The Sun.
London, England, 1850-04-01 00:00:00

ertilialiki atilt

LONDON, MONDAY, APRIL 1, 1550.

The intended abolitiOn of the mock court, at Cork-
hill, seems to be the topic on which her MAJESTY'S
liege subjects of the good city of Dublin are intent
for the time being, to the exclusion of almost all
others. A good working grievance is at all times
valuable, and the excellent gentlemen who are ac-
customed to haunt the purlieus of " the Castle," for
the purpose of perpetrating jobs and soliciting
Government appointments for themselves and friends
are resolved not to let slip so favourable an
opportunity for raising an outcry on the wrongs and
injuries of Ireland. They are anxious that the
short-sighted and erroneous policy, which has de-
graded their native land into a mere province, in
place of its being an integral portion of the British
oinpire, should be perpetuated—that the spirit of
pseudo-nationality, and the petty intrigues and party
feelings, for which the Irish metropolis has been so
painfully- notorious, should be permitted to flourish
in rank luxuriance. What is it to them that the
Viceregal establishment has been truly designated
as a "hotbed of corruption," that it has
le 1 ,to excesses and extravagances which have
reduced many respectable families to comparative
poverty and distress, encumbered estates, and made
the nominal proprietors unable to discharge the
sacred duties they owed to their tenantries ? What
matters it if it has prevented the pursuits of honest in-
dustry from being cherished, and over-stocked the
learned profesions, because the " Counsellor" or the
"Doctor" could be received "at Court," and
could -astonish the weak minds of his
country-cousins at his native village with
grandiloquent accounts of, the aristocratic company

he mixed with at the "levee" or "drawing-room ?"
The empty pageantry might have led to many real
and substantial evils, but to say this is to say nothing to
the purpose. The Imperial Exchequer was subsidised
to the tune of some twenty or thirty thousands Of
pounds per annum for the especial use and benefit of
a few Dublin shopkeepers, and that covered a multi-
tude of sins, and was more than an equivalent for all
the attendant evils which the Irish press so freely and
unsparingly exposed at other times.
This withdrawal of the salary is, after all, the head
and front of the Ministerial offending. All the elo-
quence of the imlignant orators is devoted to that
point, and that alone, in their remonstrances. They
do not venture to assert that any national advantage
is derived from the presence of the Viceroy—that
their country is more wisely and efficiently geverned,
or that there is, in consequence, a better legislation
for Ireland. Nothing of the kind 1 There is no
such substantial reason put forward. The burden of
their song is the injury to shopkeepers—the ruin to
the trade of Dublin (!) from the withdrawal of the
expenditure of the Lord-Lieutenant's household !
That trade must indeed be in a pitiful condition if
20,0001. per annum, more or less, could have any per-
ceptible effect one way or the other. Edinburgh still
flourishes, although it has no resident representative
of its monarch. Its public buildings have not fallen
into decay, nor are the better class houses suffered
to remain untenanted, because the Scottish gentry
cannot exhibit themselves some four or five times in
the year at festivities in Holyrood House. The popu-
lation of Glasgow " has increased, is increasing, and
will increase," albeit no court is held to stimulate
trade and promote the manufactures of Scot-
land. Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester, and
a host of other towns can still flourish
under a resident municipality, although there is no
local imitation, no caricature of regal splendour.
Even in Ireland itself, we find Belfast, the capital of
the "Black North," prosperous and contented, without
any such adventitious aid. Dublin alone is an
exception to the general rule; its quarter of a million
of inhabitants appear to be the only individuals in
the United Kingdom who are dependent on the
" nods and becks, and wreathed smiles" of an in-
dividual, not merely for their comforts, but
for their very existence. Deprived of the
fostering care of a Lord-Lieutenant, nothing
can prosper or turn out favourably. All will be lost
when the good citizens are no longer blessed with a
sight of their territorial aristocracy arrayed in garbs
that travestie the attire of an over-dressed footman.
But after all, if the Viceregal Court exercised so
wonderful an influence on the fortunes of the citizens
of Dublin, let us ask, what right have they to retain
an advantage denied to all other towns and cities
in the empire? Why should the over-toiled
artizan, the careworn operative of Manchester,
of Sheffield, or of Birmingham, contribute a portion
of their hard earnings as a tribute to the wealthy
shopkeepers of Dublin ? Protection in every form
has been deliberately condemned by solemn acts of
the Legislature. It is decided that the various in-
terests of the British empire must sustain themselves
by their own united strength, that they must not
seek to charge the community in general for their
own private advantage. The corn-laws have been
repealed; the food of " the many" is no longer taxed
to swell the purses of the favoured " few." The naviga-
tion-laws have been modified. There is no longer a
monopoly for the British shipowner or the British
sailor. Why, then, should the tradesmen of Dublin
constitute an exception to the general rule ? Why
should they alone be " protected ?" Why should the
wealth that would otherwise be expended throughout
the entire country—that would provide employment
for labourers, improve the fertility of the soil, develop
the natural resources of the country, and carry com-
fort to many a cottage in the rural districts, be with-
drawn from its natural channels to be expended in
folly and extravagance in Dublin.? The Lord-
Lieutenancy does not stimulate production or increase
the national wealth. If it really have the effect
its present advocates so strenuously and vociferously
proclaim, if it increase the rents of furnished houses
in Dublin, and occasion greater activity in drapers'
shops during a few weeks of the year, other localities
suffer in an inverse ratio, and are kept in misery and
wretchedness all the year, for the brief period of sun-
shine, the fitful gleams of prosperity that fall upon
the metropolis. And there can be no just or valid
reason adduced why a principle so pernicious should
be perpetuated.
But, after all, would the people of Dublin be at
all injured ? Is it not more than probable that
" the reality " would replace " the shadow ;" that in
place of a mere representative they would have their
SOVEREIGN herself paying occasional visits to her
Irish subjects, with whose loyalty and devotion she
was so well pleased last year ? Would not a " royal
visit " for even a single week be far more beneficial
in every respeCt than years of the " Brummagem
Court ?" Then, indeed, the English and Scotch aristo-
cracy would be induced to cross St. George's Channel,
to carry their wealth to the Irish shores. No express
stipulation, can, of course, be made on such a subject.
Oar Most Gracious QUEEN cannot be made the ser-
vant of the Dublin shopkeepers—an agent to puff
their wares and to bring custom to their counters ;
a bargain cannot be entered into on the point. There
can, however, be little doubt that Queen Vicroara
would now and then visit her Irish dominions, and
afford to her Irish subjects the opportunity of offering
their vows of fealty to their Monarch, to whom the
Crown has descended through a long line of ances-
tors. Then, indeed, the citizens of Dublin would
have cause to rejoice at the change, the very mention
of which is now exciting their anger and indignation

