The Sun.
London, England, 1842-12-31 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, SATURDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 31, 1842.

MR. BUCKINGHAM and the EDITOR
• of the LONDON EXAMINER.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE EXAMINER.

Sia—As you stated to me on a former occasion
that it was your established rule not to admit into
your pages the communications of authors, referring,
to any criticisms of their works that may have ap-
peared in the Examiner (a rule so singularly incom-
patible with the generally received notions of the
liberty of the press, that had I not received the infor-
mation directly from •yourself, I should have doubted
its existence in any Liberal journal), I am shut out,
as far as your power of exclusion can effect it, from
any appeal against your unjust judgment, to the very
readers by Whom it is most important that my appeal
should be seen. Nevertheless, I owe it to you, as
well as to myself and to the public at large, to seek
some other channel for this purpose—and happily the
press of England is not so entirely closed against the
claims of the misrepresented and the injured as are
the columns of the Examiner against the remon-
strances of those on whom it first inflicts an injustice,
and then denies them the right or privilege of being
heard before the same tribunal in their own defence.
Having been for the last three months engaged in
the north in the advocacy of free-trade principles, and
moving rapidly from town to town, in order to enlist
as many of the community as possible ;n a demand
for a repeal of the Corn-laws as soon as Parliament
meets, I did not see the Examiner of the 10th instant
till yesterday. In it I observed an article professing
to be a review of the third series of my work on
America, the tone and temper of which furnishes
sufficient proof of the substitution of personal feeling
in lieu of calm judgment, by which your editorial re-
ference to any labour of mine has been usually cha-
racterised. The evident object of that review is to
throw ridicule and contempt upon the work, and thus
to deter or dissuade others, as far as your opinions
could influence them, from taking the trouble of
looking into it for themselves :—you desire to make
it appear, in short, that the book is vapid, lifeless,
dull, and heavy—and that while either useful or
agreeable information is so scantily supplied as
scarcely to be found but by the most diligent search
through its thousands of pages—yet an inflated style,
selfishness, conceit, and quackery, are so superabun-
dant as to be seen in all of them.
To some of your readers your decision may seem
so oracular, that they will Deceive it without a doubt.
But I will venture to affirm that if you had carefully
examined the volumes of which you speak so flip-
pantly, you would hardly have injured your own re-
putation so much as this unjust-censui* will injure it,
with those who have examined them. And if you
have not read them carefully, as a literary examiner
ought to do, you are not warranted in pronouncing
such severe and unjust censure : for literary reputation
is as much the capital and property, of an author, as
pecuniary or mercantile reputation is the capital of a
banker or merchant, and no one has a right to assail
the one or depreciate the other without careful inves-
tigation and sure and just grounds.
That you have not given your usual attention, how-
ever, to the works themselves (arising probably from
some pre-conceived prejudice against the author) is
tolerably certain from these few facts—lst. That the

first series, though noticed favourably by almostever;
public journal at the time, was never mentioned, as far
as I remember, in the Examiner at all. 2d. That the
second series was dispatched in a few lines, and
called " a book with one idea," whereas a greater
variety of scenes and topics can hardly be found in
any work of the same size than in it. You were de-
ceived probably by the title, and thought that as this
was "The Slave States of America," it must neces-
sarily be filled with the subject of slavery. It is,
however, in reality the most varied of the three.-
3d. Though you say of the third soles that "you
have not read with any degree of care, the three large
volumes just issued ;" yet you write two columns to
throw contempt and ridicule on what you have not
examined, and you then print fragments of notes, and
swell out heads of chapters in large type, to give an
impression as unfavourable as you can, of the whole
production,
I know well that many others besides myself will
think all this, quite unworthy of the editor of the
Examiner. It might have been in place in the Quar-
terly Review, or the John Bull: and there it would
have been harmless. But those who know my his-
tory or character (and few persons in England are
now ignorant of either) know that I deserve more
fairness from an editor who professes to be peculiarly
just and impartial in his treatment of public men and
public labours.
" You do not deny," you say, and " you are, not
diSposed to forget," the services I have rendered. to
free trade and other causes which you have " much at
heart." But of what avail are these cold admissions,
when contrasted with your. conduct in heaping ridi-
cule and contempt on le very labours calculated to
promote these causes P•lsty single-handed batt!e for
the freedom of the press and trial by jury in India—
for free settlement, as well as free tade with that
country (all won by my persevering for six years with
the Oriental Herald, and four years in public lectures
against monopoly, through England, Scotland, and
Ireland, when no auxiliary was in the field to help me,
either in funds or in labour) might have entitled me to
better treatment at your hands-, My labours in Parlia-
ment were always directed to gain something for li-
berty; and my votes were never otherwise employed.
Education for the people—protection for the suffrage
—removal of civil disabilities on account of religious
opinion—abolition of slavery and impressment—abate-
ment of intemperance, and the substitution of innocent
and healthful recreations for the poor—all topics
in which you profess to " feel an interest :"—these
were my objects and pursuits there. And now, at
the very moment in which your ungenerous sneers
and sarcasms are directed against my character as
well as my writings, accusing me of " selfishness,
quackery, and conceit ;" and describing my writings
as " empty, lifeless, inflated, and dull." lam en-
gaged in advocating, with as much zeal as I did
twenty years ago, the abolition of monopoly and the
establishment of free trade : and this is my reward !
If half the pains bestowed by you to pick out frag-
ments of notes, and heads of chapters, had been de-
voted to reading and examining my works, you
might have found something worthy of consideration
in them. But while you attempt to cast ridicule on
the testimonies of some of the few individuals whose
names you have mentioned, you have omitted all re-
ference to others of far greater importance.
I ask you, for instance, whether the praise of Lord
Ashburton, of any work on America, is not high
testimony ? whether that of Sir Robert Ker Porter
and the Hon. Mountstuart Elphinstone, two of the
most accomplished travellers that England has ever
produced, is nothing ? whether the praise of Mr. Cat-
lin, Mr. Adams, and Mr. Delavan, all Americans of
extensive knowledge and high character, is of no
value ? Of 211 these you have not said a word, be-
cause your object was not to do justice, but to defame.
And even when you quote Lord Morpeth's high and
generous testimony (as unsolicited as all the others),
you say that "no doubt there is some truth, some re-
search, and some impartiality," to be found in my
work ; as such a man as myself couldlardly write eight
large volumes on America without this: (leaving the
insinuation or inference that a very little of each might
perhaps be discovered) : while Lord Morpeth's more
frank and generous nature led him to express his con-
viction, that these qualities were characteristic of the
whole of the volumes which he made the companions
of his journey.
My regard for truth and justice, as well as the na-
tural and laudable desire to preserve my own repute-
tation, (all that the tyranny of the Indian Govern-
ment, and the faithlessness of the Whig Administra-
tion has left me,) impels me to enter this public •
test against what I cannot but consider unjust and
illiberal treatment at the hands of a professed friend
i done
that
f)fooe
nprr
etuyf
public
through
ihl
freedom
deko
norue
rights,
y_hitththia:sitsarhentlayldlch.
yaahedvaAaedv
reens
added
of
as
fn sufferedi
done,
return,
the
pecuniary
m—whenlabournyinn
convertstyhoeu advo-
cacy.t shallo
lhothohfoasepvsLeeeds'octrifie of Free Trade as I have had the good
fortune to do,—you will receive a more liberal mea-
sure of reward from future Literary and Political
Examiners, Critics, and judges than it has been my
lot to receive at your hands.