The Sun.
London, England, 1864-05-18 00:00:00

owner any compensation. Neither is there any
allowance to the people of Schleswig for the sol-
diers quartered on them. I make no reference to
Jutland, because we know that there another sys-
tem is adopted, and it is treated as a conquered
conntry, while in Schleswig the population is sup-
posed to be in great measure German in sentiment
and aspirations—even many of its inhabitants who
speak only Danish—and the allies have come in
some sort to relieve the land from a foreign yoke.
From various persons who have had Prussian sol-
diers repeatedly quartered on them, I learn that
they were invariably required by the terms of the
billeting paper to supply them with food for the
first day, on the ground that immediately on coming
off the march it is difficult for the regular rations to
be served out and cooked. I have not been able to
ascertain that the Austrians act upon the same
system, and if they do it is certainly by a rare ex-
ception, not as a rule. Perhaps this difference may
have contributed to the popularity of the Austrians,
who, in some ray or other, have certainly managed
to ingratiate themselves with the population they
have lately dwelt amongst.
I find a few memoranda from Fredericia which I
had not time to avail of in my letter from that
place. As already mentioned, the preparations for
defence were far more complete than those at
Duppel, but the intrenched camp was a weak point.
It had little protection for the troops, which would
have been hardly dealt with by such a fire as was
kept up on Duppel. There were many wooden
barracks, but hardly anything casemated. Great
labour had been expended upon it ; the palisades in
the ditch were thickly and firmly planted ; there
were chevaux de frise of wood and iron, trous de
loup, and other contrivances to harass or impede
assailants. In short, the whole place was so well
and carefully prepared for defence as to prove that
the one really essential thing for holding a fortified
position is equality in respect of artillery. From
Danish sources I learn that the largest number of
men in Fredericia at any time during the war did
not exceed 14,000 men, and that on the 18th of
April, when Duppel was taken, there were not
more than 10,000.
At a short distance from Fredericia, outside the
Prince's-gate, stands the monument that was raised
to General Olaf Rye, who fell at the head of his
division in the famous sortie made from the fortress
on the 6th of July, 1849, when the Germans were
utterly discomfited and driven away. It is an
imitation of the old tombs of the Scandinavian
Vikings, a large stone resting on several smaller
ones, upon a mound of regular form. The inscrip-
tion is brief, and confined to the facts above stated.
The Danes do not seem addicted to bombast in their
records of brave deeds and signal victories. Wits
ness the mere date on the base of the statue:of the
Tappere Land Soldat.

General Gablenz was invited to ba present at the
assault of Puppet forts, but he either declined, or
was prevented by circumstances with which I am
unacquainted, witnessing the crowning action of
the campaign.

The Hotel de l'Europe has to-day been a point
of no small attraction to the Hamburgers, very
few of whom have passed it without rais-
ing their eyes to the windows of the first
floor, in hopes of getting a glimpse of the
Royalists there lodged. From the rouf of the house,
the largest in this city, were triple banners, the
arms of Hamburg, the Eagle, which is just now
winging so unusually daring a flight, and the
Black•Red-Gold of that united Germany of which
sanguine enthusiasts dream, and practical politicians
despair. Up to sunset this evening the Blue-White-
Red adopted by the partisans of an independent
Schleswig-Holstein had not made its appearance
beside the others, notwithstanding that Prince Fre-
derick of Angustenburg arrived in Hamburg this
afternoon and took up his quarters in that hotel.

Presentation to Lord Houghton at

Pontefract,

Yesterday, Lord Houghton met a number of his
late constituents at the Town-hall, Pontefract, when
a superb silver salver was presented to him in re-
cognition of his former services as member for the
borough. The Mayor (Mr. John Moxon) presented
the gift, and read the inscription as follows
" Presented to the Right Hon. Richard Monekton
Milnes, first Baron Houghton, by many of his
friends, to mark their appreciation of the manner
in which, fur twenty-rive successive years, he repre-
sented in Parliament the ancient borough of Pontes
fract, after which, in recognition of long and emi-
nent services, he was elevated by her Most Gracious
Majesty to the Upper House, carrying with him
the good wishes of the whole constituency, to whom
he had endeared himself by urbanity, kindness,
and generosity, as well as by constant solicitude for
their privileges. Pontefract, May, A.D. 1864."
_ _ _

