The Sun.
London, England, 1845-10-16 00:00:00

TOWN-HALL, WINDSOR.

TUESDAY.—This morning a charge, preferred by Mr. G.
E. Anson, private secretary to Prince Albert, against a job-
bing gardener, named William Sims, for having indecently
assaulted Mary Ann Truelove, only seven years of age, was
heard before Mr. Alderman Bannister and Mr. Blunt.
The child stated that she was the daughter of a labouring
man named Robert Truelove, of Love-lane, Windsor, and

t'.•at yesterday afternoon she was enticed to go into the
Long-walk, by the prisoner, with the promise of a halfpenny.
When they got to the style, the man took her little brother
in his arms, crossed over into the Long-walk, and went up
to the trees, where they sat down together on the grass by
the side of the ditch. He then put her brother down and
took witness on his lap, but she did not know what the pri-
soner did. He male her sit on his lap, and when some one
came witness got off.
Mr. George Edward Anson then deposed as follows :
Yesterdly afternoon I was riding up the Long-walk, under
the left-hand avenue of trees, and when I got up the bill I
came suddenly upon the prisoner, who was sitting behind a
tree, with his feet toward the ditch. He had the little girl
on his lap with all her clothes up. On seeing me he hastily
threw her off, by which I saw his cloths were disordered. After
a short pause, I asked the little girl, "Is that your father ?"
The man immediately said, " She is my daughter." I re-
peated the question, and lie again stated that she was his
child. I then called the little girl aside, and asked her where
she lived. She said at No. 2, Love-lane, Windsor, and that
her name was Truelove. I understood, either from the girl
or the man, that the prisoner's name was Simrnonds. When
I told him that I should give him in charge to a policeman,
the poor little girl cried out, "Pray don't tell." After waiting
some little time Lord Liverpool came up on horseback. I
told him what had happened, and he immediately sent off his
groom into Windsor for a policeman. The little girl, who
had a young child by her side, then began to cry, and said,
" Pray don't send for a policeman, I'll never do it again."
After waiting a little time a policeman came, into whose
custody I gave the prisoner.
The prisoner, upon being asked what answer he had to
make to the charge, denied that he pulled the child on his
knee, and stated that she went into the Long-walk of her
own accord. In the course of his defence he accused the girl
of having committed an act of gross indecency-.
The Magistrates, after severely commenting upon the
abominable conduct of the prisoner, sentenced him to pay a
fine of five pounds, and in default to two months' imprison-
ment, with hard labour, in the borough gaol.
The man, not having the money, was forthwith conveyed
to prison.

THE LATE THOMAS DAVIS.
(From the Nation, a Dublin paper.)
While the death-knell of those whom, of all God's creatures
we held most dear, is yet ringing in our ears, and it still
seems a question whether there is anything left to hope or
labour for on the earth, we are assured that a conspiracy has
commenced, whose base object is to malign the living and
the dead, and to resist and destroy the labours of love and
conciliation which have made Thomas Davis immortal.
Oh ! poor knaves—foolish as base—you have ill-chosen
your time.
Foolish knaves—to believe that the generous Irish heart,
full of love and tenderness as a mother's, would go with you
in bringing bitterness and anger into the house of death.
Base knaves—not to feel that the true, simple people would
recognise instinctively the assassin's -hand (that hand that
would murder with the knife as with the pen) in a blow
made in such a guise, at such an hour !
We place, as a shield between us and you, the memory of
Thomas Davis, already risen to be a star in our firmament.
All men (even you, bringing the tribute vice pays to decency)
have offered incense to his memory. He was our beloved
friend and brother. What he believed, we believe; what he
preached, we preach. How can you, short-sighted knaves
that you are, hope that a people, who have learned to love
his name as the name of a deliverer, will hate in others the
principles and practices they honoured in him. You dare not
lay hands on the sacred dead. The humblest of all his friends
would take by the throat the highest head that ventured to
breathe a slander upon him. Neither shall you touch, with
impunity, all that we have left of him—his doctrines and his
labours. We have spared you long, that dissension might
not come into the national counsels by us; but a thousand
times rather would we trample you into your native mud—a
thousand times rather would we strip bare the political scare-
crows who frighten good men away from our cause—rather
than that a shade of dishonour, an hour of disrepute, should
come on the fame of Thomas Davis.
We will not stop to-day to rend to pieces the web of
vulgar sophistry. God knows we have little inclination now
for angry controversy ! But, for the future, the memory
of the illustrious dead, and the political faith which he has
bequeathed to the living, shall not be misrepresented in
vain.

We are threatened with popular disfavour. No ; the
people know as, and shall know you. But it is not for po-
pular favour we labour; but for far other results.
We desire public support ; but there are conditions on
which, if it were tendered, we would scorn to accept it.
We would not tell lies for it.
We would not hunt down, by calumny, a good man who
differed from us, nor would we glorify and exalt a scoundrel
who professed himself a repealer.
It is a crime, we are told, to be complimented by a Conser-
vative. Now, we care not lo conceal this fact, that there are
many Conservatives whose good opinion we would feel proud
to enjoy, and some repealers whose applause we should be
ashamed to possess. Which of us does not know a repealer
whose praise is infamy—one whom we know to be a hollow
and venal advocate of a good cause ? Say that he is a po-
litical apostate, who now covers with coarse and vulgar adu-
lation a body whom he at one time assailed with more coarse
and more truculent abuse. He measures out his flattery now,
as he did then his vituperation, by the pence which he is
paid. He is a Protestant, and he assails the very creed which
he professes to hold, and audaciously puts himself forth as
the champion of a faith whose tenets he does not believe.
What is most exalted and sacred is not beyond the reach of
his calumny. His trade is hypocrisy—his life a continued
and consistent lie. Shall we desire the applause of a man like
this ?

On the other hand, do we not know many a man who is
astray on one vital question, but still sincere in his error—
whose spirit shrinks with instinctive abhorrence from false-
hood and dishonour—in whose breast the seeds of national
feeling are deeply sown, and who only waits, perhaps, to wit-
ness the failure of those vile attempts to raise the dead spirit
of bigotry into life, to fling himself with ardour into the
struggle for the independence of his country?
From which of these two men is there more to hope? Of
which of them shall we desire the good opinion?
In the course of these protracted struggles, we have be-
come too much disposed to accord to mere professions that
respect which is due only to sincerity—we are too tolerant
of falsehood and hypocrisy—too apt to overlook the most
flagrant violations of the fundamental virtues of honesty and
truth. Alas ! shall the day ever arrive when true men shall
come together, and look into each other's hearts, and learn
that they have nothing to fear; and when a.sociation with a
political knave shall be shunned as carefully as association
with a pickpocket ?