The Sun.
London, England, 1851-03-03 00:00:00

Captain Johnson, of the compass department, attended on
board the Fisgard, flag-ship at this port,' iu the afternoon of
to-day, to superintend a series of experiments which are to
be carried on with five different descriptions of binnacle
lights. The lights were to be lighted at 6 o'clock,r.m., and
continue all night. Lieutenant Robertson attended during
the first watch, Lieutenant Gore during the middle watch,
and the Second Master of the Fisgard during the third
watch. Captain Johnson remained during the evening, and
was to go on board at 5 A.M. on Sunday to see the state of
the different lights at that hour, and receive the reports of
the manner in which they continued to give light during the
latter part of the experiment. The testing of the lights will
occupy several days before the final report as to the best
binnacle light.

TO THE SECRETARY OF THE BRADFORD
REFORM ASSOCIATION.
Sir,—l write to you under the disadvantage of your
being likely when you receive this to he in possession of
new information which may make all I can now report
comparatively obsolete and unimportant. But there
may still be a certain value attaching to the past.
What is clear is, that for the present you are saved.
The attempt to advance your interests by bringing back
a Protectionist Ministry and a five-shilling duty on fo-
reign corn, has for the present entirely failed. No stone
has been left unturned to obtain it for you; but for this
time you must be resigned to going without. If the
wind will only hold as it now blows, the poor man
among you may fulfil his promise to his daughter of a
new gown at Easter, and the rich no longer hesitate
about gentling his second son to the University. But as
the wind is notoriously uncertain, I weu:d still recom-
mend in major matters a degree of caution. Do not go
on with your Music-hall, till you see a fir al end of the
project for securing Free Trade by bringing in a Pro-
tectionist Ministry. If you do, depend urea it you will
never pay for it, or pay for it out of the assets to
your creditors. And it •your leading firms are unwise
enough to continue their present speculations before this
principal point is settled, take care that you of the
middling and operative etaases look the danger more
wisely iu the face, and view all this as what must be
checked by bankruptcy and the Gazettg, securing your
temporary gains in Savings Banks or dlierwise, against
the want and misery which nothing could prevent your
friends from bringing upon your heads.
Do not believe I am making a fictitious case. The
Member for Montrose on Friday night avowed in
his speech that his desire was to bring in a Protectionist
Ministry. So it was for this that a hundred of us were
brought up to join in a vote intended and calculated
with that object,—a very good vote in its way, but not
good when interposed with a purposed design to shut up
Bradford work-shops and send their inmates to the poor-
house. I hope we all feel the extent of our obligation,
and shall be the better for the feeling another time.
There are things to be borne, and things not to be borne.
I tell you plainly, that your leaders are insane. Not
with that insanity, which as it is the heaviest of
heaven's inflictions, removes responsibility and sinks all
ideas of retribution in commiseration for the sufferer.
But with that more dangerous malady, which is en-
gendered out of superfluity of activeness and scantiness
of caution, leading men to desert their just spheres
of action, and display the misplaced energy which makes
a little boy put a hot poker to his Papa's powder-flask,
by way of seeing whether gunpowder will burn. Those
who ought to be defending you, have got other views
and other ambitions. They have discovered that they
are called to be statesmen, publicists, determiners of
nations quarrels, setters-up and pullers-down of Minis-
terial dynasties; and the vulgar office of keeping open a
trade in corn and cambrics is grown mean in their eyes,
unless as it may be played as a card in this their more
interesting game. If any man wants to 'put down
the Church, put up the Pope, dismantle the Navy,
reduce the Army, remove the Squadron from the
Coast of Africa, drink slave-grown Sugar, if
he objects to a Window tax, House tax, Malt
tax, Paper tax, Coffee tax, Chicory tax, Income
tax, any tax, they are there to enter into partnership.
They have souls above corn, and to atop your Bradford
trade with a five-shillings duty is like the sufferings of
the frog in an air-pump when in the way of these bril-
liant operators. Or they consider it at most, as a step
backwards to be recovered with grace and vigour, in the
grand galope they are bent on exhibiting before the public
gaze. All this may be sport to them, but it is
death to you. Turn it over in the society of your
quiet Reading-Room by the Sun Bridge, and sit-
ting there with your temperance drinks before you,
ask all steady and intelligent men of whatever grade
or standing in your industrious community, whether
while the trade [of Bradford consists in mak-
ing the goods which go abroad for foreign
corn, the one thing desirable for keeping thin
porridge from the working man's table, was
not that Free Trade should by any means within human
attainment be made to go on smoothly silently while
we bad it, because every day and every hour was di-
minishing the interests in favour of stopping Bradford
trade, and increasing the interests in favour of maintain-
ing it. Ask them, whether this is not as plain to man
and boy, as that when a patient is passing through the
crisis of an illness, it is policy to encourage the rest
which is allowing his strength to collect and the causes
f danger to subside. And just at this moment it is,
that up jumps a medical practitioner, and cries
out, "No! Bring beck the delirium and the
struggle; and when you have biatea them, you will
have beaten all. This is the way our school goes
about to save life." Bring back a five-shilling duty.
Stop Bradford trade, that Bradford men may have time
to attend Anti• Corn-law lectures. Rouse up all the dis-
honest interests in the country, and collect them into
one general run upon the trade of Bradford. Men at
Bradford are getting fat and pursy; you have no notion
how good it would ba for their healtils to be put on low
diet for a few years while we were fighting the Corn-
law question over again. Good is no good, but es it is
contrasted with evil. The man is miserable who has
enough for Us family to eat seven days in the week; and
here we offer to do cur best to cat them down to four.
If you wish to prolong the conversation because your
hour for reparation is not come, collect about the tire
such of your friends ef the Working Ceasses as are most
anxious for the Extension of the Suffrage, and put be-
fore them the following case. Their hundred supporters
in the House of Commons ate called together for one of
the annual motions on that subject. The Minister re-
plies that he has prepared a proposal for next session;
and a subordinate member of the Government gees and
intimates to the mover, that after that declaration, he
will probably not insist on pressing his motion. The
moveri a willing, but the leader who avows his desire
to introduce a Protectionist Ministry, resists, and the
motion is persisted in. There were not ten out of the
hundred misguided gentlemen (of whom I was one) who
voted on that occasion, who would have done it if
they had known the object with which they had
been marshalled. We have been like common soldiers,
with our names on a regimental list, and then brought
out to fire upon our friends and cousins; as we did on
you, when we voted for what was intended to turn out
the Ministry that engaged to give Extension to the
f the
tistohSh
through
r 00uf
ga hn
Suffrage, and bring in a Protectionist one instead.
Mr. Wilberforce used to relate, that a beggar once
came to the door and asked fur food. Some remnant
victual was given him, which happened to be vermicelli
soup. The poor man returned it meekly and said, " In-
deed I am very hungry, but I cannot eat broth with mag-
gots in it." Now I am precisely in that position; I cannot
eat broth with maggots in it. It may turn out that I am
all wrong, as the poor man was with his vermicelli, and
that the true way to benefit Bradford trade would be to
bring in a Protectionist Ministry and a five-shilling duty on
foreign corn. But till I "know the reason why," I will
not go along with what I believe to be insanity of one
or other of the kinds attempted to be described.
You will expect to receive some statement of what we
heard on Friday. Lord J. Russell's account of what had
taken place, was minutely accordant with what had been
stated by the public journals. He threw out an inti-
mation, that he was ready to reconsider the Anti-Papal
hs
Suffrage,
eoal
.Agr sgteve..e, Bill on some points; which may be supposed
re
been directed as an invitation to Sir James
Graham. He further signified his conviction
upon reconsideration, that the majority of 14 on the Pro-
tection question, and his minority on Mr. Locke
King's motion, had net so seriously affected his posi-
tion as he bad thought. And he concluded with
the information, that the Duke of Wellington had
undertaken the office of Queen's Counsel till a further
settlement. At first I thought this meant that the Duke
of Wellington was Prime Minister; but nobody else
seemed to think so. The Duke of NVweli.ltihngatnonybkondoyw,sf_oa:
civil position when he sees it, as well as he does a mili-
tary; so that there is not much danger in his hands. Sir
James Graham afterwards rose, and avowed
ment with Lord John Russell's Government on the
questions of Free Trade and Extension
hut declared the impossibility,ofhis joiningovoca
in
Lion had heel-
Papal Bill, though he admittee the pr
ethepapsrseisnegntofposaition of affairs
ethareeßudipi he the
presentsgr e at
If
ni ot woabss obstacle to thatt
h
opinion Parliament,
everybody
obuolddyagree i n
consulted, what
thatap p
this is to be, that the Anti-Papal Bill is to pass, an,
then the present
,Government is to be strengthened by
'hSalvre Jamesn oProtectionist G r
aham
a and
(I his
Ministry f rie
ld
afters
there
hhho(a:r:
eaYwc:chaissc ashbiroeelne begntooni o youato
stone
not
leftto be
unturnedangry
which could have
favoured you with that bletsteg.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
London, 3d Marcl,,lBsl. AN
OLD REFORMER.
F-

