Star.
London, England, 1831-05-07 00:00:00

CA OUT-CH OUC.

OD Thursday, at the ROYAL INSTITUTION, Mr. FARA-
DAY gave a lecture on CAouTCHOUC to a numerous and
highly respectable .audience. He traced it to its soil and
origin, ann explained it to be analytically a hydro-car-
bonous substance, consisting of the proportions of 68 carbon
to 10 hydrogen,—an incomparable, and in truth the only
natural combination of those elements. He then elicited
the carbon in a brilliant experiment.
He adverted to the valuable properties of Caout-chouc, its
elasticity, impermeability and flexibility, and the important de-
yeloping and yet undeveloped application of those respective
properties. Its spring-like, equal, and expansive elasticity
and impeernefibilitv, admirably grialified it for retaining °res-
ell:ding- liquids and fl•tids,and rendered it, as an article of cloth-
ing and external covi.:ing, vastly superior to leather. He ex-
hibited several most intotest::' fr cimenso!'iraterproof shoes,
!wets. coats. sailcloth, ba:7s, bottles, ropes, engine-hose, beer
engine, gas and other pip.'3 and tubes, syphons, surgical,
chemical, and scientific appratus, in all of which caout-
chnec was the base or elm, acteriutic ingredient, and which
were entirely free from the several disadvantages of pervious-
ness, poisonous oxidation, and to which the animal and
mineral substances now so applied are subject.
These wades were the manufacture of Messr, Hancock,
to whom is doe the mi•rit of the discovery, and who tr.asess
and use a process for fusing and recompounding, or casting
the caoutchouc. The pranical utility of the applications
already made and tried, were shorn by the written testimony
of Captains Parry, Franklin, and others. and illustrated by
accounts of the successful tostiit of experiments made at
Deptford, Woolwich, &c. the jut insie value of the sub-
stance was further exemplified by the encl.:frit% of the French
and other philoso, hers and men of science.
These developments gratified and astonished the audience,
as much as the specimens could have atroicted their admira-
tion, and many of them staid after the lecture, to inspect
the articles, and cogoire about the makers.

As soon as ,:..L.ruption ceases to be en expedient of Go-
vernment, and it will cease to be such as soon as a Patriot
King is raised to the throne, the panacea is applied ; the
spirit of the Constitution revives of course ; and as fast as it
revives, the orders and forms of the Constitution are restored
to their primitive integrity, and become what they were in-
tended to be, real barriers against arbitrary power, not blinds
nor masks, under which tyranny may lie concealed. Depra-
vation of manner exposed the Constitution to ruin ; and refor-
mation will secure it. Men decline easily from virtue ; for there
is a devil too in the political system, a constant tempter at hand;
a Patriot King will want neither power nor inclination to cast
out this devil, to make the tem, tat ion cease, and to deliver his
subjects, if not from guilt, yet from the consequence, of their
fall. Under him they will not only cease to do evil, but learn to
do well ; for by rendering public virtue and real capacity the
sole means of requirineany degree of power orprofit in the
state, he will set the passions of their hearts on the side of
liberty and good government. A patriot King is the most
powerful of all reformers ; for he is himself a standing
mi-
racle, so rarely seen and so little understood, that the sure
effects of his appearance will be admiration and love in every
honest breast, confusion and terror to every guilty conscience,
but submission and resignation in all. A new people will
seem to arise with a new King. Innumerable metamor-
phoses, like those which poets feign, will happen in very
deed ; and while men are conscious that they are the same
individuals, the difference of their sentiments will almost
persuade them that they are changed into different beings.—
But that we may not expect more from such a King than
ever be can perform, it is mammary to premise another obser-
vation; after which I shall descend into some that will be
more particular. Absolute stability is not to be expected
from any thing human ; for that which exists, immutably
exists alone, necessarily ; and this attribute of the Supreme
Being can neither belong to man, nor to the works of man
The best instituted governments, like the best constituted
animal bodies, carry in them the seeds of their destruction ;
and though they grow and improve for a time, they will
soon tend visibly to their destruction. All that can be
done therefore to prolong the duration of a government, is to
draw it back, on every favourable occasion, to the first good
principles on which it was founded. A Patriot King affords
one of the occasions I mention in a free monarchial state,
and the very best that can ha pen. It should be improved
like snatches of fair weather at sea, to repair the
damages sustained in the list storm, and to prepare to
resist the next For she) a King cannot secure to his peas
plea succession of princes like hitusolf. He will do all he
can towards it by his example and by his instruction. But,
after all, the royal mantle will cot convey the spirit of pa-
triotism into another King. as the mantle of Eijah did the
gift of prophecy into naother prophet. The ut.i.ost he can
do, and that which do, erves the utmost gratitude from his
subjects, is to re:Awe good g.,verninent, to revive the spirit
of it, and to maintliu and confirm both, during the whole
course of his reign. Tile rest his people must do for them-
selves. If they do not, they will have none but themselves
to blame : if they do, they will have the principal obliga-
tion to him. His first care will be ti purge his Court, and
to call into administration those men he can ass:ire himself
will serve on the same principles on which hi intends to
govern. If, then, the precedent rt,ign ha; been bad, v.()
know how he will find the Court cu iipiev.d. The men in
power will be sonic of those adventurers, h.i.v an I bold, who
thrust and crowd themselves early into the of party,
and the management of affairs of state, often ithout tine
ability, always without true ambition, cr even the appear-
ances of virtue; who mean nothing more t:mti what is called
making a fortune, the acquisition at writitt to satisfy avarice.
and of titles and ribands to satisfy v :oily. Such as these
are sure to be employed by a weak or n x‘it ked King; they
impose on the first, and are chosen by the last. All the
prostitutes who set themselves to sale, all the locusts who
devour the land, with crowds of spies, parasites and .19 co-
phants, will surround the throne, under the patronage of
such Ministers; and whole swarms of little, noisome,
nameless insects will hum and buzz in every corner of the
Court. Such Ministers will be cast off, and such abetters of
a Ministry will be chased away together and at once by a
patriot king.

