The Sun.
London, England, 1844-05-22 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, MAY 22, 1844.

vileges, and to the general condition as regards educa-
tion, learning, and religion, of the Universities of Ox-
ford and Cambridge, and their colleges, especially with
regard to all matters herein brought before your
Honourable House, with full power to enable such Com-
mission efficiently to perform its important services.
And your Petitioners, &e.

CUSTOM HOUSE FRAUDS.
It is a growing fashion, we believe, of late years
among our medical practitioners, to discourage the
practice of bleeding. This once popular treatment is
now, so to speak, abandoned, except in extreme cases
of topical inflammation, whether produced by external
violence, or inward disorganization, or an habitual
tendency of the blood to congestion. But the two
Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, with the Hall
of Apothecaries, to boot, may settle what canons of
doctrine they please, in full " senatus " assembled,
with all the revived solemnities of Mr. PETER
BORTHWICK'S threatened convocation of another
learned profession ; there is, we tell them, one patient
in the world, the most important on their books, toe,
who wiLL be blooded! This is no other than the
portly Joini BULL himself. He will always insist on
his customary indulgence of a little phlebotomy, as
his more southern friends of Italy or Spain demand,
after noontide, the luxury of their habitual siesta.
Only, in Mr. BULL'S case, the practitioner must take
care that he " breathe a vein," not in the patient's
arm, but in the breeches pocket. It has long been
imagined, and that burly patient is brought at last to
be of the opinion himself, that he is in incessant
danger from plethoric repletion in that region. In

LITERAT LIRE.

FOREIGN AND COLONIAL QUARTERLY

RE VIE IV. Nc. VI.
Smith and Elder, Lrndon, 1844.

The article in this Number which will be most ac- I
ceptable, to the generality of readers, is the ono on
"Modern German Poetry," chiefly, however, by
reason :of the translations which are executed with
considerable elegance and spirit, and are well selected
in point of subject. The Reviewer, after enumera-
ting some of the most eminent names that have
figured in German literature for the last half century
and upwards, proceeds to observe that the majority of
them have now passed away from the stage of exist-
ence, and that the successors of these giants are for
the most part a mere race of dwarfs, with few or no
pretensins to superior intellect, but making up by tact
what they want in talent. The German poets of the
present day, he adds, with the exception of some two
or three, have but one string to their lyres—it is that
of Byronic despair and infidel despondency, and
consequently they are, as a matter of course, dull,
common-place, and wearisome in the extreme.
" Greatly is it to be regretted that that mi-
serable doubting and despairing spirit which
prompted Byron's poetry, should be still
the be-all and the end-all of German lyric writers.
Nothing is snore wearisome than the languid satiety
which this tone of thought and feeling produces. It
is a frost which nips all true greatness in the bud, and
creates an atmosphere that stifles all the nobler feel-
ings of our nature." The tone of these remarks is a
very healthy one, and nothing can be snore true and
just. The " Highlands of /Ethiopia" is a careful
digest of Major Harris's late work on this subject.
Theßeviewer is very laudatory in his comments—but
not too much so, for the volume is full of exciting in-
cident—and successfully defends the author from the
recent attacks made on him in the Westminster Re-
view. " Galileo"—the " starry Galileo," as Milton
calls him—is an account of soma of the chief disco-
veries of this great astronomer, and the reception
they met with at the bigoted Court of Rome. " Hayti,
its Past and Present State" is an historical sketch of
this fruitful but distracted island from the period of
the reign of Christopher down to the present time.
The Reviewer is sangnine of its future prospects,
provided France will act generously towards the Hay-
tian Government, and remit a portion of the large
pecuniary claim which she professes to have
on it, and which at present it is wholly
unable to liquidate. The " Laws of the
Currency" is an essay penned in a rational, temperate
spirit, and contains several serviceable practical sug-
gestions, more especially as regards the Bank of Eng-
land system. In the article on the "History of
France" occur some critical remarks on the great
works of Gibbon, Hume, and Robertson. In general,
they are correct, with the exception that the Re-
viewer speaks in warm terms of praise of the " poet's
fire" possessed by Gibbon, and states that "flume's
reputation is undiminishel." Now he is wrong in
both these remarks. Gibbon possesses eloquence,
but certainly not poetry ; in fact, he never approaches
nearer to it than stately, rhetorical declamation ;
while, as respects Hume, his fame of late years has
sustained considerable diminution—though the charms
of his style are still as warmly admired as ever—and
he is now generally acknowledged to be a partial and
somewhat careless historian, who was by no means
remarkable for pains-taking research. We quote the
Reviewer's critical opinions of Hume, Gibbon, and
Robertson :

