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 ;
I but, blinded by bad passioi.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 Bother-
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 licentious press ; and,
for my 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 pursue
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 your 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 account.
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 a 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 strander 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 yeu 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 one
atom of truth. The humblest gentleman in England
may contemn and defy you.
MArrTrc 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 :
" Permit me to forward you a brief statement of the
facts of the case relating to the seizure of arms and war-
like stores at Rotherhithe.
"The premises and property alluded to belong solely
to my father (Mr. Hale), whose private residence is at
Chelsea, and not to M. Kossuth, as alleged by that des-
picable Austrian organ the Times newspaper. On Wed-
nesday evening last a superintendent of police (Evans by
name) came down to Rotherhithe with five or six men,
and took forcible possession of the premises, as also of a
cottage near by, in which one of my father's men resided,
producing, as their authority, a search-warrant. The
man hastened immediately up to Chelsea, to inform his
master of what had taken place. My father then has-
tened down to Rotherhithe, and, finding three men in
possession of his manufactory, demanded their autho-
rity. One of them coolly pulled from his bosom a staff.
Is that your only authority ?' demanded my father;
because, if so, I shall bundle you all out.' They
then told him they were acting under the orders of
Superintendent Evans, and that if (Mr. H.) went to
Wapping, the superintendent would explain it
all. My father then hastened to Wapping, but found
that Superintendant Evans was at Scotland-yard, to
which place he immediately went, and upon seeing the
superintendent, demanded of him the reason of the un-
pardonable outrage that had been committed (for I
should have stated that one of the men before alluded to
took away with him two of my father's rockets). The
superintendent referred him to Commissioner Maine.
He (Mr. H.) at once sent to the commissioner, request-
ing to know the reason of what had taken place. No
answer' was contemptuously sent as a reply.
" My father again appealed to the superintendent,
when he was informed that the Custom-house authori-
ties had reason to believe that Mr. Hale had more than
501bs. of gunpowder on his premises (501bs. being the
extreme quantity allowed by law within three miles of
London), and that a warrant had been obtained to search
them—the superintendent at the same time producing
the warrant, which was distinctly to search for gun-
powder. Mr. Hale then asked him why he still retained
possession of the premises, no gunpowder having been
found ; but no explanation could be got from him—while
another batch of men were sent down there, making al-
together six—in possession of the said premises ; and
they absolutely refused to allow anything to be taken
from the building. Next morning appears a leader in
the Times, stamping with ignominy Kossuth and his ad-
herents. Now Kossuth, so far from being connected
with the premises, has never entered them, and knew
nothing of the matter till the Times publicly slandered
him. Not one ounce of gunpowder was in the building,
and no arms of any kind, with the exception of rockets.
" I should here state that my father is a well-known
inventor, and has been, for some years past, engaged in
perfecting his newly-invented war-rocket, which rotates
on its axis like a rifle, and carries no stick. After an
outlay of 20,0001., and after numberless experiments had
been made, and those perfectly satisfactory, as can be
proved, and, finding that his own country only laughed
at him for his pains, he sold the patent to several foreign
powers—America,, Denmark, Switzerland, and others ;
but having a great number of rockets by him, he ear-
nestly appealed to this Government again and again to
purchase them, and also his invention. He met with
nothing but disdain from them.
" They now seize upon his place and his property, on
the pretence of searching for gunpowder, refusing to
allege any cause for doing so. The rockets in question
were manufactured upwards of three years ago. The
Government have been well aware of the existence of his
manufactory (which was formerly close to Woolwich
Arsenal), and also of the fact that he was possessed of
those rockets, and further, that they were intended by
him for the British Government.

kind, ' N `
eo gxcuepnpottwe
hedrroNa
evkestsfo;ud, and notLnordpalme an arm
rstonbolodf nylyaas.
serting that arms were found, and 500 lbs. of gunpowder,
which is a gross fabrication.
" Six men still occupy his premises, and others have
been sent to watch some premises belonging to him at
Chelsea. Mr. Duncombe intends to make it the subject
of inquiry in the House of Commons. My father has
determined, also, upon immediately taking legal pro-
ceedings against the Government, and some of our lead-
ing counsel will be retained to conduct his side of the
trial. I cannot but think it is a question which will
prove of no small moment to the present Government.
You are perfectly at liberty to make what use you like
of this information, which I have sketched out in great
haste.
"April 16th, 1853." ‘ WILLIAM HALE, jun.