The Sun.
London, England, 1839-10-24 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS

FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF THIS DAY.
(From the Globe.) . _

Recovered from the state of perturbation into which
it was plunged by the heartless hoax practised upon it
by the alleged fatal accident to Lord Brougham, the
public mind now naturally ....everts to the origin of the
the disco-
f‘oerrgye rasn•
do re fraudxposu ;r
eand f
irtesq uaiur et
hs
osatisfactiont b
jy).
Orsay, to
whom the report was traced, has explained the part he
took in the affair. We published his letter yesterjaY ;
and think it due to Count D'Orsay to state that tt.e
explanation it gives is candid, circumstantial, straight-
forward, and consequently satisfactory. But Count
D'Orsay's letter implicates another party ; of whom
the public have a right to demand, as no less due to
himself than to the public, insulted and outraged by the
contemptible and heartless hoax practised on its sym-
pathies, an explanation or specific contradiction of the
statement of his part of the affair, so seriously affecting
his honour and probity. The statement we allude to
is contained in the following part of Count D'Orsay's
letter to the Post—
'. The facts of this business, so far as I have had any
thing to do with them, arc as follow :—Mr. Mont-
gomery, a friend of Lord Brougham and Lord Wel-
lesley, called upon me on Monday afternoon in a state
of the most distressing grief. He had received a letter
from Mr. Shafto, dated Brougham-hall, Saturday,
detailing the dreadful occurrence very nearly
as it was detailed in your paper of I.his
morning. Mr. Montgomery, when he calleal
upon me, was on his way to Fern-hill, to communicate
the contents of this letter to Lord Wellesley, and I
never saw any one in a more deplorable state of grief
and agitation than Mr. Montgomery was. This morning
I had a letter from Mr. Montgomery, written at Fern-
hill, and he was as strongly as ever under the distress-
ing conviction of Lord Brougham's death. It has since
come to my knowledge that Mr. Shafto's letter was
intended as a joke. I leave others to explain the mo-
tives for so heartless a hoax."
It will be seen by the above extract that Count
D'Orsay has no suspicion that the letter was a forgery.
He does not even assume that Mr. Shafto's name had
been used by some unprincipled and unfeeling person
to obtain credence for the string of falsehoods the
letter contained. It is " Mr. Shafto's letter, dated
Brougham Hall ;" and again—" Mr. Shafto's letter
was intended as a joke." If these representations
of the genuineness of the signature verifying the
contents of the letter be founded in truth, Mr.
Shafto will find that the perpretation of such outrages
on public feeling as that caused by the letter in question
vvillisubject the offender to consequences which any man,
having a regard to persona! honour and character, would
desire to avoid. The offence would subject a plebeian
to the treadmill : one moving in the sphere of polite
society may escape visitation from the laws ; but lie
will henceforth find that some other and more satisfac-
tory authority than his name or word will be requisite
to procure for any statement of his credence as to its
integrity.
The Earl of Clarendon is, we understand, to be ad-
mitted to a seat in the Cabinet, and to receive the ap•
pointment of Lord Privy Seal. We make this an-
nouncement with unmixed satisfaction : the aid of the
Noble Lord's well-known talent, and the confidence
which his acknowledged integrity of principle properly
inspires, will enable him to serve his country efficiently
as a Member of the Government.

