The Sun.
London, England, 1834-05-30 00:00:00

MY HALF-UNCLE.

Some little time ago, a youth in tolerably
good feather as to dress, but with. more brass
in his face than cash in his pocket, made his
appearance at a respectable farm-house in the
country, and represented himself to the farmer
as being sent to him as a boarder, on account
of delicate health, by a gentleman engaged in
extensive business in Kilmarnock, whom he
stated to be his "half-uncle." The gentleman
being well Ititowil to the farmer, no objections
were made to 'receive a young man whom he
considered so respectably connected. Next day
the youngster saw, and took a fancy to, the
farmer's pony, which he proposed buying, for
the purpose of riding about for the improve-
ment of his health. A trial before closing a
bargain was asked and agreed to, and the deli-
cate youth set off on the pony to Ayr, fur-
nished with a little " loose change" to defray
expenses, which the farmer was strictly enjoined
to put down to the account of " my half-uncle."
Next night the invalid returned minus the
pony, which he said had come down with him
on the road and broke its knees, and he was
therefore obliged to leave it with an innkeeper
in Ayr. The farmer began to look grim, and
the other attempted to smooth him down by
telling him that his " half-uncle" was quite
able and willing to pay for all. As to the
ability, the owner of the pony was quite satis-
fied—the willingness was another affair ; he
therefore thought it necessary, in order that at
least there might be no mistake about the identity
of " my half-uncle," to question the youth a little
more closely. " And you are sure its Mr.
the —?' said the farmer; " Quite sure," said
the youth. " A big, stout, jolly-looking gen-
tleman ?" said the farmer ; " The same," said
the youth. " And it's him you call your half-
uncle ?" " Yes, to be sure, I call him my hay:
uncle, but there's enough o' him to be a whole
uncle to ony body." This was the only truth, as
the reader may by this time suppose, that the
unfortunate owner of the pony was able to elicit.
It chanced, by good luck, that during the exa-
mination, two of - the carts belonging to .the
gentleman whose relationship had thus been
claimed, came in sight, and the drivers
being hailed, the youth was introduced to
them, and matters explained ; the men, how-
ever, professed their ignorance of him, but did
not like to treat with harshness one who confi-
dently claimed so near a relationship to their
master. It was therefore finally agreed that "young
hopeful" should be conveyed on one of the
carts to Kilmarnock, in order to be identified by
his relative. They had not proceeded far, how-
ever, before he manifested considerable unea-
siness ; at last he called out to the driver that
he was terrified to go to Kilmarnock, for,
continued he, "my half-uncle is always in
a dreadful passion wi' ony of his re-
lations that break pony's knees 1" He then
sprang nimbly from the cart, darted through a
hedge, and quickly disappeared amid the shades
of a planting. Had he gone on, we have no
doubt he would have received from his " half-
uncle" some striking proofs of the affection
with which he regards such relations. As this
young vagabond is still supposed to be sorning
about the country, our readers, we trust, after
this notice, will be on their guard against simi-
lar impositions.—Kilmarnock Journal.

A CHEAP LORD CHANCELLOR.—At a
sale in Halifax, on Thursday week, Lord Brougham,
in full orders, painted on a beer-shop sign-board, con-
taining 24 feet of good half-inch deal, with frame
round it, and cross-bars on the back, sold for Jour
shillings 1 11—Yorkshire Gazette.

Etr is,*slll.

LONDON,
FRIDAY EVENING, MAY 30, 1834.

Public anxiety is still great with respect to
the completion of the Cabinet, but nothing
definitive is yet determined on, or if deter-
mined, not officially known. The same
parties that were yesterday named to particular
offices are repeated to-day such as Mr.
SPRING RICE, Mr. MORE O'FERRALL, Mr.
F. BARING, and such subordinate officials ;
but these and such as these, however respecta-
ble, will not,, we fear, add either weight or com-
manding influence to the administration. Their
only recommendation will be, unity of purpose—
as they must of course, in the Cabinet, adopt
the views of those whom they have been in the
habit of looking up to as superiors. The fol-
lowing list has been handed about in the City as
the new arrangement, but we do not pledge our-
selves for its authenticity, nor, if correct, does it
' augur much for Lord GREY'S discernment. It
may merely serve to finish this Session, but will
not assuredly live to face another :

Lord AUCKLAND, to the Admiralty; Lord
CARLISLE, Privy Seal ; Mr. SPRING RICE,
Colonies. Lord MULGRAVE, Post-office,
without a seat in the Cabinet.

Mr. ELLICE, Secretary at War, with a seat
in the Cabinet; Mr. FRANCIS BARING, Se-
cretary of the Treasury.

