The Sun.
London, England, 1832-01-19 00:00:00

COUNTY OF CAITHNESS.

(COPY.)
Mr DEAR SIR,--I only received this morning the en-
closed letter from Lord Melbourne, acknowledging the re-
ceipt, and announcing the presentation of the Address
from the county of Caithness. Lord M.'s letter was sent
to Edinburgh, and followed me from thence, as I had set
out on Thursday evening, and arrived here on Saturday
night, in order to give my personal and hearty support to
those principles of extensive Reform in which I cordially
concur with my constituents, and of which I now hope to
witness and to aid the triumph.
Believe me ever to remain most truly your's!,
(Signed) GEORGE SINCLAIR.
Capt. Macdonald, of Shebster.
(COPY.)
SIR,--I have had the honour to lay before the King,
the loyal and dutiful Address of the Freeholders, Heritors,
Justices of the Peace, Commissioners of Supply, and other
inhabitants of the county of Caithness (on the subject 01
Parliamentary Reform), which accompanied your letter to
Earl Grey, and I have the satisfaction to inform you
that his Majesty was pleased to receive the same in the
most gracious manner.
I have the honour to be, Sir,
Your obedient servant,
(Signed) MELBOURNE.
George Sinclair, Esq. M.P.

It is evident, from the avidity with which the
Duke of WELLINGTON pursued his claim to the whale which
was stranded in Whitstable Bay, that his Grace, although
out of office, has still an eye, if not to the loaves, at least to
the fishes !

The Hon. GEO. JoHN VERNON, M.P. for
Derbyshire, has arrived in Wilton-crescent, from the Con-
tinent. Mr. VERNON quitted England shortly after the
prorogation of Parliament in October last, and he has sine,:
visited the principal cities in the north of Europe.

Viscount DUNCANNON has recently removed
from Cavendish-square, and taken possession of the man
sion in Whitehall-place, adjoining the office of Woods and
Forests, and which is assigned as the official residence of
the First Commissioner. Lord LOWTHER now occupies a
small house in Cleveland-row, to which his Lordship re-
moved subsequent to his resignation of office.

It is confidently rumoured that a Noble Duke,
allied by marriage to en Ex-Minister, at the head of ❑o
less than forty other Reform Peers, intimated to Lord GREY
that, in the event of a creatio❑ of Peers to pass the Bill,

they shall withdraw their support from it.-1 ornitig
Paper.

THE NEW PEERS.—The list of distin-
guished individuals upon whom it was said the honour o'
the Peerage was to be conferred, has not yet appeared in
the Gazette, and it is now asserted by the persons who
pretend to be in the secret, that a compromise, in bringing
about which Lord WHARNCLIFFE has, it is supposed, been
the active agent, and which has been so long reported,
has actually taken -,lace, and that on Saturday night every
arrangement was nude by the Whigs to lull into repose
the animosity of the Tories. We give this intelligence a•
we have heard it, stating at the same time, that the per-
sons who put it forth not only pretend, but they actually
ought to know well what they assert, for they possess the
means of acquiring good official intelligence. The Reform
Bill will go into Committee on Friday.—Brighton,
Guardian.

The new number of the Quarterly is very
hard upon Louts PHILIPPE; they lay on the lash as to
certain recent disclosures with rare good will. They have
reduced their " Civil List," as regards the Citizen KING,
most amazingly.

By a mistake of the copyist, an examinant in
the Court of Chancery was made to swear that he had
been " dead" for 20 years ! The poor man only meant to
assert the fact that ha had been quite " deaf" for that
period !
_ _

We understand that all the impediments which
have so long retarded the re• building of the English Opera-
house are at length removed, and that Mr. BEATELY, the
architect, is about to commence building forthwith on the
site of the old theatre.

