The Sun.
London, England, 1842-08-29 00:00:00

g to I.ral, and punish

county,

what the iphaNtatits believe to be no afenee
whatever. The late ring was not a turn-out of
hundreds or thousands, bnt of tens of theucands,
fc,r ti•ts It L;;::; "

wages f")i• a rail. day's work." ''rear some W:c•r.
people tried to mislead them for party purposes,
and to involve them in illegal conflicts with the
constitutional authorities, we at once admit; but
these incendiaries have contrived to elude the
arm of the law, and only their dupes have been
seized. If the Government desire to put down
Chartism, it will prepare to treat the errors
of the workin;; people with lenity. Instead
of laying soares for them by means of Spe-
cial Commissions, it will throw open to them
a door by which they may return, without fur-
ther apprehension, to their customary employ-
ments. The operatives are not so ignorant as t
justify any attempt to coerce them through the
influence of terror; and therefore there is no fear
that they will either misapprehend or abuse a
policy of moderation and compromise. They fed
no impatience of the laws for the maintenance of
social order, as is sufficiently evident from the
few outrages committed during a long season of
unprecedented distress •and misery. The wisest
and satist course for the Government to pursue
is to discourage the rage for prosecutions now
springing up among the Tory officials in the
lately disturbed districts. Ministers have an ex-
cellent opportunity now of inspiring popular con-
fidence in the sincerity of their oft-repeated
sympathy for the unexampled distress, and
consequent despair, of the operatives of England
and Scotland.

A pressure of other matter at the close of the Par-
liamentary session, followed immediately after by the
unhappy necessity imposed upon us of reporting fully
every particular connected with the state of the
manufacturing districts, has hitherto prevented us
from giving the sequel of the fourteen hours' debate,
which took place at the India House, upon this case,
on the 29th of July last. We now resume this duty.
In our columns of this day will be found the able,
argumentative, and dispassionate speech delivered on
that occasion by Mr. CHARLES NORRIS. This gen-
tleman filled for several years the high office of Chief
Secretary to the Government of Bombay. Upon hie,
resignation and return to England the Court of
Directors spontaneously offered to nominate him a
member of the Law Commission of India. This lu-
crative and responsible post he declined, satisfied
to render, as an East India Proprietor, what
benefits he could to that country, where an unin-
terrupted service of . between twenty and thirty
years earned for him, among all classes o
men, European and native, the high and un-
blemished reputation he bears for wisdom, talent, and
integrity. It is this gentleman who rose to speak at
ten at night in the Court of Proprietors, and who, in
speaking his deliberate conviction of the innocence of
the Raja of SATTARA, to him an alien and a stranger,
was compelled by the evidence of the facts he pro-
duced, all taken from the official proceedings in the
case, to arraign the conduct, to refute the opinions,
and to condemn the judgment of a most valued friend,
Mr. WlLLouonny, the writer of the Sattara Report,
one of the most prominent and persevering among
the accusers and judges of the RAJA.
One or two explanations are necessary to make
some of the facts adverted to by Mr. NORRIS in-
telligible to English readers. It is an obser-
vance of good manners, universal throughout In-
dia, for a visitor to ask the leave of his host
to depart. At the Court of native Princes, the time
for soliciting this leave is intimated by a special
Officer of State, like the Lord Chamberlain, coming
round, fbllowed by servants, bearing trays, and pre-
senting to each visitor, according to his rank and
station, one or more bundles of pawn, that is, of betel
leaf, rolled up in a neat and peculiar way, with spices
and aromatics inside. On receiving this compliment,
paid to all, the visitor rises and withdraws. Every
Court has its own mode and shape of preparing those
bundles. Their preparation is a particular depart-
ment of the household, and forms the daily occupation
of one or two hundred persons. A practice analo-
gous to it may be imagined, if it were the custom for
every daily visitor to the QUEEN, and at other Euro-
pean Courts, to receive at each a delicate and different
nosegay of flowers, made of roses, or jasmine, or car-
nations. If such a custom were universal, there
would be no more doubt as to the particular nosegay
in use at each Court, than about the peculiar uniform
of its courtiers. Two native officers sent, in
concert with their European officers, to hold
a secret interview with the Raja of SATTARA,
in his palace, and to bring back proof of that inter-
view, produce proof bundles of pawn, which they
declared they received from the RAJA'S own hands.
The very sight of the bundles disproves that they
could have been so received. What is the plain and
palpable inference from this fact ? What would be
the inference, if two French sergeants in our service
were to say, that they had secretly seen the QUEEN
in her palace, that she had given them Royal nose-
gays with her own hand, which nosegays on pro-
duction proved to be totally unlike those made up
and given, time immemorial, at the palace ? Would
any man believe the statement ? But when it is fur-
ther established in evidence, that both the native
officers first of all deposed diametrically opposite as
to the place where their interview with the RAJA
took place—one saying positively that he was led up a
staircase, consequently that the interview was in an
upper apartment of the palace; while the other declared
as positively, that it was in the lower part, and that he
was not taken up stairs, but then, five days after,
came forward and said he was taken up stairs—how
is it possible to repose the smallest confidence in such
glaring contradictions ? How can the previous cha-
racter of these men increase our credibility in the
facts they depose to ? It is by the facts given in evi-
dence that the RAJA'S guilt or innocence is, we pre-
sume, to be determined; not by their characters, or
by the characters of Messrs. WILLOUGHBY and OVANS,
or of the Governor in Council of Bombay, or even by
the character of the Court of Directors. Were that,
indeed, the appeal, were an appeal to the character of
the Directors, as exhibited by their scandalous treat-
ment of the RAJA down to the last fourteen hours' de-
, hate, to be decisive of the innocence of that Prince,
there is not a just and holiest man beyond the pre-
cincts of the India House wlio, we are satisfied, is not
ready to give his conscientious verdict in the RAJA'S
favour.