The Sun.
London, England, 1842-03-07 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF SATURDAY.
GLOBE.—How complete was the refutation of
the unfounded charges, of the baseless calumnies,
launched by the Hon. Member for Knaresborough
against those manufacturers, will be seen by the
straightforward, crushing speech of Mr. Cobden in
his own and their defence, and by the more polished,
but not less effective, address of Mr. Villiers; con-
firmed, as his ample repudiation of the accusations
was, by a document which he read to the House,
attested by seventy-two of the leading manufac
turing houses, which, being members of the Anti-
Corn-law League, had been comprehended in the
sweeping though unsupported denunciations of
the Hon. Member for Knaresborough. All this may
be seen in the report of the proceedings. But the
mere reading of the speeches will not convey an ade-
quate idea of the effect they produced upon the House,
and especially upon the person to whose indiscretion
they were intended to furnish an antidote. The scene
was truly graphic. The bold indignant tone and
bearing of the two Honourable Members who had un-
dertaken to furnish the threatened refutation of the
accusations—the internal writhings of the so lately
furious assailant—evinced by the hands firmly clasped
within each other, together 'with the twitchings of
the face and quivering of lips, as the loudly-cheered
effectively-forcible periods of his castigators fell,
scorpion-armed, upon his ears, scathing his now
humbled and abashed spirit—were observed by every
one within the House. Those who had abetted the
sufferer in his unfounded attacks upon a body of
highly honourable and meritorious men, now shrunk
back abashed, as though they felt that, as par-
takers of the crime, they were sharers in the punish-
ment. Those present in the House will not soon forget
the moment when the Chancellor of the Exchequer rose
to order ; and thus stopped as it fell—interposing a
shield between the bolt and its intended object—a sen-
tence already launched, the import of which was
obvious. It would, if the speaker had been suffered
to complete what it was manifestly his intention to
convey, have been yet most decidedly expressive, of
what no one now doubts, than even any
.of the already
strongly-conveyed terms of reprehensive contradic-
tion which had been previously applied to the gratui-
tous and injurious assertions of Mr. Ferrand ! The
result will, we trust, be, that the llon. Member for
Knaresborough—without abating one jot of the fear-
less advocacy of what he doubtless believes to be the
wisest and best policy for the country, for an uncom-
promising adhesion to which he is emulous of being
conspicuous in Parliament—will be henceforth in-
duced to distinguish between reckless, hardihood of
assertion and the unbending dignity of truth. In
time even the Honourable Member may endeavour
to argue rather than to declaim ; and to seek, not
the ephemeral plaudits of less venturous parti-
zans, but that solid and lasting satisfaction which
is derived alone from a mind conscious of its
own integrity, the possessor of which as sternly
refuses to sell his voice as he would scorn to
prostitute his vote, to the base purposes of mere
party advancement ; convinced that a bad cause can-
not be long sustained by such props, and that a good
one, as it needs not, so it refuses to accept of such
support. - If Mr. Ferrand—however unlikely it may
now be that so unpromising a subject should ever
attain to so desirable a proficien^,y—be taught these,
the first principles of real excellence in a public man,
he will not regret that the lesson was enforced by the
lash ; nor that abasement was, in him, the precursor
of moral elevation.

STANDARD.—The case of the late Sir Robert
Kennedy affords another proof of the effect of the mi-
serable " economy" cry that has rung through the
country for the last half century,
,and which has
rendered -the service of the public the worst ser-
vice in which any man can engage. Here
is the case of a gentleman who served ably
in an office of great importance for thirty-eight
years, without being able to make even a decent
provision. for his surviving family, although that
family consisted of only two daughters. We say
nothing of the large sums of money that passed
through Sir Robert Kennedy's hands, because, in
the merit of mere honesty, he is happily not dis-
tinguished from tens of thousandS, and there are pro-
bably many clerks in the Bank of England through
whose hands larger sums of money have passed with
equal safety; but, from the nature of Sir Robert's duties,
the fate °fannies, the successes ofa campaign, the honour
of his country must have been frequently dependent
upon his activity and discretion, and the witness
best qualified to speak to his services, the Duke of
Wellington, bears honourable testimony to the
manlier in which he acquitted himself. Is it not
then disgraceful that such a public benefa2tot
should be so ill paid as to die a pauper ?
There .is another hardship arising from this
wretched under paying of the public servants, The
paltry pittance by which the Legislature pretends to
relieve the wants of meritorious persons generally
is eaten up in discharging the-debt of the State to its
se.-wants and their families. AVe shall not be sus-
pected of grudging the poor 1001. a year allowed to
Sir Robert Kennedy's daughters. We sincerely
lament that it has not been multiplied at least five-
fold, but we 'must contend that it is unjust to quarter
these ladies upon the Pension LiSt. • Their claim is a
claim of debt—equitably as .much a claim of debt as
Lord Cottenham's claim for his pension ; and the
State ought not to pay its debts out of what it pre,
tends to give to merit and misfortune.
