The Sun.
London, England, 1850-09-18 00:00:00

BRIOr

" Brighton is situared nearly in the centre of the bay
stretching from Selsey Bill, in the west, to Beachy
Head, the eastern extremity of the South Downs. It is
protected on the north and north-east by this verdant
chain of chalk hills, and on the west lies a level district
of arable land. The sea has made considerable en-
croachments cn this part of the coast. In the reign of
Elizabeth the town of Brighton was situated on that
tract where the chain-pier now extends into the sea, but
the whole of the tenements under the cliff were de-
stroyed by tremendous storms in 1703 and 1705, and no
traces of this ancient town are now perceptible. The
foundation of the prosperity of Brighton was laid bY
Dr. Richard Russell, an eminent physician, wbose work
on the efficacy of sea water, combined with his success-
ful practice, brought numerous visituri to the coast. But
it is to his late Majesty George IV., when Prince of
Wales, that Brighton is indebted for its celebrity as a
watering-place. His Royal Highness first visited
Brighton in 1782, after which time he passed the sum-
mer and autumn months here for many years in succes-
sion. In 1784 he commenced the erection of the Pa-
vilion, which was completed in its original design in
1787, and under the stimulus of royal patronage, what
was formerly a fishing village, has now become the most
splendid marine abode in Europe.
" Brighton is not an incorporated town. Its govern-
ment is vested in a chief constable and twelve head-
boroughs, who are annually chosen at the court-leet of
the Earl of Abergavenny. The affairs of the town are
managed by 115 commissioners, who regulate the cleans-
ing, lighting, &c._

Tii-e fish Cry of Brighton was once very considerable,
but has now declined to an almost incredible extent.
" Of the public buildings of Brighton, the most dis-
tinguished is the Royal Pavilion, the architecture of
which has been severely and justly censured. The
Chain Pier is a light and elegant structure, erected in
1822, under the superintendence of Captain Brown, at
an expense of 30,000/. It has twice suffered from vio-
lent storms. The marine wall, which was completed in
1838, and was eleven years in building, is a splendid
structure. It is nearly two miles in length, and cost
about 100,000/. The celebrated spot called the Steyne,
which was formerly a piece of waste land, is now a
fishionable promenade, and is surrounded by fashion-
able buildings. In the northern enclosure stands the
famous bronze statue of George IV. executed by Chan-
trey. The Town Hall is an immense pile of building,
the cost of which is said to have been near 30,0001.
Brighton contains nine places of worship in connexion
with the Establishment, twelve belonging to the various
denominations of Dissenters, a Roman Catholic chapel,
and a Jew's synagogu3. In the churchyard of the old
church is a monument erected to the memory of Captain
Tattersal, who assisted Charles 11. in his escape to the
continent after the battle of Worcester. There are a
considerable number of rehools in the town for the in-
struction of the children of the poor. Brighton contains
barracks both for cavalry and igfantry; the former af-
fords accommodation for 625, and the latter for about
400 men. In the rear of the east part of the town is a
pleasing rural retreat, called the Park, in which is the
German spa establishment, where chemical imitations of
the most celebrated mineral waters of Germany are pre-
pared. At Wick, half a mile west of the town, there is
a chalybeate spring, which has of late years been much
frequented. Brighton is well supplied with baths, and
every convenience for the accommodation of those who
wish to avail themselves of the advantages of sea-bath-
ing. The exterior of many of the hotels are magnifi-
cent, and the interior fitted up with much taste and con-
venience.

" Brighton is not a manufacturing or commercial
town, but it has an extensive retail trade. Steam-boats
ply regularly between this place and Dieppe.
"To the north and north-east of the town, on the
summit of the Dawns, is the race-course, commanding
an extensive view. A number of pleasant excursions
may be made i❑ the vicinity. The population of
Brighton, which at the commencement of the present
century was only 7,339, is now, by the census of 1841,
46,661; but during the fashionable season it is estimated
at 60,000. Brighton returns two Members to Parlia-
ment under the Reform Bill."

SONNET—SEPTEMBER.
(From the Ladies' Companion.)
With stained mouth and loose luxuriant dress
September comes—a reveller sure is he—
And Dryads sport—for see in mirthfulness
They tempt him still with gourd and mulberry.
Yonder the wain rich freighted ploughs the sward,
And yonder still the sun-burnt reapers toil;
There champs the mill, and there the garner's stored,
And there, profuse, the fowler's feathery spoil.
At eve now pours the yellow harvest moon
Her beams, which lend enchantment to the hours;
So dews are plentiful, and at her noon
Crown, as with coronals, the wakeful flow'rs.
From hedgeway bowers the trailing hops are torn,
Orchards are thinned, and purple paints the morn.
E. E. M. K.

