The Sun.
London, England, 1837-08-29 00:00:00

chamber. Since then she has been held in a state o

the most abject thraldom by the Ministers, whom an
other military revolution has by a stroke of retributive
justice overthrown. In this revolution, which Espar-
tero has just achieved, the influence of France has
succeeded, and the scale in which English interven-
tion is placed kicks the beam. Those two Powers, un-
der the treacherous disguise of a seeming alliance, are
perpetually struggling for the mastery at Madrid, and,
by their revolutionary intrigues, unconsciously promo-
ting the success of the cause of Don Carlos, whom
they had ostensibly united to crush. In the mean time
the state of the Queen of Portugal is thus described
by the Pedroite Chief, the Marquis Saldanha
The palace of the daughter of our liberator has
became her dungeon—thus placed in a state of coer-
cien, she can only weep over the insults by which her
sacred and inviolable person are hourly reviled. Her
august husband is attacked by a foreign assassin," &c.
This has all happened since Lord Palmerston and his
Whig colleagues took the unfortunate heiress of the
house of Braganza under their protection. The same
party have made it a point to surround the youthful
Queen of England with their own exclusive circle,
male and female, Du avertite omen ! Nothing but
the power of an overruling Providence, the hereditary
spirit of the house of Brunswick, and the constitutional
loyalty of the British people, can save the dignity of
the British crown from the unhappy consequences of
such fatal protection.—Morning Herald.
We still think—notwithstanding the sundry exqui-
site reasons which our keen Contemporaries on the
Ministerial side of the question have advanced—that
there will be no inconsiderable embarrassment in carry-
ing on the Government with an exclusively Irish, and
very small, majority in the House of Commons, and
with no majority at all in the House of Lords. We
suspect, moreover, that Lord Melbourne is rather more
inclined to agree with our opinion in this matter than
with that expressed by our singularly subtile Contem-
poraries. His Lordship doubtless feels, and his Col-
leagues doubtless feel, even much more strongly than
he, that it would be a highly inconvenient thing for
them (and, after all they have said, rather ridiculous
into the bargain) to have to give up office just at the
time when the whole personal power of the Monarch
has been " placed unreservedly in their hands :" but,
strongly as they may feel this, and anxious as they
may be to avoid doing anything so unpleasant as the
resignation of the Government would be, yet they
cannot shut out from th.sir consideration the excessive
difficulty of going on. Their majority, be it again
remarked, is in one House very, very small, and
very, very Irish ; and, in another House, there is
no majority at all, except that which is directly
against them. Their majority in the House of
Commons is an O'Connell majority, and "no mis-
take." The majority against them in the House of
Lords comprises the first men in England for cha-
racter, intelligence, rank, and wealth. We perceive
that some of the Ministerial journals sympathise so
keenly with the conclusions which we draw from the
fact of the majority being exclusively Irish that they
make a desperate plunge, and endeavour to dive under
the difficulty, by denying the fact itself. This is very
bold, and it might perhaps have some effect but that
they enter into the why and wherefore, and endeavour
to explain how it is that the majority is not exclusively
Irish. Here they undo themselves. By attempting
too much they fail to do anything, and after expend-
ing a vast quantity of cleverness they leave the matter
just where they found it, namely, that the majority—
that is, the persons by whose votes the Government is
to prevail over the votes of its opponents—are exclu-
sively Irish representatives. The marvellously astute
and somewhat positive gentleman who upholds the
Ministerial banner in the Globe—
" Who is in logic a great critic,
Profoundly skilled in analytic"—

says it is "absurd" to talk of the majority of Minis-
ters as exclusively Irish. We beg the gentleman's
pardon. We think it is not absurd ; but, if it be, it
is an absurdity which all the refined reasoning he is
master of will not erase from the minds of the British
public. He might as well try to raise herrings from
hot-beds, or fish cucumbers from the depths of the
sea, as to persuade the public that, though the returns
of English Members give a majority of 22 against the
Government, and the returns of Members from the
whole of Great Britain give a majority of seven against
the Government, and though it requires the addition
of the Irish Members to save the Government from
being beaten on the very first day of their appearance
in the new House of Commons, yet the majority is not
exclusively Irish. If the majority be not exclusively
Irish, then take away the Irish, and there would
still be some majority. But it is not so. Take away
the Irish Members, and the present Administration,
called (but not rightly called) " British," would have
no majority at all—the majority would be against
them. But it would be a pity not to look for a
moment at the clever, candid reasoning by which the
erudite Ministerialist proves the absurdity of calling
th• Government majority " exclusively Irish." We
must " talk a word with this same learned Theban."
The majority, he says, does not consist of the thirty
or forty by which the Liberal Members would out-
number their Tory opponents, but of the whole body
by whom Ministers arc supported. This is the ex-
quisite reason—the sole argument—upon which the
charge against the O'Connell Ministry of being sup-
ported by an exclusively O'Connell majority is termed
"absurd." It is not worth our while to maintain a
dispute upon the meaning of the phrase " Parliamen-
tary majority." Whether in strictness it should signify
the whole body which is the greater in a division,
or that part of the whole body by which it exceeds
the lesser, may be a very interesting point for
philologers to discuss, but we don t care a rush about
it. To attempt to meet an important political fact

