The Sun.
London, England, 1844-08-06 00:00:00

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LONDON, TUESDAY, AUGUST 6, 1844.

In the House of Lords, the Criminal Justice
(Middlesex) Bill was read a third time, and passed.
Lord WHARNCLIFFE moved a clause in the Rail-
ways Bill, the effect of which was to compel com-
panies having any traits running on Sunday, to run
tbird-class trains 'likewise. _

After some conversation, or what Lord CAMPBELL
called a " burly burly debiter the clause was un-
derstood to be agreed to.
The Earl of Mirvro, after adverting to the small
naval force kept up by this country, and to
the occurrences at Otaheite caused by the small-
ness of our fleets, moved for a return of
her MAJESTY'S ships of war (other than those re-
served for harbour duty) in commission on the 31st of
July, 1844 ; and also a return of her MAJESTY'S
%hips of war present at Otaheite from the Ist of Sep-
tember, 1842, to the latest period to which advices
have been received, specifying the date of the arrival
there and departure from thence of each ship. The
Earl of HABDINGToN replied in general terms to the
topics in Lord MINTo's speech, for which we refer to
the report. The motion was negatived without a
The Common Law Courts (Ireland) Bill was
passed.
Lord IVITARNCLIFFE moved the committal of the
Poor-law Amendment Bill, and gave their Lordships
a summary of its principal clauses. After some dis-
cussion, the Bill was committed pro forma, and
ordered to be recommitted this day.
Their Lordships adjourned at a Quarter-past One.
The Commons met at Twelve o'lcock, when after
some routine hu3iness, Sir R. PEEL moved the second
reading of the Roman Catholic Penal Acts Repeal
IEII. lie stated that the object of the Bill was to re-
peal certain old statutes which were a disgrace to the
country—adapted to other times, but calculated in
these days to throw ridicule on the Established
Church. The Bill was read a second time, and
ordered to be committed.

The Charitable Donations and Bequests Bill for
Ireland was read a third time and passed.
The Insolvent Debte:•s Bill went through Com-
mittee and the House adjourned.

The House sat again at Five o'clock, when Mr.

GLADSTONE obtained leave to bring in a Bill to apply
to private Bills the same principles which had been
applied to Railway Bills. The object of it was to re-
duce the costs of private Bills. The Bill stood for
next session.

On the motion of Mr. GLADSTONE leave was given
to bring in a Bill to amend the laws relating to the
relief and support in certain cases of merchant sea-
men, their widows, and children, and the House ad-
journed at a Quarter past Seven.

Our friends across the Channel are making a ter-
rible " hubbub " about Queen POMARE, Missionary
PRITCHARD, and Monsieur, BROUAT. If we are to
trust to appearances, to orations in the Chamber of
Peers, and national songs at the Grand Opera, the
whole of Europe—nay, the whole of the civilised
world—is to be thrown into commotion about a paltry
island, which, till Admiral DUPETIT THOUARS went
there, was regarded as a useless speck in the ocean,
that no nation would take under its protection.
Small as the island and its dependencies are, we ad-
mit our Government committed a great error in
sanctioning its occupation by the French; not that they
were worth any thing, but because they were purely
British settlements ; they had been discovered by
COOKE ; they were occupied by English missionaries
forty-five years ago ; the inhabitant were trained up
in the tenets of the Protestant religion ; and any man
of common understanding might have foreseen that if
we did not cast off Queen POMARE altogether, a col-
lision must take place sooner or later between French
Catholics and English missionaries. The island of
Otaheite was the very last which should have been
placed under the protection of a Catholic nation.
Lord ABERDEEN, however, thought otherwise ; he
now reaps the result of his oversight, and he
and M. GulzoT will have some difficulty
in arranging matters so as to please Eng-
land and France. If Algiers, or even Toulon,
had been occupied by the English, the event would
not have caused greater excitement than this mise-
rable squabble about a petty Queen, who rules over
some hundreds of half-naked savages. When Sir
R. PEEL made use of the strong expressions in Par-
liament relative to this affair, we felt convinced that
he had good grounds for his bold statements, and that
a Prime Minister of England would not have used
the phrase " a gross outrage, accompanied.with agross
indignity " without sufficient reason. All the French
papers, however, assert that there was neither a gross
outrage nor a gross indignity that; if there were
any outrage or indignity at all, they were
committed by Mr. PRITCHARD, and here the
parties are at issue. We only wish them well out of
the affair. But is it not a miserable spectacle to see
two great nations quarrelling about trifles ? While
the peace of the world hangs on the entente cordiale,
while the Governments of the two countries are on the
best possible understanding, and all the sober, reflect-
ing class, are anxious to remain at peace, a firebrand
is thrown into the midst of Young France, which it
will require all the skill of LOUIS PHILIPPE to extin-
guish. He has never been defeated yet, and we trust
his good fortune will attend him to the last. The
public have no means of judging of the real cause of
dispute, farther than this, that it is of the most paltry
description, and if any serious consequences were to
be the result England and France would become the
laughing stock of the world. We trust that Sir
ROBERT PEEL has not placed implicit confidence in
the statements of Mr. PRITCHARD, and that his future
policy will be guided by some better authority.

