The Sun.
London, England, 1838-06-21 00:00:00

In a day or two,
ACORONATION MEMORIAL
In green or crimson Silk, Gilt Edges, ISmo., 3s.

VICTORIA !

An Anecdotal Memoir of her Majesty, from her birth to the pre-
sent period ; comprising highly interesting and generally original
Anecdotes, Personal Traits, and Characteristic Sketches of the
Queen ; with a _ .

Faithful and Exquisitely Engraved PORTRAIT, by MOTE.
London : J. Saunders, Jun., 49, Paternoster-row.

On Wednesday, June 27, will
THE MONTHL
CONT:

published, 2s. 6d., No. V. of
Y CHRONICLE,

]. Political Coalitions.
2. Animal Magnetism—(con-
eluded).
3. Ireland.
4. Ocean Steamers.

'ENTS.

London : Lo]

5. University Reform, by an
Oxford Professor.
6. Review of Literature.
7. Music and the Opera.
8. Notes of the Month.
I, Orme, and Co.

SECOND EDITION.
This day was published, the Second Edition of
THE EDINBURGH REVIEW,
No. CXXXV.

CONTENTS.
1. GEORGE the FOUR al and QUEEN CAROLINE—ABUSES of

the PRESS.
9. WHEWELL'S MECHANICAL EUCLID—PRINCIPLES of MA-
THEMATICAL REASONING.
3. JARDINE on the USE of TORTURE in ENGLAND.
4. SLADE, SPENCER, and OTHERS, on RUSSIA, TURKEY, and

CIRCASSIA.
5. LIFE of WILLIAM WILBERFORCE, BY HIS SONS.
S. MISS MARTINEAU'S TRAVELS in AMERICA.
7. LORD BROUGHAM'S SPEECHES on SLAVERY.
B. CLAIMS of the WHIGS and TORIES.
9. TRADES' UNIONS and SI'tiIKES.
London : Longman and Ca., Edinburgh : A. and C. Black.

LONDON and lIIRIVIINGHANI RAILWAY.
The Public are informed thlt on SUNDAY the 24th inst.,
and on every succeeding Sunday until further notice, the TRAIN
which now leaves London at 9J A.M. for Denbigh Hall, WILL.
RUN TO BIRMINGUAM ; and that an ADDITIONAL
TRAIN will leave Birmingham at !O .►.m. fur London, stopping
at all the Stations. _

By Order,
IL CREED, Secretaries to
C. R. 1110ORSONI, f the Board.

London, June 18, 183.

?lepublication of THE SUN NEINSPAPER commenced this dub,
at 23 minutes past Three o' Clock.

o'f-t.p.'

Zhe

WITH WHICH
THE TRUE SUN" IS NOW

IN i',ORPORATED.

LONDON :
THURSDAY EVENING, JUNE 21, 1839.

We see by the votea of the House of Commons that the
Committee on the Sugar Duties Bill has been postponed
till Friday, which will enable the Members to inquire into
a subject which at present, we believe, they do not un-
derstand. Our opinion has its source in charity towards
them, for' we cannot for one moment suppose that
they would sanction the present system of bounties, if
they were aware of its consequences. ;Their intention,
which is just, is to give the sugar-refiners a drawback pro-
portionable to the duty levied on the sugar manufactured,
but by one of those disgraceful my stifications which go
by the name of finance, their intention is pervertel
into giving a bounty on exporting refined sugar, which
no person has estimated at less than ten shillings
per cwt. The result has all the evil consequences
which political economists have long proved to be inherent
in all bounties, such as diverting industry and capital from
more to less productive employments, besides many evil
consequences of its own. It substitutes competition
amongst buyers for competition amongst sellers, and in
consequence raises the price of all the sugar consumed
here more than the extent of the bounty. By exorbitantly
raising the price it drives the people to consume an article
which is proved to contain, on an average at 'cast, one-
fifth of dirt and poison. The just intention of the Legisla-
ture has, in fact, been converted by fraud and cupidity into
a means of injuring the public health, and of levying a large
tax on the consmmunity.
The average difference of price between West India
sugars in our market and sugar of equal goodness in the
neighbouring continental markets, is estimated in the pamphlet
to which we have more than once referred, at 15s. per cwt.
The import of sugar from our West India Colonies in
1835 was 204,109 tons, which gives a sum of 3,061,6351.
annually extracted from our pockets by the bounty in the
shape of an increased price on sugar. But for the bounty,
the argument is, that sugar would fall in price here to the
price of sugar on the Continent of Europe, notwithstand-
ing the monopoly, because our colonies produce more than
is sufficient for our own market, and the price of the sur-
plus to be sold in the Continental markets would deter-
mine the price of all the sugar consumed here. It would
be reduced to the price of Foreign sugar at Amsterdam
and Hamburgh. But for the bounty therefore we should
pay 15s. per cwt. on the average less than at present for
our sugar, or a tax would be remitted by the House of
Commons assenting to Mr. CLAY'S motion of 3,061,6351.,
while the revenue, without looking to the increased con-
sumption, would save 255,000/. per year. The Members
of the House of Commons, whether they represent the
suffering agricultural labourers, or our over-worked and
under-fed weavers, all of whom consume a great deal of
sugar, will not do justice to them, if they do not on Friday
support Mr. CLAY'S motion to make the drawback exactly
equal to the duty, and so extinguish the bounty.

