The Sun.
London, England, 1845-11-10 00:00:00

etrening

LONDON. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1845.

The present crisis in our social, as well as our political,
history, is one of a kind and degree of interest rarely attach-
ing to the affairs of an empire in the thirtieth year of pro-
found peace. The importance of the elements which have
created this crisis is equal to the rarity of their combination,
and well deserves—let us say, rather, imperatively demands—
the profound consideration of every man anxious to uphold
the grandeur and prosperity of this country. Abroad we
possess dominion in point of extent, variety of surface and
geographical relations, natural riches, population, com-
merce, intelligence, and power absolutely unrivalled in the
case of any other European monarchy. On the shores of
Africa we have trading settlements and forts, and immense
territorial possessions, with active and resolute colonists, and
all the materiel of permanent and rapidly expanding establish-
ments. On its western coasts we lavishly expend our blood and
treasure, the health and lives of our devoted sailors and their
enterprising commanders, in the generous effort to extin-
ouish the Negro slave•trade, and to elevate the moral cha-
racter as well as the domestie condition of the African peo-
ple. Ou the south anti east of the same enormous continent
we are peopling the primmval solitudes of a fertile wilderness•
with a race of English-descended settlers, who live in the
enjoyment and exercise of the arts and comforts, the man-
ners, language, and religion of their mother country, and
who draw from their forests and their rivers, their vineyards,
their flecks, their corn-fields, whatever can contribute to the
support, the health, the vigour, and the physical progress of
the human race. The protection afforded by the mother
country our African colonists repay by the abundant sup.
plies and equipments they contribute to our fleets, the sani-
tory resources they offer to our invalided soldiers,
exhausted by service in our more Oriental possessions,
and the staples of wool, &c., which they supply to
our general markets. In Asia, we possess the supreme
dominion of that magnificent peninsula, which proves, with
the single exception of China, the noblest region of the finest
quarter of the globe. In that Indian Empire of ours, all the
majestic and all the useful bounties of nature are distributed
with a stupendous profusion. The noblest rivers, after pur-
suing their long-protracted course through some of the
wealthiest and most beautiful countries to be found upon the
globe, roll their collected waters into the ocean at points
on the coasts of the peninsula which their alluvial deposits
have enriched, for ages, with all the principles of in-
exhaustible fertility in incalculable accumulation. The
richest and most abundant products, in some quarters,
spontaneously develop themselves ; in others, inward
the slightest labour devoted to the cultivation of the
soil. The mineral kingdoms vie with the teeming
kingdoms of animated nature in their profuse yield of
the riches they contain. The finest grain, pulse, and drugs,
the most delicious fruits and flowers, are found in the same
country which produces the purest diamonds and the finest
motais. The mountain forests furnish the largest and finest
timber trees for ship-building; the plains contribute their
precious products of raw silk and cotton ; the cities manufac-
ture AO rabrics moat prized throughout the world for the

