The Sun.
London, England, 1838-08-29 00:00:00

GERMANY.

Mammal, AUG. 20.—The humiliation of the smaller Ger-
man states, even of Bavaria, is making rapid progress. The
influence of Prussia and Russia becomes more piercing every
day, and Austria, instead of energetically supporting those
who look to her for counterbalancing the baneful success of
those two powers, is satisfied vt ith her stationary system, and
a quiet survey of what is going on ; though it is plain to every
observer, that by her apathy she herself is continually losing
ground in Germany, without increasing thereby the indepen-
dence of the minor states. Prussia has long since extended
her secret police and spy system all over Germany, and inces-
santly arrogates to herself a sort of dictatorship, which enters
even into the purely dornestc affairs of the other countries,
who either tamely submit, or soon are coerced into compli.
ante for want of sufficient support. But if every true patriot
must behold with more than sorrow the Prussian domination
and our declining independence, his indignation must be roused
to the highest degree by the really abject manner in which
homage is paid now also to Russia. If it was not publicly
mentioned by our " Censured" papers, if', moreover, it was not
quite openly put into execution, it could and would hardly be
believed that orders have been given to all the Poles who so-
journ at present in Germany, at our watering places or else-
where, to remove to ten leagues distance from their actual
place of residence, if either his Russian Majesty or the here-
ditary Grand Duke Alexander should choose to pass through
it ! The whole of this measure appears the meaner and the
more revolting, as the Poles in Germany receive no support
of any kind from our governments; but being generally of
good family and good ineome, are only spending their money
here. What in the meantime has been transacted at Toeplitz
has not yet transpired. From all I can learn the principal
conference hal been between the Czar and Prince Metternich,
and there is reason to believe that the Russian plans have been
strongly opposed, and, moreover, greatly altered by the latter,
who is too experienced an old statesman to be duped by St.
Petersburg intrigue s. So eager has Nicholas been to gain
over Metternich' to his views and intentions, that at five
o'clock in the afternoon, when the Prince's carriage was al-
ready coming to the door to leave Toeplitz, his Majesty again
called upon him and kept him in conversation till three o'clock
in the morning. At all events, it is considered certain that
Russia neither can nor dare act in open opposition to Austria
on any great question, whatever she may do secretly. The
King of Prussia and his Minister for Foreign Affairs, Baron
lWorthen,tsa ofe d c
w eit uappear only to have played a subordinate part, a
o
moreover,Toeplitz,
tnhootugt to
theyb be much
p_
tainly were there principally on an errand quite different from
that of the Russians.
The present state of affairs in Prussia affords by no means a
sinecure to the Berlin cabinet; by their violence against the
sersd their fiddle,
own a successnd seem,
a t
who in purely religious questions and mat-
ters of A
and by their general intolerance against the Catholics,
amounting,Cviaiitch)rilsccoLrisschi°ffePnescn'e would not submit to his Majesty's ordi-
nances,
ton Ina spublicta
to about five millions of souls, a passive resistance,
they have called forth among the Catholic population,
ec'aenry bed given
itself very strongly. Prince William,
like Prussia,
increasing
generally
ydi
tsttlree
expressiongtliening
feeling, if it beb opposed to Government ; but in the present
was lately sent on a tour through
the Rhenish Provinces and Westphalia to ascertain the public
but the reception he met with almost everywhere was
recline' ;
such as no Prussian Prince ever met with before. On getting
out of the steamer at Co.logne, he was, instead of the formerly
stereotype " Vzvat Prince William," received with
Long life to our imprisoned Archbishop !---long
almost
inset
oas instance
second
td is
son
omu manifesting i
thef e st i
Rini,n
&c. The same was repeated afterwards in the
shouts
—Clement Augustus !—our Archbishop we will have re-
instated," &e•
city,ne carnival when Jack Pudding m
makes his
and hisses were heard in every direction. A large group
oa b
gathered, shouting, " Eli! that fellow has a big nose,"a acant
phrase f the Col
appearance. The evening after fire-works were to be let cff
by the military, but the Prince bolted at three o'clock in the
the whole of the Westphalian nobility and gentry,
afternoon, and the official fire display was countermanded. At
Munster
kept away from the city during his stay ; nor,e but the
who used to flock into town and pay their court on such occa-
sions,aiivlauthorities and the military officers, as in duty bound,
came near him ; and even from some of them be did riot get
the most satisfactory addresses. At a military parade the
but the spec
not a hat was moved, and the people even continued
tators
ce could stand. He addressed the people, corn-
smo in Pr •
soldkieirnsgsthhoeuitrepdipthees
beforeconim comman
Loyal ded e hurrah
Highness,• "
wishich is
eon.
sidered a great mark of disrespect Prussia. This was more
ethaleofPliiiins cold reception, made all sorts of fine protests-
PtilE)llla, but the hats would not come off, nor the pipes cease to
perfume the air, a " vivat" being, of course, entirely out of
the questien. Similar sentiments were exhibited on the
birth day, the ad of August, when a bust of his
:sty in a public hall was found covered with assafzetida,
whichr in German is called tegfelsdreck (devil's excrement).
Our newspapers mention very little of all these things, be-
piese tire eenaors will not, and dare not, let 1.115,1 atn)liling of
the sort ; only a Leipaic journal has been graciously permitted
to relate parts of them, but the public is well aware of the
whole. M all events, the Berlin Government have of late
received lessons enough that they dare not trample upon the
religious rights and lihertiez of the pople, Without judge or
jury (for the trial by jury is the law of the land in the Rhenish
provinces) they have dragged away the Archbishop of
Cc-
logne and his chaplain, and imprisoned them in distant for-
tresses; they have, indeed, in public proclamations, though
wisyly not befo:p a Court of Justipe brought chafge of high
trea,ion againat the venerable Prelate, but afterwards have
been obliged publicly to admit it to be false ; nevertheless, the
e
old man is kept locked up at Minden. Such is Prussian jus-
tice to Catholics who will not betray their religion ; but the
slumbering spirit of the Catholics has been reused by this
violets , aml when
in January the Qovarnment intended
ar-
resting another priest at Coblent;, thousands gathered befcre
the house, hands on the man
to the
and swore whoever wanted to la y
should first pass over their corpses. Word was sent
neighbouring vil;agers to hurry into town at the first sound cf
thev tocsin, armed with seythes, pitehforliis, so that his
Excellency Baron 13odelschwingh thought prudent to desist
from arresting a clergyman who never has meddled wills poli-
tics, and whose whole offence consists in being very popular,
and at the same time a warm adherent of the imprisoned MTh.
bishop. —Mum ing Chronicle,

