The Sun.
London, England, 1850-01-15 00:00:00

f"tuCt

LONDON, TUESDAY, JANUARY 15, 1850.

A melancholy narrative is preserved among the
archives of the National Library in Bloomsbury—a
narrative scattered through many forgotten manu-
scripts, and through various printed pamphlets, ob-
scure, yellow, and worm-eaten. We have perused
that narrative ourselves, and, unless the task be anti-

cipated, we know the hand which will ultimately
invest those sorrowful revelations with their merited
publicity. They constitute a record of the career of
one of the most brilliant and ingenious of all the
illustrious contributors to the Spectator. They afford
materials for the biography of one of the most

charming essayists in English literature, recounting
the vicissitudes of that unfortunate man, who, before
committing suicide near the starlings of old London-
bridge, pencilled those words, which have since been
celebrated in the history of misfortune—" What
CATO did, and ADDISON approved, cannot be wrong."

Our own days have witnessed a persecution as deplo•

rable as that which led to the premature and aw-
ful dissolution of EUSTACE BUDGELL. Happily,
however, both for the authors and the victim of this
persecution, the endurance of the latter has surpassed
that of his gifted predecessor in suffering, having
nobly defied the influence of despair while submitting
to the anguish of so many undeserved calamities. It
required the hand of genius to pen an appropriate
narrative of the miseries which have recently be-
fallen Captain GEORGE DOUGLAS, late of her Ma-
jesty's 16th Regiment, and happily that necessity has
been fulfilled by the earnest and vigorous intellect
which conceived the " Diary pf a Late Physician."

A letter, published in the form of a volume, addressed
to the QUEEN'S Most Excellent Al .jesty, has just dis-
closed to the world, in its full and undisguised com-
pleteness, a story previously comprehended only in
fragmentary passages. Although the work has been
issued from the press merely within the few days that
have already elapsed of this present January, we
should have directed general attention to it even
earlier than this evening's impression, but that we
were solicitous to con its disclosures with due so-
briety and deliberation. H wing at length risen from
the perusal of the volume, our whole soul yet burn-
ing with the indignation kindled by its eloquence,
we would forthwith, without any further delay what-
ever, utter some preliminary comments upon a pro•
duction which we may well designate a military
romance, penned in language as remarkable for its
persuasive simplicity as for its rhetorical excellence,
and invested with a pathetic and enthralling interest
throughote.
Our previous allusions to the sentence passed by
court-martial upon Captain GEORGE DOUGLAS, late
of her MAJESTT'S 16th Regiment, must have de-
monstrated with sufficient lucidity to the intelligence
of our readers the cruelty of a punishment as harsh as
it was altogether unmerited. We ourselves have
frequently in these columns applied to the charges
preferred against that officer the most elementary
principles of logic, and, aided simply by the light of
the facts revealed on the occasion of his trial, have
shown beyond all controversy that in the publication
of those facts alone his acquittal was virtually pro-
nounced. Nothing whatever, as far Es our editorial
judgment was concerned, could have been deemed in
any degree desirable for the purpose of attesting yet
more undebateably the innocence of this unfortunate
but most honourable gentleman. The paltry nature
of the accusations levelled against him ; the flimsy,
shallow, dubitable, and utterly inadequate evidence
by which those imputations were supported ; the
ruthless, inexorable, and most extravagant sentence
pronounced upon the prisoner by his judges, confirmed
by the authorities at the Horse Guards, and ratified
by the sign-manual of our Gracious SOVEREIGN—
were all as glaringly recognizable by the unpreju-
diced before as after the appearance of the present
remarkable composition. What was wanting, how-
ever, has been nobly supplied by its burning and
impassioned eloquence. Mr. WARREN has here
written, in letters of phosphoric brightness and legi-
bility, a record of the damning facts out of which all
this lamentable persecution has emanated ; he has
revealed with a gallant indifference to the
consequences the source of all this moral
gangrene, the origin of this heartless assassination of
character, the cause of this unmanly animosity and
unsoldier-like turpitude. His voice, in breathing the
tones of exculpation, has risen to those lefty accents
which are appropriate to the lips of the tragic dra-
matist—and the tale he has told is in truth a tragedy
—a tragedy not the less touching because its victims
are a young mother and her new born infant, while
the principal sufferer is their husband and father, a
private soldier in the service of our beloved Sovereign
Queen VICTORIA. Detailed by the pen of SAMUEL
%KAAREN, the story of this poor naaily, reduced in
' the midst of its unoffending obscurity to irredeem-

