The Sun.
London, England, 1842-03-03 00:00:00

the observance of one day in the week as a Sabbath,
and the fixing of the first day in place of the
seventh
.is not only unwarranted by Scriv-
ture, but is directly opposed to the reason
assigned for keeping the day holy. From the begin-
ning of time " God blessed the seventh day, and
sanctified it, because that in it he had rested from all
his work, which GOD created and made." Yet these
vain interpreters of the Divine Will, these dwellers
" in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust,
who are crushed before the moth," have the
impious audacity to thr eaten us with some terrible
calamity, because we deny their authority for
abstaining from all work on the first day of the week,
the very day on which God himself began the great
work of creation ! We are guided by the Scriptures,
and the Scriptures alone, and to these we confidently
appeal. In the New Testament, we have stated ten
times, there is no authority for the change. We
have challenged the Agnewites, and the only answer
we have yet received is—not a quotation from Scrip-
ture—not an implied, much less a direct command
from Christ or his Apostles, but the unmeaning asser-
tion, " Few will venture to deny that the change was
.made by the Apostles."
With these remarks we close the subject for the
present. In making them we have had two great
objects in view—to arrive at the truth, and to pro-
tect the public against the persecution, slander, and
selfish machinations of a sect, which from the time of
our SAVIOUR has been the bane of society. We
wish to see the Sunday observed in a decent and be-
coming manner, but we have not the hypocrisy to
assert that it is more desecrated by the running of a
steam carriage than by the running of horses, which,
as well as man, according to the Fourth Command-
ment, are to do no work on that day. We wish to
see a Christian people guided by reason and Scripture,
and not the cunning devices of men. We have no
wish to interfere with the conduct of any class. Let
those who please cease from all work—let them shut
themselves up in their houses—let them kindle no
fire on that day, nor do any work ; but let them not
presume, as ministers of peace, to call down the judg-
ments of the Almighty on those who conscientiously
differ from them. Let them obey one great com-
mand of our SAVIOUR, which they wilfully break
every day, and " Do unto others as they wish others
to do unto them."

WAR AND THE TORIES.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.

