The Sun.
London, England, 1844-06-17 00:00:00

a. firni I aim

LONDON, MONDAY, JUNE 17,1844.

A Cabinet Council was held on Saturday for the
discussion of important State affairs. This is the
general report, and the report also states that the Ca-
binet was summoned to take into consideration the
" untoward" division in the Commons on the Sugar
Duties Bill. Shortly after the breaking up of the Cabi-
net, Sir ROBERT PEEL proceeded to the Palace, and
we have heard walked all alone in a very pensive
mood, looking neither right nor left, evidently ab-
sorbed in some matter of no ordinary importance.
The same report states that he tendered his resigna•
con to her MAJESTY. This is possible ; and, what is
more, it is a consummation that every friend of liberty
would Wish to ewe realised. Sir R. PEEL is too liberal
for his colleagues gYid the motley crew that installed
him Prime Minister. With the exception, perhaps,
of Mr. GLADSTONE, he haw no free trader in the
Cabinet—he has no friend of ihe l.aind—he has no man
.nnclples of
of sterling Liberal politics—and he hi:
b ri
to fight the battle alone to carry out the I,:ee obliged
the Reform Bill, and to adopt the practice • of the
'
Executive to a system which the old Tories -etest,
and which the new race, called Conservatives, ree., .11"!
with almost equal horror. Let him resign. IV, 'l''
can they do without him ? What man can the ,
Tories put at their head ? Becalsou,tar, or hien-
WOND, or STANLEY ! These are the only names that
even the ultra-Tories can suggest; and with all the
power of the Church to support STANLEY, and all the
monopolists backing the two Dukes, the New Har-
mony would be brought to a close. in one month..
ir ROBERT PEEL sees his way. He sees that the
-
Reform Bill, with all its defects, has produced a
great revolution, and that hemustobey r this
it. or
he deserves every praise; but the blind bigots by-
lvhom he is surrounded look upon him as a traitor
vvh he is the
uHe tha can save them fror a
destr, t
the T, T been deserted by al 1
his y journals excee one--a fact high].) r
to
or, •xlit. He has endeavoured we admi
by stealth, .can 7 out the principles 'of his 4:7 pre.

decessors, but possibly he could not act otherwise.
Fools must be treated according to their folly. We
cordially hope that he will set them at defiance, and
resign rather than submit to the shackles which the
monopolists in corn and sugar, and almost every
necessary of life, would impose upon him. His
resignation would seal the fate of the Tory dynasty—
a result which would be hailed by acclamation by
almost every honest man in the country.

