The Sun.
London, England, 1838-10-15 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC Jo U ANAL&

land both the Government and the Legislature should re
-
c •ive rebuke as well as counsel." And never, in the whole
history of Parliamentary contumacy, was it more necessary
to assert and enforce this principle than it is at the present
moment. Nothing is to be expected from Parliamentary
concession—everything from popular compulsion. In this
consists the solution of every advance made or to be made
in the improvement of our institutions, and in opening
through them a free passage for the purifying current of
popular opinion. The people being therefore the great
instrument of their own regeneration, the essential to their
success is the unanimous and combined action, not of one
portion of the empire only, but of its three great divisions—
England, Ireland, and Scotland. Whatever may be the
individual grievances of each country, the wrongs of all
have their origin in the want of a due representation of the
people in the Legislature ; to supply this want should
therefore be the great end and object of all. The most
certain and feasibly means of obtaining this due represen-
tation are the Ballot and an extended Suffrage ; these
therefore should be the great objects of every honest Re
former in England, Ireland, and Scotland. Let, therefore,
the watchword of the united people be " the Ballot and
Household Suffrage." Let these be inscribed on every
banner of Reform, and they will prove the trite " Precur-
sors" to the freedom, and, as a sequence to that freedom,
the prosperity, happiness, and glory of the British Isles.
Every attempt to divide the Reformers of Great Britain and
Ireland into separate lines of action is injudicious, if not cri-
minal, as nothing can be effected without their perfect co-
operation. What can the Representatives of Ireland do in
the United Parliament without the assistance of the Repre-
sentatives of England and Scotland, or the latter without the
aid of those of Ireland? Nothing—nothing ; unless to become
the derision and scoff of their Tory opponents. Yet thepeople
of Ireland at onetime are called uponto shunthe Reformers
of Great Britain, as if their assistance were not only use-
less, but worse—dangerous ; and at another time they are
called upon to send deputations to the chief towns of Eng-
land and Scotland—the head-quarters of the Reformers—
to explain their wrongs, and solicit co-operation in procur-
ing redress. Such inconsistency and vacillation is puerile,
and contemptibly unworthy of the intelligence which should
guide the action of- a whole people. We wish not to
dwell on topics calculated to increase the disagree-
ment which we deprecate ; but we would calmly appeal
to the people of Ireland, as men with whose wrongs
we sympathise, and whose co-operation, in redress of
mutual grievances, we are most desirous to secure ; and,
on the part of the British Reformers, we would ask
them, " With what grace can you come to seek our assist-
ance, if you sanction, the foul abuse and unmerited accusa-
tion which have been levelled at us ?" And we would add,
" Our grievances, though differing from your's in degree,are
similar in character. If you have your tithes, we have our
Church-rates ; a fair and full representation will free us
from both ; but neither the abolition-,of Tithes, nor of
Church-rates, nor of both, will give us a fair and full r'-
presentation. We may have incompetent and interested
leaders ; but are your own leaders always right ; or, what
is more vital, are they always honest ? Let not, however,
the opinions or conduct of leaders sever the union on
which our mutual success so obviously depends. Join with
us, therefore, in seeking this first right of a free people. Pur-
sue, at the same time, the work you have so gloriously com-
menced—the abolition or due appropriation of tithes. You
shall have our support, made more zealous by a similarity
of suffering. But before all things, by the recollection of
your past sufferings—by your hope of future amelioration—
by your own wrones, and by your children's rights—by all
that is hateful, and by all that is dear to you as men, we ad-
jure you to unite with us in the great struggle for a fair
representation in the Legislature, which is to be achieved
only by Household Suffrage and the Ballot. Do this,
and give the Union a fair trial, which it never can have till
the people of both countries be fairly represented. It is
filly, and delusion, and fraud, to talk of giving the Union
a fair trial in the Imperial Parliament, where neither you
ner we are fairly represented. Do this, and if justice be
still withheld ff ow you, we pledge ourselves to assist in
your struggle for the favourite object of your leaders—a
domestic Legislature."—Merning Advertiser.

