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

r.HE SUN, LONDON, FItiDAY 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.

We pity, of course, such ♦ictims 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 oensure 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 not 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 mull 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 which,
at Naples, there could be no doubt as to who
would be the victors.

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 piaci%
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 lettar 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 I. do I" " 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 COMM-
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 1 Well !
insurrection is an ugly thing—" order" a very
delightful thing. Bat 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 olleetion Of

g t) his simple
paintings—a collection presented to the people at
large with an affluent generosity, by the man of
whose taste and wealth it was at once the fruit
and the demonstration. And the costly gift thus
made to the country, during his lifetime, by Mr.
SHEEPSYANRS—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 iu the memorable legacy
to his fellow-countrymen, by Mr. VERNON, of
his very notable and eminently national col-
lection ! .
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 foundation of a great Public Institu
tion, at his own expense and during his own
existence—not 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 I Honour, say we, to the
Merchant-Prince, whose name will be as endur-
ingly associated with this superb and elevating
attestation, of his munificence, a 3 that of EDWARD
with more than one benevolent founda-
tion in, the city of Bristol, or as that of large-
hearted, open-handed Captain CORM with the
Fou.ndling 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, hosrover,
only his simple due. That recompence is his
abundantly and apontaneously. Do cannot help
the honour reflected upon himself by his own
splendid generosity—however repugnant, or
.ra-
ti ter, we should say, erzjnarra,sinas td manly nature way be the outspoken commen-
d /lions of his own immediate contemporar::, a.
1:1:k) arrogates no especial credit to him,-,elf by
this
el .ed 0 r.s, of his, this almost unparall ) 1
L act of public
at ld resplendent munificence—,abut that credit is
hi 's nevertheless. It w‘li be to him,
unpreten4-
in g and unambitic,as citizen though he be, it will
be to him among his immediate neighbours, in
his own particular locality, in the remembrance
of Liverpool, in the recollection of Lancashire
in I spite of him, and as it were quite accidentally
—a Alen:Lento as lastin in its way as the coveted

prize of Poesy itself, the monuntentum, cere perm-
nius ! As lasting—and more enviable.
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-
pool, were rendered additionally interesting by
ilia presence of various notabilities eminently qua-
lified 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.
EWART and Sir JOHN PAKINGTON ! Advocates of
the intellectual and moral advancement of the
population, whose energies have been severally
directed (already with apparent good result to
the development of that benign, and elevating
movement of which the Right Hon. Sir TUOMAS
WYSE, her Majesty's Ambassador at the Court of
Athens was, some thirty years ago, the far-seeing,
patriotic, and benevolent Originator ! An educa-
tional reformer, therefore—this last mentioned
and first appearing—whose name in connection
withthecanse 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-
ness. Besides the three distinguished disciples of
Sir THOMAS WYSE, in the Educational Movement,
whose names we have but just particularised,
other genial and earnest promoters of the same
cause took park 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. HAWTHORNE, in connection
with whose name it was gracefully observed by
Mr. MONCKTON MILNES, 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 our English homesteads, and that
his " Twice-told Tales " will. bear many and
many a repetition. Scarcely anything indeed, in

any way relating to 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 deeply 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.