COURIER.—That the effective and telling speech
oF the Member for Knaresborough should have stung
to the quick blatant Anti-Corn-law agitators—that
the vigorous manner in which he not only re-
pelled the accusations hurled at the landed pro-
prietary of England, but carried the war into the
heart of the enemy's camp, demolishing their outposts,
and laying bare their sore points, should have carried
confusion and dismay into their ranks, is what, a priori,
might have been anticipated; and what last night's
proceedino•S in the House of. Commons fully evince.
Let it not supposed that we are friendly towards
railing accusations or sweeping charges against any class
of the community ; we always look upon such with
suspicion, as being either false in spirit or exaggerated
in fact. Good, virtuous, avid high-minded men are
-found in every rank and calling of life, and it
is therefore with pain we have observed the un-
scrupulous and reckless manner in which the
pseud) advocates of one great interest hazard
criininatary charges with. those of another. Yet
of all men, those least entitled to complain
-of the unfairness of making sweeping imputations
against any portion of the community, are the Members
of the Anti-Corn Law League, whose whole life—the
Olject of whose whole existence has been to fling every
kind of calumnious im2utation at what they call
the landed interest and its supporters. It was
all very fair to assail the gentry of England with every
epithet which an imagination fruitful in foul in-
vectives could supply—it was all very fair for the
members and lecturers of the League to exhaust
their vocabularies of abuse against the advocates
of protection—to denounce them as plunderers,
and describe them as monsters of selfishness
—all this, we repeat, was considered perfectly
fair ; but When an Honourable Member, stung by
these undeserved reproaches, proceeds to retort
upon their nuthors—when he proceeds to unmask.- the
knavery of the " truck system," or drag to light the
causes of the decline of manufacturing prosperity,
then, forsooth, these tender-hearted -creatures are
shocked -at - the wickedness—unparliamentariness, of
such a course ; they tremble—not for their own
characters—oh, no ; but for the dignity of the
House ! We, of course, have no means of ascertain-
ing what was the precise form of words in which
Mr. Ferrand had clothed his charges of knavery
and cruelty against the members of the 'League, but,
unquestionably, we think, no one understood him to
urge such charges against all the members of the
League, much less against the great body of English
manufacturers. He made specific charges against
seine, and these, he repeats, he is prepared to substan-
tiate in every particular. What more does Mr. Cob-
den or Mr. Villiers require ?

Mr. BCSFIELD FERRAND, M.P.—lt is perhaps not
generally known that the father and grandfather of this
scurrilous and vulgar slanderer of the manufactures were both
cotton skinners! His grandfather was in partnership with a
person of the name of Willett, under the firm of Brasfield and
ilhat, and they worked the Castlefield-mill, Bingley, now
worked by Mr. Ellis. Mr. Ferrand's father, Mr. Currer
llusfield, was also engaged in the same business, and actually
had rooms in the mill and lived entirely there. Of course the
airs of insolenee which this person assumes towards the manu-
facturers, and his scandalous imputations upon their characters,
are virtually a spurning and spitting upon his own immediate'
ancestors. His quarrel with the manufacturers arises out of
his own dictatorial and overbearing temper, and his ungentle..
man-like manners, which have brought him into personal colli-
sion with nearly all his respectable neighbours, several of whom
are manufacturers of high character and Magistrates ; and
helve his vulgar spite against the class which he
vents
with characteristic indecency in the House of Commons. If
Mr. Ferrand's own character and conduct were to be assailed
as he assails those of others, or even were represented with
strict truth, a pretty picture would be drawn of him. We
have reason to believe that his constituents at Knaresborough
are heartily ashamed of the connexion, and are resolved never
to renew it.—Leeds Mercury.
It was with extreme pain that we learned that a
gentleman holding a highly responsible situation in the office
of the Paymaster of Civil Services, has disappeared. We see
no benefit in the concealmentof the particulars of a matter which
are, unhappily, the topic of discussion and regret in official cir-
cles. The gentleman alluded to is Mr. Perkins, one of the
cashiers in the department above mentioned. Among other
matters laid to his charge is this : that he procured a large
anutrit of stamps from the Stamp-office, to the value, it is said,
of 2,0091 , shi 41 stamps were intended for receipts for theme-
ney paid by him in his capacity of cashier, the custom being
thatevery person so receiving should pay the price ofthe stamp
necessary to cover the amount received. All these stamps have
been expended, Mr. ,Perkinthas made no return of the amount,
and that particular sum is also lost to the public. It is a curious
eircurnstance,that Mr. Perkins had been, for a considerable
Mime before his removal to the Paymaster's Office, a clerk in the
clepartireut with Mr. Beaumont Smith,
%.,rwietY.— Observer.
of Exchequer
shr/ta..xsa,:ltirxir-pskrt ies were given on Saturday by
'Wharneliffe, "_rociadence in Whitehall Gardens, by Lord
jamel,s.svav:oultvzon7street, by Lord Stanley in St.
b"Y su Thos. Fremantle in Eaton-place.