The Sun.
London, England, 1830-01-12 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

We hare had many applications, at different
times, for information as to any intended mea-
sures for the relief of the credit rs of his Royal
Highness the late Duke of Yak. We know
or none ; but we will not liesita.e to declare our
opinion, that it is most disgracef I that those un-
fortunate claimants should be so. jeered to heavy
losses, amounting, in many cas s, to absolute
ruin, and that the stigma of baekruptcy should
be sufferei to rest upon the mem •Ty of that illus-
trious Prince. Upon the death of his Royal
Highness, his effects were sold ; but difficulties
arising as to the validity of certain claims that
were brought forward, the matter was referred to
the Court of Chancery ; and the money having
once got within the claws of that Court, it is
needless to say, has never since Leen heard of.
In process of time, however, the disputed ques-
tion must be settled, and then a dividend of five
shillings, or perhaps six shillings, in the pound
will be doled out to the creditors of the King of
Great Britain's nearest and clearest brother, the
heir-presumptive of his throne. These things
can serer have reached the Royal ear. And
has his Majesty no real frieed who will
tell him the truth, and afford him an .op-
portunity of discharging that ‘shich, if not
a legal, is at least a great moral obliga-
tion ? Bright examples are not wanting
among private individuals, of sacrifices made to
redeem the memory of departed relatives from.
reproach. Lord Melville has long endured a
course of honourable privations, in order to pay a
father's debts ; and so scrupulous was Lord
Thanet in the discharge of what he considered
a sacred duty, that he paid upwards of 60,0001.
for debts contracted by his brother, with wf,,,m,
for years past, he had not been even on speaking
terms. The sum required to liquidate the Duke
of York's debts is a mere trifle, compared with
the enormous wealth which must, or at least
ought to have been accumulated from the King's
private income. We believe very few of our
readers are aware of the prodigious amount of
the Monarch's pocket-money,—for it is, nothing
else ; every expense of the Royal state, Oren
charities, being defrayed out of the Civil List.
There is, in the first place, the Privy Purs,
60,0001. a year ; the Duchies of Cornwall and
Lancaster, 25,0001. a year ; the surplus Re-
venue of Gibraltar, 8,0001. or 10,000/. a year;
an obscure, and snug little matter in Scotland,
under the quaint denomination of " Green Wax ;"
Droits of Admiralty; and a variety of odds and
ends, for. the diligent collection of which r_ cer-
tain Right Hon. Gentleman is indebted ttr
that high degree of confidential favour whisk
he is said to enjoy, and which he has employed
to so many good purposes, both in the east and
west—to the benefit alike of the Christian and
.Jew. These items (not to mention Hanover,
where there are pretty pickings) amount to up-
wards of 100,0001. a year, which isa t the abso-
lute disposal of his Majesty, unburdened by any
charge whatever. The King lives in a state of
almost impenetrable seclusion, forming a inelcm.
choly contrast with the magnificent -hospitalities
which, at this period of the year, enliven the
festive halls of his nobility. The chosen few
who have access to his person can, no doubt,
find better employment For his money than its
relieving hundreds of distressed individuals, and
rescuing the character of a brother from disgrace.
What matters it how the people suffer wit of
doors, while tides of wealth are continually flow-
into the Royal coffers ? Let jewels, and baubles,
and gold plate, enough be bought ;—never mind
" golden opinions." What, in God's name,
becomes of these thousands ? Can nothing be
spared for purposes of benevolence and justice ?
Is nothing due to a brother's memory ? Are
the judgment of posterity, and the approbation
of our own times, so utterly valueless, that they
are not worth buying when money can procure
them ? Times. •

