The Sun.
London, England, 1863-10-29 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TnuEs.—A few days ago we took occasion to point
out the importance of the services of Sir James
Hudson as British Minister in Brazil and at Turin,
and the very ungracious return which those services
have met with from the Foreign-office. We asserted
in substance that the man among all our Foreign Mi-
nisters who had deserved best of his country and of
the world at large—the man whose reputation rested
on no personal popularity and no partial estimate, but
upon solid and durable achievements—had been, in
the evening of his life, in the fulness of his reputation,
and in the very height of his usefulness, substantially,
if not formally, driven from a post which he was well
contented to hold, and forced into premature retire-
ment. We stated that in 1862 Sir James Hudson
had been consulted as to his willingness to accept
an embassy, that he had declined the offer, but that,
under the impression that his removal from his posi-
tion as Italian Minister was desired he had sug-
gested that if he were allowed to hold his place long
enough to entitle him to his pension he would then
resign his appointment. We stated that, in com-
pliance with this agreement, Sir James Hudson, in
April of the present year, offered his resignation;
that his resignation was accepted, and his successor
in due time appointed; and we further stated our
conviction that it was impossible that the transac-
tions, by which England has lust her very best dip-
lomatic servant, at a post at which he was per-
fectly willing to remain, should be the result of an
alleged mistake on the part of the Foreign-office.
Some rather indiscreet friends have urged upon
the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs the
propriety of vindicating himself from these stric-
tures by the publication of the papers in question,
and our yesterday's impression contains so
much of the correspondence as the Foreign-office
has thought fit to submit to the public eye. We
say "so much of the correspondence," because
it is clear on a very cursory inspection that
the most important part of the whole has been
withheld. Lord Russell and Sir James Hudson
are evidently at issue on a point of fact, the
letters upon which that point of fact must be
decided have not been laid before us, and that
omission is the act of one of the parties to
the controversy, We do not want to be told that
Sir James Hudson has left the public service, but
we do want to know whether that act was purely
voluntary or the result of an engagement, and, if
so, what that engagement was, and how it came to
be entered into. We, therefore, very much regret
that Lord Russell has not seen fit to lay before the
public all the letters relating to the transaction,
and we are entitled to assume that these letters, if
produced, would not have assisted in supporting
the position which he maintains. The first letter
is dated September 10 of this year—five months
after the period at which Sir James Hudson
tendered his resignation. The whole transaction
was completed before the correspondence which we
are allowed to see begins. This letter begins with
the words, "As you have expressed a wish to retire
from your post of Minister at the Court of the King
of Italy," and proceeds to speak in terms of well-
merited praise of the conduct of Sir James Hudson.
ft then goes on :—" Nothing, therefore, but your
own desire to quit the mission where your efforts
had been attended with such memorable success
could have induced me to recommend the Queen
any other person to represent her Majesty at Turin.
Had any of the principal embassies been vacant, I
should have asked her Majesty's permission to offer
it to you ; but, as this was not the case, and the
post you hold has been one requiring incessant
vigilance and causing continual anxiety, it has been
my duty, reluctantly, to advise the Queen to con-
sent to your retirement." Why does Sir James
Hudson retire ? We are plainly told by his own
desire ; but then we are also told of his vigilance
and anxiety as being reasons for his retirement, the
obvious inference being that he is relieved from a
duty which he is no longer able efficiently to per-
form. We do not wonder that Sir James Hudson

was unwilling to leave matters in this ambiguous
state—unwilling to pass over expressions in a letter
addressed to himself from the Foreign-office, with
which, if he did not notice them, he would be held
to acquiesce, but which gave a version cf his con-
duct entirely at variance with his own. We are,
therefore, not surprised to find in his letter of
October the 4th the following sentence :—" His
Majesty having been pleased to ask me why I
quitted his Court, I replied that 1 had conceived
myself bound by an engagement with your lordship
to do so. Offered promoted in March, 1862, I had
obtained permission to decline it, and to continue to
reside at his Majesty's Court till such time as my
pension for public service was due to me." This
letter directly contradicts the allegation that Sir
James Hudson leaves Turin at his own desire, and
confirms the statement which we presume the cor-
respondence was printed in order to impugn. These
words of Sir James Hudson entirely vindicate our
accuracy, since we could hardly have been expected
to know his motives better than he knew them him:

self. To this letter Lurd Russell replies, "I found
that Sir James Hudson, though ready to accept an
embassy, did not wish to leave Turin ; ' whereas Sir
James Hudson says distinctly that he declined offi-
cial promotion. Lord Russell says he made no
engagement with Sir James Hudson ; Sir James
Hudsons says he considered him,elf bound by an
enagement with Lord Russell. Which of these two
statements is correct P Did, a-, Ma. Elliot told the

King of Sardinia, Sir Jamas Hudson labour under
an entire misapprehension in entertaining the belief
that Lord Russell wished to remove him from Turin,

or did Eord Russell labour under an entire misap-
prehension in entertaining the belief that Sir Jas.