-0..1nE RslaOt
Saturday,
ay
IREat a few minutes
very alarming nature broke
Messrs. Hughes and before midnight, a fire of a
IN KING W
raging with great violenceth; ien
Co.,
the
out in the premises belonging to
ILLIAM-STREET, CITY.
unable to get the e army y
warehouse,and navy 0
no outfitters, te rs, No.
premisesl alyas
stock in trade w
76, King William-street. When discovered the flames were
the fire is ground-
floor. In spite of exertions of the firemen, they were
mastery over the flames until the valuable•
NARROW
thewasnearly
o a
e. destroyed,
severely damaged by fire. The cause of
ounont.xkn_o7n. The firm, it is understood, was insured
in the
ESCAPE FROM DESTRUCTION OF WILSON'S
PANORAMA OF TILE CAM' AND PORT NATAL BY FIRE.—
The whole exhibition had a very narrow (=ape from de-
struction by fire in the course of the representation on
Saturday evening. During the change of one of the scenes
the light curtain on one side of the room became enveloped
in flame, and bad it not been for the presence of mind of one
or two gentlemen near the spot, who quickly extinguished
the blaze, the chances are that the first would also have been
the last exhibition of the panorama. A cry of fire was raised
and many of the spectators made a rush at the door, and it
was some minutes before their fears were sufficiently. allayed
to allow of the continuation of the entertainment
however at length brought to a conclusion • 'll 'eh was,
faction to all present.
DipholNniGalls UDRrsoTry,MwUhßoDEstßa , With great sa:is-
The trial of the
.n7s charged with the
wilful murder of Jael Denny, Will take place in the of
course
youTnilgEmnan?
this week, before Lord Campbell.
The assizes will be
opened to-day. Mr. Clarkson and Mr. I lawkins are, we un..
derstand.retained to defend. The calendar for the assizes is
exceedingly heavy, there being us fewer than Ova prisoners