The Sun.
London, England, 1841-05-27 00:00:00

ration.

We learnt with much pleasure from the debate
on Mr. T. DUNCOMBE'S motion, that 398 out of
the 444 persons imprisoned for political offences
have already been released. Some, we presume,
have been pardoned and liberated, and the term
for which others was imprisoned has come to an
end. But though comparatively so few remain
in prison, we regret that the Ministers found
it incompatible will' their duty to comply
with Mr. T. DUNCOMBE'S well-timed motion.
We regret it as much for their sakes as for the
sake of the prisoners, for nothing has so exaspe.
rated the bulk of the people against them as the
imprisonment of these Chartists. Be they
punished rightly or wrongly, the effect on the
minds of the working classes is the same. They
believe the Chartists were wrongly punished--
they regard the punishment as persecution, and
they despise and hate the law in consequence,
and hate the Ministers, under whose auspices
it was carried into execution. Could Lord
JoaN Rusfstia. have found it compatible

with his duty to comply with Mr. DUN•
COMBE'S motion it would have had a power-
ful effect in soothing the minds of the working
classes, and predisposing them towards a union
with the middle classes in order to obtain the
common good.

Ministers must doubt whether they did not
make too great a sacrifice to a punctilio, when
they saw the motion supported almost
exclusively by their own friends and re-
sisted by every Tory in the House, except Sir
G. SINCLAIR and Mr. WALTER. Sir R. PEEL
and Lord J. RUSSELL voted on the same side,
both being apparently more intent on upholding
the prerogative, than on showing mercy or doing
justice to the people ; but Sir ROBERT was sur-
rounded by his friends, and Lord JOHN was al-
most isolated from his. It is plain, therefore,
inimical as the people suppose the Whigs to be
to them, that the Tories are still more inimical.

The Chartists have now an opportunity of
triumphing over both. The Whigs do not wish,
any more than the Tories, for the total abolition
of the Corn-laws. They will, however, we are
sure, assent to that, if the people of the towns
demonstrate, almost universally, that they are
heartily resolved to have the total abolition. A
union of the working classes with the middle
classes, under the guidance of that enlightened,
sincere, and earnest body, the Anti-Corn-law
League, would accomplish the object, and ensure
for the Chartists a complete triumph over the
Parliament, and cheap bread for the people.We are
happy to believe, from many communications
which reach us on the subject, that the Chartists
are everywhere becoming desirous to co-operate
with the abolitionists. One struggle together, and
that sordid aristocracy, and that arrogant and sel-
fish priesthood, which have so long plundered and
insulted us, in the names of social order and reli-
gion, will be laid for ever at the feet of the
people.

The tone of deep sincerity which pervades
the Anti-Corn-law meetings is a happy augury.
Earnest men are sure to succeed. One mission-
ary, one fervent believer, is sufficient to make
his own opinion the creed of a nation. But the
Anti-Corn-law question has already scores of
missionaries in every part of the land. No less
than ninety Dissenting ministers in Glasgow and-
the neighbourhood, we are told, have signed a
petition against the Bread-tax, of which the fol-
lowing are passages :
That, although they heartily coincide with their fel-
low-subjects in reprobating the Corn-laws,, from their
ruinous effects on the industry and prosperity of the
British people, they feel persuaded that the chief aspect
in which it becomes them, as Christians and as Christian
ministers, to regard these impositions, is their flagrant
wickedness in the sight of Almighty God, to whose
Holy Word they are opposed, with the benevolent ar-
rangements of whose Providence they are at war, and
whose just displeasure, if persisted in, they cannot fail
to draw down.

That your petitioners beg leave to assure your Ho-
nourable House, that in these views they are joined by
the great body of Christian ministers and private
Church members who are known to them, with the ex-
ception of those who are directly interested, or who sup-
pose themselves interested, in the preservation of those
restrictive statutes ; and that on no subject have the
virtue and piety of the- country been more united in
raising their solemn and decisive protestation.
And that on these grounds your petitioners implore
your Honourable House, in the name of the country, in
the name of humanity and justice—above all, in the
sacred name of religion, and of God ever blessed, to
abolish these unrighteous laws with the least possible
delay.

