The Sun.
London, England, 1842-08-20 00:00:00

QUEEN'S THEATRE.

Mr. Reeve and Miss Brooke, two old favourite
performers at this house, took a benefit here on Thursday
night, on which occasion a considerable novelty was
produced in the play of Hamlet. The melancholy
Dane was impersonated by Mr. Wellington, an ama-
teur, whom we had pleasure in noticing sometime ago
in the character of the Stranger at the City of London
Theatre. We think we may safely say, that amongst
amateurs we do not know Mr. Wellington's equal.
His voice is neither strong nor very harmonious, but
the conception of the character was excellent, the at-
titudes were both graceful and striking, and, above
all, the reading was correct ; and frequent involuntary
bursts of applause testified the approbation of the
audience, despite the defects of an ill-managed voice.
-We cannot afford time and space to notice the particular
points, in which Mr. Wellington excelled or failed,
but we may notice the banquet scene, the closet
scene, and the last scene, as those in which Mr. Wel-
lington• was particularly successful. Mr. Melborne,
who has spent many years in the service of the pub-
lic, enacted the part of Horatio in a most creditable
manner. We wish we saw him oftener. Mr. Reeve
was an excellent Laertes, and in the last scene, with
Mr. Wellington, was particularly effective. Mr. Ab-
bot was a good king, and Mrs. Parry sustained her
well-earned reputation as the queen. Manders was a
capital first grave-digger, and the other roles were
respectably enacted.
The remainder of the performances consisted of
Catching an Heiress and The French Refugee, in
which Mr. J. Parry, Mr. L. Goldsmid, Mrs. Honey,
Miss Rogers, Miss Brooke, and Miss Wrighten all
met with the most deserved applause. Though very
inconvenient to ourselves, we are happy to add that
the house was crammed to suffocation.

SHOCKING OCCURRENCE

DURING THE DISTURBANCES AT LEEDS.

It is with mingled feelings of shame and in-
dignation that we bring before the public an in-
stance of wanton bloodshed—a deliberate at-
tempt upon human life, which we can designate
as little less than murder, on the part of one of
the soldiery. Mr. Bingley, the reporter for this
paper, and Mr. Hall, of the Leeds Mercury,
were eye-witnesses of the circumstance, and
were within a yard, or at most two yards, of the
unfortunate victim of military recklessness, when
the occurrence took place. The affair took place
in King-street, which is in the vicinity of the
barracks and the police office. A small num-
ber of the Hussars, who had been clearing the
streets, turned up the bottom of King-street,
and, after proceeding a few yards, were filing
into a street called Nelson-street, which runs out
of it. At the time that Messrs. Bingley and
Hall were approaching the top of King-street,
an old man, named Samuel Crowther, a nail-
maker, was coming towards them, apparently to
go to his own residence, which was only two or
three yards distant. At this period there was
not the slightest disturbance in the streets, and
indeed there were not, it is believed, twenty
persons in the space betwixt the top of the
street and the soldiery towards the bottom, a
distance of probably nearly one hundred yards.
All the soldiery had disappeared along Nelson-
street, except one man who paused and looked
in the direction of the persons above-mentioned,
and then levelled his musket, and appeared to
take deliberate aim at them. Not the slightest
alarm was felt by either Mr. Bingley or Mr.
Hall, who seeing no cause for violence, appre-
hended none, and regarded the action of the
soldier simply as a piece of bravado, and looked
at him with perfect unconcern. The soldier,
however, fired, and immediately the old man
staggered and reeled in the direction of his own
door, but made no outcry. Mr. Bingley ex-
claimed—" The man is shot!" or some such ex-
pression, but Mr. Hall, who had previously seen
him in a fit, replied that he was only in a fit,
In a few moments, however, a number of women
rushed out of the house, exclaiming that the man
had been shot, and on entering the house, which
was crowded with women, uttering loud screams,
the old man was found lying on his hack on a
bed up stairs, with a wound in his abdomen, his
shirt was saturated with blood, and he was
writhing with agony. Messrs. B. and H. im-
mediately went to procure the attendance of a
surgeon. On calling afterwards, it was under-
stood that there was but little chance of reco-
very. At the time the sliot was fired, Mr. Bing-
ley and Mr. Hall were only about a yard from
the man who received it. A more deliberate
piece of butchery was never witnessed.--Leeds
Times.