by a little trumpery verbal distinction like this is
highly worthy of that cleverness in which Whig-
Radicals rejoice ; but such quirks are, for all that,
very contemptible. We know very well—everybody
knows—that the term " majority" is constantly ap-
plied to that number of persons by which the greater
exceeds the less. For instance, in the last great divi-
sion which took place in the last Parliament the Op-
position votes came within
,five of the number of Mi-
nisterial votes, and then it was in everybody's mouth
that Ministers had a majority of five—" only five l"
There is nothing said almost to which verbal objec-
tions might not be made of equal cogency with that
which we have quoted. Suppose we were to remark
that the citizens of London had chosen three of the
dullest and one of the most conceited blockheads in
their community to represent them in Parliament, some
one might answer, " Not so ; these three dull block-
heads, and one conceited ditto, were not chosen by the
citizens of London, but by that part of them who (if
their own account of the matter may be trusted) are
the most liberal, the most enlightened, and the most
intelligent." Now this would be very true; but, after all,
what would it come to but that we had used the com-
mon mode of expression, instead of the literally exact
mode ? And this is the very utmost that the Whig-
Radical journalist can claim to have made out by his
logic. We may address him as Hamlet does the
Gravedigger, " How absolute the knave is :—we
must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us."
But, to come back to the real point at issue, the incon-
trovertible fact is this, that taking the whole body of
the Representatives of Great Britain, we find that,
upon a division of that body into Ministerialists and
Oppositionists, the Ministers are in a minority. If
they outnumber their opponents it must be by the aid
of Members returned from Ireland, in virtue of Mr.
O'Connell's conge d'elire. We therefore say again,
that the Ministerial majority is " exclusively Irish."
The Ministers may pray the Lord to deliver them from
such explainers of their position as the logical worthy
whose nice distinctions we have noticed—
" How haughtily he cocks his nose
To tell what every schoolboy hnows,
And with his finger and his thumb
Explaining, strikes opposers dumb."
To be struck dumb, however, is one thing, and to be
convinced is another. It would be worth something
to the Ministry—certainly worth several quarters' sa-
lary—if they could only find some one to convince the
public that the Ministerial majority in the new Parlia-
ment is not an exclusively Irish majority.—Morn.Post

ANICDOTE OP NAPOLEON AT ST. HELENA.—
We passed the Briars, a small white house, with out-build-
ings and fields, in a valley ; several hundred feet above
the sea. Here it will be remembered that Napoleon so-

journed for soma time, until Longrrood was prepared for
his reception ; and here he lived on friendly terms with
the family of Mr. Balcembe, the late proprietor. Miss
Balcombe was a great favourite with the Emperor : she
was very young ; and Napoleon used to condescend to
romp with her. However, one day she drew his sword,
and got him up in a corner ; lungeing at him and prevent-
ing his escape. " Now," said she with glee, " I have the
greatest man in the world at my mercy." The emperor, it
is said, was so annoyed at this sally, that he never spoke to
her after wards.—Alexander's Colonies of Western Africa.

