The Sun.
London, England, 1846-07-20 00:00:00

;01. M-in_ it L.--- ins

LONDON, MONDAY, JULY 10, 1846.

Another evidence of public confidence in the Rus-
sELL Administration has just been givan by the unani-
mous re-election of Viscount Mourran, as the repre-
sentative for the West Riding of Yorkshire. Whgn the
circumstances of the previous nemination of the Noble
Lord, during the last winter season, are recollected,
it becomes a matter of profound interest and extreme
gratification to compare the circumstances of that
moment with the circumstances of the present : the
hopefulness of victory with the achievement of victory,
the yearning for the prize with the possession of
the prize. It is in these re-elections of the
Ministerial candidates that we are enabled without
any appearance of affectation to revert to that glorious
acid peaceful revolution from the excitement copse-

quent upon the consummation of which we are only
now recovering. And it is because we are so
earnestly impressed with the conviction that this
same revolution will confer an infinitely greater
amount of social happiness upon the community than
even its sanguine admirers have hitherto anticipated
in their most flattering visions of the future,
that we are the more prepared to listen again and
again to congratulations upon its completion, and to
eulogiums upon its principal leaders. Until the com-
merce of Great Britain be annihilated, and until its
industrious population cease to exist, the praises of
COBDEN, and PEEL, and VILLIERS, and BRIGHT, will
never become tedious to the popular ear, will never
cease to animate the popular enthusiasm. Neverthe-
less, it would be insanity so far to deliver ourselves
up to sentiments of self-gratulation as to conceive
that the reformatory labours of legislation are
altogether completed, or to forget that we have only
breasted a portion of that terrible acclivity. The ex-
pressions employed on Saturday by the Noble Lord the
First Commissioner of Woods and Forests, in appealing
to the electors of Yorkshire for their suffrages, were
in this particular both elevated and lucid ; they were
eminently calculated to impress their hearers with an
accurate perception of the political position of this
empire. By a poetical symbol Lord MORPETII
beautifully idealised the condition of the English
Legislature, he represented the movement which
had already been made towards the modification of
the commercial system of this country as the attain•
ment of a table land upon the side of a mountain—
many dangers passed, many obstacles overcome, but
above us other dangers and other obstacles to be
passed and vanquished in like manner. There are
Alps upon Alps to be surmounted ; nevertheless,
having accomplished so much already, and having,
moreover, accomplished it so decisively, we are not
to be discouraged by dangers, however threatening,
or obstacles, however enormous. Conscious that the
popular WILL cannot, by any human machination,
be frustrated, when enforced by justice and impelled
by a peaceful spirit of determination, we can yield
ourselves up to the most sanguine anticipations without
any dread of disappointment. For the purpose of
confirming his assertion as to the fact that Government
could not be expected to remain inactive after the
recent proceedings in Parliament, Lord MORPETH
adduced a " proof positive," in the shape of the
Sugar Duties—those obnoxious vestiges of monopoly
which still blurr the commercial code of this country,
and which must be utterly erased therefrom before
we can enter upon the full enjoyment of the bless-
ings of free trade. Heartily rejoiced are we to find
that a man of such undoubted abilities, of such a
wholesome liberality, and of such an un-
flawed judgment as Lord Viscount MORPETII, has
at length beheld this specious but villanous
abuse in its true colours, that he has discovered how
consistently a man can proclaim himself hostile to
the " blood-red flag of the slave trade," and yet
" commit himself without reserve to the general and
universal principles of free trade." No human being
can abhor with a more intense and unextinguishable
abhorrence than ourselves the atrocious and damnable
system of slavery a system alike opposed
to the pleading voice of Nature, and the
solemn mandates of Revelation. No human being
can yearn more ardently than ourselves, for the
burning of the last rag of that " blood-red flag " upon
the altar of Freedom; and it is because of the depth of
our reverence fur the sacred cause of universal liberty
that we are (like Lord MORPRTH and a thousand
others) so desirous of the cessation of the differential
duties upon slave-grown and free-grown sugar. To
speak plainer, it is because we are indignant that the
holy cause of the emancipation of our fellow-beings
is thus advanced as a mask for hypocrisy and a plea
for avarice. We are indignant at this wanton degra-
dation of a divine watchword to serve such vile and
sordid purposes. As perhaps the most glaring instance
of this miserable hypocrisy, we may direct attention
to the protest signed by twenty-five acknowledged
names, and others, and which protest is presented to-
day to the Prime Minister, previous to the introduc-
tion of the Ministerial policy as regards the sugar
duties in the House of Commons. Do these " signers
of the protest" imagine for a single moment that the
chicanery of their protestation is invisible ? Do they
flatter themselves that the religious veil
is sufficiently dense to screen their real
under-motives ? Plainly and honestly we confess
ourselves pained by this tragical kind of mock-
philanthropy; and we would briefly remind those who
are so noisy in their anxiety for the maintenance of
the differential duties, because they pretend to regard
those duties as a discouragement to the slave trade—
we would remind those people that Christianity is
opposed to the principle of slavery, not to the work •
ing of slavery. We would remind them, moreover,
that the black slaves in the sugar plantations are more
to he envied than the white slaves nearer home, who
have to drudge so arduously for their livelihood, and
to pay so extortionately for the profit of those whose
colonial possessions happen to be devoted to the culti-
vation of the sugar-cane! It is not difficult to simu-
late benevolence when the pocket can be filled by pre-
tending the principle, or to assume generosity and
philanthropy when the public can be plundered by
the pretence ! To-night, however, will prove " the
beginning of the end" of this grievous injustice.

