The Sun.
London, England, 1848-10-02 00:00:00

:;-The Sheriffs seTerally returned thanks.
Sheriff.GOODHART proposed the health of
Lord Mayor elect.

Sir JAMES DUKE returned thanks, and assured his
excellent friend (Mx. Sheriff Goodhart) that he was
determined to keep up in an unimpaired condition the
hospitable character of the mayoralty, and that the
Sheriffs should have no cause to say at the end of the
year that they had served with a shabby Lord
Mayor.

The health of the City Members followed, which
was responded to by Mr. MASTERMAN.
The company separated at a late hour.

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

FROM THE MORNING PAPERS OF THIS DAT.

TIMES.—The Chartist trials are over at last, and
the conclusion is of a more decided character than
we are apt to expect from a protracted inquiry.
Lacy, Fay, and Cuffey have been found guilty, and
together with Dowling, the young Irish portrait
painter previously convicted, have been sentenced to
transportation for life. This a severe sentence, but a
most just one. The guilt of these men is about as
great as could be imagined, and if they have pro-
voked a degree of ridicule, that is owing to the
ridiculous insufficiency of their means to their end.
Whatever may be thought of the witnesses, no sane
person can doubt after reading their evidence that
these four men did really attempt to raise an insur-
rection against her Majesty's servants, authority,
people, and person ; and that the three lat-
ter, at least, attempted to take possession
of a part of this metropolis, and defend it by
conflagration and slaughter against any force that
could be brought against them. After a trial properly
conducted this moral certainty has been attained.
There could, therefore, be no doubt as to the verdict
or as to the sentence. Transportation for life is
thought a slight punishment for ordinary cases of
arson or attempted murder. The whole metropolis
was aimed at in this inatance. It' the crime vastly
surpassed the ability of the criminals, it is not the less
heinous on that account, or less to be punished.
There is already some controversy, and there is
likely to he more, about the character of the chief
evidence for the prosecution. It is the evidence of
approvers and spies. The private motives and
sentiments of spies is a point which must be left
to themselves and to public opinion. Whether
Powell, Davis, and the others felt a perverted
curiosity and a hankering after a guilty mystery,
whether they did really feel a sort of patriotic
impulse to sacrifice themselves to the state by a very
dirty piece of public service, or whether they looked
simply and solely to the JOs. a week till the convic
tion, and after that to a good outfit to the borders of
civilization, it is impossible and most unnecessary to
decide. The use of spies, however, in such atro-
cious conspiracies as these, is a disagreeable necessity.
There is no help for it. We need not imagine an in-
stance to prove this, for instances abound. In the
spring of 1829 a club of small farmers met from
night to night at a public-house in Doneraile, in the
county of Cork, to concert the redress of their
grievances and the enforcement of an agrarian code
by assassination. They solemnly tried the gentry of
the neighbourhood one after another. Such as were
found guilty were sentenced to death, and arrange-
ments were forthwith made for the execution of the
sentence. But every night they sat there was a spy
in their number, who met the necessities of his
horrid position by playing the murderer as fiercely
as the rest, but who reported everything to the
police. In the morning half the gentry of the
neighbourhood read at their breakfast tables the
arrangements for their assassination at the earliest
opportunity. They took care to disappoint the mur-
derers, accepted beds after dinner parties instead of
coming home, varied their routes, and went out well
attended. Would they not have been absolutely in •
sane to close their ears against the information on
which their own existence hung ? Would they not
have been equally insane to let the affair run for ever
on that perilous footing, always dodging a conspiracy
and fencing with murder ? They had no possible
choice but to use the private information and even-
tually the public evidence of the spy. The conspiracy
in the present instance was only more extensive,
more destructive, and more murderous. But if the spy
is generally a viler character than the men he
betrays, whose fault is that? The Chartists
reckoned on the assistance of 50,000 thieves and
rogues. They were assisted by one scoundrel more
than they bargained for. The most agreeable aspect
of these trials is that suggested by the French pa-
rallel. Instead of four miserable, wrong-headed
fellows, with perhaps a few more to follow, the French
Government has to dispose of some eight or ten
thousand convicts. With us a mere room full of
miscreants stood on one side, and 200,000 men on tl7e
other. The trials of the past week record the triumph
of the latter over the former. Both England and
France, it may be said, are expelling their revolu-
tionists. What will most strike foreigners is the
utter absurdity of the Chartist military calculations.
Any doaen French children playing at soldiers in the