The late Mr. Cobbett, when he addressed the English
public as " Most thinking people," could never have meant
to include his friends the Radicals, who, in our humble
judgment, have shown themselves to be of all people the
most unthinking. We are not just now proceeding on the
ground that if they knew how to think at all they would
not be Radicals—though this is a very demonstrable con-
clusion ; at present we would only ask whether (their
Radicalism being for the argument's sake conceded to
them) it be reconcilable with any principle of common
sense, or of that honesty which they profess to hold fastest
and foremost, that they should be lendit g their support to
the faction of the Whigs. In order to justify them in that
support they ought to be persuaded of one of these two
propositions—that the maintenance of the Whigs in office
will accomplish the main object of Radicalism, which is
to reform the Constitution by Ballot, Annual Election,
and Universal Suffrage, or at least that while and so
long as these reforms contiene unattainable the general
government of the country is more usefully conducted
by the Whigs than it is likely to be by the Conser-
vatives. Now, the least possible attention to the past
might teach the philosophers of " the root and branch"
sect hew little they have to expect from the Whigs in the
quarter of Radical Reform : not, that experience has be-
gotten any dcubts of their willingness to perpetrate what-
ever revolution may serve their own interests, but it
wounds their consciences to commit sins for the behoof of
other people. That is an illegitimate and unprofessional
way of proceeding, into which they have never been be-
trayed. When they carried the Reform Bill, which
they intended not as an instalment, but as a settlement
in full, they believed that they had compounded a dose
of Reform sufficient to drug the popular hydra into
a lethargy for the long term which they had made
up their minds to enjoy in office. They never dreamt
of putting power into the hands of the people—
they fancied they were getting it securely into their
own. They gave the suffrage to the 101. house-
holders, not because they thought that class of
people were identified in interest and feeling with
the labouring multitudes, but because they thought
that the 101. householders would sustain the Whigs
in the exclusion of the Conservatives, provided the
Whigs would keep up the importance of the 101. house-
holders by the exclusion of the labouring multitudes.
The great majority of the country was earnestly desirous
of Reform, and many made great and disinterested sacri-
fices to achieve it ; but with reference to the objects of
its authors, Reform was simply a Whig job. It was a
shuffle of the cards which was to put all the tens, knaves,
queens, and kings, into their own hands. And so the thing
happened for the first deal. Their mistake was in sup-
posing that the same distribution would continue after the
pack should have been mixed and cut two or three times
more. They have found out their blunder now ; but they
have shrewdness enough to see that no further revolution
on the popular side is likely to restore their power. Or-
ganic change was all very well while they themselves
could be the conductors of it ; but movement under new
leaders, loud, underbred persons, who have the vulgarity
to publish their abhorrence of Whiggery and their
contempt •of Whigs, was not a thing to be at all
encouraged by the Aristocracy of Brookes's. There-
fore, when in February last, grave Mr. Grote made
his solemn march to the gates of the Constitution
and formally summoned her to surrender to the black
flag of the Ballot, the Whigs took their stand upon the
ramparts, Lord John himself peering manfully over the pa-
rapet, and charged their stoutest artillery for the defence.
They reasonably feared that if Ballot could produce the
effect expected from it, of giving additional freedom to the
expression of popular feeling, the people's just hatred and
scorn of them would but show itself with so much the more
effect in the elections, end diminish, even further, their el-
ready dwindled force in the House of Commons. The
same apprehension indisposes them now to erend the Suf-
frage, or shorten the duration of Parliament. Their
prospect of power is not in governing by the wishes of
the many, any more than by the wisdom of the
few ; but in consolidating the influence of a clique
They have no party in the country. There is a de-
mocratical party, and there is a Conservative party ;
but there is no Whig party—merely a Whig clique ;
and this clique is only just strong enough to keep its
ground by alternate combinations with the one and
the other. If either were a little more powerful
the Whig clique would be no more. Therefore as on the
one hand it repudiates 'every measure which could strengthen
the Conservatives ; so, on the other, it shrinks from any
change which might advance the democracy. Propose any
reform that involves an inquiry through Commissioners to
be appointed by the Whig Government, and the Whig
clique will support you, because this provides a bounty for
their recruiting. Propose any reform that shatters or
undermines the Church, and they will support you ; be-
cause this impairs a stronghold of their opponents. But
propose any reform that tends simply to increase the
weight of the people in the affairs of the State, and
they will resist it even to the threat of resignation, because
this reduces their own relative strength. They occupy an
intermediate ground between two great currents, and their
existence depends on the preservation of it, narrow and
sandy as it is. A wave or two higher on the right or
on the left, and the isthmus they stand on is swamped.
From men so circumstanced, what fond simplicity is
it to expect assistance to the democratic cause r. So little
indeed, is our apprehension of their proposing frequent
election, extended qualification, and clandestine voting, as
Government measures, that were it not for two considera-
tions we should feel very little uneasiness at their con-
tinuance in office, though, to be sure, those two reasons
are rather strong ones : the first being their hostility to
the Established Church, a hostility in which irreverence
and selfishness are now exasperated by revenge ; and the
second, that marked absence of principle which leaves
them always ready, for the sake of a momentary vote, to
break their promises, to eat their words, and to forfeit their
pledges, with a facility unprecedented in the annals of po-
litical dishonour. Now, it is impossible not to feel that the
very existence of such a Government, independently of its
actual measures, is a blight upon the country, lowering the
tone of its morals at home, and tarnishing its character
abroad. Why, then, if all chance of organic change must
be put out of the question, as alike improbable under a
Whig and under a Conservative Ministry, can any sincere
Radical believe that, under the Constitution as it now ex-
ists, the Government will be better administered by the
Whigs? The Radicals themselves admit that, between
the Whigs and the Conservatives, in point of good faith
there is no comparison ; in point of experience, of punctu-
ality, of the habit and knowledge of public business, no
comparison; in point of credit with other countries, no com-
parison; in point of Parliamentary talent, no comparison ;
yet, knowing and avowing all this, and warned by repeated
experiment that nothing of the organic change they want is
likely to be conceded to them by the Whigs any more than
by the Conservatives, these same Radicals (thinking they
think, but acting in the most unthinking way imaginable)
go on, trusting and hoping, and being laughed at, awl
grumbling, and then trusting and hoping again, in order to
be again laughed at, and to grumble a little more.—
Times.