Because juvenile delinquents still crowd our pri-
sons, and juvenile vagrants still throng every corner
of our thoroughfares, there has been a question raised
as to the efficacy of one of the most practically excellent
of the benevolent undertakings of modern days. We
have so often commended the excellence and set forth
the claims of Ragged Schools that it is unnecessary to
dwell upon their peculiar merits now. Those merits
have been almost universally admitted, yet on a recent
investigation of the actual condition of the juvenile
population of the metropolis, so degraded have been
the characters, and so pitiable the spectacles revealed,
that the inefficiency, or rather the insufficiency, of
ragged schools has been (some assert) made pain-
fully apparent. Nevertheless, before we decide upon
the success or the non-success of any undertaking, it is
only fair to inquire what we were justified in expect-
ing from it. If any sanguine enthusiasts anticipated
that ragged schools alone and unaided, save by the
exertions of individuals, were to regenerate a com-
munity whose wretchedness and precocious iniquity
have almost passed into a proverb, then indeed we
may admit that these institutions have failed in ac-
complishing their object. If, on the other hand, we
rightly estimate their true position—if we con-
ceive them to be (as indeed they are)
hospitals for the morally sick and destitute,
receptacles for the hapless foundlings that society
casts from her bosom to perish, in hundreds and thou-
sands, by the wayside, then, on the contrary, we shall
agree that, so far from proving inefficient, ragged
schools have not only accomplished much, but they
have accomplished much that other hands have left
undone. While, however, we take this opportunity
of again bearing testimony to their excellence, while
we again remind the rich and the charitable, that their
alms and their assistance cannot be better bestowed than
in furthering the efforts of these literal pioneers of
civilization, we would also again enforce the truth
which, with all our confidence in the good effects of
ragged schools, we have never lost sight of,
namely, that the very existence of such insti-
tutions, while it attests individual charity, is a
national disgrace. Silently, but. not the less eloquently,
these scanty, poorly-furnished buildings, with their
voluntary teachers and scholars whose "ragged"
habiliments are a less pitiable sight than the obvious
misery of their physical, mental, and moral condition
—children with none of the happiness and little of the
innocence of children—children with frames stunted
by hunger and covered with filth, a ready prey
to the first attacks of disease—children whose hearts
are ignorant of the first rudiments of real knowledge,
yet whose hands are perhaps skilful in the intricate
mysteries of theft—silently and eloquently do these
scenes cry shame tipon the Legislature under whose
sway they exist. We repeat it, ragged schools are
a disgrace to the nation. We are about to call toge-
ther men of all countries to witness our artistic skill,
and to receive proof of our national magnificence and

