The Sun.
London, England, 1842-10-26 00:00:00

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LONDON
WEDNESDAY MORNING. OCTOBER 26, 1542.

Mr. DICKENS, in his recent work on the
United States, speaks with disapprobation of the
listrust which there prevails of public men, and
the general seriousness, or want of gaiety of
the people. Something may be said, we think,
in praise of these qualities:; and in justice to the
institutions with which they are supposed to be
:onnected, we shall say what occurs to us.
" The Americans," he says, "are by nature
frank, brave, cordial ;" yet lie tells us there is
" universal distrust," and gives this instance,
which confines the remark—and, we believe, it is
meant to be confined—to public men and public
atrairs

" You carry," says the stranger, "this jealousy
and distrust into every transaction of public life. By
repelling worthy men from your legislative assem-
blies, it has bred up a class of candidates for the
;utfrage, who in their every act disgrace your insti-
tutions and your people's choice. It has ren-
.l, red you so fickle and so given to change that your
inconstancy has passed into a proverb, for you no
.sooner set up an idol firmly than you are sure to pull
it down and dash it into fragments ; and this, because
directly you reward a benefactor or a public servant,
you distrust him merely because he is rewarded, and
immediately apply yourselves to find out either that
you have been too bountiful in your acknowledgments,
or he remiss in his deserts. Any man who attains a
high place among you, from the President downwards,
may date his downfal from that moment; for any
printed lie that any notorious villain pens, although it
militates directly against the character and conduct of
a life, appeals at once to your distrust and is believed.
You will strain at a gnat in the way of trustfulness
and confidence, however fairly won and well deserved ;
but you will swallow a whole caravan of camels, if
they be laden with unworthy doubts and mean suspi-
cions. Is this well, think you, or likely to elevate the
character of the governors or the governed among you ?"
The answer is invariably the same : " There's free-
dom of opinion here, you know. Every man thinks
for himself; and we are not to be easily over-reached.
That's how our people come to be suspicious."
If the experience of public men in America
corresponds to our experience in Europe—and
we believe it does--no more wholesome senti-
ment can exist than the deepest distrust. We
speak less of the continual prostitution, by indi-
viduals in all ranks, of the public cause to their
own private advancement, of intemperate pro-
fessions of patriotism as means of achieving
power, of great promises made in opposition
that are invariably forgotten in office, of the
familiarity of the hustings and the haughty re-
pulsion of Parliament, of the deep interest can-
didates take in every man's welfare, and of the
neglect by representatives of every interest but
their own, of encouragement to agitation out of
office, and of meeting fellow agitators when in
uffice with stripes, imprisonment, and perhaps
sleuth—though all these circumstances are ex_
t‘'emely offensive, and warrant deep and
unalterable distrust, we speak less of these
almost every-day occurrences, which are, perhaps,
less common in America than here, than of
the blighted hopes which everywhere, in America
and in Europe, flow from the promises and the
actions of public men.
We speak of no one party, but of all parties,
and demagogues and despots are alike included
in the term public men. They provoke revolu-
ri(m, promise freedom, and bestow on nations an
iron and bloody despotism. They array the•'n-
-les against one family or one Sovereign
on
i-iCcount of some alleged abuses ; they trample on
the ties of kindred, affection, and allegiance •
-ley gain power, and then they use it in the
ramie, or a more selfish, sordid manner, than
King they deposed, or the iron despot who
hag previcay duped a nation by its vanity, wag


