The Sun.
London, England, 1838-04-20 00:00:00

3PM:I T OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

In continuation of the interesting narrative, laid before
our readers yesterday, of the gallant enterprise by which
the question of the north-west passage around the continent
of America has been determined, we are now enabled to
publish the instructions under which the discovering party
proceeded, and under which they are to continue their
arduons expedition, for the completion of the survey of the
North American coast to the eastward, from the Copper-
mine River to some part of Hudson's Bay. That completion
will be highly interesting, as connecting the discoveries
and observations of Captains Parry, Franklin, and Back,
as well as determining whether Captain Ross's "Boothia
Felix" is a peninsula or an island ; but, looking on the
chart at the position of Parry's " Melville Island" and
Franklin's " Point Turnagain," there can be no doubt
of a communication by sea, whether navigable or not, ex-
isting from Baffin's Bay to the westward of these points ;
and therefore we consider that although the whole of
the northern coast of the American continent has not
yet been actually surveyed, yet that, by connecting the sur-
veys of Captains Franklin and Beechey, or, in other words,
completing the survey of the coast from Behring's Strait to
Mackenzie's River, the question of the long-sought north-
west passage is at length determined. As to any national
or commercial advantages from this discovery, we see none ;
and knowing, as we did previously, that the American Con-
tinent extened northward to the latitude of about 70 deg.,
it was obviously impossible to expect any different results
in these respects ; but as an object of scientific research,
the north-west passage has been considered of sufficient
importance to have caused various national expeditions to
be fitted out, and employed, by Russia as well as England,
for accomplishing the object which has finally been effected
under the auspices of the British Hudson's Bay Company ;
so that, although Russia may, under the treaty with that
power, claim the sovereignty of the coasts surveyed by
Messrs. Deese and Simpson, yet the credit of the dis-
covery and the survey belongs to England. We beg to
refer to the " Instructions" contained in another column, as
an instance of the governing authorities of a trading Com-
pany manifesting great knowledge, clear foresight, and
sound judgment in framing the orders issued to their
officers, which are highly creditable to the Governor and
Committee, as well as to the local Governor, Mr. Simpson,
by whom the instructions were issued. As to the expense
of the expedition, although it must have been considerable,
yet, considering that the Company was established for the
purpose, among others, of making discoveries in the terri-
tories granted to them, and in the adjoining countries of
America, the credit due to them on that score is only that
of performing the duty under which their charter was ori-
ginally granted, although in these days it is something for a
prosperous and wealthy Corporation to remember or to pay
much attention to the objects for which it was originally
established, and that credit is certainly due to the Hud-
son's Bay Company.-21forning Chronicle.
The proceedings in the Court of Queen's Bench on
Wednesday, reported in our paper of yesterday, have an in-
terest which goes far beyond the question of injury between
the plaintiff and defender-it. With that question we have,
in its present stage, no right, as we have no wish, to inter-
fere. Our object in adverting to these proceedings is to
make some remarks upon the light which was thrown, by
the affidavit read in Court, upon the conduct of her Royal
Highness the Duchess of Kent. Our readers are aware
that on more than one occasion that conduct has been
made the subject of virulent commentary which we have
felt it our duty to expose to the scorn which it merited.
Whether the feeling which prompted us to defend her
Royal Highness, or that which promptedothers to make that
illustrious Lady the subject of virulent attack, were the
more honourable feeling, we must leave the public to deter-
mine ; but we may fearlessly appeal to the affidavit
now filed in the Court of Queen's Bench, as a posi-
tive proof that our information was more correct than that of
the Contemporaries with whom we differed. We believe
it is the custom of Whig-Radicals and other half-informed
persons in society, to speak of the persecution of the Du-;
chess of Kent as a part of the tactics of the Conservative,
party. This is a vulgar error gathered from coarse News-
papers. The Conservative party have, we believe, no
reason to look upon her Royal Highness as their friend,
but they feel towards her that respect which is due to her
exalted station, combined with no slight warmth of grati-
tude for the extreme pains which it is certain she bestowed
upon so educating her daughter as to make her worthy, not
only of the loyalty, but the love of the British Empire.
That her Royal Highness has been attacked in Newspa-
pers which at present profess a great regard for the Con-
servative cause, we grant—but these Newspapers ought
not be considered as speaking the sentiments of
the Conservative party. When it was more gain-
ful to be revolutionary, they advocated the wildest ex-
cesses of revolutionary intemperance, and if we may judge
from their occasional violence, which seems to have neither•
princip!e for its foundation nor justice for its object, they
would be revolutionary again if that should become the
whining side. Should popular rage again become all-pre-
dominant in this country, as it was six years ago, they who
have put trust in the Conservatism of these newspapers
will find that they have trusted to a reed, which, breaking,
will pierce the hand that has leaned upon it for support.
