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

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LONDON:
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1841.

The principle involved in the condemnation of
M. DUPOTY by the Chamber of Peers, Which
our Tories• are disposed to adopt and act en,
namely, that an author is responsible for the et._
fects of his writings on the minds and conduct of
other persons, requires now to be subjected to a
close examination. We cannot assent to it. An
author or public writer is responsible for the
truth and accuracy of his remarks; he maY be
justly liable to censure for bad taste or improper
language ; but the effects of his observations on
the minds of others is wholly beyond his com-
mand or control, and it is as absurd to make
him responsible for other men's feelings, thoughts,
and actions, as for their peculiar organization, on
which, more than on his words, their feelings
depend.

• Language, whether written or spoken, is the
mere sign or symbol of the feelings or thoughts
of him who uses it, and has no necessary or cer-
tain connection with the feelings or thoughts of
those to whom it is addressed. Men of different
nations do not understand each others language.
It is for them a mere sound, musical or other-
Wise, or a mere mark, crooked or straight, and
"thing more. For individuals of the same na-
tion words have very different meanings, or are
connected with very different emotions, accord-
] og to their respective knowledge, situation, pas-
sions, and circumstances.

Take, for example, the word " home." In the
half-starved ragged urchin, who scarcely ever
enters his wretched abode but to be scolded or
beaten, and who only knows it as a place of re-
fuge in extremely bad weather; all whose youth-
ful pleasures have been found in running about
in the.streets, playing in the dirt with other idle
boys, getting his food by what he can beg, or
earn by holding horses or sweeping a crossing :

in such a ragged lad, the word "home" conjures '
up feelings almost the reverse of what the same
word conjures up in a youth who has found most
of his pleasures in his father's house—who has
there had his toys and his playmates—who has
there always found his food and his repose—who
has returned thither from school, or from the
outdoor world, sure to find some fond and affec-
tionate bosoms into which he can pour all his
griefs, and sure to receive in all difficulties ad-
vice, sympathy, and consolation—and who has
there received all his first, his. strongest, and
most pleasurable impressions. For two such
persons, the word " home" signifies' totally diffe-
rent states of mind; and is the poor writer or
speaker, who uses the word, to be made respon-
sible for their different emotions ?

Or take the word " king," as more appropriate
to our subject. In the man who has been trained
in the belief that kings reign by Divine com-
mand, and are Gon's vicegerents on earth—
who looks, therefore, on them almost as deities—
who has been taught that, wanting their august
presence and special care, men would be brutal
untamed savages—that a Court only can shed
over a land the taste for the fine and ennobling
arts—and in whom, consequently, loyalty is a
reverential worship of the human being, who
may at any moment sit on the throne : in such
a man the word "king" rouses a kind of
idolatrous emotion. In the man who looks at all
political institutions as intended to benefit the
bulk of the community—who sees a monarch in-
tensely selfish, spending more wealth than would
feed` add cloth i .attlrausand of. bjects—who
I(ll2okthitt tifhivtrov the \ tify in g his
personal vanity and extravagance he sacrifices
his duties and his oaths, living only to squeeze
out of the people, with most ease and safety to
himself, the wealth he requires—who is con-
vinced, by much reading and much reflection,
that kings have inflicted great injury on society,
and who therefore hates the name: in such a man
the word "king" excites a scornful emotion, the
very opposite to that it excites in the believer in
Divine Right. In our country there are nume-
rous individuals who have associated these very
dissimilar feelings with the word " king," and they
have some antipathy to one another. At least
the Divine Right man considers the Radical,
Utilitarian, or Republican, as a bad man, and
would make laws, if he could, to stifle the emotions
which the word "king" excites up in the other.
These are examples and illustrations of the
principle, pervading all language, that words are
mere signs, which, in a manner that would be
called wonderful, were it not extremely familiar,
excite in those who hear or read them, such
thoughts, ideas, or emotions as they have pre-
viously, from education, situation, and their own
passions, connected with these words. The mental
condition of him who uses them may be totally
different from the mental condition of him who
hears or reads them, and whose sentences may
represent in the minds of writer and reader,
emotions as different as those which different
men connect with the word ".king."
In France, to quote a practical illustration im-
mediately bearing on the question, there are
some persons, like M. GUIZOT and his friends,
who believe that France can only be saved by
an iron hand of despotism, and who not only see
with satisfaction any attempt which Louis PHI-
LIPPE makes or sanctions to curtail liberty, but
encourage him to make those attempts, and love
and respect him the more in proportion as he
departs from the principles of the Revolution of
1830. There are other persons in France who
regard all such attempts as an act of treachery
as well as despotism, who, consequently, asso-
ciate with the conduct of the KING emotions of
contempt and scorn, and regard him as a selfish,
vile, worthless tyrant. Is any or every writer
to be made responsible for the different emotions
which the conduct of the KING, more than' any
writing, produces in two distinct classes of per-.
sons, whenever his conduct is referred to? Yes,
says M. GrizoT, in France; and yes...int3r,l
the Tories in England; and yes, also,' say,
the Peers of France, and troSe who entertain the
first-mentioned opinion of the KING'S conduct.
They assume that they are authorised to make
laws and punish writers, because their language
excites emotions of which they disapprove.
They would make writers, therefore, actually
responsible for the effect which the KING'S con-
duct, when it is made public, have on the mind
of those who prefer a Republic to a Monarchy.
We may give an illustration of the same fact
from our own country. A large party entertains
a strong and a decided conviction that the Corn-
laws are unjust, and so we always speak of them.
In landlords and tithe-lords such remarks pro-
bably excite only indignation against Anti-Corn-
law men. In the mass of the labourers, suffering
from short commons and deficient clothing, and
already disposed, from many causes, to regard
the landlords as enemies, denunciations of the
Corn-laws are likely to produce indignation
against the landlords. Now, are the Editors of
Anti. Corn-law Journals to be answerable for that
state of mind in the working classes which is, in
fact, the consequence of the landlords' oppression ?

