The Sun.
London, England, 1846-10-16 00:00:00

LONDON, FRIPA ETENING, OCTOBER l6, 1846.

1
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INTEt,I,IGFNCE

1) OCT

R MEETING

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SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

71.6 NINO P.'. l'E

11S D A. 7

be sentcntio.:, pi
phs havo at lengjh strugg!, d thiouph th- ne,evy and
ominous clouds which interposed themselves between
Madrid and Neuilly,.. and Louis Philippe has been au-
thentically informed that the Duke de Montpensier has
been married to the Infanta of Spain. Such is the bare
and frigid
erthiant thet the
glitteringvict ory
spoils, i s won,nis , andand
revelthat in hi st
he familycap-
tured announcement. Perhaps, his Majesty now
conceiveswillg ath
city long after the passing jealousy of an ally and
the elisions cavils of a neighbour have sunk into silence
and oblivion. Suet tanti. It is worth a little discredit
end some disturbance to have another chance of level-
ling the Pyrenees and doubling the dynasty of Orleans.
The ides of March are come. Before they are past we
shall see a little more clearly what is to be the cost of
Lae prize. Already is misfortune augured from the boding
inci,den4 of a solemnity which should have made the year
a, jubilee. The Spanish Queen and her sister should have
been dowered with the hearts of their people; not a voice
should have been heard but that of favour, and nota coun-
tenance seen but that of joy ; liberated captives should
have marked the national holiday ; and the true and
tried allies of Spain should have sent their representa-
tives to the altar to carry the combined congratulations
of Europe. What has been the reality? A secret and
suspicious negotiation, with rumours of violence and
symptoms of fraud, has been terminated by an abrupt
and unblessed alliance. The marriage of an Infanta has
been compassed and concluded under circumstances
which no Castilian noble would tolerate in his own
family. Amidst the sullen silence of an offended people,
environed by cavalry and guarded by cannon, the intru-
sive bridegroom has traversed the streets of his newly-
found capital, throtegh a crowd whose most friendly
feeling was indifference, and whose most innocent senti-
ment was inquisitiveness. No sound of welcome saluted
his ears or cheered him into momentary confidence.
The energy of an unscrupulous Government contrived to
suppress disgust, but it could not supply acclamations.
Arrests instead of amnesties characterised this sinister
festival of a nation ; the marriage of a Princess has
been seen to crowd the prisons with her sister's sub-
jects.. From the ill-starred ceremony the friends of
Spain stood coldly aloof, and the representative of
her truest ally and surest supporter withdrew from
the scene, after having vainly tendered the amicable
remonstrances of his country against the contemplated
contract. What will come of a bargain thus ominously
struck—thus stripped of the joys and gratulations of
such solemnities, and completed amidst such dark prog-
nostics of impending evil? The political and natural
horizons were black and overcast as at one of those mar-
riages which, in heathen fable, used to entail miseries
and bloodshed on innumerable generations ; and not
even the fatal wedding of Marie Antoinette was more
gloomily characterised than these precipitate nuptials of
a helpless Princess. Superstition was perhaps required
to infer massacres and ruin frcm the fall of a scaffold
and the deadly struggles of a crowd ; but the most sober
prudence can only augur conflicts and convulsions from
an outraged people, an estranged ally, an enslaved court,
and a detested intruder. Already is the unknown issue
of a marriage, which should have supplied reversionary
heirs to the Crown, ignored by that Power to whose
friendly aid both Crown and Constitution owe so much;
yet there is joy and gladness at Versailles, as if
forty years had not taught them to dread the tempera-
ment of Spain. It might be imagined that the re-
cords of 1808 were forgotten .or inaccessible, so little
is learned from the lesson which they so loudly teach.
Indolent apathy might then, perhaps, have been
