The Sun.
London, England, 1849-04-24 00:00:00

COLONIAL.

SUGAR.—The market for British Plantation continues
dull, at about previous rates; sales 150 hhds 2,260 bags
Mauritius sold at about former prices; mid to good yel-
low 38s to 40s, with grey at 37s to 38s. Of 130 cases
and 5,460 bags Bengal only about 1,600 bags were dis-
posed of at prices slightly in favour of buyers, via.,
middling to good white Benares at 39s to
41s Gd, and grainy from 43s 6d to 44s per cwt. The
quantity of British Plantation landed last week at the
East and West India Docks was 1,102 hhds, 215 tierces,
314 barrels. There were taken for home consumption
1,190 hhds, 69 tierces, 342 barrels. The stock in the
same places is 10,481 hhds, 1,563 tierces, 2,230 barrels.
COFFEE.-480 cases 45 bags Tellicherry found buyers
at from 32s Gd to 48s, for good ord pale to fine fine ord
colory, being comparatively easy terms.
num.—The quantity landed last week at the East and
West India Docks was 287 puns 2 hhds There were
taken for home consumption 224 puns 19 bbds, and ex.
ported 28 puns 44 hhds. The stock in the same places
is 19,238 puns 2,115 hhds.
RICE was in better demand, and several parcels, not
previously saleable, have been placed at tall prices,
amongst which were included 1,300 bags good pinky
Madras at Bs. 6d.

SALTPETRE.—The market is dull, and there are no
buyers unless at lower prices. 1,160 bags Bengal
offered at auction were taken in at 29s to 119 s 6d for
to 7 per cent. refraction, being the previous value.
TALLow.—P.Y.C. is 38s 9d per cwt on the spot, and
town 41s.
TEA.—The market is not brisk though the deliveries
are good, and at the public sales 7,700 packages howl)
been sold of the 26,076 offered.

_ - - -
Franconi's celebrated equestrian troupe, after
having bad a very successful season at Brussels, arrived
at Blackwell yesterday morning, by the General Steam
'Yaatepare
mo;sed biP Soho, from Antwerp.
to Dublin, where they
iNnaavigteawtiodna)9an
will days they
are engaged to appear.
Ma. SIMS REEVES.—Mr. Sims Reeves has entered
PisaotvomE
into an engagement with the management of the Italian
makerr his
ps
about a month as Arnold in Guillaume Tell,
e
Opera, Covent Garden,
Ealtnsd,
BOOT AND SHOEMA TIdTUTIO.N.
—The annual dinner of this eh
at the Freemasons"ravern, and about
took place yesterday
about 100 persons were
present on the oceasion. The
s Hon. Vernon Smith pre-
sided, and during the
evening subscriptions to the
amount of 6501. were announced by the secretary. It
stated that the site for
an asylum had been purchased on
the road to Richmoud ,and the architect presented each
of the guests present with a lithograph print of the new
building.
DEATH 07 A VETERAN.—James Henderson, ser-
geant in the 52d Light Infantry, died at Muse-lane,
Glasgow, on the 11th inst. The sergeant in his der
was a real hero, and had seen more service and received
more wounds than generally falls to the lot of one man.
lie served in almost all the hottest of our Peninsular
battles. He was present at the battle of Corunna in
1809—at Busaco and the capture and defence of Lisbon
in 1810—at Fuentes d'Onore and siege of Almeida in
1811. In 1812 be particularly distinguished himself at
the storming of Rodrigo and Badajos, having upon both
occasions volunteered for the forlorn hope. The aims
year he was present at the battle of Salamanca. In
1813 he fought at the battle of Vittoria, and in the
same year volunteered as one of the forlorn hope at the
storming of St. Sebastian—waspresent at forcing the
passage of the Adour; in 1814 at the battle of Orthes,
combat of Tarles, and battle of Toulouse—and at last in
the glorious battle of Waterloo! The gallant sergeant
was fourteen times wounded in action, some of which
were very severe; and he carried to his grave two
French musket balls received at Waterloo, which the
surgeons could not extract from his body. Sergeant
Henderson was a man of the most humane and tender
heart, and in every way en honour to his profession....
Caledonian Mercury.

