The Sun.
London, England, 1856-08-28 00:00:00

offences I But what is the fusillade, the
gibbet, or the guillotine in comparison to the fate
of those buried in a living tomb and experiencing

lingering deaths.! The :luminary punislimAit
would have been realmerey in comparison to a hat
they have endured for so many wasting ears.
Let the false pretences then be unsparin ly ex-
posed, Wand the real state of affairs under which
such things are possible, placed in a'correct point
of view, so that " he who- runs may read."
It is not the least striking proofof the awful con-
dition in which they are involved that so many per-
sonsplaced at the mercy of their taskmasters should
be ready to come forward to reveal " the secret-
of the prison-house," and to risk the further tor

tures to which they may be exposed in conse-
quence. They have boldly affixed their names t(
the heart-rending statement—have braved the
wrath of their keepers—rather than tamely submi.
to a continuance of their unmerited and unendur
able miseries. Their truly pitiable case has been
made known to the world. It is " wafted on tbt-

wings of the Press" throughout the length and
breadth of Europe ; and ALEXANDER and FRANCIS
JOSEPH, and even BOMBA himself, may
boast of their comparative leniency. Wha'
are the horrors even of Siberia to those of
Cayenne ? Intense cold is even more tolerable t(
a European constitution than the sweltering heat
of a tropical sun. What are the banishings ano
confiscations of " the Red Emperor,' to the
terrible sufferings inflicted by the Junior Member
of the Imperial Family on his Ticticas ? If ever
there was a case for remonstrance, if ever a
friendly nation might fairly and legitimately in-

.erfere on behalf of the subjecfs of another Power,

it is in the deplorable instance under notice.
Surely the representative of England at tht
Tuileries might make an application on behalf o'
these sufferers, and afford an opportunity to Lout:,
NAPOLEON of removing what will otherwise roman
an. indelible blot on his escutcheon, a permanent
stain on his character, which cannot be eradicated
I,y any amount of success, however brilliant
or striking. The groans of the political
victims at Cayenne will ascend to HEAVEN, ano
bring forward at some period or another, however
' long it may be postponed, a bitter retribution.
There is an avenging NEMESIS that pursues such
crimes, and insures a fearful expiation sooner
r later.

To " reap what you have sown" would seem to
be simple justice. The tradesman who, with
patient perseverance, accumulates a little store of
wealth, would feel himself aggrieved if deprived
of it, and would successfully challenge the sym-
pathy of his neigl.bours under the deprivation.
The merchant, whose warehouses groan with the
luxuriant freightage of the ships his enterprise

has despatched to every quarter of the globe,
giving employment to hundreds and contributing ,
to the enjoyment of all, would count himself ill-
used if he were shut out from the market, and
deprived of the means of converting his stock-in-
trade into money. The lawyer, whose eloquence
and astuteness have reflected credit on, the bar,
and done good service to the cause of right,
would see cause to murmur if the honours of the
profession were denied him. The soldier and
sailor, whose skill and valour have con-
tributed to the safety as well as the glory
of the State, look for promotion and other
rewards as for an undoubted right. The
common sense of mankind, indeed, has un-
mistakeably pronounced that claim to be just
which is based on the principle of reaping where
you have sown. Yet, strange to tell, in this
country, at least, that class which of all other
classes has done most to swell the renown, aug-
ment the material resources, and promote the
wellbeing of the people, has, generally speaking,
been regarded as without the boundaries, so to
speak, of the operation of the principle, and has
only sown that others might reap. It has been,
and still is, the fate of men of genius, and not
least that section whose bent has been, or is,
towards mechanical invention, to be thus wrong-

fully dealt with. And the worst of it is, the
injustice of such treatment seems by no means
to be generally recognised. It is exceedingly
difficult, ,in fact, to convince many individuals
that a man can have any fair claim to share in
the product of his brains. Even Government,
which should be on the look-out to reward public
benefactors in cases where reward is likely to be
acceptable, is, to judge by its acts, stark blind or
worse in relation to such claims.
Look at the treatment experienced by HENRY
CORT and .his descendants—HENßY CORT, the
father of the British Iron Trade—the ingenious
inventor, who, some seventy years ago, rescued
the country from dependence on Sweden and
Russia for her supply of wrought iron !
HENRY CORT, who originated the process
whereby wrought-iron is manufactured cheap
by the flame of pit coal in the puddling furnace,
and the hardly less important process, also,
whereby this cheap wrought iron is passe I through
grooved rollers, so .that the manufacturer is
enabled to produce twenty tons of bar iron in the
' same time and with the same labour previously
required to manipulate one ton of inferior quality.
It is in the age of railways and tubular bridges
the request i 4 made. He asked for no remune-
ration from Government, though he had expended
20,00 W. in bringing his processes to perfection.
All he asked was what could not be denied—
patents to protect his rights. These being ob-
tained, and contrac'ls to pay hini 103. per ton for
the use of his processes, signed by the leading
ironmasters, in steps a high officer of the Crown
—the Treasurer of the Navy and Secretary of
War---3C1Z33 his patents, an 1, under an extent
obtained, it is alleged, by the perjury of a confi-
dential deputy, sundry freeholds, valued, with the
stock and goodwill of a lucrative trade, at 30,0001.,
were handed over to the son of a public defaulter
in the Treasurer's office !
The spoliation Was sufficien tip barefaced sand out-
rageous. The remainder of the story is not out of
keeping with the beginning. Of these iniquitous
proceedings
poor CORT could get no account to the
day of his death in 1800, nor has any been ren-
dered since. Two or three years after his decease
Parliament appointed a Commission of Naval In-
quiry to examine into the charge against the finan-
cial department Of the navy—when it came out
that the Treasurer and his confidential deputy, a
few weeks before the sitting .
of the commission, had
indemnified each other by a joint release, and
agreed to burn their, accounts ter somethine, ap-
proaching a million and a half of the public
money which had passed through their hands
Of course all the evidence in ConT's case had
vanished with the accounts in smoke. ilmity
CORT was ruined, and his descendants deprived
of the patrimony even he possessed before his
genius had enrolle I him high in the list of na-
tional benefactors !
Let us be just. The heaven-born minister,
whose bosom friend had perpetrated the spolia-
tion, relieved CORT'S distresses by a pension. of
2001. a year, from which, however, 401. were
unscrupulously docked. This was in 1794—five
years after—and some six years before CORr
died. A pension of 1201. was nominally con-
dulled to his widow, only 1001. being paid rto her !