Since the expulsion of the Peel Ministry from office,
but little external pressure has been brought to bear on
the Government or Legislature ; there have been partial
and detached demonstrations in favour of certain mea-
sures—the Ballot and abolition of Church-rates, for in-
stance—but there has been no general and combined
movement, such as with a Legislature constituted like
the present will ever be found necessary to carry any
full and satisfactory measure of Reform. For four suc-
cessive sessions have the people of Great Britain re-
posed with confidence on the exertions of their repre-
sentatives and the Ministers, and for four successive
sessions have the hopes of the nation been blighted
wi'h disappointment—a di=appointment for which nei-
ther Ministers nor representatives are altogether to
blame ; for, however strict their integrity and strong
their inclination, it would have been utterly impossible
for any Ministry or any House of Commons to have
carried efficient measures of Reform, against the opposi-
tion of the Lords, without the earnest and determined
support of the people. This support was not tendered,
partly from the measures of the Government not having
been sufficiently extensive to merit or elicit a national effort,
and partly from the natural re-action of the public mind
towards repose after previous excitement. Convinced at
length of the fruitlessness and fallacy of confiding in others,
the people are now beginning to place their hopes where
ttthhheee
wallsrown
of exer-
tions. er looks,-
seocuotrawy
Ethiin
only they can ever rest wth
tions. Expectation now
te
h results ofn
intentions
Par-
liament, but without,andor
rext session
uch by the disposition
are estimated, not so much
1
of the several branches of the Legia azure, as by the power
which may be employed to coerce them to an acquiescence
with the claims of a just and judicious reform. Dangerous
indeed to the stability of our institutions would be this loss
of confidence in the ruling powers, did not the same intel-
ligence which teaches the people a correct appreciation of
their rights, teach them also that peaceful but perse-
veringdei
action is the most safe and certain mode of accom-
-
plishing their wishes, and obtaining that
return—a full and fair representation in
the Legislature.
For Parliament to refuse a compliance with the
distinctly-expressed wishes of the people
is a virtual ab-
dication of the legislative function. Otherwise what
_be-
comes of the boasted theory of all authority emanating from
the people ? What becomes of the tenure— thefree
choice of the people—by which even the British Crown is
held ? Controvert this position, and the British Constitu-
tion becomes a mockery and a lie, and the British people
slaves. Even Burke—no partial authority to democratic
principles—asserted that " it was from the people of Eng-

