The Sun.
London, England, 1845-02-19 00:00:00

PUGILISM.—CHURCII AND BURTON.--- Yesterday
was the evenful day fixed for the fight between these men, who were
matched for SO/. a-side ; and, from their well-known merit as bruisers,
the pugilistic fancy anticipated a fine display of fistic science. Burton
is a Leicester man, and Church a member of the London ring. Ar-
rangements were made for an aquatic excursion, and the Nymph
steamer was "specially retained" for the belligerents and their
friends, and Gravesend was the locality selected. The steamer started
from Ilungerford Pier with a large assemblage of the " admirers of
mining," Burton, under, the wing of " Jem Burn," and ar-
rived at their destination in the confident hope of meeting their an-
tagonist, when, " lo and behold," Church was non est iarentas. Wry
faces were made, and hard words used, but to no purpose. A war-
rantarr Itt:dving issued against Church, and who (as was stated) had been
entitled to the prize
-money, athis training quarters, the stakeholder intimated that Bur-
exit, greatly disappointed
MAN'Shav th'eLFeptßunsibri:T. DtoS :1:
-money, and the milling fancy wade their
and chagrined.
THE
ven:unent 13wo°u?dRfain
—The
consideration for the poor.
food by keeping on the wicked corn laws ,Thi They refuse them cheap
reduced the interest in the poor man's banic,-111Te have considerably
now are concocting one of the most cruel _savings' hank, and
poor-laws that was ever
Invented. And these are the men who would have the public to
believe that they are " friends" of the poor.—From a Correopowent.

Mr. WALLACE thought the dyeing and bleaching de-
partments ought to be included in the Bill, and at a fu-
ture stage he should move that they be so included.
Mr. HumE deprecated any legislative interference be-
tween the employer and the employed—between the
parent and the child. The proper remedy for all the
evils complained of was to remove those fetters which
monopoly and class interests had placed upon industry.
Mr. COBDEN gave the Noble Lord credit for his
motives,
.but thought he had been misled. In calico-
printing, and other trades of the same kind, the time of
labour was not fixed or compulsory ; they did not begin
and cease with the steam-engine, as in other branches—
it was the wish of their parents that children should be
employed—they worked in the same room with them.
under their eye, and might leave off when they thought
proper. It was not here as in the cotton mills, their
time was free; and if they overworked themselves, it was
their own or their parents' fault.
Mr. WAKLEY supported the motion—urged the Noble
Lord to extend his inquiries into the rural districts—.
until he did so, his exertions would be open to suspicion.
After a few wards from Mr. M. PHILLIPPS, leave was
given to bring in the Bill, and Mr. LABOUCHERE ex-
pressed a hope that the second reading would be fixed
for an early day.

Mr. HUME postponed his motion on the subject of
lighthouses.
Mr. T. DUNCOMBE then brought the subject of the
espionage exercised by the Post-office under the atten-
tion of the House, and complained of the conduct of the
Secret Committee, which had last year sat to consider the
subject. The Honourable Gentleman concluded
an able, eloquent, and witty speech, by moving—
" That a Select Committee be appointed to inquire
into the mode in which letters have been detained,
opened, and re-sealed at the General or at any pro-
vincial post-office, and also into the circumstances under
which every warrant for that purpose has been
issued by any Secretary of State, from the Ist day of
January, 1840, to the present time, the said Committee to
report their opinion thereon to the House, and also whe-
ther it is expedient that the practice should be con-
tinued:—That the report and evidence of the Secret
Committee of last session relative to the Post-office be
referred to the said Committee."

Sir J. GRAIIAM defended the conduct of the Govern
ment and the cour3e pursued by the Secret Committee.

An animated discussion ensued, and, eventually, the
debate was adjourned till Thursday, with an understand-
ing that it should stand the first question on that day.
The House adjourned at Half-past Twelve o'clock.

