The Sun.
London, England, 1853-01-28 00:00:00

DAILY WEATHER T.4BLL.

FRIDAY, JAN. 28, 1853.
State of the wind and weather at each of the following
places at nine o'clock yesterday morning. The stations
are arranged in order of latitude.
HASTINGS—N.E., gentle breeze—overcast.
FOLKESTONE—N.E., fresh breeze—cloudy with rain.
TUNBRIDGE—N.W., calm—overcast.
GREENWlCH—Calm—partially cloudy.
STROOD—N.E., gentle breeze—overcast.
LEIGHTON—N.E., calm—partially cloudy.
CAMBRIDGE—N., gentle breeze—partially cloudy.
YARMOUTH— E., gentle breeze—partially cloudy.
The returns from the following places indicate the state
of the weather on Wednesday morning at nine o'clock :
LIMERICK—s., calm—overcast.
MULLINGAR— E., calm—overcast.
YARMoUTH—S.E., gentle breeze—overcast.
LANCASTER—N., strong breeze—partially cloudy.
WinTsv—Calm—foggy.
SHAP—S.E., calm—overcast.

THE •WEATHER.-Sur OFFICE, JAN. 28.
THERMOMETER, IN THE SHADE.

36—highest since noon yesterday.
30—lowest this morning and during the night.
33—this day, at noon.

BAROMETER, 29.82.
WIND, N.E.—Cloudy, with slight breeze. We had a
eavy shower last evening.

eg

ATLB

..."... AU,

LONDON, FRIDAY, JAITIITARY 28, 1853.

Quibbles are already heard in one or two quar-
ters, in anstver (save the mark !) to that pamphlet
of Mr: COI3DEN'S, the argument of which is as clear
as a mathematical demonstration. Well, quibbles
are the only things that can be brought to bear
upon the question of the still obdurate, though long
obsolete, apologists of the twenty-two years' war
against the French revolution. It may be worth
while, therefore, considering some of them in de-
tail, as they appear, and treating them succinctly
in the way of exposure. An illustration
may at once be afforded of the shuffling
insincerity evinced upon this subject by
those who applaud as just, and as, indeed,
inevitable, the last struggle against France and
England—the struggle beginning in 1793, and end-
ing in 1815, a struggle which saddled England
with a debt of 500,000,0001. sterling, and France
with an old Bourbon Sovereign—France having
shaken off the Sovereign since then, and not only
the Sovereign, but both the elder and the'younger
branch of the worn-out dynasty, but England not
having, by any means, yet shaken off the debt !
The illustration is one, it must be confessed,
somewhat remarkable in its character. It has
taken some little time, it would seem, to pre-
pare it ; for already this is our third day's
reference to the brochure of the Honourable
Gentleman the Member for the West Riding
of Yorkshire, and yet it was only this
morning that the first allusion to the pamphlet
(an allusion containing the quibble about to be
referred to) was made in the columns of our chief
morning contemporary. Remember, therefore,
that the quibble is not lightly advanced by the
Times—it is only advanced, it would appear, after
mature and lengthened deliberation. It is this.
Mr. COBDEN is admitted, " for the sake of argu-
ment" (of course only "for the sake of argument"),
to be correct in asserting that the rupture of 1793
was " our own doing exclusively," that Englp,nd,
in short, was the aggressor—BUT—the other war,
the war which ensued a little later, meaning, of
course, the war which followed the rupture of the
Treaty of Amiens, was a war in which England
stood simply on the defensive—a war in which the
aggressor was France, or rather the chieftain of
Franca—NAPOLEON. Now, this is the quibble.
We have read Mr. COBDEN'S pamphlet very erro-
neously, if his argument does not go to show that
the crime of the whole struggle, not the contest of
the first eight or ten years, but of the whole
twenty-two years, beginning' with 1793 and ending
with 1815, devolves solely and directly upon the
British GoTernment. We have read history very
mistakingly, if it does not prove this as clearly as
any one of the rudiments of arithmetic, or as anyone
of the elementary truths of natural philosophy.
It is the merest evasion to take Mr. COBDMi'S ar-
gument as applying simply to the contest prior to
the Treaty of Amiens, instead of to the whole of
the struggle from first, to last, from Lours XVl.'s
execution to NApoi,toN I.'s avowed and final abdi-
cation. The pamphlet asserts this plainly enough
throughout. The pamphleteer speaks over and
over again of the twenty-two years' war, not of
the nine years' war, but of the war up to
the night of the battle of 'Waterloo. England
is shown by Mr. COBDEN, is proved by history,
to have been guilty, before Got. and man, of
the enormous crime of provoking that struggle
against the French Revolution. Here, however,
in that very phrase—the "war against the French
Revolution."
—is discoverable the germ of the
prevarication. It is objected, that up to the
it was, if you will, a war
Treaty of Amiens,
against the French Revolution, but that after-
wards it was a war against—NAPOLEON. What
miserable quibbling indeed is this ? Why, the
struggle was renewed against NAPOLEON—siMpIy
because he was the incarnation or representative
of the Revolution, the child born of it, the hero
who reduced it to order, and therefore made it
really formidable. It is merely begging the
question, consequently, to maintain that the
contest which followed the rupture of the Treaty
of Amiens was a war against NAPOLEON, and not
a war against the Revolution. The struggle both
before and after was identical—and what history
proves is this, that throughout, from 1793 to
1815, during the whole of those two-and-twenty
years the crime of the War rested with England,
because England was the Agg,ressor.
It must be confessed that Mr. COBDEN has in a
measure laid himself open in. his pamphlet to this

