The Sun.
London, England, 1846-03-16 00:00:00

PRINCESS'S TIIEATRE, OXFORD-STREET.
THIS EVENING

Will be performed a New Vaudeville Comedy, entitled, THE
FOLLIES OF A NIGHT. Duke de Chartres, Mr. J. Vining; Count
de Brissac, Mr. Harris ; Dr. Druggendraft, Mr. Compton ; Pierre
Palliot, Mr. C. Mathews; Mdlle. Duval, Miss E. Honner ; Duchess
de Chartres, Madame Vestris.

After which, a New Comic Drama, entitled MATHEWS
AND CO. Characters by Messrs. Charles Mathews, Compton,
Walton, Oxberry, and Miss E. Homier.

To be followed by a New Comic Drama, entitled, A SPEAKING
LiKENE!;.S. Baron de Raney, Mr. Granby; Alfred, Mr. James
Vining; Coco, Mr. Compton ; Manette, Madame Yestris.
To be succeeded by Mr. Charles Mathews's Farce of PATTER
VERSUS CLATTER. Captain Patter, Mr. Charles Mathews.
To conclude with a DIVERTISSEMENT. In which Messrs.
Cilbert, Marshall, Adrien, Miss Bailin, Miss Marshall, awl Mdlle.
Melanie Duval will appear.

NEW STRAND THEATRE.
M. PHILLIPPE'S SOIREES and MAI INEES MYSTERIEUSES.
Two Morning Performances during the Week.
At the urgent and reiterated solicitations of many distinguished
families, and in order to accommodate the crowds who flo to
Attend his Morning Performances, M. PHILLIPPE will give his
~;ranl Juvenile Entertainme:tt every Wednesday and Saturday
Mornng, St Two o'clock.

M. Phillippe's most Popular Deceptions and Peculiar Experiments
will be repeated, every Evening, varied by the Amusing Per-
lormances of the Chiarini Family, and the astounding Feats of the
American Brothers.—Doors open at a quarter pest Seven, to com-
mence at a quarter before Eight.
Stalls, 35.; Boxes, 2a: ; Pit, is. ; Gallery, Gd. ; Pr.vate Boxes,

little of that freedom of action which you claim for your-
selves,—if your past services entitled you to some confidence
in your sincerity when you took a course opposed by a large
number of your friends, Lord JOHN litrasELL also, by past
forbearance, and by the zealous support which he has hitherto
given to the Government, has established a claim to confidence
also ; and you should at least wait till you
see what Lord Jolts RUSSELL does, and hear what
he says, before you condemn the step which
he has taken." It should be borne in mind, also, that Lord
GREY has given a notice in the House of Lords, similar in
terms to that of Lord JOHN RUSSELL in the Commons; and
there is every appearance of the two Noble Lords acting in
concert.

The surprise excited by Lord Joni( RUSSELL'S notice on
Friday last had hardly time to subside among the Members
of the House of Commons, when Sir JAMES GRAHAM'S unex-
pected proposal of a Bill to mitigate the effects of ad-
vancing disease in Ireland, excited more seriously
startling reflections. While the protectionists have
been consuming weeks and weeks with their holiday
speeches, famine, whose existence some of them affected to
doubt, has been proving itself by the sad consequence of
wide-spreading disease. The details of disease in Ireland,
furnished by the Parliamentary paper published on Satur-
day, are of a nature to excite the most painful and alarming
apprehensions. Will they have any effect on protectionist
politicians? Will it induce them to abstain from further
obstruction of measures which they cannot prevent, for en-
larging the supply of food for the famished people of Ire-
land ? We are unwilling at this moment to say a harsh word
against Sir ROBERT PEEL'S Government, and have
no great pleasure in agreeing with an orator
from the protection benches; but we must say with
Mr. BANKES, that the advance of disease in Ireland
shows how wrong were those members of the Cabinet who
prevented Sir R. PEEL from taking immediate measures in
November for opening the ports. Compared with what
might have been done then, the best measures now will be
too late. But what is offered us now let us have as soon as
possible, and let Mr. BANKES use his eloquence and influence
with his party to dissuade them from further factious delay.
Sir R. PEEL has postponed the second reading of the Corn
Bill from to-night, in order that the tariff may be proceeded
with and, if possible, finished to-night. We trust that the
reading of the sad accounts of disease in Ireland will induce
the protectionists to do what in them lies to finish the tariff
to-night, that the second reading of the Corn Bill may not
be postponed beyond to-morrow.

