The Sun.
London, England, 1863-12-18 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENINGS DECEMBER 18, 1863.

L 0 NOl' FORGET YOUR APPOINTMENT.
—We Sup at EVANS', Covent-garden, after Jullien's
Concert.

KINAHAN'S LL WHISKY T. COGNAC
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This celebrated Old IRISH WHISKY rivals the finest
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It i Pu e, Mild, Mellow, Delicious, and very Wholesome.
Sold in Bottles, 3s. 8d , at the Retail Hou.es in London ; by
the Agents in the prinapal towns ,n England ; or wholesale
at

S, GREAT WINDMILL-STRE'WT.
Observe the Red Seal, Pink Label, and Cork branded
"Kinahan's LL Whisky."

THE TEA ESTABLISHMENT, 4 rind 5,
King' William-street, City, will be CLOSED on
SATURDAY, the 26th instant.

H 0 It T H A ND.-"PITMAN'S PHONO-
GRAPHY forms an exceedingly efficient-probably
the MOST efficient - system of ShJrthand that exists."—Sir
Rowland Hill.

London : F. Pitman, 20, Paternoster-row, E.C.

PIGS ! PIGS! PIGS!-INDIAN PIG MEAL,
without husks, supplied to the Royal farms, Windsor,
and in ,very county in England, IGs 6d per cwt. ; one cwt.
equal to 11 cwt. bar'ey or any meal. Delivered free in Lon-
don. Established 1818.— THOMAS PEARCE, Manager, 66,
Lant-street, Southwark.

DEAFNESS.—The SOUND MAGNIFIER
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Of all medicine vendors at Is. 16d. •nd 2i. 9d. or free by
post for 14 or 33 stamps from Page D. Woodcock, Chemist

THE OLD-ESTABLISHED
BEtOMPTON GENERAL REGISTRY
OFFICE FOR SERVANTS. .

(UNDER DISTINGUISHED PATRONAGE.)
MRS. DONOVAN, 56, BROMPTON-ROAD.
Families requiring Servants are respectfully sot cited to
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Applications for Servants during the past year, 1,760.
Lists of Servants forwarded on application.
Office Roars from 10 tal 4 daily,
Yearly subscribers of One Guinea supplied with every ohs
of Servants free of extra charge.
Upper Servants, ss. ; Under do., 2s. 6d.

having property than in a country where they are deprived
of the advantage of political power. (Hear.)
You will observe in the above passage from my
speech, taken from your own report, that I use the
words, "I don't want any agrarian outrages by
which we shoula change all this ;" and now we
must appeal to the tribunal of the lexicographer.
If you turn to Webster's (quarto) Dictionary you
will find the word "agrarian" interpreted, on the
authority of Burke, as follows
Rdating to lands, Denoting or pertaining to an equal
division of lands; as, the agrarian laws of Rome, which
distributed the conquered and other public lands equally
among all the citizens, limiting the quantity which each
might enjoy,

Again, in the same dictionary the word agrarian•
ism is given as " an equal division of lands or pro-
perty, or the principles of these who favour such a
division." Thus, in repudisting the agrarian sys-
tem I repudiated in pure and unquestionable Eng-
lish, according to Burke, the principles of those who
favour an equal division of land; I repudiated the
agrarian laws of Rome; and yet, in spite of this,
you charge me and Mr. Bright with "proposing a
division among the poor of the lands of the rich,"
and you associate us with Gracchus in schemes of
socialistic spoliation. I will leave Mr. Bright's case
or the future, as you seem to prefer it, to his own
good keeping, merely observing that his remarks
upon the land question were more slight and inci-
dental than even my own, and quite as incapable of
being perverted to your sense.
I must add a word with reference to the explana-
tion I have given of what was passing in my mind
when I spoke at Rochdl,4osainst agrarian outrage.
-In the 'Tense of e6mmois a speaket is anowed to
put his own interpretation and meaning ,an his dis-
puted utterances. This is fair in viva voce discus-
sions. But I decline to claim or accept the benefit
of this practice in the present case. There is no
dispute as to what I said. I accept your own ver-
sion of my speech ; it is a marvellously accurate re-
port, and I will abide by every word of it in its
simplest and most obvious meaning.