Mr. CROKER has taken the field early, as the
champion in debate of the Tories, and notwithstanding
his characteristic modesty, is not inclined to yield the
leadership in the louse of Commons to Sir R. PEEL.
When he next quotes English history, he will endeavour to
avoid those anachronisms which called forth such severe
animadversions on former occasions :—a friend of his
endeavouring to account for these mistakes, observed, that
it arose from the flippant orator thinking in Irish, and
Ito speaking in English, a language which, judging from
his pronunciation and brogue, it was evident he did not
clearly understand.—Morning
,Paper.
During the spring of life the most humble
members ..Of society indulge in gilded dreams of future
greatness, riches, and happiness. It is in vain for sober
men, who have braved the storms of existence, to find
fault with these feelings—these buildings of joyous expec-
tation. Thus it has ever been, and ever will be. The
rosy-cheeked brunette still slips her last sixpence under
the gypsy's red cloak, and " crosses her hand with silver,"
to catch a glimpse of the happiness of futurity, which to
her imagination consists in being " dressed as fine as a
lady." Nearly allied to these feelings are the dreams to
many of the other sex, who fancy that in the busy scenes
of political change something many " turn up" for their
advancement and aggrandisement. We seldom know the
secret springs, the real motives which influence men; and
sometimes, indeed, the visions of our youth become re-
alised in after-life. When GEORGE the Fourth and hi.
present MAJESTY were boys they had a trifling dispute
about some mimic ships, in the course of which GEORGL
told his brother that he ought to pay snore deference to his
future sovereign. " And who knows," replied WiLt.tam,
" tint I also may be a King ? and then I'll have ships of
my own, and nobody shall take them from me !"
BONAPARTE seems to have had, or at least be supposed that
he had, some ‘• overshadowings" of his future greatness ;
and the impression appears never to have been erased from
his Mind.—Brighton Gazette.
A cheque, purporting to bear the signatures
of MACHIN, DEBENHAM, and STORR, of King-street,
Covent-garden, auctioneers, and drawn on Messrs. Hoe-
KINSONS, bankers, Regent-street, for 2551., was paid by
them in Bank of England notes on the Slat of October last,
and since proved to have been a forgery. The person who
presented the cheque received a 1001 note and three 50/.,
the balance being in gold. On the same afternoon the
1001. note was exchanged for gold at the Bank with the
name of EDWARD WALLts endorsed both on it and the
cheque. One of the 504 notes was changed at the Co-
ventry bank nn the 221 of October, endorsed "T. AN-
DREWS, West Smithfield, London," and another 50/. note
was changed at the Birmingham Branch Bank on the
same day, the individual receiving five 5/. notes, and the
remaining 251. in gold. The utmost exertions have
been used to trace the guilty party, but hitherto without
effect.

ANOTHER ORANGE MASSACRE.—We have
just heard a report that on Friday evening last a party of
armed Orangemen, returning from the county Cavan Pro-
testant mPeting, attacked the country people near Baillie-
borough, and butchered six or seven of them. We cannot
vouch for the authenticity of the statement, but we have
no rea,nn to doubt its truth, particularly as it rests on
authority entitled to our reliance.—Pilot,

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

Several correspondents suggest to us the pro-
..

priety of convening a public meeting for the
purpose of deliberating about a resolution in
honour of the unfortunate Colonel Brereton, and

a subscription towards the support of his infant
and orphan daughters. Some grave considera-
tions may by possibility be involved in such a
measure, according to the precise object for
which it shall be undertaken. Doubtless every

kind-hearted man in England must deeply sym-
pathize, as well with the feelings of generous
humanity, which, however overstrained, were
what moved Colonel Brereton to his long for-
bearance towards the incendiary mob of Bristol,
as with those pangs of apprehensive honour
which prompted him to the last deplorable act
of his life. If a subscription be entered into,
and money raised, for the sole purpose of assist-
ing to support the helpless children of one who
fell a sacrifice to his own softness and tenderness
' of disposition, nobody would or could reject an
appeal of such force to all the better affections.
In that case the meeting ought to be held, and
the orphan fund would, we trust, be of a magni-
tude alike honourable to the dead, and useful to
his offspring. But if the ostensible purpose of
such a meeting were the expression of a public
decision respecting the professional behaviour
of a soldier, commanding a certain garrison, on
a highly critical occasion, and the consequent
erection of a standard whereby to discriminate
and admeasure the professional merits of the in-
dividual in the conduct of that important com-
mand, we can imagine that many evils—or in-
conveniences at least—might result from the
adoption of such an expedient in the present in-
stance, and from the creation of a precedent for
such tribunals to sit in judgment on the pro-
ceedings of military men hereafter. There is
nothing more to be reprehended—we might use
a far stronger term—than the language of one
set of public, or rather party, journals, which in-
culcate from week to week, and oftener, the

