The Sun.
London, England, 1840-09-01 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

We are obliged to a Correspondent who dates his letter from
Newport, Is!e of Wight, Au;,;ut 29, but his communication
did not arrive till this morning, when it was of no use.

i;IGH W A I'ER AT LONDON BRIDGE I'O-MORROW.
oru ...... Z 2 minutes alter 3. I Evening 55 minutes alter 5

a t:r Publication of the Evening Edition of Ina Sux com-
menced at 20 minutes after Three.

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know that the large property acquired by his skill
and his honest pains-taking, served to raise his
offspring to the rank of landowners, and place
them amongst the aristocracy ; and we presume,
therefore, that this youth is the grandson or some
descendant of the barber, who gained honour and
wealth by his industry, and conferred an everlasting
benefit on mankind. On that presumption we
think the case worthy of public notice, it being
probable that the general principle it involves is
equally correct, whether the mischevious lancer be
or be not the descendant of the useful and deser-
vedly honoured barber.
Without dwelling on the particular instance—
though that is a striking illustration of a general
fact—we may observe that we can scarcely walk
the streets—certainly we cannot enter the Park—of
a Sunday, without encountering some roue, some
bloated, unwieldy mass of useless flesh, some man
at whom the finger is pointed with scorn and con-
tempt, or some ruined gamester, whose father or
grandfather elevated himself above his compeers
by his sagacity, his sterling integrity, and his in-
dustry, and the soul of whose exertions was the
acquisition of a fortune and a title to transmit to his
posterity. The pleasure, however, is in the chase,
not in the prize. The laborious lawyer who
plodded over his books deep in the night and rose
early in the day, who gave up his whole time to his
irksome profession, followed a pursuit congenial
to his taste and suitable to his capacities, and while
labouring was a contented and a happy man. His
exertions, however, by providing largely for his
offspring, have deprived them of the prodigious en-
joyment he experienced year after year, and day
after day, as he contemplated his own success, and
by taking from them a rational motive for exertion
he has driven them into those vicious or ruinous
habits which make their lives miserable and them
objects of public scorn. What is true of the individual
is true of a great number, and if my Lord A., or
Lord 8., or the honoured barber, could see their
grandchildren, they would think they had inflicted
on them a far bitterer curse than nature, when she
condemned man to eat bread by the sweat of his
brow.

We may not, however, pursue this train of reflec-
tion. It is enour.h that we have indicated the ge-
neral truth, which the sight of the name of ARK
WRIGHT amongst a body of mischievous young
aristocrats has suggested. It is painful to think that
to perpetuate the misery, and real degradation of
those who, by being provided for out of the public
purse, or out of the hoards of their ancestors, are
deprived of motives for industry, the masses are very
often doomed to hunger and a degradation of an op-
posite kind—the degradation of slavery. Whether
it is always to be so—
Thus bath it been, shall be beneath the sun,
The marl still must labour for the one—

we will not undertake to decide ; but we know
not why the same rule which holds good in physics
should be an unsafe rule in morals. What hurts
us we avoid, and we look on the pain of a wound,
or the fever which follows intoxication, as a clear
command of nature to abstain from cutting ourselves
or drinking to excess. We are studious to observe
and follow the laws, such as gravity, of the material
world, and when we find the great disparity of pos-
sessions which exists in society, productive Of
misery and degradation to those who have
much and to those who have nothing,
inflicting at the same time much injury on all be-
tween them, may we not expect that men wil! be at
some time or other as solicitous to avoid moral as
they are physical injuries ? We at least will not
despair. We will not assent to the poet's conclu-
sion that it shall always he thus, and such striking
examples of the degradation to which honourable
men may doom their posterity, by the wealth
which they are so anxious to gather--as those we
have briefly referred to—may be instructive lessons
to future generations.