The Sun.
London, England, 1863-07-10 00:00:00

STUPENDOUS SENTENCE

Epitomising in a breath—(a breath that, we undertake to
say, the most long-winded of readers will find a breather I)
all the salient points in the long reign of King George 111.
It is one of the opening sentences (the longest sentence, we
should think, ever written) in Mr. J. G. Phillimore's Life
of that Monarch :—" A mighty empire lost by folly in the
West, another won by fraud and violence in the East;--
the Church returning to its intolerant and servile uoctrines ;
law, rescued for a short time by Lord Mansfield from the
gripe of attorneys, and made less revolting to sense and
justice, but speedily restored by his successors to the old
anarchy of chicane and chance ; the metropolis of Eng-
land for four days delivered into the hands of a furious
rabble, masking the purposes of robbers and incen-
diaries under the colour of religious zeal; a war un-
dertaken in the spirit of the crusades, to put down
opinion by the sword; triumphs by sea, calamities by land;
a son of England squandering the blood of her soldiers,
dishonouring the flag that had waved at Blenheim and
Ramilies, and chased into the sea by the foes she expected
him to destroy ; the fabric of public credit rocking and
reeling from its foundations; taxes increased, not only be-
yond example, but beyond what the wildest paroxysms of
a distempered fancy could have imagined that the nation
would endure ; the transition from an agricultural to a
merely commercial and manufacturing people becoming
every year more strongly marked ; the old, frank, outspoken
vices of a plain, manly generation exchanged for those of
priests and courtiers, for superstition and hypocrisy ; the de-
cay of taste and literature; the pursuit of material interests
and the study of physical science gradually superseding
every other oLject ; classical studies at the university,which
which had so long buoyed up, refined, and animated the
heavy, rough, and sluggish English nature, degraded into
a mechanical trick and drudgery, compared with which the
routine of a shop is liberal—useless to those who did not
submit to it ; ruinous, as the tone of thought among us at
this hour too clearly proves, to those who did ; all sense of
things moral and intellectual rapidly diminishing; mutiny
in our fleet, revolt in our dependencies; the crimes and
ill-successes that sullied the cause of freedom abroad
used as an argument to fortify all that was oppres-
sive and illiberal at home ; the senate adorned for almost
half a century by an eloquence which, if it did not take
from corruption all its evil, obliged it to conceal much of its
deformity, gradually stripped, as doctrines which Eliot and
Hampden never knew prevailed, of its ancient spirit ; the
intellect employed in public life dwindling, till mediocrity
or servility the most abject, sheltering and atoning for
talent, were almost the sole passport to high station in
Church or State ; prerogative judges, unjustifiable
prosecutions, iniquitous verdicts, cruel sentences ;
one noble measure, the abolition of the slave trade,
carried by great and generous Ministers, notwithstanding
the bitter hostility and vile intrigues of low minded time-
servers and of a monarch steeled against pity, and deaf to
eloquence; rebellion in Ireland provoked by oppression, and
avenged by cruelties to which thescalping-knife was hardly
wanting; an union with that country purchased by corrup-
tion more sickening than any that has been recorded since
the last days of the Roman Republic; two attempts of the
Commons to punish great and notorious delinquents battled
in the House of Lords; the crash of falling thrones in India
welcomed with delight by those who were carrying on a
bloody war in Europe for prescriptive right and established
domination; in social life (nor let this be thought below the
notice of the historian, as it illustrates the degradation and
evil manners of the time), men and women of the highest
birth encouraging, by abject submission, the amazing
insolence of a frivolous, illiterate upstart, the son of a
menial, and educated to be a menialhimself; profligacy
(closely (closely resembling that in the time of the Regent
Orleans, and not, as that was, mitigated
spirit, taste, or gentleness) encouraged by the example
of the heir-apparent to the Throne, and by two of
his brethren—one of whom supported his mistress by
allowing her to sell commissions in the army ; the other of
whom, at terwards a king actually resisted by his subjects,
Germans thouF h they were, did not in this country escape
the imputation of the blackest and foulest crimes ; little
manliness of character, little independence of thought;
metaphysics, the queen of sciences, the mistress and architect
of the materials out of which the adamantine basis of morality
must be constructed,absolutely unknown; the most grovelling
motive insisted upon in a text book for youth as the only
sure support of virtue; the pursuit of wealth the only re-
maining indication that any power of thought remained
among us ; deference to rank, authority, and riches, carried
by men of liberal education and gentle blood to a pitch
almost incredible; expeditions ill contrived and ill con-
ducted as to revive the memory of that to the Isle of Rhe,
to bathe England in tears, and cover her councils and her
arms with ridicule ; a piratical attack on a weak, but high-
minded and valiant nation, sanctioned by the House of
Commons, and vindicated by flippant gibes and venal
eloquence; and at last, the country saved in spite of the
folly of our rulers, not only by the incomparable valour
of our soldiers and the military genius of a great captain,
but by the judicial madness which, when the measure of
his crimes was full, precipitated a mighty conqueror to de-
struction, and avenged the wrongs of prostrate Europe.
Such are the characters presented by the history of Eng-
land during the long reign of George III."

The telegraphic communication between Belle
Isle and the mainland, which had been interrupted, is now
re-established.