The Sun.
London, England, 1842-08-09 00:00:00

MORNING. AUGUST 9, 1842.

THE BATTLE. OF NOT fINGHAM.

BY SIR WALTER SCOTT'S GHOST.

"It„,chalced, on an evil: ay last NI eek, that two rival
waggons found themselves in Nottingham market-place
at the same moment—the one freighted with the Con-
servatives, and the 13,ev. Mr. Stephens ; and the other
with Feargus O'Ccnncr, and his Chartists. After some
verbal controversy, Feargus jumped. from , 111.3 Waggon,
encouraged a lot of his " Lambs" to follow' him, and
played away at all before him ! Whether Mr. Joseph
Sturgo took his share in the mill, or satisfied himself with
merely giving his friends the respectability of his coun-
tenance, does not appear. He appears to have been
discoursing with the heroes all round before the on-
slaught, and there we lose sight of him."—Times of
Saturday.

List, Gentles, while in warlike verse
The deeds of valour I rehearse,
Achieved with wondrous honour,
prc-senee of his Chartist band,
By Feargus of the iron hand,
Whose sirname is O'Connor.
When blythe Aurora showed her face,
In Nottingham's broad market-place,

On Thursday morning last,
Two rival waggons there were seen,
Filled each with foes of fiercest mien,
Whose fists were doubled all, 1 ween,

And brows with frowns o'ereast:
One wain owned Stephens as its head,
The other was by Feargus led—
Feargus, whose boast it was to urge
His " Lambs" to bleat for Joseph Sturge,
And brave the hazard of a fight
Against each Tory Stephenite !
• While face to face these waggons stood,
Each deepening in its wrathful mood,
Forth came, with meek salaams,
The broad-brimmed Joseph, primly dressed,
In modest, staid, drab coloured vest,
Who thus in placid tones addressed
Grim Feargus and his Lambs :
" What, Ho ! you youthful Muttons, Ho !
" I am a man of peace, you know,
" And therefore warn you not to go
" And launch your brick-bats at the foe ;
" Don't drag the rarson to the pump, •
" Or floor him with a cabbage stump ;
"Pont' use your cudgels, which, I see,
" You handle with exceeding glee,
" And which, I must confess, alack
" Can hit a man a tidy crack ;
" Don't flare-up, like the fabled dragon,
" And pitch into yon rival waggon ;
" For virtuous 'tis to act in quiet,
" But naughty to kick up a riot."— -
He ceased, and while loud cheers arose,
Clapped his forefinger to his nose
" Gramercy ! Well I understand,
Oh drab-breeched Joe, thy shrewd command,"
Quoth Feargus of the iron hand ;
Then shouting, as he sought the foe, -
" A Feargus to the Rescue, Ho I"
The warrior, with huge satisfaction,
Led forth his darling Lambs to action 1
The foemen meet I They thump—they thwack—
Hark, burst their braces on their back !
And hark, their sculls in concert crack'.
And hark, their cudgels clatter, whack !
Stones, cabbage-stumps, and turnip-tops,
Fly swiftly, hitting precious whops ;
Dead cats by dozens join the mill,
And rotten eggs by scores, but still
Undaunted by such shocks,
Brave Feargus heads his Chartist clan,
And every minute floors his man,
As butcher floors an ox ! -41,‘

First, Stephens felt his right arm's pith,
And next; six men whose names were Smith,
And three whose names were Brown ;
A small attorney's clerk, one baker,
Three butchers, and an undertaker,
The landlord of the Crown,
A Snip, a milkman with his can,
And one enormous Alderman—
All these were floored by Feargus, who
Split each man's knowledge-box in two!
How long the warrior fought, and how
With thundering voice and flashing- brow,
He cheered his willing squad ;
And how, ere yet his toils were past,
(Humiliating thought !) at last
He found himself in Quod !
AU this in ster►►, I rowel-it! rhymno,
I'll tell you at some future time.

was ordered to be issued. The liousg adjourned at 11.dr-
past One &Cloak.

PIYnItIC orxr.:zoN.

