The Sun.
London, England, 1863-12-09 00:00:00

Mr. Cobden and the " Times,"

[ln penning the following communication, Mr.
Cobden appears to us to have been quite unneces-
sarily angry. 'We give insertion to it in our
columns simply because we regard it as a literary
curiosity. At the same time, that we cannot but
regret that a man of such sound judgment, of such
keen intellect, and, generally speaking, of such
imperturbable and statesmanlike equanimity should
have allowed himself to be disturbed into so very
flagrant a manifestation of virulence, we cannot for
one instant believe that a virulence, so coarsely
expressed and really and truly so wholly unpro-
voked, can be of the slightest possible detriment
to the Times ]—ED. SUN.

Mr. Cobden presents his compliments to the editor of the
Star, and will be obliged by his giving publicity to the
accompanying letter, which has been refused insertion in
the Times.
Midhurst, Dec. 8.
"TO THE EDITOR OP THE TIMES.'
"Sir,—The following is extracted from your yesterday's
leading article :
" ' Then, though a small State may have something to
lose by change, it has usually more to gain ; and so it comes
to pass that it looks upon any attempt to reconstruct the
map, or retorm the institutions of Europe, with something
of that satisfaction with which the poor might regard Mr.
Bright's proposition for a division among them of the land:
af the rich, or the Roman plebeians might hang on the lips
of Gracchus when he rose to expound to them his last plan
for a new colony, with large grants of land to every citi•
zen who should join it.
" Without communicating with Mr. Bright I trouble you
with a few words on this gross literary outrage, which concerns
not him alone, but every public man. To utter a syllable
to prove that the above assertion that Mr. Bright advo-
cated a division of the lands of the rich among the poor is a
groundless and gratuitous falsehood would be to offer an
insult to one who has done more than probably any other
public man to popularise those economical truths on which
the rights of property are based. To say that it is a foul
libel for which the publisher is amenable to law were be-
side the question, because the object of the calumny would
scorn any other court of appeal than that of public opinion.
But a wider question is forced on your attention by this
specimen of your too habitual mode of dealing, not merely
with individuals, but with the interests of society. A tone
of pre-eminent unscrupulousness in the discussion of poli-
tical questions, a contempt for the rights and feelings of
others, and an unscrupulous disregard of the claims
of consistency and sincerity on the part of its writers,
have long been recognised as the distinguishing
characteristics of the Times, and placed it in marked con-
trast with the rest of the periodical press, including the
penny journals of the metropolis and the provinces. Its
writers are, I believe, betrayed into this tone mainly by their
reliance on the shield of an impenetrable secrecy. No gen-
tleman would dream of saying under the responsibility of
his signature what your writer said of Mr. Bright yesterday.
I will not stop to remark on the deterioration of character
which follows when a man of education and rare ability
thus lowers himself--ay, even in his own eyes—to a con-
dition of moral cowardice; for will he deny that if he
were to meet Mr. Bright in the club or in the House
of Commons, with the knowledge that his secret was
divulged, he would cower with conscious inferiority
before the man he had stabbed in the dark ? This, how-
ever, is his own affair. But there is another aspect of
the subject in Which the public is directly interested,
"In the present management of the Time: there is one
essential departure from the plan on which it was con-
ducted 20 or 30 years ago which distinguishes it from all
other journals. They who associate in the higher political
circles of the metropolis know that tho chief editor and the
manager of the Times, while still maintaining a strict in •
*ovate towards the public, drop the mask with very suffi-
cient reasons in the presence of those powerful classes who
are at once the dispensers of social distinction and (on which
I might have something to say) of the patronage of the Go-
vernment. We all know the man whose fortune is derived
from the Times; we know its manager; its only avowed
and responsible editor—he of the semi-official correspon-
dence with Sir Charles Napier in the Baltic—through
whose hands, though he never pen a line himself, every
slander in its leaders must
pass—is as well known to us
as the chief official at the Home Office. Now, the ques-
tion is forced on us whether we who are behind
the scenes are not bound, in the interests of the uninitiated
public and as the only certain mode of abating such out-
rages as this, to lift the veil
.and dispel the delusion by
which the Tunes is enabled to pursue this game of secrecy
to the public and servility to the Government—a game (I
purposely use the word) which secures for its connections
the corrupt advantages, while denying to the public its own
boasted benefits of tho anonymous system.

"It will be well for public men to decide, each in his own
case (for myself I have no doubt on the subject), whether,
in response to such attacks as these, they will continue to
treat the Times as an impersonal myth; or whether, on the
contrary, they will in future summon the responsible editor,
manager, or proprietor to the bar of public opinion, and hold
him up by name to the obloquy which awaits the traducer
and calumniator in every other walk of political and social
life.--I am, Sr.c.,

"RICHARD COBDEN.

" Midhurat, Dec. 4."

THE SUPPOSED CONFEDERATE STEAMER PAM-
PERO.—We learn that the issuo of these private and
preliminary examinations as to the character and destina-
tion of this vessel, which have been in progress for some
time, has been that the law advisers of the Crown have re-
solved upon instituting a formal complaint and prosecution.
Mr. James Webster is agent for the defence, and we under-
stand that a very strong bar has been retained on both sides.
It is also said that this is not the only case of the sort likely
to become the subject of judicial inquiry in Scotland._
Norio ,BritiM (Glasgow) ,Maid,