Lord HOUGHTON returned thanks, saying that
often it had been his lot to address his constituents,
and often his pleasure to receive from them marks
of approbation in the solid manner of being re-
turned as a representative in Parliament, bat he
could not say that on any occasion he had received
any testimony of their confidence with greater plea-
sure than the present. At the same time he was
bound to say there were many feelings which beset
his mind in looking back to so large a period of his
life which tended to give to the present meeting a
certain solemnity which had been absent on former
occasions. Though he hoped he should often meet
them again, this event was, as it were, the official
close of a large portion of his official life. It closed
in the most kind and gracious manner, on the part
of the constituency, ti-period of his life spent in a
great degree in the- service. He did not know
what he could say upon such an occasion, except,
perhaps, that he might sketch out feebly some of
the circumstances which had marked his connection
with the borough. It was no rhetorical fiction to
say that the relation between himself and the
borough had formed the most important portion of
his life, and that but for the existence of those rela-
tions between his family and the borough which at
one time events threatened very much to dissever—
that but for the renewal of that connection, he did
not think it would have been possible for him to
pursue in public lire a career under such favourable
circumstances as that which they had given him.
(Applause.) Every man who had come to the time
of life at which he had arrived should know pretty
well what his own character was ; and he knew he
dld not possess those gifts and talents which would,
in battling the course of public life, as connected
with large constituencies, greatly recommended him
to their favour. He knew he had not those natural
gifts at his command which enabled a man to sway
crowds and to hold dominion over the minds of
multitudes of men, and therefore, although, pro-
bably, if he had nothing to do with Pontefract he
might have come into Parliament for some large
constituency, he did not think he Should have re-
mained their representative for anything like the
period for which he had retained the representation
of Pontefract. His main difficulty always
was in believing his own side to be entirely
in the right, and other people entirely in the
wrong. It had been said of some lawyers—such,
for instance, as Lord Denman and Lord Truro that
for a fee of two or five guineas they really did bring
themselves to think their sides respectively were
absolutely in the right, and the other side absolutely
in the wrong. Now, he never had that faculty, and,
whatever might have been the disadvantage to him.
self or his friends, he never had been able to throw
himself into that full partisanship which in a coun-
try like this was, perhaps, almost essential to the
prominent success of any public man. Therefore,
he was thankful that his connexion with Pontefract
had been such as had enabled him to preserve their
confidence, while at the same time it had entbled
him to act with so much personal independence.
That private independence, he was very thankful
t° 853', had carried with it some advantages. He
could not forget that period in the political history
of his time when Sir R. Peel threw the whole of his
followers into a position in which they were com-
pelled to determine whether they would remain in
a condition of things which was then considered
rather going backward than forward in the world,
or would they ally themselves; with men who up to
that time had been considered their political oppo-
nents. After due deliberation he (Lord Houghton)
ventured to take the latter course. He had never

regretted having done so, because he believed it was
politically the right course. (Applause.) Never-
theless, he was also conscious that there were cir-
cumstances connected with the conduct of Sir R.
Peel at that time which threw an aspect, he would
not say of bad faith, but at least of dubious conduct
over a large portion of his party. Of that states-
man he would never speak but with respect, for
he had always shown him signal private kind-
. nese ; but he himself would have been the last
man to acknowledge that the disunion of the Con-
servative party during his administration,
although he considered it necessary for the
good of his country, was unfortunately con-
nected with most painful and disadvantageous
circumstances to that party itself. With reference
to that demonstration made by a portion of the
country on the question of religious liberty—a ques-
tion which had now almost entirely died away—it
was one on which he was conscientiously obliged by
a large portion of his constituents. At the succeed-
ing election they showed that those circumstances
had operated on their minds, and a large portion of
them withdrew from him that confidence which
they had given him, and ho was returned to Par-
liament by a very small majority. Looking back
upon those times, he could only say that he believed
in the conduct he pursued he was in the right; and
he believed many of his constituents were right in
the conduct which they pursued. He believed the
position, on the whole, was not one discreditable to
either party; and if he found new friends in the
political turn of things to which he then attached
himself, he, nevertheless, retained the private
friendship even of those whose political confidence
for a time he had lost. (Applause.) Therefore, he
thought he might say the independence the people
of Pontefract had enabled him to exercise had not
been injurious either to the borough or to his own
character. (Hear.) He thought it was an advantage
in the mixed system of society in which we lived
that there should be smaller constituencies, which
enabled a man of his temperament and habits to take
that part in public life which otherwise he might
not do. They would see by the contemplation of
foreign countries that it was the great object to get
as many persons of independent thought and inde-
pendent means as they could to interest themselves
in politics. It did not matter whether they were
country gentlemen, or manufacturers, or whatever
course of life or position in society they belonged
to; but it would be a very disadvantageous thing
if there were no means in the Constitution by
which such persons should take an interest in poli-
tical life. It was seen that among 119 there was
growing strongly this tendency. Country gentle-
men were not now so willing as they were 50 or
100 years ago to come forward and seek to bocome
members of Parliament. In the large towns com-
mercial men, who were engaged in active business,
and making a good deal of money, thought twice,
and very often abandoned the thought altogether,
before they gave up their profitable occupations
and business for the honour of a seat in the House
of Commons, where at least they could make no
money, and very often lost any reputation they had
got. (Laughter.) Country gentlemen, who were

