The Sun.
London, England, 1839-04-23 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY, APRIL 23, 1839.

SERGEANT TALFOURD'S COPY-

RIGHT BILL.

I wonder at the inconsistency and inconsiderateness
of some lawyers high in office, who, in opposing Mr.
Sergeant Talfourd's Bill, argue that nothing but what is
substantial is property. The same lawyers, at the same
time, would direct a Jury to award the amount of da-
mages done toward a husband, not because he has been
deprived of his wife's person, but of her affections and
her society. Now by society and affections the moral
is meant. These, although they are proved plainly
enough to have been transferable, are not tangible, are
not substantial, and at the moment when they were
transferred, must have been of a value infinitessimally
small to the plaintiff. The person, which would be the
heavier loss, is much the same as it was before. Sub-
stantial as it tansy be, not a word is said about it.
If nothing but substances can be property, then no
author has a right, from the beginning, to anything else
in his works than the paper manuscript ; then the pub-
lisher buys from one man what belongs equally to ail,
since lie from whom he buys it has no more right to
the production of his brain for a single day than for a
century. But, if he has a right to it for a single day,
he has the same right for ever. Ho has bought at a
great price the precious seed of an imperishable plant.
Have strangers the same right to gather its fruit that
be and his children have ? If strangers may not gather
it this year, may they gather it next? Have they more
right to it after sixty years than after six—after six hun-
dred than after sixty ? Certainly not, if it ever was
property at all, and that property never was alienated
by the proprietor. He has abstained all his lifetime
from more lucrative labours—he has abstained from all
the scrambles for public offices—he has withdrawn from
festivity, from conviviality, from friendship—he has lost
the past, he is willing to lose the present, and you
swear that he lose the future ! You swear that the
children shall be beggars, and that, if the father had other
views for them, he was only the more fool for his pains.
Gentlemen, I am here addressing you who have risen to
rank and station by your studies. Will you calmly and
deliberately continue to avow such sentiments ? With
all due respect for the statute-book and the Greek Tes-
tament, I cannot think that less intellectual power has
been exerted by several poor authors, than by the
Learned Lords, spiritual and temporal, who have latterly
attained their elevated station by these studies. I can-
not think that posterity, or that the intelligent and
equitable of my contemporaries, will hold even me,
obscure as I am and wish to be, lower than the highest
of you. If so, with what conscience do you arbitrarily
cut off the entail from the little property of far more
estimable writers ? If it is not enough to discourage, go
on—degrade ; but stop—in behalf of the condemned I
beseech you—stop a little short of confiscation.
Chancellor Thurlow is known to have delivered, in
his Court, the same opinion on copyright as our law
officers are now delivering in Parliament, but the deci-
sions of Chancellor Thurlow have frequently been re-
versed. In his life-time, and indeed yet, people have
been too ready to believe in his favour, that where
there are eyebrows there must be eyes, and that the
most roaring beasts are the strongest.
I have no personal interest in the question of copy-
right, but I am grieved whenever I see Parliament
either slip incautiously or rush pertinaciously into d
isre-
pute. The injustice which is now apprehended from it
is trifling in comparison ro what it perpetrated no long
time ago. By the sanction, no doubt, of our great law
officers, many burgesses were deprived of their elective
franchise, at the time when what is entitled the Reform
Bill was carried. Parliament may commit with impu-
nity any crime but parricide. It may not cut the throat,
or any artery, of its parent. It has no more right to
deprive a man of his franchise than of his freehold. He
may be deprived of either when legal cause is shown
why, by established precedent ; the freehold may be
proved to be rightfully another's, and the franchise to
be justly forfeited by a contravention of the terms o❑
which it was granted. But until these proofs are esta-
blished, the holder in neither case is liable to ejection.
Parliament here committed a misdemeanour for which no
Bill of Indemnity is valid, and every Member who
voted for it is liable to impeachment. No Bill ever
pained me so grievously as the Reform Bill. I openly
predicted at the time that the most ambitious of the
aristocracy would assume the language of demagogues,
until the first effervescence of popular zeal was over ;
that they would then agree to walk off quietly in dif-
ferent directions, and, after a wink of intelligence, look
angrily on each other at parting, and keep it up so long
as they were in sight. But since they and their families
have nothing to gain or lose by literature, I do most
earnestly entreat them, in this instance, not to join the
pettiest and dirtiest of trade.unions, against the general
interest and highest glory of our country.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

The Bristol April Tea Sale took place on
Thursday last, when 3,107 chests, half.ehtsts, and boxes
were offered. The attendance was more numerous than at

