The Sun.
London, England, 1840-12-12 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 12, 1840.

They may surround this grave with the dusty

banners of past wars and all the pomp of military
_

shows, but before it closes for ever, the severe voice
of Europe will read over it once more the condemn-
ing sentence of defeated ambition. Europe will
recal the violated rights of nations, the squandered
resources of France, the crushed liberties of mankind,
and all the evils perpetrated by the bootless game of
war, and by the excess of a sell-seeking and inordinate
authority. We would fain believe that France herself
has other objects to revere, and that the national honours
paid in her name ought, if they are to be fit or:lasting,tas
be paid to the wise and good. If monuments are raised
to the dead, they ought to be dedicated to those whose
lives were dignified by the defence of solid principles,
and whose memory is hallowed by lasting benefits. Un-
happily we have had evidence, but too recent and too
strong, that these sober notions, which are established
among a people like ourselves, slow to admire, but con-
stant in our predilections, have but little root in the
mercurial democracy of France. The attempt has
been deliberately made by men to whom the Gosern-
ment of that country had been intrusted to provoke a
fresh outbreak of the fever of war. With such
intentions, and with such sympathies with the
most hateful and foolish passions which can distract
the world, it is not wonderful that they should
do honour to the remains of Napoleon, and exalt the
demigod of discord into the genius of France. But,
forsooth, it is the Liberal party which makes these
professions and indulges in these delirious schemes :
the Liberal party clamours at one and the same in-
stant for the extension of constitutional liberty, and
for him by whom all liberty was stifled—for the exten-
sion of French influence abroad, and for him by
whom the influence of France was so extravagantly
abused as to provoke the overwhelming retaliation, of
united Europe. Is it rational to point to the bright
and burning spots in Napoleon's career without :
re-
collecting what they cost to France and tb the world
Is it consistent to decree the honour of national obse-
quies to him whose fall was hailed by the great bulk of
the French nation 25 years ago as the term of their un-
bounded sacrifices and the second dawn of their public
liberties ? Those expectations have not been disap-
pointed. France has had her full share of the benefits
of peace. She has grown in wealth and population
beyond all former precedent ; she has declined in
none of the elements which constitute the just in-
fluence of a great, active, and enlightened people.
France was prosperous and the world secure until she
sought for more than that just influence. In an
instant she affects a readiness, which she mistakes for
heroism, to fling away all the blessings she may enjoy
and confer, for her cruel pastime of battles and blood.
For those who believe that violence is not strength,
that turgid size is not greatness, that genius itself is to
be admired for its uses as well as for its intensity, and
that the maintenance of peace is the true glory of na-
tions, there can be nothing more contemptible and re-
pugnant than the spectacle of a nation paying homage,
in the name of freedom and honour, to the represen-
tative of military despotism and dishonest ambition.
Amongst the strange incidents which have marked the
history of Napoleon, none is a more pregnant theme

for reflection than the circumstance that his obsequies
should be followed by Louis Philippe and M. Guizot—
the two men who have done most to combat and to
extirpate the fatal consequences of an inheritance of
military glory, and to turn the energies of the French
nation to happier and more useful purposes.
(From the Morning Advertiser.).

As railways are destined to form an epoch in human
improvement, scarcely less remarkable than the discovery
of printing itself, it becomes the imperative duty of the
Government to secure to the public the utmost benefit
of their establishment, and prevent them from degene-
rating into monopolies, not only detrimental to the pub-
lic interests, but dangerous to the public safety. Far
be from us the attempt to deprive industrial enterprise
of the just reward of its efforts, and, however enormous
their profits, so long as they took due provision for the
convenience and security of the public, we should be
reluctant to interfere with the directors of railways, or
their management. But when we see the public con-
venience made subservient to individual speculation,
the public good impaired by the encroachments of
monopoly, and human life sacrificed to negligence and
an avaricious economy, to refrain from calling pub-
lic attention to the necessity of placing railways
under better regulations than at present pervade their
management, would be to incur a share of the odium
and culpability which attach to the system which it is

