The Sun.
London, England, 1844-02-19 00:00:00

THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL FOR
IRELAND.

The Right Hon. Gentleman is in the nnexamp'e•l po-
sit on, that lie holds one •,f the h zh, st offices in the
State through commisseration and sufferance. HIS Par-
liamentary friends defend him not. They offer m rely
the apology that he anticipated that a set would be
made ups m him, and though he was resolved to be
governable he broke out at length into lawlessness.
The more he anticipated the less he is excusable, on the
grounds of rashness. No body but himself observed
that there was a particular call upon his valour, but
when the call was made, he could not pretend that it
was unexpected, and he was the less excusable for
extravagance ia the course he thought proper to ad, pt.
The storm having come on, it passed away with an in-
noxiousness to him almost miraculous. If Fitzgibbon
played his cards as some persons say he should have
done, the grand State prosecutions could have been de-
htroyed at his stage of the proceedings. Oue can Ne 1
imagine the effect of taking the infuriated Attorney •
General at his word, and repairing to a distant spot to
give the "satisfaction" demanded. From this pent he
has escaped, and he has had to deal with a most indul-
gent Bench, though in the progress of this trial a gentie-
man had been brought under the animadversion of the
Court merely for a want of due courtesy to the High
Sheriff. One comfort the Right Hon. Gentleman has,
and it is no small one in these bad times, that the Pre-
mier has proclaimed in Parliament that the Government
has not contemplated, and does not contemplate his dis-
missal. There is, in this respect, also the comfort to the
people, that while the Right Hon. Gentleman remains in
office he must be a damaging adjunct to the Tory Go-
vernment.

The Judges of the Queen's Bench are greatly blamed
in London on account of this affair of the Attorney-
General. The chief responsibility in the matter lay with
the head of the Court, and if the needful had not been
done he was of course principal'y in fault. It was ob-
served that the member of the Court who was most for-
ward in urging on an assertion of its authority was
Justice Perrin. There was, however, on the whole such
a failure as to provoke amongst our neighbours even the
humiliating sentiment of derision. The Times has ob-
served, with characteristic insolence, that the Court did
its best to facilitate an accommodation for the " jontle-
men." One thing should be remembered, when all
others are forgotten, relative to this unique business,
that the principal official parties obnoxious to blame are
persons pushed into their station by Tory appointment.
Mr. Smith is Sir Robert Peel's Attorney-General, and
Mr. Pennefather, who was so sympathising, or (more
correctly speaking) who was bewildered a manager
for the "jontlemen," was his Chief Justice.—Dablin
Pilot.

INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGI-
NEERS-TUESDAY.
(GEORGE RENNIE, Esq., in the Chair.)
A paper was read byMr. J. Grantham, describing a series
of experiments on an iron vessel called the " Liverpool
Screw." This boat was 65 feet long, 12 feet 6 inches
beam, and had 3 feet 9 inches draught of water ; she
was propelled by two high pressure oscillating engines,
with cylinders 13 inches in diameter, and 18 inches
stroke ; the pressure of the steam in the boiler varied
from 501bs. to 60113. z. the square inf.h, and it was cut off
at one-fourth of the length of the stroke, working the
rerrainder by expansion ; the nominal power Has 20
hor es. but it did not really exceed 18i horses. The
cylinders were placed diagonally, with :both the piston
rods working upon the same crank, the driving slat
being beneath the cylinders, and running direct to the
propellers, without the intervention of either gearing or
.ands.

The screw propeller was enlarged th ee times, and at
last was left at 5 feet 4 inches diameter, by 20 inches in
length ; it was set out with a pitch expanding from 10
to 11 feet, on Woodcroft's plan; it was made of wrought
Ton, with four sh,,rt arms with broad shovcl ends, whose
united area was 16 square feet, 13 feet only of it being
immersed, as some portion of the antis was constantly
above the w ater ; the angle of the centre of the dolt
was 45 deg. The spe,d of the propeller was generally
95 revolutions per minute.