The merchants and traders of the City have enabled
Exchange to
the Committee appointed to forward the building of the new
the superintendence of Mr. Herber, surveyor of hat- Majesty's
the into a contract with Mr. W. Cubit Y, Uncle;
Excise, for the erection °fa suitable covering in the quadrangle
of
the Excise buildings, in which the merchants will be
enabled to carry on business. The wooden building has been
commenced, and will be finished in three weeks. It covers 4
space of 100 feet by 40, exclusre of a covered way that will be
erected at the eastern entrance. The Committee intend
having
a fl
.."'"ed footway under the building, and lighting it
with gas. b°

Niatiat.plaze was the scene of
,
SAL op E xi
- v ,;IFE,-011 Thursday mornina, IV, the
upper end of Lought4ouglt
much confusion and disturbance, arising, from the expectation
of the " sale of a wife," near the Boot Inn, A large crowd of
persons had assembled about eleven o'clock, as the audience
on the occasion—a person named Quorndon, the auctioneer
to the alternative of going home
and proprietor—and his wife, the party about co be s'old.
Thro fi 1 ....
N .nte-fkreno.,, }mower, 'a. kl4rris, the Polii-le,
man, this singular exhibition was prevented, the lady being
subjected
consigned to the lock-up. quietly, or being

MRS. NORTON AND THE BRITISH

AND FOREIGN REVIEW.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE BRITISH AND FOREIGN REVIEW.
Sir,—l h are just read, with some astonishment, a very
long, very coarse, and very violent attack u;:ou mein the
British and Foreign Quarterly, apropos of. the discussions
of the talents' Custody Bill, the introJucton of my name
being prefaced by the following fl nitish —. " Nuts that we
have here folldived the plan of thine base inuendo-rnsking
dast,irils who dare make insinuations against ;-,,ersons wham
they dare not anerwards substaetiate, bat hal every realco to
believe were false at the time they male t' eat, v:e are certain
readersthat th of the British and Foreign Review will nit
for an instant suppose. We abhor all such conduct." How
far such conduct may be abliored I know not, but this is pre-
cisely what has been done in the article referred to.
In asserting in your title-page that f am the authoress of
a Stat6ment y• the Wrongs of Women, you hive printed
and published a direct falsehood. Your " wish" may base
been " father to the thought" that I was the author, but I
am not. I did not write it ; I have never even tead it; nor
knew of its existence till I saw it named in your Review.
In asserting that I have, as a " renowned agitatrice," dr-
culated a work on " sexual equality," you have printed and
published another falsehood. Nothing I have ever written,
nothing I have ever said, will bear cut the assertion that such
are my sentiments ; on the contrary, in my novel of The Wife
you will find precisely the contrary argument, with your fa-
vourite Milton quoted in support of it. I believe the beauty
and devotion of a woman's character mainly to depend on the
consciousness of her inferiority to man, and that the greatest
suffering a right-minded and pure-hearted woman can feel, is
unable to respcct and look up to her husband. Had you read
the pamphlet on the mother's claim, from which so many
twisted and misquoted fragments are taken, you would have
found in it no violence (although so much violence has been
lavished upon me), nothing that militated against the religious
duty a woman owes her husband, or the inferiority of the po-
sition she is intended to occupy ; not a line that the purest
woman who ever writhed under unmerited slander need have
been ashamed of writing.
In asserting that that pamphlet was written with the assis-
tance and advice of Sergeant Talfourd ; that his measure was
framed and brought forward in consequence of our being
" intimate friends," &c., you have printed and published
