The Sun.
London, England, 1837-06-02 00:00:00

gentleman to the rank and position from which he was
unjustly removed.—Morning Advertiser.
We obServed yesterday the remarkable progress
backwards which Lord John Russell was making upon
the question of Church-rates. While we were writing
the Noble Lord was already meditating another coun-
termarch, which is to place a little further interval be-
tween himself and his pursuers. He was to bring on
upon Thursday the Bth his motion originally intended
for Thursday the Ist, for a Committee to consider the
truth of a fact which he has twice persuaded the
House of Commons positively to affirm. But last night
he was reminded that several motions in the hands of
other Members have precedence of his. motion on
Thursday, the Bth, and he readily admitted that he
had no intention to interfere with the introduction of
these motions. Now, among the motions to which
allusion was thus made stands a motion by Mr. Hume
on the subject of household suffrage, which excites a
great deal more interest than it ought, and which will
probably produce a long debate ; and also a motion by
Lord Dudley Stuart, on the subject of Cracow which
excites a great deal less interest than it ought, and
which will probably produce a longer debate. So
there is little hope of hearing from Lord John Rus-
sell, on Thursday, the Bth, his Lordship's most ex-
quisite reason for examining, by the labour of a Com-
mittee, the proposition which lie has already esta-
blished by a vote of the House. But, then, what be-
cemes of the Church-rate Committee ? Lord John
Russell will move the appointment of it on Friday, the
9th. On Friday, the 9th ? Impossible ! Why, it is the
day selected by Lord Morpeth for the tardy resump-
tion of the Irish Tithe Bill. It is even so, however.
Friday, the 9th, is to be given up to the debate on
the Church-rates' Committee ; and the Irish Tithe
Bill—the Bill which was of such pressing importance
two little years ago—the Bill whose principle pushed
the Whigs into Downing-street—the Bill which was
to exterminate Captain Rock, and to make the lives
of Protestant Parsons insurable—that Bill is to be
postponed to Monday, or Tuesday, or any day you
please—to the Greek kalends, perhaps—without a
whisper of censure from Mr. O'Connell, or a shriek
of shame from Mr. Sheil. And with this womlerful
regidarity is the business of the country conducted by
Lord John Russell.—Morning Post.
Our Foreign Secretary being resolved upon occu-
pying for another year, at least, the dignified office of
principal purveyor of human victims for the shamblss
of civil butchery in Spain, we are naturally led to in-
quire what has been done for the service of the Ma-
drid Government of La Granja Revolutionists, during
the last two years, by the British mercenaries, who
were decoyed by our peace-professing Ministers into
a " non-intervention war," in which they have been
defrauded by their allies, flowed worse than African
bondmen by their Chiefs, and dreadfully thinned by
the bullets and bayonets of that peasant-soldiery whom
they were to sweep from the face of the earth within
six weeks after landing on the Cantabrian coast, finish-
in their " glorious work," as an Evening organ of the
i'ilinistry assured the public they would, by " hanging
air Don Carlos." Whether a gibbet was sent out for
the purpose, among the other munitions of war, sup-
plied at the expense of this country, we cannot say ;
:such a machine would not be an inappropriate ac-
companiment of what Lord Lyndhurst called the
miserable buccaneering war." The British mer-
et. nary legion originally consisted of ten thousand
n.cri ; it has been reinforced, from time to time, by
.a!lont 5,000 more. What remains of that force of
5,000 men now ? The last accounts, previously to
the attack upon Irun, estimated the remnant at an
effective force of somP.thina better than 3,000 men
The Carlists' resistance at Irun the other day has still
further thinned its numbers, but we will put it down
a: 3,000. The question then arises, what has become
of the other 12,000 ? Can Lord Palmerston, with
his one-sided suspension of the Foreign Enlistment
Act, answer that question ? Of that 12,000, it is
supposed that between 3,000 and 4,000 have returned
to their native shores, either disgusted with the ser-
vice, and the violation of the promises made to them,
or invalided and crippled ; all pennyless, destitute, in
rags and wretchedness, bitterly complaining of the ill-
treatment which they have experienced from the
Spanish Government, and seeking in vain for re-
dress, as the reports of Mansion-house proceedings
and other police-offices testify. Is it to experience
similar treatment that Lord Palmerston and his
Whig colleagues are anxious to decoy new levies
of British subjects into the calamitous service of
a fraudulent Government, which has already proved
fatal to so many—in which 8,000 or 9,000 of
the subjects of the King of England have already
perished by the sword or disease—suffers by the
shameful neglect of supplying them with the comforts
and necessaries of a soldier's life, which has charac-
terised the whole of the unfeeling and dishonest con-
duct of the Government with whom they contracted ?
