The Sun.
London, England, 1840-10-19 00:00:00

MONEY MARKET and CITY NEWS.

(SATURDAY EVENING.)
TIMES.—Much conjecture is exercised in the city
as •to the effect which the late measure of the Bank in li-
miting; discounts to short bills only will have upon the
general transactions in money. When the Bank on
the last difficulty of the same kind as that which
they now experience, and which is very little more
than a year ago, determined on raising the rate of
interest rather than restrict the length of bills, the
example was not only generally followed by private
capitalists, but it furnished an excuse in all cases
where the pretext could be at all available of charging
a much higher rate, and was indeed the signal for
a Mast severe pressure on all those persons who were
in a situation to require pecuniary accommodation.
It would not necessarily follow that the measure of
the Bank now under discussion ought to produce
similar consequences, but unfortunately the example hav-
ing, been once set out, and there being no limit by law
to the rate of interest on short hills, that is very likely
now to be the case. Indeed, intimations are given
already by some of the principal banks and private
bankers that they will not discount lower than six per
cent., and, consequently, a general uneasiness is spread-
ing, those who have money at command not being will-
ing to part with it, but waiting to see what turn mone-
tary affairs will take.
There can be no doubt that the Bank (having got
into the difficulty, and being desirous to counteract the
exportation of bullion and the fall in the exchanges),
have adopted a more legitimate expedient than that
resorted to in 1839. It is a practice which has uni-
formly been found to answer in the transactions of
the Bank of France, and, in fact, until about twenty
years ago no bills were admitted to discount at the
Bank of England, which had more than 65 days to
rho ; the extension of the term is altogether modern
in practice. There have been instances in Paris of a
limit as low as 45 days, but not lower, and that plan
has usually proved successful. Some persons are of
opnion that the course now adopted at the Bank will
not have any material effect on the rate of interest out
of doors, but appearances are otherwise, and those who
have long dated bills to negotiate must expect at all
events to pay dearly for the accommodation.
It has been stated that the payment of the dividends
by the Bank, which commenced on Tuesday last, was
earlier by one day than usual, and that this was done
at the request of one of the principal London bankers,
whose standing in credit, however, was too high to sup-
pose that he had any personal motive. The public ge-
nerally would feel probably obliged by his interference,
but there seems to have been some remark upon it and
objections among the other bankers.

POST.--We have produced so formidable a reduc-
tion in the item of buliion in a short time, and the
quantity of gold carted away of late by the exporting
houses has evidently been upon so large a scale, as to
justify the most restrictive measures on the part of the
Bank. At the rate at which they were going on, a very
short time would have been sufficient for the abstraction
of every sovereign from its tills. Some of our Contem-
poraries, while they admit that a decisive check on the
part of the Corporation was necessary, and acknow-
ledged to be so by everybody, complain, nevertheless,
of the suddenness of the step taken on Thursday.
From the very nature of the Bank's position with the
public, the measures of the Directors must be sudden ;
but the state of affairs being published to the world
once a month, every man of business is enabled to
judge of the probability of a change of policy from time
to time, and it is no fault of the Directors if he does
not choose to take warning.

MELANCHOLY OCCURRENCE AT

KENSINGTON.

