The Sun.
London, England, 1869-09-06 00:00:00

LONDON, MONDAY, SEPT. 6, 1869.

THACKERAT once dubbed a celebrated politico-
literary newspaper "'[he Saturday Reviler." Among
all the journals of the metropolis, the particular organ
thus referred to, is the only oue that has taken up, and
enforced, and emphasised the frightful imputation
directed against the memory of Lord BYRON by the
authoress of " Uncle Tom's Cabin "—commenting
upon it, in fact, con amore, with a sort of relish, or
gusto, as though it were a something entirely con-
genial to its tastes. Fragmentary passages are quoted
by it from Lord BYRON'S
.diary, from Lord BYRON'S
letters, from Lord BYRON'S poems—broken sen-
tences are given, vague words are italicized, casual
allusions are utterly distorted in their appli-
cation and significance, inferences of the most
unjustifiably disgraceful kind are deduced from
mere passing ejaculations. And all this is done in
cold blood, with a deliberate intention to fix upon
Lord BYRON, if possible, the horrible guilt imputed
to him—according to the rambling, and incoherent,
and (even in the dates) erroneous statement of an
American story-teller—upon the authority, or at any
rate, upon the pretended authority of Lady BYRON.
The real question now more immediately before the
public, at the present moment, in the matter of this so-
called " True Story" in Macmillan's Magazine for
September, is—not the credibility of the story itself
(that is a matter for consideration afterwards)
but the credibility of the two women, one dead, one
living, upon whose authority that story has now been
related. How far are we to believe what is thus
stated by Mrs. STowE in the name of Lady BYRON ?
That is, first of all, the question submitted to us for
our consideration. Fortunately, two witnesses, one
as to Lady BYRON, one as to Mrs. STOWE, have just
now made their appearance before us with something
like evidence upon the matter—namely, as to the cre-
dibility of these feminine (though one hardly likes to
call themferninine) assailants of Lord BYRON'S reputa-
tion. Mr. W3I. HOWITT writes a letter to the Daily
News about Lady BYRON, whom he knew very well
personally. " A Member of Congress" writes a
letter to the Times about Mrs. BEECHER STOWE, his
countrywoman.

Speaking of Lady BYRON, Mr. HOWITT writes to
the Daily News, among other things, this :—" lam
sure, " he says," that Lady BYRON was a woman of
the most honourable and conscientious intentions
but she was subject to a constitutional idiosyncracy
of a most peculiar kind,-which rendered her, when
under its influence, absolutely and persistently un-
just. lam quite sure from my own observation of
her that, when she was seized by this peculiar con-
dition of the nerves, she was helplessly under its
control. Through this the changes in her mood
were sudden, and most painful to all about
her. I have seen her of an evening in the most
amiable, cordial, and sunny humour, full of in-
terest and sympathy ; and I have seen her
the next morning come down as if she had
laid all night not on a feather bed, but on
a glacier—frozen as it were to the very soul, and no
efforts on the part of those around her could restore
her for the day to a genial social warmth. In such
mo►nents she seemed to take sudden and deep impres-
sions against persons and things, which, though the
worst might pass away, left a permanent effect." Of
this, he gives two very striking illustrations.

Speaking of Mrs. STOWE " A Member of Congress,"
addressing himself from Paris to the limes, begins
what he has to say upon the matter of her credibility
by observing that "Americans in Europe are of ten sm.-
prised by the comments of the London Press on the
affairs of their country, but [that] the great attention
just now paid to a recent article of Mrs. BEECHER
STOWE, with reference to Lord BYRON, causes
more than usual astonishment." "We all know,"
he adds, " that that lady is a mere sensationalist
writer ; that nothing from her pen is considered by
the American public as historically reliable, and that
she will at any time sacrifice truth, if by doing so she
can succeed in attracting notoriety." After comment-
ing upon the notoriously untruthful statements upon
which the fiction of " Uncle Tom's Cabin" was built
up, " A Member of Congress " goes on to say that,
" As the great notice which a certain class of Eng-
lish philanthropists gave that book at the time gave
her the only literary reputation she ever had with us
[that is, with the Americans], we [i.e., the Americana]
are not grieved that she should now turn ungrate-
fully on all England by calumniating the private
character of her greatest modern poetic genius.',
So far—even that, we might say, is tolerably strong
flavoured But it is not by any means strong
flavoured enough to express the scorn excited in the
mind of " A Member of Congress" by Mrs. STOWE'S
last proceeding : for the writer ends by saying em-
phatically—" In America the BEECHERS are known
as mere sensationalists, without true merit or sub-
stantial talents. While the crowd is amused with
their sayings and antics, the thinking portion of
the people pay little heed to anything emanating
from their fruitful pens." Remember, this is said
by an American citizen and by "A Member of Con-
gress," addressing himself to all Europe and America
through the columns of the 7 imes newspaper.
In pagan tombs there are found deposited little
earthern vessels, hermetically sealed, and symboli-
cally containing the tears of the survivors of the
deceased—little classic relics known aslachrymatories.
As a sensationalist Mrs. STOWE has allowed herself
to enact for a while the jumbled parts of a ghoul, a
resurrectionist, and a Brinvilliers of reputations.
She has, so to speak, torn open the moulderingcoffin of
Lady BYRON, she has abstracted thence not a lachry-
matory but a vial of wrath containing a secretion
deadlier than vitriol—the which, after violating, in
turn, the awful repose of his tomb, she has poured,
to the last drop, into Lord BYRON'S coffin, upon his
crumbling dust.
It is strange, and it is affecting to the last degree,
to remember at this moment how, in the noblest por-
tion of his very finest poem, namely, in the fourth
canto of " Childe Harold," Lord BYRON, standing i❑
the midst of the ruins of the Colisseum, and little
foreseeing what Time, thus, had in store for his tar-
nished but splendid reputation, uttered this pathetic
and impassioned ejaculation :
" Oh Time ! the beautifier of the dead,