GREAT GRIMSBY DOCKS.
De Ping the last few days obtrusive handbills and
imp' stun placards have been pressing, on the notice
cc fse public the fact that, on Wednesday, the 18th of
April, all persens desirous of availing themselves of
the privilege might be conveyed at so much per head
to Great Grimsby. Where and what is Greet
Gtimsby? we have heard it asked ; an 1 we do not scruple
to confess that it is not so very long since, uncon-
scious of the extent of ignorance of which we thereby
stool convicted, we hazarded the very same inquiry
ourselves. Great Grimby is a town in Lincolnshire,
on the southern bank of the Humber. What it is
now we need not trouble ourselves to describe ; what
it may, and probably will, be before the world is many
winters older, it might baffle the imaginative powers
of railway projectors and auctioneers to conjecture.
A few years ago a humble fishing village, great
in nothing but its name, with a harbour
silted up with the mud and sand that
collects so plentiful* in the bed of the Humber, was
all that presented itself, under that imposing denomi-
nation, to the gaze of the voyager steaming down the
broad estuary from the inland seaport of Hull. But
the magie wand of the capitalist has touched the
spot; the genius of railway enterprise has smiled on
and all the unbounded resources of English
wealth, industry, and constructive skill are already
employed in metamorphosing the insignificant village
into a great and populous city. Within the lapse of
two years, or three at most, piers and strong em-
bankments, running far out into the deep water, will
have converted a vast area, over which the
Husnber now rolls its tides, into a series of spacious
and commodious docks, accessible at all times to the
largest vessels. Substantial wharves, laid down with
railways, and covered with extensive ranges of ware-
houses, will line the basins ; houses and churches
will spring up on every side, and the quiet folks of
Great Grimsby will find themselves surrounded by
the bustle of a busy and populous seaport town.
Being nearer to the sea by two hours than the port
of Hull, and protected by the headland that guards
the mouth of the estuary from the surges that lash
the long and cheerless line of the inhospitable eastern
coast, it may reasonably be expected that Great
Grimsby will very soon absorb the greater part of the
merthern steam-packet traffic, both inland and foreign,
and become the principal place of resort for the ship-
ping that traverses the German Ocean. The docks
will themselves form the terminus of a line of railway
whieU spans the island, shooting across to Manchester
and Liverpool, and entering the heart of the great
web of railroad communication which is fast covering
the northern counties. Thus it may be expected
to become the main outlet for the exports
of the manufacturing districts, as well as the
focus of our large and daily increasing import
trade with the Baltic and the countries of North

Eaeope. The kagricultural counties of the east of
England will receve through it their supplies of bones,
of cake, and foreign manures, of which they have of
late years consumed large quantities, and the demand
fer which is rapidly extending under the influence of
as improved system of tillage. It will export the salt
of Cheshire and the woollens of the West Riding. In
short, it will be the commercial metropolis of the
east of England, the Liverpool of the German Ocean,
distant (by railway) but a very few hours from its
elder sister on the Atlantic.
The laying of the first stone of this magnificent
work was an event worthy of being graced by the
presence of the illustrious personage whose visit to
Lincolnshire we yesterday recorded. His Royal
Highness appears to have borne his part in the cere-
mony with the tact and good-humoured urbanity
which he invariably exhibits on such occa-
sions, and made, as he never fails to
do, an apt and well-turned F peech. We
sincerely regret that the unpropitious weather
should have interfered with the cordial welcome pre-
pared for the consort and representative of her Ma-
jesty, and when he next goes down to lay a first stone
or to walk over a Lincolnshire farm, we heartily wish
him a bright sun and an unclouded sky.
In truth, the cruel caprice of this most wintry of
April seasons, seems to have shed a mast inauspicious
dreariness over festivities which should have worn the
air of warmth and cheerfulness suitable to the in-
auguration of a great undertaking. But the sober
hopefulness of thie calculating age laughs at portents,
and defies the malice of lowering clouds and angry
skies. The new seaport, rising on the edge of a
district which the ample capital and untiring industry
of Englishmen have converted from a sterile quagmire
into a trim and fertile wheatfield, is born under a fa-
vourable conjunction of circumstances over which the
stars have no control. May it thrive and flourish as its
founders desire, and may its promoters eat of the fruit
of their ti*bours to their hearts' content ! It is in
such undertakings as this that we see the most
encouraging signs of' the vigour and vitality of the
commercial and agricultural prosperity of England.
Travel where you will throughout the countries of the
old world, you meet et every turn traces of those
tranecnigrations of capital. which no historian has
rec ,rde'i, and of the traneitoriness of the opulence
and grandeur which have been enjoyed in successive
ages by different localities. As the streams of com-
merce have cut out for themselves fresh channels. and
wandered into new courses—as the pioneers of civili-
zation have opened up for the inhabitants of densely
populated countries unoccupied tracts of virgin
fertility—the cries and countries which in
their day had queened it most proudly amongst
their fellows, have lost, one by one, the
pre-eminence their denizsns fondly fancied would
L 3 ,ternal, and sunk, within the lapse of a few cen-
turi's, into dilapidation and decay. Grass has long
been growing in the streets of Bruges and the great
soetares of Ghent. Cologne and Venice are no longer
tt,e resort of the traders of the East and West. The
old Slavonian towns which lay along the now for-
e ,' een overland routes between Europe and Asia have
e into oblivion ; Novogorod the Great is no longer
et she was, and Holmgard on the Dwina is lost for

