The Sun.
London, England, 1838-08-21 00:00:00

With the Morea and Greek islands we find that our
trade progressed during this period at a rate still more
rapid and enormous. -Lord Lyndhurst, before he concluded
his speech, was pleased incidentally to advert to the state
of our relations with Persia. We do not mean to deny the
prevalence of Russian influence in that country. But whose
is the fault ? Who permitted Russia, in 1826, towage war
with Persia, and make those conquests of territory that
have been confirmed by the treaty of Toushmantchay?
The Tories ; and to the Tories who permitted this is to be
ascribed the evil of whatever influence Russia enjoys in
Persia, and not to the Whigs, who have done much to
counteract it. We cannot take leave of this subject with-
out adverting to the glaring inconsistency into which the
Tories are betrayed by this mode of attack upon Ministers.
While they are daily making Parliament and the country
ring with accusations against the Government for its in ter-
ference in the affairs of other countries, in cases in which
our interference is in support of great national ob-
jects, in fulfilment of stipulations of treaties, and without
bringing us into war with any foreign power, they condemn
them for not interfering in quarrels with which we have
nothing to do, and in a case in which our unsolicited and
intrusive interference would have a direct tendency to in-
volve us in a dispute with a great and powerful state ! We
should doubtless be ready to break and fully able to cope
with France, if our interests or honour were attacked by
her ; but, at all events, let us not " in quarrels interpose"
without necessity. Far different, however, are the views of
the non-interfering Tories. They would just involve us in
meddling quarrels with all the world. According to Lord
Lyndhurst's system of policy, we ought at this moment to
be at war with Russia, about Circassia and Poland ; with
all Germany, about Cracow and the Commercial League ;
with France, about Algiers ; and if Lord Lyndhurst had
not some remnant of filial affection for the land of his
birth, he would probably have also found out sonic equally
sufficient reason for setting us at loggerheads with the United
States I—Morning Chronicle.
We have just received a Report of the Committee of
Management of the Association for the Promotion of the
Fine Arts, called the " Art-Union of London," for the
year 1837-8. It will be recollected that we did our ut-
most to recommend the establishment of these Art-Unions
(previously established in Germany) as advantageous auxi-
laries and accessories to the Government School of Design
established at Somerset House, the necessity of which,
with reference to foreign trade, we urged upon the notice
of the Government long previous to its institution. We
supported both principally in consequence of the irresis-
tible mass of convincing evidence brought before the
" Select Committee of Arts and Manufactures," proving
the great inferiority of the staple manufactures of this
country in taste of design, in consequence of the un-
educated condition of the great body of artisans em-
ployed in those manufactures, and the consequent
depreciation of the commercial reputation, and of the
financial profits of the country. Under these circum-
stances we feel a peculiar gratification in calling the
public attention to the report of the London Art-Union—
from which it appears it is going on in a prosperous man-
ner, and that there is not only a well-founded hope that it
will directly accomplish its own local object of tasteful dif-
fusion, but that it will also do much good indirectly,
through stimulaling by its example the establishment of
other and corresponding Art-Unions throughout the pro-
vincial districts of the country. The names of the Com-
mittee alone supply pledge that whatever good is derivable
from these institutions—as far as regards that desideratum,
the " Education of the Public Eye"—will be accomplished
untl:...r their superintendence and auspices. Among them
Win. Ewart, Esq., ex-M.P. for Liver-
are the names of
pool ; B. Hawes, Esq,, M.P. ; John I. Briscoe, Esq., M.P.,
Sir B. Hall, M.P. ; and H. T. Hope, Esq., M.P.—names
which require no comment, as honourably connected with
every branch of public education. We extract the follow-
ing bi ief passages from the report :
" The ' Art-Union' was established last year, for the pur-
pose of extet.ding the taste for the Fine Arts, and of increasi..g
the encouragement afforded to artists. During the brief ve•
riod in %Inch it h
as h:'en in operation it has purchas d
twenty-eight pictures and drawings from the various public
ex.nib,tions, at an aqgregate price of upwards of 1,000
guineas, beside setting apart a portion of its funds for the pur-
pose' of erg,raviing (exclusively for its members) one of the
pictures so purchased.