then enslaved it. They prom! .se mankind
peace, and are perpetually enalJroiling them
about the most worthless -.trifles. They
proclaim prosperity and happiness as the
consequence of obedience to their power,
and from their decrees flow poverty, pauper-
ism, and strife, which all the untired energies
of men, for ever struggling to better their con-
dition, and help one another, cannot ward off.
They pretend to insure communities, by their
ecclesiastical establishments, against vice, and by
their criminal jurisprudence against crime, and
vice and crime seem to increase very nearly in
proportion to their establishments. They pre-
tend to protect trade and promote ingenuity,
and their care stifles the former, alid prevents
the latter. We cannot look at home or abroad,
any day of our lives, and not feel, powerfully
convinced that all the hopes held out to us, by
much-promising public men, of obtaining peace,
happiness, and virtue through their instrumen-
tality are continually deceived; and of such
deception, distrust is the natural and warrantable
consequence.
We know that similar results have taken
place in America. These individuals have
professed a love for the public interest,
to serve their private ends. There great
promises are made by a Congress which are
never fulfilled. There chartered banks, the cur-
rency, the custom-house—which is as full of
frauds as our own the post-office convey-
ances, the whole proceedings of Congress, and
the Government, contrast strongly and fatally
for their character with the wonderful achiev-
ments of private enterprise, and necessarily cause
a wholesome distrust of all those who confirm-
, ally promise what is, from some cause or other,
never performed. Where there is " freedom of
opinion," as in America, where " every man
thinks for himself," where the mind is not edu-
cated into habitual confidence, but is free to re-
ceive the impression of facts, distrust arises.
It scarcely exists in Germany, where institutions
fail to accomplish what is promised in their
name as much as they do in the United States,
and where Princes have been repeatedly
faithless to their pledged honour.; it is little
known in France, where twice the people have
been roused, in the name of liberty, to acquire,
first an iron, and then a cold, calculating, sordid
despotism; and it is never felt we believe, in
Italy, where uninterrupted confidence in rulers
is justified by -the most complete and abject
debasement of the people. Far, therefore, from
censuring the distrust of public men which
prevails in America, we regard it as the natural
consequence of freedom; as its surest safeguard,
and the most certain means of securing its
progress.

In several parts of his work Mr. DICKENS
notices the gravity of the American character.
We think that also is connected with their
freedom. They have a ()Teat work to perform,
and they are sensible of it. The lazzaroni of
Naples, the casino haunters of the other parts
of Italy, are not otherwise than a gay and light-
hearted people. In France the Monarch and
his Ministers take care of the nation, and the
people are not wanting in mirth. They have long
been renowned for the vivacity of their parties
and the brilliancy of their wit, but those qua-
lities were not incompatible with committing
some of the greatest atrocities that stain the
annals of civilised Europe. The Germans are
both cheerful and kindly. The English are
accused by foreigners of the same quality that
Mr. DICKENS discovers in the Americans.
These two people take part in public affairs ;
the others are almost excluded from all inter-
ference with them. Seriousness, then, seems
connected with freedom—lightness and gaiety
with Courts and despotism.
Probably whenever men can freely reflect on
their own beginning and their end, and where-
ever they come into contact—as many of the
Americans yet do—with the almost unsoiled
grandeur of nature, communing.with her mighty
Streams, and. penetrating, through her little-
trodden-forests, solemnity-and :.earnestmiss must
tie the *meet their m4ids.- The: Indians they
IsaTediapisted'steteli SoletiManditiiariest People.
'The e. is"no reason with" ihain:4lii,,lieibg free.
and having•no endowed plergi.to mock by. their
lives, what. is taught
,hy-tliOrs,warda„ they. should
not firmly believe the, religion-they' profess.. To
live in this world as if it were a passage 'to an-
other, where every step may lead to eternal plea-
sure or eternal pain, may well make men earnest
and solemn. To live in it with such an idea of
duty, and to see the society of which they are
members a prey to many disorders, while they
seem wholly without the excuses which ,we in
Europe make for wretchedness and misery, and
for which every man, as a participant in the po-
litical power of the State, may hold himself re-
sponsible, seems well calculated to make the
Americans thoughtful and earnest. Mr. Dic-
LENS assures us they are so, which is the result of
their freedom, and a proof that, like true men,
they feel the responsibility that is on them.
We rather admire that trait in their character,
and should not think the worse of our country-
men if amongst them there were more serious-
ness and less frivolity. But what happens here ?
Take the conduct of the Ministers and the Par-
liament as a specimen. That great and unpa-
ralleled distress pervades the community is ad-
mitted on all hands. That property is threatened,
or only to be preserved by strong coercion, is
apparent. A social convulsion, alarming while
it lasted, has taken place, and it would seem by
the steps taken by the Government that the
country is not secure against another. But,
knowing all these things, and being respon-
sible for them, our light-hearted senators,
and somewhat careless Ministers, have dispersed
to shoot, and hunt, and feast, and enjoy them-
selves, as if no single speck of cloud darkened
the sky of England. The head of all—the great
Doctor himself—has, till within the last day or
two, been tasting the delight of pheasant-shoot-
ing in the preserves of Tamworth. At the con-
duct of the Parliament, and at the conduct of
the Ministers, the light-hearted people smile, and
are gay ; and we should have brighter hopes for
the future, if they were even graver, more serious,
and solemn, than the Americans.