On Friday afternoon the neighbourhood of Kensing-
ton Gravel-p4ts was thrown into a state of considerable
excitement in consequence of the circulation of a re-
port that a lady had been shot by her husband, under
circumstances of a peculiarly painful nature, which re-
port, we regret to state, has proved too well founded.
From the inquiries our reporter has made on the spot,
the following authentic particulars have been obtained.
The lady in question i 3 Mrs. Elizabeth Pearce, the wife
of Mr. Arthur Legent Pearce, a highly respectable and
opulent surgeon, residing at No. :23, Bedford-place,
about half-way between Kensington Church and Gravel-
pits. Mrs. Pearce, who is about 36 years of age, has
been married to her husband some years. For the last
week or two an alteration had manifested itself in the
conduct of Mr. Pearce, which has been productive of
much domestic discomfort, during which he has been
heard accusing his wife of unfaithfulness to him, and
also with having made repeated attempts to poison him,
by introducing arsenic into his food, &c. On the
afternoon of Friday they were visited by a friend, who
remained, with the intention of taking an early dinner
with them. Between two and three o'clock, just as they
had sat down to the dinner-table, Mr. Pearce suddenly
rose, and complaining that the room was insufferably
hot, pushed up a window behind where his wife was
sitting, and, at the same instant, discharged a pistol at
her. Mrs. Pearce immediately tell off her Onale on to
the boor, and while the friend who was sitting with them
ran towards Mr. Pearce, she contrived to creep out of
the room and escape into the street, where her cries
and her appearance, her hair hanging dishevelled about
her ears, without shoes, and her dress (a light muslin
one) on fire, soon brought several of the neighbouring
residents to her assistance, when, her burning clothes
having. been extinguished, she was assisted to the resi-
dence at Yr, Taylor, her medical attendant, in High-
row, Kensington Gravel-pits, where she received every
attention her tuation demanded.

The police having been informed of the facts of the
case, a constable was sent to the house of Mr. Pearce,
and took him into custody, and he was charged by Mr.
Pinto, of Pall-mall East, one of Mrs. Pearce's trustees,
with shooting at her, with intent to do her some bodily
harm. Mrs. Pearce was taken from the house of Mr.
Taylor to her awn residence, and Dr. Kerrison, of New
Burlington-street, was called in to attend her. Mr.
Pearce in the meantime was taken before Mr. Sutton,
a resident magistrate, who adjourned the case to the
Kensington police-office.
Oa Saturday morning, at the sitting of the Magistrates,
at their office in Kensington-square, Mr. Collison, the
solicitor of Mr. Pearce, applied for as adjournment of
the case for a few hours.
Mr. Pilkington said he did not think the Bench
would be sitting for so long a period, on which—
Mr. Collison replied he must then apply for the ad-
journwent of the case until next week, it being essential
that his client should have counsel.
Mr. Jennings, on behalf. of Mr. Pinto, the guardian
of. Mrs. Pearce, bad no objection to the postponement
of the case but he could not help thinking that if the
charge were entered into against Mr. Pearce the evi-
dence that would be adduced would benefit that gentle-
man rather than injure him. . _

The Magistrate; determined to hear some evidence
befos,2 they adjourned the case, and Mr. Pearce was
pl::ced at the bar ; he appeared greatly agitated and
touch dejected, hoiding
.a handkerchief before his face
during the investigation.
Mr. 'lades, apparently a military man, stated that he
was' on a visit at the prisoner's house, wad, as they were
about to sit down to dinner, Mr. Pearce complained of
the sultriness of the day, and threw up the window with
some violenec ; at that instant he heard the report of a
pistol, and Mrs. Pearce fell to the ground ; she then
crawled from the rootri, and, running through the gar-
den, reached the street, her clothes being then in flames
from the lighted wadding catching them. In his exa-
mination by the Bench, the witness said he did not see
a pistol in the prisoner's hand at the,: time, nor did he see
biro lire it oil.
Mr. Taylor, the surgeon, deposed that Mrs. Pearce
was wounded in the breast, but he could not say that it
was by a ball ; it might have been by the wadding ; no
ball was found on probing the wound ; she was much
burned about the arms. This witness was very much
agitated in giving his evidence, which he accounted for by
stating that he had been on terms of intimacy and friend-
ship with the family for a very long time. He further
stated that Mrs. Pearce was suffering very severely from
the wound and the burns.

Mr. Pilkington and the other Magistrates consulted
together, and adjourned the further examination until
Wednesday next ; and the prisoner was taken in a fly to
the new prison, Clerkenwell.