gardens of the Tuileries or the Luxembourg, under
the surveillance of their bonnes or their eldest sisters,
would do the thing better than the desperadoes of the
Orange Tree public-house, or the would-be insur-
gents of the Seven Dials. " Physical Chartism is
now nothing more than the blackened remains of a
squib on the morning after a Fifth of November,
trodden under foot and stopped by the rain. It has
had an opportunity such as it could never have
expected; it has done its best to profit by that
opportunity, and has utterly failed.
CIIRONICLE.—We have hitherto abstained from
noticing the recent Chartist trials. The character of
the disclosures which the evidence of each succeeding
day elicited precluded any other comment than an
expression of disgust; and so long as a judicial inves-
tigation was actually pending we were reluctant to
offer remarks that might tend, even in appearance, to
prejudge the case of the culprits. Now, however,
that the judge and jury have done their several parts,
public criticism resumes its functions, and we may
speak unreservedly. It must be almost superfluous
to say that we entirely approve, both of the verdict—
which is the only one that a sane and honest jury
could give—and of the sentence passed on the con-
victs. The lesson undoubtedly is a severe one, but
never was a severe lesson more called for. At last
the State has dealt strongly and vigorously with
set of men who, under the pretence of " politics,"
have been daily and nightly plotting against the
existence of society itself. At last it is positively
decided that men who scheme to assassinate the
police and to set fire to London—who for that
purpose spend their. spare time in casting bullets,
sharpening pikes, and manufacturing tow•balls, soda-
water-bottle grenades, and other such diabolical
implements—it is decided that such men shall pay a
heavy and life-long penalty for their execrable de-
vices. We congratulate society on having made this
move towards safety and common sense. We are
quite prepared, indeed, even now, to hear a consider-
able amount of philanthropic and constitutional cant
—especially from members of that very class which
would have suffered first, and suffered most, had these
men's projects been, at any moment, twenty-four
hours in advance of official vigilance. But we sup-
pose we may, on the whole, regard it as finally ruled,
that transportation for life is not too much punish-
ment for persons duly convicted of having planned
wholesale pillage, arson, and murder. In every re-
spect, this lesson is likely to prove a salutary one.
The very character of the witnesses whose aid the
Government found it necessary to accept will serve to
warn all conspirators prepense of the peril they in-
cur by dabbling in treason. It is well that the
Cuffey class of patriots should be thus made to
feel that when pikes, bullets, and maps of London,
with " barricades marked in pencil," are in the
case, there will always be a Powell or two on the
" secret" or " ulterior" com:nittee; and that the
noisiest zealot of them all is as likely as not to be
the very man who has sold them. So it has been,
and so it will be, 'to the end of time. The /*cedes
latronum is the merest rope of sand. Treachery is
an invariable pendant to conspiracy. Men who are
guiltily compassing treason against society may take
for granted that treason against them is not far off.
Traitor and spy go together, like substance and
shadow. We presume this very wholesome warning
will not be lost on those whom it most concerns.
[Laving alluded to this point, we think it only right
to say explicitly, that we fully approve of the-conduct
of the authorities in availing themselves of the infor-
mation offered by Powell and the others. The ne-
cessity is, unquestionably, a disagreeable one. But
the secrets of a body of conspirators against the public
peace can only he learned, in time, from "one of
themselves;' and Governments owe it to society to
adopt, in every instance, the best means of crushing
plots against social order. We cannot leave this sub-
ject without suggesting one reflection of more
general application, for the consideration of
agitators of a far different grade, both in-
tellectually and morally, from the wretched
men now in the hands of the law. Is it quite cer-
tain, let us ask, that society would have suffered so
grievously as it has done during the last six months
from Chartist sedition and conspiracy, if the classes
immediately above Chartists had been uniformly in
the practice of conducting their political movements,
or agitations, with sobriety of temper and moderation
of sentiment and language ? Is there absclutely no
connexion, of the cause and-effect kind, between the
oratory of those middle-class political reformers who
love to indulge in sweeping denunciations of " aris-
tocracy," and who systematically put the worst con-
struction on the acts or omissions of established Go-
vernments, at home and abroad—is there no con-
nexion between this, and the licentious demagoguism
which we have now seen to ripen into a wicked plot
against society? Our own impression is, that had
our "respectable" political agitators set a better ex-
ample, of late years, in the way of moderation and
6elf-restraint, in the public controversies that more

