The Sun.
London, England, 1850-05-08 00:00:00

All the light of life concenter'd
In the focus of tho towns;"

1 he must, from his known scholarship, have been per-
fectly
familiar with the fact that, swarming as our
streets do with wayfarers, and crowded as our towns
are with inhabitants, not a city in the United King-
dom—not even the mighty Babylon of London itself—
can be regarded as in the smallest degree comparable in
density of population to the cities of a remote and
flourishing antiquity. According to some antiquarians,
the number of the Roman citizens alone—at a time,
too, when Rome was in its greatest state of opulence,
absorbing into itself not only the riches but the popu-
lations of the west and of the east, of Asia and of
Africa as well as of Europe, of Britain and of Gaul
as well as of Italy—almost exceeds the limits of
credibility, and renders insignificant, by cemparison,
" the light of life concenter'd in the focus" either of
the Chinese capital or of the British metropolis. Yet
Professor ATTOUN whines over the increasing
growth of our towns and cities as though
that were a portent of national dissolution. At
any rate, if the declamation of the " learned
pundit" was altogether ineffectual in securing our ac-
quiescence, it was eminently successful in demons-
trating that there is no necessary affinity between
rhyme and reason.
But the prominent feature of the whole demonstra-
tion made yesterday at the Crown and Anchor
Tavern, Strand, by the ultra-Protectionists, was the
rancorous hostility evinced towards Mr. COBDEN
I personally. It would have done Mr. OssmEn's
, heart good to listen to. It would have been
I"nuts " to Mr. FERRAND. There were groans,
I and plenty of them, and fierce ones tco,
for Sir ROBERT PEEL -be sure of that i
I But, Mr. COBDEN ! We warrant him, it would
scarcely have been safe for him to have shown his
nose within sight of the platform. Why, the whole
1 meeting was rabid against him, and rabid with the
rabidness of the true Ferrand-phobia. There was
Mr. BALL, of Cambridgeshire, rose quite into the
heroics in his denunciations of COBDEN and his de-
fiance of him, and his declaration that the agricultu-
rists had nothing whatever to fear from " the
threats of demagogues !" Then there was the
learned declaimer already mentioned, Profes-
sor ATTOUN, of Edinburgh, waxed simultaneously
wroth and poetical, asserting—" When the red
cross of St. George and the white cross
of St. Andrew are blended indissolubly to-
gether, I fear not COBDEN, I fear no traitors !''
One Mr. HIGGINS, of Herefordshire, grew won-
derfully funny in his indignation. He said " The
willing bee had been sacrificed for the drones ; but he
told the Government that the bee would not stand it
much longer." Fancy a bee " not standing it much
longer !" But a little further on, Mr. HIGGINS be-
comes rather indecent in his disloyalty. Hearken
to the man's words : " They had heard of a
lion queen, who ruled her subjects in safety so long
as she ruled with impartiality; but when she
whipped the one and caressed the other, the beasts
turned upon her and tore her to pieces : he hoped the
Government would take warning and not loosen the
attachment of the farmers to the British Queen." As
DOGBERRY saith in play—" Why this is clear bur-
glary, thou naughty varlet !" HIGGINS we con-
jecture must be descended from a branch
of the house of that immortal HIGGINBOTTOM
mentioned in the Rejected Addresses, for the
gist of his allusions to the Free-traders amounted
to nothing more than a plain, plump, burly " Od rot
'em !" So much for the common sense, the loyalty,
and the rhetoric of the indefatigable gang of the Pro-
tectionists.

THE FRENCH REPUBLIC.

