The Sun.
London, England, 1839-12-17 00:00:00

" TO TIIF. ELECTORS OF NEWARK.

" GENTLEMEN—Having learned from the Duke of New.
castle that no one had been authorised by him to make the
declaration respecting his conduct in the present contest,
to which I alluded in my address of the 30th of Novem-
ber, I am bound to state to you that I was mistaken on
that point. I must beg, however, to observe, that the
error was very natural, considering how generally it was
reported ; and that it was, as I then thought, confirmed by
the address of Mr. Thesiger, in which he positively denies
being a nominee, and declares that the constituency of
Newark is his only patron.
" I remain, Gentlemen, your friend and neighbour,
" Stubton, Dec. 9, 1839. " R. HERON."

Ad this, we think, augurs ill for the Learned Ser-
geant. if we had no other reasons for knowing the
hopelessness of his attempt at Newark, we should detect
in these papers the persuasion felt by his own party that
his chance is desperate. The preparation for breaking
his fall is too barefaced. Aware that he must be de-
feated, they are obviously getting up the salvo, that his
failure isthe result of lordly influence enforced against him.
They will make it a grievance that the Duke of New-
castie did nut consent to remain an indifferent spectator
of a contest affecting his property, his country, and his
conscience. Having thus laid these documents, and the
history connected with them, before our readers, we now
refer them to a letter in another part of this day's
paper, dated Peterborough, and signed " Civis," by
which must be understood an elector of that town.
That town is one of the few nomination boroughs
which were rescued from the scythe of the Reform
Act. There was a good reason for that. It was, as
it still is, a borough in the hands of Lord Fitzwilliam,
a thorough-paced Whig ; he rewards the clemency
which spared it, by devoting both the seats to the Whig
interest ; and to one of those seats he nominates Sir
I?obet t Heron. Now, we can make allowance for ordi-
nary intrusions, for ordinary indiscretions, for ordinary
improprieties : we can pass over the officiousness of a
meddler addressing a letter to a constituency with
which he has no connection ; but that a Member who
is the known nominee of one Peer, should impeach a
candidate on the score of nomination by another Peer,
does really seem to us to be a flourish so daring in its
absurdity, that one's laughter is almost baulked by
one's astonishment. And observe, as our correspon-
dent " Civis" points out, that the assailant is not only a
nominee, but a nominee remarkably unpopular among the
constituents who are constrained to vote fin- him. The
Peterborough people have been for some time resolved
that. for the future Lord Fitzwilliam shall keep only one
of the seats, and that the seat he keeps shall not be that
which has hitherto been in the occupation of Sir Robert
Heron. The adventurous Baronet will, therefore, be
opposed on the next vacancy ; and all that his opponent
will have to do for the purpose of settling the election,
without so much as the trouble of a poll, will be to call
on Sir R. Heron to republish to the voters of Peter-
borough the emphatic and consolatory words which he has
addressed to the voters of Newark, only substituting
Lord Fitzwiiliam's name for that of the Duke—that is,
if Lord Fitzwilliam will consent to the announced for-
bearance. Sir Robert's abdication of Peterborough will
then stand in the following form :
" I can venture to assure you that Lord Fit:will/am (whom
I believe to be an honest and straightforward man, will never
suffer his agents to exercise any vengeance upon you for
your conduct upon this occasion ; and that those who are
in any degree dependent upon Lord Fitzwilliam may safely
make use of the free disposal of their votes, sllich he leaves
to he decided by their principles arid wishes."
So ends the connection of Sir Robert Heron with
Peterborough.

(From the Morning Herald.)

