The Sun.
London, England, 1846-05-07 00:00:00

TAI T'S.

The article on " The Tariff and the Oregon," by an
Englishman in America, contains a well digested account
of the present condition of the United States, and the
parties that unfortunately have been allowed to usurp
the Government of the country. We fear there is but
too much truth in the view which the writer takes of
the populace, and the ruinous influence they have upon
all statesmen not endued with virtuous principles, and,
above all, moral courage. The mob, in fact, guide the
destiny of the young 'Republic. ' The names of Wash-
ington, Jefferson, and others of the same class, are, to all
appearance, revered, but they are revered as were the
names of Brutus and Cassius, and others of the same
school, when Rome was sunk in slavery, and the people
only thought of indulging their grovelling appetites.
" The plague of demagogues is upon the land—the com-
promises of the Constitution are trampled under foot—
the tyranny of the numerical majority is complete."
And in another place he says—" The tyranny of public
opinion in this country paralyses the boldest hearts, and
moral courage as a virtue is nearly extinct, in all the
relations, public or private, of American life." This is
a sad picture, but we believe it is true to the letter, and
that America, of all places in the world, is the very
last which a man of refined habits and independent
mind would select for his residence. Mobs are the most
cruel, the most unrelenting, and the most unjust of all
tyrants. Some hopes are held out that the Senate will
have the courage to resist both the mob and
Polk, land the very long time they hare taken
in coming to a decision is favourable to the
opinion. "I am tolerably confident," says the writer,
in summing up his remarks " that in a very short time a
resolution would pass the Senate, recommending the
Executive to adjust the matter peacefully and by com-
promise." We are surprised to see Tait devoting six or
seven of his valuable pages to the miserable, trifling, and
silly common-places of such a man as Dr. Carus. We
have looked over the diary and can find not one original
remark, except in the shape of an absurdity ; and as for
correct information, it is totally out of the question.
What are we to think of a German philosopher who,
anxious to describe the mode of Presbyterian worship in
Scotland, entered, not one of the kirks, but an episcopalian
chapel, and with. much gravity passes censure on the
dull monotony of the Calvanistic service ? He is fond
of giving the sobriquet," Sombre Ecossais" to the Scotch-
man ; and, as his philosophy must find a reason for this
sadness in the national countenance, he comes to the
conclusion that the beheading of Mary Stuart did it all.
The following are his words :—" That peculiar melancholy
expression so often to be perceived in the Scotch, and
which justifies the expression, Sombre Ecossais, has al-
ways seemed to be connected, as well as their moist and
misty atmosphere, with the impression on the minds of
the Scotch, that with the head of the unfortunate Mary
fell too the crown of. Scotland, and was broken to pieces."
The following are the concluding remarks on the "Posi-
tion and Prospects of Sir Robert Peel :"
The crisis is an inviting one to a man of so much ambition
as the Premier is known to be. The breaking up of old par-
ties has devolved mere influence on the great floating balance
of shrewd quiet citizens, with no strong party predispositions,
than has been witnessed at any earlier period of our history
The more general diffusion of wealth and intelligence has
made this element in society more extensive and stronger,
independent altogether of the weakening of party combina-
tions, than it ever was before. Sections of society, too, have
risen into political importance, with wants and wishes which
the old hereditary distinctive measures of Whig or Tory can
neither gratify nor discomfit. Common sense embodied in
practical measures—legislative and administrative, for the
real wants of the age, and with respectful, not slavish
deference to its opinions—are what will establish a Ministry
in office. Peel, certainly, has no claims to implicit confi-
dence; his juvenile antecedents are against him; but if he
has not yet unreservedly devoted himself to the promotion of
such a policy as Liberals could support, how stand the Whigs?
While in power, they played fast and loose with the princi-
ples, by professing which they had acquired it. Of Peel it
may be said, that his actions have been better than his bad
professions ; of the Whigs, that their actions have been worse
than their good professions. Neither have claims to our en-
tire confidence for the past ; it is the future of both that must
decide. Peel, we have shown, stands on a vantage ground
for this renewal of the contest : it remains to be seen whether
he will have the clear-sightedness and intrepidity to avail
himself of it. Mr. Cobden told him, not long ago, that in
consequence of his free trade measures, he would find himself
most popular in the manufacturing districts, were lie to visit
them. The substitution of measures really capable of reliev-
ing Ireland, for coercion—the appointment of a Lord Lieu-
tenant, who, with the genial sympathies, and perhaps some-
thing of the theatrical dash of Lord Normanby, combined
with higher intellect and sounder common sense—would
render him equally popular in Ireland. The change impend-
ing in the leading political agents, and in the views and tem-
per of the popular party in that country, invites to the ex-
periment. The introduction of measures calculated to impose
a check on the petulance of privileged sectarianism—to place
the adherents of all religious sects more on a footing of social,
as well as political equality—to unsectarianize public educa-
tion in the way least calculated to exasperate or grate on
popular prejudices, would conciliate an important body of
supporters throughout England and Scotland. And there is
not one of these courses of policy which Sir Robert Peel might
not adopt, with as much honour to himself, and augmentation
of his influence over the sounder part of public opinion, as
free trade. Nobody believes him to be imbued with sectarian
prejudices; no one believes him fond of daring coercive,
forcible measures. His opinions, and natural disposition,
alike incline him to rational and liberal modes of government.
He has emancipated himself from old party connexions
step farther, and he may take new ones that: one
really
historicald o
him
honour. The hour has come which must stamp his
character. The next few months will determine whether he
is to be handed down to posterity as a greater Minister than

