The Sun.
London, England, 1847-04-02 00:00:00

S N
APRIL 2, 1847.

Major-General the Right Hon. Lord Frederick Fitz-
clarence, the new Lieutenant-Governor of this garrison,
with Lady Augusta and daughter, arrived at the George
Hotel this afternoon.
CHATHAM, APRIL I.—The Samarang, 26 guns, fitted
as a guard-ship at Gibraltar, having proved leaky after
being undocked, was taken into dock again on Monday
last; her copper has been partly stripped off to find out
the leak. She is completed in all her rigging, and as
soon as she is reported fit for her duty she will be taken
to her destination by the Second Master Attendant,
Mr. Northcoat.

The Arab, 16 guns, built from the design of Sir W.
Symonds, Surveyor of the Navy, was launched on Wed-
nesday, the 31st ult., from the lower end of this dock-
yard. The ceremony of naming the vessel was per-
formed by Miss Ellen Laing, only daughter of Mr.
F. J. Laing, Master Shipwright. She is acknowledged
to be a very handsome vessel. The following are her
dimensions :—Length between the perpendiculars, 105
feet ; length of keel for tonnage, 82 feet 21 inches ;
breadth, extreme, 33 feet 6 inches ; breadth for tonnage,
33 feet 2 inches ; depth in hold, 14 feet 10 inches ; bur-
den, in tons, old rule, 481 11-941hs—new, 264.
The Cleopatra, 26 guns, was paid off on Saturday last,
having. a serious leak in her bottom, has nearly nine feet
water in her. She goes into dock this day to ascertain
the extent of her injury.
The Aid, Smallman master, arrived from Plymouth
with stores on the 29th ult. ; the Goodwill, Pledge mu-
ter, sailed with stores for Sheerness on the 31st ult. ;
and the Charon, steam-vessel, is fitting for the service of
this port.

APPOINTMENT.
Mr. Henry John Smith, son of the late Admiral Ed-
ward Tyrrel Smith, is appointed to this yard as a writer
to the Metal Mills and Engineer Departments.

THE NAVIGATION-LAWS.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.
Sin, —I have read in The Sun of Tuesday evening last,
a letter signed " C.," dated from Dundee, wherein the
writer shows an eager desire, a very laudable one no
doubt, to have the public mind set at rest,(i. e., the more
ancient female portion of it), not in regard to "going off
the hooks," but to " hooking on." I confess, however,
that I am not under much apprehension that many of
that interesting portion of the public can suppose that
whales are captured by rod, kook and line, the error in
the reports being too palpable to ordinary minds. I
will, however, venture to be so indiscreet as to set in-
quiring minds at rest by stating that to the term of
" hooking on," as well as to many other ♦ery peculiar
phrases which have been set forth in the different papers
as mine, I have not the honour of the slightest claim.
" If " C." will take the trouble to procure the official
report of what really was said upon the occasion to
which he refers, I think it not at all improbable that he
will therein discover that the theme of his erudite lucu-
bration: has never had existence.

Whatever facts and opinions I have felt myself in duty
called upon to give on whaling affairs have been the re-
sult of rather extensive and very close observation for
many years, not only in the United States, but in all our
southern colonies, and in the Pacific and Indian oceans,
China seas, &c. ; it being also a branch of industry with
which I am very extensively connected.
I am, Sir, Sour most obedient servant,
' SAMUEL BROWNING.
4, New Bank-buildings, City, April 1, 1847.

INSURRECTION IN PORTUGAL.
The following letter, written by a Spanish officer of
rank, who has been in Portugal from the commence-
ment of the present insurrection, gives the only intelli-
gible reason we have yet seen for the ill-success of the
popular party:—

Lisbon, March 18, 1847.

My dear -, You desire me to mention something
as to what is going on here. Alasl my dear -, it
would be no easy matter to convey an idea of the present
state of the country; at least, I must confess that al-
though it would not be difficult to discover the source of
the present confusion, I could not equally succeed in
showing why the contest has not been brought to a ter-
mination ere now.