ACCIDENT TO THE HON. AMIAS POULETT, NEAR
IL/aissTEß.—On Saturday last this young gentleman, ac-
companied by his brother, Viscount Hinton, went for a
short shooting excursion, when, having enjoyed the sport
for some time, he felt fatigued, and Viscount Hinton re-
quested him to return homewards, which he accordingly
did. As he did not make his appearance at dinner, his
father, Earl Poulett, dispatched the servants on horseback
in all directions, in order to ascertain the cause of this un-
usual delay, as it was feared an accident had occurred to the
Hon. Gentleman. The Earl himself, accompanied by others,
also set out in search of him, when, after a long period, the
unfortunate young gentleman was discovered lying by the
side of a dry ditch, quite insensible, and blood issuing from
his ears and mouth. He was immediately removed, and
messengers were dispatched for Mr. C. H. Mules, surgeon,
who attended most promptly. It was then discovered that
both the bones of the right leg were broken, besides many
other bruises and injuries; there was also concussion of the
brain. A special messenger started at once for London for
a physician, who arrived at Taunton by special train on Sun-
day morning, and immediately set out for Hinton Park, the
seat of Earl Poulett. The sufferer still remained insensible
from the injuries received, which, with deep sorrow, we an-
nounce, are indeed of a most serious character. The accident
is supposed to have been occasioned by the horse falling,
throwing his rider, and rolling over him.— Western Flying
Post.
TDB EXPLOSION IN SPITALFIELDS,—The property
destroyed by the disastrous accident which took place on
Monday in the firework factory belonging to Mr. Clitherow,
Weaver-street, Spitalfields, was, we regret to state, greater
than was at first anticipated; windows and furniture as far
off as a quarter of a mile have suffered, and more persons
than originally supposed have been severely injured. Mrs.
Slater and her daughter, who resided at No. 15, Weaver-
street, immediately at the rear of the factory, were thrown
down by the shock, and one of them was much injured. At
the same instant nearly every window was shivered, and
immense pieces of solid timber were hurled into the air. An
iron hoop, of great weight, and a piece of bond timber,
upwards of 10 feet in length, were driven by the force of the
explosion upon the roof of All Saints' National School, and
destroyed a portion of it. Besides the houses mentioned
yesterday as having been damaged, seven in Clitherow-place
have been nearly rased to the ground. A woman named
Potter, living at No. 14 in that place, alarmed by the first
explosion, threw one of her children out of the window, and
endeavoured to jump out with an infant in her arms, but
her clothes being caught by a nail, she was suspended some
feet from the ground while the two other explosions followed.
Mr. Clitherow received his principal injuries through his
staying to pull his servant out of the house ; both were
terribly burned, but they are progressing favourably. During
yesterday a great many glaziers and bricklayers were em-
ployed in the neighbourhood, repairing the broken windows
and roofs of the houses damaged. Such a demolition of
window-glass, it is believed, has not taken place in London
since the great storm of the let of August a few years since.
THE LATE DRIVERS AND FIREMEN ON TUE
EASTERN COUNTIES LINE.--The board of directors of the
~bove line issued a notice for such of the men who had been
dismissed from their employ to leave the occupation of the
houses belonging to the company, on or before the 7th
instant, intimating that if they quitted possession at the time
named, the arrears of rent which has accrued from the period
of their leaving the company's service, would be remitted,
we understand nearly or quite the whole of the men have
complied with the notice. The men have issued a long cir-
cular setting forth what they term their grievances, and
calling upon the drivers and firemen, &c., on other lines, as
well as the public, for- pecuniary aid on this emergency,
which will be distributed pro rata among such hands as
have not obtained employment. The men belonging to the
A division of police, who were stationed at the rail way
works, have left, and the excitement consequent upon the
strike has nearly subsided. We believe there are great
numbers of the men who sent in their resignations still with •
out employment, while numbers of them have sought and
obtained employment on other lines.—Essex Herald.
HORSES FOR THE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA.—The fol-
lowing valuable horses were on Saturday last shipped at
Hull on board the Helen Macgregor, St. last
steamer, for the stud of the Emperor of Russia:—Two
thoroughbred stallions, Freeman and Emilian ; two coach-
ing stallions, Vandyke and Regulus; one Suffolk punch
stallion and mare ; one stallion and mare of the pure Clydes-
dale breed, four coaching mares, and four chargers. The
purchase was effected through the agency of General Betan-
court, and the shipment was made by Mr. J. Jackson.
MR. LAN DSEER.—It will be observed from last
night's Gazette, that her Majesty has been pleased to confer
the honour of knighthood upon Mr. Edwin Landseer.