1825-6, one of his political doctors (then RomNsoN,
now RIPoN), announced to the world that this
interesting personage was so excessively full of
political health (i. e. money), that the only
reasonable cause for apprehension about him
arose from this redundancy; that it was the pecu-
..

liarity of his (civil) constitution to " form " fresh
capital, as fast as he got rid of that which was in him.
All Europe was astounded at this phenomenon of an
unimpoverishable capitalist ; and France sent over
some of her distinguished savans (the Baron CHARLES
Dern; among the number) to contemplate and report
upon whatever might be most notable in the physio-
logy and aspect of a gentleman subject to so capri-
cious and diffusive a malady. To be sure there was
no end of "visiting" physicians then ! From all
parts of the Old World and of the New, he was pre-
scribed for—bled, depleted, ransacked, rummaged,
blistered—almost done for. It was very near prov-
ing one of those cases in which people are " killed
with kindness." They would not leave him ;—they
would not let him look, even, into his own case, or
worry himself with over-scrupulous inquiries into
theirs. By the application of a foreign electuary,
called indifferently " Loans" and " Mining Ven-
tures," they soon expelled from him two-thirds, as
it was thought, of his whole bulk in superabundant
capital. Then, home-reared leeches, in the shape of
Joint-Stock and Bubble Company shares, were
plentifully applied ; and at last the patient, fearful of
sinking under so many and such violent remedies,
from Mexico, and Guatemala, and Madrid—Lisbon
and Berlin St. Petersburgh and Rio Janeiro
Bogota da Fe and Amsterdam —to say no-
thing of the nausea occasioned by endless
nostrums of asphaltum, caoutchouc, corrosive sub-
limate, and all the modern ingredients of
our street pavements, and roadways, and anti-rot me-
dicated woodwork ; the patient, we say, became fear-
fully exasperated. Some of his advisers he kicked
down stairs ; others he crushed to death, by once
saa
et touching them;
dthietmn
and, it t
mischief of this re-action, on his part, would have
dtioffiDe url.t
PEEL nyd his friends where the
to dose him with their new currency drug, and gold
pill. These immediately paralysed his faculties and
ta occurredis
prostrated his strength to a degree which brought on
a " crisis," still remembered as " THE" panic. Yet
the strength of Jos's( BULL'S constitution (or pockets)
has triumphed over all these trials and disasters ; and,
with ordinary fair play—a little more vigilance in his
superior, and a little snore honesty in his subordinate
servants—it might yet do so. But he is, unhappily,
still persuaded, in the first place, to endure the con-
stant exhibition of Dr. PEEL'S Digitalis, or " Gold-
touch ;" which, given on the pretext of keeping him
free from over excitement, and keeping down the
buoyancy of his action, is slowly, but certainly, like
the narcotic poison of " BELLADONNA," sapping his
vital powers, and predisposing them to decay. In the
second place he is still practised upon by those who
profusely " bleed" him—while he sleeps. These
" practitioners," the most clandestine of their order,
are they who concoct " Custom-house frauds." The
secret of these processes has been, hitherto, but par-
tially discovered; and no system of watching, so
efficient as to ensure the detection of such intruders,
and prevent them from further exhausting their victim
daring his slumbers, has yet been devised. The first of
these mischiefs we have already, on former occasions,
minutely described. The second, we are reminded of,
by a paragraph in a newspaper of Sunday last which,
without probably intending to do so, demonstrates
very clearly how little of beneficial result can be
looked for from the means now in course of adoption
for the prevention of future malpractices of the de-
scription alluded to.
It appears that the Commissioners of Customs
suppose themselves to be now wide awake !
They are not going to slumber over frauds,
and collusions, and pecnlations, by which, if
we may judge from the jump which the Customs
duties have taken, within the year since the cry of
" thieves" has been hotly kept up at the great house
in Thames-street,—the pockets of poor Mr. BULL have
been drained of from 1,000,000/. to 2,000,0001. per
annum, instead of the 480,0001., or other modest
sum, which, a little while since, the Commissioners
congratulated the public on being at any rate the
" be-all and the end-all " of the nefarious robberies
that had then been " blown upon." No. The Commis-
sioners, " with the approval of the Treasury," have
created two new officers with " a new style and
title !" (Prodigious invention, and rare guarantee !)
These are " Inspectors-General of the waterside and
warehousing departments." To the number of landing
surveyors who have been se negligent heretofore, are
to be added three colleagues (on the principle that
JOHN, having confessed to " doing nothing ;"
Tom, in answer to his master's inquiry
what he was about, reported himself to be
" helping Jowl"). The six classes of landing
waiters to remain as before. Why ? Because of the
culpable dereliction of duty traced to their depart-
ment, in the so-called investigations already insti-
tuted. But now comes the flower of what our Sun-
day Contemporary quaintly calls this "scheme." Sixty
new officers, " subordinate to, and under orders of
the landing waiters, but superior to the lockers and
weighers," are to be chosen by the Commissioners.
There may be something very touching and magni-
ficent in this nicely-balanced gradation of ranks from
the oligarchy of the Board itself—(Magnates as they
are), through the successive gradations of an aristo-
cracy of surveyors, receivers for western ports, and in-
spectors-general to a gentry of landing waiters, a com-
monalty of " superintendents of locks and ware-
houses," and working classes of lockers, weighers,
and porters. But it is more to our purpose to be
told, from what body these " superintendents of locks"
—whose loftier state than the " lockers" them-
selves is thus carefully noted—are to be selected. And
we find they are to be taken " from the most expe-
rienced " of the old hands in this class. This is rather
ambiguous. The only "experience" of which the
public have had any remarkable evidence is con-
nected with those who must have knowingly lent
their important, though subordinate, aid to the
fraudulent entries, weighings, exchanges, and re-
movals of packages, and to the falsification of books,
whereby the revenue has been plundered to an ex-
tent[still utterly unfathomed ; and certain houses, of
more than equivocal reputation and enormous wealth,
have realised those sudden and colossal fortunes,
which enable them almost to brave and challenge ex-
posure on the one hand, with as little hesitation as
they pay down the pecuniary penalty accruing on
such occasional detection on the other. The truth is,
the whole " scheme," which we published recently
in The Sun, is an absurdly inadequate and puerile
contrivance to avert such delinquencies, as the already
ascertained frauds, in future. The great evil must be
either in the defective organization of the whole ma-
chinery of this important fiscal department, or in the
positive incompetency of the Board at its head for
their most responsible duties. The cutting down 183
lockers to 120, and 220 weighers to 180 ; the new
appointment of two inspectors-general, and the
addition of three landing surveyors, and the creation
of sixty superintendents of "locks"—were these last
even all of the family of Mr. Cuunn himself—will
do no more to guarantee the Customs' revenue from
future spoliation, in the absence of a more intelligent,
vigorous, and prompt controlling authority, than the
addition of twenty-four new Directors to the staff of
the Bank of England would operate to put the cur-
rency, under the present system, on a proper footing.
The Premier himself could not have devised a feebler
or a more delusive scheme of improved management
than these Commissioners have produced !

