The Sun.
London, England, 1829-12-17 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF tfIB PUBLIC JOURNALS.

. • •• • . • •
The hoklers of .Four per Cents. are called on
by one of their body to combine, as one man, to
resist the proposed conversion to In the
printed Address which we subjoin to our City
communication, it is observed, " By the terms
of our covenant with the State, we may call for
our payment in money at par. Such a payment,
it is well known, the M:nister cannot by any
possibility make ; for the capital of the Four
per Cents. is 150 millions of money, and ac-
cordingly the success:of h:s (the Minister's) ma-
ncsuvres wholly depends on his inveigling us
into his terms. The purpose of this Address is
to prevail on you all, to a man, to reject his
terms ; and if we act bravely and in a body, we
may cast his project to the winds. We have
the remedy in our own hands. Let there be
meetings of the holders of Four per Cents. in
every town in the kingdom, and an engagement
one to another entered into, by which each holder
shall bind himself to demand money for his
stock. We shall then have the satisfaction of
seeing the Minister's project returned to his port-
folio as a piece of wast paper." This is the only
part ofthe Address worth attention. The attempt
to• mix up the public interest with the interest
of the holders of Four per Cent. Stock will de-
ceive no one. With respect to the possibility
of associating, we must consiler the likelihood
of so numerous a body as one-fifth of the ua-
tional creditors joining in or adhering to any
plan whatever. Besides, the parties associating
are not equal terms.- One holder of Four per
Cent. Stock may have his whole fortune em-
barked, while another may have only a small
sum, any loss on which may be of little conse-
quence to him.. Each holder will, therefore,
judge for himself and act for himself; and hav-
ing no confidence in any general Associations,
which cannot indemnify him for loss, he will
resist the MiniStei, or fall in with hi- arrange-
ment, according as may appear consistent with
his -advantage. Though the Minister cannot
pay 150 millions in money, he may find money.
for all who hold out ; and it would be but a
poor consolation to one who lost by being paid
off, that he adhered to a general determination
which others departed from. We await the re-
sult, for in a matter of this kind there is no
criterion of wisdom but success. If the Mini-
ster be successful, he will thereby prove that his
calculations have been well founded. If he can
lighten the pressure of taxation, by any measure
which does-not involve a breach of contract with
the national creditor, he will deserve the thanks
of the country.—Morning Chronicle.
Some of our Contemporaries have been much
scandalized at the indecent scene lately exhibited
in the Court of Chancery; and, in truth, it is
difficult to conceive anything more ridiculous
than an old stager, like Sir Charles Wetherell,
who has for years been charged with the duty of
watching over the execution of the law, setting,
himself, an example of violating it, whiLh would
disgrace the frequenter of a tap-room. It has
been well remarked, too, that a challenge in
public is a very equivocal test of courage, as it is
given under the eertainty that no result will be
allowed to take place.
" The crime of duelling (say* the Standard) has
lately increased in this country to a degree which
imposes upon every one who has the command
of any probable means of checking its progress, a
sacred duty to employ those means. Within eight
months more duels (some of them fatal) have,
been fought in England than in as many years
preceding. This is a condition of affairs which
surely calls upon the Magistrates to exercise
the authority delegated to them, and for the due ex-
ercise of which they are solemnly responsible before
their Uod—which calls upon Grand Juries to exer-.
cise their not less urgent authority—which calls upon
the Press, as the public advocate, to hold Magi-
strates and Juries to their duty ; and, we will add,
which warns men Whose age, station, or character,
may give weight to their examples, how far they
may, by their practice, not only sanction, but enjoin,
the habitual perpetration of such a crime. We say
enjoin, for when men of rank, and of an age that
ought to bring wisdom and a sense of religious re-
sponsibility, engage in the commission of this bar-
barous and unchristian offence, they do not hazard
their own lives only—they compel other men, if
they are younger or of inferior rank, to hazard their
lives, if they would escape the public scorn, If the
Solicitor-General and Sir Charles Wetherell are
justifiable before men in violating the law of God,
upon a silly question of precedence, how can a ju-
nior Barrister, who has neither their experience, their
age, their rank, nor their obligation to preserve their
lives for their families, how can the unmarried young
Barrister, whose blood would naturally be warmer
than that of his seniors, acquit himself of poor-
ness of spirit, if he is not as prompt as they to grasp
the pistol upon a point of professional courtesy ?
Would to God that men, whose age and rank
cause their example to operate as laws in pubhv
opinion, did but reflect upon the illimitable train of
calamities which their wicked or inconsiderate vio-
lation of the law may occasion. Wnidd that be•
fore they go into the field to lift their arms against
their brethren, in defiance of the laws of God and
man, they would marshal before them in imagina-
don the long train of bleeding and mourning Vic.
aims they are then about to condemn to death or
misery! The murdered son, the hope of the
wedthy, or the stay, perhaps, of the otherwise
destitute parent—the parent sorrowing, and sor-
rowing equally, whether in riches or in penury.—
The young widow—her bright prospect of long
years of happiness changed in its dawn to a long
midnight of cheerless want and unalloyed despair.—
The orphaned infants—often hurried by the stroke
of a duellist's pistol from comfort, from cleanliness,
from the fair course of a Christian education, to
poverty, filth, and vice; but still oftener deprived
of the protection of a father's cure, and the sun-
shine of a father's love."