We really blush for the humiliating aspect under
which the Government of this country must be al-
ready regarded by foreign nations, on account of its
admitted shameless tampering with the sacred trust
of the Post-office department—and the Old-Bailey-
like, contemptible, special pleading on which, at this
time of day, a British Administration comes forward
to justify such delinquencies on its own part and on
that of its predecessors. In reference to the tone of
last night's debate on Mr. THOMAS DUNCOMBH'S
motion for the appointment of a Select Committee of
Inquiry into these transactions, we almost fear, too,
that we shall have reason to blush for the weakness
of a British Legislature, that seems far more disposed
to become a " particeps criininis," by throwing the
shield of its protection over Sir JAMES GRAHAM, than
to act with a dignity and an honesty worthy of its
better days and recollections. With what unmingled
suspicion and contempt will our Continental neigh-
bours, and our American detractors be justified in
regarding our habitual pretensions to fair deal-
ing and integrity, when, in the highest
councils of the empire, the breaking of private—
aye, and of public or foreign diplomatic seals—the
felonious acquisition by third parties of a knowledge
of the contents which those seals were meant expressly
to protect from their sight;—the transmission to cer-
tain official and other quarters which the writers of
the intelligence thus basely purloined expressly in-
tended that it should never reach—the clandestine
refolding, and false or fabricated re-sealing of such
violated papers—and the base, scandalous conspiracy
of all the parties, high or low, connected with the
most contemptible juggle of the whole felony
(namely, the forwarding the letters thus abused,
without notice or avowal of what has been done, to
the party addressed, for the very purpose of falsely
suggesting to him their undisturbed condition, in
order to entrap him into acting upon the assumption,
that his own eyes first peruse, since the original dis-
patch of the communication, what his correspondent
has written to him ;) when these are the vile arts which
Sir JAMES GRAHAM and Sir ROBERT PEEL are not
ashamed to stand up in their places to justify. For
our own parts, deploring the melancholy fact that
Mr. MAZZINI has been able to establish so signal a
case of unpardonable turpitude against more than

one of our principal official departments, we are yet
grateful to that intelligent and able foreigner for
having, with admirable perseverance, brought home
to the really responsible parties political enormities
of which, but for him, the British public would have
still remained profoundly ignorant absolutely
unsuspicious. Mr. THOMAS DUNCOMBE, too,
deserves the respect of every true Englishman, of
every party, for the zeal with which he has exerted
himself to procure from Parliament a signal disclaimer
of powers that cannot be used but to taint the national
honour. At the risk of incurring the same censure
which was visited on Mr. DUNCOMBE for the strong
expression of his indignation, we must declare that the
defence in chief, set up by Sir JAMES GRAHAM, and
the argument in extenuation attempted by Sir ROBERT
PEEL, were among the most puerile, the most pitiful,
and abject exhibitions of forensic logic ever witnessed
in the House of Commons. Mr. DUNCOMBE tells Sir
JAMES GRAHAM distinctly-1. That he, Sir JAMES,
had been guilty of the meanness and baseness of opening
his, Mr. BUNCOMBE'S, letters. 2. That Sir JAMES had
not the courage to avow it. And in reference to this
latter part of the charge, he reminded the House,
that on a former occasion he had addressed to the
home Secretary a question with the view of eliciting
the fact, to which the Right Hon. Functionary re-
plied by evading it as "one that it was known he
was not in a condition to answer." Last night Sir
JAMES blustered about " his perfect indifference to
the imputation cast upon him by Mr. Duscomne."
Indifference ! Delightful public morality, this, in a
minister ! Let us have patience, and we shall hear
the next postman who 'nay be tried at the Central
Criminal Court for breaking the seal of a letter, and
possessing himself of its contents, avow himself " per-
fectly indifferent to the imputation." For, observe,
Sir JAMES did not deny the charge, but went into a
rigmarole review of Mazzisa's case, and was so kind
as to inform the House that the question was—
whether or not they would repeal the Act of
Queen Assists, which had given to Ministers this
bad power ? Now that was not the question. Sir R.
PEEL, on the contrary, at the conclusion of the lamest
and most inconclusive of speeches, declared that
" the question was not as to the existence of the
power, but whether or not it had been honourably
exercised ; and as they had been acquitted by a
chosen Committee of honourable men, let them not
again be put on their trial by a second inquiry before
a new tribunal." Not quite so fast Sir ROBERT. By
your own showing, you and your colleague are not
yet agreed on what the question is, so that that point
is not to be disposed of in this off-hand way. But
there is another party, a greater party—the English
public—who are yet to be satisfied before you can talk
of your " acquittal." They can only be satisfied
through the medium of such a Committee as Mr.
DUNCOMBE moves for, not a packed Secret Committee,
whose first act was to exclude Mr. Duscomms him-
self. Now what was the stringent question which
Sir J. Gristliest dared not, and Sir R. PEEL would
not, meet ? Just this—well, directly, fear-
lessly put by Mr. Slum. We give his
own words—" You who answer about Mezzreii, you
who answer about the Poles, will you answer this—
Did you open the letters of Mr. DUNCOMBE ?"
Sir JAMES was silent. Mr. SHEIL reproved the
officious " interlocutory" of Lord SANDON, by telling
him that he had called not on the Noble Lord but
the Right Hon. Baronet. He reiterated his interro-
gatory. Sir JAMES was dumb. Dumb ? Dum tacet,
clamat. His silence is the eloquence of confession.
" Well, then, does Sir JAMES justify his conduct in
this particular of Mr. DUNCOMBE'S letters ?" No
answer. Sir J. HANMER is so good as to think too
well of Sir JAMES to believe such a charge as applied
to him. Eminently satisfactory that, to Mr. DUN."
CONIBE! Lord SANDON makes a long and rather angry
speech as Chairman of the Secret Committee of last
session, in which he tells the House " that the infor-
mation conveyed to it was full and satisfactory, and
though the prurient curiosity of individuals had not
been gratified, the report contained sufficient mate-
rials for deciding whether or not the extraordinary
power given to the Home Secretary had been fairly
exercised." How strangely constituted must be the
inquisitiveness of a Member of Parliament, which re-
flects upon the indignant and determined demand of
outraged individuals for full and searching inquiry
into the grievous wrong of which they complain as a
" prurient curiosity" forsooth. It is time to come to
some understanding as to the statutable I;nes of demar-
cation (we think), between moral right and moral
wrong. At last Sir J. GRAHAM speaks ; but for what
purpose ? To tell Mr. SHEIL that he cannot answer
his question ; and that, upon his honour, he has " out
with all he knew" before the Committee up stairs,
which, by its very constitution was not to let what it
heard be known ! If this be not mere mockery, it is
very like it. Now the plain truth is—whether there
be Act-of-Parliament warranty for these epistolary
burglaries or not, they ought not to be, and can no
longer be, by the English people, permitted. Better,
a thousand times better, that as to this Post-office
establishment we should be content, as we are
with so many other human institutions, to take the
great good and benefit we derive from it with their
qualifications of evil. If the case really Ise, that con-
spirators and agitators in differentlands do avail them-
selves of its facilities to communicate and interchange
their schemes of action, their projects of revolt, if
you please, against foreign powers in alliance with
us, we cannot help it. It is an abuse incident 1
to the constitution of the department. But to
maintain, beyond the whisper of suspicion,
its inviolable integrity, its national security,
its undisturbed, uninterrupted sacredness ;—this
is an object, not only of the highest importance
and interest to the confidence of our vast commercial
community and connexions, but identified with the
purity and welfare of our social system—with all the
respect demanded for private confidence and public
honour. Let us hope that the Legislature will re-
spond faithfully to the solemn responsibility now
devolved upon it, of at once vindicating and protecting
the integrity of the raost delicate, as well as the most
important, of all the trusts which a nation can commit
to its Executive.