Alorner of the ruin, comforter
And only healer when the heart bath bled
Time the corrector when our judgments err,
The test of truth, love—solo philosopher,
For all beside are sophists, from thy thrift,
Which novor losos though it cloth defer—
Time the avenger! unto thee I lift
My hands, and eyes, and heart, and crave of thee a gift :

Amidst this wreck, where thou hest made a shrine
And temple more divinely desolate,
Among thy mightier offerings hero are mine,
Ruins of years—though few yet full of fate :
If thou hast ever seen me too elate
Hear me not ; but if calmly I have borne
Good, and reserved my pride against the hate
Which shall not whelm me, let me not have worn
This iran in my soul in vain— shall they not mourn ?"
Referring to his own and his' ancestral faults," as
being only among the causes of the wounds from

which he " bleeds withal"—it is then, almost imme-
diately afterwards, that he adds—
" in this page a record will I seek.
Not in the air shall these my words disperse,
Though I be ashes ; a far hour shall wreak
The deep prophetic fullness of this verso,
And pile on human heads the mountain cf my curse !
That curse shall be forgiveness.—Have I not—
Hoar me my mother Barth ! behold it Heaven !
Have I not had to wrestle with my lot?
Have I not suffered things to bo forgiven ?
Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven,
Hopes sapped, name blighted, Life's life lied away ?
And only not to desperation driven
Because not altogether of such clay
As rots into the souls of those whom 1 survey."
Among the " things to be forgiven," the deadliest of
all, it would seem, was what has been thus reserved
for his name and for his fame posthumously ! And
yet—in spite of Lady BYRON'S hallucinations, and in
spite of Mrs. SrowE's sensationalism—we have still a
full conviction that BYRON'S apostrophe to Heaven
and Earth, from the midst of the Colisseum, will be
answered, to the full, eventually, and that in his in-
stance, in the end, Time will, in truth, be the Aven-
ger.

WHATEVER, be the result of the three election
commissions now being held—and we presume that
at least two of the peccant boroughs are doomed to
political extinction—one thing is very certain, that
all our legislation hitherto has failed to put down
bribery. Various Acts have been passed, but they
have proved as frail as packthread. The compara-
tively stringent measure passed last year, and which
was the most creditable achievement of Mr.
DISRAELI'S Administration, has turned out to be as
powerless as its predecessors. While the debates on
the subject were still fresh in the memory of candi-
dates, constituents, and legal agents, while the
clauses of the newly-written law, with the penalties
for infringement, stared them in the face, these
parties set to work to renew the electoral debauchery
and corruption which they had practised with im-
punity on former occasions. With impunity—these
words explain the audacity of the offenders.
It is not legislation that has been in fault,
but the non-infliction of the penalty. There
had been laws against bribery before, but they
had never been enforced. Guilty boroughs,
like Sudbury, St. Alban's, Totnes, Reigate,
Lancaster, and Yarmouth, had been disfranchised,
but that was no punishment to the venal voters in
those towns. If their votes could not fetch money
they did not care to have them. They were quite
willing to run the risk of disfranchisement for the
sake of a bribe, since they valued the franchise only
for the bribe. They believed that there was
no other risk. Had they not a right
to believe it P Convicted bribers were not
removed from the magistrates' bench. Double
dyed perjurers, steeped to the lips in lies, went un-
prosecuted by the Government, and suffered neither
in trade nor in the estimation of their fellow towns-
men. Moreover, it was always easy to obtain an
indemnity by volunteering to give evidence. Just as
BROADHEAD and his associates escaped hanging by
confessing their murders, so the depraved electors of
the corrupt boroughs escaped prosecution by telling
what they knew, with the certainty that they would
not only obtain a certificate of exemption from the
Commissioners, but be applauded by their neighbours
as clever actors in a laughable comedy, the LISTONS
and MATTnEws's of electioneering. Thus it came
to pass that, in spite of Mr. DISRAELI'S measure, the
last general election was as corrupt as ever. Thus
it happens that disclosures are now being made
which must make every honest Englishman blush
with shame. Thus it is that while the corruption of
Bridgwater is being exposed there are other
boroughs not far off, especially in an adjoining
county, whose guilt is probably quite as deep
although not brought to the light. The sinners did
not credit the sincerity of the Legislature. They
believed that the new Act would be as the old Acts,
very stringent in letter, but never enforced. Reckoning
upon their past experience, they were quite prepared
to run the risk of punishment for the sake of a
certain profit. The bribe was ready to hand, the
penalty was so remote that it was not worth
weighing against a Bank note or even half a
sovereign.

