The Sun.
London, England, 1844-02-10 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

/RON THE EVENING PAPERS OF THURSDAY.
GLOBE.—The Camden Town duel, in which Lieut.-
Colonel Fawcett fell by the hand of his brother-in-law,
Limit. Munro, is again before the public. On the Learned
Judges taking their seats in the Central Criminal Court
yesterday morning, Mr. Waddington stated to their
Lordships that " the Crown prosecutors had receivedjan
intimation from Lieutenant Duncan Trevor Grant (the
second of Lieutenant Munro) that it was his intention
to surrender and 'take his trial on the charge
preferred against him at a former session of
this Court, for the wilful murder of Lieutenant-Colonel
Fawcett. Under these circumstances he (Mr. Wadding-
ton) begged to apply to their Lordships to appoint a
day for the tria He would suggest Friday next for
that purpose." The appointment of Friday was re-
sisted by- Mr. Wilkins, as counsels for Lieutenant
Grant, on the plea that " the interval would not
admit of due preparation for the defenee: He would
suggest that Monday be fixed for the trial." The
Learned Judges very properly refused to fix any
dayi; and intimated, pretty significantly, their
opinion, that it was derogating from the dignity of
the;lair to enter into any such arrangements with a
party who had not surrendered himself to its process.
As was very properly observed by one of their Lord-
ships, " there was no security that the party would
surrender himself for trial." Two or three.sessions ago
the same game was played off by Lieut. Munro and Lieut.
Grant. The Crown prosecutors then received a similar
intimation that they intended to surrender themselves for
trial. The day was fixed for the trial. The witnesses were
got together. The Attorney-General and the other
counsel for the prosecution were present in Court. The
Learned Judges came down specially to try the case. A
crowded audience, drawn together by the notoriety of
the facts connected with the affecting incident, waited
in breathless expectation. At length it was announced
that Lieutenant Munro, the principal concerning whom
all this mighty stir and bustle of preparation had been
made, had changed his mind, and declined to appear ;
and Lieutenant Grant, who was only second in the trans-
actton, with becoming modesty, could not, of course,
think of appearing in the absence of his principal.
There was, therefbre no trial—for this obvious reason,
there were no prisoners ! The whole affair was a
mockery of justicea trilling with the administration
of the laws, to which they ought not to have been
exposed in the first instance ; but a repetition of which,
had the Learned Judges assented, would have re-
flected upon the discretion of the Bench. Let Lieut.
Grant surrender himself to the custody of the officer of
the Court, and thus give assurance that he will abide
his trial. The Court will then appoint a day for the
purpose, and the justice of the country will proceed in its
ordinary course. We do not mean to intimate a doubt
of Lieut. Grant's sincerity in making the intimation he
has done, through his counsel. He probably now intends
to surrender himself for trial—that is, if the Court will
compromise its dignity by becoming a party to an ar-
rangement to meet his convenience. Lieutenant Munro,
his principal in the transaction, has withdrawn himself
from justice. By the kind and considerate leniency of the
Horse Guards, he was enabled to hold her Majesty's com-
mission while he was alternately evading the laws and co -
queting with their administration—a six months' leave of
absence from his regiment being granted to him, that he
might have time to determine what course he should adopt;
whether to take his trial for the murder of which he
stood accused by the finding of the coroner's inquest,
and suhsequentiy of the grand jury ; or whether, de-
clining the ordeal of a trial, he should dispose of his
property, and retire to a distance, where the laws of his
country could not reach him. The conduct of the
Horse Guards in this matter we consider as an obstruc-
