The Sun.
London, England, 1860-11-06 00:00:00

in the pillory ; we wonder even the sentence :lid
not ada---to have his ears cut off and nailed to that
infamous pillory Recollect the words of JUNIUS,
when speaking of the people, where he says that
they are seldom wrong in their opinions—in their
sentiments NEVER ! It was a sentiment—a
generous, noble sentiment—that led the electors of
Westminster to return Lord COCHRANE to Parlia-
ment within eleven days from his condemnation to
a year's imprisonment in the King's Bench. The
accuracy of the popular judgment in obeying the
impulse of that sentiment was proclaimed years
afterwards in another reign, upon King WILLIAM
IV's. accession to the throne, a paltry, but still to the
gallant and outraged sailor, a most precious, meed of
justice was doled—viz., by the restoration of Lord
COCHRANE'S name to the Navy List, from which it
had been shamefully erased, by his restoration to his
rank in that service, the rank from which
he had been most shamefully degraded. His
rise in his profession we have not counted among
his honours, for they were bis simple right ; he
had earned his promotion over and over again by
his long and active service, to say nothing of his
many matchless achievements. The one sole
" honour" of his life vouchsafed to him by Eng-
land was—the Knighthood of the Bath. Like
another glorious hero in the sister profession, the
late Sir CHARLES JAMES NAPIER—a man as brave
as DUNDONALD, endowed with as noble a warlike
genius, and we may add as ungraciously and as
grudgingly recompensed, though never, happily,
as contumeliously treated as the old Sailor Earl
whose inanimate dust is now awaiting its sepulture
—like Sir CHARLES JAMES NAPIER in this respect,
in death as in life, when DUNDONALD breathes his
last, when "after life's fitful fever he sleeps
well " the one recompense that has been
given to him by the land he had loved
and served so well could be symbolised in those
three initials—G.C.B. There was comprised under
those three letters the whole of England's " return"
alike to NAPIER and to DUNDONALD. These,
however, are incidents in our national annals not
altogether unprecedented. JERVIS dies an Earl
from that single victory off St. Vincent, wen for
him by Commodore NELSON'S disobedience of orders
—while NELSON himself dies several years after-
wards, after winning not only that victory off St.
Vincent, but three others immeasureably more re-
markable and more important—the Nile, Copen-
hagen, and Trafalgar—a Viscount. During the
earlier part of the same reign of " good old GEORGE
lll."—Admiral HowE wins a victory on the Ist of
June, and is at once rewarded with an Earldom !
But NELSON dies after a hundred contests with his
frame battered to pieces, with an arm off, with an
eye out, and so forth, physically a mere wreck,
prematurely old at the age of forty-six, NELSON
dies after all these contests and after such victories
as St. Vincent, the Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafal-
gar, a Viscount. FITZROY SOMERSET, again, when
he passes away from the scene into his grave—has
received a peerage for chronicling the weather very
carefully under the walls of Sebastopol, and (better
than any peerage to a true soldier) he has had
placed in his grasp the baton of a Field Marshal.
While Sir CHARLES NAPIER, the Conqueror of
Scinde—the first soldier of his age after WELLING-
TON—Sir CHARLES NAPIER, the victor of Meanee
and Hyderabad dies—a General and a G.C.B.
Precisely as this kindred hero, boast, glory, and
paragon of the sister profession, the late venerab.
Earl of DUNDONALD —dies an Admiral and a
G.C.B. Why, NAPIER, years before his death,
ought to have been a Marshal of England—ought
to have had an Earldom, if not a Marquisate. As for
DUNDONALD, who shall say that a badge like the Vi-
ctoria Cross ever glittered upon a breast as dauntless ?
Might not any order of knighthood have received
lustre from his wearing it ? What grander coro-
net than the old hereditary one descended to him
from his forefathers, would not have sat well upon
that gallant crest, even though it had been a coronet
circled with the leaves of the strawberry ? Instead
of anything of all which Lord DUNDONALD breathes
his last simply a G.C.B. And with the recollection
of his possession of even that order of knighthood,
we have the painful remembrance of his arms and
banner having been torn down from their stall in
HENRY VlL's Chapel in Westminster Abbey, and
having been, then and there, kicked out of it with
the utmost indignity—under a misapprehension !
Yet, with these distressing facts in our memory, we
now find the Ministers of the Crown shrinking from
the responsibility of according a public funeral in
that same old Abbey at Westminster to the remains
of Lord DUNDONALD. Lord DERBY'S Government
did not so hesitate when the Duke of WELLINGTON
expired in the month of September. And here is
a hero worthy by the deeds recorded in his history
of lying by the side of WELLINGTON. Let J,ord
PALMERSTON'S Government do now what Lord
DERBY'S Government did then—let them act upon
their own responsibility, and, so acting, accord due
honour to the dust of Lord DUNDONALD. Shame
upon them if they hesitate ! It is the last oppor-
tunity England has of expiating her ingratitude
to this DUGUESCLIN of the Ocean !