necessity, the propriety, the wisdom, the beauty,
of acting with military promptitude and vigour,
in putting down " revolutionary assemblages"
of the people. We know what they mean by
revolutionary assemblages,—they are all popu ar
meetings held for any but Tory interests, or at
Tory instigation. Be sure" shed blood enough,"
is the party cry. It was the true Tory war-
whoop at Manchester in 1819. It would have
been so at Birmingham when the famous
150,000 met, though to support the King and
his Ministers, because it was for other thin a
boroughmongering-job. So, before a symptom
efhousebreaking, house-burning, felon-liberating,
Nlansion-house-mauling, or before even an attempt
at any of those outrages by which B istol was
desolated and its Magistracy disgraced, the yell of
Toryism was—" shed blood enough." Nor is
this terrible and revolting passion for wholesale
murder confined to newspapers ; we have heard
it echoed, though less loudly, from publications
calling themselves " professional." Further, we
have heard whispers of the same tendency from
men who occasionally wear red coats upon their
backs,—members (and not ill-meaning mem-
bers) of a profession, which exists in this free
country, but as the ephemeral creature of the
people's will, and of which the sole domestic
use, as at home and abroad the chief glory, is,
to be the protector of the people. Reprobating,
in common with all constitutional Englishmen,
this, in one case factious, in the other unsoldier-
like, alacrity to turn the sword against the
breasts of unarmed Englishmen, we must render
justice to the better portion of the Tory gentle-
men of Great Britain, by disclaiming for them
the least community of feeling with the low and
base panders to the most odious of despotisms,
because the most rapacious ; and equal justice
is due from us to the great bulk of the British
army, not more distinguished for cou.age against
the foreign enemy than for exemplary and
elagnanimous forbearance under the extremest
provocations of insult at the hands of its
own blind and phrenzied countrymen, by de-
claring that in ninety-nine cases out of an
hundred the temper and humanity of English
soldiers, when called out for the suppres-
sion of lawless tumult of any description, have
been such as to gain for them the grateful ap-
plauses of all brave and generous men. Nor,
let the worst arts of incitement and exasperation
be employed to whet the British troops against
their fellow-subjects, is it possible they ever can
succeed. With this hatred of barbarity, and
this strong feeling of the gentleness which best
becomes a soldier towards a citizen, our motives
will not be misconstrued when we avow a de-
cided objection to the proposal of recording, in
any form whatsoever, the sense entertained by a
popular meeting of Colonel Brereton's profes-
sional demeanour in the affair of the Bristol
riots. It is no secret that the ground on which
that officer was subjected to a trial by court-mar-
tial, was a serious conviction on the minds of
the Government, that if he had applied judi-
ciously the force, however small, under his com-
mand, so much destruction as did actually take
place could not have been perpetrated, and would
not have been attempted. It is not for us to
pass judgment on an amiable and generous-
minded man who has withdrawn himself from
all human authority ; but we would submit the
danger of holding out to military men, who,
whilst the nuisance of a standing army exists at
all (and how is it to be wholly dispensed with ?)
must be ruled by certain fixed laws of discipline, and
feel themselves amenable to certain long-esta-
blished and well-known tribunals—we submit, we
say, the danger of holding out to such men, that
they will be tried and judged, and are to be re-
warded or (negatively) punished by other Courts
than those which the Mutiny Act and the com-
mon law of England have assigned for their
controul ; that instead of steadily and conscien-
tiously discharging their professional obligations,
and maintaining the public peace, they are to
keep in mind the late Colonel Brereton for their
model—Colonel Brereton, who, by orders of
the Sovereign, was put on his trial for the alleged
dereliction of the duties imposed .on him—an
officer to whose command the garrison of Bristol
was intrusted when it fell into the power of a
brutal mob. Might not a popular expression
in honour of Col. Brereton be construed, by tnili-
tary functionaries, hereafter, into a public stigma,
by anticipation, by all who should do more to
preserve the peace than he did, into a sort of
threat, that if they should exert their,eives ever
so little more strenuously than he hid dune, to
preserve the towns of England from plunder and
destruction, their thanks from the people would
be a general vote of censure ?—that, in fact, to
stand well with public opinion, they must so act
as to make sure of being brought to a
court-
martial by the Crown ? For these reasons, we
•took place,
hope and trust, that if any meeting
or subscription be raised in connection with ih
name of Colonel Brereton, both may strictl:
confine themselves to the compassionate 1n
of helping to support his daughters. As for the

