The Sun.
London, England, 1841-01-05 00:00:00

The Times pursues its lamentation in the following
strain :

" That a consciousness of this fact acts as a damning
and retarding force among the partisans on either side
among the people is quite certain ; and this is to be
lamented, inasmuch as the party which gains most by
public apathy must be the party in possession."
Much as " the party in possession" may gain by
public apathy, the party out of possession, that is, out
of office, gains still more. For the apathy which allows
one party to remain in, allows another party to exer-
cise a greater influence thae, were it in ostensible pos-
session of power, the nation would succumb to, even
for a " little month." It is for the Tories to beware
how they rouse the nation from that apathy which so
so long endured their own mismanagement of public
affairs, and since endured, with equal patience, its con-
sequences under an Administration professing less illi-
beral principles. There is no question upon which the
Times could have more inopportunely challenged the
national decision than on this of the Poor-laws and
the Corn-laws. Abolish the Corn-laws, and from
the means of employment and cheapness of food thus
afforded, the Poor-laws would in a short time altogether
become unnecessary ; but abolish the calumniated
Poor-laws, and leave the Corn-laws still blighting
the general interests, sand what will be the condition of
the nation ? We dare and defy the Tories to answer
the question.

FROM THE DAILY PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
(From the Globe.)
We have seen a gentleman who has arrived from the
scene of election excite7nent at Walsall, where he has
been actively engaged concerning the election through-
out the past week, and we are happy to have his
assurance that there is a most reasonable prospect of
defeating Mr. Gladstone under all the disadvan-
tages of the recent change of candidates, &c. It is
represented to us that a section of the more moderate
portion of the Liberal- electors demur against rallying
round Mr. Smith, in consequence of the proceeding
of the Anti-Corn-law League towards Mr. Lyttelton.
Whatever opinions may be held regarding the pro-
ceeding referred to, now that Mr: Lyttelton is out of
the field, it would be madness in any Reformer to suffer
his personal displeasure with the League to promote
the election of Mr. Gladstone. We are told that Mr.
Smith commands support which had been denied to
Mr. Lyttelton. If this be true, the particular friends
of the latter gentleman, have only to add their support
also to obtain for the present Liberal candidate a greater
amount of aid against Gladstone than they could have
brought against him under their original candidate.
The election isr,too important to be frittered away by
differences concerning the past. Let by-genes be by-
gones, we would say to our friends, and unite heart and
soul to prevent the return of another vote for Lord
Stanley's Disfranchisement Bill. Although we may
not fully coincide with Mr. Smith's opinions upon all
points, we are well convinced that he is upon the whole
a good Reformer, and one who, from his station, talents,
and pursuits, is well suited to the representation of a
manufacturing borough like Walsall.
(From the Standard )
Who are the members of the Conservative demo-
cracy? Orangemen ? Doubtless, for they are men of
tried faith, loyalty, and patriotism. Persons who at-
tend Exeter Hall meetings? Doubtless, again, for they
are generally zealous Christians ; but the Conservative
democracy comprehends more than these—it compre-
hends all who value the blessings of the 13,itish consti-
tution in Church and State, and who will defend these
blessings and transmit. them unimpaired to pos-
terity.. All who will maintain existing institu-
tions as necessary to the constitution in Church and
S.ate, who will maintain existing interests as neces-
sary to justice. These are the Conservative de
rnoeracy, and we will tell the Globe where to find them.
It might be too much to ask a Whig-Radical to attend
Conservative meetings, still harder to invite him to our
crowded churches; but no objection can be offered to
an ineitation to the hustings. Aat j• of the repre-
sentatives of Great Britain are Constrvatives, Conser-
vatives returned by rtformed constitueeeies. By whom
are they returned ? By the Conservative detr)craey,
and by the Conservitive democracy alone acting upon
its own independent principles. At elections
we now hear nothing from Conservative candi-
dates of this ' party or the other party, of
this. statesman or the other state,man. No, we
;tear professions of attach vent to the constitution in
Church and State, of promises to to initain all men in
their rights ; and in proportion as these professions and
proty.ises are strong, unequivocal, and held to be trust-
worthy, is the seecess of the candidate. True, profes-
sions and promises made at the hustings have not
been alavys respected in the House of Commons, but
the fault here lies with the traitor, not with the be-
trayed, unless we bestow confidence a second time
upon the unworthy. The next general election, how-
ever, we suspect, will acquit the Conservative democracy
of such trafficking with treason.
(From the Courier.)