This is a very forcible appeal, but all remon-
strances against duelling have been hitherto un-
availing with thaso who are the most liable to
yield to the practice, because the love of life in
well constituted minds is less strong than the
dread of contempt ; and a man's conduct bill
be regulated by the opinion which prevails in the
society in which he mixes. The hest check on
improper challenges is that which exists in the
army, where a quarrelsome or troublesome fellow
is always sent to Coventry; and thus the same
powerful motive which leads a man to, hazard
his life, namely, the wish to stand we'll in society,
serves to discourage all wanton attempt to drive
hint to such an extremity. if reasoning could
put an end to the practice, it would not long
continue to cxiit ; for an issue of this kind,
while it determines nothing as to the merits of
the quarrel, draws into importance a man who
bas no other merit than that of being a
bully. In the Irish House of Commons a sort
of assassins made themselves of unportatite
by fastening on men formidable to the Alinistry,,
and literally fought their way by the• plstol
,to
offices to which their talents were unequal.
There was a time when Newspapers were.esta-
blished in this metropolis for the express pur-
pose of slandering, and there never was any,

difficulty in obtaining a ruffian, for two or three
guineas a week, to expose his person to all who
might choose to consider a conflict of this kind
any satisfaction for the, injury they sustained.
We are sorry to perceive the mistake into which
an esteemed Northern Contemporary lately fell,
in supposing that.the morality of the Press could
be improved by appeals of this nature. Ex-
perience is quite the_ other way. Those who
possess real merit are not the most likely to have
recourse to moral assassination ; and as mere
slander and ribaldry soon exhaust themselves,
and consequently lose their attraction, the pru-
dence of affording them the means of attracting
attention by the display of personal courage is
exceedingly questionable. A vulgar and im-
pertinent assailant may be safely left to himself;
he will do himself more injury than him whom
he attacks.—lbid.

