The Sun.
London, England, 1850-09-11 00:00:00

,41: t Ana Ant

17:11(.'
LONDON, WEDNESDAY, bEPTEMBER 11, 1850

Disingenuous as the apologists of Austria have
shown themselves from the very commencement of
the revolutionary movement in Hungary, we cannot
call to remembrance any more tortuous mode cf ar-
gument than that recently adopted by them in
reference to the attack upon General HAYNAU in
Bankside. With the intention of diverting the
horror of the community from the sanguinary monster
lately hooted through the streets of our metropolis,
these sinister supporters of Absoltitism have trumped
up an infamous fiction of nearly five hundred execu-
tions under the Magyar regime, five hundred, of
which not one has hitherto been recorded, " besides a
variety of massacres," existing nowhere except in
the recesses of their diseased imagination. Against
any such odious misrepresentations we shall never
cease from raising our voice in accents of indignant
abhorrence. Without deigning to discuss the force of
the accusation—regarding that accusation as being
beyond the reach of discussion-e-we content ourselves
with reminding the, public that until now not one
single charge of the like character has been directed
against the leaders of the Hungarian Democracy. It
has even been asserted of Louis KOSSUTH, the chief
in that illustrious rrovement, that throughout the
whole cf the period of his political supremacy,
throughout the whole cf the time when his authority
was acknowledged by his countrymen in the lofty
and responsiLle post of Dictator, not one
death-warrant received his signature, not one
criminal was at his mandate required to expiate
his offences by undergoing the penalty of death by
the rope or the bullet. Insomuch was this the
case that the c x-Governor of Hungary has been taxed
with his abstinence from severity as with a weakness
destructive to the vigour of his administration, and
detrimental to the interests of the Magyar common-
wealth. While the German Commander-in-Chief was
butchering his prisoners wholesale, flaggellating
women, incarcerating the noble and the ignoble ins.
discriminately in the dungeons, saturating the planks
of the scaffold with the blood of heroes, strangling the
brave and the goad with halters, and sometimes par-
tially restoring them. to animation for the purpose of
causing them to undergo the agony once more by a
'discharge of musketry (us was the case with the un-
fortunate BATTUTANI) ; while such inhuman atroci•
ties were being perpetrated in the principal cities of
the conquered territory, the fallen chieftains of that
country were retreating into honourable banishment
with their consciences unsullied by a crime, with their
bands unstained by carnage or confiscation, with their
humanity only the more conspicuou'ly displayed by
having passed triumphantly through a myriad fierce
and fascinating temptations. Yet, demonstrable as
were these facts to the comprehension of the Euro-
pean multitude, there are actually found men at this
period so rash and insensate as to impeach the Hun-
garian statesmen and the Hungarian soldiers as hav-
ing been guilty of cruelty and ferocity, of systema-
tic assassination and organi zed massacre.
. Experience has undoubtedly assured us that such
are almost invariably the results of every unsuccess-
ful revolution. Directly the cause of any body of
revolutionists has become v'sibly desperate, slanderers
have appeared from the obscurest corners of literature
ready to blacken the reputations of the purest, and to
render repulsive and detestable those who were re-
cently the objects of general admiration. It was thus
that on the rise of tle Jacobinical Triumvirate to
power the shades of the G.rondists were exposed to
undeserved execration. It was thus that on the for-
mation of the Directory the memories of Rona-
PIERRE, of COUTHON, ani of ST. JUST were laden
down by supposititious enormities beyond even those
which were really the fruits of their ghastly domina-
tion. It was thus that subsequently to the 18th Bru-
maire the five Directors a e:e accused each with their
peculiar evils, from the volup uousness of the indo-
lent BARRAS to the fanaticism of the dreaming origi-
nator of the Theoplailanthropists. It was thus that
shortly after the fall of the Profsional Government,
Lasessemen, even LAMARTINP, the patriot, almost
ruined by his self-sacrificing devotion to Democracy,
was openly'cbarged with Lying surreptitiously de-
voted to his own private purposes the public. inoneis.