The discussion upon Mr. MILES'S announced
amendment upon the new scheme of Sugar Duties,
brought forward by her MAJESTY'S Government,
has been looked to with great anxiety by all
parties—in and out of Parliament. It took place,
accordingly, in a full House (of 466 Members) on
Friday, and resulted in what must be considered a
great defeat of Ministers. But it should be clearly
understood (and the more so, as most of our
Morning Contemporaries seam to have fallen
into some error on this point), that the division
of last night did not affirm Mr. Muss's amend-
ment. Upon that, a vote remains still to be
taken ; for, as Lord HOWICIC carefully expounded the
question for the information of Hon. Members, the
question to be put by the Chairman (and so entered in
the printed " Votes" delivered out this morning) was,
" that the words proposed" (lay the amendment of
Mr. Muss) " to be left out of the first clause" (of the
Government Bill) " stand part of the clause." On this
question there divided, Ayes, 221 ; Noes, 241, leaving
the Government in a minority of 20. After the an-
nouncement of this division (which was greeted by
the Opposition with much cheering), and when the
House had resumed, Sir ROBERT PENT. gave notice
that the first business of the House on Monday next
should be to proceed further with the Committee,
in which he would announce the intentions of her
MAJESTY'S Geyvernment on this most important subject.
The Government proposition, it will be remembered,
was to reduce the duty on foreign sugar, not being
the product of slave labour, to 345. per cwt. (The
duty under 1 and 2 Victoria, cap. 33, was 3/. 3s. per
cwt.) The machinery of certificates, by which the
Chancellor of the Exchequer appeared to imagine that
it would be possible to secure the fulfilment of this
condition of free labour, which was made the prelimi-
nary of the admission of such foreign sugar, was
much distrusted and even ridiculed in former debates.
We have endeavoured to show, in former articles,
that any sugars supplied under this reduction of duty
by the United States, even assuming the genuine-
ness of their free labour production, would be
assuredly replaced either in the home consump-
tion or the export trade of America by slave-
grown sugar to the same extent. It will be per-
ceived that this impression is now generally enter-
tained. But Mr. MlLEs's amendment prooceds not
so much on the principle of effectually discouraging
slave labour in the production of sugar (an object
which he also is apparently very doubtful of seeing
accomplished, for the same reasons as we have just
assigned), as on the principle that the alteration of
the duty on foreign produce to 345. renders it indis-
pensable for the protection, nay, the existence, of
our West India interest, to reduce the duties on 13ri-
tish West India sugar to 20s. per cwt. The other
modifications of duty which this gentleman proposes
may be collected from the terms of his amendment :
" That from and after the 10th day of November, 1844, the
duty upon sugar, the produce of British possessions, be re-
duced to 20s. the cwt.; and that the duties on sugar, certified
to he the growth of China, Java, or Manilla, or of any foreign
country, the sugar of which her Majesty in Council shall have
declared to be admissible, as not being the produce of slave
labour, shall be as follows—namely, brown, muscovado, or
clayed, the cwt., 305.; white clayed, or sugar otherwise pre-
pared, and equivalent to white clayed sugar, the cwt., 345.,
with 5 per cent. thereon."
The debate was very ably sustained ; but we really
think that Mr. MILES'S supporters had the best of it
in every way. The benefit of his amendment would be
by no means inconsiderable to the consumer, and is
sufficiently low, as to its scale of protection to the
West India body, to have elicited much grumbling
from some of its members in the House, as they
carefully qualified, with this unsavoury element,
their support. The Hon. Gentleman himself de-
livered a very animated address, commencing it by 1,
reminiscences of the Premier's past promises to his
party, and subsequent acts, which we can imagine to
have been anythie but palatable to Sir ROBERT—
,.vhuqe temper, by the bye, is represented to have Ilia-
come acclimatised to the West Indian weather of last
night —after the announcement of the numbers.
Mr. MH.Es complained with good reason, that upon
the only feasible means of rescuing our plantation
from absolute ruin for want of hands, namely, the
immigration of free labourers, large and abundant
professions of their readiness to permit and promote it
had been made by Government; but nothing, or almost
nothing, carried into effect. On this subject we have
written so often and so earnestly in The Site, that we
merely quote this confirmation of our opinions, reserv-
ing other comments which we have to offer on the un-
fairness, if not impolicy, of the boon of a reduced duty
to the production of Java to a future opportunity.
But we think we may congratulate the British con-
sumer on the certain prospect of his ere long obtain-
ing sugars of all qualities at a considerale reduction
on their present cost to him.

An exceedingly edifying discussion took place in
the House of Lords on Friday, on the subject of the
Bishop of EXETER'S Bill for the suppression ofbro-

thels, when Lord CAMPBELL, with a delicate and vir-
tuous consideration for the morals of the community,
and of the reporters in particular, suggested that the
discussion should be taken with closed doors, so that
none should be made acquainted with the awful facts

detailed by the ghostly Prelate—whose speech, to do

him justice, exhibited an infinite variety of research,
and proved that he was thoroughly master of his subject
—but their Lordships and the Bench of Bishops, to

whose apostolical purity and simplicity of nature
the heinous disclosures made by their episcopal bro-
ther would of course be unintelligible. Lord
CAMPBELL'S suggestion, however, was not adopted
by the House, and, to say the truth, we
are by no means sorry for it, lot if
the discussion had been carried on with closed doors,
the " pensive public" would have lost one of the
richest bits of cant that was ever indulged in, even
by the Bishop of LONDON. In reply to some forcible
remarks made by Lord BROUGHAM respecting the
exclusion of BYRON'S statue from Westminster Abbey,
the Right Rev. Prelate observed :—" All the objec-
tions which had been urged against the eloquent his-
torian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
might be urged with equal justice and with equal
force against the works of the great poet whose name
had just b3en mentioned. Almost every one of his
poems contained inuendos, descriptions, and assertions
which, on the ground of morals as well as of religion,
disqualified the writer from any right to
claim admission after his death into a sanc-
tuary consecrated to the worship of CHRIST." Lord
BraoN has certainly put forth many careless random
opinions in his works, and he was notquite soorthodox
a Churchman as the Dean and Chapter of Westminster
could perhaps wish; but to compare him with GIBBON
in this respect, is to do his memory the cruellest in-
justice. The historian of Rome, gravely and deli-
berately, by argument and by sarcasm, and ingenious
twisting of the truth, endeavoured to sap the founda-
tion of Christianity ; he brought learning, method,
and a deep-rooted spirit of infidelity to his task ; and
with solemn pompousness in his text, and epigram-
matic point in his notes, laboured to show that the
earlier Christians were by no means what the world
supposed them to have been. Far otherwise was
it with poor BYRON. He had no cold, settled, inveterate
hatred to Christianity. He did not diligently
bring all the powers of his great, but ill-regulated,
mind to bear against it. Deism was not a faith—a
ruling principle of action with him. We could
quote upwards of a hundred passages from his works
informed with the truest and most fervent religious
Ifeeling ; and know not where to look for a purer—
Lore sacred—more inspiring body of sentiment, than
...is • L.z., be found in his Evening Address to the Virgin
in .tg Don Juan." But Lord BYRON, says the Bishop,
_wag ounoral ! Well, and was not PRIOR immoral--
.vrossly e 4? Was not CONOREVE the most immoral
dramatist of his age—so flagrant in his immorality
ly possible to represent his plays on the
I:itlaagtei,t
oirs srceaLiend them for perusal in the boudoir ?
glorious JOHN," as he was
Was not DuYDEN—" g
many of his poems—immoral in
i ncgb a dedications--
egde i—ca
ft
ri oc nms
his a
z ,aislled—
e till more immoral in
exquisitelyj ailed—immoral
°r
al in
sycophantic
sheerPr o te Sdteasni raenckdlelsys
Yet all these great men
triesmtotcadpvcapnecrey
?his worldly interests—from
ine eenth
have statues tuimesmionralliTyesitmanind, stenrowA,bbieny,thdeesntpite their