accustomed to be treated with some deference by
the people around them, shrank from going into an
assembly in which when they got up to speak some
very rough member immediately called out " Oh,
oh!' and where if he attempted any kind of joke,
which would be all very well in his own house, he
would very probably be coughed at and even hooted
down. (Laughter.) Therefore it would be seen
that small constituencies had political uses, and
though he called himself in the strongest sense a
Liberal statesman, nevertheless he had always felt
that the existence of such boroughs was not only
not injurious to the working of the Constitution,
but most beneficial to it, and most useful to our
social welfare. (Hear, hear.) He looked back to
the time when he first addressed them in that hall,
and he could not but be conscious, as all would be
conscious, that in that more than a quarter of a
century many serious events had happened. We
had come to think that after the great Peace of
1815 Europe at last had got into a condition of
comparative repose, and that there were going to
be very few changes either in the arrangement of
States or in the condition of society. That hope or
expectation was very much disperaed by the French
Revolution of 1830, and by the subsequent agita-
tation in England which produced the Reform Bills
of 1831 and 1832. Winn he came into Parliament

n 1837 a young Queen had just aecended the

throne—a bright, lively, and intelligent girl, only
made serious by the sense of the duties and respon-
sibllies of her peculiar position. That lively girl
was now a desolate widow, who passed only on
Saturday on her way from the tumult of London to

the retirement of Scotland, and on whom the great
calamity she had suffered weighed so heavily that
she was utterly unable to throw it off sufficiently to
resume the position in which she formerly showed
herself so continually to the frequent delight of the
people. (Applause,) We could only hope that
those consolations which the high nature, the piety,
and the virtuous character of our Sovereign so fully
deserved might, in the course of time, be pourel
upon her, so that she might remember the calamity
she had undergone was one of those solemn dispen-
sations of life to which all are subject—which are
common to the throne and to the cottage, and which
demand that resignation before the will of Almighty
God which is Equally due from the highest and the
lowest of mankind. (Applause.) In looking bkck
to that distance it was impossible for him not to
remember the many forms of intelligence, youth,
power, and strength with which he was familiar in
his early days in Parliament, but which in the course
of that time, though that of his own contemporaries,
had passed away from among them, though not en-
tirely from their memory ; he could not forget that
the men whom he should have expected to meet in
the House of Lords, to which the favour of her Ma-
jesty had called him, would have been Lord Herbert,

Lord Canning, Lord Dalhousie, Lord Elgin—men
who had fallen in the service of their country es truly
as if they had been shot down by the enemy's cannon
in the battlefield. (Applause.) He also could not
forget the name of one who was suffering at that mo-
ment under what he feared must be a mortal malady,
the Lord• Lieutenant of the neighbouring county
of Nottingham, the Duke of Newcastle, a nobleman
to whose good sense and judgment this country had
looked forward as likely to produce a great states-
man in future times, when those old ones we now
had should have passed away. Of course there were
brighter sides to this picture. There was a bright
side to his old friend Lord Palmerston—who
when he entered public life was past the maturity
of ordinary years, and who in his bright and intel-
ligent old age governed this country with signal
prudence and good sense, holding the balance be-
tween contending parties, acting fairly and justly
by each, doing his duty to the past recollections of
our Constitution and the future hopes of the nation.
(Applause.) Now, so much for the past. A word
for the future, In those times to which he had
alluded we had undergone important commercial
changes, and it was a peculiarity of this country
that, although changes of that kind might be un-
willingly received at first, yet, nevertheless, in a
short time even those persons who suffered from the
change felt that there was a certain necessity for
them, and would hardly wish to return to the former
position. Such had been the case with regard to
the great question of the repeal of the corn laws.
It was perfectly true that the anticipation of Sir R.
Peel, when he said he believed the average price of
wheat would be 563. per quarter, had come very
short, indeed, of the facts of the case. (A laugh.)
They all knew that as farmers, and still he did not
believe there was a man among them who would
have wished that the old system had been i❑
vogue last year when all the great commercial
classes of Lancashire were thrown out of work
by the American calamity, and were unable to
earn their bread by the ordinary means. He
did not suppose there was one of them who
would think it would have been safe for one
of those Lancashire artisans to be able to say,
" You put a❑ artificial price on the bread we are con-
suming; there are class interests which prevent us
from making the most of the little pittance we have,
and dragging on life under these sad circumstances
as well as we might do." He did not think there
was any one of the strongest supporters of the old
corn laws who could say society would have been
safe if those two thoughts could have come together