The Sun.
London, England, 1844-05-21 00:00:00

is strength, in public opinion ; but compromise is
always weakness—fur w ht.iher dishonest or not, it
looks like honesty. We could have heartily de-
sired that upon the occasion of Lord Ashley s late
propositior, every Member of the Hou >e of Commons
had voted according to his own conscientious judgment,
the effect of which would undoubtedly have been to leave
the Ministry in a minority, and remove them for a -.no-
ment from office ; but it would have been for a moment
only. Without a dissolution of Parliament the Con•
servative majority would have insisted upon the resump-
tion of office by a -Ministry that had achieved so much
for the peace, the wealth, the prosperity, and safety
of the country ; or with a dissolution, the present
Conservative majority of 100 would have been about
doubled, by reason of that very stand made for the la-
bouring classes by the Conservatives in Parliament.
Lord John Russell,' Lord Howick, and the other
Whigs saw this, and they hedged, as the jockey's
phrase is, in contemplation of the possible appeal to
the country ; we will not give any more charitable con-
struction to their pirouette, because we do not find one
of them offering amends' to the memory of the great and
good man who commenced the work of protection,
and whom they persecuted for doing so—Michael
Thomas Sadler the only man of whom we know
anything that ever deserved to go before Lord
Ashley. To have out-voted Ministers on the
factory question would have done no harm, but a
great deal of good, to the Conservative part•; but what
possible good can result to the Conservative interests
from the attempt to rundown the Conservative Cabinet
—the best Ministry, too, that the country has had for
half a century? Will abuse of Sir R. Peel's Govern-
ment tell in tavour of a Conservative candidate on the
hustings, or anywhere else? And, next, we would have
our readers to remember the parties who urge them into
a course prima facie so unwise.

STRANGE MALADY IN NEW
BRUNSWICK.
(From the Montreal courier, April 12.)
We translate the following from the Quebec Cana-
cl:en ; we have seen no account of the affair in any of the
lower province journals as yet:—
" The Governor of New Brunswick, Sir W. Cole-
brooke, has sent a message to the Legislature on the sub-
ject of a disorder the most hideous and fatal, which
exists amongst the French population on the borders of
the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and which the Medical men of
the neighbourhood consider resembles thefrfeprosy of the
seventeenth centary.
" The Chamber of Representatives went into com-
mittee on the 21st of March, to take into consideration
this message, and the documents which accompany it.
It appears from these papers, says the New Brunswicker,
that this disgusting malady made its appearance in 1824,
and that since that year seven persons have died of it,
after languishing for five or six years in the most
miserable condition; one of these patients, who had been
sequestree' in a log hut, and fed through a hole, died, as
is believed, in a state of mental derangement, and the
contagion was so dreaded, that, in some cases, the in-
spector of the poor had been himself obliged to carry
to these unfortunate creatures the food necessary for
their subsistence, and for which they still preserved
their natural appetite and desire.
" Those who maintain the contagious nature of the
disease assert that it has been communicated by sleeping
with those who were afflicted with it, and that a young
man who had assisted in bearing the bier of a dead
patient, and on whose clothes some corrupt matter from
the corpse had dropped, took the disease and died of it.
" It appears, in addition, that there are at this mo-
ment twelve patients labouring under this malady in the
county of Gloucester, and about the same number on the
other side of the line which separates that county from
that of Northumberland. It is probable that there are
others who conceal their sufferings, fearing that if they
were known to be thus afflicted they would be shunned
by their neighbours.
" Amongst the other cases enumerated is that of a
woman who was shipwrecked at Carraquet, on her way
to Quebec, and who afterwards returned to Chatham,
where the malady developed itself, and was communi-
cated to two other persons in the family, with whom she
resided, and also to a child who frequented the house,
who all died. It appears that the disease is invariably
fatal.

" The reading the different documents which accom-
panied the message excited in the Chamber a lively sym-
pathy for these unfortunates. Doctors Thomson and
Earl both declared their opinion that the disease was
not leprosy. The former of these physicians explained
in a most lucid manner the mode of living and the habits
of the French population amongst whom this malady has
manifested itselt—a population, he said, amongst whom
many bad habits are prevalent, which not only predis-
pose them to receive scrofulous maladies of every kind,
but render those maladies more difficult of cure. He
recommends, above everything, to change the manner of
living and food of these poor people, and to impress both
on their minds and bodies, by education and amusements,
an action more healthy and vigorous. The Chamber, by
a unanimons vote, granted 5001. to the Executive to pro-
cure for those unfortunates the assistance of medicine,
to separate those who are afflicted with this horrible
malady from the other inhabitants, and to ameliorate
the short span ofexistence which remains to the afflicted."