The Sun.
London, England, 1850-12-04 00:00:00

THE CORPORATION ADDRESSES TO

HER MAJESTY.

The Sheriffs of the city ;7Endon, accompanied
by the City Remembrancer, had the honour of wait-
ing upon her Majesty, at Windsor Castle, at half-
past two o'clock yesterday afternoon, by appoint
meat, for the purpose of receiving her Majesty's
commands relative to the presentation of the address
agreed upon by the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and
Common Council of the City, on the subject of the
recent Papal aggression. Her Majesty received the
City functionaries most graciously, and was pleased
to fix Tuesday next for the reception of the address.
A deputation from the Commissioners of the Court
of Lieutenancy had also the honour of waiting upon
her Majesty relative to the address agreed upon by
that body on the same subject, and her Majesty fixed
the same day for its presentation. The deputation
consisted of Mr. Alderman Salmons, Mr. Anderton,
Mr. Ambrose Moore, Mr. Alliston, and Mr. Henry
Smith, the treasurer.

REVENUE RETUENS.—The Commissioners of Cus-
toms having approved of an amended list of periodical re •
turns to be transmitted from the several oatports to the
Commissioners and their officers in London, copies of the
amended list have, by their direction, been transmitted to
the officers of the department at the several ports through-
out the United Kingdom for their information and future
government. This list contains the several returns which
will require to be made daily, monthly, bi-monthly, quar-
terly, half-yearly, and annually, and includes all returns
respecting the general affairs of the department at the re-
spective ports; as also an arrangement for the complete and
regular transmission of accounts of imports and exports of
every description of merchandise to and from the United
Kingdom ; and also the general coasting trade and between
England and Ireland, and returns of British and foreign
shipping engaged therein, comprising altogether a complete
list of the periodical returns to be made of the trade of this
country.

ESCAPE OF THREE CONVICTS. WOOLWICH,
Dac. 3.—Between six and seven o'clock this morning, shortly
after they had taken their breakfast, three convicts ma-
naged to let themselves down over the side of the Warrior
convict-ship, at Woolwich dockyard, and proceeding along
the mud on the banks of the river, without being perceived
by the sentry or any of the guards on board the Warrior,
succeeded in seizing a boat at some distance from the ship,
belonging to a waterman named Spurling, and, crossing the
river in it, effected their escape through the North Wool-
wich marshes. The names of the convicts are John Rain,
aged 26 years, convicted at the Central Criminal Court en
the 9th of April, 1849, for housebreaking and larceny; and
having been previously convicted, sentenced to 10 years'
transportation. Rain was a type-caster. Charles Fletcher,
aged 23 years, convicted of larceny to the value of 51., and
having been previously convicted, sentenced to 10 years'
transportation, on September 22, 1847. William Smith, aged
23 years, convicted of felony at Salford, on February 26,
1848, and sentenced to ten years' transportation.
ST. IVES.--HEROIC AND HUMANE CONDUCT.-011
Monday, the 18th inst., a smack belonging to Jersey came to
an anchor in St. Ives road. The day following, some of the
pilots boarded her and informed the captain that there was
every probability of a heavy gale of wind coming on,
and offered to take them into St. Ives for 45.,
or into Ilayle for ss, The captain refused the offer.
The smack rode out the Tuesday night. On the
Wednesday morning, the wind veering more to the
north, it was thought by many respectable inhabitants of St.
Ives that the captain was not aware of his danger. Several
shipowners and others employed a boat and bent three long
hawsers together, leaving one end ashore, and after much
difficulty and danger they succeeded in pulling the other to-
wards the smack. Just as they had made fast the rope and
signalled to those on shore, the smack's cable parted, but she
was brought into the pier in safety. Some of the respectable
inhabitants of St. Ives, whose hearts and purses are always
ready to relieve the really distressed, subscribed 20'., and
presented to the boat's crew for their gallant and heroic
conduct. In a few Minutes more the vessel would have be-
come a complete wreck, and in all probability the crew would
have met with a watery grave.— Cornwall Gazette.

FIGHT; AT DRATTpN, NORFOLK.—On Dionday a
fight took place between 'two working men at Drayton; and
on the came diry one ot them died in. conissnuenee of the,i)-,
ittries,he ,receiYedt The names
.of the parties were RObeit'
*Baker andßenjamin EMS; both fine 'then; idsidetit' in
'Bt. Marlin's at Oak. As 'usual sal eases, the fight
Laated in a drunkenAuarrel, and the stake was only 11.
a side.
Each man
had his seconds, anci crowd of people witnessed "
ths kilt al Conflict, which' listed seine time: - 'Ellis bad the
worst of it, and• after being severely punishea, be was tlp,
veyed home, where he died the same night. 9n.Tuesday
inquest was concladed, the jury hiving returned a verdict of
manslaughter against Baker and the four aeconda. They
have 1:113 yet been. apprehended.