One of those provincial causes which are some-
times found, on trial, to involve considerations of a
character far more grave and extensive than might,
on the mere statement of the facts be surmised of',
them, was tried, last week, at the Kent Summer ,
Assizes. It was an action for libel, "LEE V. MEAD,"
and, although we cannot find room for the report of
the proceedings, argument of counsel, &c., before ,
Mr. Baron PARKE, we will endeavour, very suc-
cinctly, to assign the grounds on which the action was
brought. The plaintiff; a lime-burner, resident in
the vicinity of Rochester, was interested as a share-
holder in the " Thames and Medway Canal Company."
At a general meeting of the shareholders in this con-
cern, held in the early part of the year, a proposition for
forming a railway along the banks of this canal was
submitted for discussion ; and an estimate of the pro-
bable outlay having been brought forward, the work
was ordered to be proceeded with, it being agreed
that the necessary funds should be raised on loan
notes. Accordingly the whole of the capital required
was very soon contributed by the proprietors, and ,
the railway, according to the statement of the plain-
tiff's counsel, will be opened very shortly from this ,
date. There is, therefore, no reason to doubt that
the " boniifide" intention of this Company is to carry
out to its full completion the undertaking they
have announced. It happened, however, that when
their project was started, other lines of railway were
suggested, and proposals for them published "for
uniting Gravesend with Rochester and Chatham." Of
these, one was termed the " Rosherville line ;" an-
other " Matthews's line," from the name of a soli-
citor who had projected it; and both are now, or
lately were, competing lines before Parliament. It
is not necessary for us to express an opinion on the
merits of either ; but it does appear by the evidence
6f Mr. WEsTow, the banker of Southwark, with
whom the Rosherville Company banked, that he re-
ceived instructions, personally in the first instance,
from a director of that Company with regard to
Mr. MEAD, the defendant, a note of which
was entered at the time upon the bank books.
These instructions were subsequently reduced
into the form of an " agreement," which
was taken away by the director in question, but
afterwards brought back to witness by MEAD ; who,
thereupon, destroyed it in his presence. The substance
of such agreement was a covenant, on the part of the
Rosherville Company's direction, to pay to MEAD the
sum of 6001. When MEAD waited on witness on the
eccasion of bringing back and destroying the paper
"the 1172 had been thrown out on the standing
orders." Accoru.."
ct to the statement of Mr, Ser-
for good and sufficient
pant SHEA, " Mr. MEAD, • his paper, the
reasons, thought fit to advocate in ..
superior claims to public favour of the Roshei
line ;" and the Learned Sergeant added, he
should be able to prove that MEAD had
bound himself, on condition " of receiving
5001. to advocate the claims of that railway, and to op-
pose all the others suggested, in the columns of the
Kent Independent." But Mr. ltiEsTorr, in his evidence,
admitted "he had no conversation with MEAD, when
the latter waited on him with the agreement, as to
what was to be done for the 6001. ;" "but "Mead
proposed that, if he continued his services, the
directors should pay him 3001. down, and the re-
mainder on the Bill receiving the royal assent. This
was not agreed to. It had been intimated to witness
that the money had been agreed to be paid for Par-
liamentary services in canvassing Members of Par-
liament. * * After the Bill had been thrown
out, these services were not required."
We should wonder if they had been. Assuming
that the money was to be paid, if at all, for Parlia-
mentary agency, the fact of the Bill being thrown
out for non•compliance with the standing orders was
an emphatic set-off, we should think, for any claim
on that score. If it was to reimburse the "Independent"
editor for writing one "line" up and all others down, the
" quantum ineruit" determinable by the amount of his
success, must have been pretty accurately represented
by the symbol 0. If the gentlemen whose eagerness
as directors originally induced them to suggest such
an agreement with Mr. MEAD for his canvassing ser-
vices in the lobby and committee-rooms of the house
of Commons, had been still so credulous as to have
persisted in retaining them after the defeat of the Bill
upon the orders, we should have marvelled almost
as much as we have done, at finding an editor
of a provincial journal thus enlisting himself and his
paper in the cause of a private undertaking, for an
interested purpose. The only legitimate client of a
journalist is the public ; and this sort of partisanship
is at all times a dereliction of his duty to that client.
We can by no means, however, go to the extent of
designating this transaction, as the Maidstone and
South Eastern Gazette has done, an attempt "to bribe
Members of Parliament." We must suppose that,
whatever estimate may be formed of the modesty of
Mr. MBAD's claim for 5001. or GOO/. (it is variously
stated), the appropriation of the sum was intended
to be in discharge of professional expenses—and his
own services. The "Radical Members" must feel
greatly indebted for the imputation which this gentle-
man's vague manner of proceeding appear* to have

