The Sun.
London, England, 1867-10-18 00:00:00

THAMES.

STEALING COALS BY A MERCHANT'S CLERK.—
Jonathan Young, clerk to Messrs. Riehett and
Smith, the well-known coal merchants in Ratcliff,
was brought before Mr. Benson, charged with
stealing a half ton of coals, the property of his
employers, and sentenced to one month's imprison-
ment and hard labour.

TILE PASCAL AND NEIVTON FORGERIES.

The following remarks have been addressed by
Sir David Brewster to M. Chevreul, the President
of the French Academy of Sciences, but which can-
not for some time appear iu the proceedings of that
body :

" The descent of two great Monarchs into the
_ arena of the Papal controversy as the correspon-
dents, the counsellors, and the reprovers of Sir
Isaac Newton obliges his friends to study this new
and almost ludicrous fragment of the most auda-
cious forgery of modern times.
" Sir Isaac Newton is charged with having, in a
letter to Huygens, written some years before, used
expressions reflecting on the scientific character of
Descartes and Pascal. These expressions, it ap-
pears, were communicated to Louis XIV. by Huy-
gens himself, the friend of Newton, and on this
occasion the betrayer of his confidence. The King
and his Court are said to have taken offence at
Newton's expressions, and when Newton is in-
formed of the Royal displeasure he prepares a letter
of apology, which, after being approved of by M.
Desmaizeaux, he forwards to Louis XIV. lam
anxious,' he says,' to retract the expressions which,
from my ignorance of the meaning of certain
French words, I did not know would be so offensive.'
The King sends this letter to the Abbe Bignon, who
informs Newton' that the King accepts his apology,
and thanks him for it.'
"It will require, we think, some faith, even in
the countrymen of Pascal, to believe that Louis
XIV., " God's Vicegerent upon earth,' would con-
descend to meddle in a petty question of phi-
losophy.
" Not less strange and incredible is the allega-
tion that James 11. and Sir Isaac Newton, two
Englishmen, should write numerous letters to each
other in French, two of which have been published
by M. Chasles. In one of these, dated at St. Ger-
mans, 16th January, 1685, and signed Jaques
R.,' he charges Newton with injustice to Pascal,
and asks him to retract and apologise for it. Now
this letter is obviously a forgery. James 11. was not
at St. Germans in January, 1685, and if he had
been there he could not have signed Jacques R., as
he was then Duke of York, and did not succeed to
Charles 11. till February 6, 1689.
"It is possible that 1685 may be an error of the
press for 1689, and therefore giving the forger the
benefit of this supposition, we shall examine the
other letter of James 11., dated the 12th of January,
1689, in which he also asks from Newton a retrac-
tation of his expressions against Pascal. At this date
James 11. was at St. Germans, but he bad arrived
there only 15 days before the date of this letter—an
outcast from his throne, and with higher duties to
discharge than that of writing letters in the inte-
rests of a stranger. At this very time, too, he was
in anxious communication with Louis XIV., and
making preparations for a descent upon Ireland,
where-he landed in February, 1689 ; and we should
not wonder if one of his other letters to Newton
should be dated on the day of the battle of the
Boyne.

" But if it is incredible that the Royal exile
should be writing letters to Newton in these
anxious moments of his life, it is equally incredible
that Newton should be writing numerous letters,
or even one letter, to James. Newton had always
been his enemy when he was the Sovereign of Eng-
land, and he never could have been his correspon-
dent. He had opposed James 11. in his attempt to
insult the University of Cambridge, and ho went
with a deputation to London, and succeeded in re-
sisting his arbitrary mandate. In 1689, when the
forger engages him in writing nnumerous letters to
the exiled King, he was busy at Cambridge in re-
conciling the Jacobites in the University to the
Government of William of Orange.
" In the letter to M. Desmaizeaux, in which he
consults him about his apology to the French King,
and which must have been written in 1689, Newton
conjectures that Flamsteed must have *had some-
thing to do in the matter of his supposed injustice
to Pascal. This conjecture alone proves the letter
to be a forgery. Newton and Flamsteed were at
this time great friends, and, having had occasion to
examine the whole of the correspondence between
these distinguished individuals, I have no hesitation
in asserting that it was not till the middle of 1691
that those differences arose which could have justi-
fied Newton in suspecting the sincerity of his
friend."

NEW OMNIBUS LAW.—On the Ist proximo a
provision in the Traffic Regulation Act will take effect by
which the driver of a metropolitan stage carriage is not to
stop fer the purpose of taking up or setting down at any
part of a street, except as near as may be to the loft or near
side of the roadway trader a penalty of 40e.