But we suspect the leave and license given by the re-
newed suspension of the Foreign Enlistment Act for
another year to British subjects, to earn a livelihood
by cutting the throats of the Basque people, with
whom their King and country have no quarrel, will
prove a dead letter. The living examples of non-in-
tervention " glory" that arc to be seen begging in our
streets and upon our way-sides, in defiance of consta-
bles and tread-wheels, have not been lost upon the
class of people to whom they belong. They see that
instead of returning with pockets filled with Spa-
nish doubloons, and knapsacks stuffed with plunder,
the poor deluded legionaries are thrown upon our
shores in a famishing half-naked condition, and only
qualified by the hardships and miseries of their two
years campaign, to pass the remainder of their lives
within the comfortless cells of a union bastile. But
what has the Legion done during its two years' ser-
vice for the advancement of the cause of the " inno-
cent Isabel ?" That is a question more easily asked
than answered. At St. Sebastian its campaigns be-
gan, and there its campaigns have ended. The effect
upon the general destinies of the kingdom, and the
war of succession, have been much the same as if
they were still encamped in the " Isle of Dugs," and
had never touched Spanish ground at all. Defeated
twice at Hernani—the last time with terrific loss, and
once put to flight before the mouldering walls of Font-
arabia—the Legion, with the assistance of 4,000 or
5,000 Spanish troops, has at length succeeded in
capturing the fortress and the Spanish half of the
frontier town of Irun, reducing, after two days' fight-
ing, a garrison which consisted of only 3,000 regular
Carlist troops, with 200 armed peasants. This mighty
exploit being achieved, and the gallant Evans hav-
ing been feasted and serenaded, as if the " deliver-
ance of Spain " had thereby been accomplished,
the Legion, or rather its shattered remnants, is
marched back again to the old " rabbit-ground" of St.
Sebastian, to repose upon its laurels, while Don Sebas-
tian, at the head of the flower of the Carlist forces,
marches unmolested from the mountains of Guipuzcoa
to the plains of Aragon, and threatens the capital
itself. It was with the view of retrieving the last de-
feat and disgrace of the legion that Lord Palmerston
and Colonel Wylde induced Espartero to abandon his
strong position at Bilboa, and to come with his 30,000
troops in British steamers to St. Sebastian, for the pur-
pose of producing some effect by the capture of Her-
mit' before the 10th of June, when the service of
the legion, according to its original contract, expires.
Troops were also brought from Santandar and Corunna,
so as to make the combined forces amount altogether
to near 40,000 men. There was also a powerful force
.of British artillery collected, together with marines, a
racket brigade, and all the necessary materiel of war
that Woolwich could supply at the expense of the British
people, whose money has been as uselessly as it has
been profusedly squandered in this " non-intervention
-war." In the meantime Don Sebastian, who had
for some months past been desirous of carrying the war
nearer the capital, but who was not strong enough to
force a passage into Arragon, to form a junction with
Cabrera and other chiefs, as long as he would have
hael. to encounter the combined forces of Espartero,
Iribarren, arid Burens, saw with delight that move-
ment undertaken by the grand army of Espartero
which favoured his own well-conceived plans. Encou-
i aging the project, he appeared to give up all idea of
a ,listant expedition, and seemed determined to defend
Hecuani. Scarcely had the grand Spanish army been
safely deposited within the walls of St. Sebastian,
when lie, with his 16 picked battalions, and arms for
more, marched out of the walls of Hernani, which the