The Sun.
London, England, 1827-03-26 00:00:00

tPlitIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

AIL decision of the Committee on the Reading
petition is such as was stated in our Journal on Sa-
turday morning. Mr. Charles Fyshe Palmer is the
fritting member. Mr. Spence, who has been tined.
visedlv indimed to fish in troubled waters, is now at
liberty to pursue his usual avocations, either of
writing books, or pleading causes. Perhaps, haw..
ever Mr. Spence is only to blame for having gone
where he had no business What, in truth, had he
to do with Reading? He was simple; those who
'let him into the good thing were knavish, and he
ought to have known them better. Ours is a hene-
Yolent and friendly principle. Let neighbours stick
to neighbours. When an alien and a stranger is
sent for to represent a borough, should not the first
inquiry of the person solicited be—" Have you not
Mr. Such-a-one near you ? You cannot be of any
great worth as a party, if those who know you will
have nothing to do with you. Why do you seek a
stranger ?" For our own parts, we are glad thct
the ancient bond is renewed between Mr. Palmer
and his friends.--Times.
Two gamekeepers have been convicted capitally
nt Lancaster, for shooting at a poacher, and left for
execution. Mr. Justice Bayley, in his charge to the
Jury, told them that " no gamekeeper had any right
to carry fire arms, or to fire at or against any poacher
whatsoever. No proprietor of game had any earthly
power to give such authority to his keepers, who
might certainly put into custody any poacher, but
it was at his peril to use fire-arms The
country must know that an illegal and dangerous
power had been' exercised by keepers of game,
which no longer could be tolerated, and which must
be checked by the arm of the law." The opinion of
the Learned Judge is in accordance with every prin-
ciple of the English Law. And yet we will venture 1
to say that it never occurred to any one of the thou-
sands of Gamekeepers who for years have fired at
poachers as if they had been ferce naturce, that they
were committing a capital crime,or indeed a crime ofany
sort. Slav, we will go further, and say that we verily
believe that the gamekeeper who happened to shoot
a poacher, previous to this sentence, considered him-
self as having performed a most meritorious action,
a sort of set off against evil deeds, which, if he were
a Catholic, ought to procure for him an abatement
of a thousand years or two in purgatory. The capital
conviction will serve, however, to let in a new light
en their consciences. Is it not strange, that in a
country calling itself civilised, capital crimes should
hate been committed by thousands before a single
trial took place ? But the composition of Grand
Juries will at once solve the enigma. The Grand
Jurors are all 'Squires—men who employ game-
keepers., and-would not, of course, find a Bill. At
all events, the belief of such a result, and the poverty
of the poor creatures killed, would always prevent
the attempt being made. The destruction of life be-
came at last so great, that a feeling of indignaticn
pervaded the whole country ; and some way or other
tie feeling has even found its way into a Grand Jury.
This sentence not only makes all the deaths of
poachers, by the Same means, capital crimes, but it
brands almost all the 'Squirearchy of England as
abettors of murder. They are taunted with the
crimes of the instruments instigated by them.—
Morning Chronicle.

The greatest prince or statesman, the most en-
lightened philosopher or eminent divine, need not wish
for a better biographer of his last moments, than the
late Duke of York has found in Sir Herbert Taylor,
whose memoir we published a few days since. It is
proluction which may be read with no less inte-
rest than utility by persons in every class of life, re-
lating, as it does exclusively, to that period of ex-
istence when. all tanks are upon a level. It is equally
honourable to the subject and to its author, and not
the less so from its: manifest truth to nature. The
Duke is here represented, acd with an irresistible ap-
pearance of truth, as moro calmly resigned to the ap-
proach of death than falls, we believe, to the lot of
the majority of mortals ; yet with a lingering and
tinextinguishable hope of recovery, which, however
it may often be attempted to be disguised, cling, we
have no doubt, to manhood in all its stages, as lung
as the glimmering taper throws a catching and ex-
piring light upon the frail tenement which contains
it. It is impossible to contemplate the calm scene
which this Memoir discloses; and not to look back
with something like feeling of disgust at the recol-
lection that. it was at the resignation of this Prince's
death-bed that rhe yell of exultation was raised by

persons, who, if they have any feelings at all, must, on
reading this document, we should think, be Struck with
something like remorse, at having attempted to sully
and embitter a scene, which the wise and good of all
persuasions must be alike anxious to applaud and imi-
tate. But independently of all general considerations,
thejc is one point alone which renders this Memoir
interesting as a matter of history—we mean; the un-
deniable manner in • which it establishes the late
Duke's sincerity on the point which formed so con-
spicuous a feature of the latter part of his life; and

on which he received so great a share of applause
and condemnation. It is so much the fashion to look

upon politicians as mere actors, and to impute to
public men (often perhaps with too much truth)
any thing but sincerity in the opinions which they
avow, that it is refreshing at least to find one man of
exalted station, whose most marked and prominent
avowals are evidently the result of an undisguised
and heartfelt consciousnessness of their truth. Even
were they erroneous, their sincerity would entitle
them to respect; and how much more so whon they
are in unison with those o!' so lime a portion of
the community ? There is one other point of vier►
in which this document strikes us as being alike va-
luable and honourable to the Dukes memory, into,

much as it contradicts the too prevalent opinion
that Princes are, from their station, incapable of re-
ceiving or bestowing pure regard; and that sur-
rounded by sycophants, their lives are past in one
endless routine of flattery on the one hand, and of
something like hypocrisy on the other. Of the

Duke of York it has been repeatedly said that he
never lost nor deserted a friend. This Memoir not

only corroborates that assertion, but shows that his

heart was alive to friendship ; that neither rank, nor
luxury, nor ease, nor patronage, nor power, nor flat-
tery, had deadened in him (as they are but too apt
to do) one spark of natural affection. That the
Duke too had warm and attached friends, who liked

him as a man, independently of his Princely station,
admits of no doubt ; and, above the rest, one who,
by this Memoir, h;s established to himself a never-

dying reputation,, which will descend to posterity,
and be embodied, most truly to his honour, with the
future history of the age.—Morning Herald.

" Is it," says a Morning Paper, " the right of a
British subject, in the abstract, or is itnot, to choose

his own representative, or to be himself chosen a

representative, if the constituent body so wills it ?"
The inference deduced from this proposition, con-
veyed in an interrogative form, is, that it is oppres-
sion and injustice to deprive a Catholic subject of
that which is his abstract right. We say, that there
exists no such abstract right, either to choose or to
be chosen, as is here supposed ; and that every part
of the British Constitution proceeds on notions di-
rectly adverse to such an idea.—To choose or to
be chosen, is a privilege conferred by the laws on
certain classes of the community, selected with
a view to the public good. There is no natural
or abstract right to that most artificial thing called
political power. They who are clothed with po-
litical power possess it not as a right, but as a
trust, to be exercised for the benefit of their fellow
suhiects. Who would not laugh to hear a man
talk of a natural or abstract right to be a Peer ?
Yet such a pretension would have exactly the same
foundation, as a claim of abstract riot, to elect or
he elected a Member of the 'Muse of Commons.—
Those men do the Catholic question great injury,
who, for the sake of raving about tyranny and op-
pression, and injustice, found it upon any notions of
abstract right. If they adopt such principles, they
must, if they will, be consistent with themselves, em-
brace all the. absurdities, not only of universal suf-
frage, but of universal eligibility, unlimited ht any

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