able desolation, is one ( f the most heart-piercing
narratives ever written by the hand of a novelist—
but, alas.! in this instance the gloomy phantoms of
romance have been exceeded by the dismal shadows
of reality. Tnroughout, the various incidents trans-
piring in the island of Alderney are linked together
by a striking and harrowing consistency. One cir-
cumstance follows another in this masterly exposure
with a sequential significance beyond all possibility
of miapprehension. There are perceptible from the
very outset, the irritating relations in which the
town-major of Alderney and the commander of the
troop of the 16th Regiment, then stationed
in Alderney, stood in regard to each other—
differences of opinion which appear to have so
far affected the temperament of Colonel LE MESURIER,
as to have resulted in many deplorable calamities.
After examining the statement of the occurrences
here submitted to the scrutiny cf her Most Excel-
lent MAJESTY by Mr. WARREN, it is impossible
not to discern that the charges preferred
against Captain GEORGE DOUGLAS were trumped
up for the purpose of covering the dead bodies of
MARY RILEY and her unfortunate offspring with the
impenetrable pall of oblivion. Thanks, however, to
the beneficent Nemesis of Christianity, the very
effort made to hush up the double death of the wife
and child of poor PATRICK RILEY has been the means
of raising a voice
.which will resound throughout
the length and breadth of the land, penetrating the
innermost sanctuary of the Palace, and echoing
through the chambers of the Legislature with the
syllables of its avenging revelation! With the intention
manifestly of shrouding in forgetfulness the cruelties
which led to the dissolution of a young mother and
her new-born infant in the Old Canteen House, near
the barracks at Alderney—a young and gallant sol-
dier, the representative of an ancient family, and a
ignominiously
expelled of spotless reputation, has been
expelled' from the service of his QUEEN, on a
trumpery charge cf equivocating to a constable in-
capable of comprehending the meaning of our language
and branded in the presence of his brother officers,
and of his fellow-countrymen generally, with con -•
duct at once " scandalous and infamous." Such is
the crying wrong which remains to be expiated—
and happily for the cause of justice, for the credit of
the army, and f9r the memory of the reign of VICTO-
RIA, the appeal for its expiation has been made
by a voice so resonant in its argumentative eloquence.
and addressed to a Monarch as clear in intellect as
she is benignant in disposition. Touchingly and
rergentlY 1141 Mr. Whau‘szi exclitiraed—" T nth

constrained to appeal unto CitiAß." That appeal,
we doubt not, will very speedily prove not to have
been made in vain—and the removal of a great
wrong will then amply repay the self-sacrificing toils
of geniu., while it yields a tardy, yet still sweet and
welcome consolation to a disgraced, an injured, but
through all a true and right honourable soldier.
We await with confidence those royal words of
justice which will thrill through the heart of the
whole nation, coming from the regal walls of Wind-
sor, of Osborne, or of Buckingham.

What " Jew ROTHSCHILD" (as BruoN called him)
has refused to do, " his brother Christian BARING,"
led on by the anti sacra fames, has not
thought it unbecoming his Christian status,
or his character as an Englishman, to
perpetrate ; the house of BAILING Brothers
(of which house, be it not forgotten, Sir FRANCIS
THORNHILL BARING, the First Lord of the Admi-
ralty, is a partner), the house of BARING Brothers,
the English house cf BARING Brother:, the
Christian house of BARING Brothers, has
dared " to offer an outrage to the moral sense c:f the
civilized world " by contracting for a Russian loan in
the city of London. This loan for five millions is, it
is pretended, for the completion of the rail-
road between S. Petersburgh and Moscow ;
so state Messrs. BARING Brothers, on the faith of the
assertion of the Emperor NICHOLAS. How ex-
ceedingly innocent, and simple-minded, and
credulous Messrs. BARING Brothers are
when it suits their convenience ; they are
the very Corydons of Capel-court, the simple
shepherds of the Stock-Exchange; five millions, only
five millions are wanted to complete a railroad already
nearly completed and which goes through a country
presenting no great engineering difficulties, and where
there is neither land to be purchased nor compensa-

tion to be.paid ; and Mean?: BARING Brothers believe
this because it pleases the Emperor NICHOLAS to
assert it. Verily we may be thankful that
Sir FRANCIS BARING, wha believes in NicaoLas,
is not Foreign Secretary, or perchance the
Cossacks would have been by this time at Constan-

tinople. And here we would remark upon the ex-
cessive inconvenince which must arise from appointing
money jobbers and their connexions to high offices of
state. Suppose a war were to break out between
England and Russia, the interests of BARING
Brothers would be opposed to those of Queen
VICTORIA. It would be the interest of Queen VIC-
TORIA to damage in every possible way the credit of
Russia; it would be the interest of BARING Brothers
to uphold it—to which of the two would. Sir FRANCIS
THORNHILL BARING pay his allegiance ? Would the
First Lord of the Admiralty do his utmost to
damage Russia ? Could he forget that he was a
member of the firm of BARING Brothers ? This
money is not wanted to complete the railroad,
it is wanted for purposes of war—of war to be
carried on against the interests of England, perhaps
against England herself; it is wanted to defray the
expense of the Hungarian and Polish campaigns ; for
admitting for the sake of argument that the
money thus raised will be expended on
railroads (a supposition so monstrous as to
amount to a self-evident absurdity), still but for
that Hungarian campaign the Emperor of RUSSIA.
would have had funds sufficient to have completed
his railroad without a loan—the money is

