The Sun.
London, England, 1844-02-22 00:00:00

Cbtai Mbttion

SUN OFFICE, Seven o'Clock,

TATTERSALL'S.—THIS EVENING
QUARTER TO SIX O'CLOCK.
CHESTER CLT.
13 to 1 agst Merry Andrew
14 to 1 agst The Prior
14 to 1 agst Sir Robert
15 to 1 agst Cattonite
20 to 1 agst Freedom

DERBY,

6 to 1 agst Ugly Buck
7 to 1 agst Rattan
16 to 1 agst Orlando
18 to 1 agst Cockamaroo
18 to 1 agst Leander
27 to 1 agst Loadstone,
33 to 1 agst lonian
33 to 1 agst Running Rein
33 to 1 agst Can3panero
33 to 1 agst Voltri
40 to 1 agst Foig-a-ballagh
40 to 1 agst Vat colt
All the others as on Monday.

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS,

FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF THIS DAY.
GLOBE.—The Anti-Corn-law League held its usual
weekly meeting last evening. It was truly a " monster"
meeting. Every part of the immense building was
crowded. There could not be less—packed as the assem-
bly was—than six thousand persons present. These
were principally of the class of society to which the
term • respectable" is conventionally applied ; but
who would be more properly designated as the middle
(to distinguish them from the labouring) classes. The
dress circle, the private boxes, and the stage were ap-
priated to a yet higher class, among whom were persons
of considerable rank and station. The issue of tickets
had been restricted, and every effort was employed by
the Committee to prevent confusion. To a very con•
siderable extent, the preliminary regulations, and
the arrangements within the house, were success-
ful ; and, with one or two trifling interruptions from
personal altercations between parties who were incon-
venienced by the pressure at the pit entrance, the pro-
ceedings of the evening were conducted with order,
only interrupted by the enthusiastic cheering within,
and by crowds without, the theatre. For intensity and
duration, this far surpassed any demonstration (and we
have been present at many exciting scenes) we ever
witnessed. The newly-formed " League for the Pro-
tection of Agriculture," and the proceedings that
marked its formation, supplied the speakers with topics,
which they employed with considerable effect upon
the risible faculties of the meeting. Mr. Daniel
O'Connell's announced intention of being present
had contributed to heighten the interest, which
the weekly meetings of the League had hitherto kept_
alive, to the excitement we have - described. He also
applied his peculiarly caustic sarcasm to the proceed-
ings of this new agitation; and slily alluded to the pro-
secution against himself and his coadjutors in Ireland,
as having rendered the Duke of Richmond and the
Duke of Buckingham fearful of coming, as conspira-
tors, within the clutches of the Attorney-General.
Passing from the incidental to the immediate business
of the night, we cannot withhold the high gratification
with which Mr. James Wilson's speech was evidently
listened to—a speech which was delivered under the
manifest disadvantage of the meeting being kept on the
yui vive by the expected entrance of Mr. 0 Connell,
and the occasional intimations of his approach. As an
exposition of the impolicy of commercial restrictions,
and the mischiefs it has wrought in this and other
countries, it was most able and convincing, and de-
serves the widest circulation, as a vindication of the
efforts now employed to impress the Legislature, through
the medium of public opinion, with a conviction of the
necessity of adopting a wiser policy in its enactments
respecting commerce than that by which it has hitherto
been governed. We have taken occasion to allude to the
enthusiastic reception of Mr. 0 Connell by this immense
assemblage. We regard it as one of those " signs of
the times" which no Government can safely treat with
indifference. The prosecution of O'Connell and his
co-agitators has produced an effect on the public
mind, even in this country, most unfortunate for the
Ministry • and this feeling is spreading. O'Connell,
whose influence was subsiding, has been exalted into
a hero. If subjected to personal infliction, he will be
more formidable in his prison than when presiding in
his Conciliation Hall, or addressing his monster meet-
ing on the plain of Tara. There he was a " diffi-
culty" to a Government, disliked by the great bulk of
the Irish nation. He might have been neutralised by
Ministers; and would have been so, had they adopted
a mild and generous policy toward the people, over
whom he exercised an influence which had waxed
or waned according as the Ministry of the day
coerced, or conciliated, by its system of government.
At the close of one of those enthusiastic bursts
of cheering with which O'Connell was last night
greeted, he said—and who will venture to doubt the
correctness of the anticipation 2—" The sound of that
shout will not die within these walls • it will be carried
throughout your metropolis ; it will be 'conveyed on the
eastern winds to Ireland—it will be heard to re-echo
soon on the banks of the Shannon, the Nore, the Suir,
and the Barrow."
STANDARD.—The adjourned debate was last night
continued by a single speech ; but that speech possesses
an interest greater than belongs to all the speeches that
went before it, and all that arikely to follow it. It was
the speech of the Attorney-General for Ireland—the de-
fence of a man who had been for six consecutive nights
in the House of Commons, and for twice as
many weeks out of doors, the object of incessant attack
from open enemies, and of insidious blows from pre-
tended friends, as unjust as they were malignant. Great
interest naturally attached to such a defence, even before
the speaker had opened his lips ; but we do not hesitate
to say that the Right Hon. Gentleman had spoken but
a very few sentences before the generous sympathy with
the per iet uted man was wholly lost in admiration of the
great lawyer and orator, and astonished at the power
with which he crushed all his opponents, and vindicated
the cause of truth and justice. In Ireland it is
pretended that Mr. Smith is not an eloquent speaker,
and some chattering fribbles in this country
talk of his failing in the House of Commons, but
read his speech of last night—mark its perfect unity
as a demonstration, the irresistible sequence of each in-
ference, the lucid order in which these inferences pro-
ceed to an inevitable conclusion, and the animation and
vigour which pervade the whole, and then say whe-
ther such a speech would not be thought eloquent in
Greece in her best age—whether it does not rank
with the best English models ? It is not " Irish
eloquence " quite the opposite but that is indeed
high praise. It is an inadequate acknowledgment to
say, that by his speech last night Mr. Smith has won
the very first place among the professional orators
in the House of Commons. That it overturned the
whole case attempted to be raised against him, and
overturned it without effort, can be easily under-
:stood. The case was one which any infant's hand might
crush; but it was not with infantine force—it was with
the strength of an Afrite—that the Attorney-General
for Ireland rolled back their accusations upon his ac-
cusers. The expression of indignant scorn with which
be vindicated his own honesty, and the honesty of
the Irish bar, in reply to the imputation of
bir Thomas Wilde, has probably never been
excelled ; and an inferior matter, his contrast
of Sir Thomas's own precedents- to Sir Thomas's
late exposition of the law, was as ludicrously effective
as the vindication was terrible. We say so much of the
qualities of the Attorney-General's speech to invite
those who read for amusement only, and who would,
perhaps, be deprived of the high gratification of reading
this. splendid arguraOnt by the terror of a long speech
upon a threadbare subject from one hitherto known
• only as a consummate lawyer.

