THE DURHAM MINERS' STRIKE.
To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."
SIR,--Will you permit me to add one fact to the very signifi- cant postscript of Professor Beealy's letter ?
It is not only true that forty-five families were evicted at Oakenshaw on Tuesday, but it is true also that the county police were employed to evict them. The police previously had merely guarded the men engaged in that work, but on Tuesday they did it themselves! Even in Ireland the police have always hitherto had the decency to stand apart from outrages of this kind ; but in Durham they have begun the bailiff's work without tenderness and without question. Meantime the people who pay police-rates suffer in property and person from the absence from duty of the men they support. "Housebreaking and robberies of every- description," says the Durham correspondent of the Newcastle Chronicle this morning, "are becoming rife in this neighbour- hood, chiefly, it is said, through the absence of the police on duty at the collieries on strike."
Policemen now are employed in strange offices—in guarding the game of the landowner; but nothing, perhaps, can tend more to bring the police force into contempt than its recent employment in the odious private service of wholesale eviction.—Very truly
yours, W. E. ADAMS. Newcastle-on-Tyne, Dec. 14, 1863.
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