We cannot discover the policy or the justice
either of advocating or of sacrificing the interests
of one part of the community at the expense of
the rest ; yet this latter is the treatment which
the landed interest is now receiving at the hands
of those who wish to be thought the liberal part
of the Press. We are gravely told that a reduc-
tion of rents would be a panacea for all our
grievances, while it would be a just punishment
of the landed interest for the support which they
gay.e to Mr. Pitt in commencing and prosecuting
the war which led to the accumulation of our
enormous debt, and consequent present burdens.
If those who write such things are old enough to
remember the periods of which they speak, they
must know (or, if not, history would inform
them) that such assertions are untrue. It is in
vain now to travel back for a period of seven-and-
thirty years, to attempt to settle a point which
never has been, and probably never will be, una-
nimously agreed upon—viz., the justice or ne-
cessity of the war which then commenced. But
one thing is quite certain, that whatever support
the measures of the then Minister met with
from the landed interest, either in or out of
Parliament, was at least equalled, if not
surpassed, by the prominent zeal displayed
by .. the moneyed and mercantile interests,
whose " life and property" meetings, and whose
" loyalty loans," were well enough rewarded by
other loans and contracts,.to say nothing of the
testimony which both the Peerage and Baro-
netage of that clay bear to the disinterestedness
of their zeal, and the value of its reward. We
say this rather to remove exclusive blame from
the shoulders of one class of the community,
than to place it on those of another. A sense of
common danger should silence the voice of
mutual crimination, even if any party was exclu-
sively to blame, which, at this distant period, it
is probably in vain to inquire. And what is
there in the relative state of the parties (the
landowner and the fundhohler) which can jus-
tify any one in calling for the sacrifice of the
one and the indemnity of the other ? It is
true that the landlord has doubled, and, in
many instances, more than doubled, the rents of
his estate=, though we doubt whether he now
finds that he has doubled their saleable value ;
but has the stockholder derived no advantage,
when, for every 461. which he lent the country,
be can now obtain 941.; and the average of
whose loans at this moment bear a premium in
the market of 90 per cent.? And who, let us
ask, has borne the burden and heat of the day ?
We answer, the landowner, whose increased
rents have scarcely enabled him, if his estate be
of moderate dimensions, to retain his station in
society, after having mainly contributed to pay
the public creditor his dividends, and the mann-
facturiug as well as agricultural poor that main•
tenance which devolves almost exclusively upon
him. Away, then, with the cruelty, the fallacy,
and the delusion, of endeavouring to throw upon
one part of the community burdens which the
whole must and ought to bear ! Such notions,
though advanced by " liberal" heads, are most
illiberal in their origin and mischievous in their
consequences, and can only tend to divide and
distract attention from the common danger,
which shOulrbbe met by one common remedy.—
Morning Herald.

We really thought that we should not again
have hal occasion to mention the name of
O'Connell, previous to his appearance at St.
Stephen's ;
.but to every hell there is " a deeper
still," and if we may judge from the accounts
which have reached us from the sister island, the
great Agitator has determined to fall by degrees,
and not to grace the brows of the " Collective"
only with an exposure of his insignificance.—
The answer put forth by Mr. O'Connell, on the
question of huxterina with the Beresfords for a
larger fee, in order to bring them in for the -
county of Waterford, was a choice morsel of
special pleading ; but the upshot of the extra-
ordinary meeting of the Finance Committee
of the defunct Catholic Association on Friday
last, was a gem of the first water. Mr. O'Gor-
man Mahon—one •of the most respectable
members of the Association, and Secretary to
it, while it bad being—had possessed him-
self, as %ve mentioned yesterday, of some of
the books of the Association, with the view
of writing a history of it. Mr. O'Connell
demurred at an act which gave the Secretary at
cne. seep nine points of the law against him, and
a meeting of the Finance Committee was called
for the purpose of regaining possession of tharD•
We need not mention the result in any other'
terms than that the Secretary still possesses the
books, and does not by any means seem dis-
posed to give them up; but the following choice
morsel of history we must give at length. Mr.
Slieil and Mr. Lawless, it will be seen, acted the
part of honourable men, and opposed the dicta
of the great Agitator. What, it was asked, has
become of the Catholic Rent, squeezed from the
pockets of the poor Irish peasantry and others?
this is an awkward interrogatory. Probably the
Secretary's history of the Association will ex-
plain it, particularly if it embraces the history of
the county of Clare election, and the items cf
the expenses incurred in returning the great
Liberator to Parliament. There is something
also to be said respecting the mission in 1825.
Would Mr. O'Connell like to have it published?
—Morning Advertiser.

AFFECTING MANJA.—A considerable
ex-
citement took place at Middleton-in-Teesdale, on Monday
week, in consequence of a body being found in the church-
yard, which at first was supposed to have been " Burked ;"
bat on inquiry it proved to be the remains of a young man
named ROBINSON, who died about four months ago of
small pox, and whose mother in a fit of derangement had
deg out of the grave, in the night of Sunday, under
the delusion, that a minister, whose description of the
raising of LAZA nus she had heard in the day, could oper-
ate in the same manner on her dead see. She had disin-
terred the body, but being unable to carry it away, and
having been refused assistance by a neighbour to whom she
Applied, she left it exposed, and retired home. It was
I:4aund in the morning, as above stated, and again consigned
the earth, after the particulars had been found out, The
1,002. woman, since the death of her son, had applied both
persotially and by letter to several disenting ministers to
Fe I ase her dial cut of purgatory.— York Courant.
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