The Sun.
London, England, 1841-12-31 00:00:00

THE SUN, 0141301•7 FRIDAY, DECEUHER 81,
_lB4ll

houses in the suburbs, which, from day-light to
dark, are continually visited by beggars of all
ages. They have not often to thread their way
at night through any of the thoroughfares and
narrow streets of the metropolis, and they behold
none of the wretched objects, who, beingashamed
to be seen by day, then creep out and solicit
alms. They are carried from place to place in
their carriages ; their houses are within inclosed
parks, into which the beggars cannot penetrate ;
between them and the very poorest, crowds of
menials interpose, and they cannot see that
wretchedness which is now daily forced on the
observation of the middle classes. Such a rela-
tive position makes the present distress pecu-
liarly a middle-class question ; and it can only
be as they bestir themselves, and make the
upper classes share their knowledge and un-
easiness, that the causes of this distress will be
removed.

The middle classes, who may be said in gene-
ral to live on profit, are already the greatest
pecuniary sufferers from the decay of trade ;
but while they see their means diminishing, they
also see the claimants on their bounty rapidly
increasing. They suffer both in mind and purse.
They are afflicted by the sight of distress which
they cannot relieve, and are apprehensive of
coming to want themselves. It is chiefly their
property which is exposed to the depredations
of those who are in distress. Nor is there, we
are afraid, any immediate chance of improve-
ment. The New Poor-law is probably as ri-
gorous as the community will bear. A more
rigid test than the workhouse can scarcely be
applied, and there seems no possibility of dimi-
nishing mendicancy-by increase of severity.
If it were supposed that the present distress,
by putting many persons out of existence, would
put an end to beggary, there would be some,
though a very painful consolation; but it is
known from the history of every part of Europe,
that such distress does not wholly arrest the re-
production of the species; and as the present
race of distressed persons are carried off, their
places will be supplied with others, and probably
an increased number. If the middle classes wish
to live in safety, and be untormented by the
painful sight of suffering fellow-creatures, they
must, with that energy which belongs to them,
fake up the question of public distress, and reso-
lutely probe it to the bottom.
Far be it from us to say one word against the
active charity which is ever ready to relieve the
sufferings of the people ; but while that is admir-
ably adapted to soothe individual suffering, it is
wholly inadequate to redress a public injustice.
Charity is a delight to those who give, as well as
to those who receive ; but it is now required to
set mills in motion, and give profit to the masters
as well as wages to the men. Charity unfortu-
nately increases the claimants on bounty without
augmenting, like manufactures, the means of
providing for them. Charity is not, however de-
lightful to the heart, pecuniarily reproductive.
It will not suffice, therefore, to relieve the present
distress, and still less will it permanently restore
prosperity.

If the middle classes wish to put an end to
that distress, by which they are both morally
and pecuniarily the greatest sufferers, they must
have recourse to other means than charity. They
cannot, with decency or propriety, rely on a
Ministry which has been formed on the principle
of denying redress and relief to the people. If
they have not lost all that energy which enabled
them to carry the country through great foreign
wars, they will see the necessity of immediately
exerting themselves to conquer the greater diffi-
culties to which the country is now exposed
from domestic circumstances. The middle
classes are the sufferers by the present state of
the law, and it is the duty of the middle classes
to help themselves, and procure the reform of
the commercial code.

The Madrid Journals of the 21st instant have
come to hand, but their contents are of no poli-
tical importance. M. SALVANDY still declined
being presented to the REGENT.
Thr Funds had on the 21st undergone a slight improve.
inept, the last bargains done being at 321 a 33 for cash,
331 at sixty days, and about 135,0001 sterling was the
equivalent amount of the operations done.