It must be, then, with something very like dismay
that these hoary-headed sinners now find themselves
in imminent danger of a criminal prosecution. The
Commissioners would seem to have received instruc-
tions that there is to be no shamming on this occa-
sion. Mr. GLADSTONE would appear to have resolved
with Mr. DISRAELI that the plague spot of
our Constitution shall be cut out. The
first seems to have determined that the
measure passed by the second shall not
be a dead letter, shall not be a laughing-stock, as all
former Acts have been. In all these towns the
Commissioners have exhibited a severity quite
unknown before. One man has been fined for con-
tempt of court ; another has been committed to
prison for the same offence; others have had cer-
tificates refused; and at Bridgwater, the worst of
the offending boroughs, the Commissioners
have made a special report, in order that
the Attorney-General may be able to prosecute
within the twelve months allowed by the law. All
this vigour looks as if Ministers were in earnest.
We sincerely trust that they will confirm this
impression. Let them resolve that they will, with-
out respect of party, prosecute the worst offenders,
and punish them on conviction. Candidates, con-
stituents, and legal agents will be convinced
that bribery, if not a disgraceful, is at least a
dangerous offence, when they see their fellows
inmates of some of Her Majesty's gaols.

IT is a grievous pity that Mr. RoEntex's friends
do not induce him to retire into private life. Every
fresh speech that he utters makes us the more
inclined to laugh, until we remember that this is an
" Atticus" whose folly should rather make us weep.
The one-while reformer and economist now hates
reform, and talks of " pitiful " economy. Ile
declares at the Cutlers' Feast that England must
have a navy capable of contending with all the
other navies of the world put together, and then—
for he is not even consistent—he goes on to
say that the Volunteer movement has made
invasion an exploded idea. It is not worth while
wasting words over a man so thoroughly illogical.
But we would ask him two questions : Is efficiency
compatible with economy, and are we not more
likely to obtain the first by practising the second ?
And has he ever heard of the practice of self-
insurance ? If not, let him ask our great shipowners
what it means. They do not insure their ships,
because it pays them better to be their own insurers.
The contingency of losing all their vessels is possible,
but is so improbable that it is not worth the heavy
burden of insuring
every ship. So is it with us.
The contingency of France uniting with Prussia,
Russia with Turkey, Italy with Spain, and all with
the United States, in order to invade England, is
within human conception, but is so extravagantly
absurd a supposition that we should be simply
madmen if we were to provide against it. In
fact, we could not do so if we would.
We should have to turn all our adult
males into soldiers and sailors. We should have to
give up our trade and manufactures in order to pre-
vent an invasion which would destroy them, It
would be, in fact, a case of proper vitanz virendi
perdere causas. Enough and more than enough of
the senile folly of this poor old man.
Let us turn to a more pleasant subject. The
Marquis of lIARTINGTON offered to the Sheffield
Cutlers a new idea. lle proposed that the Irish
land question should next year be taken out of
the list of party questions. It was a startling
tinig to ry
b mayes aisapli for t and
it. fall
proposition. Is not this the very question of all
others upon which the Opposition hope that the
Ministry
ytetitshesrueb
jiseest hasionc-
thl
iAnd
hitherto this
not been included in the rota of party questions.
With the exception of Mr. BBIGHT, there is, we
, believe, no prominent statesman who has

committed himself by any definite propos
Then it must be remembered that the
Conservative party themselves complained last
year that Irish problems should be made the
battle ground of parties. As they were in a mino-
rity the protests were perhaps not entirely disinte-
rested. But the Minister who now proposes a truce
belongs to a Government and to a party strong
almost beyond precedent; strong enough to carry
their measure ruthlessly if they choose, strong enough
to bear secessions far more numerous thanthere is any
likelihood of taking place. Once more, it is certain
that this question must be settled, and that without
delay. Which is the more likely to settle it, the party
who are in a large majority, and who have just settled
one great problem, or the party which, for the
present, is in a hopeless minority by reason of its
opposition to that settlement ? The Conservatives
will do well to take counsel with the nation before
they reject the POSTMASTER-GENERAL'S offer lof an
armistice.