The Sun. — 1847-08-27 (London, England)

LON )')N, FRIDAY, AUGUST 27, 1847.  On Tuesday evening the Duke DE CHOISEEL PRASLIN committed suicide while confined in the  prison of the Luxembourg. This, we take it, is a conclusive testimony that the deceased nobleman was in truth the 'murderer of the mother of his nine children.. He bras escaped the avenging hand of Justice, he has hurried before a more awful Tribunal than that of hriman authority, he has plunged into the mysterious abyss of Death, after imbruing his bands in his o'Nn.blood and in the blood of his wretched wife. 'The departure of a miscreant covered with a guilt so tremendous must mar-e one shudder, but oanzt,st inspire any right-thinking man with inplirration to follow the spirit of the de.o with :expressions of indignation. There is a sangity Nen  in •the death-chamber of the assassin—even over the  ,cadaverous corpse of the suicide—which bushes the -voice of wrath, and reminds us that the power of man is impotent before the majesty of the grave. Years hence the tale will be told bow the Duchess DE Cuotssux. PaAsmx was killed by the hand of her I:tti.sband-; the sleeping apartment in the hotel Praslin will possibly be shown as " a place accursed" to those who are yet unborn ; the print of the bloody hand upon the wall will tell of the struggle of the poor lady in her last agony, and will attest the spot in NiOuldh the deed was perpetrated, like the stains upon  the floor of Holyrood , or the broken flag-stones in  the dungeon of Berkeley Castle. With ourselves, however, this horrible occurrence must be associated 'filth very different considerations. The self-destruction of the 'Peer who, within the last fortnight, has rendered the name of an august family infamous, and covered its. survivors with shame and desolation; makes it i ncumbent upon us to turn from the imme4 diate acte I% in this domestic tragedy, and scrutinizEi the cone uct of thOse persons who were morally responsi Me for the life of the accused and for the expiatic in of his crime in the event of his conviction. That; the Government has been most culpable in permitting the Duke DE PRASLIN to escape the igno— .  minies of a trial and execution is beyond all denial. It were an insult to the common sense of the peoPlf: for the authorities to pretend that the suicide was a casualty which occurred wholly and entirely without their connivance. Every circumstance that has transpired since the fatal morning of Wednesday, the 18th instant, has betrayed the willingness of the Government, or rather of the subordinate officers of the Government, to facilitate that catastrophe which has just deprived the ducal murderer of an existence which had become loathsome and unendurable. AVe cannot, of coarse, distinctly assert that poisons were conveyed to the Duke DE PRASLIN at any direct in:ligation:l from a high quarter, or that the transmission of that instrument of death was under the express permission of his official guardians, but we must most plainly and emphatically pronounce our conviction that indirectly the authorities have been accomplices in the suicide—that opportunities must have been intentionally afforded—that precautions must have been wilfully foregone—that efficient remedies must have been purposely neglected. These inferences are inevitable from the facts that have transpired. Why, of itself, is it not a most suspicious particular, that during his life, when in confinement, the Duke DE CHOISEUL PRASLIN is treated as one who had swallowed laudanum, and after his decease it is discovered that he had saved himself from the bar and the scaffold by a dose of arsenic ? Antidotes are administered for laudanum, when they should have been antidotes for arsenic, and yet some of the most distinguished physicians in Paria were summoned to the aid of the criminal in the prison of the Luxembourg ! how is this bewildering and anomalous fact accounted for ? Why the Journal des Debars endeavours to explain the circumstances away by an extravagant assertion that a phial-bottle was discovered in the dressinggown of the deceased assassin, containing the dregs of a poisonous draught compounded of arsenic and laudanum together! This is a mere prevarication, a mere quibble to hide the damning complicity of those who should have appeased the popular indignation by visiting upon the head of the Duke DE PRASLIN the penalties of a crime which would inevitably have brought the head of a coalheaver or an artizan to the axe of the guillotine.  That the occupants of the Chateau should abhor the notion of the execution of a Peer so noble by birth and position as the Gentleman of the Bedchamber to Madame la Duchesse D'ORLEANSf 15 very conceivable. They must instinctively have shrunk from such a supposed profanation of the aristocracy. In yielding, however, to this sentiment of repug• Dances the Government of France has involved itself in a grievous and perilous dilemma. They have diverted upon themselves that popular indignation which was concentrated upon the suicide and the murderer. Public opinion has been so far roused in the metropolis, that it must by some means. be appeased. The people are not to be cajoled in their fury ; their rage has been enkindled recent evidences of crime, and by the many licentiousness, and depravity among the higher classes of the community..avit Thmatustcrimbee, expiated, or Ilicentiousness, that depl.ll -b'e very sudden and or the consequences very appalling. Fr fiance not in ' the mood to be ava trifled with ; it has been trifledsNriutphtioofn, late nd too en repeatedly by the disclosure of corruption, lity, and perjury, and debauchery, anidleblcooridssishedi among its rulers and its princes. coming ; it has been hastened by the supreme ruler and the loftier minions of the Tuileries. Let them thank themselves for the consequences of their schemes and their policy; let them remember that a nation enforces retribution when retribution is evaded ; let them call to mind their vicious acts in Spain, in Switzerland, in Portugal, and in the very precincts of the Tuileries ; let them hear in recollection the unnatural friendship contracted between France and northern absolutism ; and let them, in the hour of their more selfish remorse, curse the day  when they permitted the suicide of the Duke