wanted, as M. COBDEN justly observes in his
a :mirable letter to the Secretary of the Peace So :iiety,
" to pay the savage instruments of the devastation cf
Hungary," to pay the murderers cf BATTUT ANT and of
Aumca, it is blood-money that Messrs. BARING Bro-
thers have undertaken to lend—it is blood-money that
they ask the capitalists of England to supply. To
every man to whom they have addressed a circular, ask-
ing his subscription to this loan, Messrs. BARING Bro-
thers have offered a deliberate insult. We trust that no
Englishman (BARING Brothers are, thank GOD, more
American than English), we trust that no English-
man will be found sufficiently base to take part in
this " unholyand infamous transaction ;" should there
be any such, let him be regarded as excommunicate and
a castaway; the blcod of BATTHYANY, the blood
of Auracu, the blood of the murdered of Arad and

- .
of Pesth, will be on his head ; his will be the guilt,
the shame, the disgrace of the wornan•fl•.gger.
Never again be his red right hand grasped in friend-
ship; let all mankind avoid him ; the subscription
to the Russian loan will be as the mark of
CAIN branded on his brow. But we will not believe
that England holds any man who will join the
&RINGS in this infamous transaction. We
devoutly hope, for the honour of our country,
that not one single application will be made to
them from any English house, but that they will be

permitted to monopolize the unhallowed gains, what-
ever
they may be, as they will in that case the
iviiimy and guilt of this most unholy compact. We
are rejoiced to find that Mr. Coanzis has taken
up this question, and is bestirring himself to convene a
meeting in the City as an indignant protest in repro-
bation of this " unholy and infamous transaction."
There are many points on which we con-
sider Mr. COBDEN wrong, and we have never hesi-
tated to state as much whenever the occasion seemed
to require it, but in this he is right, and every
honest man will go with him cordially. Let the
meeting be held without delay, and let it be followed
u? by meetings in every town in England.

Never, perhaps, has public opinion been more une-
quivocally exhibited in Ireland than recently on the
great question of free trade. Never has a body of
reactionary agitators been more signally discomfited
than the Protectionists in the sister kingdom.
The " grand demonstrations" that were so vaunt-
ingly announced by the Tory press, which were to
have afforded the most striking illustrations of the
unanimous decision cf. the Irish people of all classes
and grades in society, have proved complete and un-
questionable failures. The monopolists have sus-
tained defeat after defeat. The black north, where it
was supposed their greatest triumphs would have
been achieved, has witnessed the total annihilation of
their hopes. Downshire was regarded as the strong.
hold of the party; in that county, where the princi-
ple of " tenant-right" is almost universally sanc-
tioned and recognised, where landlords and tenants are
united by the strongest bonds of common interest,
where the cultivator of the soil would really be
benefited by high prices for agricultural produce,
as well as the owner, the feeling in favour of free
and unrestricted trade has been most clearly and dis-
tinctly exhibited. The sturdy yeomen of Ulster
are not, however, to be deceived by the weak devices
and glaring fallacies of the advocates of the re-impo-
sition of taxes on human food. They mustered
strongly at the Court-house of Downpatrick, under
the guidance of one in whom they well knew that the
most unbounded confidence might be reposed—who
in all the relations of life, public or private, had ever
maintained the highest character. Mr. SUARmAN
CRAWFORD—the kind-hearted and generous landlord,
the intelligent and liberal politician—was a fitting
leader for the shrewd and clear-headed farmers, who
arranged themselves at his side in opposition to prin-
ciples which they believed to be deeply in-
jurious to the interests of their common country.
He was well qualified to expose the errors and
mistakes of those who might endeavour to mislead
the people, and induce them to give their voices in
favour of partial and highly objectionable imposts
for the benefit of a privileged minority. Under his
generalship it was certain that the contest would be
ably and skilfully conducted, and the free-trade force
rendered fully available, and such was the case.
The victory was indeed complete ; there was nothing
to be desired or wished for.