exposed them to—very wrongfully as we are con-
e fident.
But the amusing part of the affair is the subject
matter of the libel. The Kent Independent of the
23 March published two letters :`'the one to the
Editor, signed by that ulaiquitous and Ary civil gen-
tleman " A Constant Reader :" the Zer, an inelo-
sure, addressed to a certain " My dear HAYMEN,"—
headed " Private and confidential," and purporting to
be intended for the veritable "Mr. HAymErt" pro-
duced as a witness on the part of the plaintiff; and
signed by " WILLIAM LEE," whose identity with
the latter was carefully suggested by the writer's
dating from one of the addresses of that gentleman.
" A Constant Reader" informed the Editor that he
had picked up the inclosure in one of the steam-
boats, and that "it showed very clearly what was
going on behind the scenes. "Mr. WILLIAM LEE,"
writing to Mr. HAYMEN, is made to speak of "a recent
exposure of the falling in of the chalk in the tunnel
of our own concern"—of the " bedevilment" MAT-
THEWS hid led him into with his subscription list,
and of his (LEE's) fear " that the whole affair will be
exposed before they can get out ;" of his having in-
structed the Secretary of the (Thames and Medway)
Company to deny all statements of adverse parties,
true or false, "so that, by putting on a bold front,
they may catch a few flat fish ;" and of his having
laid a delusive wager of two to one with the parson of
Frindsbury to show confidence in the concern," &c. &c.
Perhaps the reader will have anticipated that these letters
are altogether fabrications—gioss forgeries, without
one tittle of truth in all the imputations they were
evidently fabricated with a view to fasten on an ap-
parently highly respectable gentleman, Mr. LEE, the
plaintiff. But when the editor of the Kent Indepen-
dent is applied to for the name of the author, he re-
plies in a strain of, we must call it, indecent levity, and
affects to treat the whole affair as " a squib ;" it
being considered nothing more, this correspondence
had been inserted—and that he should as soon expect
the Editor of Punch to be amenable to legal applications
on behalf of Sir C. F. WILLIAMS or Lord BROUGHAM
for the hard hits occasionally dealt by our facetious
weekly contemporary on both those individuals.—
Now, here is just the mischief of a dull, heavy-handed
and very reckless anonyme attempting to gambol like
our spirited and airy friend. The absolute prejudice
which the forgery was calculated to produce to Mr.
LEE in his commercial or trading position, was indis-
putably shown by evidence. The inconceivable in-
justice of the Independent's quoting Punch for
" his bright example, as it is his theme," is abundantly
manifested by the very curious letter of Mr. MEAD to
DICKSON and OVERBURY, Mr. LEE'S solicitors. In
this we fall upon the following morceau—a
grammatical curiosity which Punch's ingenuity
may perhaps elucidate :—" I have heard of a gentle-
man named LEE, who is said to be a lime-burner;
but had I have desired to possess myself of his
Christian name," &c. A verdict for 501. damages has
probably admonished the Editor of the Independent,
with sufficient force, of the folly of attempting to be
very droll, when the effort involves attacks on pri-
vate character, which no other person in the empire
would once have suspected of having been ever
intended for " a joke." " Squibs" to be endurable,
should burn a little more brightly, and be thrown a
little less maliciously.

We have intelligence from Madrid to the 28th ult.,
from which we learn that an extraordinary courier
had arrived from Gibraltar, at the British Legation,
with the following intelligence

" The Prince de Joinville having learnt that the Moors had
a third time attacked the French troops, his Royal Highness
has addressed an official communication to the Governor of
Gibraltar, and the commander of the English squadron. He
states in the dispatch that he is proceeding to Tangiers in
order to attack that place, and that he doubts not, from the
harmony prevailing between France and England, that the
English squadron will, during his operations, abstain from
appearing off Tangier. The Governor of Gibraltar and Com-
mander of the Squadron have replied that the instructions of
their Government order them to observe the strictest neu-
trality. That neutrality is to be observed until the arrival
of fresh orders. It is affirmed, adds the letter, that the French
squadron opened its fire against Tangiers on the 24th."
A. letter from Cadiz of the 24th contains the fol..
lowing :

" Yesterday, on the arrival of a dispatch from Marshal
Bugeaud, the contents of which are not known, the Prince
de Joinville immediately went on board the vessel bearing his
flag, and set sail for the coast of Morocco. It has since been
rumoured here, in consequence of some indiscretion on the
part of one of the persons to whom the Prince had imparted
his intentions, that he has gone to Tangier, to bring away
the consuls and French subjects residing there, and to land
them at Cadiz. This step was regarded as preliminary to the
decisive measures which the Prince was authorised and de-
termined to adopt."