century—a century which boasts of its perfect free-
dom from intolerance—it is gravely insisted, in the
highest Court of Judicature in the kingdom, that Lord
BYRON'S statue has no right to be introduced into a sanc-
tuary where CONGREVE, and PRIDE, and DRYDEN are
deemed quite moral and virtuous enough to be repre-
sented in effigy ! Shame on this sickening cant, which
is alike unworthy of the age in which it is uttered,
and of the episcopal dignitary who uttered it !
BYRON immoral ! Impossible ! Had he been so,
surely the late respectable publisher of that High
Church and State periodical, the Quarterly Review—
the patronised of Lords and Bishops—would never
have dreamed of republishing " Don Juan" with all
the passages, which were once thought objectionable
and expunged as such, diligently restored to the text!
If there be one fact more discreditable than another
to the much vaunted spirit of the age, it is the studied
exclusion from Westminster Abbey of the statue of
the most genuine poet that the world has known since
the days of SHAKSPEARE.

We cannot allow the Report of the Select Com-
mittee on Gaming to subside into the " limbo" which
is the early, and certain, destination of all Parliamen-
tary papers, without offering a word or two upon its
contents and its pretensions. It is entitled to this
notice. Had it, indeed, no other claim on our atten-
tion, it is so eminently characteristic of the House of
Commons, and of the spirit of the age, that, upon that
account alone, it would be our duty to receive it with
a special greeting. All the tendencies of the House
of Commons are to class legislation. This report is
directed against a class—not the general community
—of gamblers. The tendency of the age is cant; and
every line of this document is responsive to it. Thus
the report, as we have intimated above, is identified
with our times and with our Legislature.
The Select Committee, it seems, was " appointed
to inquire into the existing statutes against gaming of
every kind ; to ascertain to what extent these statutes
are evaded ; arid to consider whether any and what
amendment should be made in such statutes." If it
have satisfied the first branch of this triple charge,
(which we are not disposed absolutely to allow,) it
has strangely slighted the other two. Like the chur-
lish Jupiter of the poet to his supplicant, the Select
Committee has doled out but scant measure to the
expectant House of Commons, which invoked its as-
sistance ; for the " Select " have
granted but half its prayer ;
The rest the winds dispers'd in empty air."

There are but three statutes mentioned by name or
designation throughout the report; the "extent to
which they are evaded," is a matter disposed of in a
single paragraph ; namely, " with regard to the extent
to which these laws have been evaded, your Committee
might be justified in saying that, with the exception
of the enactments for the suppression of common
gaming-houses, these laws have, generally speakirg,
and with some particular and occasional exceptions,
seldom been called into action." The "amendments"
which are recommended as proper to be made in the
existing laws for the repression of gaming, we shall
notice presently.
On the first branch of their inquiry, the Committee
obtained the assistance of Mr. Justice PATTESON, and
of Mr. STARKIE and Mr. BELLENDEN KER, " the two
Commissioners for making a digest of the criminal
law, and they beg to refer to the evidence of those
three persons, and to the papers furnished by the two
latter, (and inserted in the appendix to this report,)
for a full and accurate detail of the enactments now
in force which bear upon gaming of all kinds." But
the appendix has not yet been delivered out from the
Vote-office ; and we are treated at present to the
somewhat vague or trite information, " that upon some
branches of the subject much uncertainty exists, as to
what the law, as bearing upon any given case, really
is"—an interesting, and, withal, a notorious uncer-
tainty, which it did not need the sagacity of two
Commissioners to discover, being a fact within the
certain knowledge of ninety and nine out of every one
hundred of her MAJESTY'S subjects.