" Gibbon united the philosophy and general views of
one age to the brilliant pictures and impassioned story
of another. He warmed with the narratives of the cru-
saders or the Saracens—he wandered with the Soy-
thians—he wept with the Greeks—he delineated with a
painter's hand, and a poet's fire, the manners of the na-
tions, the features of the countries, the most striking
events of the periods which were passed under review ;
but at the same time he preserved inviolate the unity
and breadth of his picture,—his lights and shadows
maintained their just proportions, and were respectively
cast on the proper objects. Philosophy threw a radiance
over the mighty maze ; and the mind of the reader,
after concluding his prodigious series of details, dwelt
with complacency on its most striking periods, skilfully
brought out by the consummate skill of the artist, as the
recollection of a spectator does on any of the magic
scenes in Switzerland, in which, amidst an infinity of
beautiful objects, the eye is fascinated by the calm tran-
quillity of the lake, or the rosy hues of the evening glow
on the glacier. We speak of Gibbon as a delineator of
events ; none can feel more strongly or deplore more
deeply the fatal blindness—the curse of his age—which
rendered him so perverted on the subject of religion,
and left so wide a chasm in his immortal work, which
the profounder thought and wider experience of Guizot
has done so much to fill.
" Considered as calm and philosophic narratives, the
histories of Hume and Robertson will remain as standard
models for every future age. The just and profound re-
flections of the former, the inimitable clearness and im •
partiality with which he has summed up the arguments
on both sides, on the most momentous questions which
have agitated England, as well as the general simplicity
and occasional pathos of his story, must for ever com-
mand the admiration of mankind. In vain we are told