tion of the criminal jurisprudence of the country—a
virtual sanction to military men to do that for which
they have too often shown an inclination—a refusal to
submit to the 'constituted civil authorities, from an
idea that the army ought not to be subject to their con-
trol, but be wholly responsible to its peculiar tribunals.
Since the trifling with the Court on the former occa-
sion, circumstances have occurred which may lead
Lieutenant Grant to expect a favourable consideration
of his case, if not by the jury, at least by the Govern-
ment, on the part of the Crown. Duelling has been
defended in high places. The Ministers of the Crown
have deemed it expedient to_extenuate, if not to justify
altogether, the conduct of- Abel 'Attorney-General of
Ireland ; who penned and _transmitted a challenge to a
barrister, while that barrister was engaged in defending
a client then under prosecution•bY the Attorney-General !
A practice which the laws of God and of the country
condemn—which public opinion demands should be
put down, as alike criminal and absurd—and the folly
and (milt of which have been most forcibly exemplified
in the' melancholy fate of Lieut.-Colonel Fawcett, and
the circuinstanms out of which it 'arose—this sense-
less mode of settling disputes, the relic of a dark
age, in which the life of one or both disputants is
perillcd, and has been often sacrificed to what is as
foolishly as falsely called the " law of honour"—this
practice has been appealed to by the Attorney-General of
Ireland in a Court of Justice. And this monstrous
outrage upon the laws, and upon the sanctity of the
temple of justice, has not only been allowed to pass
unvisited by the Judges of that Court—who scarcely
manifested disapprobation, ant 'abstained from marking
the outrage with the slightest punishment of the
oirender—but the Ministers of the Crown, in their places
in Parliament, have declared that they see nothing- in
the circumstances which calls for their interposition !
" They have neither taken, nor do they contemplate
taking, any steps for the dismissal of- the .Attorney 7
General of Ire!and !" How, then, can the Attorney -Gene-
ral of England now press the charge against Lieutenant
Grant, or even against Lieutenant Munro ? _The mortal
result of the duel in which they were engaged was
merely accidental. The " tiring with an intent to
kill" is a capital felony ; the killing is nothing more
than merely carrying out the intentions of the parties
toward each other. when they agree to fire the loaded
pistols with which they go forth armed to the selected
place of combat. When the Attorney-General of Ire-
land challenged Mr. Fitzgibbon in open Court, and
under the extraordinary and aggravated circumstances
so often detailed, he contemplated the same results. to
himself; or the gentleman he challenged, as followed the
challenge transmitted by Lieutenant Munro to Lieute-
nant-t2olonel Fawcett. The Attorney-General was
therefore not only guilty of a flagrant contempt of
Court, but of a serious offence against the law, of which
he is the chief officer in Ireland. If Attorney-General
Smith escape scatheless ; if he be neither punished by
the Court, the dignity of which he has insulted, nor by
the laws, which he has defied : if the Government throw
around him its protection, and thus tacitly approve, by
defending, his conduct ; we really cannot see how the
Government, by its Attorney-General, can prosecute
Lieut. Grant ; or, if prosecuted and convicted, can allow
him to be subjected to punishment. Sir B. Peel has
deprived justice both of the balance and the sword. The
Government has given a license to duelling—which was
fast passing into desuetude by the contempt and odium
that were accumulating upon the practice, and those who
adopt it : it has thus counteracted the combined efforts
of the sitarist, the moralist, and the divine ; and has
i.hown that its c'a:ms to the character of a moral and
religious Administration are as hollow as are its other
pretensions to the nation's confidence.