And now, having given you the above materials,
which I do solely to leave no ground for a pro
longed correspondence, I ask whether you are pre-
pared to adhere to the charge that I proposed at
Rochdale on the 24th ult. to divide "among the
poor the lands of the rich," and, if so, I call on you
to cite those "certain passages" from my speech
which you say " will bear no other interpretation."
I must be allowed to remind you that it is now
wholly a question of proof; that there is but one
issue before us, and that any attempt to evade this
issue by raising others, or entering on vague and
irrelevant discussions, cannot be tolerated. I will
repeat the assumption that you could not have
made this grave charge without believing it to be
founded in truth; that in alluding to " certain pas-
sages,', you thought them to exist. I call on you to
produce them in the specific form in which you
would feel bound to establish your charges before a
solemn legal tribunal, and as you are still more
bound to do, at that higher tribunal, the public
opinion of this country, to which this correspondence
will be referred.

I remain, Sir, your obedient servant,
klidhurst, Dec. 14. R. COBDEN.

P.S. I purposely abstained from saying a word
in the bcdy of my letter in answer to other parts
of your communication, because I wished to have a
distinct and categorical answer from you on the
single question at issue; but, es you seem to be
curious upon the subject of my alienation from
your pages, I will give you a trivial historical inci-
dent. When entering on the arrangement of the
details of the treaty with France, in Paris, in the
spring of 1860, I found that the Times arrived
daily at the offices of the Commission, in rae
de l'Universite. While every faculty of my mind
was employed on the task in hand, I found my
efforts thwarted and opposed day after day in the
columns of your journal, where the treaty was in-
cessaotly denounced, ridiculed, and misrepresented.
I knew of course that the statements made in the
Times were groundless, I knew that the writers
could not know them to be true, and I believed
then, as I believe now, that you were actuated by
the mercenary fear (foolish enough, as I say) that
the abolition of the paper duty, which was contem-
plated as a part of the measures in connection with
the treaty, would be injuriou3 to the interests of
your journal. To prevent this you appeared to be
ready to destroy the treaty, defeat the Budget of
the year, sacrifice Mr. Gladstone, or worry me to
death. I was tongue-tied and could Rot speak,owing
to my official position, and it was only through the
confidence which the Chambers of Commerce placed
in my commercial knowledge that I was enabled to
defeat your unpatriotic efforts.
I was naturally led to inquire how the Tunes
reached the Commissioners' office, and was told that
it came from home as a part of our equipment. Jr
seemed strange enough that a Government pro
fessing to desire the success of the treaty should
favour a journal which was doing its best to pre-
vent it. Resolved that so long as I was at the head
of the Commission the Times should not enter the
premises, I sent a communication to the proper

quarter requesting that the Daily News should be
substituted in its stead. This Was done, and from
that time the Times has never entered my house
except by accident.

qect, what is the meaning and object of the pas-
sage to which you have referred me ? As I write I
find that Mr. Cobbett is in a similar difficulty.
For myself. I can but repeat that " certain pas-
sages in your speech will, in my opinion, bear no
other interpretation than that ascribed to them,"
and you have yourself quoted the very passages
ojusti t 3 my opinion,-II remain,
p
•
‘STiro,neycwo.uhlri6co.hbledry i
servant,
JOHN T. DELANE.
ielnt
P.S.—ln your postscript you mention what you
call " a trivial historical incident." It is of little
interest to me or to the Times why or when you
ceased to read it ; but you must allow me to remind
you that the Times, as the largest consumer of
paper, has always recognised its own interest in the
abolition of the Paper Duty. Your negotiation a
Paris affected not the limes, but the papermakers,
who complain, as I still think justly, that while
3. on made such concessions to France as the under-
taking to levy no export duties on coal, you omitted
to stipulate that the French export duty upon the
materials of paper should not be maintained. Surely
it was not unbecoming a great commercial journal
to remind the British n( gotiator of such neglect
while there was vet time to amend it ?