It was only by making great exertions that we, along
with some of our Contemporaries, were enabled to pre-
sent the public yesterday with a copy of the indietmen.
against Frost and his companions, about to be tried for
high treason, under the Special Commission at Mon-
mouth. We think the public curiosity, which had been
excited to a high pitch to ascertain in what way the
charges of treason were shaped, especially against Frost,
must have been somewhat disappointed on the perusal
of that document. It was supposed that Government
was in possession of papers of Frost, which were seized
at the time of his arrest, and of which the contents
never were made public, that would have thrown
some light on the origin of the treason, and the pro-
ceedings of one or more of the leading conspi-
rators previously to the fatal 4th of November.
Nothing that was not previously known appears upon
the face of the indictment. The overt acts of treason
charged in the indictment are only such as were pre-
viously known to the public. In the first count, stripped
of all its technicalities, the levying war on the Queen
in her realm is the treason charged, with the mode and
the means by which the war was levied—viz., the
marching in battle array ; the seizing arms, ci.c.; the
f orcing divers liege subjects (f the Queen to join them
in such treasonable enterprise ; and, finally, their at-
tack on the Westgate Hotel, in Newport, and the firing
on the Magistrates and the Queen's troops with intent
to destroy the Government and Constitution of the
realm as by law established. In the second count the
overt act of levying war on the Queen in her realm is
stated, without describing the mode or means by which
the levying war was effected. In the third count the
treason is laid to consist in the compassing and ima-
gining to depose the Queen, of which the overt acts laid
are the attempting in a hostile manner to get possession
of the town of Newport, and to cut off the communica-
tion with the surrounding country, by seizing
her Majesty's mail, &c.,—the assembling and
conspiring to attack and fight with the Queen's troops
—to attack and obstruct the Queen's justices—to stir
up, make, and levy insurrection, rebellion, and war,
against our Lady the Queen, in her realm, and to sub-
vert and destroy the Constitution and Government of the
realm as by law established, and to alter and change the
laws of the realm by force. In the same count other overt
acts of the treasonable intention to depose the Queen are
set forth, such as purchasing and procuring large quan-
titles of arms, &c., with intent to array themselves and
other false traitors to fight against the Queen's soldiers,
and to subvert the Government, &c. ; the marching in
hostile array through the public highways, towns, and
villages in the county of Monmouth ; the attacking and
besetting the houses of the Queen's liege sub-
jects, and forcing several of the said liege sub-
jects to leave their houses and march along with
them ; the seizing divers quantities of arms v;ith intent
to fight with and kill the Queen's troops, and to raise
and levy
dleyy insurrection, &c. The atte.ek on the West-
forchHin ottehl,ewiiirtsht all the cisirchuemrestarne
andactuai?lnale:iyniinnggg ivtt
to r pceesa,tentsl,t technically n iaclaslol
the
(Lis asan overt act of compassing
count the treason is elapiodseas the Qte n
an in t
0I
Inc
vtyh
we
rfourth
uiedein
the overt acts to prove that stated to be,
the assembling and conspiring together
are
to take
sion of the town of Newport and of the Post-offiPeco,snsensd.
to cut off all communication with the rest of the king
dom,—the assembling, conspiring, and consulting to
attack the soldiers of the Queen, and the Magistrates,