HORRABLE AND FATAL ACCIDENT.-We
have to record the melancholy death of Mr. Banfield, land-
lord of the Lopez lia-ad Inn, near Crewkerne, under cir-
cumstances which render it peculiarly awful and distressing.
-The deceased attended our market on Monday last, and
did act leave until a late hour
buti-1 miraculously received
He had scarcely gone a
the
mile when he fell from
his horse,he no injury, and again mounted h,eunlnnal ;
but ere
reachad another mile he agaiii fell
a severe bruise on ona side of his head heavily, and received
his
ho, however,
t;n
which the blood flowed copiously. it was not
sone ear, from
so severe as to prevent his re-mounting
the third and lass time, he attempted to
get e and, for
just as he arrived opposite the house of a farmer
Davis,hen
a n
;
l'oasernarsh, he fell with tremendous force on his head,
and fractured his skull. He was carried into Davis's
"house, in a senseless state, and several surgeons were loon
in attendance. The poor man never once moved, looked.
or spoke ; and after lingering in the same unconscious
condition until Wednesday morning, death finished his

careep
Mr. WARBURTON AND THE DpCnTObßy
S.3Fr
The following is a paragraph from a note writte ,
Warburton, the propounder of the Medical Reform Bill,
to Dr. Webster, the President of the British Medical
Association. When read at the meeting, it was received
My
with hissing and considerable disapprobation :--
Medical Bill will be too strong a dose for the medi-
cal corporations, and too weak a ono for the more
sanguine medical reformers. Between the two stools, I
anticipate I shall WO, througn. You will see many indica-
tions in the Bill how little I am d;;;:iosed to trust medical I
men with the power of lezjilating in own affairs ; I
would as soon confide such power'in their own matters to
butchers and bakers."
The Great Western Railway have offered to
dertake the construction of a railway through the County
of Cornwall, if the sum of 200,0001.
--Cornwall Royal Gazette, be raised in the county.

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

FROM THE MORNING PAPERS OF THIO DAY.