lying in the coffers of the Exchequer, superadding
the business of the peculator to the fury of the dema-
gogue ! No marvel, therefore, that the deceived and
defeated leaders of the Hungarian Revolution should
be now-a-days taxed with the culpability always
attributed to mifortune. No wonder tbat the de-
fenders of the Viennese Cabinet at least should
endeavour to justify the proceedings of that de-
testable Government, by enumerating a variety of
executions and massacres. Our only surprise is that
the charge has not been attempted sooner, that
the Austrian organs, both at Vienna and at London,
have not bad the ingenuity to devise this scheme of
prevarication somewhat earlier, so that its delay until
the eleventh hour should not provoke the scrutiny of
the suspicious and the sneers of the sceptical. Even
the most credulous must be startled into some degree
of incredulity as to the veracity of these same mas-
sacres and executions, when it is considered that up
to this moment not one word has been uttered against
the Councils of Debreczin as being harsh in cha-
racter or tyrannical in treatment. But for the
recent explosion of hatred to that most execrable of
the Austrian soldiers, Haysimr, we should, in all
human likelihood, have never heard one whisper as to
the executions ordered by the Hungarian statesmen,
much less of the massacres attempted by the Hunga-
rian warriors. As to the latter, indeed, it would le
interesting to learn who could by any possibility have
been the objects of 'these same human battues. Was
the carnage that of cities, villages, or hamlets ? If of
either, in what quarter of the Continent. In Austria
itself it could not have been, because of the short time
during which the Magyar forces were beyond the
frontiers of their own dominions, and because, more-
over, of the ardour with which the German people
sympathise, with the Hungarians. In Hungary itself
it could not be, for this simple reason, that the inha-
bitants of all the towns, villages, and hamlets of that
glorious country were heart and soul with the
champions of their independence.. In Transylvania it
was equally impracticable, because of the depopula-
tion which had already transformed that mountainous
province into a wild and precipitous wilderness.
'Where, therefore, by any possibility such massacres
could have been perpetrated it would be rather diffi-
cult to conjecture, but that we are conscious of still
more odious abominations sprouting forth, day after
day, in the prurient fancies of similar calumniators of
the unfortunate.

Happily, with the better informed portions of the
community there can be but one opinion as to the
treatment encountered by the German butcher of the
Hungarians when first detected in the streets of our
metropolis. That most infamous woman flogger
could not but recognise in the sudden contagion of
fury against himself personally the wrath inspired by
his atrocities throughout the length and breadth of
Christendom. Many leagues from his own country,
separated by the waters of the channel from the Eu-
ropean continent, he still found that in an obscure
district of the English capital his name was sufficiently
' notorious to rouse the passions of the working classes
to a frenzy of abhorrence and indignation. The
lesson accorded to his sombre and polluted conscience
by the yells of the labouring population of Bankside
must assuredly by this time have carried dismay into
his judgment; for it tells in sounds more comprehen-
sible than articulate language that the vengeance of
the people, in this age of advanced civilization, is in
no manner, restricted to, a given territory, but that
henceforth the family of mankind are so bound to-
gether by their common intelligence and their frater-
nal sympathies that a tyrant cannot, as of old, find re-
fuge from the brand of the popular Nemesis. Even
the ruins must from this time forth fail to afford
them protection as they did of old to Meatus, or later
in the days of Roman decadence to the blind and
destitute BELISAHIUS. " The age of Ruins" is indeed
obsolete, and the age of impunity to Absolutism like-
wise. Among all the countries scattered over the
two hemispheres, the pulses of emotional sympathy
throb in unison, none the less mysteriously than the
in•angible current flows along the metallic threads of
the electric telegraph. The channels afforded to this
sympathy are those, be it remembered, of the Fourth
Estate, and so long as journalism sustains its vigilance
and its integrity, so long will the nations of the earth
be armed against their desolators—rising up to pro-
nounce a malediction over their infamies whenever
they detect a foreign tyrant among their visitors.
Henceforth we would recommend the apologists of
despotic government to contrive some more ingenious
mode of argument for the purpose of palliating the
enormities transformed by them into objects of admi-
ration; otherwise they can only contrive, by their
impotent attempts at reasoning, to inflame still
further the wrath of the community, to render them-
selves contemptible, awl the themes of their pane-
gyric more than ever objects of scorn and abomi-
nation.

