The Sun.
London, England, 1852-09-22 00:00:00

gay'
trontrut

LONDON, WEDNESDAY. SEPTEMBER 22, 1852.

History bad not tarried until his decease to claim '
the privilege of narrating the extraordinary career of
the Duke of WELLINGTON. His renown had become
incorporated with the national annals long before his
aettnli departure. He had so far acquired the prero-
gatives conferred by extreme age upon the illustrious
that he was enabled, while still in the complete pos-
session and in the full vigour of his faculties, to
appreciate the estimate likely to be formed by pos-
terity in regard to the scope and splendour of his
reputation. There was something remarkable, if not
altogether unprecedented, in this surprising prolong-
ation of a life
!' distinguished by eminent achieve-
ments. Beginning on April 29th, 1769, and termi-
nating on September 14, 1852—it embraced an epoch
snore prolific in wonderful events than any other
(humanly speaking)
of which the world has record.
Associated with the, majority of those events, ARTHUR,
comprehending
WELLESLEY had the advantage of
them in their entirety, by that extended existence
which rendered him, at last, the solitary survivor of
his earlier contemporaries. It is impossible to stand
over the grave which has just opened to receive the
remains of our veteran soldier without emotions of a
very peculiar character—remindicg us, as his funeral
obsequies cannot fail to do, of the lapse of time
which has gradually but inexorably
absorbed all the
grandeur and puissance of the last age of g
. iants—an
age more momentous than that of ALEXANDER, and
more memorable than that of CZSA.II, more glorious
than that of CONSTINTINE, and snore chivalric than
that of EHARLEBIAONE—the age of ona greater than
all combined, tha age, of the most astonishing adven-
turer the earth has ever known,
that of the Em-
peror and King, the Conqueror and Lawgiver, NAro-
LEON. Connected as the fame of our great Cap-
tain was so very intimately with that marvellous
era, it possesies for us, at this
juncture, a singular
fascination. It recalls to mind, by a variety of sig-

THE SUN,

nificant circumstances, the fact which every succes-
sive year had, for a considerable time pant, been ren-
dering more and more perceptible—namely, that the
military labours of the departed were as inoperative
towards the end proposed as they were, undoubtedly,
productive of expense to the country, or of glory to
himself and his companions in arms. Thirty-seven years
have elapsed since the crowning victory of Waterloo
—or as our neighbours are accustomed to term it—
cette funeste et glorieuse jour de Mont Saint Jean—
and the gold and the blood squandered by England
in dictating to France who should be her Sovereign,
have been lavished to no other purpose than to enable
the vanquished race to avenge in a brilliant and
almost miraculous manner their political misfortunes
and their national vicissitudes. The effete family of
the Bourbons, after being dragged back by foreign
armies to their throne in the Tuileries over half a
million of the dead bodies of their fellow-couutry men,
have been ignominiously expelled beyond the fron-
tiers which their selfish policy had caused to be dese-
crated with a view to merely their own personal ag-
grandizement. This treatment of the house of
CAPE; moreover, has by no means been restricted to
the elder branch. It has been impartially extended also
to the younger—not, however, until after an
extraordinary instance of domestic turpitude had been
manifested—the son of that Egalite wbo had covered
his name with indelible infamy by voting for the
death of Louis XVI., having "stolen the precious
diadem" from the false-
spoken tyrant CHARLES X.
and put it in his pocket," under cover of the mean
and swindling trick of a hackney stock-jobber !
After the Elder and the Younger Branch of the
Bourbons bad thus disgraced the royal office to
which they had been originally restored by means
of the banded Kings of Europe, France avenged the
proceedings of 1815 by that sudden explosion of
popular feeling in 1848, which rendered the treaty
of Vienna so much mere waste paper, torn into frag-
ments and trampled into the dust by the leaders of
revolution. The Duke of WELLINGTON became
conscious, moreover, that in other respects, before
the hour of his death, arrived the battle of Wa-
terloo was fruitless of any of the grand
results intended by the councils of the Allied So-
vereigns. He perceived that after a little more than a
quarter of a century had elapsed the great name of
NAPOLEON was more than ever invested with an in-

destruetable and magical popularity And this in
spite of the treachery of MARMONT in 1814, and the
treachery of FOUCHE in 1815, in spite of the capitu-
lation of Paris and of the captivity of St. Helena!
CHATEAUBIZIAND had said, even at the time when his
noble intellect was most infatuated for the Bourbons,
and most prejudiced against the Bonapartes, that it
was only necessary to raise a grey great-coat and a
three-cornered hat at the end of a pole in any pr.rt of
the French provinces in order to create a rising o
the whole population. The Duke of WELLINGTON
had lived long enough to witness that strange predic-
tion strong as coming from the lips of the
apologist of the house of CAPET, and of the
traducer of the house of NAPOLEON—singularly and
signally verified. He had survived sufficiently to
behold, as it were, in the villages of France a thou-
sand vignette illustrations of the beautiful ballad of
BERA..N G En—