(From the Times.)
The fresh attempt to get rid of King Louis Philippe
by a foul and hideous murder in open day may have
shocked every human being out of France, but no man
who comprehends the state of that country or of the
morals of French democracy can have been in the least
surprised at it. Was it without reason that we quoted
on Friday last from the Journal des Debats the follow-
ing dreadful passages ?—" Are there in France either
laws or charter, or Monarchy or Government of any
description, or are we at this moment under the
full sway of anarchy ?" " There is on every side
the most furious excitement to insurrection—the most
incredible outbreak of the most unbridled passions.
Already, whoever is suspected of being favourab!e to
peace is denounced as a traitor, a coward, an enemy
to the country. And they are the journals of the
Ministers themselves which circulate this shameful scan-
dal. As for the laws, they are openly set at defiance.
As for the charter, the Ministerial democrats declare
their contempt for it. The Crown they insult without
remorse. The Chambers they threaten with the ven-
geance of the people. The revolution speaks as if it
were the universal master. No man is permitted to
have an opinion of his own. He who is not for imme-
diate and universal war is a partisan of Foreign Powers."
And it was "as a partisan of Foreign Powers," no
doubt, that the Marseillois assassin fired at the brave
and enlightened King, a musket loaded to the muzzle.
Said we not truly in the same number of the Times,
" that the question of the East was but a hollow
pretext Ibr violence in all quarters ?" Said we
not on that occasion, " that there is a faction at
work, which will force both King and Chambers into
foreign war —into universal war—ON PAIN OF
DEATH ?" Why, what was the horror aimed at by this
assassin, named Darmes, but to inflict " the pain .of
death" on his Sovereign, because he considered the
life of ":Louis Philippe to be the only obstacle in the way
of universal war ?" Then, what must be the nature
and ends of that war towards the excitement of which the
means amount to regicide by fierce assassination ? What
must be the character of the faction which pants for
such a war, and which attempts to procure it by such
methods ? Among the most disgusting traits in the his-
tory of any faction, or of any people (apply it to which
you please), is this avowed identity of the war party
with the party which abets assassination. The intending
murderer in the recent instance declared that his sole
i object was to remove the sole obstacle to a war. Well,
since it ought to be assumed that conscientious ca-
suists like M. Darmes are disposed to administer
equal justice to all their enemies as well as friends,
let us suppose for a moment that a few more " obsta-
cles" to war should happen to present themselves by and
by—suppose that when the Chambers are assembled to
decide, in concert with his Majesty, the question of
peace or war, and that a majority of the Chamber of
Deputies should, contrary to the expectations of the
Constitutionnel, the Courrier Francais, and others of
the Liberal faction, happen to vote against the said Li-
berals, and for the maintenance of peace, every member
of that majority becomes at once what M. Darmes pro-
nounced his Majesty Louis Philippe, after he had shot
at him--" an obstacle to a war with the allied Powers."
By what parity of reasoning or equality of justice can
any single member of such majority be suffered to es-
cape the same visitation at the hands of the war faction
as would have been inflicted on Louis Philippe had not
a merciful and beneficent Providence interposed ?
(From the Morning Advertiser.)
To escape from an attempted assassination is such a
common-place occurrence with the King of the French,
that even were public opinion less engrossed with other
subjects than it is at present, such an event would
scarcely supply material for " nine days' wonder." An
account of an affair of this kind, which took place on
last Thursday, appears in our paper of this day, but
whether the attempt were instigated by the war par-
ties, who consider Louis Philippe the great obstacle to
the indulgence of their belligerent propensities, or by
the Government itself, as a stage trick to divert public
attention from scrutinising too closely the other parts
of the drama in progress of representation by the
French Cabinet, we have not at present before us suf-
ficient information to pronounce any decided opinion.
From whatever cause originating, it is not likely to
cause any great sensation in Paris at the present mo-
ment, though if our French Contemporaries were to take
example from the ingenuity and effrontery of the Tory
Journals in this country, they might discover in this
attempt on the life of the King of the French the ef-
fects of a miserable griping economy, which had not
provided sufficiently for his protection, just as a part of
the English press has denounced the parsimony of the
Government in this country, as affording opportunity
for the firing of the Talavera, which, it appears, ignited
from spontaneous combustion, or of the Camperdown,
which I was endangered by causes against which
no vigilance could have guarded. Beyond speculations
of this kind, the attempt on the life of Louis Philippe
loses all its interest as soon as narrated ; and, therefore,
leaving it to speak for itself, we revert to the Syrian
question, which, uutil adjusted. must attract the para-
mount solicitude of Europe. In alluding to matters of
secondary or minor interest, we must not omit to notice
the ludicrous exhibition of Mr. Attwood, who pre-
vailed apor. M. Odillon Barrot and some dozen Mem-
bers from the Chamber of Deputies, to witness one of
those fantastic caricatures of humanity at which angels are
said to weep. Mr. Attwood commenced by asserting that
the parties into which this country is divided, " were
united to prevent the communication to the English
people of the knowledge of that which was done, or ,
that which was felt in Franco. That in England there
was, consequently, no knowledge that the Treaty of the
15th of July was injurious to France, and not the re-
motest suspicion that collision would arise out of that
Treaty." It is a pity that Mr. Attwood did not here
supply the knowledge which he complains of being with-
held from his countrymen, and point out what the com-
bined ingenuity of the French press has not yet been
able to do—the manner in which " the Treaty of the
Lath of July is injurious to France." This is an as-
sumption, in support of which not a tittle of evidence
has been or can be adduced beyond the rabid assertion
of fanatical incendiaries. In fact, so far from being in-
jurious to France, the Treaty of July involves not a
single stipulation against which France makes the
slightest objection ; her only cause, or rather pretence,
of complaint is that the Treaty was signed without
consulting her, though she had previously withdrawn
from the negotiation without assigning any cause.
(From the Morning Chronicle.)
In a Second Edition of the Chronicle of Saturday we
announced another horrible attempt to deprive the King
of the French of his life. Though we have occasionally
disapproved of the policy of Louis Philippe, and may
have thought that he took a more direct part in the
Government than in strictness belonged to the functions
of a constitutional King, we have always been ready to
do justice to his great powers of mind, his virtues,
his kindness of disposition, and many excellent qualities.
With regard even to his tenacity of power, which it
seems difficult to reconcile with ministerial responsibility,
we are aware that much may be said in his favour from
the great difficulty in a country like France—con-
vulsed by a succession of revolutions—of establishing
an approximation even to the fixed habits which in
this country have been derived from the predomi-
nance for a century and a half of a powerful aristo-
cracy, or rather oligarchy, Louis Philippe, it must be
recollected, has lived through all the French revolu-
tions, and is evidently strongly impressed, from his ex-
perience, with the difficulty of retracing any false step
in governing a population so peculiarly liable to be car-
ried away by headlong impulse, as that over which he
rules. If ever there was a man qualified to overcome
the difficulties of the situation of King of the French,
Louis Philippe is that man. Burke, in 1796, drew a
picture of the severe duties and harassing toils in store
for future Kings of France by no means inviting to
any one to whom a throne might only be desir-
able for the sake of personal indulgences. But
Louis Philippe has shown how well he knew the
arduous nature of the duties imposed on him by his
position. From the moment he ascended the throne
to the present, he has never suffered himself to be
thrown off his guard. His natural capacity is allowed
by all who know him to be of the first order,.
and his powers of mind have been carefully culti-
vated. But powers of mind of a high order, and ex-
tensive acquirements, are not always a guarantee against
serious mistakes. It is the peculiarity of Louis Phi-
lippe that he combines many qualities of mind seldom
found united in one individual. He is quick in discern-
ment, and yet wary, and his reliance on his own judg-
ment is accompanied with a vigilance which never allows
him to be off his guard, or to neglect any point from
which he may be assailed. It has been observed by a
democratic journal of France that he is in his sixty-
ninth year, but though this warns us that a time is fast
approaching when, by the laws of nature, his mental
powers must be impaired, there is yet no indication of an
an approach even to that state. He is still the intelli-
gent and shrewd, nay even astute Sovereign, who seized
and successfully steered the State vessel at a period
when every man who contributed to the Revolu-
tion of 1830 aspired to political influence, and the
disappointment of multitudes surrounded him with
perils, in whatever direction he moved. But Louis
Philippe has other claims on the gratitude of the
French besides those he derives from his powers of
mind, and his extensive acquirements, the result of
careful cultivation and extensive experience of all the
vicissitudes of life. In him, the French have to boast
of a monarch who is a bright example of a good hus-
band, a kind and yet considerate parent, and mild
master, who, with a regard for religion, is without a
vestige of intolerance or bigotry, and whose example
ia of incalculable benefit to a nation in which a revolu-
tion has shaken good as well as bad principles. His
devotion to the improvement of
income,
Frane
and his taste
, to which he
forhas
he
fine
applied
ahritss,imgimve himense private
well-founded claims on the na-
tion. We know of no French Monarch who has better
deserved the title of Father of his Country. Whatever
his failings may be, they certainly_
ecesaor
bear little resemblance
gtinguished ant
to those of his di . „ Bonaparte,
which unfortunately harmonised INt to, well wit