immediately_interest thew, we—abould have heard
much leiss of these Chartists.

ADVERTISER.—The Chartist prisoners have i
been found guilty : for that the public mind was pre-
pared. They have been sentenced to transportation
for life : that will not only take the country by sur-
prise, but produce profound emotions of pain and
regret. This journal is the last which will be sus-
pected of sympathy with physical-force Chartism ;
for no journal in the metropolis, or elsewhere, has
written more frequently or strongly against demon-
strations of popular violence, no matter under what
pretext they may be made, or what the cause they
are intended to serve. But we must confess that we
fully share in the feeling of amazement and sorrow,
which we know will be universal, at the severity of
the sentence which has been passed upon these mis-
guided men. Far be it from us to attempt, in any
degree, to extenuate the heinousness of the crime
with which they were charged. It was one of the
greatest enormity ; but then, it is to be remembered,
that not having succeeded in carrying out their plans,
no disastrous results, either to person or property, Ac-
crued
from their machinations. We need not remihd
our readers that both law and common sense make a
wide distinction between the intention and the actual
deed. A man who commits an assault, with intent to
murder, is not regarded by the law in the same light
as the man who has actually taken the life of a fellow-
being. Neither is the person who wilfully sets fire to
another's house treated by our courts of criminal
jurisprudence in the same way as the person who has
successfully committed arson. Why, then, should a
different principle be applied in the case of the miser-
able men who stood last week at the bar of the Old
Bailey ? If found guilty, it was right they should be
punished, even though they failed to inflict any injury
on society ; but surely a much less terrible sentence
than transportation for life would have met the merits
of the case. Two years' imprisonment, with hard
labour, would have been, in the opinion of most per-
sons, a sufficiently severe punishment. But we should
not have said a word against the sentence had the
punishment been seven years' transportation. Jones,
Fussel, and the other Chartists, sentenced some weeks
ago to two years' imprisonment, were scarcely less
guilty than the Chartist group who last week stood at
the bar of the Old Bailey. The tendency of all their
speeches, writings, and proceeding, was just the
same, though in legal phraseology a different term
might be employed to characterise them, as that of
the conspiracies of the Cuffey class of Chartists. The
country will look on this punishment not as justice,
but as the gratification of a spirit of revenge on the
part of Government. The result will be, that the
Chartist prisoners will be regarded as victims. The
severity of the sentence will exclude from men's
minds a sense of the enormity of the crime. Public
sympathy for the prisoners will take the place of con-
demnation of their conduct. Henceforth they will be
regarded more as martyrs than as criminals. It is 11,
most perilous thing for any Government thus to break
down the relative proportions which ought to exist
between the degree of guilt and the measure of the
punishment. But not only does the case of Cuffey
and his confederates exhibit a marked contrast to that
of the batch of Chartists of whom Ernest Jones was
the head : it also exhibits a contrast to the case of
John Mitchel and John Martin, the Irish Re-
peaters. Cuffey and his companions only intended
mischief: Mitchel and Martin have done mis-
chief, and that, too, on the most extensive scale.
Cuffey and Co. did not even get up a street riot : the
writings and speeches of Mitchel and Martin
instigated a large part of the south of Ireland to
rise in open rebellion against her Majesty's authority,
and led to the loss of life. A handful of policemen
crushed the Cuffey conspiracy, which only embraced
forty or fifty individuals : the organization in Ireland
produced by the writings of Mitchel and Martin, and
the other physical-force Repealers, embraced the
whole nation, and was of so formidable a nature, that
thousands of troops were sent from this country to
prevent a universal outbreak. The Cuffey conspiracy
was put down at an expense to the country of a few
pounds : the extinction of agitation, and the suppres-
sion of the insurrections produced in Ireland by,
the treasonable writings of Mitchel and Martin,
will cost the country at least 1,000,0001. Mitchel
and Martin not only systematically preached disaffec- •
tion to the throne of the Queen, and resistance to the
authority of the Government, but they vehemently
urged their countrymen to assassinate the Lord-
Lieutenant, and to massacre in cold blood the soldiers
of the Queen : in the counsels of Cuffey and his asso-
ciates there was nothing half so ferocious as in the
speeches and writings of the former. And yet Mit-
chel is only sentenced to fourteen years' transporta-
tion, to a country possessing the finest climate in the
world ; Martin to only ten years' exile from his
native country; while poor Cuffey and his com-
panions are doomed to transportation for life I So,
glaring an inequality in the infliction of punishment
will cause a revulsion of feeling in every well-
regulated mind. The severity of the sentence
passed at the Old Bailey on Saturday caused
a shudder wherever it was known. It will be
productive of a deep and abiding sense of regret,
if not of horror, when the country contrasts
with that terrible punishment the comparatively mild
sentences passed on the two principal authors of the
Irish resistance to the authority of the Queen—men
who were the authors of an amount of mischief which
never can be fully calculated. What makes the case
of the Chartist convicts all the harder, is the fact,
that not only is their conviction the result of the
grossest treachery by their confederates in treason, but
that they were led into their worst crimes against the
Constitution by the very men who now turn appro-
vers against them. So terrible a sentence as that
which Mr. Baron Platt has passed upon men who
were first trepanned into treason, and then convicted
by the evidence of the " scoundrels"—to use the
Examiner's epithet—who entrapped them, will be
productive of infinite evil, by lessening that reverence
with which the people of this country are accustomed
to regard our courts of justice.