FUOM THE EVENING PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.

GLOBE.—The case of the deposed and incarce-
rated Ameers.of Sinde was last evening brought under
the notice of Parliament by Lord Ashley. The Noble
Lord confined himself to a narrative of the facts and
circumstances of his more than questionable stroke
of State policy; for which no defence has been set
up, except the hackneyed plea by which similar in-
fractions upon the rights of the defence-
less, by those who have the power of inflicting
wrong, have been justified. Unadorned by eloquence,
which, indeed, the subject needed not—alike free from
the brilliant flashes of genius and the thunder-bolts of
declamation, both which would have found a fit place
in . a speech on such a subject—Lord Ashley con-
tented himself with a lucid exposition of facts, sup-
ported by the papers which had been laid upon the
table of the House ; and left the subject to find its way
to the hearts and consciences of his auditors. The
end Lord Ashley sought to attain, perhaps to the full
extent he anticipated, was secured. The utter absence
of proof that the untbrtunate Ameers of Sinde had
been guilty, or even contemplated the commission
of the acts by which the policy pursued by the Go-
vernor-General toward them was sought to be jus-
tified, was forcibly dwelt upon by the Noble Lord,
and made a powerful impression on the House. Had
the strictures applied to Lord Ellenborourgh been
employed by a Member of the Opposition, they would
have been attributed to the virulence of party ; and
thus their effect upon public opinion would have been
diminished, if not altogether destroyed. Coming
from a supporter of Ministers, they acquire a cha-
racter for impartiality which they would not have
obtained had they proceeded from the opposite side of
the House. They are not merely justified by facts ;
but these facts prevail with double sway," when
made the basis of that severe condemnation which
Lord Ashley pronounced upon the conduct of the Go-
ornor-General toward these unfortunate Princes.
The effective and much required aid afforded to
our army in 1841, by the Ameers whom Lord
Ellenborough has deposed and imprisoned, and whose
dominions he has seized upon and annexed to the
British territory, was alluded to by Lord Ashley, for
the purpose of exhibiting the baseness of ingratitude
by which the Governor-General had heightened the
turpitude of injustice :

" Let them (said Lord Ashley) recollect what they
(the Ameers) had done for them Let them call to
mind their danger—their dismay—their terrible reverses
in Caubul. Let them remember tremblingt. and
nervous anxiety which existed at thatethis
• country, and the imminent danger of theirirnete'r inpire in
India ; and let them remember also the
the Anteers and their friendly and ready co-operation.
During all the year 1841 supplies were re(
abundance for our armies ; those supplies were liberally
. bestowed. Detachments of our army marched through
their country without control or objection, demanding
and receiving everywhere every possible assistance."
How have we rewarded these Ameers,who facilitated
the march, and sustained, by supplies of food, our
troops when in circumstances of peril and privation?
Without adequate provocation, if assumption be taken
as proofs—without any proved provocation; for no
proof of provocation has been supplied—we have
stripped these unfortunate Princes alike of
their private possessions and public power ;
and left them to mourn apart, in the solitude
of distant prisons, over their own lost freedom,
and severe and complicated sufferings! The close of
Lord Ashley's speech is not more beautiful in its
simplicity than it is fraught with matters for serious

reflection, and motives to practical application by those
I who wield the destinies of our Anglo-Indian pos-

sessions :

"The generosity of mighty power was safe and cheap,
and honourable. Many men have been led to believe
that the reward of a Christian empire in the East would
be universal dominion. Whether by such means as these
Great Britain would accomplish the empire of the East,
would remain to be seen. He did not think we had made
a very auspicious beginning. Let them, however, not
lose what they had obtained, by injustice. Let them
wipe out the awful imputation cast on them by the Ameer
Moobaruck Khan, You tyrants—you Christians !'
Hen pietas! heu prisca fide!'
Now, we perceive there is no hope or justice for us, un-
til God Almighty shall sit in the last great, udgment.' "
Mr. Roebuck undertook the defence of Lord Ellen-
borough; but did so by a most questionable line of ar-
gument. His Lordship, as Governor-General of India,
had not acted in the case of Sinde worse than his pre-
decessors in that Government ! All who had gone before
him were inferiot to him in mind, and exceeded him
in carrying out an aggrandizing policy. For this
purpose the Member for Bath referred to the conduct
of successive Governor-Generals for more than half a
century ; but reserved his peculiar powers for the
administration of Lord Auckland, upon whose ex-
pedition against Affghanistan he poured the vials of
his concentrated essence of wormwood and gall with
his more than ordinary illiberality. Without re-
spect to the marked difference which exists be-
tween the two cases, both with reference to their
origin and design, the Hon. and Learned Member
for Bath persisted in withdrawing the attention of the
House from the question before it, for the purpose of
gratifying a taste, of which he seemed to be alone in
the indulgence. He concluded a rambling, vitupe-
rative speech, with a string of resolutions for which,
as no seconder could be found, the Honourable and
Learned Gentleman has the sole merit. Sir J.
Hobhouse's refutation of Mr. Roebuck's uncalled-
for and unsustained attack on Lord Auckland,
was complete. Under any other circumstances the
castigation it administered would have been deemed
severe ; but the House seemed to feel that it was de-
served. Sir Robert Peel admitted the spirit and
talent which Lord Ashley had evinced in bringing
the question before the House. The Right Hon.
Baronet did not venture to justify all that had
been done ; but dwelt upon the extreme in-
convenience and embarrassment that would result
from a vote of the House of Commons;
which would compel the Governor-General to libe-
rate at once the Ameers of Sinde, and restore them