and to stir up, raise, and levy insurrection, &c.—the '
purchasing and providin; large quantities of arms, am-
munition, &c., in order to carry into effect the aforesaid
objects—the seizing guns, pistols, &c., from liege sub-
jects of the Queen, with intent to fight and attack
the soldiers—the marching into Newport in hostile
array—the attacking the Westgate Hotel, and firing
on the soldiers and Magistrates ; and finally, the actual
levying war is laid in this count in the same words as
in the second count ; but there it is laid as a substan-
tive act of treason, while here it is laid as an overt act of
treason only, to prove the main allegation of intending
to levy rear. Now, neither in the two counts which
charge the treason as consisting in "levying war on the
Queen in her realm," nor in the other two counts which
charge the treason to consist in "compassing and
imagining to depose the Queen," are any overt acts laid
to prove either of these treasonable intentions, but such
as the public were already aware of, and which are all
resolvable into the one overt act of teeing war by march-
ing nprm the town of Newport and attacking the Queen's
troops there. Consequently nothing that happened
connected with this treason earlier than the 4th of
November is brought under the cognisance of the Court
by this indictment ; for of no overt acts can the Crown
give evidence but such as are laid in the indictment.
What then becomes of all that took place previously
to the 4th of November, as to the previous getting up,
arrangement, and organization of the treason and rebel
lion ? Nothing of it all is inquirable into before the
Court and Jury appointed to try the persons indicted
for the treason. In order, then, to come at any know-
ledge of the manner in which this enormous wickedness
against the Crown and society was prepared, and the
means by which it ripened from intention into act, re-
course must be had, as we long ago stated, to a Par-
liamentary Inquiry. The public have a right to such
an inquiry, and we hope the nation will demand it. If
the papers of Frost which have been seized, and the
contents of which have been hitherto kept a profound
secret, were of a treasonable nature, those very docu-
ments might be laid as overt acts to prove the treasonable
intention, on the principle scribere est agere, that Is, if
written in furtherance of the treasonable design ; for if
only speculative, however objectionable in other.respects
they might be, they would not be legally chargeable as
acts of treason, although a different doctrine was held
in the case of Algernon Sydney, and in that of
Peachum, the preacher ; but the law, as laid down in
Sydney's case, has long since been held, not only bad,
but execrable, and the solemn reversal of the attainder of
that murdered man, by Parliament, has consigned the pre-
cedent, as history has the memory of his murderers, not
to oblivion, for that is impossible, but to imperishable in-
famy. As none of the written papers which were seized
in Frost's house have been laid as overt acts of the pre-
viously formed design to depose the Queen, charged in
the indictment, we are bound to believe that they have
no reference to any such treasonable design, and that,
as far as the specific acts of treason charged are con-
cerned, they arc perfectiy innocent documents. Still,
we trust, if not produced on the trial, they will be called
for in Parliament,—where Lord John Russell must be
prepared to answer why;ln the first place, he made
Frost a Magistrate, under the extraordinary circum-
stances which attended that appointment, and why, in
the next place, he, as the Home Secretary up to a re-
cent period, or Lord Normanhy, his successor, had no
more knowledge of a rebellion being preparing in South
Wales than Lord Durham had of the organization of
a second civil war in Canada, while parading the country
with all the pomp of oriental despotism, spreading his
peacock plumage to the sun, and boasting that he
had effeetteally crushed the seeds of insurrection,
though events showed that he had been sowing the dra-
gon's teeth, that were soon to spring into armed men.
lf, indeed, the Executive Government (lid receive
timely information of the ripening rebellion long before
the 4th of November, and still allowed that rebellion
to be matured, by whomsoever originally concocted,
until it drenched the streets of Newport in blood, the
members of that Government would be the real erimi.
oafs. We will not prejudge any of the accused now
about to take their trial, but will only observe that if
Frost. and his fellow prisoners were proved to have been
guilty of all that is charged in the indictment, their
guilt would be still inferior to that of a Government
which could look at such preparations for civil war, and
allow preventive laws to sleep until rebellion rained
blood upon an unsuspecting community. If, on
the other hand, Government was as profoundly un-
conscious of the treason which must have been long
preparing, and in which thousands of deluded men were
concerned, as Sir John Campbell, when he boasted at
Edinburgh that Chartism had been put down without
one drop of blood (he forgot the bloodshed of the Bull-
ring), their ignorance would be almost as criminal as a
conniving knowledge. It is just one of those cases in
which the great Whig leader, Fox, told Lord North
that " ignorance in a Minister was a crime of the first
magnitude." If Government knew of the intended re-
bellion beforehand, and took not the necessary and
lawful means to prevent it, they are guilty of misprision
of treason. If they knew nothing whatever of it until
the fatal explosion took place, they have shown almost
more than in any other instance their utter incapacity
to govern. In either case the conduct of the Queen's
Ministers touching the design to depose her Majesty,
is, as well as the origin of the treason, fit subject for a
Parliamentary investigation.