quibble or prevarication. He contents himself
with demonstrating most elaborately and logically
that the rupture of 1793 was attributable, not to the
French, but to the English Government. He does it
in a most masterly manner—setting facts in such
a way as to render them altogether incontroverti-
ble. He sets out, as we remarked yesterday, by
asserting most earnestly—" It is not enough to
say that France did yot provoke hostilities—she
all but went down on her knees (if I may apply
such a phrase to a nation) to avert a rupture
with this country." In testimony of this, Mr.
COBDMT describes the whole of the conduct and
treatment—the conciliatory conduct, the harsh,
repelling, and even ignominious treatment—of
M. CHAIrVELIN, the French Ambassador. He
mentions the indefatigable endeavours made
by that diplomatist, to guard against any
rupture between his own and the British
Government--together with the haughty, and,
at last, insolent rebuffs given to him by the then
Foreign Secretary, Lord GRENVILLE. He recounts
the correspondence between Lord GRENVILLE and
M. CIIAIIVELIN, up to the 24th January, 1793,
when the latter received the peremptory order of
the Privy Council, requiring him within eight
days to quit the shores of England. So far Mr.
COBDEN justifies to the full, his strong but not
extravagant assertion, that France (to use his own
phrase) " all but went down upon her knees to
avert a rupture with this country." But he con-
tents himselfwith this when he might have gone fur-
ther—little dreaming, possibly, of the wretched
little quibble by which the whole of his power-
ful argument might be evaded—the quibble
that the war was not the same war during the
whole of the twenty-two years from 1793 to
1815, for that after the Treaty of Amiens it was
a war against NAPOLEON, and not against the
French Revolution. We say that had Mr. COB-
DEN anticipated this most frivolous objection to
the continuity of his argument, he might have
gone further, instead of contenting himself with des-
cribing the conduct and treatment of M. CHAIIVELIN.
He might have accepted, "for the sake of argu-
ment," the distinction without a difference of a
war against NAPOLEON in lieu of a war against
the Revolution, and might have proved as
clearly and as logically as in the insta nc
of the original rupture of 1793, that England
was systematically the aggressor, the fomenter,
the sustainer of the quarrel throughout. What
are those three facts glaring upon us so reproach-
fully from the scroll of the Past, the records of
that age of blood and disaster ? They are visible to
every eye—those who " run may read"--they are
three documents, documents from no obscure
hand, documents penned by NAPOLEON, the Con-
queror of almost all the great powers of Chris-
tendom. Those documents are letters addressed
by that great man, upon three very momentous
occasions, to the Royal personage at the head of
the British Government. Two of them were ad-
dressed to the KING, the other to the PRINCE
REGENT. The two first were appeals made
by NAPOLEON to England, appeals in the name of
huinanity that the war might cease—the earliest
of these appeals was forwarded to the Court of
St. James's, when the great French chieftain was
elected First Consul, the second, when his autho-
rity was rendered permanent. Observe ! so
deeply was NAPOLEON interested in pressing his
demand upon the attention of this country, that
he broke through the rules of diplomatic etiquette,
and personally addressed himself to the English
SOVEREIGN. The third document we are all of
us familiar with that Letter to the PRINCE
REGENT, in which the great EMPEROR likened
himself to THEMISTOCLES, and in which *he
appealed not to our humanity but to
There is something de-
our magnanimity.
plorably "in keeping "in the result of all
those communications. It is not sufficiently
borne in mind in this country, and may here not
unprofitably be recalled to the popular
recollection. Not one of these three let-
ters was ever even answered. Courtesy, to
speak of no other consideration, might have
dictated some response, no matter how evasive,
from the hand of the KING or of the PRINCE
REGENT. But no, there they remain, those
three documents, flaming reproach from the
scroll of history—unanswered ! Were we wrong,
therefore, in saying that Mr. COBDEN might
had he listed, have gone yet further in his argu-
ment ? But, Heaven knows, he went far enough
in the melancholy record of those atrocious wars
—demonstrating as plainly as any fact can by
possibility be demonstrated, that-from first to last,
throughout the whole of those twenty-two years,
from 1793 to 1815, England was systematically
the aggressor—and the aggressor because France
had declared for freedom of opinion, and the
principle of equality, and the right of self-govern
ment.

