MR. SULLIVAN, M.P., AND THE PRINCE IMPERIAL.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 372, 4 June 1880, Page 19

MR. SULLIVAN, M.P., AND THE PRINCE IMPERIAL.

A committee has been formed for the purpose or organizing a public protest against the proposal to place a memorial to Prince Louis Napoleon in Westminster Abbey. In reply to an invitation to act on the committee, Mr. A. M. Sullivan, M.P., has addressed to Mr. Nettleton the following letter —

House of Commons, March 6, 1880. Sir, — In reply to your letter of yesterday's date inviting my presence at a representative conference to organise a " protest against the proposed memorial to Louis Napoleon " in Westminster Abbey, I regret to find myself so strongly and. completely opposed as I am on this subject to many gentleman with whom I agree on most other public questions. Like most Irishmen I love France, but lam neither Bourbonist, Bonapartist, Orleanist, Communist nor Republican. The outburst of national emotion, in deference to which a site for this memorial to the Prince Imperial was granted in Westminster Abbey, was creditable to the sympathetic feeUng and generosity of the British nation. Touched by the tragic circumstance of his untimely fate, and the heroic spirit of his last stand when so cruelly abandoned, the English people seemed unanimous in the demand that this tribute of sympathy should be paid to his memory. No political character attached to the proposition, and it is pitiable and pitiful that hateful political animosities and hatreds should now seek, as it were, to accomplish a triumph of insult over his ashes. No doubt Sir H. Lowe round some Englishmen to applaud him when he was heaping cowardly indignities on the head of the great uncle of this young Prince, and thought it quite a grand idea to style the victor of Austerlitz and Marengo " Monsieur Bonaparte." But the verdict of history, the voice of the world, has settled that issue, and has decreed eternal infamy to those who could thus meanly insult the helpless ana unfortunate. This young Prince fell in the uniform and under the colours of England ; a volunteer in the service of the country that had given his parents asylum and hospitality. Though I respect the chivalrous feeling which impelled his course of action, I deeply regret it, for the war in which he fell was one of the most unjust and wicked England ever waged. But the guilt and crime of that war must be on the heads of those whom England elects as a government, and who decree these aggressions, not on the brave soldiers who go where the national mandate sends them. Nothing more becomes a great nation than magnanimity, Your movemement, doomed to fail, is only calculated to blur and mar the grace and generosity of an act which all the world will applaud, and which none will misunderstand. —Yours very truly, A. M. Sullivan. — Charles Nettleton, Esq. —

New York, March 26.— A check drawn by the Treasury Department to the order of William H. Vanderbilt foi 310,500 dols., being three months' interest on 31,050,000 of United States 4 per cent, bonds was paid through the Cleaning House in this city yesterday. This represents an income of 3,450 dols. a day, of 143 dols. 70 per hour (or nearly that), nearly 2-40 dols. a minute, and of nearly 4 cents per second, sleeping and waking, It is, besides, only one of Vanderbilt's sources of revenue. This large investment in Government bonds was from the proceeds of his sale of 50,000,000 dols. New York Central stock. He has recently purchased a vast amount of real estate on Broadway and Fifth Avenue, and is now said to rank next to the Rothschilds in point of wealth. It is asserted by knowing ones that Vanderbilt is to day worth more than 130,000,000 dols.