To return to the case of M. DUPOTY. He has
been punished for an article reflecting on LOUIS
PHILIPPE, but it is very probable that the lan-
guage of the Ministerial Journals in Paris may
have had a more irritating effect on the minds
of the conspirators than the language of M. Du-
POTY. They regard LOUIS PHILIPPE as a traitor
to his oaths, and as an obstacle to their political
success ; and they may have been stimulated to
commit a grievous political crime by the insult-
ing taunts of their opponents. WEDDERBURN,
when Solicitor-General, it is said, insulted
FRANKLIN, and FRANKLIN retorted that his
master should pay for the insult. The separa-
tion of the American colonies, regarded as a
traitorous offence by GEORGE 111., followed. The
Republicans, then, may have repaid the scornful
and insulting language of the Ministerial Jour-
nals with scornful deeds ; and the words of the
former might have been the provocative to
make the attempt on the life of the KING. It
would be absurd to punish the Editors of the
Ministerial Journals with five years' imprison-
ment, for such an effect of their writings on the
minds of Republicans; and it must be equally
absurd and unjust to punish M. DUPOTY for some
analogous supposed effects of his writings.
Because it is impossible in any case to discri-
minate between the effects of a writer's words on
an individual, and the effects of that individual's
own peculiarities, which make words the means
of exciting in him peculiar thoughts and emo-
tions, it is wrong to make a writer responsible
for effects he is only the incidental cause of pro-
"dug. Unless it can be made apparent that
the attempt to murder the KING of the FRENCH
was exelusively the consequence of M. Du-
POTY'S writing,
it must be as unjust to punish
an attempt him for such as it would be to find
one man guilty of murder for having acciden-
tally run against another, who some short time
thereafter died of
apoplexy. If indeed it could
be shown that such an attempt was exclusively
the consequence of M. Dupe, r
TY s writings, the
punishment inflicted on him is much too light.
We conclude, therefore, because the words
which a man uses are the signs of his own ideas
and emotions, and because he cannot even tell
what ideas and emotions those signs will excite
in others, much less control them, that it is to-
tally unwarrantable to make a writer answerable
for the effect of his words on the minds of other
men. He can only be made responsible for the
truth or good taste of what he writes, and he
must leave the issue in the hands of Providence.
It is necessary now to insist strenuously on this
view, because the Tories are willing to imitate
French statesmen, and call the Liberal Press of
England to account for the indignation which is
growing up in the land against the injustice
which the Tories habitually practise.

So far as our own observation goes we never
recollect to have seen so many deplorable objects
asking charity in the metropolis as at present.
Other people have made the same remark. Of
that painful feature in society our Legislators
know little or nothing. They do` tot inhabit

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