MURDERS BY A YOUNG CHILD.
On Monday was committed to Lincoln Castle, for trial,
charged with the wilful murder of her two little bro-
thers (on the mother's side), Mary Johnson, a girl not
-yet thirteen.
The inquest was held at Benington, near Boston, the
place where the parties reside, and it has proved a most
painful and intricate investigation.
The prisoner's improbable story is as follows :
She went to Mr. Overton's shop, the Post-offica, to in-
quire for a letter ; there not being one, she went out
again, and in about ten minutes returned, and asked
for a pennyworth of arsenic, which, after a deal of
-hesitation, she obtained. The same ni flit, when par-
taking of their meal, the two children were poisoned,
and died the next morning, within two hours of each
4other. On the night in question, after their meal was
egyer, Farr (the father) and his housekeeper went to a
ranting chapel, in an adjoining parish, and upon their
Teturn homo they found the two children at a neigh-
bour's house, under the same roof, retching, purging,
:land vomiting, which continued with but little intermis-
sion until they died. The father fetched Mr. Cummack,
•a surgeon, but upon his arrival William expired.
-The day after the death of the two children, the
father, hearing that the prisoner had procured poison
et Mr. Overton's, took her with him, and confronted her
.
with Mr. Overton, putting the question, " this
;girl get any poison here ?" Being answered in the
affirmative, the father then asked the girl what she did
i with t ? She replied, " I gave it to a woman on the
road, who sent me for it." At another stage of the
:investigation, being asked by the Coroner if she should
;know the woman again, or describe her dress and person,
:she answered, she had never seen her before or since,
mat she was a tall woman, wearing a brown cloak,
a white straw bonnet with Coloured ribands, and ,
car-
rying a reticule basket; and that she accompanied
'the woman on the high-road as far as the guide-post
leadins,g to Butterwick, being a distance of between 200
and 300*
yards from Mr. Overton's, where the woman
left her, it.nd pursued her journey towards Boston, and
the girl returned hoe.
After vigilant inquiry by the officers and polieenosueh
woman can be found.
At this stage of the proceedings a witness was pro-
duced who completely refuted the statement of the pri-
soner, and swore that on the day in question she was
_going on the high-road to Boston, and saw a woman
•comb's. over Mr. Overton's stile, and that she also saw
the prisoner, but that they never came near one an-
other, and that no communication did or could take
-.place between them.
Mr. Overton proved serving the prisoner with a quar-
ter of a pound of arsenic, and he asked her how they
were going to use it ? She said "to poison mice." lie
advised the girl to be very cautious where she put it, as
it was highly dangerous, and then took the precaution
of duly labelling it with the word "poison."
Mr. Cummack made apost mortem examination of both
bodies, and detected arsenic in their stomachs.
The housekeeper underwent a severe cross-examina-
tion by the Coroner, but nothing could be elicited from