SUN OFFICE, Hay-past Three.
ANOTHER ACCOUNT.
Mr. SPRING RlCE—Colonies.
Lord CARLISLE—Privy Seal.
Lord AUCKLAND—Admiralty.
Lord MULGRAVE—Post-office.
Mr. E. ELLlCE—Cabinet Minister.
Mr. MORE OTERRALL—Lord of the
Treasury.
Mr. F. BARlNG—Secretary to the Treasury.
We have also heard it stated very confidently
that Lord DURHAM will go as Ambassador to
Paris (preparatory to being Foreign Secretary.)
Earl GRANVILLE to come over, and go to the
Admiralty.

The Irish bishops are reported to have used
these words in an address to his Majesty :
" Should, however, abuses be found to exist in
our ecclesiastical establishment, we profess our
readiness to co-operate for their removal."
So it is a matter of doubt to these heads of the
Church whether there are any abuses in our
ecclesiastical establishments, and they modestly
require that " no alteration be made in the dis-
cipline and service of the Church but by the
sanction and recommendation of its spiritual
guardians." We are .ready to admit that the
bishops and clergy are the fittest persons
to make alterations in the Litany or Liturgy, or
forms of worship, but least of all fit to remove
the abuses, or reform the polity, of the Church.
Men who_ can see no abuses in our ecclesiastical
establishments must wilfully shut their eyes
against the truth, and are the very last persons
that anv rational Government would apply to
for assistance in re-modelling the constitution of
the Church. Doubt abuses in our ecclesiastical
establishments, and assert that the polity of our
church is modelled as closely as circumstances
will admit, or the ecclesiastical institutions
founded by our Lord's apostles ! Why the
abuses of . the church are the crying grievance
of the day. Every layman, and most church-
men, denounce them daily, and believe that
there is no safety for the Episcopal Church till
they are redressed, yet these watchful shepherds
of the flock can see no danger, and quietly repose
under the belief that her institutions are as
pure as those founded by the Apostles. What
a singular church the Apostles must have
founded, if it was the prototype of the English
Episcopal Church I Bishops living in palaces
with 30,0001. a year, attending more to carnal
than spiritual concerns, while the great Apostle,
according to his own words, "had no certain
dwelling place, and laboured, working with his
own hands I"—pastors of the flock receiv-

ing wages for services they never perform, I
—some of them with five or six livings, and re-
ceiving thousands a-year. for doing ab.solutely
nothing, and the discipline of the Church alto-
gether so relaxed that it is more easy to
punish a layman for disgraceful conduct than to
find: one that ought to be a model for Chris-
tians, and a pattern for every moral virtue.
Such wilful obstinacy leaves no hope for
Church Riform from the Episcopal. Bench,
and only confirms the saying that reform in any
corporate body or class of men, whether in
church or state, always comes from without.
The Catholic Church took no steps to redress
grievances till they were compelled by the
people. But for the people we should still have
had rotten boroughs and a mock representa-
tion ; and if the people had not taken the lead
in ecclesiastical reform, we should still be
afflicted with tithes, pluralities, non-residence
of clergy, and every abuse that oppresses the
people and degrades the Church. They have,
however, taken the question out of the hands
of the Church, and reform will be carried in
opposition to the episcopal bench. We have
seen what is said to be the KING'S answer to
the address of the Irish bishops, and can only
say that we firmly believe his MAJESTY
never made use of the words imputed to him.

It is evidently the composition of some secret
enemy of all ecclesiastical reform. The KING
has hitherto been the best friend of reform, and
he will not now fail in his duty.