As soon as the coup d'etat of the 6th October was
made public the whole of the country rose against the
doctrines put forward by the new Administration; half
the army joined in the insurrection, which had every ap-
pearance of a formidable and spontaneous movement,
and shortly after the popular forces came to threaten the
capital itself. And yet at the end of two months we saw
the Constitutionalists shut up in Oporto. True it is that
they met with some military reverses; but still, having,
as they had, the resources of the country and the sup-
port of the population, they ought to have brought the
contest to a speedy termination. How is it, then, that the
strife has been protracted, contrary to all reasonable ex-
pectation? how is it that the popular movement, ir-
resistible as it appeared, has been so far checked as to
have been confined to certain localities ? It would not
he easy to answer these questions ; at least those who
have watched events, and have a thorough knowledge of
men and things here, cannot answer them satisfactorily.
But I cannot help thinking there has been sad mis-
management on the part of the Liberals ; their means
were abundant, their force far superior to that of the
Government, whose influence at one time did not extend
beyond the walls of Lisbon. The spirit of resistance
shown by the population was truly remarkable, but their
leaders, I fear, have not had the required tact to make
use of these advantages.
If you ask their partisans here what their friends are
about, the answer is—" They are organising." But they
ought to show some activity, move about the county,
give signs of lifa. " Wait till they are ready, they are
organising." Indeed, to hear them speak, one would
suppose they are preparing a mighty armament for the
conquest of the Holy Land, and after all it is little more
than war in a bandbox. The fact is, strange as it may
seem, that they are ashamed of being called guerrillas,
and thus it is that as soon as the peasantry take up arms
the first thing their leaders do is to set to work and or-
ganise, and they do not consider that they are ready to
act until they have nice uniforms, shackos, cravats, &c. ;
that is to say, that they transform what might be very
good guerrillas into very indifferent soldiers.
They do not admit here that the best uniform for a
man who considers himself called upon to take up a
musket to sustain his rights, is a rough zamarra,* and
that he ought to be allowed to make short work of i t.
No, ho must be organised; and the few guerillas they
have, influenced by the general system, are perfectly
useless. For my own part, it may be very naughty to
think so, but I would not give a penny for guerillas
when they don't stop couriers and intercept convoys;
when they don't add to their rancho a fowl from the
neighbouring yard and kiss the village lasses. Iu
the army, order, discipline, severity; but with guerillas
there must be a certain degree of laisser alter,
otherwise you check their enterprising spirit and
make monks of them. We have a pretty illus-
tration of it in Portugal. Has a single convoy been
attacked ? Has the rear-guard of the army ever been
harrassed ? Not a bit of it, they are organising. For-
tunately for them, the Government are also organising
as hard as they can, and one is induced to believe that
things will go on in this way while the contending par-
ties have resources, which means that it will be a ques-
tion d'argent. The fact is, there is no energy on either side,
and I think it would require herculean efforts to make 'em
come up to the scratch. Nevertheless, I must say that,
according to the information we have, the Oporto
gents are very firm; and, considering the present state
of affairs, Mr. Saldanha and his followers will sooner
or later bo oisliged to cut their sticks and trot
out of the country, which I don't supposo would do
much harm to its prosperity although it might injure
theirs. Of course, all this is supposing that there is not

to be Spanish intervention; which to me, at least, is not
yet very clear, whatever guarantees the Madrid Cabinet
may have given.
As to the tincture of Miguelism of which the Oporto
Junta has been accused, a great deal has been said, and
in my opinion a great deal of nonsense. The Junta
have said—" here is our programme; we accept the
services of all the Portuguese who will come forward to
defend it." Many Migu..lites have joined, but there has
been no compact entered into.
* Sheep-skin jacket.

The following accident occurred on the evening of
the 21st, at the Copenhagen theatre. The lustre, weigh-
ing about 3001b5., was drawn up after the second act of
Don Cesar de Buzan. to have something done to the
lights, when all of a sudden it descended with great ra-
pidity as far as the benches of the uncovered boxes and
strunk nine persons with such violence, that they were
all stunned. The utmost confusion at once prevailed,
and the performance ceased. An investigation was im-
immediately instituted, from which it appeared, that when
the moment for letting done the lustre arrived, only two
men out of the four employed for that purpose were pre-
sent, and that not liking to delay, they ventured to move
the machinery themselves. They found too late that the
weight was more than they could manage, and the con-
sequence was that the lustre came down with a run, and
did the injury mentioned above, some of the persons hurt
are considered to be in a dangerous state.