RAILWAY SHARE MARKETS.
LIVERPOOL, Styr. 31,
STOCK EXCHANOH.—There is a better feeling prevailing
in our market this morning, but prices can not be quoted
any- higher. The sales are—Caledonian, Preference, 'A die.
—Edinburgh and Glasgow, 39—Great Northern, 12N dis.—
Lancashire and Yorkshire (late Manchester and Birming-
ham), Fifths, 4% dis.—Ditto, 321. Shares (late Extension),
11 c. dis.—London and North. Western, 109 c..—Ditto, New
Quarters, 21s. 3d. dis.—Ditto, Quarters, I 1 c. p.—Man-
cheater, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire, Eighths, 7% dis.--Ditto,
M. Preference, 9%—Midland Stock, 82 c.—Ditto, New
Halves, 101. I Is. 3d. dis.— North Staffordshire, 6 dis.—
North Union ( A), 197_,,—Shrewsbury and Birmingham,
Preference, Is. 3d. p.—York, Newcastle, and Berwick (G. N.
E. Purchase), 154, dii.
BIRMINGHAM, San% 31.
STOOL EXCIIANGE.—The sales are—Birmingham, Wolver-
hampton, and Stour Valley, 4IA p.—Birmingham, Waiver-
hampton, and Dudley, 4,4 p.—South Staffordshire, 44 dis.
YORh:' SEPT. 29.
Siocx ExcnArron.—The business transacted to-day was
as follows: - Great Northern, 4%—North British, 167/c—.
Ditto, Quarters, 3%—York, Newcastle,
E. and Berwick (Ex-
tension, No. 1), 131,4—Ditto (G. N. Purchase), 6%.
GLASGOW, SEPT. 29.