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

MR. HUDSON'S EVIDENCE AT YORK.

POST.—When any man demands from our coun-
trymen the justice that is emphatically expressed in
those words that are household words of old England,
" fair play," he makes an appeal that is certain of
meeting with a response from Englishmen. Such an
appeal is now made to us, in common with the pub-
lic, on behalf of a gentleman who has proved all the
vicissitudes of public feeling,
from a blind and un-
reasoning worship to a blind and still less reasoning
hatred. There is scarcely any man in this country
whose name has been coupled with so much adulation
at one period and so much vituperation at another, as
has fallen to the lot of Mr. George Hudson, the
Member for Sunderland, whose power and popularity
in the railway world were scarcely exaggerated in the
title universally conceded to him of the " Railway
King." On his behalf it is that an appeal is now
made by some of his friends to the public for fair
play. At a trial which took place in the city of
York at the last assizes, this gentleman was produced
as a witness, under circumstances that entitled the
party producing him to endeavour to establish out of
his own lips the delinquencies which the statement of
counsel had freely imputed to him. In order
to convict him of fraud and mismanagement in any
matter connected with those railways in which he had
taken an active share, it was the privilege and duty
of the cross-examining counsel to sift every trans-
action in which he had been engaged—to assume his
guilt in his questions—to extort from him his most
confidential secrets—to lay bare the most minute de-
tails of his railway life—to probe everything that was
suspicious—to drag to light everything that was con-
cealed. All this, we say, it was the privilege and the
duty of counsel to do, and to do it in the presence of
persons able and ready to convict him of inaccuracy
or mis-statement if he sheltered himself behind any
prevarication. It was equally the privilege, we will
not say the duty, of counsel to do all this, if necessary,
with all the assistance of browbeating and bullying,
or the milder aids of insinuation, sneering, and per-
plexing, which make a hostile cross-examination by
an expert advocate the most terrible instrument of
moral torture by which truth was ever extorted
from a reluctant deponent. In addition to all this,
Mr. Hudson was, at this trial, without notice of
the points; that would be inquired into, with-
out documents to refresh his memory, or re-
flexion to suggest forgotten facts, called on to

explain every - transaction which his cross-ex-
aminer chose to select as suspicious. He was
called upon to do this at the moment ; while his
questioner, on the other hand, had all the advantage of
preparation—of deliberating on the line of his exami-
nation, on the very frame of each question, and of
full and minute consideration of all the facts of each
case. It is impossible to conceive any man taken at
greater disadvantage than the man whose conduct was
subject to such an ordeal as this, yet this is just the
position of the deposed railway potentate when he was
placed in the witness-chair at York in the libel case
of " Richardson v. godson." It was, no doubt, an
interesting and exciting scene to both the enemies
and friends of the man who was submitted to the
process, from which, if he deserved one-tenth of the
obloquy flung upon him, it was impossible for him to
escape without utter and damning ruin. What more
could his enemies desire ? The delinquent in the
witness-box, compelled to disclose every secret, to
parade all his private dealings, to confess to an inqui-
sitor who would show him no mercy and tolerate no re-
serve, to ans wer without hesitation inquiries as to trans-
actions comparatively remote—without hesitation, for
hesitation would have been conclusive evidence of
guilt—the witness who, under such circumstances,
deliberated was lost. The assistance of a scrap of
paper and a pencil to calculate the exact amount of his
gains upon some questioned transaction was the ut-
most extent of deliberation that could be conceded.

What expected disclosures of criminality must those
who have heard of him as the great railway delin-
quent have gloated over in anticipation as he ascended
the witness table ! With what confidence must
his enemies have calculated on complete ex-
posure of something gigantic in illicit spe-
culation ! Subject to this ordeal, Mr. Hudson
was closely questioned upon very many transac-
tions of his railway life. His evidence, we have heard,
from more than one faithworthy quarter, produced a
manifest revulsion of feeling in his favour. We can
easily understand from the printed report that it did
so. Same friends, believing entirely in his integrity,
and anxious to do him justice with the public, have
published an authentic:report of that evidence, vouched
for by a member of the bar. It is accompanied by a
modest and unassuming preface, which makes that
appeal for fair play which never, as we have said, is
made to Englishmen in vain.
Finally," says the editor, " these pages are offered
to the public in the conviction that those who desire to
do justice to a deeply-injured individual will form their
opinion of the transactions which they detail, not from
the uncertain representations of rumour, but from the
unquestionable facts established in a court of justice,
under the solemn sanction of an oath, with all those aids
to the investigation of truth which the most certain and
minute cross-examination could supply.
Inner Temple, August 21, 1850."
We were not among the number of Mr. Hudson's
adulators in the days of his power, neither did this
journal lend itself to run him down when the reverses

