The Sun. — 1850-04-09 (London, England)

PRICE SD.  disputant like being detected in a false statement, and the advantage gained by the opponent is immeasurably, great. It would, however, be perfectly useless to chronicle all the silly and childish notions put forward on the subject of piracy both in Borneo and China. We have ' no desire. to enter into a controversy with any particular party, our object being merely to silence a few outbursts of spleen emanating from a certain clique who, from sheer ignorance and with wilful misrepresentations, are engaged in disseminating false views upon the subject. Tu all well educated and enlightened men the case is so apparent, and the claims of the natives c.f the Archipelago are so obvious, that it is almost a task of supererogation to enter into a discussion upon them. " But as one drop of gall embitters sometimes much water, so the little band of economists may succeed in prejudicing some persons, who have not, perhaps, at hand the means of judging personally of the case. For the benefit of individuals so situated, we will enter into a few details respecting those peaceful and harmless tribes who wander over the seas of China and the Archipelago, and are attacked and slaughtered to carry out the sanguinary propensities of the Governor of Labuan. " The news of an audacious attack by a piratical horde upon an inoffensive trading vessel, the murder of the crew, the enslaving of the women, reaches England, and, with it, the intimation that measures are preparing to chastise the daring offender. Scarcely has the rumour arrived, than up start a host of sentimental sympathizers, not with those who are murdered—by no means—but with the perpetrators of the crime, over whose anticipated fate, the most extraordinary wailings are made by petty journalists and ignorant itinerant speech makers." _  The writer then proceeds to trace from authentic records the history of piracy in the seas of China and the Indian Archipelago for the last century, and brings it down to the destruction of the pirate fleet list year by the British cruisers, proving that the persons manning the fleet' so destroyed, the especial pets and proteges of the patrons of pirates in this country, were engaged in plunder, in murder, and in slave-trading and woman stealing up to the date of their destruction. It is an admirably written article, and should be studied by all those who do not wish to be misled by the mock sentimentalisms of the patrons of piracy under the guise of peace. Another paper, well worth the study of the statesman, the manufacturer, and the merchant, is that entitled " Commercial Mission to Japan." It is more than three years since we advocated the proposal for sending a mission on a grand scale to the Japan Islands for the purpose of reviving our former intercourse with that fertile empire, which produces the finest tea, the finest copper, the best cotton, and the best coal in the world, and which would willingly take our manufactures in exchange for its productions, thus opening to our manufacturers the, perhaps, very largest market in the world. We trust the propriety of dispatching a commercial mission to Japan will be again brought under the notice of Government, and we think the men of Manchester should lose no time in impressing the necessity of such a mission on her Majesty's Ministers. The observations on Courts-martial" are continued, and in his observations on the case of Captain Douglas, the writer says—  " We think it would be in vain throughout the whole series of the State Trials, those monuments of cruelty, oppression, and unbounded malignity, to find an instance in which greater outrage was done to the law, or greater injustice to the prisoner, than is furnished by this case of Captain Douglas." This is an excellent number of the United Service Magazine.  A