Times marked by the abuse of political excitement are
the most favourable for the advocacy of social Reforms.
Let those journalists who consider newspapers as mere po-
litical machines for the service of a party, or only com-
mercial speculations for the sake of gain, apologise to the
public for " obtruding" upon their attention questions o!
social Reform whenever they happen to do so. We have
never made any such apology—nor do we think any neces-
s iry. Believing, as we do, that that is the best political
system which hest provides for the moral and social happi-
ness (J. man, we look upon every question affecting the man-
ners, habits, and general condition of society, as being
withn the legitimate province of the public journalist
quite as much as questions more immediately connected
with the political destinies of a nation. But political
topics being those which are the most exciting, and
exciting topics being those which are the most popu
larly attractive, it is natural enough that journalists
who find it more to their account to interest than
instruct the people, should prefer political topics,
when they have them, to any other. While the tocsir,
of agitation rings through the country, few are they whose
minds can remain so serene and healthy amid the din and
contagion of excitement as to be capable of attending to
the calm voice of reason pleading the cause of moral and
social improvement. Our readers will bear us witness that
we have long laboured in the great work of social reforma-
tion—the improvement of our civil and criminal jurispru-
dence—the abolition of negro slavery—the extirpation from
our laws and customs of the cruel, uujust, and impolitic im-
prisonment for debt—the emancipation of the white slaves of
the factory systemfrom the grinding bondage of a merciless
cupidity—the amelioration of the condition of the labouring
population on principles opposed to the man-degrading theo-
ries of the political economists—Me abatement (J. the demo-
ralising nuisance, the Beer Shop Bill, which we endea-
voured to prevent when a Tory Ministry, cheered on
by the treacherous applauses of the Whig free-
traders inflicted it upon the country—the extirpation
of that great fraud, the slave apprenticeship siis-
tem, which the Whigs gave the country in exchange for
twenty millions sterling—the abolition of the revolting
cruelty of militaryflogging—the suppreesion of the disgust-
ing barbarity of pi ize-fights, and the prevention of all abuses
of power to the torment of man or those animals which
the Creator has given him to use, not to torture—the pro-
motion of the religious and moral education of the people,
in contradistinction to the infidel schemes for planting the
land with a godless population. These are some of the many
questions connected with the moral and social well-being,
of society which sometimes amid the din and uproar of con-
tending factions, sometimes in the intervals of political con-
tention, we hive made the subjects of discussion—not
whellv without advantage to the community. Another
question which we lately took up is the absurd and bar-
b irons practice of duelling—a nuisance to society which
must be abated before it can be truly sail that England is
ie possession of all that an enlightened nation ought to claim
of rational habits and Christian civilization. This nuisance
exists in spite of the severest denunciations of the law ;
and why? Because the tyrant custom, that tramples on
the law, makes cowards of those who administer the law,
and of those who might successfully exercise against it an
influence on public opinion. If we have no other requi-
sites for the task of encountering this great evil we have,
at least, the moral courage to expose it in all its monstrous
silliness—in all its hideous deformity. Strangely enough,
the apologists fur this practice plead the very effrontery of
the violators of the law as their excuse. They say—" The
practice of duelling has long set the law at defiance—there-
fore it ought to continue toset the law at defiance." Though
this has not been said exactly in the very words in which
we have put it, the same thing has been said in substance
and effect a hundred times. On the sante ground any vie
which happens to become fashionable should be held sacred
from the reproof of the law. They who resort to such an
argument must be prepared to admit its legitimate inference
—an inference that would read oddly enough if inscribed
as a maxim in the book of British jurisprudence. That
inference is—that the law which punishes all other offences
has not and ought not to have, any controul over fashionable
crimes. Is it not thoroughly ridiculous to have the maxim
silent leges inter arma applied to the practice of duelling ?
To have this species of social murder—of fashionable assas-
sination—put on a level with rebellion and civil war, which
are too powerful for the ordinary laws to deal with. When
the feudal system flourished, the bold baron used to sally
from his castle at the head of his armed retainers, to make
war on a neighbouring baron. The hostile chieftains re-
venged their mutual wrongs, or satisfied the " point of
honour" with lance in rest, or iron mace, or battle-axe,
strewing the field of chivalrous encounter with the
ghastly
victims of " honourable" strife. The laws command and
the King's authority were equally violated and defied—that
was the fashion of the time. But as civilization advanced
the outraged law was vindicated against these petty belli-
gecelxareedenuttbse d,
o to ,
,aarnndsthe Sovereign's power restored. How is it,
then, that the law was strong enough, when vigorously
saunpdprerseslatihme bthatetlefiealrdrs of their
ay
hi
tasrevlfesttso forbe the dominion ofthei
withstereolo-
ueseot
edp of the plough, and yet allows
trampled
uniatnyd, note ofanalhyinbny
the silken lordlings of theo n
pr im .
dayp
able frequenter of: s gambling-houses and danglers after opera
girls, but by sporting linend
mraanpernirsirpolished brickmakers,
dapper clerks, and heroic
The reason is,
that against these noble and ignoblienebs; belligerents, waging
internecine war upon each other without the Sovereign's
licence, the law is not vigourously executed
o
all. Though the law is not put in force, or, at least,
exec executed at
iii force so seldom as to hold out almost certain impunity
is pu
punity
to those who practise in this line of genteel assassination, it
cannot be said that any body is ignorant qf it. No prac-
tised pistol bully who has learned to put a ball through the