EXCELLENT SUGGESTION.—Mr. Taylor, of Roby,
has suggested, and we believe communicated to our parochial
authorities, an excellent expedient in connexion with the
regulation of Irish immigration into this town. If the au-
thorities have the power of putting Mr. Taylor's plan into
operation, it would not only have important sanatory results,
but would gradually tend to check the lavish importation of
Irish paupers. The suggestion is, that all steamers or other
vessels bringing over this class of passengers should be com-
pelled to proceed rip the river, direct to the lazarette, where
the whole of the passengers should be examined, and none
permitted to land but those who were in good health. Such
a regulation would check the influx of fever patients into an
already too insalubrious town, and would at the same time
render proprietors and masters of vessels cautious how they
took on board a class of individuals who would subject them
to so much trouble and detention.—Liverpool
The enthusiasm of the Viennese public for the
opera of The Camp of Silesia continues unabated. At
each representation the Imperial Theatre, notwithstand-
ing the great increase of prices is filled to excess, and
the receipts invariably amount to about 11,000 florins
(about 6001.) Tho opera of Robert le Diable is about to
be reproduced, in which Mdlle. J. Lind will fill the parts
of Alice as well as that of the Princess. It is said that
M. Meyerbeer has undertaken to set to music for the
theatre, An-der- Weirr, a new opera, the words of which
are by 2113aurenteld.