With these dimensions the speed attained was de
scribed as 10} statute• miles per hour. The amount of
" slip " of the screw in the water, as ascertained by
Massey's log, was stated not to exceed five per cent.
Several experiments were detailed, which showed that
there was not more tendency to "li-t," or to turn round
by the action of the screw than with the paddle-wheel,,
and the vessel was stated to have exceled a 1 the other
steamers of the port of Liv, rpoul in towing out vessels
in a rough sea.
Designs were submitted on this principle for a steam
frigate, and for large steamers working with oscillating
cylinders direct upon the main shaft.
In the discussion which ensued, the various forms and
modifications of screw propellers and th..ir relative
merits, were very ably treated by a number of speakers.
Mr. Rennie gave a sketch of the introduction of a
kind of screw used by Mr. S. Brown with his gas engine.
which was tried on the Thames ; the more successful
attempt of Mr. Smith, and the building of the Archi-
medes and other vessels. He mentioned also the claims
of Mr. Sauvage, of Boulogne, to the invention, and his
being recently rewarded by the King of the French. Mr.
Rennie entered largely into the theory of the forms of the
propellers, and in this he was followed by Mr. Farey, Mr.
Galloway, Mr. Samuda, and others ; and M. Normand,
of Havre, who is celebrated for giving such superior
forms to the vessels built by him, gave a slight sketch of
I the Napoleon French frigate, in which he eulogised the
engines constructed by Mr. Barnes, and the general re-
sult obtained with the vessel; but it appeared that the
speed was not superior to what had been obtained with
paddle-wheels.
A model was exhibited, by permission of Sir H. T.
de la Beche, from the Museum of Economic Geology,
showing all the kinds of valves used in pumps for drain-
ing the Cornish mines, and the merits and defects of the
various kinds were very ably explained and commented
upon by Mr. Jordan, under whose directions the model
was constructed. Mr. J. Taylor gave an historical
sketch of the introduction of the various improvements,
the causes which had led to them, and the effects they
produced. The length of the discussion upon the screw
propeller left so little time for the subj. ct of the valves,
that it was announced to be renewed at the next meet-
ing, Tuesday, Feb. 20.

EXTRAORDINARY REVELATION OF A MURDER COM.
MITTED IN IRELAND ELEVEN YEARS AGO.--NORTRA.3IP-
TON, FEB. 15.—A curious revelation has been made by one
of the soldiers of the 83d Regiment, at present stationed at
our barracks, by which the perpetrators of one of those cruel
and dastardly murders which we are constantly reading of in
the Irish papers, are likely to be discovered and brought to
punishment. The man's deposition was taken before J. Mar-
shall, Esq., one of our borough Magistrates, yesterday, but
as the parties are still at large, the examination was strictly
a private one, From what I can gather, the murder in ques-
tion was committed in the year 1832. The witness was then
a boy about 12 years of age, and was with others in the field
gathering blackberries, when he observed four men, whom
he knew, and whose names, I understand, he mentions, run
across the fields towards the high road. They were armed.
Shortly after the witness heard a cry of " Murder" proceed-
ing from the road, and then two strangers passed him and
his companions, as if coming from the direction of the
cry. He asked them what the cry was about? but the only
reply they made was to tell him to go about his business.
`When the witness got upon the road, he saw the four men
he had first seen in the fields standing over another man
whom they had on the ground, and were beating. Soon
afterwards the murdered man was brought home by the
police. The witness told the circumstance to his father at
the time, who desired him to hold his tongue about it, and
beat him. It appears that the unfortunate victim had made
himself unpopular by taking a quantity of land which had
previously been let in small holdings, and he was therefore
waylaid on his-return from market, and murdered. The
party who saw the murder committed, mentioned the parti-
culars shortly afterwards to a Roman Catholic priest residing
in the neighbourhood, but, thanks to that gentleman's con.
scienciousness, the subject has remained a mystery up to the
present time. I understand that copies of the depositions
have been forwarded to the Secretary of State, and to the
magistrates of the district in which the man states the murder
to have been committed.