another falsehood. However proud I might have felt, had
Sergeant Talfourd considered me of sufficient ability to be his
coadjutor in any literary task, your assertion that he did so is
false, fur this simple reason, that I was oat then so fartuntve
as to have made his acquaintance. It may suit the opponents
of this measure to ride it out on the strength of the prejudice
they can create against me, and to throw other cases into the
shade; but the notes for my pamphlet were made before I
knew that I ever should have a direct and personal interest in
the subject; they were made on the case of Mrs. Greenhill,
whose story and whose petition are so carefully slurred over by
the writer of the article in your Review ; and after the intro-
duction of Sergeant Talfourd's Bill, an abridgement, alluding
to that measure, was cirdtilated, composed principally of se-
htetions from the original pamphlet (as the article in your
Review was composed from selections from a pamphlet against
the Bill, privately distributed amongst the Lords). That
person in my position, parted from her children (the eldest
not seven years old), should take an interest, a deep and bitter
interest in "the Infants' Custody Bill," nas natural, was in.
evitable: that Sergeant Talfourd, with his acknowledged in-
tellect and noble character, should bring forward an important
public measure, disbelieving in its
justice and
utility, merely
do gratify the caprice of a complaining woman, is an idea tco
ridiculous to have entered the mind of Any but the Orlando
Furioso who wrote the attack in your Review.
In asserting or insinuating that the delay in the progress of
the Bill arose from " the Norton negociations taking a more
favourable turn," you have printed and published another
absurd falsehood. The delay was, as I believe, to improve
the details of the Bill ; and for my own part, did it please
God to restore my children to-morrow, I should still feel the
deepest anxi:dy for the success of that measure. My interest
in it did not begin with my own misfortunes, and will not end
with them. I should still think it a gross injustice that a
mother may be prevented from nursing, or even from gaining
intelligence of her sick and dying child, by the caprice of an
angry husband; I should still think it a gross injustice that a
man may forsake his legitimate wife for a mistress,
her innocent legitimate child into the care of ths'
in the case of Skinner v. Skinner) and 1.13: Znglish law have
no remedy for such a wrong.
For any answer to the arguments on the ostensible and
nominal subject of the article in your Review, (namely, the
Bill itself), this is not the place. For anything I know' the
House of Lords may decide next session that Sergeant Tal-
fourd and the great majority of the House of Commons who
supported him are fools, and know not what they aee doing ;
that so likewise are such of the Lords who support Lordb
Lyndhurst, as well as Lord Lyndhurst himself (though he fits
been twice Lord Chancellor of England, and has owed that
position not to the adventitious aid of circumstances, but
simply to the superiority of his own natural talents); and
that the only true, wise, or great man is the writer of the
attack in the British and Foreign Review. But I feel called
upon for a contradiction of the four or five distinct false-
hoods which have been published respecting myself, as silence
might seem to admit that what you have stated is no more
than the truth. I declare all those assertions to be false, and
consequently the vehement abuse and contemptuous argu-
ments founded on those falsehoods, are so many misrepresen-
tations. I contradict them thus openly, because I perceive a
cunning and plausible attempt, as I have already said, to
create a prejuitect against the 13111 by mixing up my affairs
with its discussion.