Now as to "gaming of all kinds," it would indeed
have been desirable to receive from the house of
Commons a report, indicating, expounding, and re-
commending any necessary amendments in the sta-
tute law directed against a crime against the peace
and property of individuals and the bonds of social
connexion, and the security of Government itself, so
heinous as gaming, in the general sense of the term.
ft saps all the foundations of moral feeling ; under-
mines all moral responsibility in every relation of
domestic life ; and ultimately debauches, by a process
of certain mental corruption, the integrity of the
public servant, as well as the honesty of the private
citizen. To one absorbing demon passion—a com-
bination of fierce rapacity and crafty avarice—it is
ever ready to sacrifice the most precious associations
of domestic life, the most sacred principles of honour,
the calls of duty, the memory of affections. On that
altar the gamester, in the madness of his irrepressible
excitement, will immolate fortune, station, character
—the property of his children, the interests of his
posterity—his friends ; his country—all his hopes
here—all his destiny hereafter ! Is this the crime—
so hideous, yet so common—a treason against the
peace of every class of that society with whose limits
it may be said to be co-extensive—which the Select
Committee appear by their report to have aimed at
effectually putting down by the powers of the law ?
Let us see how this is. The report classes " the
laws now in force about gaming" under four heads-
1. Those of early periods (as 17 ED. IV., c. 3, HEN.
c. 9) " which prohibited certain games on po-
litical grounds," for example, in order to prevent the
disuse of archery. 2. Those in the nature of sump-
tuary laws, against what was considered, when they
were passed, excessive gaming, such laws being
"destined to restrain private individuals from wasting
their substance by losing too much money on games
and pastimes." 3. Laws against fraud, and for the pre-
vention of cheating, &c., at games upon which mosey
is to be lost.and won. 4. Those which relate to pub-
lic morals, and prohibit common gaming-houses and
public gambling as nuisances, " whereby unwary men
are led into dissolute and vicious habits," &c.

They who, in reference to the passage we have
marked by inverted commas, under No. 2 in this enu-
meration, may naturally expect to find strong recom-
mendations to enforce old, or provide new, effcient
laws against the stupendous gambling of the turf—
that is the grand stand or the betting-room—still be
as disappointed as those who may assume that, under
No. 4, are to be included Crockford's or Boodle's, or
the gorgeous hells of more modern creation, which
grace the vicinity of St. James's. On the subject of
" betting," in truth, the report rises to a strain of elo-
quent deprecation of the folly they committed who
had ever dreamed of legally restraining such an
amusement—for the upper classes. For mark how
the class feeling of the House creeps in, and upsets all
the pretence of moral solicitude which the Committee
had previously expressed :
" What sense can there be in declaring by law that a
man may win or lose ten pounds by a game or a wager;
but that if he win or lose a larger sum, he shall be liable
to a heavy fine ? Does such a law even accomplish its
own apparent purpose of protecting individuals from
their own imprudence ? For may not that sum, the loss
of which is a trifle to a man in one class of society, be a
matter of great importance to another man in a poorer
condition? And if protection is the object of this law,
does it not protect most those who from their station in
life need protection the least, and leave comparatively
unprotected those of an inferior class, who may be se•
vere sufferers from apparently small losses."

This is pretty well. But we were still more sur-
prised at a subsequent passage, in which s. very "spe-
cial plea," is put in to save the interests—of the betting
ring :

" At present wagers are chiefly confined to sporting
events, but the practice of wagering is still deeply rooted
in the habits of the nation, and the practical imposition
of pecuniary penalties for wagers would be so repugnant
to the general feelings of the people, that such penalties
would scarcely ever be enforced, or if enforced would be
looked upon as an arbitrary interference with the free-
dom of private life."

We must own these passqges gave us some mis-
givings. We recollected a recent threatened catas-
trope of an avalanche of " qui tam" actions impend-
ing over most noble Dukes, and Lord GEORGES, and
sporting Colonels—suddenly and miraculously ar-
rested in its descent, by the sedative effect of a pro-
tective or indemnity Bill, for a term, carrid through
both Houses with a speed that " Running Fein" him-
self might have envied. We turned first to the list of
the Committee, where we found such names as
WORSLEY and LASCELLES, Colonel PEEL and Captain
BERKELEY, and Sir HORACE SEYMOUR—(in some of
whom the qui-tam antipathy is most powerful)—and
then we turned to this strangely sympathising senti-
ment. Was it contributed by the Gallant Colonel
himself ?

" But to keep upon the Statute-book laws of a penal