„
r to the exploring inquirer among the snows of
-:orsaken North. The great marts of Grecian and
l'eeelician commerce, and—to remount to a still ear-
; period—the vast and stately cities whose euins
lie entombed under the soil of the Mesopotamian
p s. leie what are they now ? Monuments of the in-
sta')llity of human things, abandoned by the merchant
and ertizan to the antiquarian and the moralist. The
wealth and industry which decked the plains of Asia
and the shores of the Mediterranean, are gone to
people and adorn the coasts of the far Atlantic.
England, too, it has been said, awaits her allotted
hour. The time will come, we have been told, when
a traveller from New Zealand or South Australia
shall stand upon a ruined arch of London-bridge to
sketch the ruins of St Paul's. It may be so. The
decrees of Providence may, in our ease as in a hun-
dred others, overturn the calculations of human fore-
sight. But, so far as we can rely on what
experience and observation teach us, that time, if it
shalt ever come at all, must be very far distant.
With the blessing of Heaven, if we be true to our-
selves, we have long ages of prosperity before us.
We lie on the great thoroughfare of commercial in-
tercourse; before the gates of the Old World, and on
the highway to the New. Our accumulated capital
—injurious as its concentration may prove in
some respects to our social state our mi-
neral treasures, and the elastic energy of the
Anglo-Saxon character, will keep us yet, as
they have kept us hitherto, in the van of the
march of industrial progress. And we may derive
some confidence in the vigour and elasticity of the
national fabric from observing how, as our old towns,
rich in architectural beauty, and venerable from his-
torical and ecclesiastical associations, formerly the
marts of our inland trade, become lifeless, dull, and
deserted, new cities rise elsewhere, as if by enchant-
me et, in spots to which the flys of population and
ca; ital, di,placed by new inventions and discoveries,
has from time to time determined. The man of taste
and sentiment may mourn over the change, and con-
trast Lincoln Cathedral and the noble Minster of
York with the cheap churches and commodious
meeting- houses which will in due time embellish the
town of Greet Grimsby.. But let him console him-
self. He is seeking to arrest the. operation of an un-
varying law, which, whilst it has ruined other coun-
tries, has but enhanced the prosperity of his own,
changing, it is true, its features, and perhaps defacing
those which in his eyes were most attractive. Let
him reflect that he will be better employed in im-
proving and refining the character and tone of his
own generation than in bewailing its degeneracy.
Let him, we say, take comfort, and not refuse to join
CI-, directors of the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lin-
e ,;nshire Railway Company, in celebrating, with the
nil of Messrs. Bathe and Breach, of the London
.iv.rn, the anticipated, triumphs of Great Grimsby
Ducks.—Chronicle.