Madrid journals, of the 10th and 11th inst., have
been received. In the Senate the general discussion
on the Clergy Dotation Bill was closed, and the first
article adopted on the 11th. It was understood that
the whole measure of Government would be adopted
in both Chambers. The Envoy, CASTILLO T ATENZA,
was not to set out for Rome till after the presentation
of the Bill to Congress. It appears that the amount
of Three per Cents. issued by the Government from
the 15th to the 31st of January, in consequence of the
conversion of the claims of the contractors of Trea-
sury-bills and the Floating Debt, reached the sum of
183,676,279 reals.

On the 11th the Three per Cents. closed at 321
for cash, and 33i at 60 days ; the Five per Cents. al
24 for cash, and 24,i at 60 days; and the Debt with-
out Interest, at 7 at 60 days.

Most of the Paris papers give an outline of Sir R.
PEEL'S financial statement, but their remarks are very
concise, and without interest. Such a large surplus,
and that surplus disposed of in a way that may inter-
fere with French manufactures, especially in glass,
cannot be very pleasing to those parties who lose no
opportunity of showing their hostility to England.
The Journal des Debats treats the subject in rather
an amusing manner, and pays a compliment to the
Premier for the admirable way in which he keeps a
secret. "Fourteen days ago," says the writer, "the
Government announced that they would pro-
pose a continuation of the income-tax, and a re-
duction of duty on certain articles of consumption,
But the question was on what tax blessed by heaven
would the choice of the Alinister fall ? No one could
answer, and Sir ROBERT PEEL, according to his
custom, carefully kept the secret, while he was be-
sieged by persons representing almost every branch
of industry—tea, coffee, sugar, cotton, paper, soap,
and things without number. These made the air re-
sound with their lamentations, like the halt and lame
who expose their wounds, real or factitious, to the
charity of the public. But the financial dictator was
impenetrable. He had neither eyes to see nor ears to
hear. He walked amidst them like a physician of
the first rank among his patients crying for relief,
but he would give no answer till the appointed time.'
After other remarks in a similar strain, that journal
thus proceeds : . .

"The strength of Sir Robert Peel's Ministry consists in
the success of his financial measures; and, right or wrong,
the Prime Minister of Great Britain is considered as the only
man capable of maintaining an equilibrium between the in-