" The claims of this institution may be reseed on three dis-
tinct grounds :—the first, that there is a large class of persons
much impressed with the importance of the Fine Arts, and
desirous to encourage them, who, at present, on account of
their comparatively limited means, are unable sufficiently to
display their good will, by purchasing such works of art as
they would wish to rssess. To this class of parsons the
Art- Union offers an easy means of at once assisting in the en-
couragement of deserving artists, and of getting around them,
sooner or later, valuable works of art.
" There is another class of persons—some of them possessed
of ample Means—who, from various causes, and especially
_ from the want of having their attention drawn directly and
frequently to the subject, have hitherto evinced little or no
interest in the progress of the fine arts, and little or no taste
for the high gratification they are calculated to afford. To
these the Art- Union makes a systematic and recurring appeal ;
and offers, too, no inadequate inducement, to recognise the
claims which artrat-SlV?je upon them, and to okain for them-
selves a new and lasting enjoyment.
" The third ground on which these associations rest, arises
necessarily out of the two former, and will readily be antici-
pated ; for it is but too notorious that works of art of great
merit, arc continually returned unsold from our public exhibi-
tions, and thrown upon the hands of artists, highly deserv-
ing of that public encouragement which at present they so
frequently fail to meet with. These propositions, your Com-
mittee fear, are utit too indisputable; nor can it be denied that
they afford ample reason for earnest and continued associative
exertion."
We consider the objects of these institutions as equally
important in a commercial as in a social point of view.
They tend to promote the profits cif trade and to increase
social comforts in an equal degree as they tend to augment
the moral refinement of the working classes, and raise the
intellectual character of society. On the point of the al-
leged inconsistency of a union between art and trading profit,
we differ entirely with the declaration of the President of
the Royal Academy, Sir M. Shoe, who asserts (see Report
of the Select Committee of Arts and Manufactures) " that
the interests of commerce and of the free institutions it
engenders, are hostile to the interests of art, and to the
growth of genius." We, on the contrary, maintain that
the interests of art and those of commerce are identical ;
and we take upon ourselves to say, that the identity has
been proved by the irresistible character of the valuable
evidence adduced before the Select Committee to which
we have referred. The principle of free competition ap-
plies equally to the encouragement of art as to the en-
couragement of commerce. The less that both are checked
the greater will be their development. They have a right
to look to Government for an auxiliar support. But the
patriotic encouragement of wealthy individuals of taste
should be chiefly depended on. It was such patriotic en-
couragement as this, by the " Merchant Princes" of
Venice and Holland, which raised those Republics to their
memorable eminence, and demonstrated the principle for
which we have so often contended—tbat commercial free-
dom is the base of all those intellectual triumphs of art
which, subsequently, by the reaction of the " beautiful and
the good" on the profitable and the orderly—of the dulce
on the utile, confer its most brilliant distinction, and its
most enduring performance on commercial freedom.—
Morning Advertiser.