Hudson resigned of his own accord ? That question
would best be settled by the production of the cor-

respondence of 1862, which correspondence unfor-
tunately Lord Russell omits to produce. The ques-
tion turns on the fact whether there was or was not,

expressed or virtually, such an engagement as is as-
serted on the one hand and denied on the other, and
the party who withholds the means of forming an
opinion has no right to complain if that opinion be
given against him. One thing now, however, is per-
teztly plain. If an engagement did exist, Lord Rus-
sell ham been the means of depriving the diplomatic
service of one of its most valuable members • kit
even if such an engagement did not exist Sir James
Hudson acted under the belief thot it did, and Lord

Russell, therefore, arty be reterred to his own asset.
tion, that noting but Sir J, Hudson's own desire to

quit the mission would have induced him to recom-
mend any other person to it. The practical conclu-
sion is inevitable, that if Sir James Hudson has been
forced out of the service, or if he has acted under
the impression that such pressure was exerted, be
ought in either case to be restored. There has either
been mistake or misconduct on the part of the Fo-
reign-office, and when this has been made cle,r the
public service should not be permitted to suffer by
either. It is disagreeable to admit misconduct ;
to some persons it is almost as grievous to con-
fess a mistake. Be it which way it may, we
have a right to ask that neither shall prejudice
English or Italian interests. The mistake, if mis-
take there be, is not irrevocable. The mischief
admits of a simple cure. As nothing but Sir James
Hudson's desire could have induced Lord Russell to
remove him from Turin, the fact that such desire
did not exist would have furnished an excellent
reason for his restitution. We see, h3wever, very
little reason for hope for such a consummation. Sir
James Hudson has been held to his resignation,
'after it had been ascertained on his own evidence
that such resignation was made net of his own free
will, but under the belief that he was bound to offer
it. Nothing can be more full than the admission of
his services, and yet for some reason or other there
is no wish to retain him in the public seavice. We
do not therefore think that the case of the Foreign-
office is in wuy mended by the portion of the cor-
respondence it has seen fit to publish.

POST.—The commemoration of the anniversaries
of great men in the world of letters belongs to a
high state of civilisation. The earliest nations of
antiquity deified their victorious generals, but not
their orators and poets. Poetry and literature
have but little praise in their own day. Their
merit is seen in after years, when they have had
time to work their way and do their part in en-
riching the mind, directing the affections, and
moulding the thoughts of men. The Greeks com-
memorated Pericles, but not Homer; and the Ro-
mans, who filled their Pantheon with soldiers, had
no place for Cicero, Horace, or the Poet of Manhteuist
•
Much as in the later empire they gloried
e
names, they knew not how worthily to tirnanttshmeiirt
their memory or to put into enduring fo'rin
appreciation of the men who had united,
them-
selves the ardour that makes heroes andthtehetrciaalms,
philosophy that deals with the morals, the
All
the progress, and the destiniesn I
hOumman history. It
this belongs to a later epoch i
is the growth of peaceful tirn, w
war is hushed,when national hatreds ne
aren th
erseti quiescent,
shnenh no'
s
cw,rheeen,
apodutmeriliotbajreyethseroofisamibsit
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rise
derivebefo
n as een
tb,hileittyilrorefetehLy.et
InctrbilsersainnedemEorneglasacdrebd thbings
blessed with half a century of peace—since she
has increased in wealth,
form and variety of social apnrdogarde
progress—that
ti inshe
every
has
begun to commemorate the men who have enriched
her literature,adorntehdishiesrhaurttso,farnedeertogmrotwedtbeain
hern
moral good. Even
this country. The example was before our eyes for
some years in Gzrmany, but Englishmen, who o
never be made to act together without difficu:t
have been slow in learning the lesson.
are learningthe grieta,
tar% de
n vv
criet by one,
aovnee,maosved theirt htuSrtliii lcomes
round,
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the mind of England receive thee heartt,
tlate,
and
formed but
nunworthy, honour of a public commemoration.
ot
The tendency to get up commemorations is now