magnanimity. Whatever the reality of ISSI may be,
it is not difficult for imagination to conjure up a
gorgeous spectacle, wherein the wealth of England
and the enterprise of Englishmen will be splendidly
conspicuous. Let us imagine, however, some stranger
from another world, dazzled by the glory of the
"show," asking, like King ARTHUR on a similar
occasion, to see the " substance ?"
" Where stands the People ?—Genius, lift the blind."
What sort of an exhibition for the eyes of
all nations would a close scrutiny of London
afford ? To return to the subject of these remarks—
one only, but one,of the most important of the many
crying wants of the community—Education, we are
yet in expectation of some Ministerial effort in its
behalf. In this case, more than any other,
we may say, bis dat qui cito dat ; for in
this case delay is death. The public have
observed with pleasure that by her MAJESTY'S desire
the name of the Prince of WALES has been placed
upon the list of patrons of many of the principal
public charities. Has the young Prince given a do-
nation to the ragged schools of London ? In no
place would the name of youthful royalty be so ap-
propriately inscribed.

In another part of our paper will be found an ac-
count of the Totnes Election, which, although it
does not contain the report of any speeches of great
oratorial display, certainly possesses some interest
from the tone of the speech of Lord Seymour, (now
a Cabinet Minister), who, when speaking on the suf-
frage question, stated it to be his belief that the Go-
vernment would, on being convinced that it was
really the desire of the people generally, grant a
measure of reform in the shape of an extension of
the suffrage. We hope the people throughout the
entire length and breadth of the kingdom will, there-
fore, petition for reform, and, perhaps, the Govern-
ment will be alive to its own interest, and make
timely, concessions. It is now very generally ad-
admitted, even in small boroughs, that the present sys-
tem is far from perfect, and that electoral districts
could easily be established on the basis of the poor-
law unions. This alteration would at any rate give
the franchise to hundreds of thousands who are at
present unrepresented. There can be no doubt, if
the people are true to their own interests, a measure
of reform will, ere long, be introduced by the present
Government, and carried through Parliament.

THE FRENCH REPUBLIC.

We have received the Paris journals of Saturday
and yesterday.
The Pressa of Saturday has a long article
avowedly from the pen of M. DE LAaXARTINE, in the
course of which he thus alludes to the proposition of
M. DB LAROCHEJACIIIIIELIN
:
"As to the proposition of M.",de Larochejacquelin, I
will not discuss it. Evidence is not discussed, it is felt
or it is not, that is the whole controversy. If, however, I
had to discuss it,
.1 would merely, like Socrates, ask the
author of the proposition fivo or six questions, and from
consequence I would constrain him to end in anarchy
which he detests as much as we. Thus, I suppose it
had triumphed, and the nation had chosen the monarchy;
the next day, the author would be obliged to have
another trial to decide which monarchy. I suppose
the nation replied that of the empire. The next
day M. de Larochejacquelin, or a partisan of the
majority of July, would come and ask for a third trial,
founding his demand on the pressure of the reminis•
cfmces of the glory of the army, of the Government
then existing and dominating the ballot. I suppose that