the last sale, but the biddings wen dull, and there was no
improvement of prices, which may be quoted as follows :
—Congou, from is. OTd. to Is. lid.; souchong, is. 4d. :
flowery pekoe, 2s. &Id. to 2s. 10d. ; twankay, Is. 3d. tc
Is. 3id. ; young hyson, 23. to 2s. 3d. ; hyson, is. 71d. to
35.; imperials, 2s. 9.1. to 39. ; gunpowder, 2s. 101 to
3s. 61d.
FLAT-CATCHING EXTRAORDINARY, OR THE
BITER BIT.—A gentleman farmer residing not far from
Peterborough, and wbo, in Lis own estimation, is a very
clever fellow, wishing to purchase of Bill Hewson, at
Peterborough market last Saturday, a lot of lamb-hogs,
which was offered him at 425. per head, refused to
take them at the preferred price, but, intending ti
show his brother farmers the scientific manner in
which he conducted his business, made an offer to
buy them at sevenpence per lb., live weight. Billy, who
it an uneducated man, and knowing the reputed accurac)
of his customer, looked rather shy at first, but after some
consideration agreed to take the price offered. Scales and
weights were procured, when, instead of 425., the purchaser
had to pay 60s. per head, which he handed over in high
dudgeon to his intended dupe, amidst the jeers and laughter
of all present, many of whom had heard him boast of tit(
accuracy of his calculations between live and dead weights.
—Cambridge Chronicle.
TIIE IRISH GOVERNMENT.—THE
INHABI-
TANTS' PETITION ?--The following letter has been received
in Edinburgh by the Lord Provost from Lord John Rus-

sell, in acknowledgment of the Address to her Majesty re.
cently transmitted from this city t--" Whitehall, April 16,
1839. My Lord, I have Lad the honour to lay before the
Queen the loyal and dutiful Address of a very numerous
body of the citizens of Edinburgh, expressive of their cor-
dial approbation of the course pursued by her Majesty's
Ministers in the administration of the affairs of Ireland,
which Address accompanied your Lordship's letter of the
llth instant ; and I have to inform your Lordship, that the
same was very graciously received by her Majesty.-1
have the honour to be, my Lord, your Lordship's obedient
servant, (Signed) .1. Russeee."
The funeral of the " Prince of the Gipsies,"
" Wisdom Smith," aged 76, took place at Essen
Rutland, on the 4th inst. About one hundred of thoinir wan-
dering tribe were present at the ceremony, and a large
coucourse of peasantry from the adjacent villages also
joined the burial train. The dark•faced outcasts, in pro-
jecting this spectacle, were wiser in their generation than
the simple rustics among whom they had pitched their
tents; they secured a " comfortable coffin" for their patri-
arch, by assuring the joiner that the " Prince's son" was
worth thousands, and that he would come from the north,
to take the place of chief mourner in the funeral obse-
quies. They also duped other small tradesmen by assuring
them that the wealthy heir to the vacant diadem of the
swarth.skinned people, would pay for everytdh ice! ind of the
a most
princely manner Every man, woman, an
crafty race, however, had disappeared like a mist before the
morning succeeding the ceremony, and the tradesmen are
unpaid.—Lincoln zeta.
MARRIAGE
INSTALMENTS.—At Hough-
ton-le-Spring, on Sunday last, an amusing circumstance
occurred, which has yielded much merriment to the gos-
sips of the district. A young couple presented themselves
at the altar, to be joined together in holy matrimony; and
in the midst of the buckling ceremony, when they were
called upon to join hands, they each held out, in the ner-
vous confusion of the critical moment, the left instead of
recognized master of the ceremonies
the riyht hand. The recogn
the parish-clerk, corrected the blunder ; and the lovers,
tickled by their mutual inadvertence, burst into a most un-
canonical fit of laughter, which speedily infected their
wedding-attendants. The proxy of the non-resident
rector of tke fat-living (the Rev. E. S. Thurlovv), al-
though he can stomach his absentee superior's indulgence
of his ease, was unable to brook this awful indulgence in
mistimed merriment, and doffing his surplice, he bolted
into the vestry, followed by the clerk, entreating him to
return and finish his task. The curate was inexhorable
and the disappointed pair lei's. the church half-married'
On the following day, however, the marriage was per-
fected by another clergyman. The joke has been the oc-
casion of much fun in and around Houghton._Gateshead
Observer.
DREADFUL DEATH BY PIRE.—An inquest
was last night held, at the Coroner's Court Room, on the
body of Eliza Lewis,. aged 24, a fine young woman. It
appeared from the evt.dence that the deceased, who lived
k
with her mother, at ..o. 11, CI lanes-street, Hatton-garden,
was on Saturday welting some bees' wax and turpentine
in a pipkin on the fire. On its boiling over she took it
off, when her clothes caught the flame, which sows spread
all over her. Some persons hearing her screams run to
her assistance, but her dress was nearly all
she died that all burnt off. She
was taken to St. Thomas's Hospital,
morning at eight o'clock.
Accidental death."
MELANCHOLY
SIIIPWItECK.--
Verlict__,,
On Thursday
morning a fishing smack belonging to Ramsgate was lust
off that port, and two of her crew drowned'. The name
of one of the sufErers was Henry Bates, son of William
Bates, of Dover ; and the other Was his brother-in- law.
Both have left widows and fgrnilies to deplore their loss.
A boy who was on board the smack when she went down
was picked up by a schooner which was passing at the
time.—Dover Chronicle.

ay, sou of the (Talk
Lieut. Robert Walker o_t.ss:

Admiral, and Commander-in-Chief at Sheerness, is pro.
noted to the rank of Commander.
The following notice is taken from a newspaper
of 1761 : " The ladies of distinction at the west-end of
the town have determined to bestow on the poor all the
winnings at cards during the holyday."
The town crier of Ludlow lately gave notice, that
all boys found whistling. in she streets would in future be
apprehended by the policie, as such practices were a great
annoyance to the peaceaale and well-disposed inhabitants
of the town!