We repeat that it is merely a vulgar error to suppose that
the attacks upon one who, from her sex, her station, and
her conduct, it is cruel and unmanly to attack, have pro-
ceeded from the Conservative party. There is no legitimate
ground for political hostility to her Royal Highness,
the mother of the Queen. Intimately connected as
her
Royal Highness is with the Sovereign, she has
no political character in this country. We acknow-
ledge a party hostility to her brother-in-law, the Duke of
Sussex, because he is a Memberof the House of Peers, and
in that capacity gives his aid to those whose conduct tends
to undermine the institutions upon which we believe the
stability of the Throne itself to depend. But the Duchess
of Kent has no political position. She might indeed—had
William the Fourth not survived until last May—have
been the Regent of these kingdoms with all the powers of a
temporary sovereignty, and that in virtue of a law proposed
and carried by a Conservative Administration ; but in that
position the principles of law, as well as the sentiments of
loyalty and courtesy, which attribute no wrong to the sove-
reign authority, would then also have made party hostility
inapplicable to .her. To return, to the affidavit in the
Court of Queen's Bench. It appears from thence—divesting
it of its legal technicalities—that the Duke of Kent died in
1820, leaving his affairs in a most embarrassed conditiOn.
Her Royal Highness, his widow, had no fortune of her
Own, and with her child, the present Queen of these realms,
was wholly dependent upon her allowance from the Consoli-
dated Fund of 8,000/. a-year. But the very necessaries to
her Royal Highness's condition in life, which had belonged
to her deceased husband, were her's no longer. They
became the property of the Duke's creditors, and
she surrendered all, even to the furniture of the
Royal apartments in Kensington Palace. She—the
widow of a Prince of the Blood Royal—was left to
begin the world as it were, in England, not only without a
shilling of present property, but with the difficulticsof bank-
ruptcy crowding upon the gloom of the chamber of death.
Against all this, under good advice, her Royal Highness ap-
pears to have successfully struggled. She borrowed money
to buy in from the creditors of her late husband those
things which were absolutely the necessaries of her station
of life, and incurred a debt of 12,0001. From that time
until her Royal Highness's daughter became Heiress Pre-
sumptive to the Crown, she appears to have led a life ra-
ther of decent than of splendid privacy. Her debts did not
increase, but at the end of 1829 had diminished to 11,475/.
9s. 6d. After this time 10,000/. a-year was granted for the
support and education of the Princess Victoria ; but the
degree of public state which, on account of the position of
the-Princess and her future prospects, it was deemed ne-
cessary to keep up, rendered the addition of 10,000/. a-year
quite inadequate to the increased expense ; and at the ac-
cession of the Princess to the Throne, the debts of her:
Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent had accumu-
lated to 63,1951.35. The moment that Parliament granted,
to her Royal Highness an allowance of 30,0001. a-year, as
mother of the Queen she alienated 18,000/. a-year of it
for the purpose of paying off debts incurred in the bringing
up and education of the Queen, only reserving to herself
the right of reducing this 18,000/. a-year to 10,000/., in
the event of ceasing to reside with her Majesty. We ven-
ture to affirm that all this, instead of indicating anything
like extravagance or a waste of money upon any favourite,
will show to everybody conversant with the expenses of a
considerable household in London that the pecuniary affairs
of her Royal Highness must have been managed with sin-
gular skill and economy. Indeed, although her Royal
Highnesss political partialities may not be with the Con-
servatives, yet it would seem that, so far as Conservative
principles can be brought to bear in more limited concerns
than those of politics, they have been acted upon
by her Royal Highness. In the regularity and dis-
cipline of her household—in the strict arrangement of
duties—and the determination that they should be
strictly attended to, the proceedings of her Royal High-
ness have been, we believe, quite upon the Conservative
plan. And this it is, perhaps, which has provoked not a little
of that enmitywhich it is said the present Prime Minister of
her Majesty allows himself to cherish against her Majesty's
mother. The Noble Lord seems to have a constitutional
hatred of discipline ; deference to duty he appears to look
upon as a very vulgar virtue, and unsuited to such gay
philosophers as himself. It suits him better to make the
palace of his Sovereign a house of entertainment for him-
self, and to have it ordered after a fashion more agreeable
to him than that regularity which seems somehow or other
to be associated with gravity and forethought. 'We have I
no doubt the report is true that her Royal Highness the
mother of the Queen is not honoured with the particular
approbation of that gay and accomplished master of table'-
talk the First Lord of the Treasury ; but we do not think I

that the respect entertained for her Royal Highness by the
steady and thoughtful people of England will on that ac-
count be much lessened.—Morning Post..
It gives us much pleasure to announce that the Rev.
Dr. Chalmers is daily enpected in town, at the special re-
quest of " the Christian Influence Society," to deliver a
course of lectures "on the establishment and extension of
National Churches, as affording the only adequate ma-
chinery for the moral and religious instruction of the people."