DEATH OF THE. DUKE OF ARGYLL.—We regret
to have to announce the death of his Grace the Duizo
of Argyll, which took place on the 22d inst. His
Grace was in his 72d year. having been born in Sep-
tember, uuti. He succeeded to the family titles and
estates in 1806, on the death of his father, John,
' the fifth Duke ; he has left no issue by his mar-
riage, and is succeeded by his next brother, Lord
John Campbell, who is married, and has issue
several children ; his eldest son is in his niiieteeni.h
year. The late Peer was Duke and Earl of
Argyll, Marquis of Lorn and Kintyre,. Earl of
Campbell and Cowal, Viscount of Locher and
Glenilla, Baron Campbell, and Baron of Lorn, Inverary,
Mull, Morven, and Tiry, in the Peerage of Scotland ;
he sat in the British House of Peers as Baron Sundridge
and Hamilton ; he was also a G,C.8., a Privy Coun-
cillor, Keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland, Keeper
of Dunstaffnage and Carrick, Lord Lieutenant, Vice-
Admiral of the Coast, and Hereditary Sheriff of Argyle-
shire, Lord Steward of the Household, one of the
Keepers of the Crown and Regalia of Scotland, and an
Official Trustee of the British Museum.
(From the Courier.)
Some days since we took occasion to draw the atten-
tion of the public to the difficulties which the new Go-
vernor-General of the Canadas bad to encounter, and to
his deplorable deficiencies, physically and mentally, for
the task. It would seem, that the Ministry at home,
with its peculiar infelicity of selection for public duties,
had contrived to misplace the most unfit person possible
in the most arduous office out of Great Britain ; and with
the like infelicity which pervades almost all its acts of
practical government, to displace the most efficient man
that could be found for the tranquillization of the Cana-
das, under the embarrassing circumstances of their po-
sition in respect to the parent country in their allegiance,
to the United States in their temptations, and to each
other in their rivalry. This state of things nannot fail
to give alarm to all thinking men in this country. .If it is
to be made a question whether it is worth while for
Great Britain to retain her colonies or not, let that goes--
tion he fairly brought before the British public, and we
shall be ready to argue it. But if it is wise to consider
the Colonies as of so great value to the British
Crown, that !heir loss would go far to destroy Great
Britain as a great and independnt power, would strike
a fatal blow at her commercial prosperity, and spread
distress and ruin throughout her population, then too
much caution cannot be taken to conciliate our colonial
interests at home and abroad. Is there any man hold
enough to assert that the recent appointment of the Go-
vernor-General of the Canadas is ealculated.to produce
that conciliation, and that respect for the authority of
the parent country, which are so particularly desirable in
the present position of Canada ? Is it' not' 'fititorious
that the appointment has given the greatest, dissptis-
faction, a) ihis excited the greatest fy ria4{ home
and abroa d It is with pain and reluctance that
we make observations which seem to lii,clesPc'ecially
pointed at an individual ; but it is the question
of the preservation or the loss of tee 4f. the
most important of the British Colonies Oat we
have to deal with : all personal considvrationi. must
give way to the paramount importance Of ibis
consideration. These colonies are in dange-tiod in
endeavouring- to rouse the public attention to this fact, •
we do hut repeat the general opinion when we
.say, that
reparation of Ministerial misgovernment, and of Lord
Durham's perilous imprudences, would task the energies
of a statesman of much greater calibre and loftier pre-
tensions than Mr. Thomson.

---
(From the Standard.)
We have frequently bad to complain of the heart-
less, unmanly, and indecent liberties, taken with the
Queen's name by those who are loudest, in their pro-
fess:ons of loyalty and affection to her Majesty. The
most flagrant outrage of the kind that we have yet
seen is, however, the following passage in a late speech
of Mr. O'Connell's, at Cork :
" They all must remember the cries of The Kirg,
God bless him !' which used to issue as the watchword
of that faction, and for any one who dared to speak a
word against him the black hole was too good, and the
lash and the torture merely a fit requital. But where
had the loyalty of those men gone to now ? It had
completely vanished, and they eagerly entered into
every plot and every chambermaid conspiracy ; and
even when the purity of the Royal mind was
such as to lead her to shudder at the appearance of
vice, and because she was too good to tolerate even its
appearance about her, that miserable malignant faction
still clung to their calumny ; nay, they would, as he had
said before, deprive their Sovereign of her life if they
possessed the power.—(Hear, hear.)"
There can be no doubt that Mr. O'Connell here
alludes to the melancholy case of the injured. Lady
Flora Hastings, and that be directly imputes to his in-

noccnt Sovereign the cruelty and injustice of which the
lamented Lady Flora was the victim, and which Lady
Portman and Sir James Clarke have yet only dared
to insinuate against her Majesty. As to the rest, let
Lords Melbourne and Headfort write a commentary
upon Mr. O'Connell's text, and they may call in to help
them Mr. Robert Owen, the apostle of " Socialism,"
whom the Primicr lately introduced to his maiden
Queen.