The intended execution of the two unfortunate women,
Ann Byroni and Dinah Jones, for infanticide, at Chester,
where Baron Gurney sentenced them to death without hope
of mercy, has excited great and general dissatisfaction,
more especially as the crimes for which those two miserable
victims of seduction are ordered to be strangled on the scaffold
are attributed to the demoralising operation of the bas-
tardy clauses of the new Poor-law—clauses which are an
outrage to Christian morals, and which, in fact, offer a
premium to the most cruel and profligate libertinism of the
male sex. Rightly did the Bishop of Exeter, in his
manly and eloquent reclamations against those unchristian
inevitable
consequence predict the increase of infanticide as an
consequence of their operation.An honest and industri-
ous man was lately committed for three months to the
ignominious labour of the tread-mill, because he was
neither willing nor able to support the bastard of a fel-
low who had seduced and deserted his daughter. Had
the daughter, in the agony of despair, dest7o3ed the off-
spring, she would have been sent to the gallows, and thus
the ruffian who
'was the cause of all the evil ould have
had the exquisite gratification of seeing, at the same time,
theinnocent father toiling with bursting heart cn the
tread-mill, and the betrayed daughter suspended on the
gallows, while he enjoyed his felon-security under the pro-
tection of the infamous law which was the Whiggre-t '
" boon to the labouring population l" As to Ann Byron,,
a petition has been forwarded in her behalf to the Queen,
signed by the Rev. C. K. Prescott, the Rector of Stock-
port, where she resided, and six other clergymen and
mini,ters. It also bears the signatures of the Mayor of
Stockport and two county Magistrates, as well as of several
professional men and a great part of the respectable shop-
keepers
in favour
tradespeople of the town. This is a strong tes-
timony favour of the character which the unhappy woman
had borne previously to her seduction and its conse-
quent crime. With regard to the other young woman,
Dinah -Tones, ordered to be stranAled on the same scaffold,
it n't!l be recollect, d that the Jury accompanied their
verdict by a !wool niendatiz)n to mercy, which Mr. Baron
Gurney publicly declared that lie would not attend to.
Tile voice ot•the jury is as much the voice of the country
ints i rceornmenuation to mercy as in its verdict of guilt.
If thasa! women aro allowed to prrish on the scaffold their
lite lvil be inarked by the sympathy of the people and the
execration of the law. While we endeavour to pr:-s nat
such sacr,fices of female victims upon the anhallow el alter
of man's licentioainess, we ere aware that executions of
:Ili; nature will do more towards the apt edy destruction of
the Wli ig Poor-Liw, by exciting against it au irresi,iibl.:

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY, AUGUST 21, 1838.

force of public indignation, than any arguments not illus-
trated by the practical examples of such revolting cioselty.
A Chester correspondent informs us that the day fixed
for the execution is Saturday next, and not Saturday
week, as stated in a paragraph copied into our Paper from
a provincial journal.—Morning Herald.
Some notice having been lately taken in Parliament of
the refusal of the Dean of Westminster to allow a statue
of Lord Byron a niche in the Abbey, the occasion has
b
s een
laid hold of by the enemies of the clergy to pour forth their
virulent misrepresentations. Because Lord Byron was a
popular poet the refusal to do honour to his memory in one
of the principal Churches of the kingdom is thought to be a
very fitting opportunity for directing popular odium against
the ministers of the national religion. And in the eager-
ness with which the infidel Radicals rush to take advantage
of this opportunity, they quite forget to be consistent even
in their habits of calumny. Every one knows that
Liberals"
a com-
mon theme of abuse directed by the pseudo
against Conservatives, is their alleged bigotry against
Roman Catholics, and their- pharasaical—that is, hypo-
critical—denunciation of flagrant immoralities. ut in
this new attack on the Conservative clergy for re-
fusing to do honour (within the walls of a sacred
are re-
edifice) to the memory of Byron, the public
minded that while Roman Catholics, and persons oc-
casionally guilty of unchaste writings and immoral conver-
sation, have been honoured in Westminster
who
Abbey by imi-
tative statue and memorial scroll, the bust of Byron,
was not heterodox in his belief, for he-had none, nor more
libidinous in his writings than some other great poets, has
been authoritatively excluded. Thus, when it suits the
purpose of the infidel Radicals to make the Conservative
clergy odious to the Roman Catholics, and to those who
are given up to the pleasures of sense, there is one story
told of the bigotted hatred of the Established Clergy to
those who differ from them in opinion; and when it is their
object to make the same Clergy odious to such as indulge
in idolatry of talent or genius, without reference to prin-
ciple, then another story is told, showing that the honour
which they allow to be paid to those who are opposed to
them in religious belief, they will not allow to one of whom
this fault, at all events,could not with literal strictness of truth
be asserted. Our opinion is, that the Dean of Westminster
rightly discharged an extremely painful duty when he re-
fused a place in the Abbey to the bust of Lord Byron,
and we think that all the reproaches of the infidel Radicals
on this subject, and all the laboured yet very frivolous at-
tempts to show that there is inconsistency, or illiberal ar-
rogance, in this refusal, are very honourable testimonies to
the good conduct of those whom they are intended to injure.