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1838.

ace of spades at a shooting-gallery, goes to Wimbledon or
Chalk Farm to try his skill upon the person of some
fashion aping simpleton, whom ho may have plundered at
a gambling-table or insulted in a tavern, but with a full
knowledge that the law has declared the act of homicide by
duelling a capital felony. Yet he and his second, and his
alders and abettors, brave the law with all the ignominious
and penal consequences which it attaches to the crime. It
is time that the law should be vindicated both against its
patrician and plebeian violators--vindicated, we mean, to
any extent short of death, and public opinion will support
the law.—Morning Herald.
Whatever attachment the Whigs may affect for the
principles and practice of national liberty, when Whigs are
opposed to the Government, it is now clear enough
that no such attachment do they really feel. On the con-
trary, they at once fear and hate those principles and
that practice when they possess the Government, and
they do so because they find they are not strong. enough to
keep the helm, when the free breath of political liberty
sweeps over the face of society. Moreover such is the
egregious vanity of the Whigs that they think nothing sug-
gested by them should be questioned. The difficulties of
popular opposition, and the most rigid controul of Parlia-
ment, are, in their opinion, constitutionally right, and
practically expedient, when such difficulties and such con-
troul are placed in the way of a Tory Government. but
they are held to be very questionable advantages
when they stand in the way of anything which Whig
wisdom and disinterestedness have condescended to
adopt. We place this to the account of vanity, as
much as anything else, thowli no doubt real hypocrisy
and corruption have also a good deal to do with such con-
tradiction. But there is an amount of political vanity in
the Whigs which falls very little short of sheer craziness.
They absolutely do think that there is so much philosophy
—so much "enlightenment"—so much intellectuality and
science, in their plans for the arrangement of every thing in
which they interfere, that any opposition to them. whether
it arise from the people, or the press, or from Parliament,
must be wholly causeless and inexcusable, and, upon the
whole, a very great public inconvenience. This insane
vanity of the Whigs, which leads them into the most
corrupt alliances with the worst miscreants of the mob,
when they are excluded from the Government, leads them
directly to despotism when they are in the Government.
So convinced are they of the matchless excellence of their
plans for governing, that they think the country cannot
suffer so much by the corrupt practices to which they
resort for getting into power, as it wit gain by the happy
circumstance of their being in power. And when they
have obtained their end, they are so convinced that nothing
can be a 3 good as what they have determined upon in the
Government, that any check or controul upon the Govern-
ment seems to them unreasonable and impertinent, and fit
to be abolished. It was not without a smile that we read,
in a demi-official Whig journal of Saturday evening, the
following pla;ntive allusions to the happier state of affairs
in Prussia, where then is no Parliament or Press to inter-
fere with the wisdom of the Administration :