mistaken for popular acquiescence ; but such a blunder
is strangely simple now. It was amidst the apparent in-
difference of carelessness or content that the French co-
lumns were pushed across the Pyrenees, and established
in the frontier fortresses, while the partition of Portugal
was put forth as a transparent pretext for the occupation
of Spain. It was without question cr interruption that
Charles and Ferdinand continued their unbecoming
quarrels, and tossed their ueglected kingdom for arbi
tration or acceptance into the hands of the wily ruler of
France. Not a murmur reached the guard-rooms of the
arrogant Joseph, when the ninety-one notables had con-
veyed to him, as he fondly conceived, the peaceable and
entire possession of the monarchy of Spain. Napoleon
had stronger grounds of confidence than Louis Philippe;
for Charles was an idiot, and Godoy was a fool ; and if
the ambitious Corsican thought that Spaniards would
willingly acquiesce in a Monarch and Constitution
of his gift, he might have been more readily par-
doned for forgetting 1706, than can King Louis
Philippe be fur forgetting 1808. A week trans-
formed apathy into itsurrection. A flame, the most
fierce and violent, burst forth instantaneously from ashes
under which scarce a spark was thought to smoulder.
tarragon, Navarre, the Asturias, Biscay, and the Cas-
tiles, successively or simultaneously proclaimed their
spirit and their strength, and not a link was wanting
in a chain which encompassed the French intruders
with the vindictive hostility of an insulted nation. Spain
seems to fascinate the house of Orleans by an hereditary
taw. Scarcely had the first uxorious Bourbon been se-
cured in his palace by the ill-merited loyalty of Castile,
than the Regent tampered with Stanhope fur its transfer
to his own branch, or at least for its partition ; and King
Louis Philippe may, perhaps, recal the hour when he
sailed with a Sicilian kinsman to Gibraltar in pursuit of
this favourite prize, with somewhat different ideas of
English interference from those professed at present.
A few months will now probably show us how far he
has succeeded in a feat which foiled the undying ambi-
tion of Louis le Grand and the unexampled might of
Napoleon ; and what is the real value of the spoil for
which he has not hesitated to imperil a thirty years'
peace and convulse the relations of Europe.
POST.—It seems to be generally admitted among the
physicians of the mind, that there are intellectual as well
as physical epidemics, and that the human understand-
ing has its influenaas as well as the human body. Folly
appears to be as catching as the measles—any one gen-
tleman who may be insane upon some point of " social
improvement," has only to inoculate the brains of
his neighbours, to cause the major part of the commu-
nity to take the mania kindly, and to go as stark staring
mad upon the subject as himself. A little time ago the
enlightened British public caught the railway fever, and
everybody was .delirious about " junctions," " exten-
sions," and " directs ;" but being under skilful hands,
the fever, as usual, was allayed by copious phlebotomy,
or a considerable letting of the vital specie from the
breeches pocket, and it was found that, as in the well-
known case of Nicolai, the Italian bookseller, the
bleeding had the effect of dissipating the illusion.
The last new mental malady is an eruption of clubs.
One or two " noble institutions" have already broken
out, and the streets seem likely in a short time to be
covered over with a severe rash of cockney Parthe-
nons, Palladiums, Athenaeums, and other Bow-bell
temples of wisdom and boiled beef. The clerks and
shopmen of the metropolis are to be fed and philoso-
phised at cost price. They are to have three courses of
fish, flesh, and fowl, and a course of scientific lectures
into the bargain, on the most reasonable terms ; and, so
that no time may be lost, the mind is to be feasted with
the body. A professor of hydrostatics is to come in with
the soup—a lecture on ichthyology to be served up with
the fish—and a popular discourse upon comparative
anatomy to lend all the relish of currant jelly to the
mutton. Consequently we may entertain hopes of