If it be the business of a Churchman—as assuredly we
think it is—to do honour to those who have coetributed
in doing honour to religion, it is very reasonable that
though a man may have held points of faith different
from them—but yet with them adored a common Deity
and acknowledged a common INlediator—it is, we say,
very reasonable that, however such a man's errors
may have been contended against while living, the
service which his genius has done the common cause
of religion, should be acknowledged with „gratitude and
reverence when he is dead. The name of Dryden has been
mentioned by the infidel scoffers, as though it were a gross
inson'istency that the.bust of him, a Roman Catholic and
a writer of some loose rhymes, should be allowed a place
which is denied to the bust of Lord Byron. We scarcely
know whether we should attribute such a reproach to
bigotry, to ignorance, or to insensibility. The man of let-
ters who walks with reverential awe around the memorials
of Great Britain's honoured dead which dignify and adorn
Westaliu.ster iV4r:ey, thinks not of the unchaste lines of
; bast lie lite; re-
members
its
happiest Dryden
mDryden, which were not so much his vice as the vice of the
thinks n kio
si, notlour of the errorstile us
in heis
of fait
happiest moments did to religion
Dim as the borrowed beams of moon and stars
To kingly, weary, wandering travellers,
Is reason to the soul; and as on high,
Those rolling fires discover hut the sky,
Net light us here ; so reason's v:lirnal,l;ng ray
Was lot not to assure our doui,tf,ll way,'
But guide us upward to a better day,
And as those nightly tapers disappear,
When day's bright Lord ascends our hemisphere,
Si. pale grows reason at religion's sight,
So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light."
We do not find fault with Lord Byron that he has
not written so well as this—far no man, perhaps, has
ever produced in English rhyme, any thing so fine as
these lines of Dryden—but we say that Byron hes
never written in a similar spirit of reverence for re-
ligion ; but alas ! so differently, that we shudder
when we think that next after Voltaire, no man
has in his day done more injury to the cause of ITU-
' gion than did Lord Byron. His genius was a meteor as
baleful as it was brilliant. Few, and full of evil, were his
days. We should not think that we—laymen, and loit-
erers in the path of duty ourselves—had any right to
blame Lord Byron merely because he was unsettled in re-
ligious belief, or without any such thing. In his case, as
in that of many others, there may be as much to pity as to
blame in such a state of' mind. But the moment any nu 11
dares to become an apostle of unbelief, and to use the
talents which God has given him, to infect others with the
disease of unbelief which he ought to lament in himself,
then he is obnoxious to blame, and his proper meed
is not our pity, but our opposition and our resentment.