STOCK ExcHANor.—The vales are—Aberdeen, 16—Cale-
donian, Preference, 325. 6d. Edinburgh and Northern, 1014
Glasgow, Dumfries, and Carlisle, sE4—Glasgow, Kilmarnock,
and Ayr, 61—Ditto, Halves, No. 1,4/. 168.—Great Northern,
41/2—North British, Thirds, 41/2—Paisley, Barrhead, and
Hurlet, 20s.—Scottish Central, 223—Scottish Grand Junc-
tion, 3s. 3d.

EAST INDIA FLOUR.—The vessel John Macvicar,
arrived from Calcutta, has brought 250 sacks of flour as
a portion of her cargo. We have before, if we recollect
aright, had occasion to direct attention to the importa-
tion of a quantity of thatr from the East Indies, the pro-
ductidp of that part of the world, but the supply from
that varier is of very rare occurrence, and this arrival
is of Mu.At interest and importance.

81RT11,4,

On (he 24th ult., the wife of Captain Shortrede, Bombay
Army,!of a son.
On the 27th ult., at Stowlangtoft-hall, Suffolk, the lady of
11. Wilson, Esq.. of a daughter.
At Nirliit more- hall, Staffordshire, on the 28th ult., the lady
of Captain It. Mainwaring, R.N., of a son.
On the 28th ult., at Felton-park, Northumberland, the
wife of J. (;handless, Esq., of a daughter.
At Dulwizh, on the 29th ult., the wife of T. Stevens, Esq.,
of a daughter.

MARRIED.
On te 28th ult., at Lyndhurst, New Forest, the Right
H on. ord Manners, to Lydia Sophia, third daughter of
Captaid W. B. Dashwood, R.N.
On the 28th ult., at St. George's, Camberwell, Mr. J. N.
Keighley, of Edward's-terrace, Camberwell, to Susannah
Sapphir.i, the only daughter of Lieutenant William Rule,
R. N., of the same place.
On the 28th ult., at St. Oswald's, Durham,Francis Marcus,
fourth son of the late Rev. Gilbert Beresford, to Elizabeth,
eldest daughter of W. Green, Esq., of Old Elvet, Durham.
On the 28th ult., at Christ Church, Virginia Water, J.
Dingwall, Esq., to Elizabeth Hird, of Sunningdale, Surrey,
Widow of the Rev. J. S. Hird.
On the 28th ult., at St. John's Church, Westminster, G.
T. Davis, E•ei , of Canterbury, to Sarah Ann, daughter of
the late 4. Farebrother' Esq., of Westminster.
On this 29th ult., at St. George's, Blo,.msbury, the Rey. J.
I). Winslow, vicar of Napton on-the-Hid, Warwickshire, to
Harriet, eldest daughter of the late T. Gotobed, Esq.

DIED.
On the 18th ult., at Madrid, J. Henderson, Esq., aged 65,
formerly her Britannic Majesty's Consul-General for the Re-
public of Colombia.

On the 24th ult., at Brighton, Henry, third son of the
Right Hon. William Yates Peel, aged 19.
On the 25th ult., at Marine Parade, Brighton, Anne,
widow of J. Tattnall, Esq.
On the 26th ult., at High Wycombe, Bucks, aged 71,
Mary, relict of Captain W. White, late of the 13th Light
Dragoons.
On the 27th ult., at Chichester, Mr. E. Miller late of
Shanklin, Isle of Wight, aged 28.
On the 27th ult., at Polygon, Somers-town, J. Thackeray,
Esq., aged 14.
On the 28th ult., at Fitzroy-square, Edward Orme, Esq.,
aged 74, for manyyears a magistrate and Deputy-Lieutenant
of tha county of Middlesex.
At Eltharn, Kent, on the 28th ult., Ann Launce, widow of
the Rev. Hugh Hill, D.D., late of Southampton.

London: Printed and Published by MURDO 'YOUNG, 'a t •
No. 112, Strand, Printer, at The sun. Oftiee, Na. 111, _
Strand, in the Precinct of the Savoy, iD the county of
Viddlowax. Monday, October ; 18446 - •

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