We recorded last week with national pride the activity
and seaman-like work displayed by the officers and crews of
the ships Rodney and Albion, in fitting out the Bellerophon,
at Portsmouth, and the Calcutta, at Devonport. At
Portsmouth a rivalry seemed to exist between
the different departments in the dockyard and
the officers and seamen on board the Rodney, which
should do their work quickest and best. On Saturday week
the officers and crew were turned over to the Bellerophon,
and on Monday. they went to work, and on that day the
tops and caps were got over, the lower rigging put on together
with: the topmast, crosstrees, and caps, the mainyards got
across—all heavy work, says our Correspondent; next day
the rigging was set up, the bowsprit completed, the topgal-
lant-masts fidded and rigged, a number of the main and
lower deck gnus got on board, with many other operations
which the common reader cannot understand, and which it
is needless further to describe. It is enough to say, that ac-
cording to the usual calculations all the fittings could not be
completed before Saturday, and even then it would be called
quick work. What was the result? Had our gallant sea-
men or our brave officers become enervated by peace, or less
active in their operations by having no enemy to rouse them
to exertion ? Quite the contrary. At noon on Wednes-
day the Bellerophon, 78, was anchored at Spithead,
all ready for sea, completely rigged, royal yards
across, sails all bent, three months' provisions on board, guns
all in, in short, fitted for service, and in condition to go
into immediate action with an enemy, powder being only
wanting, and that the harbour regulations prevented her
from taking in. The Calcutta, at Devonport, was fitted out
with the same rapidity and spirit, for between the
two crews there seemed also to have been a
rivalry, and the officers of superior rank at these
two sea-ports on the occasion, as well as the in-
habitants, were alike surprised and delighted to find that
England can yet use so well that arm which has saved her
in every hour of danger. But foreigners, on reading
the accounts, will be more than surprised,—they
will be struck with astonishment that opera-
tions, which in Russia, or Holland, or Prance,
would have occupied the same number of men for four-
teen days at least, were accomplished in England in less
than a fourth part of the time. On looking at feats of which
the country has such just reason to boast, it is natural to
ask what reward and what treatment should sailors like these
receive at the hands of Government. When they are not wanted
should they be turned adrift, and handed over, much against
their will, to our enemies? Should they be paid less than
merchant seamen—be subjected to a severity of discipline,
often needless and injurious to the service, and have mixed
up with them the refuse of gaols and the offscourings of the
people? Should they have forced into their ranks the best
of our fishermen along the coasts, as prisoners and slaves,
and be compelled thus to associate with men detained against
their will, and as fully entitled to their liberty as the fir'st
noblemen of the laud? Such, we blush to state, the
exception of a retreat in Greenwich Hospital, wheal maimed
or worn out in the service, were the rewatl:; given to
the brave defenders of their country, to 'the men who
guarded so faithfully the British coas!.d against all the
hostile attacks of BONAPARTE, finally annihilated the
fleets of France and Spain. Peace certainly has mitigated
to a certain extent th:ae hardships—we should rather say
cruelties, but stir. much is to be done ; and naval reform,
if we wish 1:0 maintain our superiority, is absolutely ne-
cessary. Their pay must be increased as well as their
pensions; they must be induced by rewards, not forced by
violence, to engage in the service, and on every occasion
when a ship is paid off, or the number in active service re-
duced, should provision be made that the experienced
seaman shall find it his interest to remain in his
native country, and still look to it as his home. Only
a few hundred thousand pounds a-year would accom-
plish all this, yet that is refused, and economy seems
always, in the most preposterous manner, to be allowed
first to attack the defenders of their country—the sailors
and sr.,taltra. The pay, and more especially the pensions,
are, 'too small ; sufficient inducement is not held out
ft respectable men to engage in the services, and the
consequences are becoming more and more felt every day.
The artillery corps cannot be supplied with recruits from
Scotland ; soldiers, who it appears are entitled by some over-
sight to their discharge, for the same reason decline to
remain in the army, and when any large vessel is to be
manned the greatest difficulty is found in getting able
seamen. The remedy is perfectly simple, and occurs to
every man of practical knowledge.