That there is a good deal of misconception and ignorance
prevalent upon this important subject, even in quarters
where better things might be looked for, is painfully evi-
thnt, we do not say from the senseless and interested
jargon of your voluntary chapel-mongers, but, what is
worse, from the looseness and incongruity of the views
which are known to be extensively current upon the
Church question, both among her Majesty's present
Ministers, and also among many of their principal sup-
porters. Of this we had a curious specimen last year,
in the extraordinary proposal of Lord, Fitzwilliam, who,
though a great stickler for a Church Establishment
after his own fashion, ventured to recommend that
all sects should be invested with an equal and
indiscriminate right to conduct their worship at separate
hours i❑ the parish churches of the country. Of the crude
and licentious notions maintained respectively by Lord
Glenelg and Mr. Spring Rice on the subject of Church
establishments, we have abundant proof, both in the endow-
ment of Popish Bishops by the Colonial Office, and also in
the confused declamation against the principle of Church-
rates, whereby the Chancellor of the Exchequer introduced
his measure for their abolition. The monstrous jumble of
absurdities exhibited by Lord Melbourne in reply to Lord
Aberdeen's speech on the claims of the Scotch Church, and
which drew forth a dignified rebuke and refutation from
the Bishop of London, plainly shows that the ignorance of
the subordinate members of the Government is, if possible,
surpassed by that of their chief. Now, considering that it
is the special duty of these personages, as professors of
practical statesmanship, to be thoroughly conversant with
all the merits and relations of what may be justly deemed
the most important question of home policy, it can
scarcely be matter of surprise that among private indivi-
duals, having neither the same inducements nor obligations
to study it, there should prevail extensively a very partial
and superficial acquaintance with its real nature and bear-
ings. Whether we revert, therefore, to the necessity of
correcting the popular fallacies of the anti-establishment
party, or of arousing the more apathetic friends of the
Church to a sense of their duty, or of fortifying her at-
tached members with the strongest arguments for her de-
fence, we cannot but think that " the Christian Influence
Society" are conferring a signal benefit upon the public,
as well by the topics and the time which they have se-
lected for the introduction of this discussion, as by the
choice of the illustrious individual to whose genius they
have intrusted it. Of course it will not be imagined
that the forthcoming lectures have been determined on
in the idle hope that they are likely to be attended
or appreciated by her Majesty's Whig advisers. No
such expectation is entertained ; for although it be
true enough that Lord Shelburne, when in power,
did not disdain to take the financial counsels of Dr. Price,
there seems little reason to suppose that a modern Pre-
mier, whose name is identified with that Nobleman's rather
in rhyme than in reason, can muster sufficient magnanimity
to imitate such an example on a far more important sub-
ject, even though a greater than Dr. Price be ready at
hand to instruct him. Neither let it be supposed that the
lectures of Dr. Chalmers will involve, in the slightest de-
gree, a spirit of political partisanship, or any reflections on
the policy of Government in regard to Church extension.
The whole subject, as we are well assured, will be treated
by him in a tone of enlarged Christian philanthropy, apart
altogether from the petty jealousies of party strife. No
man in Europe is able to set it in a clearer or more at-
tractive light. The lectures will be delivered gratis in the
Hanover-square Rooms, commencing on Wednesday next.
We earnestly urge them upon the attention of such
Members of the Legislature as are neither indifferent
to the beauties of moral demonstration, nor foreclosed
against the processes of calm and candid inquiry. Tickets
of admission may be had, we believe, on application at the
rooms, the limited size of which renders it necessary to
confine the attendance exclusively to gentlemen. Indeed,
we consider the smallness of therooms a great disadvantage
to the general usefulness of the lectures. The fbilowing is a
syllabus of the topics to be treated of :
" 1. Statement of the question respecting a National Es-
tablishment of Christianity, and exposure of misconceptions
regarding it.

"2. Vindication of a National Religious Establishment, in
opposition to the reasonings and views of the economists.
"3. Vindication of a National Religious Establishment, in
opposition to the views of those who assert the sufficiency of
the voluntary principle.
" 4. On the circumstances which have determined Govern-
ment to select one denomination of Christianity for the Na
tional Religion.
" 5. On a Territorial Establishment, and the reasons of its
efficiency.

" 6. -Circumstances which justify a Government, that has
assumed one from among the several denominations of evan-
gelical Protestantism, for the National Establishment, in
abiding by the selection which it has made."—Times.

A paragraph which originally appeared in a London
weals' paper, has been copied into several of the daily prints,
as well as into the country papers. It is headed, " Important
to Farmers and Others," and states that, after the 6th of April,
" gigs on steel springs are liable to pay duty, and that those on
lancewood springs arc exempted." As the statement in this
paragraph is wholly erroneous, and has occasioned many inquiries
from different parts of the country, we are requested to give it
a contradiction. No change in the law has taken place such
as is alleged ; and neither the liability to duty, nor exemption
from it, depends in any degree on the circumstance whether
the gig be on metallic or lancewood springs. —Morn. Paper.