Madrid Bourse on the 27th.—Three per Cents
261, at 60 days ; Fives, 20t for cash.

The few expressions made by Sir R. PEEL in the
House of Commons last week, relative to the impri-
sonment of Mr. PRITCHARD, have caused a great sen-
sation in Paris. Nearly all the journals are loud in
denouncing the haughty language of the English
Minister, and what some of them call the "timid and
trembling" expressions of M. GUIZOT. On Satur-
day afternoon the Chamber of Peera was crowded to
excess, drawn together from an expectation that some
questions would be put to the Minister on the subject.
On his arrival questions were put by the Marquis DR
Bois and another Peer, to which M. GUIZOT re-
plied :—" There are doors which must not be opened
every time they are knocked at ; so long as the proper
time shall not have arrived, I shall not enter into ex-
planations calculated to injure the general interests of
the country. lam of opinion, that all the assertions
put forth by newspapers ought not to be noticed at
this tribune. When the facts shall be known and
cleared up, I shall be ready to accept a debate on all that
the Government may have done." The Prince DR
MosKowa defended the course pursued by the Noble
Peer, and said, after the remarks made by Sir R. PEEL,
explanations were absolutely necessary. Several
other Peers took the same view; and among others,
Count MOLE, who expressed his regret that, while
the Cabinet observed a prudent reserve, it did not
afford some words of encouragement to the French
officers who commanded at Otaheite. M. GUIZOT
replied that he was intent on upholding the honour
and dignity of the navy everywhere, and he could not
answer questions in that hall without more full in-
quiry. The subject was also adverted to on Friday,
but in the absence of the Ministers, when Baron
CHARLES MI MI made the following remarks :

A •m not one of those who regard war with extraordinary
in 1840, but in preach-
- "-once is too well accustomed to war to feel
uneasiness. A.. .4;
alarmed at such a colik..ngen-eY" or its consequences. lam
,
no partisan of war—l defended•
'
big concord I frankly declared, that If we uad no other alter-
native than war, we would engage in it witu .;"dour—nay,
with transport. Permit me to add a few words on A roceni
question connected in the highest degree with the navy and
the colonies. I have seriously reflected on the intelligence
just received through England—l have read all the official
documents published by the English journals' who are not
certainly very friendly towards us. IPell, these documents
proved to me what I already knew—that the officers of
our navy who commanded at Otaheite have acted pro-
perly, and as behoves brave and rational men. They had
received from the King's Government the order to govern the
country—they have governed it—they wished the French
flag should maintain the advantage. And when an individual,
Consul or not, accumulating I know not how many profes-
sions, many of them most honourable, forgot his quality—
not the quality of an Ambassador, but of a Consul—ow is
of commercial agent—and became an instigator of revolt, I
say that no Government would have hesitated an instant to
arrest such a man, taken in the act of exciting insurrection.
Nevertheless, gentlemen, our officers treated him with every
attention, the English journals themselves admit it, and pub-
lish the document in which it is recommended to treat with
kindness a conspirator who had infringed all laws and vio-
lated the rights of nations. Such Is the truth. Without in-
flicting the least injury on that factious Consul, Itelwas con-
ducted on board an English vessel, in which he left the country.
Let him now complain to his Government ; let the British
Parliament inquire into the facts. The British Parliament
knows how to respect the laws of nations. There is in the
Majority of both Houses of that illustrious political body,
eminent men, who, no doubt, value national hononr above
all things, as we do ourselves, but who also value justice. I
will venture to affirm front this tribune that there is no•
statesman who, after perusing the documents published by
the English journals, the most inimical to France, will RP
declare that the agents of the French Government acted
correctly. I consider those documents to be authentic; and
a letter from Otaheite, received yesterday by a general officer,
a friend of mine, who communicated it to me, convinces me
that the Governor of Otaheite did his duty. If he was attacked
I should be the first to undertake his defence from the tribune,"
In conclusion, M. Dupin said, "By- voting the Bill now
before the House, you will place the Naval Department in a
condition to provide as speedily as possible against all con-
tingencies—l except none. It is a law of good administra-
tion ; it is in every respect satisfactory ; you may vote' it with
an entire confidence."

The Baron was repeatedly cheered during these re-
marks, and was greeted by many of the Peers on leav-
ing the tribune, The excitement, however, is not
vnfined to the Chamber cl' Peers. On Friday a
grand demonstration took place at the Opera on the
performance of CHAULES VI. In the second act the
national air beginning—
" Guerre aux tyrans! Jamais en France,
Jamais I'Anglais ne regnera !"
was called for, when the manager, M. PILLBT, came
forward and said it would be sung in the second act.
It was executed with a powerful chorus, and raptu-
rously appiawled, The affair has evidently become