at this third trial the nation replied by the monarchy of
July. The next day a proposition, signed by an Impe-
rialist and a Legitimist would demand a fourth trial,
founding his demand on the presssure of the functiona-
ries of July still in place, of recent influence, of affection
not yet extinct, of habits not yet forgotten. I suppose
the nation replied by choosing the Legitimist monarchy.
The next day Republicans, Imperialists, partisans of
the illegitimate royalty, would sign a proposition to de-
mand to have the ballot annulled, founding the applica-
tion on the pressure of the nobility, the clergy, the great
proprietors, and the other aristocracies influencing the
country districts. I suppose that the nation at last tired
of these trials, should divide into two nearly equal parts,
and should give only one or two votes majority out of
twelve millions of voters. Does M. de Larochejacquelin
suppose that there is under the vault of heaven a nation
of philosophers sufficiently scrupulous observers of the
metaphysical decisions of number, in matters like these
of government, to stop short before a vote and not ask
for the annulation of the ballot, founding their demand
on some pressure or other, for what is there that is not
pressure here below ? Nations feel the pressure of
circumstances, of events, of panics, of ideas, as
the mercury feels the pressure of the atmosphere.
I suppose, also, that the votes are exactly equal.
Then, is it an appeal to the people? No; but as
appeal to civil war! Here, then, is the nation setting
up a cases bal. against itself. What logic that is which
ends in blood I May the republic preserve us from it
Let us remain in it and improve it, in place of discussing
it incessantly and so weakening it. I doubt that this
incessant crisis in which the proposition of M. de
Larochejacquelin would plunge us, that this successive
change of kings, dynasties, empires, or republics, would
be an efficient remedy for the crisis of business which
the author of it seems to think. An appeal to order, to
common sense, to labour, would in my opinion be better
than eight or ten appeals to the people. In finishing, an
idea occurs to me, and would cause me to pardon the
republic if I was among the number of those who
arc impatient against time—it is this:—ln 1790 a pro-
position like M. de Larochejacquelin's would have the
next day seen its author in prison; in 1793, would have
led him to the scaffold; in 1810, would have seen him on
the plain of Grenelle; in 1815, would have carried him
to the prevotal court; and in 1840, would have had him
before the Court of Peers; whilst in 1850, the Republic,
free and magnanimous, listens without being angry, dis-
cusses without scandal, and confines itself, after having
honoured the courage of the proposition, with sending
its author to what?—to reflection. I cannot help hoping
well of a Republic which has at once caused the good
sense, humanity, and morals of my country to make such
progress."
The election for the Vosges has terminated in the
return of M. GUILGOT, the Democratic candidate.
Ile polled 34,000 votes. Democracy bas made great
progress in Vosges. In May, 1844, the highest
number of votes polled by any of the Democratic
candidates was 18,800.
It appears that the differences between the PIMP.
DENT and the Orleanists and Legitimatists who com-
pose the reactionary majority of the Assembly are
by no means arranged. The Siecle has the following
on this subject :
" We must not believe all that people say, but yet we
have a right to listen to it. Some days after the election
of the 10th March a Council of Ministers and of inti-
mate friends was held at the Elysee. Such and such a
one breathed fire and flame against the Parisian shop-
ocracy, who wanted the sword of a Napoleon to bring
them to their senses. The principal auditor replied
that he was of a different opinion that he thought
reforms urgent that the revolution was made
for sake of such reforms, and that if the nation
desired them, who, he asked, had the right to
stop the national will? On hearing such language the
person to whom this retort was addressed flow to a cer-
tain general whom certain parties transform into a
monarchist ogre, and rushing in, exclaimed, ' All is lost;
even he, our hope, has gone over to the Reds! General,
save us once more.' A new Council was called, at
which the leaders of parties assisted. M. Thiers dis-
played extraordinary vivacity. Louis Napoleon, whose
maxim it is that the world is commaudea only by the
phlaktnatic, simply replied by offering power to M.
Thiers. The latter, encouraged by the presence of M.
Berrver and others, pushed his remarks to such an out-
rageous length. that the matt:r ended in the nomination
of M. Baroche." _

That there is by no means an entente cordiale sub-
sisting between the PRESIDENT and the Bourbonists
is evident from the following article, headed UR-
GENCY, which appears in the Napoleon of yesterday:
"Present circumstances are such that never was it
more necessary to simplify questions. Let us leave to
other times the task of discussing theories; let us
occupy ourselves with each laws and measures as may
ameliorate the present state of things. The firm inten-
tion of the Government, we are convinced, is to act with
respect to the Assembly with every possible deference
and accord; but their union will be durable only on one
condition—that the important propositiocs submitted to
the Assembly shall be decided in one way or the other.
Uncertainty is ruining the country. When a Bill is of
great importance to the public its rejection or adoption
ought not to suffer any delay. What, for instance, de-
mands more urgency than the discussion upon the Bill
which relates to the press? What at the same time
more prejudicial than the disquietude to which are de-
livered up both those who hope to see it rejected and
those who desire to see it favourably received? Let the
Assembly, therefore, we conjure it, rise by its activity
to the height of the peril. Let it discuss without the
slightest delay that which is marked by so decisive a
character of utility for the country. The country cannot,
we must over and over again repeat it, be tranquillised
but by twe kinds of laws—those which repress excesses
and prevent disorders, and those which give a just atis-
fection to popular ittereste. The representatives who
know how to appreciate both the gravity of the situation
and the importance of their mandate, ought, with all
their efforts, all their solicitude, to hasten the examine-

Lion on the one hand, if the laws on the press, on elcc-
Oral meetings, on the jury, on the mayors, and on
' transportation; and on the other of tae budget of
1851, and of the bills on a pension fund for the
poor, on mutual aid societies, on public wash-
in;-douses end on the credo: foncier. If all these
measures were voted in a month, the influence
of the Assembly and the government would gain im-
menLely. and both would have merited well of their
country."
The Estafette declares that it is probable that the
majority may make extensive alterations-in the Bills
relating to the press and the electoral meetings.
The Journal des Debats of Saturday bitterly la-
ments the immense progress which democratic opi-