The Sun.
London, England, 1839-10-25 00:00:00

GUILDHALL.

Yesterday a decent-looking man named Wenzyss was
charged with having drawn a knife and attempted to
stab a policeman in Farringdon-street. It appeared
that the prisoner was in a state of intoxication at the
time, and causing a disturbance, which the officer en-
deavoured to suppress, and had it not been for the as-
sistance of another policeman he would in all probability
have been dangerously wounded.
Two individuals gave the prisoner a good character,
and he was ordered to be discharged on entering into
recognizances to keep the peace for three months.

WORSHIP-STREET.
James de la Pois, an Irish labourer, was'eharged with
having wilfully damaged a quantity of gas pipe belonging
to Mr. Horsepool, a butcher, in Featherstone-street, St.
Luke's.

It appeared that the complainant left home on busi-
ness the preceding evening, and upon his return some
time afterwards he was surprised to find that the gas-
light in his shop was extinguished, and to his increased
surprise on going in he found the prisoner busily at work
with the entire gas apparatus strewed in ruins around
him. Upon asking his wife and sister what it meant,
they stated that shortly after he went out the prisoner
entered the shop, and after informing them that he
(complainant) had ordered him to repair the pipes, he
set to work upon them. As he had given no such order,
the machinery being in a perfect state, he turned to the
prisoner for an explanation, who very coolly told him
that in passing the shop he thought the gas burnt very
badly, and conceiving be could effect an improvement by
adjusting it after a fashion of his own, he resolved to
give him the benefit of his gratuitous services. The
prisoner, who was considerably drunk, had made wild
work of the job, the greater part of the fittings having
been torn down, one of the pipes broken, and a meter
entirely destroyed. A policeman was called in, into
whose custody he was handed over.
In his defence the prisoner attributed his extravagant
conduct to the quantity of gin he had imbibed.
He was ordered to pay the amount of damage, toge-
ther with the drunkard's fine, or to be committed for 14
days to the House of Correction.

HONESTY REWARDED.--A young man,
named Alexander Stewart, a labourer, belonging to
Dunkeld, in going to his work at Dowelly Sawmill, by
an unfrequented road, lately found a pocket-book, con-
taining, besides other valuable documents, bank-notes
to the amount of some fifty or sixty pounds, the property
of a distiller in Tullymet. The pocket-book and its
contents were restored to their rightful owner, who had
been almost frantic about his loss, and who, in the exu-
berance of his generosity, presented the young man
with a shilling !as a reward for his honesty. The dis-
tiller being a man of modest pretensions, we believe
that he would not wish his name to be coupled with
this generous and liberal transaction.—Perth Chronicle.
On Saturday a bathing machine at Kemp Town
was set afloat, in consequence of having slidden with
great rapidity down the " full" of the beach, which
was more than usually shelving ; and seven lads, who
were in the machine at the time, were thus placed in
imminent danger. Happily, two other youths, named
Rouse and Coore, who were near the spot, and bravely
went to their rescue, succeeded in stopping the machine,
and had the pleasure of bringing- the lads in safety
ashore.—Brighton Gazette.

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
(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 reverts to the origin of the
forgery or fraud ; and requires satisfaction by the disco-
very and exposure of its author. Count D'Orsay, to
whom the report was traced, has explained the part he
took in the affair. We published his letter yesterday ;
and think it due to Count D'Orsay to state that the
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, are 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 dreadfu I occurrence very nearly
as it was detailed in your paper of this
morning. Mr. Montgomery, when he called
upon rne, 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-
li 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 bad
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
will subject the offender to consequences which any man,
having a regard to personal 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 he
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 Duke
of Argyll, which took place on the 22d inst. His
Grace was in his 72d year, having been born in Sep-
tember, 1768. 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 nineteenth
year. The late Peer was Duke and Earl of
Argyll, Marquis of Lorn and Kintyre, Earl of
Campbell and Cowal, Viscount of Lochow and
Glenilla, Baron Campbell, and Baron of Lorn, Inverary,
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 had 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 Cann-
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 cannot 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 ques-
tion be 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 their loss would go far to destroy Great
Britain as a great and independent 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 bold
enough to assert that the recent appointment of the Go-
vernor-General of the Canadas is calculated 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 notorious
that the appointment has given the greatest dissatis-
faction, and has excited the greatest fears at home
and abroad ? It is with pain and reluctance that
we make observations which seem to be especially
pointed at an individual ; but it is the question
of the preservation or the loss of one of the
most important of the British Colonies that we
have to deal with : all personal considerations must
give way to the paramount importance of this
consideration. These colonies are in danger ; and in
endeavouring to rouse the public attention to this fact,
we do but 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 had to complain of the heart-
less, unmanly, and indecent liberties, taken with the
Queen's name by those who are loudest in their pro-
fessions 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 Mi. O'Connell's, at Cork :
" They all must remember the cries of The King,
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 he directly imputes to his in-
nocent 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 Premier lately introduced to his maiden
Queen.