The Walsall election is a cup of bitterness overfhw-
kg fel. the Chronicle. Its friends of the Anti-Coil:-
law League, worked up to desperation by Chronicle Anti
Corn-law articles, and excited by Chronicle applause of
the lucky hit, entered into a solernii covenant some time
since, to run their own particular cattle for every bo-
rough in the event of a general election, or where a
casual vacancy should occur, unless the windy coursers
who should chance to start-in the Whig interest would
enter into pledges, too stringent (or backsliding, to go
in Anti-Corn-law harness, and with despera-
tion so reckless, as, in case of Whig recusancy,
to help to upset the Ministerial omnibus. The va-
cancy fcr Walsall is, we believe, the first open field
presented to the leaguers for the trial of the covenant,
and the lion. Mr. Lyttelton having announced himself
a candidate on the Whig, with Mr. J. N. Gladstone on
the Conservative side, a trio of Anti-Corn-law
trampers was despatched from Manchester to catechise
both, and to save the good people of the borough the
trouble of thinking and deciding for themselves by
taking the nomination into their own bands exclu-
sively. The test was first put to the juvenile represen-
tative of Whiggery, who, with something of a disposi-
tion to stretch a point, could strain conscience no fur-
ther than a promise to
." vote for an inquiry into
the Corn-laws," a prorruse, of course, not at all
to the satisfaction of your " go the whole hog" men,
who would hang first and try the case after. So Mr.
Lyttclton got his discharge, and made his exit with
much more despatch than his entrance. Upon which
the Chronicle waxed as furious and frothy with
.the
League as if itself non-cogniz int and non-approver of
the covenanb beforehand ; its logic in effect being, as
seen now when put to the proof, that the Corn-law ques-
tion—that question of questions--that question of life
and death in its eternal verbiage of Anti Corn-law
discussions hitherto—is, in fact, a very secondary ques-
tion in comparison with the existence of Whiggery,
and of the Whig patronage resulting of which it is so
large a recipient ; a question not to be dreamt of carry-
ing except through the portals of Downing-street.

BURNS'S EARLY DAYS. _Burns, before his
visit to Edinburgh, had, at ail times and places, been in the
habit of associating with the best men of his order—the
best in everything, in station, in manners, in intellectual
character—such men us William Tell and Hofer, for
example, associated with in Switzerland and the Tyrol.
Even the persons he got unfortunately too well ac-
quainted with (but whose company he soon shook off ),
at Irvine and Kirk- Oswald—smugglers and their adhe-
rents, were, though a lawless and dangerous set, man of
spunk, and spirit, and po xer both of mind and body ;
nor was there anything the least degrading in an ar-
dent, impassioned, and imaginative youth becoming
for a time rather too much attached to such daring and
adventurous, and even interesting characters. They
had all a strong poetical smell of the sea, mingled to
precisely the proper pitch with that of the contraband.
As a poet Burns must have been much the better of such
temporary associates : as a man, let us hope, notwithstand-
ing Gilbert's fears, not greatly the worse. The passions
that boiled in his blood would have overflowed his life,
often to disturb, and finally to help to destroy him, had
there never been an Irvine and its seadort. But Burns's
friends, up to the time he visited Edinburgh, had been
chiefly his admirable brother, a few of the ministers round
about, farmers, ploughmen, farm servants, and workers in
the winds of heaven blowing over moors and mosses, corn-
fields
and meadows, beautiful as the blue skies themselves;
and if you call that low company, you had better fling your
copy of Burns's Cotter's Saturday Night, Mary in
Heaven, and all, into the fire. He, the noblest peasant
g
hat ever trod the greensward of Scotland, kept the so-
ciety of other peasants, whose nature was like his own ;
and then, were the silken-snooded maidens whom he
wooed on " lea rig and 'man the rigs o' barley," were
they who inspired at once his love and his genius, his pas-
sion and his poetry, till the whole land of Coila over-
flowed with his immortal song—so that now to the
,
proud native's ear every stream murmurs a music
not its own, given it by sweet Robin's lays; and the
lark, more lyrical than ceder seems singing
his songs
at the gates of heaven for the shepherd's sake, as through
his half closed hand he eyes the
musical mote in the sun-
shine, and remembers him who
by the d day's side,"_where the the blooming daughters
of Scotia, we demand of you, on, peril of your life, low
uantities of earth,
company and unworthy of Robert Barns ?—Prqfessor
Wilson's Essay on the Geniets and Character qf Barns
" sung her new awakened
We have seen that the thomacs eat little else
Some months of the year than large
and that genie brutes devour earth. I may here add that
not only the Otornacs, are so fond of it, as, when will sup-
plied with food, to take a little, but that many nations of
the torrid zone have a propensity to geophagism. The
q
ne,groes of Guinea, the Javanese,the New Caledonians,
and many South American tribes eat clay
as a luxury;
and the GuajeroL s, on the wes* of Rio da la
Ilache, csrry
a little box of brae as sailors do a tobacco-box. Germanworkmen at the mountain of Kiffoonser spread clay in-
stead of butter on their bread, and call it slain batter, and
find it very srtisfying and ease of dieestion. The Oto.
macs do not suffer by the practice, but in some tribes the
people grow sick and thin by indulging too freely in this
luxury. Africans who genphased with impunity at home
on a yellow clay, severely sulra- from it in the West Indies.
The red clay eaten in Jiva destroys the appetite and wastes
the body.—Ebiotson's Hum an Physiology.
GOOD FORTUNE.—.A few days since a man
named John Billings, who has for many years been an in- ,
mate in St. Saviour's Wu: khouse, Ssuthwark,
came into
possession of 30,0001, by the death of an aunt in Berkshire.