The Sun.
London, England, 1863-12-22 00:00:00

Again, in your letter to me of Dec. 7 you stated, "These
speeches are diecussed elaborately in two leading articles on
successive days, and in each of them certain passages are
interpreted as recommending a repartition of the land
among the poor." Now, the word partition or repartition
means simply a division, and not a bequest or inheritance,
and yet, with our dictionaries at hand, you now ask me to
interpret the " repartition of the land among the poor" as
only meaning to say that Mr. Bright and I wished to compel
rich landowners at their death to leave their estates equally
among all their children. And in your letter to me of Dec.
1 11, you "repeat" the assertion that "certain passages" of
our speeches "bear no other interpretation than that
ascribed to them." Now, up to that date you had put no
other interpretation on those speeches than that they advo..
cated the division of the land of the rich among the poor.
The poor we are now told to interpret to mean only the
children of rich landowners I
Then, I suppose, we must altogether agree to forget that
you coupled us with Gracchus and the agrarian system of
Rome.

_ .
No ; in the teeth of all these proofs in plain, unmistake-
able English to the contrary, I should be sacrificing truth
to courtesy were I to affect to concur in this new version of
your language, which does not admit of two meanings. I
note your recantation, but repel the attempt to raise a fresh
issue to covet your retreat under a fire of minor accusations.
I will conclude this correspondence with merely remarking
that the blow which was aimed at the fame of Mr. Bright
and myself has missed its mark. How far the recoil of the
weapon may affect the hand that levelled it time will show.
—I am, Sir, yours, &c., R. CciinEN.
J. T. Delane, Esq.
p.S. I cannot compliment your political economy. You
reproach me for having made the " concession " to France
of undertaking to levy no export duty on coal. Sir Robert
Peel had abolished the export duty on coal for the benefit of
England a dczsn years before the French treaty, and all I
engaged was that for ten years more we would not be so
foolish as to put any
impediments in the way of our ex-
ports. As for the paper duty, it is the interest of the British
public to buy everything in the cheapest market. If
foreigners put foolish restrictions on the export of rags, it
is an additional reason why we should take their paper.
lor
This may,—and lam sorry for it—for a time, but only
a time, bs injurious to our own manufacture of that
article, in which I believe you or your family are largely
engaged. The difference between you and me in ISG3
that I was looking to the public interest and you were ad-
vocating the interest of a class.

Midhurst, Friday Evening, Dec, 18

Sir--I am compelled reluctantly to resume my pen, after
having sent to the post what I hoped was my final
com-
munication. But this morning's Daily News which has
just reached me, contains a statement which cannot with
honour be passed over, either by you or myself in silence.
In the first leader of that journal 1 have read, for the first
time, the following passage, which purporte to be an extract
from a leading article in your journal of the 26th of Novem-
ber on the following day, commenting on the speeches of
Mr. Bright and myself at the Rochdale meeting
"This language, so often repeated, and so calculated to
excite discontent among the poor and half-informed, has
really only one intelligible MEANING. Reduce the doc-
torial franchise; for when you have done so you will ob-
tain an Assembly which will SEIZE on the estates of the
proprietors of land, and DIVIDE THEM GRATUITOUSLY
AMONG TILE ;'OOR lt may be right to re-
duce the franchise, but certainly not as a step TO SI'OLIA-

TION.''
I sincerely trust there is some inaccuracy in this quota-
tion, which is not only a libellous outrage on two members
of the House of Commons, but a dire insult to millions of
honest and industrious Englishmen. If it be a correct ex•
tract from your leading article, which I have no means of
verifying at the moment of writing, it is in direct contra-
diction to the statement made-in your last letter, that you
never imputed to Mr. Bright and myself the contemplation
of any more violent means of dividing the land than by a
change in the law of succession. Assuming the words to be
correctly given, you charge us distinctly with aiming at the
SEIZURE of the landed property of the country for GRATUI-
TOIIS division among the poor. You will at once see that
unless this language be unreservedly recalled it makes the
statsment in your last letter simply a mockery and an un-
truth.—l am, sir, yours, &c., R. COBDEN.
J. T. Delano, Esq.

