The Sun.
London, England, 1855-10-31 00:00:00

DESTRUCTION OF VALUABLE PLATE&

A ceremony was performed the other day, which
at the first blush appears to be about the most
stupid and disgusting act of Vandalism which we
ever happened to have heard of. A number of gen-
tlemen "interested in the advancement of the fine
arts," to use the words of the reporter of the meet-
ing., attended at the Albion Tavern, Aldersgate-
street, on Thursday evening, to bear witness to the
destruction of the steel plates " of some of the best
known and most popular steel engravings which
ever existed, and which were published by the pre.
sent Lord Mayor, Sir Francis Graham Moon, when
he carried on the business of a printseller and pub-
lisher, and the original cost of engraving, copy-
right, &c., of which has been little short of 30,0001.°0
Among these were " The Waterloo Banquet,"
"The Queen receiving the Sacrament," " The Re-
turn from Hawking," and several others equally
well known to those who gaze at print-shop win-
dows.

The steels of these magnificent plates werein the first
instance destroyed by disfiguring theextigray.sitnrgese, under
the superintendence of Mr. Boys, of ofo
t, their
present proprietor, and Messrs. Dixon and Ross, the
printers, of the Hampstead-road, who have taken the
whole of the impressions from them for distribution
among the public. The plates were subsequently cut to
pieces by machinery, and were exhibited nailed to boards
on a surface of white cloth, at the Albion, on Thursday.
Mr. Boys, formerly of the firm of Moon, Boys, and
Graves, presided, and remarked, that perhaps this might
be looked upon as the most extraordinary epoch in the
annals of the fine arts. He believed it was without a
parallel that from 25,0001. to 30,0001. should have been
voluntarily sacrificed and destroyed, as they saw was the
case with the beautiful and celebrated plates around
them. Some of the subjects he was justified in saying had
cost, with the various adjacts in engraving, ke., 8,000/t.
each. They were, as they saw, destroyed beyond all re-
demption ; and now must be stated the object of such
voluntary destruction. The patrons of art devoted a
considerable sum every year to the decoration of their
mansions with such specimens as the impressions of the
plates before them bad produced, and it was felt that
those who had paid 10, 15, or 20 guineas for a work of
art should be protected from seeing the same work at
a later period, as was too frequently the case, hawked
about at incredibly lo sums. One effect, therefore, of
the destruction of these plates was that a large increase
is the standard value of the existing impressions was
created. A. lasting value was imparted to them, and as
those in the hands of the trade diminished in number
that value would increase. Under these circumstances,
as a guarantee to the trade as well as the public, these
valuable plates had been destroyed. Mr. Graves, Mr.
Straker, Mr. Marks, and other gentlemen, spoke upon
the subject ; and the various copies in the hands of the
proprietor was then put up to a trade sale, the conipett-
tion being very spirited. A liberal entertainment ter-
minated the proceedings.
One of our earliest recollections is of a picture, in
a certain child's history of the world, called "Turks
Destroying Works of Art," where three or four
sturdy Osmanlis, slippered, bearded, turbaned, and
with fine muscular development, were sawing away
at a fluted Greek column. We have never been able
to forgive the Turks for this—no, not even now that
they are our allies. But they were barbarians, and
they knew no better ! When we read the above ac-
count of the Albion Tavern meeting, this picture
was immediately recalled to our recollection. The
acts were the same ; but, as for the reasons, they
are very different in the two cases. Mr. Boys, Mr.
Graves, Mr. Colnaghi, and Mr. Ackermann, and
" the large number of gentlemen interested in the
advance of the fine arts," are not barbarians. Oh,
no ; they are interested in the fine arts. _