to power. He deprecated the effects which such a
course might have on other native Powers ; and un-
dertook that, if left id the hands of the Government,
every consideration should be given to the situation
of the Ameers, with a view to the amelioration
of their condition. Lord John Russell's speech,
though short, merits regard, not merely for
the sentiments it expressed, but also for the
generous spirit in which it was conceived. Ills
Lordship abstained from embarrassing the Govern-
ment by voting for Lord Ashley's motion—and thus
showed himself superior to the narrow and illiberal
spirit which actuated his opponents when a similar
question arose respecting the Affghan expedition ; but
refused to admit that the annexation of Sinde could
be justified by the plea set up, that its former rulers
were despotic, and that liberty and civilisation would
be improved by the inhabitants being brought under
British supremacy.
STANDARD.—The debate on Lord Ashley's mo-
tion last night was highly interesting, but it is totally
impossible to abstract it in any form in which the
interest must not evaporate. The splendid speech of
the Noble Lord was worthy of his most humane and
generous motive, and both were worthy of his cha-
racter ; but to say this is not to say that the
motion ought to have been agreed to. In the
unhappily mixed condition of human affairs, though
the highest degree of virtue ought always to
be the ultimate object of our pursuit, and though we
are bound to venerate those who inculcate it by
their doctrine, and illustrate it by their example, the
advance cannot always be made rapidly and with-
out interruption. It is, undoubtedly, our duty to
make all men happy ; but whether we pursue this
object upon a small or a great scale, if we pur-
sue it irrespectively of circumstances, we run a very
great risk of ending by making many miserable.
In the matter before us, it is impossible to
doubt that the liberation of the deposed and
imprisoned Ameers of Sinde—the purpose of Lord
Ashley's motion—whatever the justice and humanity
of the motive for the act, would result in years of
war and desolation, and rivers of blood. The ques-
tion is .not whether these princes have been justly
dethroned and imprisoned—a matter to be other-
wise decided—but a matter in which we do not
disguise- an opinion, that no more than justice has
been done—but whether they are to be let loose to
kindle a new war, for the affliction of mankind.
We rarely venture to differ from Lord Ashley, but
nn this point we cannot agree Uith hiin, probably
I,ecause we cannot reach his elevation of sentiment.
lir. Roebuck's speech is as characteristic of the
speaker as Lord Ashley's ; this is saying enough of
it. The Member for Bath abundantly vilified all of
whom he spoke, reserving as usual his most bitter
reproaches for the people of England. We know not
to what country or race Mr. Roebuck belongs,
but we suppose that he is not an Englishman.
The speech of the Premier, however, disposed
of the whole question, by showing the impossibility
that the Parliament could, without risking the most
fatal consequences, undertake to prescribe the details
of a government administered at a distance of five or
six thousand miles—or adopting the Dutch mode
of measuring distance, by time—at a distance of three
or four months. There is one passage of the Right
Hon. Baronet's speech which ought to be care-
fully remembered as often as our Indian policy comes
under consideration—it explains a principle which
some of our readers may remember to have been
more than once advanced in the Standard :
" Sir, it is very difficult to act upon abstract
principles, which are applicable to civilised States,
when we have to deal with barbarous States.