The Pitt Club anniversary was celebrated
yesterday. And such a celebration I Judging
from the speeches delivered, it must have been
more melancholy than a funeral assembly, not-
withstanding (as the Morning Post assures us)
" the dinner was excellent, and the wines
superb." Not a single gleam of courage, viva-
city or confidence was elicited the whole even-
ing. The spirits of the guests were flatter.tban
the flattest small beer at a cheap boarding-
school. Even the great Duke was in the
blues—as his Grace is Colonel of the Blues,
this, perhaps, is not to he wondered at
—and Lord ELDON " refused to be com-
forted." If such was the melancholy of
the meeting, while the daintiest viands
Were before them, and the rarest wines in brisk
circulation, what must . it have been when the
time of parting arrived, and the landlord's 'ac-
count was sent in ! Rabelais has well observed
that the hour of reckoning is the most melan-
choly, whether to peer or peasant, in the whole
twenty-four. Poor Lord ELDON must have
felt, to his very pocket's core, the truth of this
assertion. The landlord's bill must have ope-
rated on his sensitive nerves like a Reform Bill.
The different Items must have shocked him like
so many Schedules. How he survived them, we
know not. To pay, is at all times, under every
circumstance, an exceedingly painful duty ; but
to pay when one- has had no enjoyment
for one's money, is an affliction not to be
thought of without a shudder. We hope
the respected landlord of the London Tavern
has no reason to regret yesterday's Pitt anniver-
sary dinner. We do not imagine that he has (for.
GoD forbid that we should impute unworthy mo,
Lives
to his guests !) though it is remarkable
that at about " eleven o'clock," when all the
wines on the table were exhausted, a sudden
rush was made to the door—or to use the more
courtly phrase of our morning contemporary,
"Abe company broke up in the most per-
fect harmony !" Why or wherefore this
abrupt evanishment took place, a sense of de-
licacy prevents us from inquiring.
The chairman, Colonel CoNoLLY, who was
the chief speaker of the evening—and this, by
the bye, . may go far to account for the general
dullness of his hearers—made one remark that
struck us by its exceeding truth and justice.,
He " felt convinced," he said, " of the feeble-
ness of his own powers." Exquisite critic
Never was the old adage, " know thyself,"
more happily illustrated than in this instance I
The gallant colonel went on to observe, that
"he was addressing an audience which bore a
grateful and lively remembrance of blessings un-
numbered and unequalled, derived from the
pursuit of the councils of WILLIAM PITT."
The gallant Colonel, it is manifest, is a wag
of the first water, or he would not apply the
terms " blessings unnumbered and unequalled"
to the monstrous pension-lists, sinecures, jobs,
and so forth, entailed on the country by the
Pitt system. By the " blessings unequalled,"
he, of course, means the Tory boroughmon-
gers ; by the " blessings unnumbered," the
eight hundred millions of debt, which the
" heaven-born" Minister has saddled on the na-
tion's back ! Was ever irony equal to this ? And
then the sly allusions to the gratitude and
vivid memories of those who had profited by
such a system! Had the gallant speaker's
hearers not been in the lowest state "-of de-
spondency, they must have laughed, fit to kill
themselves, at such irresistible facetiousnes.

Our Contemporary, in calling attention to
the speeches delivered at this dismal anniver-
sary, takes the opportunity of comparing Lord
CASTLEREAGH! to CROMWELL. How pro-
foundly stupid, or how broadly ironical I Sup-
posing, however, that the Moining Post is
serious, where, we "ask, lies the resemblance
bet Ween the two men ?. CRonIWELL was a
hero who made the name of Englishman re-
spected throughoui Europe ; CASTLEREAGH
a statesman who made it everywhere a by-
word for scorn and ridicule. CROMWELL
freed his country from the shackles of a mo-
narchical despotism ; CASTLEREAGH riveted
those shackles still closer. C RONI wELL was to-
lerant, CASTLEREAGH intolerant, in matters of
religion. CRONIWELL, as an Englishman, loved
England ; CASTLEREAGH, as an Irishman,
hated Ireland. CROMWELL saved his coun-
try ; CASTLEREAGH betrayed it. CROM-
WELL was a stern, unbending republican soldier;
CASTLEREAGH a pliant, sycophantic tool of
tyranny. CROMWELL sent an English army
to 'succour his persecuted dissenting brethren in
Switzerland and Piedmont; CASTLEREAGH

sent. an English....arniy to enslave his Catholic
fellow-countrymen- in Ireland. CROMWELL set
all the monarchies of Europe at defiance ; C AS-
TLEREAGH bowed the knee to the Holy Al-
liance. In one respect only our Contemporary's
parallel holds good. CROMWELL never opened
his lips in the senate but to perpetrate some
absurdity or other ; CASTLEREAGH had the
same intuitive genius for blunder. CROM-
WELL was vague, wordy,. obscure ; CASTLE..
REAGII possessed equal talents for mystify-
ing and bewildering. But enough of this.
The Irish apostate is now forgotten, or lives
only in the deep, settled hatred of the country
he betrayed. ;

A practice has become prevalent among
journalists of quoting the prices of wheat at
Athsterdam, Hamburg, Paris, and some other
places, and contrasting them with the prices in
London- We marvel why they do not quote the
prices at Dantzic also ; if they did, they would
find the price of wheat lower at Dantzic than
elsewhere, and they would thus perceive that
here, as in almost everything else that relates
to the Corn Laws, there is a fallacy which re-
quires to be detected. The price of wheat is
found to be uniformly greater in London than
it is in Paris, or any of the places where the
prices are quoted,and the reason is that the demand
for wheat is much greater in London, and in
Great Britain, than it is at Paris, or in France,
where, in general, the prices are higher than in
any other country than Great Britain. The
numbers of persons engaged in manufacture,
and in other pursuits than agriculture, are as
three to one of the latter in Great Britain.
There is no other country in the world where
the numbers engaged in agriculture are so few,
compared to the entire population, as they are
in Great Britain ; and it is the extensive de-
mand of two-thirds of the population upon the
labours of the other third who supply the whole
population with food that increases the price
so much in Great Britain.