THE BRHED or HORSES in FRANCE. At the last
sitting of the Academy of Sciences, M. Duvaernineey
member,
in the name of a committee of which he is
report on a paper by M. Richard, director of them Tr,° ,a
laras. M. Richard states, that horses artificially
bred and trained for racing are of too delicate a nature.
to on useful fur military purposes; that the mixture of
the English race-horse with the Preach breed railer
io,!Rriorates than improves the latter; that the only race,
of horses in France which have prospered, or have not
deterioratA, are those used in. agriculture, and
i'od by agriculturists; that the Arabian horse, well
etw.ten, is the only foreign race proper to revive the
breed of light horses in Franet!, such as were used before
790, by crossing them with the breeds of Auvergne, the
Limousin, and the Pyreneu. The report agrees with
M. Richard as to the unfavourable results of mixing the
English pure Wood-horse with the French race, and
thinks his opinion in fav,Air of the exiesixture of Arab
blood very rational. The report, which has been adopted
by the Academy, concludes by recommending that the
thanks of that body shall be given to M. Richard for his
communication.

The Commissioners for investigating the application
of iron in railway structures had a meeting on Saturday
at the Office of the Board, of Trade, Lord Wrottesley
presiding.

GREAT INDIAN PENINSULA
RAILWAY.
The annual general meeting of the proprietors of the
shore railway was held 3 e -t-relay, at.
the London Tavern,
Biihopnate•street; In-rd When:elide in the chair.
The report stated that, after protracted negettations
with the nourable East India Company, the directors
had at length obtained from the Court terms securing
in
the in :ail:num interest of five per cent. upon a capital
the first instance of 500,0001., which they trust
the proprietors will receive with satisfaction. These
terms of guarantee were even more favourable to
the company than what were contemplated in the pro-
spectus issued by the directors in July last, the chief
points of difference being the omission of the confisca-
tion clause, a concession of interest extending over a
period of 99 years in place of 25 years, and the condi-
tional augmentation of the capital of the company to
1,000,000/. sterling. The directors had effected the
allotment of shares-70,000 in England and 30,000 in
Bombay. The subscription contract (required to
be submitted to the court) was in course of
execution, and would be completed within the specified
period. Shareholders had the option, at their discretion,
of paying the whole 51. per share at once, or the de-
posit and calls when made, which were to be spread over
three years; and the interest would accrue upon what-
ever sums were paid from the respective dates of pay-
ment into the treasury,of the Honourable East India Com-
pany. It was proposed, when the company was fully
constituted, to issue share certificates carrying interest
coupons in respect to such shares as may be wholly paid
up. The extension capital would be offered rateably to
holders of the present shares, in such manner as may be
deemed most advantageous and desirable, on every exten-
sion of the undertaking, ing, either by pre-emption of further
issues, or by an optionalincrease in the nominal amount
of the shares proportionate to the augmentation of
capital, from time to time, as the railway may progress.
It would be gratifying to the shareholders in England
to know, that, in Bombay, where the merits of the un-
dertaking, as a mercantile enterprise, may be presumed
to be best estimated, the most sanguine anticipations
were entertained of its success. The list of shareholders
thereincludes the names of almost all the principal
officers of the Government, and many of the leading
merchants in Western India; whilst the gentlemen
who compose the auxiliary committee in Bombay in
connexion with this board, and under whose personal
superintendence the active operations of the company
would be conducted, are gentlemen upon whose judg•
ment, integrity and vigilance the utmost confidence may
be placed. The directorshal only further to add that, with
respect to the estimates for the first section, between Bom-
bay and Callian they had the most implicit confidence in
their sufficiency. The sums estimated to cover the cost of
works and materials were based on the most trustworthy
data, and confirmed by actual tenders from experienced
contractors. In regard to future extensions of the line,
the directors, in conjunction with the local committee,
would not fail to fortify the interests of the property by
whatever means experience in the first section may afford,
meanwhile adopting the improvements and avoiding the
errors apparent in the conduct of existing railways, and
observing the most rigorous economy in every depart-
ment of the business of the company. With such rules
of conduct for their guidance, and encouraged by the
confidence of the proprietary, the directors had no fears
of being able to carry out to the fullest extent contem-
plated, and with the most entire success, thisimportant
undertaking.
The balance-sheet showed the amount received to be
22,3814, and the expenditure to be such as to leave a
balance in hand amounting to 1661.
The CHAIRMAN, in moving the adoption of the report,
expressed his gratification that they had arrived at a
point when they could enter upon the execution of a
portion of the line with spirit and energy, and gave it
as his decided opinion that no Indian railway had been
suggested which was likely to prove of so much practical
importance to this country, as the one they were em
barked in.