We hope Mr. John Lemoine—who makes him-
self merry with English absurdities, and shows us
up to his compatriots, and whose facetious notice of
our legal and Sunday legislation we translated a day
or two since—we hope that Mr. John Lemoine
never reads the Daily News. For these gentlemen
interested in the fine arts would indeed be exhibited

as English originals. The observations of his to
which we refer began with the sentence "What are
laws without manners I" and very apropos is such a
maxim in the present case. When we have succeeded
after ages of struggle in destroying the obstacles
of the law to free trade, when we have destroyed
many, and—please God—intend to destroy many
mere monopolies—when we have done all this, heie
we hate this fine-art people, who have no " law "
to trouble them, showing themselves apparently to
be as little troubled with "mariners." Apparently,
we say, for are they Rot interested in the fine arts It
Wo have all read: of Shakspere's or King Lear's
" farmer, who hanged himself for fear of plenty ;"
and we have heard that during the good old times
quantities of corn were now and then absolutely
destroyed io enhance the price of the remainder.
Now the corn destroyers and King Lear's farmer
were interested in agriculture ; so their case at
first seems parallel to that of Messrs. Boys and Co.
But it is not ; for the farmer and corn destroyer
were interested in agriculture as being sellers of
corn, and though they did the corn eaters harm, they
(lid themselves good—or thought so. But Messrs.
Boys and Co.—and by the Co. we mean all the per-
sons concerned in the Albion ceremony—according
to the statement of Mr. Boys, destroyed the steel
plates only to benefit others, by raising the value
of the engravings, which had been bought for many
guineas b. y people who decorate their mansions.
Tile fact is, Messrs. Boys and Co. are aristocrats or
philo-aristocrats ; they worsh;p people who have
mansions, and they show their abundant love by
making a voluntary sacrifice of 25,000/. or 30,0004.
entirely for the sake of their lordly patron*. We
therefore see now what they mean by being lute-
rested in the fine arts. We have heard of print-
sellers destroying engraved plates immediately after
they had taken as many impressions as could be
called perfect copies, so that no inferior ones should
appear in the market to beget a poor taste in art and
take away from their high repute as priutsellers.
These latter were interested in the fine arts in a dif-
ferent sense from Messrs. Boys and Co. There are
some people, too, who labour to make the best things
common—who would rather decorate the peasant's
wall with a good engraving than with a bad one—
who think it better that the :esthetic faculty of the
poor man should be drawn out by offering to his
gaze a Raphael than dulled by the vulgar and atro-
cious daubs which alone aro now within the reach
of his purse ; and who think, in fact, that there
' will be always natural causes enough in action to
make a difference between the cottage and the
mansion without resorting to the barbarian, brutal,
and wicked process of voluntarily destroying what
is beautiful or useful.

Are Messrs. Boys and Co. content to be consi-
dered as interested in the fine arts in this sense,
viz., that they are meant only for the mansion, and
not for the cottage ? Is this really their excuse for
their stupid barbarian act ? and for the brazen
front with which they take credit to themselves
for the act, and have a president, speeches, and a
" liberal entertainment ?" To do them justice, we
don't think they saw the full meaning of theirsue%
planation, or that they intended to do ny
barbarous thing ; and as the barbarity
woulda con-
sistw
in the knowledge of what they
barbarity. As doing,
As we
acquit them of brutality and
in short,
affair wears this aspect.
elaborate trade puff.
said at first, it is only at th;refirbssautrspb‘elucts,h that the
that after all it was only
Mr. Boys, the distribution among
impressions from
Mr. Boys
fitog_o
theculonsideration : and this con-
proprietovaiziort.ho plates, had taken
the public" ......for a
siderationno more could possibly
:rem:
it became known
be produced. .
,woullvde
impressions should be taken as the
that as man), amount
h o that
e that hta
ot
Ma
plates would bear, and that he and the gentlemen
inter
interested es in
the tine arts who entered into " the
spirited
competition" for the engravings may make
avery good thing of it. We hope that the whole
world will now have an opportunity of buying
,
some of those prints ticketed " very rare ;" that
they may) notwithstanding, be bought cheap
enough to adorn a cottage, while the owners of the
mansions may fancy that all their engravings are
from plates that have been voluntarily destroyed,
so that their souls may not be vexed by having
anything that the million can attain to. We hope
that this latter is the real explanation of the Al-
bion meeting—that, in fact, it was a peddling trade
puff ; that Mr. Boys made so good a thing of it
that the cost of the liberal entertainment was a
flea-bite ; that it was not the dull-headed act of
Vandalism which it at first appeared ; and that
this time we shall escape the kind notice of Mr.
John Lemoine.—Daily News.