" In practical good government they contend they are mere
advanced than we are, for that improvements proposed to the
Prussian Administration, for instance, are sure to be executed,
whilst here they must run the gauntlet through intrigu:•, totly,
and faction, in Parlianient. We believe that our regimen of
publicity has advantages which compensate for its evils, but
certainly some of our meetinifs are the opprobrium of free dis-
cu•sion, as some of our Parliamentary tactics are a hindraece
to public business."
Very pleasant and consistent is all this, from an out-:ind-
out Whie ! Were the " Arlministratiou" only to be con-
-ulted, everything would be done right, but that n iu2hty,
troublesome thing, the Parliament, must be show, d to in-
terfere with its " intrigu2," its " folly," and its " faction,"
and thus the sublime administrative wisdom of the Whigs
is thwarted and embarrassed. These obstacles are all very
well for the restraint of unenlightened Tories, but when
Whigs are in the seats of Government they are " hin-
drances to public business." And the " liberty of the press,"
'on, that is a very questionable advantage. When To-
ries are in power, it is to the liberty of the people
what the air they breathe is to their bodily existence—
if they have it not, they die." But when the en-
lightened and infallible Whir possess the Government,
the very name of the thing becomes distasteful, and it
is found expedient to use a less plebeian phraseology.
The " liberty of the press" is changed to " our regi-
men of publicity," and even then it is treated with ex-
treme coldness, and it is barely admitted that it has advan-
ta_:es which compensate for its evils I Alas, thou once-
boasted " liberty of the press," this is but scurvy treat-
ment from thy old friends the Whigs ! Yet there is in all
this nothing to surprise any man of common sense and ordi-
nary observation. It is very natural that people who
g,v ern like the Whigs should feel the questioning of Par-
liament an annoyance, and the criticism of the press
disagreeable. And if their Government were what
they in the delirium of their vanity, perhaps, suppose
it to he, we must own that the palpable distrust manifested
by Parliament, and the utter contempt and scorn so openly
avowed in the press, would be very unreasonable as well as
irksome. The excessive vanity of the Whigs has turt:ed them
crazy, and they cannot see things as they really are. If
they did they would necessarily hate and despise themselves,
which is a disagreeable position for any set of middle-aged
gentlemen to be placed in.—Morniaz Post.

PHENOMENA IN THE SOUTH ANTARCTIC
OCEAN. —The white ashy material fell now continually around
us, and in vast quantities. The range of vapour to the south-
ward had arisen prodigiously in the horizon, and began to as-
sume more distinctness of form. I can liken it to nothing but
a limitless cataract, rolling silently into the sea, from some
immense and far-distant rampart in the heaven. The gigantic
curtain ranged along the whole extent of the southern horizon.
It emitted no sound. March 21—A sullen darkness now
hovered above us—but from out the milky depths of the ocean
a luminous glare arose, and stole up along the bulwarks of the
boat. We were nearly overwhelmed by the white ashy shower
which settled upon us and upon the canoe, but melted into the
water as it fell. The summit of the cataract was utterly lost
in the dimness and the distance. Yet we were evidently ap
proaching it with a hideous velocity. At intervals there were
visible in it wide, yawning, but momentary rents; and from
cut these rents, within which was a chaos of flitting and in-
distinct images, there came rushinz and mighty, but soundless
winds, tearing up the enkindled ocean in their course.—Ppn's
South Polar Narrative.