shortly seeing the day when Euclids shall measure out
yards of flannel on geometrical principles, when New-
; tons shall calculate the gravity of our accounts at our
bankers, and Bacons oblige us by handing us the copies
of our wefts. The richest, the raciest, the summa
,taititia of all, however, is a project for the construction
of a series of social Chateaux en Espagne, given in a
paragraph now going the circuit of the papers, and the
first stone of which appears to have been laid in the
brain of some sapient correspondent of the Builder,
who seems to possess a fine lath-and-plaster facility for
running up castles in the air. The atmospheric archi-
tect puts forth a plan for what he calls "Family Club
Chambers," by which he proposes that the future resi-
dences of the middle classes should consist, like George
Coleman's fat gentleman, of several single houses rolled
into one. He is anxious to consolidate the domiciles, as
well as the funds, of the London gentry, and to locate a
different establishment on each different floor ; or, in
other words, to run up what he calls "a palace" several
families high, and so to found throughout the metropolis
a number of little communities of " flats." But the
gentleman cackles so eloquently on the subject, that, in
order to allow him the opportunity of saving the British
Capitol from the hands of the barbarians, we will give
his own version of the scheme :
" FAMILY. CLUB CHAMBERS. That the union Of
several private residences under one roof would improve
the architecture of London, is unquestionable.
If it
were properly carried into effect, we might live to see
palaces erected for the accommodation of the middle
classes, instead of interminable rows of mean dwellings,
which depress the spirits of all who behold them. The
system would also be most advantageous in preventing
the inconvenient extension of the metropolis."
So that " those interminable rows of mean dwellings"
which constitute the localities of Russell, Eaton or Bry-
anstone-squares, which we believe' were erected for the
accommodation of the middle classes," but from the con
templation of which we must confess we never expe-
rienced that "depression of spirits" which the aerial
builder mentions, are, we suppose, to be horizontally
condt nsed, and perpendicularly elongated, until they
arrive at the altitude of the brace of stucco Mont Blanes
which flank the Albert entrance to Hyde-park, and
which are of course, to the aerial builder, so much more
inspiriting to behold, and must be so healthy to ascend.
This arrangement certainly might have the effect of
" stopping the inconvenient extension of the metropolis"
spoken of ; but though it might prevent London from
growing a Daniel Lambert in bulk, we fear that it
would be the cause of the buildings becoming O'Briens
in height.
HERALD.—We are free to confess that we have
much greater expectations of Lord Cottenham as a law
reformer than we ever entertained of- Lord Lyndhurst.
The last-mentioned Noble Lord occupied the great seal
for the third time from 1841 till the middle of the pre-
sent year; and though no man was better aware of the
evil of the monopoly of the sergeants than the Noble
and Learned Lord, or knew better the ill effects of
choking up the approach to one of her Majesty's superior
courts,—or more sardonically laughed at the folly of
maintaining, in the nineteenth century, the usages and
customs of the twelfth and thirteenth,-- or more stoutly
maintained the propriety and necessity of Lord Broug-
ham's efforts to open the Common Pleas, than Lord
L 3 ndhurst,—yet such was the uncontrollable laziness of
his nature—such his insoupent and careless character—
that ho never made for five lag years the slightest
effort to repair a state of things which was operating
alike to the injury of the Bar and Bench, and—what
was of far more consequence then either— to the great
injury and oppression of the suitors frequenting her
' Majesty's courts of common law. Somewhere about
' the middle of the month of July, we believe, the great
seals were delivered to Lord Cottenham, and on the 18th
,of August he had drawn up and passedthrough Parlia-
, , ment the 9th and 10th Vict, c. 54, entitled " An Act to