the national character ; for it cannot be concealed that
the French are too generally smitten by the mad pas-
sion for extending their limits, and carry their yearnings
for military glory to a reprehensible excess. Louis
Philippe has, on the other hand, distinguished himself
by a strong desire to make France great, through the
development of her own resources. It is lamentable to
think that his valuable life should have been so often
attempted by political fanaticism. We have no doubt
that sympathy with the assassin will be confined to
very few indeed ; and that the great body of French
citizens will view the attempt with reprobation. But,
then, how is it to be expected that the men of the class
in life to which this assassin belongs can always mode-
rate within legitimate limits the indignation which has
been carefully instilled into them, against All who are
supposed to be opposed to the mania for a general war,
and especally against the King, who is pointed out as
the great advocate of peace ? We would fain hope
that this most appalling consequence of these incen-
diary exhibitions will teach lessons of moderation to the
nation, and that the meditated assassination of one of
the best men of our times, who, in spite of occasional
mistakes, will go down to posterity as one of the greatest
rulers of a great nation, will rouse all that is great and
good among our neighbours to form a wall of defence
round the person of their Monarch. If it be true that
the assassin declared that he was actuated by a desire
to rid the world of a tyrant—the tyranny consisting in
the obstacles interposed by the King's love of peace to
the gratification of his own insane cravings for war—a
strong manifestation of the abhorrence of the nation may
have a salutary effect on those who might be led to sup-
pose that, by raising their hand against the life of the
King, they wero earning a title to the regard of their
countrymen.