(From the Morning Advertiser.)
While slandering their Queen to an unutterable ex-
tent of calumny, the Tories evince a most morbid
sensibility of any unfavourable allusion to the Church
or its dignitaries. All imputations, however gross or
infamous, against the Sovereign—whose only or gravest
fault appears to be a wish to afford a favourable consi-
deration to the claims of the people over whom she is
called to preside—are received with rapturous acelama-
Ftion ; but the slightest inculpatory allusion against the
Church or its pastors—whose ministry is perhaps most
keenly felt in the exactions levied from a dissentient
people—is regarded as a trebly-dyed atrocity. As an
instance of this perverse obliquity of vision, or crimi-
nality of purpose, we may refer to the Times of yes-
terday, which, though it had either applauded or at-
tempted to qualify the most disgusting charges against
the Queen, waxed wondrously wroth at the public ex-
pression of indignation against her Majesty's maligners,
of whom the foremost and most vituperative were the
reverend revilers of the Established Church. Through
their great conduit of infamous invective the Tories
thus allude to those who dared to express a frank and
free opinion of the Church and Bishops :
" With the unhallowed purpose of involving those emi-
nent persons in public obloquy, they have been variously
and pertinaciously maligned, as the determined abettors
of corruption, as the relentless persecutors of Dissent, as
the enemies of popular education, es the sycophants of
political intrigue, as mere luxurious sinecurists, and we
know not what besides; but especially as the opponents of
every legislative improvement, and, still more, as the de-
fenders of every ecclesiastical abuse. The licensed
hawkers of these wholesale calumnies consist chiefly of in-
fidel Whigs, Popish indulgence-mongers, rancorous secta-
rian preachers, Church-rate contessors of the John
Thorogood school, together with the accomplished artists
who fabricate, as ordered. the morning and evening scur-
rilities of the Melbourne Press.

" That the vile venom of infidels and Papists should be
habitually vomited at an order of men who, more than any
other, have so exposed their respective systems of licen-
tiousness and imposture as to have left them without a
rag to cover their naked infamy, cannot be matter of sur-
prise to any one."
In the foregoing terse tirade there is a text for volumes,
but as our space is limited, we shall nail our Contem-
porary to his own statement of the case, and first call
upon him to prove, if he can, the negative of the follow-
ing queries :—Are not the bishops and clergymen of
the Church of England the determined abettors of
corruption ? The relentless persecutors of Dissent ?
The enemies of popular educcion ? The sycophants
of political intrigue ? Mere luxurious sinecurists
The opponents of every legislative improvement ? The
defenders of every ecclesiastical abuse ? With the ex-
perience of the last few years, independently of the
testimony which centuries have id:forded against ascen-
dant Churches, who, save the Times and the Tories,
would dare to answer one of these queries by a negative.
In thus challenging inquiry, the rimes has left the
Churchmen—to use its own powerful language—" with-
out a rag to cover their naked infamy." The exhibition
is too gross to need or even admit of any commentary
in its exposure ; we shall, therefore, for the present
leave the spiritual pastors of the Church to the degrad-
ing scrutir,y which their trumpeter has challenged for
them.

(Prom the ~:liforling Past.)
The following statement, upon the accuracy of which
the public may confidently rely, affords a striking illus-
tration of the industry, zeal, and success with which
Chartist principles have been diffused, and the Chartist
organisation established among the labouring population
of Great Britain, None of our readers can have for-
gotten the conviction and transportation of the Dorches-
ter labourers, or the crime (that of administering un-
lawful oaths for seditious or treasonable purposes) for
which they were consigned to this punishment, after a
trial at which Mr. Baron Williams, a Judge whose libe-
ralism had been the cause of his elevation to the Bench,
presided. As little can the circumstances under which
these persons returned to this country have faded from
recollection. The walls of the House of Commons had
revethcreted loud and violent invectives against the
Wtr* • , d
Ica.Government for having permitted the
tawlilt to take its course in respect to offenders
of principles and habits so coligeoial to itS'
The Ministers of the Crown, unfortunately, could
not but feel the sting of such a reproach. But
in addition to this they are threatened with the loss of
some of the votes of the Radical party in the House
they
so irreproachable, or so Cl(-
Y
tonfe
fIC
oo mt.
am Commons
moral f tchh persisted in dealing hardly with
vated, rather, in liberal estimation that the gravest
charge against them was the administration of unlawful
oaths for treasonable or seditious purposes. The latter
argument was irresistible. Ministers could not fford
the loss with which they were threatened—the loss of
some half dozen Radical votes. The Dorchester la-
bourers were accordingly pardoned, and brought back
to England from the penal colony to which they had
been sent. That they were pardoned and brought
back contrary to the deliberate judgment of the Execu-