NUMBER or ENGLISH IN FRANCE IN 1844.—The
following is an official return made by the municipal authori-
ties to the Minister of the Interior and Prefet de Police, in
Paris, of the number of English residents (domicilies) through-
out France on the Ist of January, 1844 :—Paris, 25,000; St.
Cloud, Versailles, and St. Germain-en-Laye, 6,000; Rouen,
Havre-de-Grace, and Dieppe, 5,000; Harfleur, Honfleur,
and Caen, 2,300 ; Fontainebleau, Orleans, and Tours, 3,500 ;
Bordeaux, Toulouse, Po, Barreges, Montpellier, Nismes, and
Marseilles, 3,500; Aix, Avignon, and Lyons, 600; St. Quin-
tin and Lille, 1,500; Amiens Beauvais, Arras, Abbeville,
and Montreuil-sur-Mer, 2,800; Boulogne-sur-Mer and vici-
nity, 7,000 ; St. Omer, 2,700 ; Cassel, Warmhout, and Armen-
tieres, 300; Bergues and Dunkirk, 2,000; Guines, Marquise,
St. Pierre, and Calais, 4,800; making a total of upwards of
66,000 English residents in France. Admitting that each,
on an average, expends five francs a day, the annual sum spent
by the English will be above 4,820,0001. sterling. This re-
turn does not include the number of English who pass
through France on their route /to Switzerland, Germany,
Italy, the Mediterranean, and India, which, on an average,
exceeds 50,000. The facility now afforded by the London,
Folkstone, and Dover Railway, and steam-packets to pas-
sengers for Boulogne and Calais, from Southampton to
Havre, and Brighton to Dieppe, has greatly increased the
number of visitors, which this summer will, in all probe-
be from 60,000 to 80,000.
EXTRAORDINARY MARRIAGE NOVELTY. Since
Monday last, the neighbourhood of St. John's Chapel, St.
John's-square, Clerkenwell, has been the scene of great in-
terest and curiosity, in consequence of a ceremony of a most
novel and extraordinary character having taken place. The
Rev. Mr. Hugh Hughes, minister of St. John's Chapel, in the
course of his visitations, to relieve the poor in the lower walks
of life, and afford them religious aid, discovered a great num-
ber of persons, of both sexes, living together in a state of pro-
fligacy. Through the medium of his exhortations they were
brought to a sense of the impropriety of such a mode of life,
and 86 men and women, consisting of butchers, costermon-
gers, tailors, shoemakers, and others of various trades and
callings, consented, at the suggestion of the Rev. Gentleman,
to appear at St. John's Chapel, on Monday last, there to
go through the matrimonial ceremony, gratis. Every arrange
ment was made for the occasion, and at an early hour
the galleries were filled with highly respectable persons, male
and female, in order to witness the ceremony, and the body
of the edifice was crowded, while the greatest interest was
manifested outside by numerous spectators. The police and
Bucklaw, the beadle, were in attendanee to keep order, and
prevent any inconvenience. At eight o'clock in the morning
the " happy couples" began to arrive, and they were ushered
through one door into pews. The Rev. Gentleman at length
tuck his station at the altar, and commenced his labour,
when he continued to go through the solemn ceremony amid
the greatest silence, until lie successively solemnised 23 mar-
riages, some young, some middle-aged, and others old re-
pentants. On Thursday the chapel was again crowded, and
the same ceremony was performed with 23 more couple, but
the remaining 40 did not appear at the appointed time.
There is no doubt, however, that they will come forward, as
the doors of the chapel are gratuitously open to them.
A RARE VISITOR.—A few clays since, Captain
Searson, of this town, shot, on the banks of the river Trent,
a rare visiter, from the Arctic regions, called the Dusky
Grebe. It is beautifully marked, and being a novelty so far
south, was placed in the hands of Mr. Reid, of this town, for
preservation.--Doncaster Gazette.