The Sun.
London, England, 1857-04-17 00:00:00

rii_E SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, APRIL 17, 1857

seen with a liberal placard in their hands,
or especially of having suggested a hint in a cafe
or elsewhere, that his MAJESTY'S Administration
was anything but the perfection of paternal Go-
vernment. There would appear to be a large
number of political delinquents at large, duly
rated to the cupidity or the necessities of an ill-
paid police. They could be lodged in a prison
at any time, but then it might come out that
those who arrested them had formerly taken pay
to let them alone. The compromised man by
paying tribute to the policeman has compromised
him too ; and henceforth he can keep at large on
payment of a moderate rent for his liberty. It
is the interest of both parties to observe the bar-
gain. Lucky, indeed, is the guilty by BOMBA
law, if he can escape damp dungeons, heavy
fetters, and the bastiaado on such terms.

prize of Poesy itself, the monumentum ccre peren-
nius ! As lasting—and more enviable.

NEW MUSIC.

The festivities with which the ceremony of
laying the foundation-stone of the proposed struc-
ture, drew to a graceful and appropriate conclusion
on Wednesday last in St. George's Hall at Liver-
poel, were rendered additionally interesting by
the presence of various notabilities eminently qua-

WEEKLY MUSIC FOR THE PEOPLE.

G. F. Wilson's Penny Musical' Library. Lea,

Warw-ick-lane,

This first number contains directions touching
the concertina, with many popular and operatic
airs for practice on that instrument. We are
astonished at the price of the pages, but still more so
at the distinct and simple manner in which
ample instruction is conveyed to the merest tyro in
the science. We advise all who are now " playing
by ear" only to procure these useful little books.

lifiad to appreciate the importance of the occasion
of which those same festivities were commemora-
tive. Among them—conspicuous of late years
as direct participators in the promotion of the
cause of National Education (a cause which this pro-
jected Free Library and Museum bestowed upon
Liverpool by the generosity and public spirit of
the Member for South Lancashire is so obviously
calculated to subserve)—Lord STANLEY, and Mr.
EITART and Sir JOHN PAKINGTON ! Advocates of
the intellectual and moral advancement of the
population, whose energies have been severally
directed (already with apparent good results), to
the development of that benign and elevating
movement of which the Right Hon. Sir THOMAS
WYSE, her Majesty's Ambassador at the Court of
Athens was, some thirty years ago, the far-seeing,
patriotic, and benevolent Originator 1 An educa-
tional reformer, therefore--this last mentioned
and first appearing—whose name in connection
withthe cause with which it has been so long and so
honourably and so pre-eminently associated, ought
not, we conceive, to be passed over upon these occa-
sions, as it has been almost invariably passed over of
late, with such unjust and ungracious forgetful-

We pity, of course, such victims of police
treachery to their masters, but there appears to
be even a more villainous tribute exacted from
numbers of respectable persons by the mere
threat of an information. It is not sufficient that
from a prudence which no one can censure in a
Neapolitan, a man should have kept his indignation,
and his patriotic aspirations within his own bosom.
If he have not most cleverly played the hypocrite
—if he have not joined in demonstrations of
loyalty which none nct receiving Royal pay could
feel—if he has failed to praise what he must de-
test—he is a man against whom it is easy enough
to trump up a charge of patriotism. False swearers
can be had for a trifle, and amongst the police
themselves, probably, for nothing. The unhappy
victim could soon be placed where no habeas cor-
pus could reach him, and even if it were deemed
imprudent to put the accused on his trial, he could
be kept for months in a noisome gaol, his compa-
nions being those guilty only of felonies and other
real times, and at the end of the time be dismissed,
not daring to demand a trial ; that, of course,
would be to demand a conflict between truth and
innocence, guilt and perjury—a conflict in whicb,
at Naples, there could be no doubt as to who
would be the victors.

ness. Besides the three distinguished disciples of
Sir THOMAS Wits]; in the Educational Movement,
whose names we have but just particularised,
other genial and earnest promoters of the same
cause took part oratorically, in the convivial
sequel to the noteworthy ceremonial which took
place on Wednesday, at Liverpool. Literature
being represented there by the accomplished author
of " Palm Leaves," M.P. for the borough of Pon-
tefract, and, in the name of our kith and kin across
the Atlantic, by Mr. N. HAWTHORN; in connection
with whose name it was gracefully observed by
Mr. MONCKTON MILNE; that his " Scarlet Letter"
has struck to the heart of its every reader, that his
"House of Seven Gables" has been built up per-
manently among oar English homesteads, and that
his " Twice-told Tales" will bear many and
many a repetition. Scarcely anything indeed, in
any way relating t) these proceedings of Wednes-
day, in the great seaport of Lancashire, but will
be found by the generality of readers, upon exa-
mination, to be de.eply interesting. It was an ex-
ceptional occasion in itself, and the mere record
of it has correspondingly proved, in its attractive.
ness, to be hardly less exceptional.