,t the:-

extend to all Barristers practising in the Superior Courts
s tmiu- t^- the Privileges of Sergeants-at law in t).
vt Common. Pleas." As this Act is a mod.'
;ty and clearness, and a full measure of jii-
;).,tit branches of the profs and to ail suitors, we
I transcribe it in extenso, in order that its provisions may
I be thoroughly known :
" Whereas it would tend to the snore equal distribu-
tion- and to the consequent dispatch of business in the
superior courts of common law at Westminster, and
would at the same time be greatly for the benefit of the
public, if the right of barristers-at-law to practise, plead,
and to be heard extended equally to all the said courts;
but, by reason of the exclusive privilege of sergeants-at-
law to practise, plead, and have audience in the Court of
Common Pleas at Westminster during term time, such
object cannot be effected without the authority of Par-
liament: Be it therefore enacted by the Queen's most
excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of
the Lords spiritual and temporal, and Commons, in this
present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of
the same, that from and after the passing of this Act all
barristers-at-law, according to their respective rank and
seniority, shall and may have and exercise equal rights
and privilege of practising, pleading, and audience in the
said Court of Common Pleas at Westminstor with the
said sergeants-at-law; and it shall be lawful for the jus-
tices of the said court, or any three of them, of whom
the Lord Chief Justice of the said court shall be one, to
make rules and orders, and to do all other things neces-
sary for giving effect to this enactment."
That this measure will not only, in the language of
its preamble, tend to the more equal distribution but to
the consequent dispatch of business in the courts at
Westminster, there can be no manner of doubt. For
the last five years the Court of Queen's Bench has been
overwhelmed with a mass and multitude of business
which no five—or probably no ten judges—in her
Majesty's dominions could effectually get through, so
as to leave no arrears at the end of the terms, or, if you
will, at the end of the judicial year. Some idea, and
that a faint one, of the increasing bulk and importance
of the business, may be formed from the fact that one
of the volumes of the Term Reports, which in the days
of East—i. e., from 1800 to 1812—used to amount to
about 550 pages, now, in the days of Adolphus and
Ellis, amounts to the astounding number of 1,080 and
1,105 pages. The cases of parish law, and involving
decisions on the new Poor-law Act, have increased
tenfold since the days of East—while cases of corpora-
tion law have, since 1832 or 1833, increased in a nearly
equal ratio. Railroads, too, have brought in their
train (we mean no pun) a new, distinct, and very
fruitful class of cases, altogether unknown to
the old law; and unless each one of the three courts
of common law performs a nearly equal share of
labour, the engine of justice, to make use of a railroad
illustration, will be altogether at a stand-still. The idea
of " exclusive privilege" to practise and plead in a par-
ticular court can, in the present day, only be defended
by the possession of superior learning, astuteness, and
aptitude—and we have yet to learn that any one of the
twenty-seven sergeants, or sergeants' counters, as they
are called in " Home's Mirrour," possesses a greater
aptitude than any competent " apprentice" or " utter
barrister" in 'Westminster Hall. Whether the black
patch on the top of the wig or the purple gown of the
sergeant, described thus by Jekyll,
" Their purple garments come from Tyre,
Their arguments go to it,"
confers on him any extraordinary capability, we leave to
be determined by the learned brother who published the
case of the sergeants-at-law, and who aspirated at a Lord
Mayor's dinner a fervent wish that sergeants might eat
calipee and calipash at the Mansion-house feasts so long
as British law and the British constitution lasted. Joking,
however apart, there are not above seven or eight of
these serge ant counters who enjoy any considerable
practice, and to say that the whole legal business of the
country should suffer, to secure the monopoly of these
gentlemen, is a proposition so monstrous, that it nerd
merely be enunciated to be at once placed in the limbo
of preposterous follies. It is, indeed, of the mainest
importance—as every practicable man known—to the
attorney, to have his cause handled, ab eve usque ad mala
—from the beginning to the ending—by the same
counsel. A cause is generally best managed in which
the counsel who has first advised as to the preliminary
steps and pleadings, advises and argues to the end.
Practically this was not so in the Common Please under
the arrangement maintained by Lord Lyndhurst—
himself an old and eminent sergeant. For from
every circuit in England causes were argued in
bunco by sergeants who had not led at the trial, either
at Liverpool—or Exeter—or Stafford—or Bury—or
Lincoln—or Chester—or Swansea—as the case might be.
And the preposterous and unjust part of the arrrangement
was, that sergeants who excluded all other barristers
from their close court—free as "chartered libertines"
themselves—took the wide range of Westminster Hall,
and plied, such of them as had large business, like Sir
Thomas Wilde—their gainful trade and tuneful tongues
—in every court, from that of the Lord Chancellor down
to the latest created Vice-Chancellor's Court or Court of
Bankruptcy. This was a manifest injustice, and could
only be defended by those who resorted for anti-
quarian arguments to Fortescue and Dyer, or by those
sergeant counters who told us, as an extinguisher of
all discussion, in the words of Sir Edward Coke,
in his preface to the Eighth Report, and in his
First Institute, that the Common Pleas existed
as a distinct court before the Conquest, and was
not created by Magna Charta. To such pre-admite
pleaders for exclusive privileges as these—to such
preposterous pedants and prigs—it was vain to
urge the spirit of the Uniformity of Process Act,
altering the mode of proceeding in the Common Pleas—
as well as in all the other courts—vainer still to urge the
spirit and exigencies and requirements of the age and
time in which we live—for they were blind as well as
deaf to what was passing around them. But now their
illusions are dissipated,—not by the Queen's writ—but
by the Act of Parliament, which we have given in
its entirety. No longer, therefore, can the ancient
counters—.

tics to

" The sergeants-at-law both ware and wise,
Who often do come to the parvise,"
claim exclusive privilege "pur enginer la court," to use
the words of the statute of Westminster—(and which
has been erroneously translated in the statute-book "to
beguile the court," for the words mean to dupe and de-
ceive, and the phrase is so used by La Fontaine), for
Lord Cottenham has levelled the barriers they erected,
and opened the common bench to the common bar,—
to men with stuff in their heads, and with stuff on their
backs.