THE FARMER AND HIS PEAS.—AboUt forty
years ago a farmer at Eddleston, in Peebles—hire, had a fit Id
of peas lying close to the churchyard wall. When nearly
ripe, the youngsters of the village often stole them after dark
George was determined to watch his peas one night ; so off
he went, and seated himself upon the top of the wall, for the
purpose of seeing better around him. It so hai penvd that
two young fellows of the village determined to frighten
old George. They repaired to the churchyard, the one
with a black sheet around him, and the other with a
white one, but unknown to each other. The one with
the black sheet was there before George, and crept uncler a
gravestone ; the other waited until he saw the old man fairly
seated upon the top of the wall ; he then got his sheet around
him, and advanced straight for George, little dreaming what
was awaiting himself. When about half way through the
churchyard, the black goat crept from his hiding e, and
coming round the end of the church, met his white friend right
in the face; both stood aghast—both fainted and fell. After
a little while the white fellow rose and looke 1 around him,
where he sees again the black spirit rising from the earth ;
he
took to his heels and ran, cleared the wall at a bound, never
once looking behind him till within the house and the door
shut. His companion, equally frightened, ran off at the other
side, but did not escape so well, for instead of running down
by the bridge over Eddleston water, he never saw it in his road
but plunged right over head and ears to the bottom of the
stream. George, honest man, kept his seat, and when he saw
the spirits ascending and descending among the graves, he said
that baith black dells and white dells might rise, but lie
would watch his peas."—Edinbury/t Observer.

MOLES AND BEETLES.--The mole is vul.4a.rly
reckoned a solitary animal ; this is most fully contradicted by
the following fact:—.Close to a garden in the parish of
Muckart, no less than twenty moles have been taken this
summer, by the same trap being regularly set in the same
mole-path. A mole was caught for a while every- d iy. A
young boy having caught a beetle, gave it liberty beside a
dead mole ; on returning next day to the spot, the mole was
very nearly buried in the earth. To ascertain whether this
was the work of the beetle, the mole was gently raised, when
the beetle was found busy at the work of excavation under-
neath. The experiment was repeated by another dead mole
being deposited in another part of the field. It was two days
before it was visited, when the upmost part was level with the
earth, and mostly covered. A beetle of the same description
as in the former case was found at work underneath. The
ground was harder in the latter case. It appears, that where
it is soft a single beetle will excavate the ground sufficiently to
bury a mole in the course of a night.—Scotsman.
UNIVERSAL SUPFRAGE.—A meeting of the Uni-
versal Suffrage Association was held last night, in the Justi-
ciary Hall, to take into consideration the present state of pub-
lic opinion, and the probability of the Universal Suffrage
principle being generally adopted. The speakers were
Messrs. Hedderwick, Purdie, and Moir, and Mr. Tait, from
Auchinairn.—Scots Times.

Formerly it was supposed, if a person drank milk,
after a meal of fish, it would have the effect almost of poison ;
but now it is prescribed to remove the danger arising from
eating oysters to excess, and has been known to succeed when
medicines from the apothecary's shop bad failed.

- -
The Proprietors of the Chelsea Water Works, at a
meeting held on Friday, ordered that seven shillings a week
be allowed to the widow of the poor man who lately lost his
life by an accident, while employed in the engine-room of that
Company's works.

A singular instance of the change of fortune oc-
curred a few days ago in Westminster, to an elderly woman
named Margaret Winterton, who for many years had occupied
a miserable tenement near the Almonry, by her coming intn
possession of a sum of money, exceeding 1,0004 by the death
of a relative in Paris.