that he is often inaccurate, sometimes partial ; in vain
are successive attacks published on detached parts of his
narrative, by party zeal or antiquarian research ; his
reputation is undiminished ; successive editions issuing
from the press attest the continued sale of his work ;
and it continues its majestic course through tho sea of
time, like a mighty three decker, which never even con-
descends to notice the javelins darted at its sides from
the hostile canoes which from time to time seek to im-
pede its progress. Robertson's merits are of a different,
and, upon the whole, of an inferior kind. Gifted with a
philosophic spirit, a just and equal mind, an eloquent
and impressive expression, he had not the profound sa-
gacity, the penetrating intellect, which, have rendered
the observations of Bacon, Hume, and Johnson as en-
during as the English language. He had not enjoyed
the practical acquaintance with man, which Hume ac-
quired by mingling in diplomacy ; and without a prac-
tical acquaintance with man, no writer, whatever his
abilities may be, can rightly appreciate the motives, or
probable result of human actions."

SELECTION FROM THE SPEECHES AND
WRITINGS OF THE LATE LORD KING.
Longman, London, 1844.
The late Lord King, though not possessed of any,
brilliant or commanding qualities of mind, was, never-
theless, one of the most useful, and—on all questions
connected with finance, statistics, &c.—one of the
most influential public men of his day. There were
few practical subjects with which he was not ac-
quainted, and on all which he discussed in Parliament
he brought to bear a strong, unclouded judgment, a
quick, intuitive perception of the truth, and a variety
of pertinent arguments, drawn from the copious store-
house of a richly cultivated intellect. Hence his
speeches were always listened to with respectful at-
tention, even though they might fail to convince the
Tory-ridden House to which they were addressed;
and they were read by all the more thinking and
liberal portion of the community with that deep
interest which their sterling merits were so well cal-
culated to excite. In politics, his Lordship was a
Whig—perhaps we might say, "a Whig and some-
thing more"—and on all questions of moment he was
invariably found voting with the advanced guard of
the Liberal party. Of Church reform, in particular,
he was, from the first to the last year of his public
career, the zealous, consistent, and determined advo-
cate ; and he was, in consequence, held in great awe
by the bench of Bishops, who shrank from his apt and
cutting sarcasms, and seldom had the boldness to venture
on a direct reply to them. Though he possessed wit
and humour in no ordinary degree, yet these quali-
ties were always under the control of his judgment,
and he never allowed them to lead him astray from
the main track of his reasoning. Strong, homely
well-wearing sense was the chief staple of his mind ;
he had no fancy—no earnest, impassioned powers of
eloquence such as carry away an audience in spite of
themselves, but won his gradual way to public notice
by the practical strength of his logic, the luminous-
ness and simplicity of his diction, and the manly
courage and straightforwardness of his views. Had
he possessed more active ambition and fiery energy of
temperament, he might, with his natural and acquired
abilities, have raised himself to a commanding rank
among the statesmen of his age—for it was an
age which he thorougly understood and which was
well able to appreciate him—but he was fond of cul-
tivating lettered ease in the retirement of the country,
and cared little for political celebrity—that brilliant
ignis fatuus which leads so many men astray—that
fatal rock on which so many characters are ship-
wrecked. In the volume before us, which is edited
by the Earl of Fortescue, we have a selection from
some of the most successful of Lord King's Parlia-
mentary speeches, together with a few unimportant
extracts from a meagre private diary which he kept
for three weeks, and then suddenly laid aside, and a
brief memoir, from which we extract the following
passage, relating to the earlier portion of his Lord-
ship's life :
" Lord King was born in 1775, and at the age of
six was sent to Eton, where he remained nearly
twelve years. Being early impressed with the defects
in the system of education then in use at our public
schools, he never sought to acquire more of classical
learning than was necessary to carry him creditably
through his school exercises, but applied himself assi-
duously to various branches of more practical
,know-
ledge, particularly mechanics, geometry, and drawing,
and among his early amusements at Eton, was the
mak-
ing a detailed survey and map of the country imme-
diately round it He was distinguished among his
school-fellows for the cheerful ease of his temper and
the kindness of his disposition, of vi Inch the writer of
this memoir (himself sent to Eton at the age of ten
years) received many proofs during the short period
i
that they were there together n 1793. He still recol-
lects with grateful pleasure the happy hours which he
spent at that time in the society of his older friend, to
whose protection he had been recommended, and in
whose room he always found a refuge from the little
annoyances, which in those days, more than at present,
younger boys at public schools occasionally encoun-
tered from their seniors. Then were laid the founda-
tions of an intimacy, which was cemented afterwards by
family ties into brotherly affection, and continued with-