16, Sergeants'-inn, Dee. 2

Sir,—l received your second letter, dated "Friday Even-
ing, December is,,, only last night. The quotation you take
from the _Daily News is so far inaccurate that it does not
convey the same meaning as the whole article from which
it is taken does. I enclose that article and that which ap-
peared on the following day. I add an extract from an-
other, which has been published since; and, having now
given you all the means necessary for obtaining that redress
which purported to be the object of your first letter, I beg
to retire from the personal part of this controversy.—l am
sir, your obedient servant,
Richard Cobden, Eeq., M.P.

Joux T. DELANE.

UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH.--A vacancy having
been createdin thechair of Scots law by the lamented
and sudden death of Mr. George Ross, advocate, who has
filled it for two years, the Faculty of Advocates met on Fri-
day to exercise their privilege of selecting two names to be
presented to the curators of the patronage. The Faculty
unanimously selected as the first name Mr. G. Moir, advo-
cate, sheriff of Stirlingahire. Mr. Moir was called to the
Scottish bar in 1825,and from 1535 to 'ISO filled the chair of
rhetoric and English literature in the University of Edin-
burgh, but resigned it in consequence of increasing profes-
sional practice, and the chair has subsequently been filled till
1815 by Professor Spalding, and since that date by Professor
Aytoun. The second name chosen—the advocates being
required to present two—was the Dean of the Faculty (Mr-
Moncrieff, Lord Advocate, M.P.), who is sent to the cura-
tors as a nominal candidate in the expectation that they
will, as usual, choose the first on the list. Since the open-
ing of the university session in November, several of the
classes have been attended by Prince Alfred, and by Prince
William of Besse, who have for the time occupied apart-
ments in Ilolyrood Palace,
The Princes left on Friday
for the Christmas holydays, and Prince Alfred returns
again to his studies in Edinburgh early in Janu aryStans-
' MR. STANSFELD, 111. P--On Friday, Mr.
fold, ALP., Junior Lord of the Admiralty, who has
been making a tour of the naval dockyards, and inquiring
into their management, arrived at Birkenhead on a visit to
Mr. John Laird, M,P., and left for London on Saturday.
thed ()Br e
sk, Birkenheadn
Idiot
eelkys
nsipeesestresd.
Clover and Clayton's graving
During his stay be visited
the extensive works and docks of Mes,rs. Laird Lre'hc
He also wont on board the Agincourt, at present in course
of construction by the firm. Tile suspected rains under
seizure in the river were visited. On the Liverpool side
Mr. Stansfeld confined his attention to the Canada Dock,
the Sandell Graving Dock, and tho new steam decks. 11e
boarded the Inman steamship City of London,
his visit Mr. Stansfeld made particular lar inquiriondones into During the
both sides progress of all works ondeof the Mersey. Ho
was accompanied by Mr, Walker, ono of the chief auditors
to the Admiralty.
DIRECT COMMISSIONS.—The next (x. =nation
for direct commissions will take °lace at Chelsea Hospital
on Nondfly, the Ist of February, 1864,

