The Sun.
London, England, 1846-09-11 00:00:00

THE POTATO CHOLERA.

Much is said, and has been said, concerning' wht
are termed " years of famine," but it is not generally
known, that since the introduction of the potato into
this country, no year has ever passed which, in some
remote locality or other, has not been such to the un-
fortunate inhabitants. The climate of. Ireland is so
unsettled, its soil so various in quality, and the potato
so liable to injury from excess of either drought or
moisture, that we have no hesitation in stating the
startling fact of this annual famine as one we can
vouch for, upon our own personal knowledge, and
against the truth of which we challenge contradic-
tion. Neither does an autumn pass without a
complaint peculiar to those who feed solely
upon the new and unripe potato, and which
ever since the year 1832, is known by the people as the
potato cholera. With these circumstances the Legisla-
ture ought to be acquainted, inasmuch as they ate cala-
mities that will desolate and afflict the country, so long
as the potato is permitted to be, as it unfortunately is,
the staple food of the people. That we are subject, in
consequence of that fact, to periodical r.:currences of
dearth and disease, is well known and admitted ; but
that every season brings its partial scourge of ' both
these evils to various remote and neglected districts in
Ireland has not been, what it ought long since to
have been, an acknowledged and established tact in the
sanatory statistics of the country. Indeed, one would
imagine that, after the many terrible visitations
which we have had from destitution and pesti-
lence, a Legislature sincerely anxious for the health
and comfort of the people would have devoted itself, in
some reasonable measure, to the humane consideration
of such proper sumptuary and sanatory enactments, as
would have provided not only against the recurrence of
these evils, but for a more enlightened system of public
health anScleanliness' and a better and more comfort-
able provision of food for the indigent and poor. As it
is at present, provision-dealers of all kinds, meal-mon-
gers, forestallers, butchers, bakers, and huxters, com-
bine together, and sustain such a general monopoly in
food, as is at variance with the spirit of all law and hu-
manity, and constitutes a kind of artificial famine in the
country ; and surely those circumstances ought not to
be permitted, so long as we have a deliberative legis-
lature, whose duty it is to watch and guard the health
and morals of the people.—Carlton, in Dublin Univer-
sity Magazine.

ACCIDENT AT WESTMINSTER-BRlDGE.—Wednesday
morning, about twelve o'clock, a man named William
Jenkins, a labourer employed in the securing of West-
minster-bridge, missed his footing, and fell into the
Thames. Several boats put off to his assistance, and he
was rescued, and after restoratives were adminiitered he
was conveyed to his home.

FATAL RAILWAY ACCIDENT.—A fatal accident
occurred on the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway on Sa-
turday last, to a person of the name of William Solomon,
a labourer, employed a short distance from Kendal. An
inquest was held at the Hyena, on Monday, before Mr.
R. Wilson, coroner, when the following particulars were
adduced ;—James Dixon, of Kendal, railway labourer,
sworn and examined, said, " On Saturday morning last
I was at work on the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway,
near Mr. Bainbridge's house, in the township of Natland.
The deceased, William Solomon (who was also a la-
bourer on the line), was working beside me at the same
place. He was bringing a waggon down the line, to be
coupled to one which I had assisted to fill. The wag-
gun was laden with sand and stone, and was moving
down an incline towards our waggon, and deceased was
to stop it by the use of the break. We thought the
waggons were coming too quick, and we called on de-
ceased to use the break ; and, when he was stooping for
the break, another waggon which was behind him over-
took the one he had charge of, and jambed his head be-
tween the two waggons, and crushed his skull. Ile imme-
diately dropped down upon the ground, and I, with the as•
sistance of some other persons, removed him to Kendal.
We lirought him on in one of the company's carts, and
he died on the way home. The deceased was walking
alongside the waggons when he attempted to put the
break on, and he had to stoop with his head between
the two waggons, the one behind overtaking that which
he was stopping by the break. There was a man at the
break of the waggon which was immediately behind the
one in deceased's charge. He was holding on at the
break with all his power, and there was no blame to be
attached to him for the accident. There was a man at
the break of each waggon, and no one was to blame.
Deceased should not have stooped with his head between
the waggons ; it was not necessary for him to do so to
bar the break. The deceased was about 23 years of
age, and his death was caused entirely by accident."
Thomas Thexton, of Kendal, railway labourer, exa-
mined, said—l was present when the accident happened
on Saturday, which caused the death of William Solo-
mon. I have heard the examination of the last witness,
James Dixon, read over ; what he has there stated is
quite true, and I have nothing to add thereto. Verdict,
"Accidental death.'