In the comnit'nts of the Paris Journals of
Tuesday upon the KING'S Speech at the opening
of the legislative session, we find ample indica-
tions of the folly and the madness of the war of
extermination proclaimed against the Press by
the Court of Peers. These comments are so
written as to defy a Star Chati;ber prosecution,
and yet the majority of them are levlled at the
Government and the KING with a force and a di.
rectness unknown in the political discussions
which take place in this country. A Government
which admits of the right of free political dis-
cussion, and after the abolition of the censorship
places itself in direct hostility to the Press, is
either mad, or doomed to sure and speedy de-
struction. If then there be wisdom in the
Chamber of Deputies, and any attachment to
the House of ORLEANS, it cannot too soon set
about the correction of the vagaries of the Court
of Peers. The functions of that most despicable
Court must be clearly defined, and if trial by
Jury is to exist in France its exercise must be
secured to all classes of offenders not charged
with the actual crime of high treason by the re-
peal of the infamous September Laws. But the
Government objects that it cannot obtain con-
victions from Juries for offences committed by
the Press. This is because it does not trust
wholly to the honesty of Furies. While any
verdictjbut that of a Jury can ruin a Jour-
nalist, the sympathies of Juries will naturally
and necessarily be on the side of the Press. Be-
sides no case is referred to a Jury unless the Pro-
cureur-General give it as his opinion that it would
be ridiculous, and therefore would excite univer-
sal odium, to bring it before any other tribunal.
Unless the Monarchy place itself in harmony
with the Press before the close of the pre-
sent Session of the Chambers, either France
will shortly be in chains at the feet of Louis
PHILIPPE, or that Monarch awl his family will
be petitioners to a foreign State for an asylum
denied them within the limits of revolutionized
France. The monstrous doctrine of constructive
treason established by the verdict of the Peers in
the case of M. DUPOTY must at once, and for ever,
be declared infamous by the Legislature. Nothing
short of this can give security to the Press, or
persuade the nations of Europe that France is not
retrogading in all that gives-stability to the insti-
tutions, and freedom to the thoughts, of a civilized
people. As for M. HEBERT, the vile tool of the
Court who propounded this doctrine of complicity
of treason, we regard him as a more dangerous
enemy of the KING than FIESCHI, PEPIN, ALI..
BAUD, or any of the vile assassins who, in the
course of his reign, have attempted his life. The
veriest BOURBON conspirator could not labour
more effectually to overthrow the ORLEANS dy-
nasty than the Procureur-General has done since
the commencement of the trial of QUENISSET and
his accomplices.

The election for the President's Chair took
place in the Chamber of Deputies on Tuesday.
The following is the result:—

Deputies present 309
Majority required
Sauzet had 193 votes.
Lamartine
ilgarrot
M. SluzET was, therefore, to the great chagrin
of Me Royalist poet, declared duly elected. But
it was supposed that this would not be the
only Ministerial triumph in the preliminary
arrangements, as the opponents of the Minis-
terial candidates for the Secretary of Questor-
ships were supposed to have no chance.
This is to be traced to the difference
of opinion between Count MOLE and M.
Imts, relative to the conviction of
M. DUPOTY. The Court was in favour of the
conviction, and prevailed upon many of the
" 221,” of? whom he is the leader, to vote with
the Government. M. TRIERS, in whose breast a
lingering recollection of the Journalist yet exists,
shrunk from the atrocity of declaring DUPOTY
guilty; and as the first duty of the Opposition
will be to denounce this sentence, the MOLE
party suddenly finds itself rowing in the same
boat with M. HEI3ERT and the Ministry.
The Moniteur of the 28th gives in its official part an
account of the opening of the Session.
The three Councils of Commerce, Manufactures, and