The Journal des Debats, in the article trans-
ferred into our columns of Thursday, inveighs
against the rumoured elevation of Prince Leo-
pold to the Sovereignty'of Greece, simply on the
ground of his being supported by British influ-
ence ; to which that journal accuses the Polignac
Administration of yielding an ignominious sub.
mission. The personal character of his Serene
or Royal Highness (for we know not which
title the Court Newsman is now instructed to
give him) is not at all touched upon. Yet,
surely, politicians, to whom the selection of
Prince Leopold is, for other reasons, unpala-
table, might, with great reason, demand what
personal qualities he has at any time evinced en-
titling him to occupy the distinguished station
to which he is said to be destined. The first of
a dynasty, whose business it is to leave his king-
dom a sure inheritance to his descendants, ought
to possess some talents ; it is only the eueeessors
that can dispense with them. In this country,
his qualifications for governing, if he do possess
them, are entirely unknown ; his single recom-
mendation appearing to be the revenue which he
draws from the careless prodigality of the set-
tlement made upon him at the period of his
• marriage with the deceased Heiress Presump-
tive of this Crown. His 5 0,0001. per annum,
payable at the British Treasury, would no
doubt enable Prince Leopold to support the
kingly style and dignity without further contribu-
tion from his new subjects ; but what augury can
be made favourable to the stability or indepen-
dence of a kingdom unequal to defray the per-
sonal expenditure of its Monarch ? Kingly Go-
vernment is, indeed, a transcendent blessing ;
but, like most other sublunary enjoy ments, it
bears a price, high in proportion to the amount of
the gratifications it affords. Now, the Greeks
are a poor people, and Prince Leopold is not
immortal ; and what would Leopold the Second
be without his great progenitor's fifty thousand
pounds ? But to be serious: Has—and if he
have, when and how—Prince Leopold evinced
those powers of mind, and that force of cha-
racter, needful to compose the stormy elements
of which Greece is composed ? What rational
hope is there that the contentious leaders, whom
even the sacred cause of liberty, the sense of
common wrongs, and common injuries, with all
the motives most powerful to bind men in close
fraternity, were incapable of uniting against the
tyranny under which their country groaned, will
implicitly acquiesce under the dominion of a
stranger, set over them by the capricious choice
of alien Powers? The fortunate adventurer
who, like Napoleon, raises himself to a Throne,
may be supposed likely to possess the talents ne-
cessary to uphold him on it ; but what is the
probability that Prince Leopold ahould prove
equal to such a task And is Greece to have
no voice in the choice of her future Sovereign ?
Will not the turbid spirits which have so long,
with whatever fortune, kept alive the war against
Turkey, spurn the yoke imposed upon them by
the confederated Powers, who expel one Master
only to act up another ? But the plan probably
is, that the new Monarchy shall be a limited
Monarchy—that there shall be a Charter and a,

Representative Assembly. So far well. Yet
for the Chief Magistrate of a Liberal Consti-
tutional Government, the last selection that free-
men, or enlightened philosophers, would make,
is that of a scion of one of those small German
houses, which, themselves destitute of every
other pretension to the esteem or consideration
of mankind, cherish with all the devotion of in-
terest and bigotry the absurd feudal notions of
kingly prerogative and pre-eminence. With re-
spect to Prince Leopold's pension, we think,
notwithstanding some recent observations of a
Contemporary, that the feeling generally preva-
lent is correct. So long as he shall demand it,
the money must no doubt be paid) because the
bond is so written. But until the superabund-
ance of the national income shall render an an-
nual payment of 50,0001. a matter of no account,
the people of England may well be allowed to
accuse the folly which assigned so dispropor-
tionate a provision to a Cadet of the House of
Coburg. It is to a mere oversight that the Prince
owes his extravagant pension and his case is
most unjustly likened to that of a son-in-law,
entitled, by express contract, to such a charge
upon the father of his wife (a thing, by the by,
itself very uncommon), because he was not the
equal of the Princess whom he espoused ; hay-
ing an income scarcely eqt‘ial to that of a junior
member of a gentleman's family, and having
been preferred by the mere fancy of a girl to the
high station of her consort. In the degree to
which he was elevated, the provision of an in-
come to be drawn by the husband from the re-
venues of the State to which the Princess be-
longed is wholly unprecedented. Prince Leo-
pold was, to speak truth, a mere pauper ; and
had any one seriously anticipated the demise of
the Princess, fifty hundreds, instead of fifty
thousands, would have appeared a most ample
maintenance for him.—Morning Chronicle.
Mr. Chambers, the Union nail Magistrate,
is entitled to much credit for the judicious
promptitude with which he put a stop to the
late projected prize fight, by seizing one of the
combatants, and holding him to bail to keep the
peace. We have both read and heard a vast
deal of ludicrous lamentation over our fallen
liberties upon this occasion; of the woful state
of destnitsm we live under, when a police con-
stable can, without a warrant, do any thing so
flagrant as prevent a disgraceful exhibition, set
on foot for the sole benefit of pickpockets and
gamblers. We are not more indifferent to the
cause of real liberty than the warmest or loud-
est of its admirers ; but we do not partake of
that sensibility which is only awakened in favour
of projects and proceedings which every right-
minded and honest man must naturally wish to
see suppressed. The right to do wrong is one
which no Government, or any of its function-
aries, should ever recognise ; aud, if there is any
occasion on which " a vigour beyond the law"
is excusable, it must, we should think, be when
a great and positive evil is removed by it. There
has been a vast deal too much squeamishness
upon this subject already ; and a kind of vulgar
sympathy has been attempted to be excited in
favour of a band of ruffians, many of whom are
thieves and vagabonds themselves, and whose
meetings are the resort of all that is infamous.
We are told, for instance, that the manly charac-
ter, the open spirit of Englishmen, are sup-
ported by these exhibitions. As long as manly
sports are pursued as such, we do not deny their
favourable influence to a certain degree, on the
personal courage of those who partake of them ;
but, even in that case, we doubt whether the
more valuable quality, moral courage, is at all
promoted by them. But prize fights, as they
are now got up, have Lo claim to either of these
distinctions ,the courage which they engender
being nearly akin to that hardened impiety with
which persons trained to crime at those assem-
blies at last expiate those crimes upon the gal-
lows. Surely, then, if the object of all criminal
laws, and of all to whom are confided the duties
of exercising them, should be to prevent crime,
how can any man, acting as a Magistrate, espe-
cially one paid for services, avoid doing as Mr.
Chambers has done upon this occasion ? A
Magistrate who could have acted otherwise under
the circumstances would have been unfit for his
office, and fairly open to the reproach of silently
winking at crimes which it is his bounden duty
to auppress.—Morning Herald.