It may be quoted as a singular specimen of the
Tory mind, that the most sincere and conscien-
tious of the Tory journals has undertaken to de-
fend the sanguinary revengeful murders com-
mitted by our ancestors at the gallows, and calls
for the suppression by force of the Anti-Corn-
law League. To be criminal, according to this
doctrine, is to be deserving of death, and as, ac-
cording to the same party, all men are criminals,
all men are deserving of death, a deduction which
justifies mutual assassination. The progress of
events, to which Tory Ministers and the Tory
party are obliged to succumb, is confusing the
Tory mind. It endeavoured to rule society on a
theory which will work no longer, and now it is
quite at a loss. In an agony of tear it demands
the suppression of the Anti-Corn-law League,
which is rendering its pet theory worthless, and
it recommends capital punishments, as they were
employed by our ancestors, to put down every
petty crime. It is like a spoiled child, which is
ready to break even its own doll—the present
Constitution—to pieces, if it c annot have its own
way. Society will not stop for the Tory theory ;
the Tory mind will not go forward with society;
and it has no alternative but to resort to the ar-
bitrary power and bloody executions of the Eighth
HARRY. If it have his malignity, it lacks his
vigour. It is a waiting woman essaying to wear
the armour and wield the axe of the bluff mon-
abrec
trulyh.
pitiable
icdoiuclual oiutssuinecietsed praitnikcsr,ubsuhng
but would
by the ponderous weapons after which it
grasps.

We are delighted to perceive from Mr. DON..
COMBE'S speech on Monday, at a meeting of the
National Association, that the late discreditable
Charges of Lord ABINGER at Liverpool and
Chester are not likely to be soon forgotten or
forgiven. If no one else, observed the Hon.
Member for Finsbury, would bring them under
the consideration of Parliament, he would do so.
that :alight have beext
in fact, just
This is manly
and straight-forward;
the course of Pr"eedulg

~_anticipated from a gentleman who, through
evil and through good report, has ad-
hered unflinchingly to the popular cause,
and supported it in the Senate with a zeal
and ability that few have equalled, and none
surpassed. Mr. COBDEN has also recorded his
abhorrence of the obnoxious Charges in ques-
tion; many other Liberal Members are known to
entertain similar strong opinions on the subject;
and greatly indeed shall we be surprised and
mortified, if a large majority of the Whig,
and the whole of the Radical, section in
the House of Commons, do not read such
a lesson to his Lordship as shall effec-
tually sicken him of delivering one-sided
political homilies from the judgment-seat.
Doubtless, Lord ABINGER—Iike other small men
who are apt to assess their talents and influ-
ence at too high a valuation—thought that by
formally recording his protest against Chartism,
he would be crippling its energies, and putting
it, as it were, without the pale of respectability;
but if such were his notions, never was man
more mistaken; he has shown by his
Charges, not that the Chartists are reckless
anarchists, but that he is a wilful Ignoramus;
not that they are contemptible in point of num-
bers and ability, but that he is a bigoted
alarmist. We by no means hold with all the
six points of the Charter, which is, we think, in
many respects unsuited to the wants of the pre-
sent day ; but this we will say, that we have seen
nothing in the document that in the slightest de-
gree justifies Lord ABINGER'B declaration, that it
strikes at the root of the monarchy, and
advocates a spoliation of property. But were it
even otherwise, and as anarchical in its charac-
ter as it is simply impracticable, still, his Lord-
ship is not the man to extinguish it. It requires
a Hercules to crush a Hydra. But to return to
Mr. DUNCOMBE. Alluding to the conduct of the
MELBOURNE Ministry, the Hon. Member
for Finsbury observed, " Much blame is
due, and justly due, to them. They were
told, when in the zenith of their power, that
they were not then making the most of their
time, but that the reform which they had
effected, was incomplete. They heeded not the
warning, but talked of finality, and hung on the
skirts of the Court, instead of supporting them-
selves on the strong arms of the People."
There is but t©o much truth in these remarks.
The tilrh:go, without absolutely arraying them-
selves against the People, yet neglected, when
they had the power, to befriend them; and the
consequences of this neglecthavebeen, first their
own irretrievable defeat; and secondly, the acces-
sion to office of a set of men whom circumstances
have armed with all but despotic power, and
whom it is necessary to watch with the utmost
vigilance, inasmuch as they are by no means re-
markable for their Liberal tendencies. If it had
not been for Whig supineness, we should not
now, among other blessings, have been saddled
with a Tory Income-tax, and a locust-plague of
tax-gatherers, a thousand times worse than all the
Plagues of Egypt put together.