(From the Spectator.)
The salons of Paris are feverish, for the jour de
l'an is approaching. Ever since 1860, when the
Emperor with a dczen words sent down the funds
in every capital of the Continent, and broke up that
icy surface, an smooth and so dangerously thin,
which is called the European peace, Paris has been
unable to divst itself of the belief that a coup de
the'(2:re so exciting and so successful wcuid one day
be repeated. The toraptation, they say, of the im.
proreptu Congress, with all Etircpe in attendance.,
the world listerriog anxiously for the telegram, and
no possibi ity of reply is to a monarch who combines
with unusual power of secrecy ueueuel love lot.
sudden and striking scenic effects always great, and
this year may, they think, prove irresistible, The
difficulties of the Empire are, they conceive, thick-
ening fast, the deus ex machind must descend, and
the clouds could not open with more awe-inspiring
effect than amidst the combined etiquette and joy-
ousness of the Imperial receptions held upon New
Year's Day. We are to-day in possession of the
talk of circles to which the ordinary newspaper
correspondent has rarely access,
e.nd though we be=
vbajed as much on a secret
longing
n theirg for
o
pinihnis
sensations—terribly strong in a society
llioe
peak,
_b_ecalmed—as on
that
Wbich the Empire has, eo. to w
ell
worth the passing
trustworthy calculation, it is
study of those who recognise Napoleon may
at any moment apply a solvent to all diplomatic
chemistry.
The line of argument current in circles in which
argument has not been suppressed by a governing
hate, of Bonapartism runs much in this direction.
The Emperor, say the talkers, stands, and knows
he stands, in the presence of three new dangers, two
of them self-created, and one the natural effect of
eleven years of repression: His address to his
Legislature, with its great but dreamy proposal,
followed as it was by a series of refusals reverberat-
ing from every superior Court, had among his own
people two distinct effects. It excited, and very
powerfully, the popular imagination. Franco feels
great ideas as no other country feels anything, ex-
cept, perhaps, menace or new taxation, and French-
men had special reasons for feeling this one. The
conviction, perfectly jest in itself, that the treaties
of 1815 were intended to humiliate France, that they
had for nearly for fifty years operated as a heavy
restraint, and that " glory" was impossible until
they were swept away, has burnt itself deeply into
the mini of France. A vague hatred of those agree-
ments, acknowledged by all classes of educated
Frenchmen, by Republicans no less than Impe-
rialists, by M. Thiers as much as Prince Jerome,
has extended itself even to the peasantry, whose
traditions are of the Grande Ar2nee whose career
was arrested in 1815. Peasants who read nothing
else still read the Emperor's speeches, and as they
deem him irresistible, the acknowledged leader of
the Continent, his pledge that those treaties should
end, should be replaced by a new "fundamental
pact'' more favourable to France and the nationa-
lities, created throughout all France a sense of deep
and pleasurable excitement. It was increased by
the knowledge that the Congress must first of all
take up the question of Poland, upon which the
strong feeling always existing had been recently
deepened by the unchecked invectives of the press,
and the greedily credited steriec of Russian cruelty
to the Poles. That feeling might rot survive a
long and still less a disastrous war, but it was
strong enough to authorise the Emperor to begin
one—as he said in his speech ho would have done
had England consented—had to obtain such a result
of a campaign in peace seemed to mast Yet.L.elt-ne
the ne plus uTtra of etrategv. The universA refus:ll
of Europe to obey the summons has diec,richanted
the populace, and their disappointment, like the
hailstorms and every other misfortune, is visited or.
the Government. The educated closses know the
truth in spite of the illoniteur, and the uneducated,
though bellied as to the facts, have an instinctive
sense that noire maitre is not so strong as he said
he was. "Isolation in Europe," " diplomatic de-
feat," " dust thrown on the fin.," these are to the
public mere phrases, bat that Mouravieff goes on,
and that Napoleon does not interfere himself, and
cannot make Europe interfere for him, this is a
fact, and one which the masses by no means accept
with pleasure. Napoleon, who hears from official
reports everything that passes in France, the very
talk of the wine-shops and gabble of the market-
women, knows well how deep is the disappoint-
ment, and knows, too, that a similar one discredited
Louis Philippe for years, and that he, far more
than Louis Phillipe, cannot afford to fail.
Some striking act, some speech which shall
set the world in movement, would seem absolutely
required to alter the current of national thought,
and remove the impression of failure, and that
speech must be made just when the world from
habit begins to listen.
Again, the Emperor is known to have been
startled, not to say shocked, by the result of the
elections, a result which has been, so to speak, re-
peated by the votes given this week in Paris and at
Dijon. He suffers, despite his cool judgment, from
the temptation of day-dreamers—the disposition to
believe that the world is going their way, and he had
imagined that the masses of France were reconciled
to the Empire. The elections show nothing to the
contrary, but they prove that the townsmen through-
out the country are thirsty for wider liberty, that
the artisans are voting with the rich, and the Em-
peror, who knows best of all men the gigantic efforts
made to divide those classes, is proportionately
alarmed. The debates in the Corps Legislatif have
proved that thevote of towns has greatly
the ibe the
rals
prestige of the Government, for thong
claim only 35 members, yet in the trial
debates on
the elections 84, some of them nominees, voted
affec Lied
" against M. de Persigny-" i
There is a swerve,
too, in the tribunals, which are apt to respond to
power
the fluctuations of s too
himself,barometric
aand
t
style, and editors, for
amazementexample,
getting
prefects, are to their own example, prosecuted by
go move the personal following
acquitted. These thin
of the Emperor almost SO 11311 C a
est
the only one who enjoys some faint
we believe, correct to affirm that the shrewd
among them,
fortnight,
Emperor that if the Legislattare is not
informed the
share of social liking, has, within the past
to become unmanageable, war, or a further
Liberty
grant of
dynasty is still not beyond the reach of internal
internalwlbibeenrtayv,oairdeabthlee,oenxlayalternatives.otly
is rot, the or-aparte role,
the
attack, and war, if circumstances; would only allow,
as well as the easier out-
might be the more popular
let from an unmanageable
situation. There is,
therefore, say the salons, reason for fearing that
Now Year's Day will b
utterance, possibly e marked by some Imperial
We admit dangerous, and certainly im-
portant.
the full force of these arguments, at
least as far as to
the influences now working in the
direction
but there
are reasons
of some grand and theatric coup,
which make such a New Year's gift to
Europe seem
to men not longing for Scenes at least
improbable. The Emperor uriy,
and possibly will,
take the opportunity of publicly abandoning his
scheme of a general Congress, end
throwing the h
by itself would be
re-
sponsibility on the Powers whose adhesion has been
withdrawn ; but this speec—
It is only when that which
suggestive of peace.
exists is to exist
no longer that war becomes immi-
"lent, and such a speech would be a confession that
that must continue to last. Yet
whet
ror to say ? He is known to
be bitterly urine)
,ell. at the conduct of the Austrian
Court, which
has saddled him with the Archduke
a else which
is the exists
Em pe
Aux, without affording him the support he expected
'n return, but he cannot a second time menace the
Al ustrien representative. There is nothing to fight
Austria for, unless, indeed, ho draws the sword cu
all Germany in defence of Denmark, which he
seems as yet by no means inclined to do. Popul4r
feeling might back him then, because there would

