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

FRIDAY, AUGUST 27, 1847.  On Tuesday evening the Duke DE CHOISEUL TRASLIN 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 has escaped the avenging hand of Justice, he has hurried before a more awful Tribunal than that of human authority, he has plunged into the mysterious abyss of Death, after imbruing his hands in his own blood and in the blood of his wretched wife. The departure of a miscreant covered with a guilt so tremendous must make one shudder, but cannot inspire any right-thinking man with inclination t 3 follow the spirit of the dead with :expressions of indignation. There is a sanctity even in the death-chamber of the assassin—even over the cadaverous corpse of the suicide—which hushes 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 how the Duchess DE CHOISEUL PRASLIN was killed by the hand of her husband ; the sleeping apartment in the hotel Praslin will possibly be shown as "a place a-: cursed" 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 which 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 with 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 incumbent upon us to turn from the immediate actors in this domestic tragedy, and scrutinize the conduct of those persons who were morally responsible for the life of the accused and for the qexkliation 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 ignominies of a trial and execution is beyond all denial. It were an insult to the common sense of the people 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 willingnesa 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. We cannot, of course,. distinctly assert that poisons were conveyed to the Duke DB PRASLIN at any direct instigation 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 ine'vita& 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 Paris 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 Wats endeavours to explain th? circumstances away by an extravagant assertion that a phial-bottle was discovered in the dressing. rn of the deceased assassin, containing the dregs of al poisonous draught compounded of arsenic and lauditnum together ! This is a mere prevarication, a mere quibble to hide the damning complicity of those who si'iould have appeased the popular indignation by vhiting upon the bead of the Duke DE PRASLIN the penalties of a crime which would inevitably have brou,lht the head of a coalheaver or an artizan to the axe 01' the guillotine. That the occupants of the Château should abhor the notion of the execution of a Peer so noble by birth .and position as the Gentleman Bedchamber to Madame la Duches the Bed'Olitt.EadNs, is very conceivable. They must instinctively e y have shrunk from such a _supposed profatzstionovfthe aristocracy. In yielding, however, to 'lance, the Government of France has n involved itself sentimentiv of repugave in a grievous and perilous dilemma. popular Theyindignation diverted upon themselves that -which was concentrated upon the suicide and the murderer. Public opinion has been so far rouse d in the metropolis, that it must by some weans be appeased. The people are not to be cajoled their fury ; their rage has been enkindled by the many recent evidences of crime, and licentiousness, and depravity among the higher classes of the community. That crime, that liie.entioustiess, that depravity, :mist be expiated, far the consequences will be very sudden and very appalling. France is not in the trifled with; it has been trifled with of 17... d to be ‘te too repeatedly by the disclosureand of corruption, an,..4 lity, and perjury, debauchery, and bloodsbe amomg its rulers and it minions of by the supreme coming ;it has been hastenepdrinces. The crisis is 40 the loftier reVer them. thank themselves for the Tuileries. I.Alt whenet them of tlatir schemes and their policy thel eonsequ,lnct 's that a nation enforces retributionretributi. 3n s remet nbe r and in ac is it ,evaded let them call to mind theiraav Spain, in.. Switzerland, in Portugal, procincts o the Tuileries ; let them bear in the eon the u. 'inatural friendship contracted betwe ea France and northern absolutism ; and let them,in the hour of the. Ir more selfish remorse, curse the d. ty