Their fervent spirit pervades the great body
of the Anti-Corn-law party, and it cannot be
quelled by the cold, sordid fallacies of the land-
lords, or the barren formulas, borrowed from the
Church of Rome, of the English priesthood. The
repeal of the Corn-law is now regarded as a great
moral and religious question; and if the landlords
and the clergy of the Church cannot oppose it
on moral and religious grounds, they will only
provoke, by resisting it on sham and foolish pre-
texts, a more shameful defeat.

The Paris papers of Monday have been re- I
ceived, together with the first day's Report of
the trial of DARMES and his two accomplices,
DucLos and CONSIDERE, for attempting the life
of the KING, on the 11th of October last. The
trial excited no interest, and none of the usual
precautions were taken to preserve the peace of
the metropolis. This augurs well for the Govern-
ment, and for the state of public feeling in Paris.
It must also satisfy the KING that a Government
which outrages the public sense of justice by
unduly magnifying offences, in order to glut its
private vengeance in their punishment, is sure to
provoke their almost immediate repetition. Still
enough has not been done to discourage the
atrocious crime of DARMES. While a villain,
who has earned from the justice of his
country a verdict of detention in chains
and hard labour for life, can by the per-
petration of an additional crime make him-
self an object of European curiosity, and
demand for his Judges, the Peers of France,
that he may insult the Court and set the laws
at defiance, and so act the desperado on a na-
tional theatre, there will exist a strong tempta-
tion to the morbidly vain in villainy to aim at
the life of the first Magistrate. To deter from
such a crime it should be punished with the
utmost obscurity. No Court of Peers, no Cham-
ber of Deputies should be consulted, or made
officially acquainted about the matter. The busi-
ness should be left to a common Jury, an ordi-
nary Judge, and the few witnesses-capable of bear-
ing testimony to the mere crime for which
the accused stood charged. " But," cry the
courtiers, " would you afford the KING no more
protection than you would the meanest of his
subjects?" Unquestionably we would. We
would enable him to do more good than others,
and so make himself more beloved than any
subject could do. We would grant him such
prerogatives as, if properly exercised would alle-
viate the sufferings of the afflicted, improve the
condition of the industrious, satisfy the wishes of
the virtuous, second the exertions of the benevo-
lent, and force even the evil-minded to respect in
him the majesty of virtue. These are the true
protections of Royalty. But to punish with
greater eclat, and with more severity, offences
against the person of a Sovereign than against
the obscurest of his subjects, is but to exalt him
as a target courting the bending of the bow of
the hardly thought-conceived crime of regicide.
DARMES, the principal criminal, when brought
before the Court, presented the appearance of a
rather stupid, common-place man. He is of fair
complexion; and when asked if he had fired at
the KIN©, admitted it at once. His age is forty-
three. DucLos' age is forty-four; his hair and
complexion black, and his eyes exhibiting in
their wildness indications of insanity. The third
conspirator is only thirty years of age, but his
appearance manifested nothing remarkable. To
the preliminary proceedings of the Court, such
as reading what in England we term the bill of
indictment, which occupied two hours, the pri-
soners manifested the utmost indifference.
The unfortunate affair of the LOUIS-PHILIPPE
an hundred times more
iv
the trial of DARMES. The
lCoerlryespinontedreenstce than excites
Government has been sadly at fault with regard
1,,
to this correspondence.
of forgery, which it at firstltaibnasntidtounteeddamthaeitclhstatrhgee
I France—a Royalist paper. It set at liberty two
Editors which it imprisoned, without daring to
bring them to trial. It brought charges against
six Journals, abandoned five of them, and was
defeated by the sixth in a Court of Justice. At
the very outset we besought the French Govern-
; ment to take no notice whatever of this corre-
spondence. Unnoticed by the King and the
Ministry, we well knew that, after serving for a
nine-days' wonder, it would be thrown aside and
forgotten. But the prosecution of it by the
Court has acquired for it an immense importance.
Already do the Opposition Journals declare that
they will not be satisfied—that France will not-
be satisfied—with a Ministerial pledge to the,
Chambers that the letters are forgeries:
The fact must be proved--proved by Judges,
1, and before a court' where the originals