The Sun.
London, England, 1846-07-06 00:00:00

CHARGE.

Permanent Debt • • • • ••• • .. ....................... •• • • •• ••• • • • ......... .
Terminable Annuities.. .. ..
Interest on Exchequer-bills issued to meet the charge on the Consolidated Fund ...
The Civil List • • •••• • • • • • • • ..
Other Charges on the Consolidated Fund . •
To pay off Exchequer Bills, raised per Act 6 and 7 Vict. c. 87, for Opium Compensation ....... .

Total Charge

The Surplus • • .• .• • • • • • • • • •

The Amount of Exchequer-bills issued to meet the charge on the Consolidated Fund for the Quarter ended
Apri 5, 1846, and paid off out of the growing produce of that Fund for the Quarter ended July 5, 1846,
after deducting 000,06 W., paid off out of the Sinking Fund • •
The Amount issued in the Quarter ended July 5, 1846, in part of
the Consolidated Fund for Supply Services•• • .
The Surplus of the Consolidated Fund, Quarter ended July 5, 1846 .
The probable amount of Exchequer-bills required to meet
Quarter ended July 5, 1846 • •• • .

the sums granted by Parliament out of

the charge on the Consolidated Fund,

nicalities surrounding its sale and transference should be
done away with, and it should be rendered as easy for a
man to buy an acre, or half an acre of land, as a cow or a
sheep. The immense tract of country kept waste by the
nominal titles which a few possess to them, should be given
up to the husbandman, the value of those nominal titles paid,
and the drones driven from the hive. When such things are
done, a free and independent resident proprietary would
spring up. In a few years the greater portion of the land in
Ireland would change its owners, greatly to the advantage
both of the present owners and the tillers of the soil. The
country would be held by five millions of its own people,
instead of by five hundred foreigners. The advantages are
obvious. Its wastes would be reclaimed, its fruitfulness in-
creased an hundred fold, its population would be all busy
and industrious, we would hear nothing of discontent or dis-
turbance, and plenty would overspread the land.
" I have now stated my case and given my proofs. To my
mind, it is as clear as daylight, that all the political vicissi-
tudes, not only of this country but of England, are traceable
to the land monopoly, and the absurdities of land tenure.
It is not merely an Irish question; but with you English it
is not, as with us, one of life and death. lon have large
and profitable manufactories to provide bread for your people ;
and your land-owners, though too often opposed to anything
that has a tendency to elevate humanity, are yet English-
men, and live in England, and are consequently less likely to
abuse their power, and more under the influence of sympathy
and public opinion. Yet you are deeply interested : this
worst of the heir-looms of accursed feudalism yet remains;
it must be struck down by the same hands that felled the
giant monopoly. No greater boon could be conferred on our
involved aristocracy, than to give them facilities, and urge
on them the necessity for selling off large portions of their
estates; most of them are only nominal owners, and are in
reality but a sort of land-agents to a host of money lenders,
lawyers, and relatives. It is for such reason, and in connexion
with measures of a more comprehensive character, that the
proposed expedient of compensation to tenants would be of
value ; it would force sales, for few of our proprietary would
be able to pay for improvements in their lands, and there-
fore should sell them."
There is much force in the above observations, and
it is true that England is as much interested as
Ireland in getting rid of insolvent proprietary of mere
nominal landowners, and substituting for them a solvent
proprietary, who would have not only the desire, but
the capital, to improve their estates to the utmost.
" St. Giles and St. James" is continued in this num-
ber, and we have papers by Cooper, the Chartist poet,
by Angus Reach, and by several of our old favourites,
but the paper of the number undoubtedly is " Ireland
and the Irish."

5,670,128
4;43,844
1,559
1,585,609
97,835
438,490

101,501

8,538,966
4,349,167

91,501

7,425,651
5,785,552

12,888,133

13,211,203

1,953,799

4,631,097
5,785,552

1,154,455

799,344

prove successful. The fellow-burghers of the re-
nowned Flemish painter have erected, in a conspi-
cuous part of their city, an effigy of Sir Peter Paul
Rubens ; the Parisians not long since raised a similar
monument to the memory of Moliere ; everybody re-
members how last year a colossal statue of Beethoven
was uncovered in Germany in the presence of sovereigns;
the Scott testimonial is already a famous structure in
Edinburgh, and the Burns mausoleum is equally
celebrated ; how is it that no national memento
has ever been adventured in any quarter of Great Bri-
tain to demonstrate the reverence of the English nation
to the genius of William Shakspere ? Thousands
of pounds are collected as a gift to a man who
has been successful in huckstering railway
scrip :—what a profligate instance of mammon-
worshipping is this ! And twopence has never been
subscribed as a gift of gratitude to the memory of the
most wonderful poet who ever breathed the breath of
life. We are proverbially the wealthiest nation on
the earth ; and we have never raised even a plaster-
of-Paris bust to him in any public place of
any of our tewns or cities. We speak thus
not because such a monument would add one
spark of glory to his fame, but because it would show
we were not altogether unworthy of being his fellow-
countrymen. Poets are the truest regenerators of man•
kind, and that is why they deserve honour. And
the French have afforded us an example of
doing this economically, and yet beautifully : they
christen their streets after the most illustrious
men of France, and, by so doing, associate glorious
thoughts with their very household. Nor are they de-
terred from so doing by the most lengthy titles, one of
the thoroughfares in Paris being designated Rue
de Jean Jacque Rousseau. Hcw much better than Tom-
kins's-place, Snooks's-terrace, and Jackson-villas, would
Dryden-street, Cromwell-street, Coleridge-street, Hamp-
den -street, and the like, be ! The notion is not un-
worthy the attention of the Commissioners of Metropo-
litan Improvements.

