256. 
before were amicably dispesed towards us, and 
has, above all, shaken our own reliance on the 
justice of our.cause ; the only sentiment which 
has hitherto upheld us in ali our difficulties 5 
commanding the respect of other nation§, aad 
inspiring our own people with a cantar 
expectation, under the blessing of Providence, 
of a successful termination oe a long and ar- 
duous contest. 
That we are ever unwilling te pronounce 
definitively on a measure, the whole grounds 
of which are. not before us: out that, in a 
case which above all others required the 
clearest proof, we have the deep mortification 
of being compelled to acknowledge, that every 
presumption is against us; and that no evi- 
dence has yet been adduced on which we can 
safely rest the defence of our country, from 
accusations the most injurious to our national 
character. 
The attention of the public has also 
been drawn again to the gross and scan- 
dalous misappropriation of the House of 
Correction in Cold-bath-fields, by the 
following spirited peution :— 
To the Knights, _ Citizens, and Burgesses of the 
Eigrkeile Hlouse of Commons of Great Bri- 
tain and Ireland, in the Uni oy Parliament 
mbled : 
The 8 Pescion of Alexander St eph ens of the Honour~ 
ble Society of the Middie Temple, and Park 
Vokes, in the County of Middlescx, Esquire, 
Humbly sheweth, That ceitain persons 
lately serving the office of Grand Jurymen for 
the county of Middiesex, tc the number of 
about nine, having visited the House of Cor- 
rection for the said county, commonly called 
the Celd Bath Fields Prison, on Tuesday 
Wovember the third, in the year of our Lord 
ene thousand eight hundred andseven, between 
the hours of eleven and twelve in the fore- 
noon: ; 
They there discoverad, that all the loaves 
found by them (each of which ought to con- 
tain sixteen ounces, and to be distributed dal- 
ly at ten o’clock in the morning) were greatly 
deficient in point of quantity, as wiil be seen 
from the annexed statement on the part of one 
of the magistrates of the city of London, 
That the prison weight demanded and used 
upen the present occasion, for trying the 
Joaves in rotation, provea also deficient, as 
was fully demonstrated in both instances on 
the same day, when compared with the stand- 
ard at Guildhall, in the presence, first, of 
Sir William Leighton, Knight, then Lord 
Mayor, and aiterwards, of Richard Phillips 
Esq. then, and still one of the sheriffs of 
London and lviiddlesex, as weil as of four 
of the late Grand Jury; and, moreover, that 
the scales of the said prison were false and 
fraudulent, 
Copy. of a@ letter Jrom Ate Sheriff Phi itlape to 
Wiliam Mainwaring, Esqe Chairman of the 
Ruarier Sessions, Ge. 
Bridge Street, Nev. 1 35 1807. 
€¢ Sin—I consider it a duty which I owe 
Siate of Public Affairs nm March. 
[April 1, 
the public to inform you, as Chairman of the 
Quarter Sessions, and, I believe, one of the 
Committee for conducting the business of 
the prison, that I was present when an appeal 
was lately made by the Grand Jury of the 
county to the standard weights i in Guildhall 5 
that I witnessed the examination of oe 
pound weight for weighing meat and other 
provisions in the House of Correction, Cold 
Bath Fields, when it was found to be seven- 
eighths of an ounce too light; and that on 
weighing some leaves which were found in 
the same prison, by the Grand Jury, they - 
appeared also to be considerably too light, one — 
or two of them being from an ounce anda 
half to two ounces under weight. “I should 
compromise the feelings which I bear towards 
the respectable magistracy of the county of 
Middlesex, if I were to omit to make this for- 
mal communication, 
I have the honour tobe, Sir, 
Your most obedient humble servant, 
R. Poitiers, Sheriff.” 
“< To W. Mainwaring, Esq.” 
Your petitioner, together with other gen- 
tlemen, late members of the Grand Jury, 
also discovered: 
That several of the liege subjects of this 
realm were committed to close custody, in 
cells destitute of fire, eight feet three inches 
long, by, six feet three inches wide, two of 
them in irons, although sick; some, if not. 
all, of these were innocent in point of fact, 
as ail were then innocent in point of law, 
being detained under the pretext of re-exami- 
nation, and consequently uncondemned by - 
the legal judgment of their peers, or even 
the accusatory verdict of a Grand Jury. Of 
this number were a mother, a daughter, and 
a son, of creditable appearance 3 the two for- 
mer in one cell, so situated as to be exposed 
to a continual current of external air, without 
the possibility of obtaining, even during the 
severest frost, an artificial warmth by means 
of fuel, while the convicts below enjoyed 
all the tomforts of an open roomy ward, with 
occasional access to fire. 
That in one of these Jonely cells, was closé- 
ly confined a foreigner of some rank, the 
Chevalier de Blin, who, as we were told by 
one of the jailors, while so immured, had 
been deprived of his reason, and who present- 
ed to your petitioner a memorial on his knees; 
who aiter conversing with him in French 
some time, through the key-hole, demand- 
ed to enter. 
That in this place, geiko: for 
the improvement of the morals of petty 
offenders, a female prisoner, as we have 
Jearned, has been lately debauched by the 
Sen of the Chief Jailor, or Governor, who 
then held an office of trust in the prison, and 
has since had a child, now, or at least lately, 
burdensome to the sacteh of Kensington, in. 
the county of Middlesex. 
That four debtors were shut up in this ~ 
House of Correction, the only communication 
between whom and the world, appears to 
take 
% 
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