In such circumstances abstract principles cannot
by enforced. I think it would not be pos-
sible for us to rigidly adopt such principleswith respect
to the States in India as we should be governed by
were we dealing with the States of Europe. Take
the case of Aithanistan for instance, assuming
that it was believed that some unfavourable design
were entertained against our Indian possessions by
Persia or Russia, and that Sinde was to become a party
in that design. Would it be possible for the Go•
vernor-Peneral of India to dO his duty to his country
if he did not take such steps as were in his
power to thwart such a 'proceeding, when, by taking
possession of Sinde, or subsidising the troops of that
country, or the taking of such steps as should prevent
the carryinc, into effect a scheme like that to which I
have alluded ? If we look at civilised nations when
they come into contact with barbarous ones, we find it
impossible, from some cause or other, inherent to bar-
barous States, to carry out thoseprinciples which govern
civilised nations."
The reason of the difference is obvious—law, like
like language, to be understood and observed, must be
ex hatituto, and it would be as absurd to attempt
dealing with men according to laws of which they
know nothing, as to attempt communicating with
them in a language that they never heard before.
There is, indeed, the moral law, which is common
to our unsophisticated nature ; but if human nature is
unsophisticated anywhere, which we doubt, it certainly
is not so among the princes of India, with whom

cruelty and injustice are in daily practice, successfu'
falsehood and treachery occasions of pride.

" A stirring life they lead, who have such neighbours near."
In dealing with them, treachery may not be retaliated
for treachery ; but all those rights which are allowed
among civilised nations, as resting upon the hypo-
thesis that they will not he perfidiously abused, may be
lawfully withheld from those who will, we know, abuse
them to our injury upon the first convenient opportunity.
According to the proverb, " cords must hind those
whom honour cannot." Hence it happens that a
moral and civilised nation, placed upon the confines
of immoral and uncivilised nations, must, in its
own defence, subdue its neighbours if they do not
enlighten and reform themselves by its example.
Hence it is that Butler, in a passage referred to last
night by Lord Ashley, includes lawful conquest
among the means by which a purely Christian Go-
vernment could ensure universal dominion. The
wise and pious writer saw that in the perverse
nature of man were the seeds of occasion
when conquest - might be lawful. Such oc-
casion surely arises when a nation is thrown,
by any cause, itito contact with another
which owns no law, and has no respect for truth
or justice. It may be well for the rigid
moralist in politics to avoid the difficulty of
such proximity to evil; but we doubt whether the
enlightenment and- civilisation of the world would
gain by such prudent reserve; and it is certain that we
can neither withdraw from India, nor maintain our
position there, by a strict observance of the code of pub-
lic law recognised in Europe. Such a strict observance,
indeed, would compel us to a more frequent, and a more
fierce, course of aggression than any British Governor
has ever pursued in the East, and so little would the
native princes gain by it that they would soon have
reason to say—sunouum jus mama infuria, The
truth. that in Indian government, and in
all distant governments, where the neigh-
bouring States aro uncivilised, the Governor
must act upon his own discretion, according
to circumstances, with little regard to any
fixed rules, and the attempt to fetter him by any,
cannot be otherwise than mischievous. The House
o motionnsl for last
the liberationnightwaso
f it opinion,o the
infoergirts re-
jected tCm
e Commons
a majority of 202 to 63.

Died on Thursday, in Pot-ebester-place, Hyde-
park, aged forty-Dine, after ye4rs of health, and months
of severe suffering, Isaac Newton Wig*, FAco for several
years ALP, for Brighton.

► IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.
ROUSE OF LORDS, Feb.'9.
The LORD CHANCELLOR took his seat on the Wool-
pack at Five o'Clock.
The School Teachers' (Ireland) Bill went through
Committee, and was ordered to be read a third time
on Monday next.
AFFAIRS OF SPAIN.

Lord CLARENDON stated that in consequence
of the illness of the Noble Lord, the Secretary for
Foreign Affairs, he should postpone his question on
the state of affairs in Spain until Monday next.
ACTIONS FOR PENALTIES ON GAMING