On partera de sa gloire
Sous le chaume bien longtemps:
L'humble toil dans cinguante ans
IVe gonnaitra pas d'autre histoire."

it is that reflection more than almost any other which
f•irces itself upon the consideration of the more reflec-
tive—whether in France or in England—at the pre-
rent moment, when we find ourselves standing upon
the brink of that grave which is about to close over
the remains of the Duke of WELLINGTON. It is a
reflection the force of which must be recognised not
less by the systematic enemies than by the sincere
admirers of his Highness the PRINCE-PRESIDENT.
For the election of that personage to the chief
magistracy of the French Republic must be acknow-
ledged on all bands to be a tribute of homage, of
gratitude, and of devotion offered by thirty-five
millions to the memory of the defeated of Waterloo and
of the captive of St. Helena. This circumstance before
the close of his prolonged existence must have forced
itself, we doubt not, somewhat painfully upon the re-
cognition of the calm and severe judgment of
ARTHUR, Duke of Wellington. Thus has it come to
pass that even within the lifetime of our great Cap-
tain, the exertions of the despots of Christendom have
proved futile in strangling the will of a great people,

those exertions which were only rendered even for a
bile triumphant through the aid strangely afforded
to the coalition by the English Government—the aid
of nearly 800,000,0001. expended by Mr. PITT,
and of so many remarkable victories achieved
by the redoubtable sword of the Duke
Of WELLINGTON. Upon the future annalist—
may wenot venture to assert, with implicit confidence
in the serene impartiality of his judgment, upon Sir
ARCHIBALD ALIsoN in the continuation of his

"History of Modern Europe ?"—will devolve the duty
of deducing yet more clearly from these events the
moral which we have hero dared to intimate by anti-
cipation. Whatever may be the secret and selfish
promptings of our national interest—So may it ever
be with those who would presume to tamper with the

liberties of a great people, endeavouring to thrust
back upon an unwilling race a monarchy supported
only by foreign bayonets and to subvert the rights of
au isolated community with the banded armies of an
tutire continent I

Within the last five or six years a great revolution
ins taken place in Ireland. In 1846, when the staple
food of that country was swept away by a disease
which destroyed it and left a large population to
famine, that revolution commenced. Emigration im-
mediately, and as if of necessity, was resorted to, for
though the Celt much loves his native land, the love
of life was stronger, and Ireland was abandoned by
thousands and tens of thousands of her inhabitants
when they found that if they remained it would be
with Famine staring them in the face. The
agrarian links were snapped, and far lands were
resorted to, with the prospect of comfortable
existence there. It is an ascertained fact,
(published under Parliamentary authority) that from
1841 to 1851 the population of Ireland had sustained
a decrease of 1,659,330, and that, in the same decade,
1,289,133 persons, or more than three-fourths of this
decrease, had been lost to Ireland by emigration.
The decrease in the population of Ireland may best
be
shown by the Official returns under the different
Census' Acts. In 1821 it was 6,801,827. In 1831
it bad increased to 7,767,401. In 1841 it was
8,196,597. In 1851, when the last census was taken,
°
it was 6,515,794, showing the decrease in the
last ten years
to be over 1,600,000. Taking
theincreaseofbirths at 1 per cent. per annum, there
would
n 651,815517
bteoingbe
four
against
a7n37an2nwuahl r
who
emigrated f
-5
times the probable increase of the
population. In
the first four months
be
of 1852 the number of Irish
76,370, a still further emigrants was increasing
e depopuaon. s
amount and rate 0- a ltia a that, as any
schoolboy's calculations would show--a gallon being
taken out for every quart put in—the whole agricul-
tural population of Ireland runs a fair chance, if
emigration proceeds at this rate, of being entirely
swept away in • a few years. It may be
worth while to add, that the remittances from North
America to Ireland, to defray the passage-money of
relatives and friends, was 990,0001. in. 1851. This is
money saved from hard labour, not gained in any
lottery of luck at the gold mines, and devoted by
honest Industry to the cause of Affection. It com-
pletely, because practically, gives the lie to the oft-
repeated slander which accuses the poorer Irish of
w,:nting an aptitude for labour. On the contrary, no
people work so hard, where they find their work paid
for, and to send over nearly One Million sterling,
to help others to emigrate, shows prudential
principles and practice of no ordinary:character. The
Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners, who
had cognizance of and reported on this fact, further
declare that these remittances are made out of the
po,,r Irish emigrants' first savings. Such has been
the providence (born of deep affection, if you will,) of
, the self-exiled Irish, whom certain writers systema-
tically delight to libel as " imbruted," "idle,"
and " careless?' We have yet to learn that
emigrant Englishmen have remitted their sa-
, viege to relations and friends in anything
like the same ratio. In fact, when in Ire-
land, where his toil is ill-requited, or goes to swell
Ithe fortunes of the absentee and the middleman, there
is a sort of hopelessness in work. Out of Ireland,