at floodtide, and every year sees some honoured
name held up to universal admiration. Some in-
stances, we will not hesitate to say, have been both
unworthy and ludicrous, and names not really great
have been puffed into notoriety with no other object
than that of making a commercial profit of the
.pro-
ceedings held ostensibly in their honour. 'this
ought everywhere to be protested against and
frowned down. By all means let us heap all the
honours which the best arranged commemorations
can express upon those who deserve fame, but let
such schemes be single-minded, let them be acts of
devotion, expressing real homage—homage that
costs something ; homage that comes of sacrifices
made, and not of self-interest subserved. We are led
to these remarks by finding that, quite in accordance
with the tendency just stated, there is to be a grand
tercentenary commemoration of the immc,rtal Shak-
spere in the ensuing year. We believe that the
scheme is at present only in its earliest stage of de'
velopment ; but we cannot allow even the meagre
details which have S et reached the press to go forth
without expressing our earnest hope that nothing
will be left undone to make the occasion worthy Of
the unapproachable genius in whose honour it is ttoi
be held. Let it be genuinely and honestly what t
professes to be—the homage of a great and en-
lightened people to a poet, a moralist, a philosopher,
and an actor, who preceded them in all that is great
and enlightened by no less a period than three
centuries. Let it be the expression of Englishmen
in the most advanced stage of their progress, that
nothing which they have since learnt has made it
necessary to unlearn Shakspere—that he is not, and
never can be, obsolete—that with all the accumu-
lated acquirements .of a highly cultivated age
they cannot dispense with his plays, can-
not excel his poetry, cannot supersede his philo-
sophy, and cannot amend his morality. Let the
Shaksperian commemoration be all this, and mote,
but let it be, as we said, single-minded, united,
self-denying, spontaneous, practical, definite, con-
gruous, and thoroughly genuine. Above all, let it
not be vulgarised after the fashion of Burns and
Schiller, by a demonstration for the benefit of the
shareholders of the Crystal Palace. It will be the
death-blow of greatness if it can never escape the
questionable posthumous honour of a Crystal Palace
celebration—to be chronicled in an annual report in
the same category with rabbit shows, pigeon shows,
flower shows, poultry shows, rope dancing, and
Pepper's ghost, as auxiliaries to the small dividend
which the directors have to announce to the de-
pressed shareholders. Shakspere deserves better
things at our hands than this, and we earnestly trust
that the gentlemen who are initiating the movement
will propound to the British public something
worthy of the man, and of the age and country in
which we live. We believe that nothing is yet de-
finitively decided, and that plans are only in procasa
of lucubration. Our remarks, therefore, have refe-
rence only to broad general principles; the advoeacy
of details is not within our province. To us it seems
that there are two leading ideas at the foundation
of the subject—the one general as belonging to all
England, or we may say of all the world; the other
local, as belonging to those places and particulare-
inseparably associated with his life and history, and
through that association have become histo-
rical. If England has a general interest in Shake-
pere, Stratford-on Avon has a particular one. There
he was born ; there he gained that education which
he afterwards turned. to such account ; thence he
married his wife ; thither, in his declining years, he
retired to enjoy his well-earned leisure and compe-
tency ; and there his ashes lie. If these things do not
consecrate a place, what can ? It is impossible, there-
fore, that Stratford can be left out in any adequate
commemoration of the great bard. A demonstra-
tion which should only deal generally with Shak-
spere's memory, and should ignore the local asso-
ciatious which have led to so many thousand pil"
grimages to his early home, would be wanting in a
very important particular, and be as unsatisfactory
as one which should seek to centre all interest .10
Stratford, end overlook the fact that the homage
of the civilised world is the poet's inheritance.
To do justice to these two ideas—the general and
the local—is the problem which the promoters of
the commemoration have to solve; and if theY
bring to the task a largeness of mind worthy of the
occasion, they can hardly fail of a success that wlll
be at once creditable to themselves, and not un-
worthy of the immortal bard who, ages ago, won a
fame to which no public demonstrations, however
perfect, can add, but which narrow or ill-con-
ceived schemes of commemoration might grievously
insult.

COUNTRY MARKETS.

►•

NEWARK.--WEDNESDAY.

A moderate quantity of wheat on offer at our market to-
day, and the demand was fair. Other articles the same aB
last week.

White wheat new, 41s to 46s 1 Barley, grinding.. 29s to 32s
Red do 4os to 44s j Oats, old, .. 2ss to 28i
Old white 42s to 46s 1 New do 20s to 24s
Red do. 41s to 44s 1 Beans.. 37s to 40s
Barley, nialting....36s to 408 1 Beans, new.. 32s to 348