FRANCE AND SPAIN.
(From El Espeetador.)
The policy of France is recorded in our contempo-
raneous history in mournful pages. Immense evils have
invaded 153 from the other side of the Pyrenees ; twice
has the liberty of the Peninsula expired in the hands of
France ; for years and years has our nationality been
absorbed by the influence of the Tuileries ; our despots
have constantly received all their inspirations from the
Court of the Seine, and when this occurs—when the
Spanish people know that it occurs—French diplomacy
dares to present a French candidate for the hand of the
Queen's sister, as if the Queen and her sister were
capable of placing themselves in open hostility
towards the opinion of a country which has lavished for
them its treasures and its blood ; as if the Queen and
her sister were unaware that the injuries which the Spa-
nish nation has received from France, must per force
have left in all parts of the country profound wounds and
inextinguishable resentments. No ; amongst all the
matrimonial candidates whom the foreigner can com-
bine for the purpose of destroying our nationality, none
is so utterly repugnant as a French Prince. What
matters it that the rulers of our unfortunate country
level the Pyrenees to the policy of France, govern with-
out any inspiration of their own, and consent to retain no
more vitality than what France lends them, and no more
ideas than „hat France imposes upon them? Reminis-
cences have raised other Pyrenees more inacessible than
those levelled by our rulers. Saraeossa is one chain of
Pyrenees ; Gerona, another ; the 2d of May, another!
—Will our Afrancesad 35 be able to level these Pyrenees?
But it is not the animosities engendered during the
War of Independence which principally mark the fron-
tier which separates us from France. These animosities
would have died away, had not new and continued
injuries been perpetrated to exasperate them afresh.
The wounds which our nationality had received would
have eventually healed up, had not fresh assaults torn
them open again when they were already on the point of
being cicatrized. France has always been our enemy;
the same when she threatened us with an armed in-
vasion, as when she discovered her covetous looks under
the veil of fraternal friendship. The same when she
sent us her soldiers, as when she sent us her advice; and
she has assuredly cost us fewer sacrifices by her baronets
than by the exotic principles which she has sought, in
spite of us, to acclimate on our soil.
France has always been our enemy, and it is certainly
repugnant to our ideas to have to express ourselves in
this manner in reference to a nation which has, more
than any other, bequeathed heroic deeds to the history
of liberty. " No, France is not your enemy," we shall,
perhaps, be answered by those who reject in France the
system of lies which oppresses them as we reject it in
Spain. "France is not your enemy ; the country which
gave birth to Voltaire and a reception to Rousseau—the
country of Mirabeau and Manuel, of A. Carrel and La-
fayette—the country which has given for apostles of
liberty such men as a Dupoty and a Lamernais, cannot
be the enemy of those who, with less force and talent,
but with equal zeal and constancy, oppose the tyranny
of man over man, profess the sacred principle of the
sovereignty of .the people, and anxiously hope that the
world may become rejuvenescent, and recover new life
under the beneficent rays of the sun of liberty. No,
France is not your enemy, nor can France be the enemy
of Spain. In the nineteenth century there are no,such
things as hostile nations. It is not France, 0 miserable
Spain ! that opposes 'the development of your felicity
and the reconquest of your rights ; it is her Govern-
ment—perhaps her dynasty ; but nothing but her
Government and her dynasty."
Yes, it is true, we will reply, it is nothing but her
Government, nothing but her dynasty ; but they are all
dynasties and Governments. Napoleon, that is, the
empire, crosses the Pyrenees, enters Spain, penetrates
the fastnesses under friendly pretences, and forthwith
intimates his will to us from the heig,hts of the ramparts,
with the cannon on the batteries and match in hand,
and says to us, " You are mine." Spain is filled with
corpses. Napoleon falls. The Bourbons recover their
throne in France. During their reign, Spain, weary of
suffering, makes a desperate effort, breaks her chains,
and a sanguinary struggle is established between new
ideas and old musty prejudices. The liberals are aban-
doned to their own strength. With all this, the enthu-
siasm is great, and the triumph secure ; already is the
balance turning in their favcur, when Louis XVIII.,
that is to say, absolutism, flings 100,000 soldiers into
the opposite scale, and the ancient system is triumphant!
Spain is filled with scaffolds. At a later period the re-
volution of 1830 hurls the Bourbons from the territories
of France, and an Orleans occupies the vacant throne.
He occupies it constitutionally.
French absolutism gave to Ferdinand VII. bayonets
to destroy the constitution ; but French constitution-
alism does not give the Liberals of Spain bayonets to
destroy absolutism. Ferdinand VII. dies ; Isabella 11.
finds a support in the constitutionalists, in order to
triumph over Don Carlos, who disputes the throne with
the assistance of the absolutists. The cause of Don
Carlos is that of absolutism '; and Louis Philippe, that
is to say, constitutionalism, only combats it in appear-
ance ; and whilst he offers Isabella 11. his sympathies,
the Spanish Liberals have opportunity to remark that
the cannons and mortars which pour death and destruc-
tion upon heroic Bilboa are of French construction
The absolutists are divided and debilitated ; they are
already unable to dispute the victory with the Liberals ;
and, in their desperate situation, they put an end to the
war by m, ans of a convention. This convention is a de-
cisive victory for the Liberals. ' Liberty remains tri-
umphant in tile plains of Bergara. In spite of this,
liberty succumbs after having overthrown Don Carlos.
It succumbs in the hands of afaction inspired by France
—by a faction that M. Guizot himself designates by the
fraternal qualification of " French party ;" it succumbs to
the mephitic influences of France. With all this, it is
not France which has entailed upon us all the evils which
we have just enumerated ; it is her Government, her
dynasty ! Yes, it is her Government—it is her dynasty
—we allow ; but, we repeat, all are her Governments, all
are her dynasties—the empire, absolutism and constitu-
tionalism, Napoleon—Bourbon, and Orleans.
-

And since it is not lawful for us to accuse a nation of
the fatal influences which its Government exercises over
another,-let us nevertheless be allowed, on the marriage
question, to separate the cause of France from the per-
sonal cause of Louis Philippe. We reject the candidate
which the latter presents us for the hand of one of the
daughters of• Ferdinand, not as Spaniards, but as; Pro-
gresistas. The present situation is insupportable, and
this situation would be perpetuated, if, unfortunately fur
the country!, the candidate of Louis Philippe should
prove triumphant.