Sin,—One great cause of the difficulties England is
now struggling with, is the shameful Treaty of Peace
signed by the Tories in 1815, leaving France as strong
as at the commencement of the war ; so that we shall
probably soon have the battle to fight over again. France
never makes peace but she immediately prepares for
another war. France was twice at the feet of outraged
Europe. Common sense would have dictated the neces-
sity of crippling her, either by a diminution of her ter-
ritory on the frontiers of Spain, Switzerland, the Rhine,
&c., or by loading her with a portion of our debt, in ex-
acting guarantee against an augmentation of her navy.
Why, also, was a Commercial Treaty overlooked with
her and other countries ? France, in her days of suc-
cess, nearly annihilated the different countries she sub-
dued. Should there be a third march to Paris, are the
Tories to sign the Treaty of Peace ? Had Napoleon
obtained military possession of England, what would
have been its fate ? War is now imminent, and the
Tories in power. If they are not unseated by a general
burst of indignation through the land, those infatuated
wretches who, at the late general election, sold their
votes for 51. or 101., will soon rue the day they touched
those bribes. Ten times the sum received will soon be
extracted from their pockets, and they will be fleeced
and plundered, if not ruined. In fact, the past folly,
extravagance, corruption, and jobbing of this party,
holds out but a dark prospect for the future. The Whigs
were bad, but the Tories ten times worse. The two
parties have drawn England to the mouth of a volcano.
Foreign nations ere aware of this, and France, probably,
hopes to ruin us, and produce a national bankruptcy,
without firing a gun. Her debt is not a third of ours ;
her internal resources yield a revenue equal to ours.
England's revenue, indeed, very existence, depends on ex-
ternal commerce. England, in case of war, can no longer
look to loans. She has eaten her cake. When the rest
of Europe refuses to obey the dictation of France, she
has merely to order armaments by land and sea, and lo I
England is put to an expense of millions. To be pre-
pUred, then, for these bursts of passion on the part of
France (for under whatever Government it may be, it
will always be tormented with a thirst for conquest and
venomous hatred to England), the most rigid economy
in abolishing places and pensions is demanded. There
are I know not how many retired Chancellors. Some
of them might surely be employed, and their salaries
saved. Did not the late Lord Eldon have, in land and
money, about two millions ' • and, not satisfied, saddles
himself on the nation with a large pension ? Is it
proper any officer in the State should have the power of
realising such a fortune ? Lord Brougham, also, the
great gun and big-wig of reform and economy, after
blazing and chattering for years on these topics,re tires from
the scene with an additional grant of 1,000/. per annum.
to the usual pension. At all events, these pensions
should be given only to those who really want them.
The Liberal Royal Duke also solicited in forma pauperis
an addition to his little salary. Billy Pitt, the Tory, the
pilot who weathered the storm or gathered the stake, after
spendingseven or eight hundred million, failing in all his
undertakings, dies, overwhelmed with debts, contracted
by his own carelessness, and leaves the country to pay.
them. Canning, after pocketing 12,0001. for a pre-
tended trip to Portugal, when pleading the cause and
poverty of the economical Regent, afterwards George
the Fourth, exclaimed that theleorntnons would at length
drive the poor man to dine at D'Oyly's chop-house if
they were so niggardly. What sums of public money
have been paid to the Ardins and Percivals, Grenvilles and
Granvilles, Wellesleys and Wellingtons, &c., &e., &c. The
only real patriot who has appeared on the stage for
a length of time is Lord Camden, who actually (a
patriotic act unprecedented in English annals), aban-
doned a large portion of his pension conferred by a rapa-
cious Government. It is not meant to detract from the
merits of many of the above, but the purse of John Bull
is not in a state to admit of the drafts made upon it ; for
all these sums are paid from the productive labour of
the country ; from taxes paid on corn, tea, sugar, tobacco,
&c. &c. Fifty millions per annum must be raised to
pay the establishments and interest on the debt, and it
is now decided by the Tories that twenty millions per
annum more must be paid to protect the land and ruin
the merchants. The landholders all through the war
tripled their rents ; if they lived beyond their means and
morgaged their lands, is it just the nation should pay
for extravagance ? Some say twenty millions per
annum is spent by absentees on the Continent. To
mend the matter, andit would be supposed to encourage
absenteeism, the Government pays large sums to chap-
lains where a number of English reside. Certainly those
who reside abroad should pay their own pastors. These
are trite subjects, but they cannot be too often brought
forward. We are arrived at a moment that admits no
longer of trifling with the people. It is trusted the
general good sense of the nation (if they cannot force
the great physician to abandon his charge) will at least
compel him to spare his patient, and tLe oligarchy, to
come into reasonable term s; as, in a certain sense, in a
general convulsion, the little man with his 1001. per
annum, will be as great a sufferer as the Dukes of Nor-
thumberland, Wellington, &c. &c. It is possible you
may find some hints in the above worthy of being
enlarged upon by your able pen.—Your's &c.

A REFORMER.

The frontier question of Canada was left open and
unsettled for more than half a century. by the Tories,
and now probably millions must be spent. France and
the United States will always act together.