Simultaneously with the progression of the Customs and
Corn Importation Bill, two official documents of the utmost
interest and importance, bearing, as they do, upon the pre-
valence of disease and the scarcity of provisions in Ireland,
have been issued, one by our most gracious SOVEREIGN, and
the other by order of the Commons in Parliament assemlsled.
And with the publication of these very remarkable papers,
the last rags of hope to which the most visionary sceptics
liad clung are fur ever scattered to tke winds ; the great,
haggard truth stands out with hideous prominence before
them ; the miseries which have been mentioned as propa-
gating among: t the wretched populace of Ireland are not
fictitious in one solitary tittle—not to the extent of a single
diseased potato—not to the extent of a single case of dy-
sentery—not to the extent of a single empty pocket, or a
stomach minus nourishment. On the contrary, the pictures
which have been hitherto drawn of Irish destitution and
Irish wretchedness prove to be anything but over-coloured :
the oratorical allusions through which the English public
I acquired their first inklings of the moral hurricane brooding
over our sister island are corroborated by the unanswerable
logic of statistics ; the visions which had been evoked by our
statesmen as persua.sives to a vast movement, are realised by
these numerical figures, and that with a rhetoric more
stirring and more solemn than could be enunciated by the
most accomplished scholiast—the rhetoric of fact ! Never
within the limits of any appreciable record has Ireland been
visited with a more dire accumulation of suffering during a
period of confirmed tranquillity than that under which her
children are now writhing, without solace and without hope.
Committed, for some inscrutable reason, to the spoliation of
a vegetable pestilence, without an opportunity of acquiring
by additional toil wages enough to compensate for the de-
ficiency, their frames emaciated by hunger, or burnt up with
contagious maladies, the Irish multitude are plunged into
one of those woful plights from which extrication is impos-
sible, unless through the interference of the more fortunate and
less embarrassed among their countrymen. We have, how-
ever, so repeatedly viewed the matter in this par•
titular light, namely, as an incentive to the sympathy, the
generosity, and the justice of Government, that we are fain
to believe ieve any further enforcement of this point to be super-
fluous,the more particularly as our legislators are giving
every indication of their anxiety to administer comfort where
it is so urgently required, and
areerf descending from the ex-
pression of sentiment to the
an
y which
of acts. Looking,
however, at the two documentspe before
tions of anything that
e
part
me i b
ainistry_
may have
us, as pallia-
oorverr-aptrheocripiatastiodnirect evonidtehneee
of the integrity of
thaeppe;red like
their conduct has been guided—they
importance and require a yet closer examination. The one
presented by command of her MAJESTY is a full exposition
of
the rapid and gigantic strides already taken by disease, by
way of sequence to the tainted esculents with which the )la-
bourers had been compelled to appease the cravings of nature,
in defiance alike of their poisonous qualities and the nausea
produced by their odour and their flavour. From the re-
ports condensed into this abstract it appears that each of the
four principalities partake, and in a great measure, of
the infections arising exclusively from the murrain,
or from the actual non-existence of either nutritious
or unnutritious provisions. The greatest caution, more-
over, has been observed by the Commission throughout
their exertions—and this circumstance is conspicuous in the
care with which the different medical statements have been
selected. A. mere glance at these eight folio pages will suf-
fice, in all conscience, to penetrate the most obdurate
with feelings of commisseration for the sufferers,
and with a real anxiety to beheld their penury