From the moment that the Court-house was opened
no doubt could remain as to the result. The blank
and desponding countenances of the requisitionists
formed a strong contrast to the bold and manly as-
pects of their opponents. The reception af-
forded to the different speakers removed- every
doubt, if doubt could have existed. The torrents
of enthusiastic applause with which the Ho•
nourable Member for Rochdale was greeted When
proposing his amendment to the first resolution, and
the hearty cheers bestowed upon his lucid and bril-
liant oration, appeared_to dispel any delusions under
which the Protectionists might previously have
laboured. They speedily became heartily ashamed
of themselves, and of their ill-omened cause ; a
rapid retreat appeared the only available course ;
Saute qui pout became the order of the day, and
one by one sneaked, crest-fallen and broken-spirited,

from the scene of their discomfiture When the
question was put on the original resolution. scarcely
thirty hen is were raised in its favour, while the
amendment was carried by a decisive and overwhelm-
ing majority.
The amendment itself was of so sound and practi-
cal a character, and so fully explained the views and
feelings of the tenant-farmers of Ireland, and the line
of policy necessary to render that unhappy country
really prosperous, that we cannot refrain from giving
it in extenso. It was resolved—.
" That we recognise with satisfaction the indications
of improved manufacturing, commercial, and financial
prosperity, which have Lean exhibitel during the year
1849, under the action of free trade; that as a e consider
the abundance and el eapress of food to be the only true
basis on which tie happiness of the people sad the pros-
perity of the nation can to founded, we do not de ,ire a
rt-turn to 0 e protective system; but we are of opinion
that, in order to me ,t the lea ered prices of alsicultto al
produce, and to compete wish the growers of corn in
foreign cauntr'ea, it a ill be requisite for tLe farmers of
t' e Unite 1 Kingdom to take means for increasing the
productive powers of it e soil, by improved systems of
cultivation, mai a larger exreaditure et labour and capi-
tal; and that, theieFore, it bestoraes more especially just
and necessary that the rent of all lands let at the former
high scale of prices should be reduced in conformity with
the fall in the rates of produce; and that the tenant's
right of property in all improvements created by his
money and labour should be established by law, and tf.e
value secured to him according to the custom of this
country, known under the name of tenant-right'."'
The principles here enunciated are indeed just and
equitable, sagacious and statesmanlike. " The
abundance and cheapness of food is the only true
basis on which the happiness of the people and the
prosperity of the nation can be founded.' A return
to the protective system is not desirable, and the low-
ered prices of agricultural produce, and the full and
fair competition with the growers of foreign corn,
can only be encountered by increasing the productive
powers of the soil, by an improved system of cultiva-
tion, and a larger expenditure on labour and capital.
Former rents, assessed under a very different state
of affairs, can no longer be maintained ; fair reduc-
tions muA be made, in conformity with the reduced
price of produce, and legislative security must be
afforded to the tenant that be himself, or his family,
will be permitted to enjoy the fruits of his skill and
industry ; and that can only be attained by a Par-
liamentary recognition of the time-honoured custom
of "tenant-right."
The defeated Protectionists attempted to break their
fall, by subsequentlyjiolding a hole-and-corner meet-
ing in the county grand jury-room, and by passing
in their privacy the resolutions which they had fondly
hoped would have been adopted at the county meet.
ing. But the people will not be deceived, and these
suggestions will go forth to the world as the vain
and futile aspirations of a few disappointed land-
ordc.

we need not chronicle the other failures in Done-
gal, Monaghan, Meath, Wexford, or Clare. The
results must satisfy the reactionaries, if, indeed,
they are at all capable of understanding the signs of the
times, that they may at once, and for ever, abandon
the Dame Partington effort of attempting to stem
the tide of public opinion with their Protectionist
besom s.

THE FRENCH REPUBLIC.

The members of the Club of the Mountain have
issued an address to the masters of the Primary
Schools throughout France, recommending them to
resign their situations, as the only means of escaping
the persecution of " the prefects, the servile executors
of the pleasure and the vengeance of the Govern-
ment." . _

The Napoleon announces the recal of the French
fleet from Vourla.

The National maintains, notwithstanding the con-
tradiction of the Cons titutionnel, that a small expedi-
tion has been ordered to be fitted out against Buenos
Ayres.
M. YXTET has been named reporter of the Com-
mittee on the Paris and Avignon Railway Bill.
The Opinion Publique, the organ of the parti-pretre,
having stated that certain high personages have
shared three or four millions gained by a forced rise
of the Funds, and that they are now preparing a fall
to profit by it in a similar manner, the Aloniteur calls
upon the Legitimatist journal to name:the persons to
whom it alludes. _

There had been a heavy fall of snow in the south
of Frances which lrA prevented the arrival of the
Madrid and the Italian mails.
BUSINESS DONE IN FOREIGN RAILWAYS AT THE

1.61,1f)61C1-TOCK-EXCIIAN(II4. JAN. 14.

Boulogne and Amiens, 71/o—East Indian, VA—Louvain
I la Sambre, 3/4—Namur and Liege, 7%—Northern of
France, 1% dis.—Orleans and 13ourdeanx, 334—Paris and
Rouen, 23Lii—liouen and Havre, 9y;—Sambre and Mouse,