SUDDEN DEATH IN THE YORK HOUSE OF
CORRECTION.—On Thursday last, an inquest was held
by Mr. John Wood, the Coroner, at the York House
of Correction, on view of the body of John Waddington,
a prisoner, who had been found dead in bed that morn-
ing. The Jury consulted privately for upwards of an
hour, when the Coroner said the Jury had unani-
mously agreed that the deceased " Died from inflam-
mation of the bowels, and that he did not receive from
the keepers of the prison and the medical officers that
attention which his case required." He hoped that in
future he would be more careful than he appeared to
have been on this occasion.—York Courant.
The Animals' Friend Society has again detected
the vile practice of the butchers in throwing sheep
a down cellars in Newington Market. Terry rid Ro-
berts were last week charged by its officers with
P
this
abominable cruelty ; they were fined by
but only in the inadequate sum of ss* Aeach. rieJohn,
Jeremy
Bonner was fined 10s. by Mr. for having ill-
treated a truck-dog, and driving the poor animal be-
tween the carriages, so that its foot was run over,
after which it was driven on towards its home, twenty
miles off, but was prevented from proceeding by Gib-
bins, an officer of the Society, who took the driver
into custody, Henry Martin, Joseph Tuck, and John
Clay, were also fined by Mr. Jeremy and Alderman
Humphery for similar offences. But Mr. Greenwood
unfortunately dismissed a strong case against John
Brown (in which a horse had been ill-treated), be-
cause the stick, which was broken and bloody, had
not been seen by the complainant in the act of being
broken.

SPOTS ON THE SUN.

The Gazette du Midi gives an account of a dis-
covery by Count Decuppis, the Italian astronomer.
He is said to have succeeded in manufacturing
glasses which enable the observer to look at the
sun without having his observations at all affected
by its rays. By means of those glasses the sun
appears of a pure whiteness, and the surrounding
firmament is equally distinct. M. Decuppis is
stated to have observed on the 3d instant an un-
usual number of spots on the sun's disc, and having
made an addition to his apparatus, he perceived, at
a quarter before nine on that day, a small black
spot entirely free from penumbra, and of perfectly
spherical form, which had advanced upon the disc,
describing an arc of about seven minutes. Reite-
rated observations convinced him that it had
to
the mean time advanced towards the sun s
limb to the extent of two minutes and thirty
seconds. At three minutes after nine, when M.
Decuppis attempted to make a new observation, the
spot had disappeared. The perfectly round figure
of this spot, its blackness, the smallness of its
diameter, its motion, and the absence of penumbra,
appeared to the observer to be so many proofs that
it :was a small planet hitherto undiscovered which
was passing over the sun's disc.—Galignant's
Messenger.
[The " discovery" of the glasses is no disco-
very at all, and the " small planet," which the
Italian astronomer has found, will prove a mare's
nest. For the rest, our readers will recollect, that
in our paper of Tuesday we made the following
announcement :—" SPOTS oN THE SUN.—There
is at the present time on the sun's face, and not far
from its centre, a splendid group of spots, visible
through the London fog to the naked eye, or
which, when the planet shines strongly, the eye,
protected by a smoked or dark glass, will instantly
detect."]