purposes of luxury or ornament. From a subject population
of ninety mink ns of souls (independently of almost as many
more, over whom we nominally exercise no more than the
influence of the paramount State over its tributaries,) we draw
those fine bodies of native soldiery, who, under the
simple condition of being commanded by - British .
officers, compose the bravest and steadiest troops which
Asia has ever produced, and who form, at this mo-
ment, the great bulk of our Anglo-Indian Army—
an army which for its morale, its discipline, its high-toned
courage, its experience, its varied service, its miraculous
successes, its inflexible perseverance, and its indomitable
spirit, is, perhaps, without arrival even among the military
powers of Europe. In America, we have extended the do-
minion of our flag—and consolidated that dominion by the
most populous, intelligent, and powerful colonial establish-
ments to be found in the world—over territories of all but
boundless extent, and also eminent for the value of their
native products—their sugars, coffees, spices, their timber
and corn, their rivers and lakes, their fisheries and their
trade. In China, we have established a paramount influence
and authority over all other strangers—with the single ex-
ception, perhaps, of the Japanese—whom the jealous policy
of that; imperial government has hitherto admitted into
commercial and even municipal relations with its-aubjects.
And with all these means and manifestations of- power,
strength, and dignity, abroad, we possess and we exhibit at
home a degree of opulence, a height of refinement,`_- an ex-
tent of civilisation, an organisation of resources for the en-
largement and maintenance of our authority abroad, and
our domestic prosperity, in every way proportioned to these
indications of external grandeur. The history of human
societies does not produce a parallel to the rapidity, or the
amount, in which capital has been multiplied among us
within the last ten years. No Oriental fabulist ever ima-
gined, in all the unbridled license of his invention, a fund of
wealth, accumulated in one country, adequate to that which
must have formed the basis of railway speculations that have
been brought forward, in the latter half of that period, to a
nominal or hypotheticated amount of capital exceeding
640,000,0001. and this, too, among a people whose means
are annually charged with the actual payment of 50,000,0001.
of taxes. of which nearly two-thirds are .devoted to
defray the current charge of interest on the debt of the nation.
But in the midst of all these blessings and distinctions of
internal prosperity and foreign power; it is but too evident
there are disturbing influences at work, which, if not counter-
acted promptly, may go far to sap and undermine the foun-
dations of this magnificent political and social fabric. Bad
economic laws, such as those which regulate the trade of
corn and of money—impolitic principles of fiscal achuinistra-
tion—abuses or incompetency in great branehes.d our exe-
cutive departments—and, above all, an-Christian, unwise, '
and antiquated civil disabilities, on account of religious opi-
nions, still affecting certain classes of her MAJESTY'S subjects,
these are fruitful sources of disunion, di3content, and dim,
ganisation of public feelir.g, which it becomes, with the lapse
of every day, more and more the imperative duty of the gb-
vernment and the Legislature to remedy or to remove. In
more than one quarter of the political horizon
every observant eye detects a threatened explosion
of that morbid animosity and insatiable envy which
the grandeur and the power of the position oc-
cupisd by this country among the nations has generated
among the most unprincipled of -other Governments with
which, up to this moment, we are on terms of ostensible
amity. Of all kinds of wisdom political wisdom is that
whereof " timeliness" is the most indispensable qualification.
The movement in our dockyards, arsenals, and harbours, is
all_ satisfactory enough, as being in the right direction; but
in the meantime the Government should reform all admitted
anomalies in our legislation and our civil institutions, so as
to " knit together, in the bonds of amity and peace, the
hearts and minds of all classes of her 31.t.msTv's subjects,"
against the day of that catastrophe—a war—which at no
distant period may be forced upon us. Whatever enemy we
may have to combat with may be assured of ultimate and
signal defeat, provided only that we leave him no auxiliary
so formidable as the existence of rankling internal grievances
affecting large masses of our countrymen, and laws specially
oppressive to the poor, by their cruel enhancement of the
price of the first necessary for hurilan subsistence. .

The last number of the LIIW Review contains an article on
the subject of the controversy between the bar and the press,
which is well worthy of attention. As might have been
naturally supposed, the writer leans rather to the side of the
bar. He would fain insinuate that no insult was meant to
the press by the members of the Oxford and Western Circuit
in passing their too famous resolution. We will not stop to
inquire whether or no insult was meant; certain it is
insult was offered, and such being the case, we are
glad to find that the Law Review, a periodical which
numbers among its contributors some of the highest names
in the profession, offers this excellent advice to the members
of those circuits:—
We believe that in both circuits there has been, on the divi-
sion as to the resolution, an opposing. but of course unsuccessful
minority, although on the Oxford Circuit it was asmall one. This
minority may then easily become a majority, and we sincerely
hope that no time maybe lost in rescinding the resolution in ques-
tion. It is painul to us to offer this advice; it grieves us to find
that two bodies so eminent and respectable as the Oxford and
Western Circuits, so nearly allied to ourselves, and each of which
numbers among its ranks so many men whom we not only value
and esteem as distinguished members of the profession, birt to
whose judgments we would gladly defer on other matters. Ent as
we feel a strong conviction that it is for the honour of the profession
and the interest of the puhl:c that the step should be taken, we
would only say that the sooner it is taken the better. Circuits,
like all other public bodies, are fallible. If they have been led into
error, they have neither been the first nor will they be the last
placed in similar circumstances. It is quite possible that both
these circuits acted from a generous feeling. We therefore, with
all sincerity, tender them this advice."
This is wise, sensible advice, which we trust will be fol-
lowed ; and thus will this controversy, from which no pos-
sible good can arise, be brought to a conclusion. The
writer goes on to state that, in giving this advice, it must
not for one moment be imagined that he considers the
bar has anything to fear from the press. If, by
this phrase, he means the abstraction called the
bar, he may possibly be right, but if by the .l ar he means the
aggregate of barristers, he is decidedly wrong, for the puislic
would not be cognisant even of the existence of any one
single barrister if the press were invariably to exclude the
names of all counsel from its reports and notoriety.—that
notoriety which the press alone can bestow, is the Pabulum
vitte to a barrister. Besides, in a preceding portion of the
same article, we find the following passage :
" One word more, which we address quite as much to the true
interest as to the generous feelings of the leaders of these circuits.
The bar owes its strength, its reputation, its standing in society, to
its power of attracting to its ranks from the lowest station by far
the greater proportion of the clever men of the day. It is its
proudest boast that its sons rise, without any other assistance than
their talents and character, from the lowest rank to be the com-
panions of princes, and to wield the destinies of the world. Let
the bar beware of shutting any avenue to this class of men; and
the public press is one which has already sent, and will again send, a
large part of the talent and character of the bar. The reporter of
to-day may become the reported of to morrow. The bar of the
present day boasts but little beyond mediocrity ; we look along the
ranks, and, in the midst of a larger extent of average ability than
was ever before known, we find but few rising above the middle
height, and no ' one standing above the rest from his shoulders
and upwards' Let us not, therefore, poison a spring from which
already so much good has flown, and which may help us in time of
need."