It will be seen by our Parliamentary report that Mr.
Sergeant TALFOURD has withdrawn the Copyright Bill.
No other course, in fact, was left to the Learned Gentle-
man, as it would have been quite impossible to get it
through Parliament at this advanced period of the Ses-
sion, while so much important business is pressing upon
the attention of the Legislature. The Learned Sergeant
stated that he had made such alterations in the measure as
had disarmed the hostility of the principal publishers to it.
What these alterations are we know not, as we have not
seen the Bill in its amended form ; but we are inclined to
doubt whether, as they have met the approbation of the
booksellers, they will be entitled to be considered as im-
provements. Mr. H UNIE is still implacable in his hatred
of the Bill, and is determined to oppose it when it is
brought forward next Session.

Wearied and disgusted as the public must feel with the
repeated, but hitherto futile attempts of the Saints to
interfere with the popular observance of the Sabbath, it
cannot but prove satisfactory to every honest man to find
in the debate in the House of Commons last night a

complete justification of his abhorrence of such inter-

with the conscience of the community. An
At, moved by Mr. JEavis, on the first clause of
Day Bill, re-committed last night on the
Er. PLIJIIPTRE, served to tear the hypocritical
Ithe countenances of the Parliamentary
he Honourable Memb,-!r proposed that after
shall do any manner of work," the words " or
done" should be inserted, in order that the Bill

might equally affect both rich and poor. In an instant
Saint PLUMPTRE was on his legs to oppose the amendment.
His conscience took the alarm the instant it was proposed
to extend the operation of the Bill to those who never
work but by the hands of menials and domestics. The
Honourable Gentleman is so much of a casuist as to discover
a great difference between working oneself and compelling a
servant to work. It is the hand, and not the will and power to
cause it to be obeyed, that, according to the modern Pha-
risaical interpretation of the Commandment, sins against
the sanctity of the Sabbath I Mr. PLUMPTRE was sup-
ported in his opposition to Mr. JERVIS'S amendment for
compelling the rich to observe the Sabbath equally with
the poor by Mr. GOULBURN, Sir THOMAS FREMANTLE,
Sir H. VERNEY, and Mr. KEMBLE ; and opposed by Mr.
SANFORD, the SOLICITOR-GENERAL, Mr. VERNON
SMITH, Mr. VILLIERS, Mr. HAWES, Lord DUNGAN-
NON, Mr. P. HOWARD, and Mr. LANGDALE. What
will the country think of the sanctimonious preten-
sions of Parliament, when it reflects upon the fact,
that upon a division of 168 Members, a majority of
50 were found to exonerate the rich from all penalties at-
tached to the crime of breaking the Sabbath ? In vain
was it urged that the poor might be compelled to break the
Sabbath by their masters and employers, and therefore—if
the breach were to be made penal—common sense and com-
mon justice pointed out that in all such cases the masters
and employers should be held responsible. When Mr.
JERVIS, in denouncing the Bill as one-sided, pointed
to the Sabbath-gambling in the Clubs, as proved by a
recent disgraceful trial in the Court of Queen's Bench,
Sir T. FREMANTLE got up and applauded the prudence
of his pious friend in including in his Bill only
vulgar iniquities ! Parliament had never recognized
clubs, and therefore he maintained that the sins com-
mitted in them were not proper subjects for the cog-
nizance of the Legislature. What an accommodating,
Aristocratic conscience must not this Gentleman be blessed
with ! As there is no mention of club-houses, either in
the Act of Charles 11. or the Decalogue, the Hon.
Baronet very composedly concludes that their name is not
entered in Heaven's Chancery, and therefore, that no ac-
count shculd be taken of the Sabbath debaucheries weekly
committed in them. Talk of the religion of the Par-
liament of Great Britain in the nineteenth century
after this! Should this Bill pass, we tell its framers
and supporters, that it will lead to a reaction in the
public mind more injurious to the moral feeling of this
country than all the pernicious laws enacted during the
last quarter of a century. Having exposed the rottenness
of their own morality, they need not flatter themselves that
the people will pay the least regard to the measure with which
they are seeking to insult them. On the contrary, from
very exasperation, thousands who never before were guilty
of the least breach of the Sabbath, will unite with the least
scrupulous in trampling upon a Bill which singles
out for insult and oppression the industrious poor.
Mark, too, the effect which its enforcement would
have in Ireland, where from the poverty of the people
public meetings can only be held in the agricultural dis-
tricts on the Sabbath. In the hands of an Orange Ma-
gistracy- it would be made to interfere with the performance
of divine worship, under the plea of preventing. such public
meetings ; and thus it would lead to breaches of the
peace, deprivation of the liberty of the subject, and eventually
to conflicts between the constabulary and the people, at-
tended with loss of life. We therefore call upon the Go-
vernment to exert its just influence in throwing out this
mischievous Bill. Leave the people to follow the dictates
of their ses oral creeds and consciences in the observance of
the Sabbath ; or it' there is to be restriction, impose it on
those who are too wealthy and too indolent to toil daily for
their daily bread.