The news foom Port Natal, of which we gave
an abstract yesterday, will be found detailed at
length in The Sun of this day, and will be read
with lively interest. The intelligence in general
is very satisfactory, though we have to regret
the loss of many lives in this unfortunate affair
with the Boers. Without including the sol-
diers shot when the landing was effected
under Colonel CLOETE, there have been
twenty-five killed and forty wounded, making
a total, including prisoners and those miss-
ing, of eighty-six. The emigrant farm-
ers, however, seem now reconciled to their
fate, and are making atonement for their rash
attempt by unqualified submission. They have
released all the prisoners, whether soldiers or
civilians, given up all the captured cannon, and
restored all public and private property which
they had seized. This is highly characteristic
of these simple and honest people, and we re-
joice to find that this conduct is met with be-
coming kindness and forgiveness by the Go-
vernor at the Cape. He has granted a general
amnesty, including their leader PRETORIOUS,
with the exception of five persons who had
taken an active part in resisting the British
troops—promised to defend them against the
natives, and assured them that their lands shall
not be interfered with till the determination of
her MAJESTY'S Government is made known.
That, we trust, will be equally liberal and
humane. These people have many claims
on the sympathy of our Colonial rulers. They
left the Cape settlement owing, as it is well
known, to their dissatisfaction with the
laws and institutions of that colony, and
occupied the territory where they are now
located under the firm conviction that it did
not belong to the British Government.
If they had any doubts on the subject, was it
_ _ _

_ .
likely that they would have given up their lands.
and removed, at great expense, to a distant
settlement where they might be again sub-
jected to the same treatment from which
they had fled ? The disappointment felt
when they found themselves still under British
dominion excited them to madness, and forced
them into an unequal and hopeless contest with
this country. They have suffered the penalty,
and it now remains for our Government to do
them justice, make the amnesty complete, and
allow them to retain their existing administration
and civil institutions.

Accounts from Lisbon, brought by the Liver.
pool steamer, which arrived at Falmouth on Mon-
day, state that Lord HOWARD DR WALDEN had
had interviews with the Duke of PALMZELA and
Senhor GOMES DE CASTRO upon the Tariff ques-
tion, and another meeting was expected soon to
take place between the Commissioners. The
Treasury bills on the Decima were expected
shortly to come out; they were to be drawn for
a year, and to bear interest at 74 per cent. per
annum. The issue to be under the charge of the
Board of Public Credit.

It appears from a list of the paid up amount
and selling price of the shares in the banks of
Lisbon and Oporto, steam-boat, omnibus, insur-
ance, fisheries, and other companies, that those
of the Bank of Lisbon are at 175 dollars pre-
mium, and the Fideledade are at 15 per cent.
premium. The Oporto Bank shares are a trifle
below par; all the other companies are at a con-
siderable discount, and some, such as the fishery
and earthenware companies, are at merely a no-
minal price.

Great complaints were made of the proceed-
ings of M. CAPACCTNI, as tending to excite schism
and disobedience to the constitutional bishops
and clergy.
The French Princes were daily expected at
Lisbon from Brest.

yiedfrbirs paperssever of
al u
h 0---urndasyb-,
ywhichthe
e bboaisdtebnreoeus
delayed
Paris
weatherin the Channel, have been received, and,
as might have been expected, some of them
express great indignation at the article in the
Journal des Debats on Lord ABERDEEN'S letter.
The Commerce and the National are quite furious
on the subject, and seem quite at a loss to con-
ceive how a Frenchman can defend, or even
palliate, the conduct of the British Government.
" The Journal des Debits," says the Commerce,
"is the Ministerial journal, and the Ministry have
received from public opinion the title which they
deserve, the Ministry of foreigners. No one there-
fore can be surprised at finding this morning in the
columns of that Ministerial paper, an article
which some might imagine was drawn up by an
English writer. ‘Vlienever France has any af-
fair to settle with foreigners the Journal des
Debats is sure to place foreigners in the right; it
reserves all its solicitude for foreigners, and to
them it addresses all its praise and congratula-
tions. It is, in fact, the journal of 1814 and 1815."
The same journals express great dissatisfaction
at the appointment of General JACQUEMINOT to
the command of the National Guards.

As for the appointment of General Sebastiani, it is
not yet inserted in the Moniteur, but it seems not to
be doubtful. On this subject the Siecle has the fol-
lowing remarks :—" The nomination of General Ti-
burce Sebastiani to the command of the military di-
vision of Paris, in the room of General Pageot, is cer-
WA. By way of kuleauaiircation, &meal Pte. has