OUR OWN TIMES. Illustrated by G. Cruikshank.
A glorious etching of " Almack's over the water,"
where " no gentleman is allowed to smoke except at re-
freshment time," and " no gentleman is allowed to dance
with his hat on," is the frontispiece to the present num-
ber. Then we have a most original sketch of railway
deposits—to wit, the hats and bonnets left in the first,
second, and third-class carriages, arranged on shelves as
they are to be seen at the station; and under the
title of the " Moderns in Beards ad the Ancients in
Spectacles," we have an admirable quiz upon those white
vested gentlemen who insist upon wearing beards and
moustachios, and, sticking the head of a Venetian
senator on the body of a Bond-street lounger, fancy they
Look artistical and aristocratic. As appendant, George
Cruikshank claps a pair of spectacles on a ferocious
Baron " of the good old times," who, dagger in hand,
is about to strike; and the whole countenance reminds
you
" Instead of Fitz-Walter, or of Guy of Warwick, or blood-
spilling Bagniolles—of a grinning hyena, in a fancy dress.
" That being the case, my grotesque young artist, all of
the modern school, be kind enough to turn to your mirror,
and tell me if your shoulder-sweeping masses of hair, and
your Spitalfields figured waistcoat, your renaissance mousta-
chios, and square-cut coat, your curled whiskers, and your
star-bespangled satin stock, are not equally as incongruous
companions as a feudal baron in spectacles. And does not
the suspicion creep over you that you are nearly as fertile an
object of merriment ? You don't think so. Very well :we
will go a little further, and try back as far as the classic ages,
and if that does not convince you we shall hand you over to
Truefit and to Stultz, to do their worst upon you.
_ _

" The incongruity which a mixture of modern with bygone
costume produces is, of course, increased in proportion as we
dive into antiquity. We have heard of an ingenious artist,
moving in no elevated sphere, who obtained his livelihood by
painting pictures for peep-shows. His drawing was always
vigorous, and his colouring uncommonly bright, but for want
of a knowledge of ancient history, his composition and ac-
cessories were somewhat incorrect, inasmuch as he clothed
all his figures in modern costumes, and attributed to them
habits of life peculiar to the class of society in which he him-
self moved. Ile was also a severe moralist. who, wishing
to combine instruction with amusement, invariably treated
his juvenile patrons with pieces, in imitation of the early
dramatists, whose equally grotesque mysteries were—in the
best faith, and with a really pious purpose—representations
of passages from biblical history, only that our friend mixed
up sacred with profane history, with the most anachronistic
miscellaneousness. his master-piece was a family group of
King Solomon, and when he exhibited this composition be-
hind the glazed peep-hole, his description of it ran somewhat
as follows :

" The next piece in this ere show, is King Solomon—King
Solomon on his golden throne. Look to the right, and you'll
see Nimrod a standing with his back to the fire, in top-boots,
buskins, and red upper Benjamin, just come in from hunting.
He is a talking to King Solomon, who is smoking his pipe
and a reading the Times newspaper. A sitting on the steps
of the golden throne is the queen of Sheba untwisting a pair
of stockings as fast as Mrs. Penelope—(there you see her, in
the arm-chair in the cotton gown)—has knitted them. Look
to the left, out of the open window, and you behold Nebu-
chadnezzar sitting down on all-fours, and waiting for Mer-
cury to bring him a cold salad.'
"The extravagant absurdities of the showman are easily
wrought, in actual life, by inattention to propriety in cos-
tume. The figure of Diana, for example, carved with its
far from ample drapery, by hands said (scarcely with pro-
fanity) to be immortal—so exquisite is their work—excites
no feeling but that of the purest pleasure—that pleasure
which the chaste and beautiful are calculated to call up.
But place a Bond-street bonnet on the head of the sculptured
goddess, and she is immodest ; add a pair of spectacles, and
the statue becomes a ridicule."
There is much sound sense in this good-humoured
satire.