The opposition made by the University of Oxford to the
Great Western and Oxford Railway Bill tends to raise the
undertaking very much in our estimation. As a body that
Institution is at least a century behind the age. What
other persons call reform and improvement it designates
innovation and revolution ; it would have granted no re-
lief to Dissmter3 or Catholics—it would retain all the
bigoted prejudices and enforce all the antiquated
,statutes of former times—and but for the conellia.t-
lug policy of its protectors, 'WELLINGTON and PEEL,
on whom it heaped every abuse, it would by its
opposition to every species of reform, have created
that very revolution of which it stands so much in dread.
Facility in travelling (and frequent intercourse with the
rest of mankind tends to destroy prejudices)—steam-boats
and railways are every day removing some barrier to im-
provement, to international intercourse, and to the amal-
gamation of the different states of Europe and America ;
and it is not too much to say, that the steam-engine,
more than any other discovery yet made, is destined to be
one of the great means of civilising the world—creating
mutual sympathies and mutual wants—the greatest of all
securities against the effects of ignorance, and the calami-
ties of war. Oxford, true to its character, will have none
of these improvements. It dreads contact, as if all other
places were impure, and the precincts of the venerable
University furnished the only abode of virtue, and the only
school for moral and religious knowledge. The public
have not thought so. The system of education
pursued there has been condemned by many brought
up under the wings of the University. Many
parents send their sons to Oxford and Cambridge to get
degrees in the shortest time possible, and not a few prefer
sending them to inferior places when they can acquire moral
and useful education without degrees. The more the place
is thrown open to the public, the sooner will its great de-
fects become known. Facility of intercourse would throw
light upon the monkish habits at the University, and soon
lead to what the public desire, and the old bigotted party
dread—a radical change.

The amount of tax levied on the community by the
Church is undoubtedly not ascertained. In none of the
estimates made in Parliament are the church-rates, fees,
and sundry parochial taxes included. It is in one respect
like light, generally seen but very difficult to measure. To
the disgrace of some of the new Corporations, that of Ox-
ford for example, they have, under the influence of the
Clergy, voted considerable sums for beautifying and
adorning the Church. Certain Aldermen of the Cor-
poration of Oxford, because they thought proper to go
to Church in state, also thought proper to make the
people pay for their splendour. Ten pounds were annually
voted for singing boys—what would the Standard say if it
were for singing women ?—fifteen for repairing the organ,
and other sums for lighting and warming the Church, wash-
ing the surplices, &c., altogether 501. This was done in
defiance of the 92d clause of the Municipal Act, which
high Church Aldermen can repeal or suspend, as easily
as dispense, where the Church is concerned, with the obliga-
tions of morality. It was only natural that the members
of the Corporation who do not go to the Aldermen's
Church should resist such a violation of propriety as this
vote; and as its illegality could not be disputed, the
high Church Council voted a salary to the Mayor, coupling
it with the condition that out of the sum so voted,
a proportion of the expences of the Aldermen's Church
should be paid to the Churchwardens of St. Martin's parish.
To take 501. of the Corporation funds, or any other sum
for the gratification of the four or five Aldermen who
attend a Church, is a monstrous perversion of the prin-
ciples on which the Corporations were reformed, and
such doings will speedily make the reformed Town Coun-
cils as disreputable as were the old nests of self-elected
jobbers. The Church is here again the leaven of corrup-
tion, and its advantage justifies Aldermen as well as Le-
gislators, in their own eyes, in doing wrong to their fellow-
citizens or the public. The poor Aldermen are in fact
only the tools of some arrogant high Churchmen, who are
determined to leave no means unexplored by which they
can dip their hands into the pockets of the people. It is
not enough that the public must pay all the exorbitant de-
mands of the Church—they must also submit to those de-
mands being made in the most arrogant manner. The pro-
ceedings at Oxford under their influence should make the
inhabitants of our towns very cautious how they elect priest-
ridden men to represent them in the Town Councils.