LOVE OF THE TIGER FOR HUMAN FLESH.—It
was my lot to be stationed, for several years, in a remote part of
our Indian possessions, adjoining the Mysore frontier, and'in the
immediate vicinity of the great chain of Western Ghauts. In
the pathless thickets of their eternal forests, untrodden by the foot
of man, the tigress reared her young, and wandered with her sa-
vage partner into the smaller jungles of the plain, proving a scourge
that drove every feeling of security from the humble dwellings of
the wretched inhabitants. In such a country, inhabited by the
poorest classes, living in small villages surrounded by jungle, and
forced to seek their subsistence amongst the tiger's haunts, nu-
merous casualties, of course, occurred, and I hadfrequent opportu
nities of studying the habits, and witnessing the ravages of this
formidable animal. Some idea may be formed of the havoc com-
mitted by tigers, when I mention, from returns made to Govern-
ment, that, in one aistrict. three hundred men and five thousand
head of cattle, were destroyed during three years I Whilst con-
fined in the forest, the tiger is comparatively harmless. There,
feeding principally on deer, he rarely encounters man, and when
the solitary hunter does meet the grim tyrant of the woods, in-
stinctive fear of the human rave, makes the striped monster avoid
him. But in the open country he becomes dangerous. Pressed
by hunger, he seeks his prey in the neighbourhood of villages, and
carries off cattle before the herdsman's eyes. Still, he rarely
ventures to attack man, unless provoked, or urged to desperation.
But under whatever circumstances human blood is once tasted, the
spell of fear is for ever broken ; the tiger's nature is changed ; lie
deserts the jungle, and haunts the very doors of his victims. Cattle
pass unheeded, but their driver is carried off ; and from that time
the tiger becomes a snan-eates .-77te Old Forest Ranger.
EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW RAILWAY.—We un-
derstand that the minority of the shareholders intend to pre-
sent a bill'of suspension and interdict to the Court of Ses-
sion against the resolution of the majority, sanctioning the
running of a morning and evening train on Sunday.
This application will necessarily be founded on some
of the old Scotch Acts as to the compulsory obser-
vance of the Sabbath Day, and must open up a wide
field of discussion, as many of the statutory injunctions of that
period on this subject have fallen into desuetude. In anticipa-
tion of such an appeal to the Court of Session, the majority re-
tained the Solicitor-General and Mr. Rutherfurd. The mino-
rity were also anxious to secure the aid ot these eminent coun-
sel; and subsequently sent them retainers, which ot course
they had to decline.--Edinburgh Advertiser, of Tuesday.
MR. HENRY VINCENT IN DEVIZES.—On Wednes-
day, February 23d, Mr. Vincent arrived in Devizes, for the
first time since the Tory riot in 1839. His intention was to
attend the Anti-Corn-law tea meeting, but finding, on his ar-
rival, that the party was a private one, Mr. Vincent wrote a
letter to the Chairman, stating he had no desire to intrude
himself among them, but hoping that a public meeting would
soon be held in defence of popular representation and free
trade. News of Mr. Vincent's arrival soon spread, and at eight
o'clock the Temperance Room was filled with a highly respect-
able party. Mr. Vincent was enthusiastically received, and
addressed the meeting for the space of three hours, on the
" first principles of Government, and urged the necessity of
union between the middle and working classes, to obtain po-
litical power for the people.— Wiltshire Indepependent.

LITERATURE.
ZACHARY COBBLE, Bull, London, 1349.

The author of this queer production has very
happily designated it in his title-page as a
" Rigmarole in Rhyme." It is a " Rigmarole,"
and such a one, as we do not often meet
To give any minute critical analysis of it is impos-
sible, for itsplot, and even sometimes its language,
are as perplexing as the riddle of the Sphynx ; we
must perforce, therefore, content ourselves with
observing that it is a poem—or rather a string of
rhymes—one hundred arid fifty-eight pages and
a quarter long; and that, so far as we can gather,
it concerns the adventures of a pedantic school-
master, by name Zachary Cobble, who is pic-
turesquely described as being
" A stiff, high-shouldered, comic figure,
Called a gig- top, but somewhat bigger ; _
His upper story all one way stuck'
Like the roof of an awry haystack,
(The easier for his twinkling eyes
To twinkle converse with the skies),
And from its rear was seen to shoot
A little bit of tail, or root,
Powder'd all o'er, whence his large mind
Its alimentary stores purloined."