Yuu have said that I " courted publicity." It is attacks of
the nature you have made on ma which force that publicity.
It would no doubt suit the author of that article, and other
known or unknown foes, that I should always preserve silence,
let what will be said of me. " Do not court publie;ty I" that
is, " let the publicity be all or, one side ; let us assert what
we choose ; let us invent what we can ; let us pour out what
venom and scurrility we please on your name, and do not you
venture to deny the falsehood, or reply to the attack ; it is not
fit the truth should be known, end if we can buily you into
silence, we will." It is one of the many falsehoods in that
long abusive article that I have courted publicity, or sought
any sympathy but that of my family and friends, and the
proof is, that to this hour no explanation of the very strange
events which have cursed my name with painful notoriety, has
beer. given to the world. I did not " court" the gross and public
slander by which four or five unworthy plotters hoped to ob-
tain a temporary political triumph. I did not " court" the
advertisement which day by day went forth in the public
paper; ; nor the abuse and ribaldry which, by means of law
reports and comments upon lam reports, has clung to my
name wherever English newspapers are sent. 1 did not
" ecurt" the vehement and tedious article in your Review,
the abuse of its writer, or the assertions which it contains ;
but since these things have fallen upon me ; since publicity
i 3 to attach to me and my affairs ; since I cannot evade or
escape from it ; since every editor of a Paper or a Review
thinks he has a right to publish what he please., tn con-
nexion with my name, I will at least so f:,r court publicity on
the other hand, as to deny assertions which, were they true,
would disgrace me. When that pompous article was written,
and the utter inferiority of women commented on, it might
have struck the writer that in proportion to the inforiority and
helplessness of their position towards men, should be the ge-
nerosity and forbearance exercised towards them by men; it
might have struck him, while he sneered at the logs of a
mother parted from her child, and made assertions ite could
not prove, that it was suffering enough to be so parteel, and to
have youth blighted, and " life's life lied away," without his
adding comments whose virulence and injustice would better
have become a low newspaper squib than the discussion of a
Parliamentary question in the pages of a work professing
nobler ends, and bearing the motto—" In prituisoue hominis
est propria veri inquisitio atque inve,tigatio."
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
CAROLINE NL;.CON,

DREADFUL FIRE AT HEMIM HEMPSTED.—
On Saturday last a dreadful fire occurred at the beautiful
little town of petrel Hempstead, Hertfordshire. It ap.
peers that on Saturday night, about 11 o'clock, the ser-
vant of Dr. Hallet, a physician in the town, retired as usual
to rest. It is supposed that he ft!'.l asleep before be got into
bed, and that he kneeked the candle off the table, which set
fire to the bed furniture. In a little time the conflagration
burst out in an alarming manner, and the greater portion of
the inhabitants were soon on the spot to render assistance, but
their efforts were unable to check the progress of the devouring
element, and the mansion was sue; 1 a heap of ruins. Engines
were sent for frarn Arlindge Castle, Sir Astley Cooper's, and
Qeneral Montague's, but they arrived too late to be of much
service. It is impossible at present to give an exact account
of the damage done, but it is supposed, an a rough calcula-
tion, that property to the anioqut of 20,000/. is destroyed.
None of the property is insured. The body of Thomas Jack-
son, the servant, was dug out of the ruins. He was quite
dead. A servant girl, named Mary Sharp, and the son of
Dr. Hallet, a fine youth six years of age, are missing. It is
greatly feared that they, too, have perished.—[We have since
learned from a correspondent, who yesterday made inquiries
at Hemet iitimpst©d respecting the above occurrence, that
there is no truth in the statement that three persons uvre
burnt to death. So far from this being the ease, no one
received the least injury, and Dr. Hallett, the gentleman
whose house was burnt, has no son.]
On Monday night a shoemaker named Steel, re•
siding in Monmouth-street, attempted self-destruction by hang-
ing himself from the bedpost. His daughter, a girl ten years
of age, observing that he was about to suspend himself,
screamed and endeavoured to leave the room, when the
Wretched man 'made a stab at her with a large knife. Fortu-
nately she escaped the blow by darting underneath the table.
Assistance being procured, it was found that in the interim the
man had so far effected his purpcs as to be insei.slble. He
lies at Charing-cross lioipital In a very rrecarintis state.
An inquest was held yesterday at Fulham, ee the
body of a girl named Kelly, late servant to Me. Wansborough,
surgeon, at Fulham, who poisoned herself by taking a dose of
arsenic. The only cvidenee es to the eatve which led the gill
to destroy herself erns that of her aunt, who stated that de-
Pen.eti bad complained to her of liming been left alone in
house with her young master, who bad attempted to take li-
berties with her, a circumstance which he preyed greatly on
her mind. Verdict—" Tenreolearl derangement.
An adjovol4ed inquest was held yestetibY
dock
tAyBn, n4t,tiecl 4een, who was found dead in the
on the
of` t. Mary llvery, FJoutliwerk, a short time ago under st stp,t
citing eiregfestances. After a lengthened investigation, e
jury returned a verdict of " Accidental Death," being of ow,
nion that deceased bad fallen into the dock from ,tee nitwit
there being no sufficient barrier for ,the teNr-ito.F khassengers.