THE EXHIBITION OF 18M.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.
SlR,—The notice taken of my letter on the sub-
ject of prohibiting the affixing of prices to specimens
in the Exhibition of 1851, and the ire'ry unexpected
reception accorded to it, impose on me beyond doubt
the necessity of a reply.
And first, by way of obviating the possible impu-
tation of inattention to the previous collection of opi-
nion in quarters where deference was due, let me
protest in the most unqualified manner, that in my
simplicity I hal no more idea of the necessity for
asking any previous question, than in the only two
cases which present themselves as in any degree pa-
rallel. If the Archbishop of Canterbury had been
found declaring his anxiety to turn over the duties of
his office to the Cardinal Legate; or if Ministers had
announced their determination to advise the reigning
Sovereig❑ to make a transfer of the powers of the
Crown to the individual who is writing letters from
America to Members of Parliament and others, de-
claring himself the legitimate descendant of the
Stuarts by virtue of a second unexpected appear•
mmnee of issue like what nave ri.e to our ancestors'
suspicions of the warming-pen, and holding out the
abolition of the national debt as his lure,—the same
individual probably, who after the Three Days of
July, presented himself at the office of the Westminster
Review as a descendant of the exiled family. and
though an officer in the King's service or calling
himself so, wanted to challenge the conductors of that
work for having used the phrase "the obsolete
tyranny of the Stuarts," and who is described is
the Quarterly Review of a few years ago under the
title of " The White Eagle ;" either of these
events might have led a simple-minded man into
precisely the state of astonishment which was my
own. It may be necessary to beg pardon for the
digression attendant on introducing these parallels,
but as the claim of the living Stuart to the throne
rests on the same basis as those of the Cardinal to
the episcopates, the next event will naturally be
that they will be found hunting in couples, and there-
fore little points of history are interesting.
To return then, I felt so perfectly undoubting that
the admitted prosperity of Bradford since the aboli-
tion of the corn-laws rested on the fact of its manu-
factures being the medium selected by foreigners for
return cargoes for goods furnished from abroad, and
that the prospect of entering a collection of the world's
products with the good articles in one hand and the
low prices in the other, would have been hailed with
ecstasy by every boy who greases a wheel and every
girl who tends a spindle ;—that the one thing which
would have raised a tumult in Bradford would have
been that somebody should have whispered, " You are
not to be allowed to send your prices ; the foreigner
is to send his alpacas and hit merinos, as handsome
and as good it may be as your own, but you are not
to be allowed to state that your price is half of his ;"
—that the rich would have joined i❑ it for the sake of
completing the prospects of affluence to themselves
and their children already opened to them, and the
poor in defence of their share of the general prospe-
rity ;—en all this there was such an absence of any
shade of hesitation on my mind, as I hope will at all
events free me from any intended act of presumption
or of disrespect.
And now what do the objections on the other side
amount to ? As collected from quarters distinot
from those indicated in your paper, they amount to
the dislike of particular wholesale-dealers to let their
prices be published, lest a cry should be raised of the
excessive magnitude of the profits of the retail-dealers
(a cry in which no man with the smallest idea of the
workings of the commercial machine will join), and
the retail-dealers shouldeake'measures to avenge them-
selves. To which is to be added, an equally unfounded
fear of the comments of the working classes, on the
proportion between prices and wages. To obviate
which it is demanded, not that the affixing of price*
shall be a thing left to the option of the exhibitors,
but that a prohibition shall be laid on that other
portion of the commercial community, who with
the general public besides, are interested in
publicity. And this is what, if there is no
mistake, is advanced as a system of non-interference
between Protection and Free Trade. "By no means
interfere; therefore let there be the prohibition ;" it
strikes me such is the argument. Other reasons have
been urged, such as that prices vary. Does not a
price-current do the same ? And if prices vary, could
not the exhibitors alter them if they chose ? But ex-
hibitors may put wrong prices. Does anybody pay
more than a qualified attention to any man's state-
ment of his prices, and would not the same reasoning
shut up the Post-office, lest men should send decep-
tive accounts of their prices ? But the Commissioners
are responsible. Who made them responsible ; and
who accounts them so ? And if there is any shadow
of responsibility, st uld it not be obviated by a decla-
ration on the part of the Commissioners, prefixed to
their catalogue or other publication, stating that they
have no means of testing the accuracy of the state-
ments of prices affixed to the goods, and therefore
leave the public to the same means of precaution as in
other cases ?
And now, having asked some bold questions in my
time, I will ask another, and that is, whether the
reasons urged for the prohibition are such as the
Commissioners, with due regard to their standing
before the Bridal public and foreign nations, ought to
admit as their rules of action ? There is a responsibility
on the Commissioners, very different from what there
is upon the applicants for prohibition. The last may
plead the difficulty of escaping from the influence of
particular views of gain. The others are to be a
specimen to posterity, of what a Royal Commission
could do for the public interest in the middle of the
nineteenth century.
One point more. In all operations, a moderate at-
tention should be paid, to whether the opponents have
not the means of counteracting in their hands, and
so leaving the attempt without the deed. In the pre-
sent case, what reason is there tip suppose, that the
individuals interested in their prices being known,
including the mass of foreigners who have prepared
goods for the express purpose of showing what
articles can be had cheaper by the British public
through the intervention of Bradford trade, and
the united public whose interest lies the same way,
will not without delay prepare a list of
the articles whose owners are anxious the prices
should be known, and press it upon carriage and foot
passengers at a small price, as near the doors of the
Exhibition as they can contrive ? And if' this is
done, or if strange and extravagant ways are taken
to prevent it, I ask who will in any imaginable re-
spect stand better than they would have done if the
affixing or not affixing of the prices had been left to
the option of the exhibitors, a just compromise which
it is still in the power of the Commissioners to secure P
To conclude, I have done what I thought a pal-
pable duty for the interests of my constituents, and
think so still. If they do not concur, my appeal must
be to the next generation of commercial men, who I
doubt not will view the proceedings of their prede-
cessors in the same light as we now regard the opi-
nions of our ancestors on the benefits of Protection
and a high price of corn.
I am, Sir, your obedient, servant,
T. PERRONET THOMPSON.
Blackheath, Dec. 3, 1850.