To say nothing of the exquisite taste and pro-
priety exhibited in the comparison of a man's
head and shoulders with a " haystack ;" what is
to be thought of the assertion that Zachary Cob-
ble's mind " its alimentary stores purloined"
from his pig-tail? He must have had an extra-
dinary intellect to derive nourishment from such
a source. But indeed he seems to have been a
queer genius altogether, for we find him, in the
earlier portions'of the poem, bent on reformingl
the world, by means of his own personal exer-
tions and those of his illegitimate son, Dashem
—a promising stripling, whose duties in his
father's school-room arc thus sportively defined :
" His duty was to hold down breeches,
And clear the way for stripes and switches,
To run as powder-monkey, 'tween
The embrasure and the magazine,
And when retreating signal sounded,
To button and bind up the wounded."

This gifted couple, father and son, set out,
like Hudibras and his squire, Ralpho, one fine
morning in search of adventures, chiefly hi con-
sequence of a dream which Old Cobble had had
a few nights before, in which dream a spirit ap-
peared before him, and after playing him a va-
riety of droll pranks,

" Bore him upwards with a whistle
That set his brains all in a frizzle."
On awaking up from this unpleasant dream, Old
Zachary finds himself as chilly as an iceberg,
which gives the author an opportunity of dis-
playing his aphoristic powers of thought in the
following terse and pregnant couplet :
"Evaporation is a process
That cools men's minds as well as noses."

It was some time, however, before our hero's
mind—whatever may have been the case with
his nose—was thoroughly cooled, for it seems
that, among other things, he had dreamed that
he was married, which naturally put him into
a state of effervescence, and he could with diffi-
culty reconcile himself to the fact that,

" The greetings of his wedded spouse
Were all a visionary chouse."
We pause here, for the purpose of directing the
reader's special attention to the perfect grace and
beauty of the word " chouse.' How poetical
the idea How refined the expression ? But
faultless as it is, it is scarcely superior to a dia-
logue which takes place between Cobble, the
father, and Dashem, the son, the morning after
they have set forth on their expedition. The
father having asked the son to guess some
puzzling riddle, involving a question of moral
right, the son modestly and classically replies,
" That's a pretty go,
How should I, I should like to know ;"

whereupon Old Cobble delicately intimates that
Dashem is an ass. After some further conversa-
tion the two enthusiasts for moral and political
improvement jog quietly along the high road,
and ineeting with a butcher and a calf, in a pa-
roxysm of humanity they give the calf its free-
dom, and then hurry on in search of other ad-
ventures; in the course of which expedition of
discovery, they suddenly find themselves in the
midst of a game preserve—a circumstance thus
poetically alluded to by Dashem
" We've got into the game seraglio
Of some great Turk ; should he o'erhaul you,
His Janissaries are not the folks
To pay night-trespassers with jokes:
Yon wigwam, or whate'er the word is,
The mansion-house of no small lord is ;
And, hark ! d'ye hear that sound? A whistle!
The keepers are on us—let us mizzle
The epithet " mizzle has an elegant ,pro-
priety--not to say melody—about it, that must
strike even the most unobservant reader. The
sequel of the adventure is described in terms not
less chaste and euphonious•:—
" This hint being fortunately taken,
They turned away, and saved their bacon."-
But Zachary was not always so lucky as in this
instance, for having made himself obnoxious to
the authorities by his Reform crotchets, the Lord
Chancellor,
" With a view to keep things quiet,
Issued his peremptory fiat,
Engrossed and sealed—and Boots was bid to
Deliver it quickly, which Boots did do."
The consequence of this punctuality on the part
of Boots was, that_Zachary Cobble was arrested
for sedition, and brought to trial before a jury of
his countrymen, one of whom was so clever a
fellow that he could actually