GENERAL COUNT DROUOT.
(From the Times.)
There is something very striking in the intelligence,
which we every now and then receive of the death of
some famous person whose life and deeds have already
assumed a character as purely historical as those of Jobe
Talbot or Ambrose Spinola. It was but the other day
that one of the worst names of the National Convention
was brought again before the public, and we were in-
formed that one of the chief and most villainous actors
in those bloody days—a man who had seen the butche-
ries of the Abbaye and sat on the revolutionary tribu-
nal, a companion of Robespierre, and a compatriot of
Santerre—had just expired in poverty and obscurity at
Brussels. Occasionally we hear of the recent decease of
a duke or general whose title appears to us as obsolete
as that of the King of Westphalia, but who, after cast-
ing his imperial skin, had been quietly vegetating in
unobtrusive retirement. It is true, as far as chronology
is concerned, there is nothing strange in all this. The
events, in reality, are but those of the other day. But
our long peace, our altered politics, and our improved
civilization, have all tended to throw back the last great
war to an unreal distance, and to disable us from con-
necting its characters with those of the existing genera-
tion. Its tale has been written, too, so often and so well,
and read so eagerly and so thoughtfully, that all its
events seem emphatically the events of history, already
out of the reach of tradition, and to be sought for only in
books and records. When Sir Walter Scott first began
to write, "sixty years since" did not imply so strange
a period as "forty years since" implies now. There are
thousands of men in England, who can recollect when
the French revolution was not yet prophesied. Its
monuments are but monuments of yesterday. The man
who wrote the " Siarseillaise"—both words and music—
was alive in a garret a few years ago, and may perhaps
be so still. Yet for all this, the actual result is as we have
said. The younger amongst us can scarcely help fancy-
ing that the generation of the war is clean gone, and
long ago ; for the truth is that many of its mighty men
die a civil death at its conclusion, and retired like doubt-
ful characters of old times to the cloister, into a privacy
which left their former lives to history, and withdrew
their remaining days from all notice of a world, which
was no longer a world for them. On Tuesday last we
recorded the death of one of these singular characters,
whose unequivocal reputation deserves a testimony
which could hardly be accorded to the renown of
many of his contemporaries. Count Drouot has just
expired at Nancy, and it is a carious illustration of
our remarks that this hero of history was only in
his 73d year. In one sense it may be said that he
was the Emperor's right hand, for Napoleon won his
battles by his guard and his artillery, and Drouot was the
general of the artillery of the guard. It is not a little
remarkable that Napoleon, who had such abundant
reason to know the value of a preponderating artillery,
delayed so long to strengthen his favourite corps with
this peculiar arm, but it is a fact that dragoons, chas-
sours, lancers, gendarmes, fusiliers, and almost every
other denomination of force were naturalised in the
ranks of the Imperial Guard before any guns beyond
a few light pieces were attached to it. The circum-
stances may not be uninteresting to those who read
or remember our own periodical debates on this point.
In the first battles of the revolution the French had no
horse-artillery, but the advantages derived by the Prus-
sians from this peculiar corps were so manifest, that in
1792, the Legislative Assembly decreed the organisa-
lion of a similar body. The corps at once sprang into
that extraordinary favour which in all countries it seems
equally to have maintained, and its popularity was
increased
years after its establishment, of the capture
of the Dutch fleet, as it lay ice-bound off its own shores.
Accordingly, when Napoleon, in 1806, began to organise
thre ino the present case by its strange achieve-
ment,his
famous
foundG a ras
this force, though its strength scarcely reached 100 men;
and this he contented himself with raising to three squa-
ialready attached
eodf
to the
it old
a company Gard e
Co n o
drons of 200 each. Three years afterwards, however,
ePacriale d
he added eight companies of foot artillery under Colonel-
Major Drouot, and so rapidly did his perceptions
brighten concerning the importance of this arm of his
force, that the artillery of the guard alone, by successive
l
n
tteoosnrst
oetaugmentations,mnhfdaeonetrd.l9 thetliet
guns.
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tremendously wielded by Drouot, of which the flashes
far more truly than ever did the fiery tail of
was to Napoleon what Dickson was to Welling-
haps of more original and extended military talents.
But in abilities in his own particular sphere,
in bravery and steadiness, and, above all,
in single-minded honesty, stanch fidelity, and
unimpeachable virtue, the Count had no superior,
and but very few equals, in all that band of heroes who
raised the Emperor to the throne of glory. In his per-
sonal habits he was most singular. lie—a Frenchman
and a soldier, in the midst of the imperial staff, and
under the reign of Napoleon—was actually a religious
character, and did not scruple to avow the fact. Ile
even carried about with Lim a small Bible—the only
one, probably. that was ever to be found in the baggage
of the Grand Army, except that placed by Napoleon in
the mythological class of his travelling library, and this
it was one of his chief delights to read. When- ordered
to the front, it was usually at the most critical point of
the field, and at the most hazardous moment of the day;
and on these occasions he is said to have always dressed
himself in a certain old coat, dismounted, and advanced
on foot in the midst of his guns, and it did happen that,
throughout all his perils, he never received a wound.
Few readers will require to be reminded how often he
and his cannoneers decided the fate of a well fought field.
Those 50 or 60 guns, described by eye-witnesses t
seemin; to be actually discharged as they galloped along,
swept 'away the last relics of Russian obstinacy or Aus-
trian chivalry, and terminated the carnage of the day.
Iu the manipulatian and direction of his pieces Drouut
was unrivalled. Once, at the passage of the Elbe, in
1813, the Emperor, observing the enemy on the opposite
bank, cane] out hastily for " a hundred pieces of can-
non !" The General was at his side in a moment with
the guns in position, but so impatient was the Emperor
for success, that on the effect of the fire not being so
immediate as he expected, he jumped off his horse, took
hs:d of Drouot's ears and shook him soundly. The Ge-
ne' al bore the operation with great patience, and then
defied the Emperor to place the guns better—a challenge
which Napoleon waived with the laugh of a pacified
child. When reverses at length came, and the crea-
tures of the Emperor's bounty fell off from him on every
side, Drouot still stood by his master and abandoned
him not. Etsiomnes, ego non. With our Macdonald—
that worthy descendant of the man of Moidart—with
Bertrand and Fain, with Cambronne and Caulincourt—
he awaited that last levee of Fountainbleau, and followed
his sovereign to Elba with as much devotion as he had
followed him to Dresden. We might long search that
muster-roll of glittering names comprised in the livrad'or
of the Empire before we found any so entirely worthy
the pride of a countryman and the respect of an enemy
as that of General Count DuouoT.