We yesterday pointed out how it was that the
retail trade in beer was practically vested in the
Ale-kings by means of the licensing system, and
that any person who, despite the numerous impe-
diments in his way, succeeded in opening a free
public-house was either crushed or bought off,
according to his circumstances. The " unlimited
competition," the propriety and expediency whereof
has been admitted by nine-tenths of the members
of the popular branch of the Legislature, and by
even a larger proportion of the community in gene-
ral, was thus effectually prevented, and the
" thirsty souls" of every district were thus com-
pelled to draw their supplies from the stores
of the great monopolists, at any prices which they
thought proper to demand. Hence it is, that no
matter how the price of barley may vary, the
charges for its liquid extracts remain un-
altered. A reduction in price of twenty
or thirty per cent. does not in any degree affect

the consumer—its only effect is to enhance the
previously inordinate profits of the brewer.

Another evil of the system is, that it leads, in
too many instances, to the adulteration or dilution
of the beverage. The moment a public-house falls
into the hands of one of the great firms, the oc-
cupant for the time being must submit to a com-
plicated and stringent code of rules and regula-
tions. He is no longer his own master. Any
disobedience may be severely punished. He
must not only purchase all his supplies from his
landlord's brewery, but the rate at which he is to
retail it is also specified ; and between the two
regulations, unable to gain a fair and remunerative
profit if he distribute the beer in the same condi-

tion in which he receives it into his cellars, in
self-defence he is obliged to tamper with his stock.
To be enabled to live he must sell out of
each cask many more gallons than it originally
contained, and thus the consumer again suffers
from the virtual monopoly—the deterioration in
quality being even a greater grievance than the
increase in price.

It may be said that the evil is more apparent
than real—that there is nothing to prevent any
capitalist from entering into .the brewing trade,
and that if he supply a superior article at a mo-
derate charge, he may confidently rely on public
support. Never was there a greater fallacy. No
matter how sound and palatable may be his beer,
or low its cost, he cannot find customers amongst
those who, by the primary condition of their
leases, are bound to draw all their supplies from
an exclusive source ; and it would take much time
and expense before he could establish a private
connexion that would render his establishment
remunerative. It may be said that good ale, like
" good wine, needs no bush" ; but if there
be no place where it can be obtained, either with
or Without " a bush," the adage falls to the
gr'aund. The licensing system prevents it being
sold under a bush, because the magistrates will
not allow the new brewer to open a house for the
sale of his beverages if the number previously
licensed were in their opinion sufficient for all the
wants of the district. It matters not how unex-
ceptionable the character of the occupant, or un-
equivocal his testimonials, the invariable rule is
appealed to. No more than two or three houses
will be tolerated, and nothing can shake the
magisterial determination. On the other hand,
the activity of the police effectually prevent the
ity
considerable quantity being sold
witshsiobi
" a bush," or, in other words, in an polilt of any
un-
licensed house.

Again, it may be said that licences may be et-