It appears to be universally admitted that the ge-
neral body of unguaranteed and non-preferential
shareholders in the railway companies are not fairly
remunerated for the amount of capital expended on
the various lines, to say ncthing of the risk encoun-
tered in carrying their gigantic projects into execu-
tion. The nation has been enormously benefited by
the wonderful facilities for intercourse and traffic
afforded by the iron net-work by which the island is
intersected. Time and distance are practically anni-
hilated ; journeys that formerly took weeks to accom-
plish may now be performed in a single day, and at a
tithe of the former expenditure. It is needless to expatiate
on the economical advantages that have already arisen
and must necessarily arise from these almost miraculous
achievements. They must be obvious to every man
possessed of ordinary powers of observation. From
the most exalted to the humblest in rank and station
—the wealthy nobleman, the poor cottier, the mer-
chant prince, and the small trader—all must concur
in considering those through whose spirit and enter-
prise these mighty undertakings were orginally con•
ceived, and ultimately carried into execution, as public
benefactors of the highest order, deserving of the
highest rewards which the nation could confer.
It would, therefore, be an act of but common jus-
tice, as it would undoubtedly be one of sound policy,
to afford every possible encouragement to such par-
ties ; to endeavour, so fir as practicable, to render
their speculations profitable, so that others might be
induced to apply their capital to internal improve-
ments, rather than to lend it to foreign potentates for
the most questionable purposes ; to develop the
natural resources of the United Kingdom, rather
than to enable a tyrannical despot to rivet
the chains of a gallant but unfortunate
nation struggling for freedom. But public
men are proverbial for ingratitude—they will not
even be guided by expediency, if bold and compre-
hensive views be required to discover that expediency.
The youth who killed the goose that laid the golden
egg has many admirers and pupils amongseAzeie
who modestly style themselves " statesmen," atictiyho
consider them3elves competent to manage the alfaira

,_,:, ,~.

of a mighty empire.
UtOM the beginning the parties interested in rail-
way property have been fleeced in every possible form
and on the most frivolous pretexts. They were' met
at the very threshold by the most extravagant
charges for legal and Parliamentary_ expanses:
The most vexatious opposition was encouraged,..wbieh
had to be; bought off at almost any price. The value
of the land required for railway purposes war-vot
merely quadrupled—that would have been '01'1.6-
derate demand; but, the.companies were tatilit to
consider themselves well off if they escaped
ing ten times the price that could be obtained).:
any other quarter. Under such circumstances
by no means surpri‘ing that the expenses of constitse-
tion before the lines were in good working coticlifiOn
far exceeded the original estimates. They were, in fa
about double what they would have been had
Government, the Legislature, and the landownen
treated the companies in the manner which thepv.t.,
rited. This vast and most unnecessary addition to
the original expenditure was one of the prineipal
causes why the profits have not been cquivalent to
the reasonable expectations of the shareholders-if-114
they are not fairly remunerated for their enorixfotis
outlay. , •
But it was not in this respect only that they were
unjustly treated by Parliament; competitionAiias
encouraged,wbicb must, if fully carried out according,
to the eriginal intentions approved of and sanctfoireti
by theiiegislature, have proved absolutely ruinous to
all parties concerned.* The prevailing eacitemsot was.
taken advantage of to extoXt, ,the ha!dest
the different companies; they were bound to give

4r;