Information from Berlin state, that the Pelts are erecting
very strong entienchments at !'raga and Grochow ; the
troops under Sacken have taken Pultusk.
Letters from Memel of the 21st, and from Tilsit of the
19th, mention that the Russian• General Renuettampf has
arrived at Polangen and taken the command of the troops ;
there he has been strongly reinforced and is going to act on
the offensive.

PARIS, MAY 2.—Sunday being the King's fete, there
was to have been a grand review, but in consequence of a
dreadful wet Saturday, it was put off to next Sunday. Yes-
terday, however, until eight o'clock, was very fine, and ttLI
Champs Elysees were very gay. About four o'clock
the King, attended by two of his sons, four or five gentle
men, and as many servants, rode as slowly as possible front
Neuilli to the Palace. The crowd was most enthusiastic.
The King, with his bat off, bowed as repeatediy as he could,
looked remarkably well and pleased. He wore no mark of
royalty, and he and all his suite bad on plain clothes. Not
a soldier or national guard near him. Pray do not put into
the STAR the lies and nonsense sent from Paris. The hum-
bug of all the Paris correspondence ought to be explained.
PARIS, MAY 3.—The state of public opinion in France
is in no respect changed. Those who were for war, are fer
war still—and those who were for peace are for peace
still. Those who have cried aloud for the dissolution of the
Chamber of Deputies are not less importunate or e% en clamor-
ous. Those. on the other hand, who think the restoration
was very good, and the foreign and domestic situation of
France during the reign of the Bourbons, by no means so
bad as is sometimes represented, are for leaving Belgium to
settle her own affairs—are for leaving the Italian patriots to
be massacred by the Pope and the Duke of Modena—Pate
for leaving the Poles to the " tender mercies" or just dis-
pleasure of the Emperor of Russia—and even some of them
blame the interference of France in the affairs of Portugal ! !
These ;Len have no idea that the moment may ever arrive
when F. auce a ill want allies, and that then, having allowed
the peup:e of other countries to be oppressed, that France will
find Rhea neither among the kings nor among the mil-
lions ! Still less have these puny, sleepy, old men any
idea of a nation being grand, or generous, and of its espous-
ing the cause of liberty, human happiness, and civilisation.
Tt.ey carry this system into all their political and personal
°pi/lino., ; and, for this reason, they hate free trade, and hate
the removal of ease obstacles which prevent one nation
front ha% tug a tee intercourse with another. They under-
, stand no 1110. e about a•ithinetic than they do about politics.
/ • T!teirs is " the chandler's shop school." They comprehend
very well, how so much of French taxes, laid on so many
' bales of English goods, will produce so much mo:tey on all
the English goods imported ; but they cannot understand
how France will be the gainer, if she laid no taxes at all ;
and in return sent her wine into England free of duty. Thus
we are divided into two great parties—the friends to improve-
ment and the enemies to all change. There is a third party.
which is the ministerial party. Sometimes it is be. found
acting nobly, and at other times meanly. it is trying in the
two or three months of vacation to gain over partisans, and
hopes to secure a majority in the Chamber of Peers.