---
We have received the Paris papers of yesterday.
The courage of the reactionaries fails them just as
the time for action arrives, and it is announced that
already, even before it is presented to the Assembly,
the Electoral Bill has undergone several important
modifications. As was well observed by one of the
Democratic papers, when the subject was first mooted,
this new proposal must be either a niaiserie or a
violation of the constitution, aud, after having drawn
it up as the latter, the committee, taking counsel of
discretion, have diluted it down into the former, not-
withstanding the fanfarronade of the Duke of MON..
TEDELLO (who was M. GIIIZOT'S Minister of
Marine) that he would not have the slightest
hesitatation in ♦iolating the constitution if it
should become necessary. M. LEO DE LABORDE, M.
DE LA ROCREJACQUELIN, and the more exalted mem-
bers of the Legitimatist party, are opposed to any in-
terference with universal suffrage. Generals CAVAIG-
NAC aid LAMORICIERE and M. DUFAIIIIE will not

consent to any violation of the constitution, neither
will MM. ODILON BARROT, DE TOCQUEVILLE, and the
party with which they act ; the chances, therefore, of
the passing of any measure calculated to essentially
modify universal suffrage are very small, and to the
committee will be left the odium and ridicule of hav-
ing exhibited a desire to violate the constitution, and
at the same time of having lacked the courage or the
ingenuity to devise a measure capable of effecting
their object. The PRESIDENT of the Republic exhibited
his usual prudence when he consented to the exclusion
of every one of his personal friends and partisans from
the committee ; the ridicule and the odium will now
fall exclusively upon the " Burgraves " of Orleanism
and Legitimacy, who have suffered themselves to be
completely out-manoeuvred.
The C.nstitutionnel openly advocates the prolonga-
tion of the power of the PRESIDENT for tett years, a
proposition which will be vehemently opposed by the
Legitimatists, as they consider it an Orleanist trap
to gain time for the coming of age of the Comte DE
PARIS, whose chances of success, however, do not ap-
pear to be very promising. The great majority of
Frenchmen feel towards him as does M. DE LAMAR-
TINE, who, in his recently published castigation of
CROSER, the English Quarterly Reviewer, says—
" I owe no dynasty to any one. I will say more—l,
who had never disavowed my respectful reminiscences
for the child proscribed in 1830, if a dynasty had been
in my gift, it is not to the illegitimate breech that 1
would have restored the vacant property of a throne."
The Electoral Bill will be presented to the Assem-
bly on the 7th or Hth.
The state of Paris is most satisfactory, notwith-
standing the attempts of the reactionaries to get up a
panic. Strangers continue flocking into the city, gay
parties are given, the shopkeepers are doing well,
bread is cheap, employment is plenty, and wages are
good, and yet M. EUGENE SUB is Member for Paris ;
the fact is, the reactionaries have so often raised the
cry of wolf, that at length no one attends to them.
Letters have been received at Toulon from the
French fleet at Naples to the 22d ult. The Volney
ship-of-the-line had arrived there, and there was no
appearance of the return of the fleet to France.
PARIS BOURSE, MAT 7.—Latest Prices--Five per
Cents., 88f. ; Three per Cents., 54f. 70e. ; Bank of
France, 2,070 f.

We read in the Journal des Dlbats :—" Our letters
from California announce a painful event. In a
country in which legality is scarcely yet established,
and in which all the nations of the earth have numer-
ous representatives, each man has felt the necessity
of joining himself to his fellows, to those who speak
the same language, and have the same interests. The
French, who are from 8,000 to 10,000 in number,
have assembled ou the banks of the San Joachim and
the Stanislas, places which are eminently favoured,
and in which they have discovered very considerable
deposits of gold. This circumstance caused the
jealousy of the Americans, who, pretending to be the
absolute masters of the soil and of all it contains, at-
tempted to drive them away. A combat, a veritable
battle in fact ensued, and a great number of persons
lost their lives on both sides. The victory, however,
was with our countryinen."

tithe sitting of the Assembly yesterday, M.
DELESSERT brought up the report of the committee
on the Paris election. and M. EUGENE Sun was for-
mally proclaimed representative of the people.
BUSINESS DONE IN FOREIGN RAILWAYS AT THE
LONDON STOCK-EXCHANGE, MAY 7.
Boulogne and Amiens, 6—East Indian, VA—Northern of
France, 12%.