SPIRIT of the PUBLIGIJOURNALS. I
• 1O T-11E EVEk/RG,p4PEIWOF ttSTElgai.'
GLOBE.-The Times observes this moilling,-
that "- the condition of the disorderly multitudes.
themselves has, in a majority of instances,
exhibited a greater degree of reluctance to
transgress the limits of the law, and of modera-
tion when those limits have. been transgressed,
than our experience of other periods
.of .dis-
turbance among. the manufacturing population
would have led us to anticipate." The truth of
this remark is questionable, as regards the
manufacturing population, though . unfor-
tunately less so as regards the mining.
population in some of the disturbed dis-
tricts. And what does this truth prove? Whom
does it prove calumniators of the mannfacturing
population—both the . men and the masters?
Those utterly reckless, lawless, Godless hordes
of manufacturing operatives, as the Tory organs.
have delighted to depict them, have not shown,
themselves disposed to . use- the facile Means
of mischief so perpet:tally pointed out to them
' i by those Vory tools and favourites, the factory-
agitators of the last font- .years. They have
shown themselves, •on the one hand, dii-
posed, when their hands were free, .to stand
by those ruthless oppressors. the inillowneN,
denounced to their vengeance by the same Tory
tools ! The manufacturing towns have harboured
no Swingti, or rather have furnished them nu fol-
lowers. What must have been the consequence
of disorders like those of this week past, if the
town work-people had been as blind to conse-
quences as the country work-people haVe so often
shown themselves; or if so ill a spirit had pre-
vailed between classes as raised the flames of
1830 ? Yet the town work-people, and not those
degraded and desperate portions (too numerous)
of our peasantry, are the invariable objects of
alternate compassion and clamour by the
land-sycophants. And, certainly, no means
have been wanting, on the part of those land-
sycophants, to instil delusions (congenial to their
patrons) between class and class in our towns.
We said yesterday, and we repeat to-day, that
in exactly the same proportion as the hack Tory
political economy found believers, it must form
Chartists. It must form Chartists, far—far more
unreasonable than the poor Manchester turn-outs!
—wild as the mining forced requisitionists, bur-
glars, and fire-raisers!---thuddled and mad, as
those simple and happy peasants, the guerillas of
Capt. Swing! 'What are the main delusions of
the two leading sections of working malcon-
tents ? One—that of the mining believers in
Frost. and the Times' friend Cooper—is that the
upper social strata present vast fields of plunder
and partition (if they could but contrive to gain
their mastery by successful surprise, and coin-
bined force). The other—the milder manufac-
turing form of delusion—is, that not measures
for admitting commercial abundance of the
prime necessaries of life, but direct laws for se-'
curing work and wages, can alone mitigate their
condition. The latter class of malcontents are at
least too rational to imagine thatplundering houses,
and then squatting down each man on his strip
ofland—with a " tittle farm of `Vern-dee" self=
appropriated to each chief of the enterprise—is
the likeliest way of bringing about the social re-
geration. But they believe potently in the force
of law to do, by direct,- means, every thing for
their interest. flow should they fail to believe
thus, when they see those who now make the
law acting obstinately on the same belief, in
grasping sole hold of the star of life !
STANDARD.—The accounts from the north
this morning are more satisfactory than any pre-
viously received. Yesterday we explained why ,
a simultaneous cessation of the ambulatory and
spasmodic disorders cannot be expected : they are
however, manifestly becoming less frequent, and
of a less grave character—very serious or for-
midable they never were. The wise policy of
the Government has brought into activity the
gentle and efficient remedy in all such cases.
We must not, however, hope that any amount of
wisdom, forbearance, and firmness on the part of
the Government, can eradicate the seeds of disaf-
fection very suddenly. The Leaguers are rich and
unscrupulous; they have excited the late move-
Ment solely with the purpose or embarrassing the
Queen's Ministers and intimidating the Legis-
lature, and there is no doubt they will persevere
in their efforts:. It is pretended, forsooth, that
• the Leaguers are guiltless in the matter, because
they have not taken the lead in Chartist meetings,
and headed the mobs which imposed inactivity
upon their own mills. But did they not, by
themselves and their hired lecturers, supply
•for two years all the themes of Chartist se-
dition ? did they not threaten the very stop-
! page of ;the mills that has occurred ? and are
they •not, at this moment, trying to turn the
public cialamity to their own acenunt? QIIP.S.
tionless they are too cunning to appear at
Chartist meetings, even if the practical oppressOr
could dare to show himself among the sufferers
by his oppression; and it would be too gross an
anomaly for the man who bad himself reduced
wages to head the mob resisting the reduction;
but they can work more effectually by indirect
means, and underhand ; they can supply the
Chartists with topic of clamour against "class
legislation," by denouncing the aristocracy and
lauded gentry as the authors .of all public suf-
lering by their rapacious and cruel legislative
measures—and they can secretly supply funds
to the more active enemies of order. We dis-
tinctly charge them with both practices, and we
rest our charge upon the evidence of their own
journals..