Yesterday forenoon the remains of Mr. Wm. Mason,
one of her Majesty's coachmen, who died on the 12th instant,
in the 65th year of his age, WVIV removed from his residence
in the Queen's Mews, Pimli.so, for interment in the burial
ground of the old church, Kensington. Mr. Mason had lived
in the service of the Royal family for near forty-eight years,
and was much respected by all ifs illustrious members. The
cavalcade consisted of a hearse drawn by four horses, and three
mourning coaches. Among the mourners who followed him to
his last resting place were Sir John Conroy, Mr. Edward Con-
roy, Mr. Chavasseaux, and other members of the Duchess of
Kent's establishment. Most of her Royal Highness's trades-
men, residents of Kensington, were also present.
PARISIAN HOSPITALS.—The budget of the hos-
pitals and asylums (hospices) of Paris for the year 1836
amounted to 18,000,000 f. (720,000/.) Of this the town
gave, as its ordinary contribution, 5,300,000 f. (212,0001.) The
tax upon theatres produced 660,000 f. (26,4000 The rest was
furnished by freehold property, the interest of money and
stock, and legacies. The average daily cost of a patient in
the hospitals is If. 67c. (16cie); but it varies extremely in
different ones. At. the Hotel Dieu the average is if. 62c.
(151 d.); at St. Louis 2f. ( Ind.); at the Cochin Hospital.
if. 90c. (18d.) ; at the Clinique, 2f. 75c. (2s. 2d.) In 1816
(1836 ?) 81,996 patients were admitted into the hospitals ;
and 13,320 persons were maintained in asylums. The mean
mortality of the hospitals is 1 in 11.—Gazette des Hospitaux.
The recent alteration made in the law of wills,
which came into operation at the end of last year, will be a
great benefit to the public. It simplifies the law, and applies
one principle of devising to all property. We cannot forget
that Sir Edward Sugden had the impertinence, because he
had not been consulted in drawing up the new Act, to pro-
pose, at the beginning of the Session, that the period of carry-
ing it into execution should be postponed, and the people de-
prived of its benefits, till he had had the opportunity of picking
holes in it. His lengthy orations were despised and laughed
at. The law took effect from the beginning of the year, and
several stationers, Mr. Boone amongst the rest, have judi-
ciously published will and codicil papers, which will enable the
people more readily to profit by the new Act. These papers
are accompanied by concise directions for using them, so as to
make it very easy for every man to make his own will, and
leave no man who can write an excuse for not performing that
duty, and saving expense to his family.
FRANKLIN'S VISIT TO EDINBURGH.—WhiIe in
Edinburgh he took occasion to visit one of the chief
printing offices in the town. In walking through the esta-
blishment, he entered into conversation with some of the
men, and was particularly pleased with the appearance
and character of a lad named Matthewson, who, to the
business of a printer, added that of a cutter and founder of
types. Matthewson had originally been a shepherd boy ;
but from his earliest years had shown a taste for reading,
and a turn for carving letters and figures. One day, while
attending his master's sheep, he was accidentally observed
by the Minister of the parish to be employing himself in
cutting some words on a block of wood, with a clasp knife.
The Clergyman was so pleased with the ingenuity of the
boy, that he interested himself in his fate, and sent him to
Edinburgh to pursue the profession of a printer, to which
his inclinations seemed to be bent. Shortly afterwards, he
began to make himself useful by cutting dies for types of a
particular description,' required by his employer, there
being no regular type-founder at the time in Edinburgh.
It was while thus engaged, that he attracted the attention
of Dr. Franklin, who, struck with his modesty and intelli-
gence, and hearing an excellent character of him from his
master, offered to take him to Philadelphia, and assist him
in the establishing of a foundry for the manufacture of
types. Young Matthewson was delighted with, and most
grateful for, the disinterested kindness of Franklin's offer ;
but, from some peculiar circumstances connected with his
situation, he was unable to take advantage of it. Mr. Ma-
thewson afterwards established 4 type-foundry in Edinburgh,
and died only a few years sines at an advanced age, univer-
sally esteemed as a tradesman and citizen. The fore-
going circumstances, relative to his early life arid interview
with Franklin, were communicated by himself a number of
years ago. Glasgow Chronicle.
It is stated in the York Papers that a meeting of
the inhabitants of Wetherby was held last week, to consider
whether the present chapel of ease in that town should be re-
paired or a new siee , a:.d that, the latter eon,
been assrst-d upon, •• subs, siption was " in
space of half an hour neuriy 1,0004 yytle collected. Wetherby
is by no means a large town.