our object to correct and improve. Railways are a new
element in the general economy beyond the corrective
influence of competition, which guarantees security and
moderate prices in other modes of conveyance. In
stage-coach travelling exorbitant charges, insolence,
negligence, or the recurrence of accidents, are certain
to call forth the means of their own correction. If one
firm be obnoxious to such occurrences, other parties
will place coaches on the same line, and mismanagement
must cease by the increased attention of the proprietors
or by the ruin entailed on their establishment by the
abandonment of the public. With railways it is dif-
ferent. Here there can be no competition, at least
the necessity of precision and punCtuality in the ar-
rangements is such that the most minute variation
from the rules of management, by which competing
parties usually endeavour to obtain an advantage over
each other, might lead to the most dreadful results.
Hence, in the impossibility of safely admitting the cor-
rective action of competition, and under the necessity of
having railways conducted under one uniform system,
harmon;ous in all parts, we are strongly impressed with
the belief that until the Legislature take the general
question into its consideration, public safety and public
accommodation will have no satisfactory security. The rail-
way
directors have but little time to place their lines in
order before the meeting of Parliament, but if they be
not prepared to furnish a better account of their stew-
ardship than appears in the long catalogue of fatalities
which the last few months have recorded against them,
there can be no second opinion of the necessity of plac-
ing railways under a direction different from that at
present presiding over their management.
(From the Morning Post.)
An Evening Contemporary having prudently with-
drawn from the deience of his conduct in refusing the
request of the Duke of Wellington to know upon what
authority he had published the untruth, that the Duke
had declared himself to have been deceived in the mat-
ter of the Irish Corporation Bill, the Herald, with
more valour than discretion, comes forward to the
rescue of its discomfited colleague in the work of calutn-
niating a zealous, faithful, and meritorious Conserva-
tive, and of spreading discord and confusion among the
Conservative ranks. It would have been prudent in
the Herald to reflect that one of the most essential
qualifications for such a championship as it has under-
taken is some degree of reputation for the love of truth,
and that another qualification of some value is that the
champion be not personally interested in the cause upon
which he obtrudes his support. In the absence of these
the pretended champion is a principal in disguise, end
must be suspected of shrinking from the avowal of his
real character, in the dastard consciousness that his arm
is nerveless and his weapon ineffectual :
~ We have already (says the Herold) expressed our opi-
nion of the conduct of the Standard, in having declined,
even at the command of the Duke of Wellington, to give
up the name of any one of the persons from whom it re-
ceived the information that his Grace was deceived. We
have described the conduct of that journal as honourable to
itself and creditable to the character of the press in gene-
ral. But the Morning Post, that, like Mr. Shaw, advo-
cated a • surrender' of the Irish corporations, &c."
There are two distinct and wilful misrepresentations
in the above paragraph. One is, that the Duke of Wel-
lington commanded the Standard to give up the name
of its informant. His Grace appealed to the courtesy
and justice of the Standard, and appealed in 'vain. The
other is, that the Morning Post and Mr. Shaw, or ei•
ther of them, advocated a surrender of the Irish corpo-
rations, in the sense in which the Herald uses the words.
Mr. Shaw and the Morning Post advocated the main-
tenance of the Irish Corporations until the Conser-
vative leaders in both Houses of Parliainent, and a
considetabie majority of the Conservative Members
of both Houses of Parliament, and the Irish corpo-
rations themselves, net excepting the Corporation of
Dublin, and the Conservative press generaliy, not ex-
cepting the Morning Herald, had assented to the prn-
ciple of the Irish Corporation Bill ; and then Mr. Shaw
and the Morning Post laboured with equal zeal,
though unequal ability and effect, to promote such al-
terations and amendments of the Bill as would render it
as little obnoxious and dangerous as possible to the
Protestant interest in Ireland. But still another though
less palpable misrepresentation is conveyed in the above
passage. The Herald would evidently have its readers
believe that it is interested in the question at issue no
otherwise than as a volunteer champion of the Standard.
This we shall show to be untrue, by recalling to the re-
collection of the public a recent occurrence in which the
Herald was immediately concerned, and which was; of
so discreditable a character that, had not the Herald
imposed upon us the necessity of reviving it, ae should
very gladly have permitted it to pass into oblivion.
The Herald as well as the Standard has repeatedly as-
serted, upon the alleged authority of some nameless Con-
servative Peer or Peers, that the Dukc of Wellington
had dec.ared that he had been deceived in respect to
the Irish Corporation Bill. The assertion was an in-
sult to the Duke of Wellington, and a gross outrage
upon the common sense of the country. It was felt by the
public to be so, and nobody either believed or paid the
least attention to it. The Herald, however, waxing
bold in the practice of uncontradicted falsehood, or im-
patient of the contemptuous indifference with which its
invention was received, committed in an evil hour the
folly of adding to the original fabrication the further
statement that it was Mr. Shaw who had deceived the
Duko of Wellington, and of accompanying this asser-
tion by the declaration that the Herald was ready to
give up its authority if the Right Hon. Gentleman ap-
plied to it to do so. Mr. Shaw did apply to the Herald
to give up its authority for an assertion so insulting and
injurious to him. And did the Herald redeem its
pledge ? No. It shuffled and prevaricated in a man-
ner for which a witness at the Old Bailey would have
been committed to Newgate, and finally refused to
comply with the demand it bad challenged Mr. Shaw