ADVERTISER.—The meeting held at Manchester
on Tuesday last, for the purpose of memorialising Go-
vernment on the subject of abolishing entirely the re-
maining duties on foreign corn, will, we have no doubt,
be followed by similar assemblages in all parts of the
country. Indeed one has already taken place in Sun-
derland. It is only surprising that meetings, having for
their object the opening of the ports, have not before
now taken place in every populous town in the country.
There is only one thing, in connexion with this subject,
which has caused us greater surprise. Can our readers
guess what that one thing is ? If they bestow a mo-
ment's reflection on the matter, they cannot fail to arrive
at a right conclusion. That which excites
is, our amaze-
ment to the highest pitch, in connexion with the pre-
vailing alarm and the impending famine, that Govern-
ment should not, weeks ago, have thrown open the ports
to the untaxed admission of foreign corn. The
astonishment which we feel is not confined to our-
selves. It is shared by the country. It is universally
felt. If ever a Minister's course was clear, if ever
his duty was plain, Lord John Russell's was so
in reference to the unbarring of our ports to the
admission of foreign corn, duty free, whenever it was
seen that the potato crop in Ireland was a total failure,
and that the corn harvest generally throughout the
kingdom was below an average. How Lord John Rus-
sell can reconcile his refusal to open the ports at such a
crisis as that which has overtaken us, with the duties
which, as the first Minister of the Crown, he owes alike
to the Sovereign and the people, is more than we are
able to comprehend. It is for himself to explain it. If
the Noble Lord can make out a case for himself, he must
be a much abler logician than the public has hitherto
given him credit for. One thing is certain—there isnot
a man beyond the pale of the Cabinet who does not feel
and say that a graver dereliction of duty was never com-
mitted by any Minister. Time was when the Noble
Lord would have been impeached for such neglect.
Many a Minister before him has stood at the bar of Par-
liament for dereliction of duty of a much less
nature. Morally, the Noble Lord is responsible
for every death from starvation which takes
place in Ireland ; constitutionally, he ought to
be also so considered, and be dealt with ac-
cordingly. Nay, more, we maintain that Lord John
Russell is responsible for every breach of the peace
which may take place in Ireland, and every outrage on
property which may occur in that country, which has its
origin in the present scarcity and high prices of food.
-Do we absolve from blame those who may be the prin-
cipal actors in any popular outbreaks on the other side
of the Channel ? Nothing can be farther from our
minds. The law must deal with all such persons as
guilty. They must be punished. On the contrary hypo-
thesis, there would be an end of all order'. Society would
be disorganised. Anarchy would everywhere prevail.
So long as laws exist, they must be enforced, even
when their violators have been worked up by cir-
cumstances over which they had no control, to a
state of desperation. But if the wretched peasantry
of Ireland are not to be held guiltless, even with
all the palliating considerations which, in their
present condition, can be urged in their fa-
vour, what shall be said of the criminality,
both moral and constitutional, of the Noble Lord at
the head of the Government, when he has refused to
adopt a course which would have had the effect of miti-
gating the evils which have driven the Irish to this state
of desperation ? The Whig Premier has the reputation
of being a cool and courageous man. The epithets of
coolness and courage are not those which are to bo
applied to his present conduct. Callousness to human
buffering, insensibility to human wretchedness ; in a
word, downright inhumanity, are the only terms which
can properly characterise the conduct of Lord John
Russell. It was the prevailing impression, some time
ago; that Sir Robert Peel had no heart. The question
whether the Right lion. Baronet possesses that article or
not, is one which we have no inclination to discuss just
now. But one thing we know, and that is, that had he
been still Premier, he would, at least a month ago, have
thrown open the ports. Whether humanity or policy
had prompted him to the act, we care not to inquire ; it
is enough for us to know that he would have done it.
And that he would no one can doubt, with the recorded
declaration before him of the Right Hon. Gentleman,
that the reason of his resignation, in Novemb:ir last, was
because he could not induce his colleagues to concur in
the propriety of then opening the ports.