" You ask me whether I belizvo in war. Yes, I
do. How will it break cut ? I will toll you. It
will break out in the pping, and. my father-in-law
will begin it. Tne situation of King Victor Em-
manuel is no longer tenable. The public d, bt in-
creases every year. There must 100 an end. to this.
The King has several times written to the Emperor
that he must have a solution, and that he would
rather be plain Chevalier de Carignan than continue
to play the part of a sovereign who is gravitating
towards a precipice. I repeat to you, my father-ina
law has warned my cousin that in the spring he
means to attack the Austrian lines. Believe me
that this is the way the struggle will commence ;
the King gives way to no illusions; he knows that
Austria will gain the victory, but he knows also
that
his magnificent army will not yield without
making
a serious recistance. The conquerors will
re-enter Lombardy; they
peace, he cannot allow Austria to destroy the work
great
the klngd
will, perhaps, occupy
Turin ; but then the situation will change. how-
evermay be the desire of the Emperor for
of France in Italy.
himself, to maintain lie
will
contrary to all home foofrced, in
Italy.
Isfp,ite of
how-
ever,
expectation, the Emperor
father-in-lavr he would prefer
iillarlioaft i Piedmont,naoreprobableon de o bies
should abandon my fat
interfere, and that, after a war the
to become once again Kin°. ,
relieved of the responsibility which
weighs upon
aFsrKaninceg
wofillltaly.
him
mat
King will have Northern Italy, and the '
Emperor
will dispose of the south as he thinks Rt.',
A few hours will probably decide whether
the
above letter, which a Paris journal, with all the
fear of warnings and suppression before its oyes,
ventures to print, is of is not an impudent forgery.
If it be genuine, it will probably rank as one of
the most stirring events of those momentous times.
This much is certain, that all the recent letters from
Italy speak of preparations for immediate war
which nobody can account for. Prince Napoleon's
letter—if it be his—givz Ran explanation of them.