sto"mach were so disordered and contracted, for

First Report of the Select Committee, presented February

25. 1729.

1

"want of use, that they were totally incapable of CHAP.

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XVI.

performing their office, and the unhappy crea"ture perished about the time of digestion. 1731. Upon his body a coroner's inquest sat, (a thing

હે

which, though required by law to be always "done, hath, for many years, been scandalously "omitted in this gaol,) and the jury found that he "died of want. Those who were not so far gone, "on proper nourishment given them, recovered, "so that not above nine have died since the 25th "of March last, the day the Committee first met "there, though, before, a day seldom passed with"out a death; and, upon the advancing of the Spring, not less than eight or ten usually died 166 every twenty-four hours." *

Such atrocities in a civilised country must fill every mind with horror, and it is still more painful to reflect that for very many years, perhaps, they may have prevailed without redress. Thus, for example, in the session of 1725 I find a petition from poor insolvent debtors in the gaol of Liverpool, declaring themselves "reduced to a starving "condition, having only straw and water at the "courtesy of the serjeant." + How often may not the cry of such unhappy men have gone forth and remained unheeded! How still more frequently may not their sufferings have been borne in constrained or despairing silence! The benevolent exertions of Howard, (whom that family, fertile

Second Report, presented May 14. 1729.

+ Commons' Journals, vol. xx. p. 375.

1731.

CHAP. though it be in honours, might be proud to claim XVI. as their kinsman,) and still more the gradual dif fusion of compassionate and Christian principles, have, we may hope, utterly rooted out from amongst us any such flagrant abuses at the present time. Yet let us not imagine that there is no longer any tyranny, to punish, any thraldom to relieve. Let not the Legislature be weary in well doing! Let them turn a merciful eye not merely to the dungeon but to the factory, not merely to the suffering and perhaps guilty man but to the helpless and certainly unoffending child! For my part, I firmly rely on the progressive march of humanity. In a barbarous age it was confined to men of our country. In a half barbarous age it was confined to men of our religion. Within our own times it extended only to men of our colour. But as time shall roll on, I am persuaded that it will not be limited even to our kind; that we shall feel how much the brute creation also is entitled to our sympathy and kindness, and that any needless or wanton suffering inflicted upon them will on every occasion arouse and be restrained by the public indignation and disgust.

From this digression I return to the government of Walpole. To detect and punish the cruelties of gaolers was undoubtedly a merit in any administration, and a happy consequence of tranquillity and leisure. In financial affairs, also, there was much cause for congratulation; the taxes were light, the trade thriving; the debt at least not increasing, and

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1731.

the predictions of impending ruin rather less com- CHAP. mon than usual. In vain did Lord Bathurst declare with awful forebodings, that "one of our best "mathematicians has foretold, that if ever England "raises above five millions in a year it will infallibly "be exhausted in a few years! * For once, the people did not mistake gloom and melancholy for depth of thought. In short, looking to the state of the country, every thing seemed prosperous, looking to the state of the Cabinet, every thing submissive. So brilliant appeared the fortune of Walpole at this period, that an old Scotch Secretary of State in the time of William, named Johnston, having been on a visit to his native country, and seeing the state of affairs at his return, could not forbear from earnestly asking the Minister, "What "can you have done, Sir, to God Almighty to "make him so much your friend?" +

The two Secretaries of State were now Lord Harrington and the Duke of Newcastle - men of very opposite characters. Harrington, descended from a brother of the first Lord Chesterfield, was a man of very high diplomatic, but no Parliamentary, talents. He had skill and sagacity to unravel any negotiation, however perplexed, not readiness and eloquence to defend it. The observation of a Por-. tuguese minister, that "Lord Harrington was "not accustomed to interrupt those who spoke to

See Parl. Hist. vol. viii. p. 537.

Mr. Delafaye to Lord Waldegrave, Oct. 15. 1731.