Agriculture met on Monday ; the Minister of Commerce
presided.
The whole of the sitting was taken up with the sugar
question ; all the systems already brought forward in
the sittings on Friday and Saturday had new and ardent
advocates, and the discussion being nearly exhausted, as
there was no reason to proceed to a vote, the sitting was
closed without adjournment to any certain day; only the
Minister announced that the subject of discussion at the
next meeting of the three Councils would be the question
relative to cattle. The Councils will, therefore, have to
discuss the question in their respective meetings.
We hope to be able to give to-morrow some precise
information respecting the discussion in the three sittings
in which the Councils treated the sugar question.
We see by a letter from Frankfort of the 24th, that
the Marquis de Chasseloup Labot has made but a very
short stay in that city:
The Marquis de Chasseloup Labot, Envoy Extraor-
dinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of his Majesty the
King of the French to the German Confederation, after
having delivered his credentials to Baron Below, the
Representative of Prussia in the Diet, left our city to-day
to go direct to Paris, and take his seat in the Chamber
of Deputies, of which he is a Member, as Deputy for the
Department of the Lower Seine.
lithe presence of a Minister Plenipotentiary at Frank-
fort is useless, why appoint one?—if it is useful, why
choose a Deputy who must neglect one portion of his
duties?—Commerce. _ _ _

The National states that Baron J. de Rothschild has
been created a Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour
by a Royal Ordonnance, dated 24th inst.
The Moniteur announces the translation of M. Dupont,
the Archbishop of Avignon, to the Archbishopric of
Bourges, and the nomination of M. Gignoux, Vicar• G-
eneral of Beauvais, to be Bishop of that diocese.
The Dunkirk Journal states that Captain Granara, of
the Marie Louise, of that port, havinr, rendered great
assistance to the Emma, of Dundee, Captain Young, in
November last, when in a distressed state off Cape Fi-
nisterre, on a voyage to Genoa, the underwriters of the
latter vessel have presented him with a magnificent silver
plateau, richly chased, and hearing an inscription com-
memorative of the circumstance.
The -Ceurrier de Lyon announces the death of an in-
habitant of Vaise from a broken heart ; he had sustained
losses, from the inundations of 1840, to the amount of
100,000 f., but receiving only a very inadequate sum from
the indemnity fund, was compelled to relinquish all hope
of being able to rebuild his house, which had been
thrown down by the floods, and sell his estate. This had
preyed on his mind, and worried him till he died.
The personnel of the British Embassy in Paris is now
composed as follows :—His Excellency Lord Cowley,
Ambassador; Mr. H. Lytton Bulwer, First Secretary of
Legation ; Mr. Turner, private secretary of Lord Cow-
ley ; Messrs. Greville, Howard, Heneage, APlntosh, and
Jones, attaches.
Prosecutions have been commenced against the Pilate
and the Haro of Caen for giving an account of a re-
cent sitting of the Court of Peers.
The Duke Alexander of Wurtemberg has arrived at
the Tuileries from Brussels.

" Negotiations," says the Moniteur Parisien, " are
nearly brought to a close between the Directors of the
French and Belgian Post-offices, for the establishment
of estafettes, to receive at Cambrai the mails from Paris
for the Two Flanders, to convey them through Lille to
the first station at Courtrai, or any other that may here-
after be nearer tl4 frontier of France, when the railroad
is finished, so that very shortly letters passing through
the post-office at Paris will be distributed in the two pro-
vinces of Flanders, nearly as soon as those for Brussels
are delivered in that capital.
BOURSE—PARIS, TUESDAY, DEC. 28. _

first Highest Lowest Last
Price Price. Prier. Prix,.
r•feich 5 per Cent 5........... 35 ... 116 45 ... 116 30 116 45
3 per Cents. ex div 78 20 —, 78 '45 ... ;13 15 ... 78 25
8 ink of trance
Latfitte Bank 1,0001. Shares 10( 250 —lOO5 ...1002 50 ...1005
5,0001. Shares 5025 ...5025 ...5025 ...5025
melvian flank
Belgian 5 per Cents 102% 10234 10234 10234
5 per Cents., 184 U 103% 103% 103% 103%
ipsnish Active ......... 24% 24% ... 24% ... 24%
Pass) a ss(z •••5y{,... 534 ... 534
Old Deferred
Neapolitan
Portuguese 5 per Cents.
Ronan.— .... 102% ... 102% ... 102% 102%