It is, of course, not wonderful that the pros-
pect of a prison, of a battle with perjury and
despotism, of broken health, of broken fortunes,
compels an honest man to bribe a black villain.
He may avow his perfect innocence, but the police
informer knows his advantage. He is not there to
dispute about his innocence, but to get money of
him. He hints that he has the means of placing
him in the list of the proscribed, with perhaps
another kind hint or two that it is not wished to
drive things to extremity, and so forth. Th e
result we see in a recent letter from Naples—"l
am watched, says one, by a policeman, every now
and then he comes to me and menaces me with
some denunciation, if I don't give him two or
three piastres. I have already given him 40
piastres, but I cannot continue it, for I am poor.
What must Ido ?" " I do not know what to
advise was the reply, for you are threatened with
one of two evils—imprisonment or continual
plunder." Another case is mentioned of " Baron
—, who in this way was robbed of 2,000
ducats. And these, so far from being individual
cases, form part of a gigantic system of corrup-
tion, cruelty, and plunder." It is stated that " not
a man in the street but has some case of police
extortion to narrate. That calumnies are invented,
and then the machinery of secret denunciation, of
insinuated compromises and ruin is set to work."
All this is but so natural, that if not commu-
nicated by an intelligent resident, it could have
been sketched to the life by merely imagining and
describing the necessary results of a jealous, weak-
minded, and therefore anxious and timid despot-
ism, upheld by thousands of worthless agents ;
especially when those agents are underpaid. How-
ever well remunerated, informers have always
been an avaricious, unscrupulous, lying race.
None but a villain will undertake the work. But
when the despot leaves them to get one-half of
their livelihood how they can, there is no doubt
whatever that they will live on innocent and
guilty alike. To avert insurrection against such a
regime was the reason why British and French
men-of-war withdrew from before Naples ! Well !
insurrection is an ugly thing—" order" a very
delightful thing. But some may think that the
order kept by living under tribute to informers
and perjurers is worth subverting at almost any
sacrifice.

Another noble act of individual munificence has
now to be recorded by the journalist. It was

only very recently that the nation became the
grateful recipient of a magnificent collection Of

paintings-_a collection presented to the people a

large with an affluent generosity, by the man of
whose taste and wedth it was at once the fruit
and the demonstration. And the costly gift thus
made to the country, during his lifetime, by Mr.
SHEEPSHANRS—had been preceded, not very long
previously, by Mr. TURNER'S almost invaluable
bequest of the majority of his own rare and
matchless masterpieces--a posthumous offering to
the realm, having in its turn likewise, to some
extent, a, direct precursor in the memorable legacy
to his fellow-countrymen, by Mr. VERNON, of
his very notable and eminently national col-

.notion !
Another and a kindred act of public munificence,
we repeat, has now to be added to this noble and
benignant catalogue of benefactions to the general
population. Elsewhere, in our impression of this
evening, will be found an elaborate and enthralling
record of its inauguration. From the particulars
there given, it will be observed that the act to
which weare making immediate reference is nothing
less than the four3dation of a great Public Institu•
tion, at his own expense and during his own
existence—sot in part but entirely, not posthum-
ously, but during his lifetime—by Mr. WILLIAM
BROWN, M.P. for South Lancashire. And that
great public institution—a new Free Library and
Museum in Liverpool ! Honour, say we, to the
Merchant-Prince, whose name will be as endur-
ingly associated with this superb and elevating
attestation of his munificence, as that of EDWARD
COLSTON with more than one benevolent founda-
tion in the city of Bristol, or as that of large-
hearted, open-handed Captain CORAM with the
Foundling Hospital hard by Bloomsbury !
Adulation would be as insulting to Mr.
BROWN to receive as it would be repugnant
to ourselves to offer. Gratitude a grate-
ful recognition of his civism is, however,
only his simple due. That recomponce is his
abundantly and spontaneously. He cannot help
the honour reflected
s
upon himself by his own
g enerosity—ho
waver repugnant, or ra-
ther, we should say, embarrassing t) his simple
and manly nature m: Ay be the outspoken commen-
dations of his or en immediate contemporaries.
He arrog ates no especial credit to himself by this
deed of his, t'
and resiplen ais almost unparalleled act of public
dent munificence—but that credit ii
his nevi
o'..heless. It will be to him, unpretend
ing an(' -
-- 'unambitious citizen though he be, it will
be to 6:.C11 among his immediate neighbours, in
his o-
AIL particular
locality, in the remembrance
of T
Jiverpool, in the recollection of Lancashire...
in
spite of him, and as it were quite accidentally
p,s
Memento as lasting in its way the coveted