The result of the recent trial at Winchester, the
immediate and unhesitating acquittal of Lieutenant
HAWKEY for the murder of Mr. SETON in the un-
fortunate duel which took place at Gosport last year,
and the applause with which the verdict of the jury
was received by a crowded court, does not occasion
us the slightest degree of surprise or astonish-
ment. It fully bears out and confirms the
observations we offered on the occasion of
the acquittal of Mr. Pym, in the month of March
last, for his participation in the fatal transaction. In
the present trial the accused was unable to obtain the
benefit of the testimony of his wife, Mrs. HAWKEY,
who was not a competent witness on his behalf, owing
to the policy of the law, which provides that husband
or wife cannot be evidence for or against each
other, except in cases of high treason, or
where either is indicted for a personal in-
jury inflicted on the other; he therefore laboured
under the serious disadvantage of being unable to
prove clearly to the jury the real cause of the un-
happy quarrel, and the serious nature of the injury
attempted to be inflicted on him. The jury, however,
again interposed themselves between the law and the
accused, and pronounced an acquittal, although no
reasonable person could for a moment enter-
tain a doubt that his was the hand by
w. Melt the death-weund was inflicted, although
was clearly explained to them that they
must dismiss from their minds the various points as
to the policy of the law and the hardship of the parti-
cular case, so eloquently and ably expatiated on by
the counsel for the prisoner ; that they were bound by
their solemn oaths to pronounce a verdict according to
the evidence, that was according to so much of what
they had heard sworn before them as they believed,
and the only questions for their consideration were—
Did the prisoner at the bar deliberately, by shoot-
ing at Mr. SETON with a pistol loaded with gun-
powder and bullet, inflict upon Mr. SETON a wound ?"
and " was that wound the cause of his death ?" They
could not have been influenced in this acquittal by
the ingenious point raised by Mr. COCKBURN, that in
this case the cause of death was-a state of things super-
vening on the treatment, and not on the original wound,
that, in fact, it was the result of the operation which
had been performed, and not of the wound itself
The Judge had most properly overruled the point.
and reserved the benefit, if any, that might result to
the accused therfrom, for an appeal to all the Judges,
in the event of a conviction. We can, therefore,
only ascribe it to the unwillingness of the jury to
make a person who had a reasonable
ground of offence, where there was nothing
unfair in the conduct or management of
the duel, a victim to the unwillingness of the Legis-
lature to grapple with the acknowledged evil, and to
subject him to all the pains and penalties of a con-
viction for murder, the most severe sanctioned by the
law. If it is seriously resolved by our Government
that the practice of duelling shall be put a stop to,
that the nuisance shall be abated, and that juries
shall not be induced to tamper with the
solemn oaths they are required to take—a
precedent of the: most mischievous description
and character—no time should be lost in bringing for-
ward measures sufficiently stringent for its suppres-
sion. As we have already stated, it is not the possi-