The Sun.
London, England, 1853-04-18 00:00:00

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.

SIR,-It is written—whom the gods would destroy,
him they make mad. Your doom then seems inevit-
able ; for if an utter abandonment of the laws of mo-
rality, a reckless disregard of the laws of honour, a
desperate determination to court the contempt of your
countrymen—if these be symptoms of madness, then
are you mad, indeed—mad as moon can make you.
But the gods are guiltless of the act. The demons
have done it. Your own vile passions have crazed you.
Once more you have assailed M. Kossuth ; once more
you have shot your envenomed shaft ; and once more,
glancing back from the pure shield of that gentleman's
honour, your poisoned arrow has recoiled upon yourself.
Unscathed stands he. His escutcheon is unstained.
Even your foul ink has not soiled it. It is as pure as
ever ; spotless as the pinions of the swan, as the wing
of the wave- washed albatross. _

You have created an abysm of infamy. Into this you
designed to drive M. Kossuth. You essayed to push
him from the cliff. Headlong you rushed upon him ;
but, blinded by bad passiol.s, you missed your aim.
You have staggered over yourself; and your intended
victim stands triumphantly above you.
From the declarations of the gentleman himself, from
my own personal knowledge of facts, I pronounce your
whole statement regarding M. Kossuth and his Rother-
hithe arsenal, a web of wicked falsehoods. But the
cold-blooded audacity, the harlotic abandon, with which
you have uttered these falsehoods; and commented upon
them, are positively astounding. It is difficult to be-
lieve you in earnest ; and one is inclined to fancy you
the dupe of some gross deception.
But the palpable animus that guides your pen will not
permit this charitable construction, and we are prevented
from giving you even the benefit of a doubt. We have
no alternative but to believe you guilty, with deliberate
forethought, with "malice prepense."
But, Sir, if you are to be suffered to drag innocent
men from the privacy of their hearth—to charge them
with imaginary crimes—to support your charges with
not a shadow of evidence, but, upon the contrary, to
substitute coarse calumny, and vengeful vituperation
—if all this be permitted to you with impunity, it is
full time iwe nquire, in what consists English freedom?
There are tyrannies besides that of despotic Govern-
ments. There is the tyranny of a + eni _ours press ; and,
11. ~.,y part, I would rather submit me to the rule of
the sabre and the knout, than live at the mercy of a
conclave of dissipated adventurers who sneak around the
purlieus of Printing House-square.
I shall not condescend to repeat the slanders you
have lately uttered. lam saved the necessity of refut-
ing them. The pen and the tongue have already ac-
complished this. Higher names than mine have endorsed
the refutation. In the House of Commons, Duncombe,
Walmsley, Bright, and Dudley Stuart have nailed the
lie to the wall.
I know not what course M. Kossuth may puisue
towards you. Doubtless he may treat you with that dig-
nified silence he has hitherto observed. He can well
afford it. He need not fear to be silent. He shall not
lack defenders.
You may double ycrur staff of facile scribes, and arm
each of them with a plume plucked from the fetid wing
of the Austrian eagle. You will find among the cham-
pions of truth, brains as clear, and pens as clever as
your own ; and though you may stuff your columns
with wordy sophistry, it will be scattered like chaff be-
fore the heaven-born wind.
I repeat it, M. Kossuth can afford to treat you with
sublime silence ; but I, who am gifted neither with the
divine endurance nor Christian forbearance of that noble
man—l cannot help telling you the contempt I feel for
you and yours. I feel the paucity of language to ex-
press it, and I doubt not but that every Englishman
will experience a similar difficulty. True, we might get
over that by borrowing a little from your vocabulary,
but I shall not condescend to do so. Even now I feel
that I am sinking the gentleman, in coming thus forward
a second time to call you to aicount.
But as the citizen of a country by you disgraced—as
the friend of a man by you injured—l cannot submit
myself to silence. When you charge M. Kossuth and
other Hungarian leaders with a violation of our hospi-
tality, I cannot do otherwise than pronounce your
statements false. You perhaps do not know how much
you yourself are indebted to the high respect which these
gentlemen have for the laws of English hospitality. But
for that, Sir, I can assure you that you would long since
have been dragged from your incognito, and treated in
a manner I will not describe ; and although I for one
should not approve of such ti proceeding, I could not
deny that you have done all in your power to deserve
it. But if the laws of our country protect you, they
also protect the stranger from insult. The host has
duties as well as the guest, and may equally violate the
laws of hospitality. You, Sir, have been guilty of that
violation.

I call upon you, then, to make some atonement for the
wrong you have done, to apologise to the man you have
wronged—to your countrymen, whose honour you have
compromised, whose intelligence you have insulted. I
counsel you to this course, which you will find the most
prudent. Do not affect to despise my counsel. Do not
imagine, like Macbeth, that by " becoming worse," and
keeping up a meretricious swagger, you may extricate
yourself from your unhappy, position. This, be assured,
you can never do. Powerful as you fancy yourself, you
are not strong enough to defy public opinion. You may
flounce about the lobbies of a theatre- —you may frown
upon the manager and frighten the trembling debutante
—you may, now and then, make merit for yourself, by
holding up to public execration some unfortunate wretch,
who, having miscalculated the amount of black-mail, has
made you an inadequate offer ; but fancy not, for all
this, that you are omnipotent ; you cannot annihilate ono
atom of truth. The humblest gentleman in England
may contemn and defy you. _ _

_ .. .
MAYNE REID.
14, Alpha-road, Regent's-park, April 16.

The following letter from Mr. Hale, whose father is
the proprietor of the premises at Rotherhithe, in which,
it has been alleged, arms and munitions of war had been
discovered by the police, has been forwarded to several
of our Sunday contemporaries :

THE Sli ARE•MARKETS.

BRITISH RAILWAYS.

Closing Prices
this day.

29 - 30

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7i-- 6d
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3i -- 2id
103 -- 105
22
64*
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-- 64
22 -- 23

43 - 53pmi
8 - 9

5 - Oi
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621 -- 831
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13 131 p
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4 -- 4.1 d
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... -
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4 d
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d

17 19
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20. 214
754 76;
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4 4
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69 70
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-- 2 p
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lf -18 i
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1,1

1112 - 113

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61 74
LO6 —10 S
id i3/41)
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164'

- 4

10 -11

Da --13,1 xx
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h --ipxd

148 - 150
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1418 i
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par -- P

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191
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par i PI

:IGN.

3 3fr
101td
—6 p
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p
It 2,2

-- 1p
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71 - 81
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20
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64-- 5i p !
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1d -- par I
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2 ja 1 d

LINES LEASED AT FIXED RENTALS.

Leasing
Compans,

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