We were the first to announce the retirement
of Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald from the Board of
Trade. The fact was at the time formally and
positively denied by the Courier. We consi-
dered this denial, coming from so suspicious a
source, as something like proof of the authen-
ticity of the report, and so it has turned out to
be. Mr. Fitzgerald is no longer President of
the Board—his successor will be named before
the meeting of Parliament. The Attorney-
General, Sir James Scarlett, has taken suddenly
unwell, and declares himself to be unable for
the present, to leave his bed. He attended the
Cabinet Council on Sunday, and it is insinu-
ated that the air of Downing-street has had a
paralysing effect on his too-susceptible nervous
system. Some of his friends fear that the Learned
Gentleman will not be able to appear in
court for some time ; while others, whom we
suppose he cannot reckon among the number of
his friends, actually assert that, like Mr. Vesey
Fitzgerald, he has retired from office. Which
of these reports is the correct one we of course
cannot decide. We wait to hear what the
Courier has to advance on the subject. We
sincerely hope that our contemporary will con-
tradict the latter rumour in the usual way, in
which case the greater of hction will be undoubt-
edly confirmed. tii Serene Highness Prince
Leopold of Saxe-Coburg has, we are sorry to
hear, been advised to become seriously indis-
posed also, and that with all convenient alacrity.
There are some unpleasant obstacles to his ele-
vation to the sovereignty of Greece, which it is
deemed as well to conceal under some of those
serious infirmities to which all public men are un-
fortunately heirs.—Morxing Journal.
The Meeting of the County of Lincoln, on the
Malt and Beer Duties, was, notwithstanding the
immense note of preparation, but a very sorry
affair. There was no one of any ability present
at it, and the speeches which were made would
have done but little credit to a meeting of mere
mechanics. We have, indeed, known many
better speeches made at such meetings than any
of those which were delivered at the Lincoln
meeting ; but the manner in which a subject may
happen to be discussed ought never to be any
test of its merits, and the malt and beer question
is assuredly one of those which possesses its
own merits, however feebly it may be treated by
its advocates. The landowners, in truth, are
only advocating their own cause, when they
advocate a reduction of the duties on malt and
beer. The heavy taxes on these articles have
tended greatly to keep down the price of barley,
and, in consequence, also to lower the rent of
land. Were the duties which are now levied re-
duced to one-half of what they are, there can

SHEEP SKINS.
Wool - Os. Od. to Os. Od. I Polled., V...... 25. Od. to 3s. 6d.
D0wn5,,..,.,...,.,..... Is. 3d. to le. 9d.