In another column will be found a list of the goods
seized by the harpies of the Church, from certain of the
parishioners of Bungay, who regard the voluntary payment
of Church-rates as a sinful act. Alas! for the Church of
England, when, notwithstanding the loud professions with
which she proclaims her abhorrence of the evil courses of
her old mother—the scarlet abomination—she copies her ex-
amp'e where it is least worthy of imitation, and walks in the
worst(;.' her ways, as if she wore determined to prove her

kindred by the vice, not the virtue, running in the blood.
Persecution, for conscience' sake, was the foulest of all the
stains upon the Church of Rome ; but experience has
proved that if the sects that sprung out of the so-called Re-
formation had possessed the power of the Mother Church,
they would have exercised it with as great, if not greater
tyranny. They persecuted to the utmost extent that they
dared to persecute, and even now—in this age which we
deem enlightened par excellence—we find the spirit of per-
secution, though disarmed by the force of public opinion
and the law of the greater part of its active venom, still
showing tokens,'not to be mistaken, not only of vitality, but
of its ancient malignity. Nor is it to one sect alone that
the charge of persecution applies. It matters not what
the doctrinal points may be by which the sect is distin-
guished ; once give it power—do but establish it in connec-
tion with the State, and you necessarily make it intolerant.
The spirit of an Establishment is everywhere one and the
same, and we can be at no loss to know it by its fruits,
whether brought forth in the shape of pains and penalties,
inflicted for non-payment of Church-rates in England, or
of annuity tax in Scotland.

New York journals from the 26th ult., to the evening of
the 2d inst., inclusive, have been received this morning.
They announce the arrival of the Earl of DURHAM, at
Quebec, on the 20th ult. Great preparations were making
for the suitable reception of his Excellency in the Ca-
nadas. We subjoin an official notice of the burning of the
British steam-boat, the Sir Robert Peel, on the River St.
Lawrence, about seven miles from French Creek, by a
party of incendiaries, supposed to be Canadian re-
fugees, hitherto concealed in the United States,
We trust that the authorities will do all in
their power to discover the perpetrators of an act, the
obvious intention of which is to provoke hostilities between
England and the United States. A paragraph which we
copy from Mackenzie's Gazette of the 2d instant, ascribes
the destruction of the boat to accident, but the official cor-
respondence upon the subject proves this statement to be
entirely unfounded. The boat was forcibly seized, carried
into the American waters, and there burned.
The monetary intelligence from the United States is ex-
ceedingly favourable. Stocks continue to rise, and specie is
abundant. We have copied, from the New York Daily
Whig of the Ist and 2d instant, the latest account of the
state of affairs in Wall-street :

BURNING THE SIR ROBERT PEEL BRITISH -STEAM BOAT.
(From the Albany Argus of June 1.)
FRO)! TILE NORTHERN FRONTIER.

An express from Watertown reached the city yesterday afternoon,
bringing despatches to Governor Marcy from the District Attorney,
Marshal, &c., at that place, by which we regret to learn that a most ex-
traordinary outrage was committed within the American waters early on
Thursday morning. The British steamboat Sir Robert P.:el, lying too
about seven miles from French Creek, on the River St. Lawrence, was
forcibly seized by a body of armed men, supposed to be Canadian refu-
gees, set on fire, and entirely consumed.
The subjoi'ied extracts from the letters t 6 the Executive affords all
the information yet rezeived touching this affair :
FROM G. C. SHERMAN, DISTRICT ATTORNEY, TO Hl:4 EXCELLENCY