• Now surely that bar which boasts little beyond medi-
ocrity, has every thing to fear from a contest with that press
which, to use again the words of this writer, - • •
Is a power properly called the Fourth Estate, before which
the Prime Minister, be he who he may, daily trembles; which dis-
poses of crowns and subverts empires ; which changes the face of
nations and the very habits of the people."

It is most assuredly a great anomaly, that men who
exercise this vast power—who are in the nineteenth cen-
tury what the priests were in the thirteenth—the defenders
of the oppressed against the oppressor—the denouncers
of evil perons and evil things, the excommunicators of
those bold bad men wl.o set the laws at defiance, but who
yet fear that their evil deeds should become publicly known
—it is most assuredly a great anomaly that the ex:rci6ers of
this mighty power should have no fixed social status. The
writer in the Review regrets this circumstance, which in fact
renders the power of the press a perfectly irresponsible power,
but he endeavours to account fur it by saying
"It the newspapers wish to be respected, they must show that
they respect each other. They impute to each ether, in plain
language, cr►mes which, if true, ought to drive them out of all
civilised society. Over-reaching, unfairness amounting to tLeft,
suboanation of perjury, and lying, are repeatedly laid to each other's
charge." .

To this, as a general accusation against the press, we
demur That it is true of some papers we admit, but that it
is so of all we as strenuously deny. Besides, this very fault
is owing to the fact that editors of papers have no social status.
The abstraction Star may abuse the abstraction Bee in the
most virulent language. Like corporations they have neither
bodies to be kicked, or souls to be saved ; but if Mr
THOMPSON were known to be the editor of the Bee,
and were received as such, and Mr. JotiNsos were
known and received as the editor of the Star,
then these papers, being no longer abstractions, would
be forced to respect each other, or a duel between JOHNSON
and THomrsos would be the inevitable consequence.
The following accusation against the Press we meet at
once with an indignant denial :
" An impression has got abroad that in society no one is safe in
the company of a gentleman connected with the press ; that there
must be an end to all the ease, and abandon, of society in his pre-
sence, that random thoughts and careless opinions will be seised
upon, and at some future and convenient time divulged to the
world."

It is not the gentleman connected with the newspaper press
of England who is the penciller by the way, the sketcher of
fashionable sketches, the betrayer of confidence, the purveyor
of scandal. No, it is the attache-4h. -fashionable member
of the fashionable club—the man who has and who holds
his status in society—that is the retailer of " the after-dinner
nonsense." He it is who brings his budget of gossip to the
market, and sells it for what he can get ; and he it is who is
most loud in his denunciations against newspaper men, be-
cause his proffered serviced have by them been rejected with
loathing and contempt.

The intelligence from Switzerland is of an unfavourable
character. The excitement caused by the suicide or ass
nation of M. LEc appears to be still on the increase, and
several persons of rank and the greatest respectability had
been arrested in consequence of the confessions of a. man
named MULLER, 10)0 calls himself an accomplice. The
Basle Gazate of the 29th ult. says, that no reasonable and
impartial mar_ believes that Dr. P;FYITER, who has been
arrested on the pretended confession of 7.llrumr., as an ac-
complice in-the reported murder of M. LEU, had anything to
do with the affair. The Federal Gazette of Zurich expresses