to make. The public may now judge how disinter-
ested and how effective a champion the Herald is
of the conduct of a confederate in refusing to comply
with the reasonable request of the Duke of
ton. The doctrine that the conductors of newspapers
are bound to protect from exposure hone:st and well-
meaning informants, although their communications
may prove inaccurate, is unquestioned and unques-
tionable. But the Herald and Standard parade it
very idly in reference to a case to which it is manifestly
inapplicable. No man, peer or commoner, could have
told either the Herald or Standard, as a fact within his
own knowledge, that the Duke of Wellington had de-
clared he had been deceived in a matter upon which
the Illustrious Duke had never thought, and therefore,
certainly never said, he had been deceived, without
knowing that he was uttering a falsehood, and knowing
also that he was uttering it for a most mischievous and
malignant purpose. We will now whisper into the ears
of the Standard and Herald what we believe is no
longer a secret to any but themselves :—There is not a
single man of sense in the three kingdoms who, at this
moment, believes that either the one or the other of
them was ever told, by any Nobleman or by any other
person tit to be named as the authority for such an as-
sertion, that the Duke of Wellington had said he was
the Irish
again is no secret tosihh
deceivedwill
whisperin respectanother
secret,
Corporation Bill. We
any but themselves :--No man of sense in the three
Kingdoms will believe this, after all that has passed,
until they give the name of their authority. The
Herald boasts of its consistency on the subject of the
Irish Corporations Bill in the following sounding
phrase
From the first hour when the design of surrendering
the Protestant Corporations to that faction whose violent
and unprincipled ambition is the belle and curse of Ireland,
was publicly announced, Gown to the moment when that
fatal concession took place, we never expressed but one
opinion upon the subject, and that was, that such a mea-
sure, under every shape and modification, seould receive a
determined and uncompromising resistance."
After the preceding exposure the public will learn
without surprise that this boast has no foundation in

truth. Its 'the session of 1837, when the Conservative
majority of the. House of Lords twice postponed the
second reading of the Bill, expressly for the purpose of
seeing what the lower House of Parliament would do
with certain other measures relating to Ireland then
before it, the Herald loudly and repeatedly applauded
the course taken by the Conservative Peers, although

.his course was taken avowedly on the supposition that,

in the event of those other measures becoming a law,
a Bill for the re-construction of the Irish corporations
was to follow. Was this expressing the opinion that
" such a measure, under every shape and modification,
should receive a determined resistance?" We have not
room to-day for the quotations from the columns of the
Herald that would fully establish our assertion. If our
Contemporary desires it we shall, however, give them ;
and in saying this, we assure the Herald that we do
not mean to redeem our pledge in the manner in which
it redeemed its pledge to Mr. Shaw.

mouthshire and of the coal and iron mining districts of
South Wales at this moment. The heartless doctrines
• of a low Unitariansm it is well kr!owr prevail there to
an alaruu.. extent, and the inherent vice of their de-
-1 struetiveness is shown in the rooted hatred of the un-
happy people towards all the classes above them in the
material and. social scale. Frost indeed pretended that
no invasion of the rights of property was contemplated
by the insurrection which found its term as its outbreak
at Newport, but there is neither Magistrate nor man in
those regions, with opportunities of information as to
the direction of Popular opinion, who is not satisfied to
the contrary upon the most conclusive cf aft evidence—
that is, the familiar talk of the common people emong
themselves.

- -
Our readers will remember the fact of the blow-
ing-up of the fortress of Michailuff, on the Circassian
coast, some time ago, in order that it might not fall into
the hands of the enemy. The Emperor of Russia, in
order to perpetuate the renn-mbrance of this heroic act
of a soldier, named Ossepoff who volunteered to fire the
train, has ordered that the name of (i.,sepuff shall be
kept for ever on the fist of the first company et grena-
de rs, of the regiment of infantry of Tenginski, as tha
first soldier, and that on calling over the list, when the
name shall h;, mentioned, the answer shall he, " Died for
the glory of the Russian arms in the fort of Michailoff."