Now it seemed to be the glory and the joy of
Lord Byron to use his brilliant wit, his tremderendous
energy, and his marvellous felicity of diction, in or to
bring all the world into the same state of scornful unbelief
as himself. In none of his writings does revealed reli-
gion appear to be allowed a moment's respect, and though
his writings are not absolutely atheistical, yet they cer-
tainly lead to the conclusion that he, the most conspicuous
literary man of his time, with the best opportunities of
good information, regarded all questions concerning reli-
gion, just as they might have been regarded when Cicero
discussed the nature of the soul, and Horace amused the
polite Augustus with deductions of Deity from the noise of
thunder heard when the sky was clear. Is it right that
the bust of such an author should be set up in one of our
principal Churches ? But to come to more practical mat-
ters, and to strengthen our argument with the aid of great
critical authority, let us attentively consider the character
which Lord Jeffery has given of Lord Byron's writings, and
that not at the beginning, but near the close of the great
Poet's career. The grand chief of literary Whiggism
writes thus of Lord Byron's works generally
" The charge we bring against Lord Byron is, that his
writings have a tendency to destroy all belief in the reality of
virtue—and to make all enthusiasm and constancy of affection
ridiculous ; and that this is effected, not merely by direct
maxims and examples of an imposing and seducing kind, but
by the constant exhibition of the most proflgate heartlessness,
in the persons of those who had been transiently. represented
as actuated by the purest and most exalted emotions—and in
the lessons of that very teacher who had been, but a mo-
ment before, so beautifully pathetic in the expression of the
loftiest ccaceptions. Under some strange misapprehensiors
as to the truth, and the duty of proclaiming he has
it,
exerted all the powers of his powerful mind, to convince his
readers, both directly and indirectly, that all enobling pur-
suits and disinterested virtues, are merely deceits or illusions—
hollow and despicable mockeries for the most part, and at
best, but laborious follies. Love, patriotism, valour, devotion,
constancy, ambition—all are to be laughed at, disbelieved in,
and despised I—and nothing is really good, so far as we can
gather, but a succession of dangers to stir the blood, and of
banquets and intrigues to sooth it again. If this doctrine
stood alone with its examples, it would revolt more, we be-
lieve, than it would seduce; but the author of it has the un-
lucky gift of personating all those sweet and lofty illusions,
and that with such grace, and force, and truth to nature, that
it is impossible not to suppose for the time that he is among
the most devoted of their votaries—till he casts off his charac-
ter with a jerk—and the moment after he has moved and ex-
alted us to the very height of our conceptions, resumes his
mockery at all things serious or sublime, and lets us down at
once on some coarse joke, hard-hearted sarcasm, or fierce and
relentless personality—as if to show
Whoe'er was edified, himself was not.'" _ .

CRIMINAL COURT-MONDAY.

We ask again whether there be any illiberality in refusing
a niche in a church to the statue of a man whose writings
have been thus described by a literary Liberal of the first
eminence ? We should be delighted to see the bust by
Thorwaldsen in any place dedicated merely to the honour
of human genius ; but in a sacred edifice, dedicated to the
honour of revealed religion, the bust of Byron would be
out of place•--Morning Post.

release. He had spent the money allowed him, and had ob-
tained no benefit. The debts had been released, and he now
applikd for a creditor to be allowed to receive the dividends on
the debts he had purchased. The application was resisted on
the ground that the debts had been released. i
It was urged that the insolvent had equity for the appli-
cation ; he was in distress, and had walked up from Bradford
to London on several occasions. It was admitted that he had
acted in a " very foolish" manner.
The COURT said they had no power to assist him ; he had
by his own act taken their jurisdiction away. It was to
be regretted that he had acted in the manner he had done.
—Application refused.
IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT BILL.
Mr. WOODROFFE applied on the part of an insolvent, who
had been a long time in prison, for leave to file his schedule.
The Learned CHIEF COMMISSIONER significantly asked whe-
ther the insolvent was in execution ?
Mr. WOODROFFE said there was no doubt he was. Many
had been disappointed ; they expected the Bill would have
gone much further. -
CHIEF COMMISSIONER—The man has petitioned.
Mr. WOODEOFFE—He has, and cannot take advantage of
the Bill; be is now anxious to proceed.
The COURT granted the application.
ATTORNEYS ♦ND THEIR " AGENTS."
A case came before the Court on Saturday in which it ap-
peared gross negligence had occurred.
The Learned CHIEF COMMISSIONER took occasion to re-
mark on the " agents" employed by attorneys who lent their
names to them. The attorneys were appointed on a recom-
mendation from two barristers. They stated that they meant
to practice bona fide, but it was well-known they were ciphers
and shadows of their agents.
[The Commissioners will have an opportunity of making
strong rules to protect prisoners. It is a fact that there are
more " agents" than attorneys. The agents secure the clients,
arrange for terms, and the " attorney" is called in to take the
retainer and witness the schedule. He secures a certain fee for
his trouble, the rest is pocketed by the agent. The Court have
made several rules on the subject, but others are required.]

THE QUEEN V. JOSEPH REITTERHOFEER, ALIAS COUNT RUTTER