England ever had before him, or as one who almost became a
great Minister."

-
UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE.
The present Number opens with an elaborate review
of Mr. Pearce's recently published biography of the
Marquis of. Wellesley. This review, albeit occasionally
tinctured with sectarian prejudice, is on the whole fairly
written. " The Witch of Kilkenny," which follows, is
a not altogether unsuccessful imitation of the glorious
Ingoldsby Legends of poor Barham. " Ireland Sixty
Years Ago" is continued in this Number of the Dublin
University, and gives us most amusing accounts of the
sayings and doings, the fun and the frolic, and con-
spiracies and persecutions, going on in the Irish metro •
polis., just before the period of the union. From this
article we extract the following account of a meeting of
united Irishmen, with sketches of the three great leaders
of that body, Theobald Wolfe Tone, James Napper
Tandy, and Archibald Hamilton Rowan:--
‘' I entered college in the year 1791, a year rendered me-
morable by the institution of the society of United Irishmen.
They held their meetings in an obscure passage, called Back-
lane, leading from Corn-market to Nicholas-street. The
very aspect of the place seemed to render it adapted for
cherishing a conspiracy. It was in the locality where the
tailors, skinners, and curriers held their guilds, and was the
region of the operative democracy. I one evening proceeded
from college, and found out Back-lane, and having inquired
for the place of meeting, a house was pointed out to me, that
had been a hall in which the corporation of tailors held their
assemblies. I walked in without hesitation—no one for-
bidding me—and found the society in full debate ; the Hon.
Simon Butler in the chair. I saw there, for the first time,
the men with the three names, which were now become so
familiar to the people of Dublin—Theobald Wolfe Tone,
James Napper Tandy, and Archibald Hamilton Rowan.
" The first was a slight, effeminate-looking man, with a
hatchet face, a long aquiline nose, rather handsome and gen-
teel-looking, with lank, straight hair combed down on his
sickly red cheek, exhibiting a face the most insignificant and
mindless that could be imagined. His mode of speaking was
in correspondence with his face and person.
It was polite
and gentlemanly, but totally devoid of anything like energy
or vigour. I set him down as a worthy,
as
good-natured, flimsy
P
man in whom there was no harmand the least likely
person in the world to do mischief to the tote-
" Tandy was the very opposite looking character.a He w
the ugliest man I ever gazed on. He dark,haday
llo"w truculent-looking countenance, a long drooping nose
reather, sharpened at the point, and the muscles of his face, formed
two cords at each side of it. He had a remarkable hanging-
down look, and an occasional twitching or convulsive motion
of his nose and mouth, as if he was snapping at something on
the side of him while he was speaking.
" Not so Hamilton Rowan. I thought him not only the
most handsome, but the largest man I had ever seen. Tone
and Tandy looked like pigmies beside him. His ample and
capacious forehead seemed the seat of thought and energy ;
while with such an external to make him feared, he had a
courtesy of manner that excited love and confidence. He
held in-his hand a large stick, and was accompanied by a
large dog. _ _