At the present time from the absence of
any great demand, the price of wheat at Dantzic
is less than 20s. a quarter, when the home
price comes up to the importation price, and the
duty ceases to amount to a prohibition, the price
of wheat at Dantzic rises nearly to the same
amount with the price here. Does it not then
necessarily follow, that if our great demand
were allowed to operate at all times freely at
Dantzic as it. does at home, the price at Dantzic
would always be the same with the price here,
with the difference only of the expense of bring-
ing wheat from Dantzic to the markets of this
country? If there were nothing to hinder our
great demand from so operating, the price at all
places where it did so operate, as well as at
Dantzic, would be the same with the price here,
with this difference only, that is, the price would
be equalised, and the increase of price at Dantzic
and other places would be great, but the diminu-
tion of the price in Great Britain would be little.
The consequence then would be that grain
could not be purchased abroad cheaper than it
could be at home, and a preference would thus
always be given to home grain, because it could
be immediately sold by the dealer as soon as
the state of the market enabled him to realize a
profit ; whereas, if he purchased grain abroad, the
home price might fall before it could be brought
here to be sold. In the one ease, "that in pur-
chasing home gram, he could always purchase
so as. to be sure of a profit, whereas, in the
other case, that in purchasing abroad, he always
ran the risk of a loss ; and this was the state
of things before 1815, when agriculture flou-
rished. Our owners and occupiers of land,
therefore, stand very much in their own light in
maintaining the present Corn Laws, on this
ground alone, even if there were no other reason
against them, though their apprehension of the
fall of price is the main, but mistaken ground
upon which they maintain their laws.

Hamburg papers of the 27th instant have
been received. They state that the Russian
Government has published an extremely severe
ukase against all Russian subjects residing
out of the empire without permission. No
" noble," it seems, is to reside more than four
years out of the empire, and no " non-noble"
more than three years, unless he can assign
the most satisfactory reasons for his absence.
The Frankfort, papers contain no news of
public interest :

HAMBURG, MAY 27 .—BoRsEN HALLE.—Funds were
higher to-day, and the market animated. New Aus-
trian were sellers at 1151.
Discount, :;4 per cent. End of May.
A nglo-Danish Loan, three per cent. 72
Anglo-Russian 102%
Russian Inscription, 5 per cent., 182 4,
Ditto, ditto, 1831 95%
Ditto, ditto, 1832. 95%
Certificates 9B
Polish Bonds 124t1
Prussian Bonds, 1832
Austrian Bank Shares 1300
Ditto Metalliques PI
Ditto 4 per Cent.....
Spanish 3 per Cents.
Spanish Cortes (A. F. Haldimand and • ons) 35%
Ditto 1 per Cent 53 yi
Dutch 2y2 per Cents.
Ditto 5 per Cents 9314
Portuguese Regency 7514
The English mail of the 23d inst. had not arrived
when we went to press, and the Dutch mail brings us
no additional intelligence from England.
The Russian Government has published an ex-
tremely severe ukase against all Russian subjects re-
siding out of the empire without permission. The
following are the principal enactments of this specimen
of autocratical legislation :
A regular passport authorises a noble to reside
four years out of the empire, and a non-n9ble three
years. If any one exceeds this term, without
express permission, his property is to be placed in the
hands .of trustees, and after a suitable deduction has
been made for the maintenance of such of his family
as may have remained in Russia, the remainder of his
income is to be applied to State purposes. If, on his
return, he can prove that unforeseen and inevitable
difficulties prevented his return, the property will be
restored to him ; but should he not be able to do so,
his property is to remain in the hands of trustees till
his death, and then to be handed over to his legiti-
mate heirs. _ .

A Russian female marrying a foreigner, and quitting
Russia with her husband, if possessed of landed pro-
perty, is to sell the same, and one tenth of the produce
of the sale is to belong to the Government.
A Russian nobleman, lately deceased, has left
a legacy of 50,000 rubles to increase at compound
interest till the year 1925, when the accumulated ca-
pital is to be given as a prize for the best history, in
Russia, of the reign of Emperor Alexander. The
capital, it is calculated, will then amount to nearly two
millions of rubles.—Hamburg Reporter, May 27.
EXCHANGES ON LONDON.
HAMBURG, MAY 27.-13 834 ; two months, 137%.
BERLIN, MAY 21.—Three months. 6 24%.
ST. PETERSBURG'', MAY 20.—Three months, 10 17-32.
STOCKHOLM. MAY 16.—Two months, 12 38.
—.Hamburg Papers, May 27,

- SUN OFFICE, Four o'clock.
EPSOM. RACES THIS DAY.