Bristol Magistrates, we have already hinted our
sentiments with regard to their selfish, sneaking,
and unworthy conduct ; nor shall any aid of ours
be-wanting to procure for their Worships a proper
kind and amount of retribution.—Times.
We cannot help thinking that the retirement
of Lord Ashley from Parliament, occasioned as
it has been by the defection of his party, or of
certain Tory or Anti-Reform Lords, from the
ranks of his subscribers, is an indication of a
Growing opinion amongst the Tories themselves
°that the cause of the rotten boroughs is a losing
one. We describe the cause as that of the
rotten boroughs rather than that of Anti-Re-
form, because it is more definite in its meaning,
for now-a-days we are all Reformers. There is
no such thing as an Anti-Reformer, we believe,
not even excepting the Duke of Wellington
himself, to be found in the whole country. The
name, therefore, by which we can best distin-
guish, and the test by which we can most con-
veniently try, the pretensions of all Reformers
is this very touchstone of the rotten boroughs.
Reformers may differ as to the extent to which
the elective franchise ought to be enlarged, but
they cannot differ upon one point—namely, that
the rotten boroughs, one and all, tag-rag and
bobtail, ought to be, and must he, got rid of.
That this impression is now gaining ground
amongst the borough faction themselves we infer
from the desertion of Lord Ashley by his former
supporters ; for does any man believe that,
f they felt they had the slightest chance
of success, they would relinquish a tri•
umph such as the return of that young
Nobleman for an important county ? Pride
and prudence—that is, political prudence—for-
bade it ; but there is a prudence of another sort,
which, as some men, at least some Noblemen,
think, may fairly put in its claim when the
higher attribute is about to yield to the force of
circumstances. The old adage exhorts us to
" let well alone ;" but it is sometimes the part of
wisdom to let had alone, when it happens to be
too bad to afford any prospect of becoming better.
Upon this principle it would seem that the Com-
mittee of Charles-street resolved to drop Lord
Ashley at the door of the House of Commons
and then to take to their heels as fast as they
could. There are other indications also, such
as the good-humoured tranquillity of the public
mind, from which a similar inference may be
drawn in favour of the success of the Reform
Bill. The present temper of the public is the
result of confidence and hope. They find the
Ministers firm ; they find the King also firm in
the support of those Ministers ; and Leven the
special pleading of Mr. Croker cannot move
their gall, when they see such a union of power
in support of the great cause of political and, we
may add, of moral improvement. It is not in a
blind reverence for all the provisions of the Bill
that we hail its probable success with pleasure.
Any • -lan who can dispense with the sweet
flavour of the rotten boroughs is a Reformer to
our taste, and the more he can improve the other
provisions of the Bill, the more he may com-
mand our humble support and approbation.--
Morning Herald.
A practice is growing into use in our Crimi-
nal Courts, especially at that of the Old Bailey,
alike discreditable to those who introduce, and
to those who permit it : we mean the practice
of some hamsters, after having taken briefs to
defend prisoners, advising their clients to plead
guilty, and throw themselves upon the indulgence
of the Court. We wish we could, generally
speaking, assign a good motive for this. In a
solitary instance or so the course may be advis-
able ; but such instances are very rare ; and the
barristers who adopt such a course at any rate,
lay themselves open to the imputation of first
pocketing the client's money for defending him,
and afterwards avoiding the trouble. The very
reverse of this was formerly the practice ; and
we can see no reason for rushing from one ex-
treme to the other. When prisoners have been
inclined to plead guilty, the most eminent
Judges have invariably hesitated, if not refused,
to receive the plea, recommending the prisoner to
retract and reconsider it—advising him, at any
rate, "to take the chance" of a trial. Whether a
recommendation of this kind of moral and judicial
falsehood be altogether advisable is one thing—at
any rate it has the best of motives for its apology ;
but that the " chance of trial" should be denied
to a prisoner by the very advocate he has em-
ployed to convert his fears of a blank into hopes
of a prize is unjust—we had almost said disho-
nest. The Court, too, in making itself a party
to such arrangements, is a party to the same in-
justice. The practice is generally excused or
glossed over, under a notion, alleged or implied,
that the Judge will deal more leniently with a
prisoner who saves him the trouble of trying
him. The very notion, however erroneous, that
justice is thus biassed or bartered away for con-
venience, is highly objectionable in itself, and
calculated to degrade and scandalize, in the
eyes of the public, that, the purity and integrity
of which is of the highest national and indivi-
dual importance. We trust, then, that barris-
ters will not lend themselves to a practice which
throws, whether justly or not, an imputation
upon their honour and integrity ; but that if it
should be persisted in, Judges, and persons
placed in the situation of Judges, will not per-
mit the stream of public justice to be blackened
by what its administrators should firmly and in-
variably set their faces against.—Morn. Herald.
We yesterday alluded to a blunder of the
Quarterly Revtew, in supposing that the agra-
rian law proposed by the Gracchi had reference
to private property. The ideas of modern
Europe, with regard to property in land being
so different, not only from the ideas of antiquity,
but of all other quarters of the world, the sense
of the ancient authors was utterly misunderstood
till of late years. The first who discovered that
the question had reference to public lands was
the learned Heyne, but it was not till after his
time that it was ascertained that the lands of
which it was wished to limit the possession were
public lands, let for a longer or shorter term,
and paying rent to the Treasury. In the report
from the Select Committee of the House of
Commons, on the affairs of the East India Com-
pany, ordered to be printed 11th October, 1831,
Mr. James Mill, who is the head of the office
which has the principal charge of the Corre-
spondence with India on the Political, Revenue,
Judicial and General Departments, describes in
his evidence a state of things in India precisely
similar to that of antiquity with regard to public
lands. " I conceive (says Mr. Mill) that the
peculiarity of India, in deriving a large propor-
tion of its revenue fom the land, is a very great
advantage. Nine-tenths, probably, of the re-
venue of the Government in India is derived
from the rent of land, never appropriated to in-
dividuals, and always considered to be the pro-
perty of Government ; and to me that appears
544 be on of the most fortunate circumstances
1/4`,.,41184 e 411; •‘, 'any country ; because, in conse-
i ;-"1:114444 4401 +ants of the State are supplied,