"By dark chiromancy tellfor
Of a prize ox what his rump would sell for,"
a species of information which must have been
peculiarly acceptable to the prize ox ; of another
of the jury we are told that
" A tidleywink shop once he kept
'Till by John Doe scoured out and swept."
When the evidence had been all gone through,
the prisoner,
" Who first as dumb
As patience sat, and looked as glum
As a bull surveying a raw beefsteak,
Broke all at once into a fresh freak,"
and delivered a long speech by way of defence,
which so electrified the jury, that they unani-
mously gave a verdict in his favour—a cheering
incident, which relieves the reader from a load
of apprehension, and forms an appropriate ter-
mination to the poem. Such is " Zachary
Cobble," a ridiculous, and, in some respects, an
incomprehensible performance, wherein sound
is substituted for sense ; and similes introduced,
Which are distinguished for nothing so much as
their utter dissimilitude. As for humour or
fancy, there is hardly an atom of either in the
whole work, and even the rhymes hobble on,
like an old man on crutches—without grace,
ease, or spirit. The best thing in the poem
is the word " Finis" at the end of the last line.

AGRICULTURAL PRODUCE AND SHIPPING IN NORTH-
ERN EUROPE.—A paper has just been published, by
order of the House of Commons, under this title, which
extends to 63 pages, and must have cost a considerable
sum of money to print it. The facts it contains, which
are nicely disposed in a tabular and columnar form, are
summed up by the, author of the paper, at the end,
somewhat to the following effect :—Should our Corn-
laws be abolished, Belgium can supply England with
no material increase of agricultural produce. Neither
can Holland. Bremen, as the port of Hanover and
Hesse, might supply a little more. From Hamburgh
some increase might take place. Kiel, it is possible,
might send us from 25 to 30 per cent. more food than at
present. Lubeck the same. Rostock the same. From
these ports, however, we can get only the produce of
Holstein, Mecklenburgh, and Lunenburg, the whole of
.which;could it be spared—the amount they have supplied
is about 150,000 quarters—could scarcely suffice to feed
our people for a single week. Stettin, no increase.
Dantzic, no material increase in a seasonable time ; but
there are districts in Poland and Prussia which might be
cultivated. There is news for the people of Eng-
land worth paying for ! Elsinore might increase its ex-
ports of food about 25 - per cent. Was it neces-
sary to send a political agent to the Continent
to gather this information, and was a large folio re-
quired to make known to the people of England that
these several places could not immediately send any great
additional supplies of food ? We have already stated
that fact months ago in The Sun. To grow corn, the
ground must be prepared, and cultivation cannot be ex-
tended in an hour • and were the Corn-laws to be abo-
lished tomorrow, there is no part of the world from
which we could immediately procure any large additional
supply of food. Who the wonderfully sagacious man
may be who has provided the public with this informa-
tion at so considerable a cost, we are not exactly aware,
but we see that his report is dated from the ADMIRALTY,
and that the Comptroller of victualling and transport ser-
vices is called, like the reporter, James Meek, Esq. Can
it be that he had been spared from his duties at the Ad-
miralty to visit the Continent to gather that informa-
tion? Must the people of England give this Mr.- Meek
two salaries for such service'? Is his Comptrollership a
sinecure? At least we can say that if his labours in the
victualling and transport office are of no more value to
the public than his researches into the productive powers
of the Continent, all the public money is terribly wasted
which goes into the pockets of Mr. Meek. When new
taxes are to be levied, the people have a great right to
complain of the manner in which their resources are
squandered by such silly missions as this on which Mr.
Gladstone has sent Mr. Meek, -and in procuring such
valueless, though expensive information, as is contained
in those 63 pages.
The snow, which has for nearly two months co-
vered the _mountains is the environs of Algiers, has compelled
the lions to descend to the plains. At Kaddona. an European
having fired at one of these animals and missed him, the lion,
instead of attacking the European, sprang upon two Arabs
who were near him, and wounded them severely. Between
Cape Matifoux and the Hami.e, in the thick covers which
border the coast, the lions have, taken refuge in such numbers
that the Arabs of Hadjera have been compelled to withdraw.
A grand lion hunt is getting up, but the inexperience of the
Europeans in such matters leads to the apprehension of serious
accidents. •