had not been long standing on the floor, looking at and
absorbed in the persons about me, when I was perceived, and
a whisper ran round the room. Some one went up to the
president, then turned round, and pointed to me. The presi-
dent immediately rose, and called out that there was a
stranger in the room. Two members advanced, and taking
me under the arm, led me up to the president's chair ; and
there I stood, to await the penalty of my unauthorized in-
trusion. I underwent an examination ; and it was evident,
from the questions, that my entrance was not accredited,
but that I was suspected as a government spy. The " bat-
talion of testimony," as it was called, as already formed,
and I was supposed to be one of the corps. I, however, gave
a full and true account of myself, which was fortunately con-
firmed by a member who knew something about me, and was
ultimately pronounced a harmless gib,' and admitted to the
honour of the sitting.'
This article is followed by two reviews, the one of
Hood's Poems, written in a warm-hearted congenial
spirit, and the other a second article on the recently
published life and correspondence of David Ilume, dis-
tinguished by its fairness and impartiality. We have
then a biographical sketch of Sir Martin Archer Shee,
illustrated by a portrait; after which William Carleton
gives us the first four chapters of a tale of Irish famine,
entitled the " Black Prophet." The last article in the
Number is on the social condition of Ireland, and is
just the sort of paper that might be expected from the
pen of a clever and somewhat unscrupulous Orange
partisan writer.

SUGAR DUTIES.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.

Sut,—The Gazette of last Friday quotes the average price
of West India sugar at 365. 7d. per cwt. Sugars, quality
for quality equal to this West India sugar, the produce of
Cuba, Porto Rico, and other foreign possessions, may be
roadily bought at 20s. per cwt., showing a difference of six-
teen shillings and sevenpence per cwt. (or 214 d. per lb.)
by the time it reaches the actual consumer.

This immense gain, this fraudulent fruit of monopoly,
goes directly from our pockets to those of the British saga:.
producers. One shilling per cwt. paid in excess of what
Havannah, Brazil, and other sugars will command, is equi-
valent to 250,000/. ; or four millions sterling and upwards on
the annual quantity, at 16s. 7d. per cwt., of sugar con
sumed in the country.
West India sugar is here particularised, because the
planters in those colonies are the only parties who can or do
set up even a shadow of pretence to a just claim to be pro-
tected by a differential duty, and they only can do so on
the plea that they are obliged by the conditions of the law
to yield to certain differential duties in favour of other
British colonies in the purchase of their food and lumber.
The West Indians send home about a moiety of the sugar
consumed in the United Kingdom, and in order that they
may receive two millions sterling we, the consumers, are
compelled to pay four. Monopoly invariably operates in this
clumsy and partial manner. W hat does the Government
propose to do to abate the expensive nuisance? Why next
to nothing ! Sir Robert Peel has given notice that he means
to reduce the differential duty on free labour sugar (about
10,000 tons) 3s. 6d. per cwt., maintaining the absurd fiscal
distinction between free and slave labour sugars. The West
Indians, who have been told to rest perfectly quiet under this
attempt to impose upon us, actually chuckle in the hope that
Sir Robert will be enabled to carry his project. No one
knows better than Sir Robert Peel that the way to deal with
the sugar question 'would be to abolish the ridiculous lawS
which oblige the planters in the West Indies, by differential
duties, to purchase their food and lumber of other British
colonies. Let him allow these planters to buy their supplies
in the cheapest markets, and thereby sweep away all grounds
to their claim to protection, especially' seeing, as he must do,
that in the end the home consumers of West India sugar
have to pay the piper.
How much wiser would it have been in the 240 Protec-
tionists in the House of Commons, both as relates to their
own breeches' pockets and to those of their tenants and de-
pendents, to have insisted upon the abolition of all protecting
duties, including those levied for the supposed benefit of the
colonies, prior to the annihilation of the corn-laws, so that
they themselves, their tenants, and others had had time to
lay in their stock of necessary articles at the unprotected
price, before they were either of them compelled to sell their
produce on the like terms, rather than stand out, interrupting
the commerce of the country, by striving after the retention
of a monopoly which they must have felt months since was
doome4 to the tomb of the Capulets. Had they manfully
stood upon that point, they would have had some degree
of justice on their side, and enjoyed besides just as many
opportunities of abusing Sir Robert Peel as they
have had ; but it was not their good fortune to be
so prudent—in lieu of pursuing a course similar to that
described, however, it is reported in Mincing-lane these
gentlemen are prepared to vote for as much protection
as their united energies can obtain for all colonial produce.
Protection, they say, is their principle, and therefore they
will exert themselves to maintain the slightest vestige of it ;
to be sure, the valiant promise was made to the West Indians
before the first division on the corn-laws ; that may have
taught them to moderate their tone, and look more closly to
their own interests and to those of their dependents.
As the planters of the British sugar.• producing settlements
ship various qualities of sugar, and are likely to be placed
in active competition with foreign producers, it would be
but justice, as I pointed out in a previous letter, to impose
an ad valorem duty on all classes of sugar ; so that the West
Indians, who send to market very inferior qualities to the
Whith Havannah, &c., should only pay a duty according to
the worth of their sugar.—l am, Sir, your obedient servant,

B. S. R.