A few days ago a labouring man, belonging to the
Hotel Dieu, took it into his head to go down to the banks
of the river near the bridge of the Archeveche, Paris, for
the purpose of washing a portion of his clothes. He had
no sooner taken them off than, by some accident, he lost
his balance, fell into the water, and was carried down by
the stream. his cries for help brought several boatmen to
the aid of the sinking man, and they were just about to
seize him after lie had risen to the surface, when he again
disappeared. The :calls for help of the persons who wit-
nessed the perilous situation of the peor fellow caused a
number of persons to assemble on the bridge of St. Charles,
which connects the two portions of the Hotel Dieu, and
amongst them was an aged man, who had only a few days
before arrived at the hospital, suffering from a cerebral fever.
The treatment of his case had, however, been so successful
that he had already become convalescent. As he stood
there anxiously awaiting the fate of the other, a fellow made
some cold-blooded remark about his having got a good bath,
upon which the old man said, " he shall not bathe alone,
at all events," and immediately plunged into the water to
his assistance. The boatmen took up the poor fellow out
of the water with very little delay, but he was already dead:
The labouring man was meantime got out, taken back to
the hospital, and restored to life.—Trench Paper.
CURRAN.—When a boy, I was one morning play-
ing at marbles in the village ball-alley, with a light heart and
lighter pocket. The gibe and the jest went gaily round,
when, suddenly, amongst appeared us a stranger, of a very
remarkable and very cheerful aspect ; his intrusion was not
the least restraint upon our merry little assemblage. He
was a benevolent creature, and the days of infancy (after
all, the happiest we shall ever sec), perhaps rose upon his
memory. God bless him ! I see his fine form, at the dis-
tance of half a century, just as he stood before me in the
little ball-alley in the days of my childhood. His name was
Boyse ; he was the Rector of Newmarket. To me he took
a particular fancy. I was winning, and fell of waggery ;
thinking everything that was eccentric, and by no means a
miser of my eccentricities ; every one was welcome to share
of them, and I had plenty to spare after having freighted
the company. Some sweetmeats easily bribed me home
with him. I learned from poor Boyse my alphabet and my
grammar, and the rudiments of the classics. He taught
me all he could, and then he sent me to school at Midle-
ton. In short he made a man of me. I recollect it was about
five-and-thirty years afterwards, when I bad risen to some
eminence at the bar, and when I had a seat in Parliament,
on my return one day from Court, I found an old gentle-
man seated alone in my drawing-room ; his feet familiarly
placed on each side of the Italian marble chimney-piece, and
his whole air bespeaking the consciousness of one quite at
home. He turned round—it was my friend of the ball-
alley. I rushed instinctively into his arms, and burst into
tears. Words cannot describe the scene which followed :

" You are right, Sir ; you are right. The chimney-piece
is yours—the pictures are yours—the house is yours. You
gave me all I have—my friend—my father—my benefactor !"
He dined with me : and in the evening I caught the tear
glistening in his fine blue eye, when he saw poor little Jack,
the creature of his bounty, rising in the House of Commons
to reply to a Right Honourable. Poor Boyse ! He is now
gone ; and no suitor had a larger deposit of practical bene-
volence in the Court above. This is his wine—let us drink
to his memory !
On one of the members of a corporation being in-
formed that the system of exclusive dealing was abating in
its virulence, he immediately exclaimed, " Then another
public meeting shall be called to revive it."
COUNTY VOTERS.—From what we have recently
heard, we imagine that the Tories in this neighbourhood
have been serving objections, almost indiscriminately, upon
county electors who voted for Stanley and Towneley at the
late election. Several cases have been mentioned to us,
where, if the facts were correctly stated by the parties,
there was no good ground of objection whatever ; and the
only motive for giving the notices appears to have been a
desire to harass the parties, by compelling them to attend
before the revising barrister to prove their qualifications, or
to strike them off the register for non-attendance. As
some of our readers may have received these notices
(which, we believe, are all signed " James Barratt, junior,")
and may not know what steps they ought to take in con-
sequence, we beg to inform them, that, if they will carry
them to the office of the Reform Association, No. 18,
Brown-street, they will receive all the information which
may be necessary to enable them to defend their franchise,
and to defeat the vexatious objections of the Tories. We
hope the next Session of Parliament will not be allowed to
pass over without the enactment of a law, by which per-
sons making unfounded objections will be compelled to pay
the expenses to which the parties objected to may be put
indefending their rights.—Manchester Guardian.
Shortly after seven o'clock last evening, consi-
derable excitement was occasioned at the West-end of the
town by the appearance of a balloon of considerable mag-
nitude at an altitude of about 1,500 feet, proceeding with
great speed from South West to North East. When over
St. James's Park it was suddenly seen to collapse, and to
descend with frightful velocity. The car being distinctly
visible, with a flag flying at each end, great fears were en-
tertained that it contained some intrepid mronaut, whose
life was in jeopardy : thousands of persons ran from all
directions towards Trafalgar-square, where it was supposed
the fall took place. The strong current of air which pre-
vailed at that moment, however, blew the machine beyond
that spot, and in the direction of Covent-garden, whither
the multitude followed, but passing over this, and catching
the chimneys of the houses, it crossed Great Russell and
Bow-streets, and finally descended in the burial-ground in
Drury-lane. The gates were immediately scaled by hun:
shreds, when it was found that the car was untenanted.
The greatest excitement prevailed till a late hour ; and as
the balloon had apparently burst, anxious enquiries were
made as to whom it belonged, from whence it ascended; &c.
Eventually it turned out to be no more than a machine of
tissue paper, set afloat by some young amateurs, who,
doubtless, are at present highly entertained at their suc-
cessful experiment in " creating a sensation."
A very fine old woodcock was killed in Melkin-
thorpe Wood, on the 11th inst., by one of the gamekeepers
of the Earl of Lonsdale,