(From the Morning Post.)
Is it not monstrous that the French Minister should
have the audacity in a public letter to say that the love
of peace on the part of the French nation may be re-
lied upon ? Do we not know that the Ministerial
journals of France have been exciting the populace to
the wildest fury for war, and with such success that the
Government finds no small difficulty in repressing the
violent spirit which has taken possession of the people ?
Love of peace I What a palpably false assertion !
Eagerness for war—passion for war—wild, delirious
fury for war—this is what we may indeed rely upon as
having possession of the French populace, and no one
knows better than M. Thiers by whose arts this madness
was set in motion. The Minister would be afraid to make
this public assertion about " the love of peace " which
is at present to be relied upon in France—he would
be afraid of the indignation of the French war party,
but that he knows that they are well aware of the dis-
honesty of the representation, and like him not a whit the
worse for such dishonesty. In England you destroy a
Minister in public estimation if you convict him of deli-
berate dishonesty of statement. In France the case is
very different. They have no moral sentiment which
revolts at dishonesty. They look merely to what seems
most likely to effect the purpose of the Minister. It
his purpose be to perplex matters and gain time, and if
the assertion of what is palpably untrue seem to be the
readiest means to that end, they think well of him in
proportion to the cleverness and intrepidity with which
he uses such means. They look merely to what is suc-
cessful or unsuccessful—other standard of right and wrong
with respect to public matters and public men they have
none. Nevertheless, this Turco-Egyptian question hav-
ing become, through the preparations and menaces of
France, a European question, Europe must soon decide
upon the " love of peace" and the " disinterestedness" of
France. Europe will seek in the debates and resolu-
tions of the French Chambers for such rational expla-
nations as it seems in vain to expect from the shuffling
State papers of M. Thiers. Europe, and, above all, the
rational and just portion of the French nation, will pro-
bably try to ascertain these two things—first, what
it is that the Government of France really wants, and
what is the real meaning of all her warlike noise, and
all her monstrous expenditure in warlike preparation ;
secondly, if France merely desires to preserve to Mehe-
met Ali the sovereignty of Egypt, why did she not agree
to the proposals of the Four Powers, which would
have secured that sovereignty to Mehemet, and
why she has filled Europe with pain, alarm, and dis-
turbance to no end whatever, but that which might
have been gained with the cordial good-will and co-
operation of every great Power in Europe ? If it
should turn out, as we think it will, that M. Thiers
found he had been misled by shallow Jacobins in the
British Cabinet, that he had made a great mistake, and
that the only way of turning away the attention of the
French Government from his blunder was by setting the
nation wild about war and its insulted honour, if this
shall be found to be the teal history of the career of M.
Thiers for the last three months, we hope there will be
enough of honest indignation left in France to enable
the King to rid himself of a Minister at once so danger-
ous and so contemptible.