The Morning Chronicle alludes to the forthcoming in-
tention of the Earl of _Fort,sene to call the notice of the
Hou-& to the late trials for Ribh,mism at the late Armagh
io;siz,-, thus :—" Well might Lord Eliot condemn the
proc, di.!gs disclosed in evidence on trials at Armagh.
We have no recollection of anything equally revolting
ii:t‘Thg ever transpired in a Court of Justice. By their

own Si!count, Htqian and Cox exerted all their poivers of
seduction to induce men to become Ribbonmen, and they
were commissioned by the Magistracy to enter on this
nefarious trade. Strangely constituted must that man's
mind he who can think of justifying the course pursued
:on thiS occasion. It is in utter perversion of the Magis-
terial hi-notions to commission. men to provoke to the
commission of crime. To hold out inducements to the
guilty to betray each other, and to employ men to worm
themselves into the confidence of men who entertain
designs against the well-being of society are quite
distinct from the pr.;ctices disclosed at Armagh. Who
shall say what etlect the proclamations issued by the
approvers, and the speeches made by them, may have
had in seducing innocent men from the path of duty !
Magistrates are appointed to discover and repress crime,
but not to create it.

The Post proposes and answers the following ques-
tion :—" What has been done for Conservatism in the
Parliamentary session which is now virtually at an end ?
We own that we cannot suggest a satisfactory answer to
this question. We fear that there is no rational English
politician who feels himself at this moment standing upon
firmer. ground than he stood upon this time twelvemonths.
We fear that there is now even less certainty in the
minds of men than there then was, us to the permanence
of existing interests and orders of society. We fear that
there is more apprehension of continued struggle and
strife, leading to some undefined new state of affairs,
than there was a year ago. We cheerfully grant to the
present servants of the Crown the merit of one good
Conservative deed, namely, that of putting the sources
of revenue upon an equality with the sources of expen-
diture. The neglect of this was one of the most mon-
strous of the Whig faults. But even in the mode of doing
this we recognise rather the boldness of a man who hadr
the courage to carry out Whig principles, which the
Whigs themselves had not, than the advancement of
Conservatism.

In allusion to the recent Nottingham election, the
Herald remarks:—" The return of Mr. Walter, at this
juncture, demonstrates that Sir John Hobhouse does not
represent the political opinions of the majority of the
Nottingham electors, but that he sits in Parliament as

Member for that borough by grace of the money spent
and the debts contracted at the last general election by
the agents of himself and Sir G. Larpent. Not all the
ingenuity of his friend Mr. Wakefield can extricate him
from this dilemma. But thiS display. of Conservative
strength at Nottingham is useful, principally for the use
to which it can be applied, whensoever Sir John Hob-
house presents himself for re-election there. The 1,799
electors who have returned Mr. Walter to Parliament can
defeat Sir John Hobhouse ; and though the return of the
former be the legitimate object of Conservative triumph,
the defeat of the latter would be one of the greatest elec-
tioneering exploits that the Nottingham Conservatives
could achieve; let them then, in this their hour of suc-
cess, commence to prepare for the great victory which is
hereafter to be gained.
The Times, in commenting upon the result of the
election at Nottingham, says :—" The supporters of Mr.
Sturge may be much belied -by public rumour ; but cer-
tainly the world does not scruple to charge them with a
recourse to bribery as gross as the violence they com-
mitted. The world does not scruple to assert, wherever
i got its information, that a sum of something like four,
thousand pounds has been expended in the old con-
trivances of bribery, cooping, an,l intimidation ; and the
world does not scruple to connect these practices with the
great patrons of Mr. Sturge—the Anti-Corn-law League.
The hired mobs, which were collected in the surrounding
villages, marched into the town, and employed through
the night in patrolling the streets, to the intimidation of
all well-disposed persons ; the funds subscribed by rich
and ambitious agitators, or extracted in copper by itine-
rant lecturers from audiences just sufficiently educated
to be seditious—all these means and appliances have
formed the strength of that pacifie Radical whose defeat
we are called upon to commemorate. Mr. Walter and
his friends, with a scrupulous abstinence from anything
that even Mr. Patrick Maxwell Stewart could torture
intoillegality, with no other aid than the known character
of the candidate, and the good wishes of all honest men,
have succeeded in signally defeating these unscrupulous
efforts."