in railway affairs evoked the curses of every disap-
pointed speculator upon his head. To this appeal we
ought not, however, to decline to respond. Neither
do we, on public grounds, profess ourselves indifferent
to the reputation which Mr. Hudson's share in the
railway transactions of 1845 may ultimately bear.
The railway speculators of that period are a chapter
for good or evil in the history of the national mind.
In that chapter,the position of Mr. Hudson forms no
obscure, unimportant section. As national property,
then, a just estimate of his character is a matter of
national interest. If he be as described in the sen-
tence we have quoted, a deeply-injured individual, it
is but an act of public justice to set him right. And
when men are only asked to listen to the facts of his
conduct, as unquestionably established in a court of
justice, and judge of him by those facts, common
honesty demands that thisappeal should not be in vain.
Mr. Hudson, we presume, was questioned as to
those parts of his conduct which, in the eyes of his
evidently most hostile and well-informed accusers
presented the most plausible grounds of impeach-
ment. They had the advantage of selecting their
own ground of attack. His evidence offers to us his
own explanation, attested by his oath, and sifted by
the power of a most searching cross-examination. In
endeavouring to do the justice for which we are asked,
we purpose to take :each of the charges that is con-
veyed in the questions of bis cross-examiner, and sub-
mit it, with the reply conveyed in the answers of Mr.
Hudson, to the judgment of our readers. That judg-
ment will thus be formed, not, indeed, upon the entire
of his railway life, but upon those passages of it which
were deliberately and carefully selected as supplying
the strongest materials for his accusation. It is for
public opinion—often an intemperate, frequently a
prejudiced, but generally, in the long run, a just tri-
bunal to decide whether there be anything in these
passages to justify the attempts that have been almost
incessantly repeated to associate the name of George
Hudson with those mal-practices by which, in the
days of the railway madness, too many railway
speculators took advantage of that madness to enrich
themselves by dishonourable means. The transac-
tions which were made the subject of inquiry were
so many that within the limits of a single article
it were impossible to glance at them all. To-day
we• select one which has, perhaps, been more
pressed to Mr. Hudson's disadvantage than any
other. We will state the charge, and then give from
the evidence his reply. It has been said, and the ac-
cusation has been repeated in every variety of form,
that, in the month of
thpeurYchoraksed a quantity of iron for
Mar,ct,ewlcBa4sst,le,Aalnrd.
Berwick
ibeinlgw
ay chairman
Company, of
that company at the price of 6/. 103. a ton, but
charged it to the railway company at the price of 121.
This is the substance of the accusation, conveying a
charge of fraud and breach of trust of the most dis-
reputable kind. The facts of the case were these :
In October, 1844, when the York, Newcastle, and
were not in existence,
panriyvate account, entered into
aA'awlerspeculation Railwayoi
in iron. ni
osCnno.wi 1131
lie contracted with eminent
ironmasters to sell to him 10,000 tons of iron, at the
price of 61. 103. In the following spring, the price
of iron had nearly doubled, from the demand created
fur it by the many projected railways. Mr. Hudson
was, therefore, in the position, in the month of March,
to call upon those ironmasters with whom he bad con-
tracted
he could sell supplyto
him, at the price of 61. 103. with iron
which inthe market without difficulty for
at least 121. To the full benefit of his fortunate specu-
lation Mr. Hudson was beyond all question, solely and
individually entitled. The Berwick Railway had
just as much right to the benefit of it as bad the pro-
prietors of the Morning Post. Mr. Crawshay, who
wanted iron in the month of March, 1845, offered
Mr. Hudson 50,0001. to assign his bargain to him ;
and if Mr. Hudson had thought fit to accept that
offer, Mr. Crawshay would have received the
ten thousand tons of iron, paying the sellers
at the price of 6/. 103., and handing over
to Mr. Hudson 50,0001., which that gentleman
would have pocketed without the possibility of
question or imputation. But it so happened that the
Berwick Railway Company, in that very month of
March, thought it their interest to secure, at the then
market price, a large quantity of iron. The same
iron masters who were under this engagement to Mr.
Hudson were among those who made a tender for
supplying that iron to the railway. This tender was
at 121. lO3 ; it wa
very lowest at which a large quantity of iron could be
obtained,
downpaidto 12/., a price the
for it by other rail-
way a .
price
below was beaten
that
companies at the same time. Mr. Hudson had it thus
in his power to call on these iron masters to fulfil
their contract with him. He had it in his power to
accept the offer made by Mr. Crawshay, and compel
them to supply the iron to Mr. Crawshay, and pocket