FROM 17111 DAILY PAPERS OP SATURDAY.
(From the Globe.)
We regret sincerely to have to announce this new
attempt upon the life of his Majesty Louis Philippe.
the King of that 'French. It 7.s then that the rage of
unfledged heroes, with their virgin swords and prosti-
tute pens, and the no less rabid virulence of renegade
priests—translates itself into gun-shots ! Assassina-
tion, like the conscription, provides substitutes, and acts
by proxy. A Lamennais is a wiser man in his gene-
Iration than a Clement or Itavaillae ; the fanatics en
chef slink behind gerans retponsables ; and as in Eng-
land there are go-to-prison editors, so in France. It
should seem, there is an equally advanced division of
labour between firebrands and assassins. The French
will have the singular honour, should these accursed
attempts succeed at last, of having rid themselves,
twice by assassination, once by judicial murder, of
three of the best monarchs to be found in their his-
tory. They are bringing back, with prodigious pomp,
and all the posthumous glare of talse glory, the
remains of the most illustrious "scourge of God"
since their Louis le Grand ; and with remarkable con-
sistency in wrong estimation, here are shots fired at the
man in France who certainly has worked hardest to re-
pair the thousand internal evils of the reign of Napo-
eon. Louis Philippe is a monarch who would have
been highly respected in England ; and perfectly safe
from pistol shots, excepting from madmen. He would
have found in the peace-loving portion of our aristo-
cracy, and of our people, sufficient support to carry out
his views, without incurring that odium which the French
Monarch, thrown into the ferment of petty factions—
not one of them strong enough to screen his person, and
few honest enough to wish to screen it—has incurred
by exerting his voice in the Government, in the midst of
the confusion of tongues prevailing around him. We
can hardly conceive a position more cruel than that of
a monarch, who feels himself fit to govern, and is toll
that he mus"t, not do it ; and who, when he seeks around
him those on whom to devolve the functions, which he
is told it is unconstitutional for him to take any part
in, finds little else than overweening pretensions, and
selfish ambitions, parties without party discipline or
lasting cohesion ; and finally coalitions, which set even
party morals at defiance. This has been the position
of the King of the French ; we have called it a cruel one;
if he sink under it, he will deserve to be deemed the
martyr of principles, which, be they sound on all points,
or not, be they liable, or not, to the charges which have
so often been brought against them, have, at all events,
been the result of large experience, aid sober convic-
tion—infinitely more solid therefore than the stock in
trade of talking politicians. It France cannot bear the
caution of a ruler like Louis Philippe, she may try again
how she likes an Emperor, and prretorian guards.

(From the Courier.)

No man who has watched, however slightly, the
course of events in France during the last two months,
who has waded through the frantic ravings of the press,
republican and revolutionary, who has waited on the
accessory war fulminations of the press Ministerial, who
has wonderingly accompanied the press fed by Royal
bounty, and nourished in the precincts of a Court, in its
inconsistent as inconsiderate career by turns of bellicose
bombast or frenzied fear, can really feel or affect asto-
nishment about tha deplorable occurrence of which the
particulars will be found in another column of Paris
intelligence. The life of the King of the French has
once more, and almost for the hundredth time, been
attempted by the hand of the assassin—an assassin who
avowed his crime, without the expression of other re-
gret,
.'we are told, than for the failure of its consumma-
tion. The wretch is evidently one only of a class with
which the streets of Paris abound ; whose numbers
swell frightfully with every revolution, and whose dia-
bolical passions are stimulated to greater fury only by
every unsuccessful attempt, and every suppressed
eineute. The general demoralisation of the French
people, in the capital at least, is an awful warning of
the perilous results attendant upon organic changes in the
social and political structure ; of the perpetual and in-
satiate appetite for change thereby generated and daily
more excited the more it is administered to. The lesson
ought not to be, will not we hope be, lost upon the
more rational portion of Liberals and Reformers at
home. The atrocity of the crime is more deeply en-
hanced still by the character, public and private, more
still than by the quality, of the illustrious victim des-
tined, but so far preserved. Few have been the
Monarchs who have deserved equally well of their
country and their subjects as Louis Philippe. The
elected of a free people's choice, the very abstract ex-
pression, if so we may term it, of that sovereignty
of the people, whose wonder-working theory
in its exaggerated interpretation has captivated no less
the folly of the foolish than the wisdom of the wise,
he at least has legitimatised his origin and justified his
title by a reign signalised by peace abroad and prosperity
at home ; by cares unceasing for the moral and material
well-being of his people, by protection to property, and
by justice to all. It is impossible to perambulate Paris
and its environs without admiration for the munificence
of the Monarch by whom they have been embellished so
highly, and so much improved in the more substantial
sense.

(From the Standard.)
The King of the French has to thank M. Thiers for
this added attempt upon his life. Whether the attempt
is to be repeated upon the person of the King, or the
violence of the Thiers faction is to be reserved for the