CUSTOMS.—Charles Sholl, Esq., late Comptroller at
the port of Lancaster, is appointed Comptroller of file
port of Falmouth, in the place of Mr. llearle, resigned.

NAVAL INTELLIGENCE.

T?ThYCTII,

Sr

Collier's red broari tae matuni.
head of the St. Vincent, all such reports as that of the
gallant officer's " having struck his broad pendant at
Portsmouth," and " hoisted a blue one on board the
William and Mary at Woolwieh," as stated by two
" oracles" this morning, being false.
Captain Stephen Lushington (1829), of the Retribution
steam-frigate, is appointed to command the Vengeance,
84, advance ship at this port for the flag on the Irish
station. The officers and crew of the Retribution are to
be transferred to the Vengeance, and will be turned
over to her (according to present arrangement) on
Saturday. The Retribution came into harbour this
evening to be dismantled; various reports are in circula-
tion as to what is ultimately to be done with her. One
is, that she is to be a steam tender to the Excellent,
under the superintendence of Captain Chads, her present
steam tender Bee (10-horsepower, appropriated tor the
use of the students of the Excellent, and Royal Naval
College, to study and practice steam in), being too small
for the comfortable accommodation of the numerous
parties of ladies and gentlemen who so frequently avail
themselves of her services in the summer to take a pic-
nic to the Isle of Wight or elsewhere.
Captain Lushington returned from the Admiralty this
afternoon.
The Wasp, 16, Commander Ussher, sailed this morn-
ing at daylight for Sheerness, to be paid off.
Lieutenant Oldmixon (1815), First of the Styx steam
sloop, on the coast of Africa, has been appointed by the
senior officer, captain Mansel, to the command of the
Flying Fish, 12, also on that coast, until the arrival of
Commander Dyke, appointed to her by the Admiralty.
Lieutenant Selwyn (1843), First of the Actaeon, 26,
has been appointed by Captain Mansel, to _command the
Star, 16, on the coast of Africa, vice Hockin, invalided.
The Penelope, 22, steam frigate, has not yet exhibited
the pendant, nor has she anything above board yet on
which she can hoist it, except her funnel.
The Eurydice, 26, remains at Spithead. It is ru-
moured she is destined for the Cape of Good Hope sta-
tion, but no orders are yet promulgated.
PLYMOUTH, OCT. 14.—We bad exceedingly fine wea-
ther yesterday, with a moderate breeze from north-west,
in consequence of which the port was nearly cleared of
the numerous ships which bad found a secure anchorage
here during the late heavy gales.
The Buckinghamshire, Capt. M`Gregor, from China,
left on the 12th for London.
Her Majesty's frigate America, 50, Captain the Hon.
J. Gordon, sailed yesterday for the Mediterranean,
taking 100 boys for distribution among Admiral Parker's
fleet. The following also sailed yesterday :—the lion.
East India Company's steam frigate, Moosuffer, for Ben-
gal ; her Majesty's troop ship, Athol, for Bermuda and
Barbadoes ; her Majesty's store ship, Diligence, for
Gibraltar; the Australian emigrant ship David Malcolm,
Captain Smith, with emigrants and passengers, for Sid-
ney ; and about 69 or 70 merchant vessels, foreign and
coasting, for various destinations.
Last night a severe storm sprang up from the south-
west. The schooner Queen Victoria, Captain Fox,
belonging to Plymouth, in ballast, not having sufficient
chain out, dragged her anchor in the Sound, and, in
endeavouring to make sail, missed stays, and went ashore
under the Hoe. Her owners have landed her sails and
rigging, and hope to get her off next tide.
A brigantine, belonging to South Wales, in entering
Catwater, came in contact with and drove the trauling
sloop Red Rover ashore in Deadman's-bay, where she
will go to pieces.

gill th