The Sun.
London, England, 1837-06-15 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The hopes raised the other day of a decisive blow
about to be struck against the Pretender in North
Spain have vanished with the last news. We have
long been told of the impossibility of the forcing the
insurgents to a battle on fair terms in the mountainous
region of the province in which they are in the
ascendant. But here Don Carlos, his forces, and his
mock Court were found in Aragon, in the plain, in
the midst of a country not favourable to him. He
was inclosed in a town, surrounded by forces at least
equal to his own, yet he has been allowed to escape,
and to pass a large river into the mountains of Cata-
lonia, where such an opportunity may not soon
again occur. We are not prune to cast the impu-
tation of treason on persons and events with
which even those on the spot find it difficult to be
thoroughly acquainted. Oraa is an old and a cau-
tious General, infinitely more cautious even than
Espartero, around whose neck he was a very
mill-stone during the operations which terminated
in the relief of Bilboa. Oraa knew his troops,
of whom those brought from Valencia are little to be
depended on. To attack the Carlists with them in
the town of Barbastro he certainly would not et-
tempt after the failure of Iribarren at Huesca. But
he has even shrunk from keeping a strict blockade,
from famishing them, and thus forcing the Carlists
to make a desperate attack upon some one of the
surrounding divisions. Neither Carlists nor Chris-
tinos will make a desperate attack of this kind
unless they are forced to it; and each party seems
to have it for a maxim not to force its antagonist
to any such extraordinary efrorts. Oraa, accordingly,
has made a bridge for the enemy in another
province ; and it is only those that understand
a little of the Spanish mode of warfare who can
refrain from attributing such conduct to treason.
Espartero, it seems, instead of pushing any
force after the Pretender, has turned back towards
Estella. Oraa may have continued to blockade
the Carlists in expectation of Espartero coming up
to his aid, and may have abandoned it on learning
that Espartero refused to quit Navarre altogether,
and venture with his whole force in pursuit of the
Pretender's expedition. Espartero was perhaps right
in refusing to withdraw his whole force from Navarre,
where the breaking up of the British Legion might
lease a very weak division of 10,000 men, insufficient
to defend the line of Hernani. The Commander-in-
Chief might, however, have made a march upon Bar-
bastro, or dispatched six or eight battalions, to make
Oraa decidedly superior to the Carlists. This, indeed,
was the intention with which he undertook his late
march, purposing himself to turn from Pampluna upon
Estella, and clear the Borunda and the vicinity of the
Ebro of the scattered bands which infest them. The
fall of Lerin must have rendered this still more requi-
site. The conclusion from all this is, that the pre-
sent campaign is likely to be productive of nothing
decisive. The best judges consider the expedi-
tion to Catalonia to he a foolish enterprise on the
part of Don Carlos. He has no partisans in Cata-
lonia who are not already armed, already acting
in bands ; and any attempt to organise them in a
more regular army would diminish their efficiency, and
prove, as it has always proved, an utter failure. As
to a march on Madrid, the Pretender would no more
attew:)t it than he would attempt a general action, ex-
cept with very superior numbers, and these he cannot
muster. The Queen's troops are numerous, well
armed, well supplied. Whltevcr may be the difficulty
of procuring money at Madrid, Espartcro and his
soldiers want for nothing ; and immense credit is due
to M. -24,1hlinbal for the activity and attention lie 11,-is
pad to this point. The Spanili Constitutional Ge-
nerals have under their command an ample force to
frustrate and repel any serious attempt on the part of
the Carlists. But, on Cie other heed, it must be ad-
mitted that such is tha nature of this army and its
Generals, that no decisive blow or victory is to be ex-
pected from it or them. They will at most prolong
the war, which, if left to Spaniards merely, may last
this fifty, nay, this hundred, years.—illorn. Chronicle.

As a friend and master—as a husband and father—
as a man, and as the Sovereign of a free people—King
'illiam IV. has excited in a powerful manner the
sympathies of every honest Englishman, by the very
serious nature of the malady under which, for some
weeks past, lie has been suffering—we fear we might
with truth► say, sinking—for greatly is it to be appre-
hended, that whatever changes may have occurred in
the personal condition of his Majesty, they cannot be
regarded as on the side of convalescence. To speak
frankly our own feelings, both of lively alarm and of
deep and (with all deference) affectionate concern, we
acknowledge ourselves to be hopeless of any but
one—and that the least cheering —result of the malady,
or complication of maladies, which has of late op-
pressed the frame of the kind and good King William.
Nor, so far as human judgment can determine, do we
understand that there exists the least rational ground
for conjecturing that the event will be long postponed.
Intermediate matters being, therefore, of compara-
tively second-rate importance, the question which
forces itself on every mind gifted with the slightest
forethought is, what will be the position of this country
should it please Providence to deprive us of the reign-
ing Sovereign ? The presumptive heiress to the crown
is a Princess, we believe, of no ordinary promise. She
is said to be a young lady of much excellence of dis-
position, of much natural discernment, and, what
is ines:im able when accompanied by good sense,
much of that strength and firmness of character which
eminently distinguished, in the brightest periods of
his life, one of her illustrious ancestors, who sat upon
the throne of England—we mean the paternal grand-
father of her Royal Highness—the upright and un-
bending George 111. How far the native endow-
ments of the Princess Victoria may have been un-
proved by a judicious and generous culture it is not for
us to pronounce. We are bound to hope that those
who were either nominally intrusted with the educa-
tion of a young personage destined to fill a station so
exalted, and, what is a subject of far wider interest, to
discharge functions so grave and manifold, and to sus-
tain a responsibility so awful, or if not the nominal
depositories of such a trust, we are to hope at least that
those who may have substantially superseded them
in their office, and taken upon themselves the practical
communication to her youthful mind of that knowledge
by which it ought to have been diligently furnished,
and of those various habits and attainments which are
not ornamental merely, but indispensable to him or her
who wears a crown—we must hope, we say, that those
persons, whoever they were, may have endeavoured
conscientiously to stamp upon her heart, not alone the
feminine, but the royal virtues, and to have opened the
spirit of the future Queen of England to the breadth
and grandeur of her fast-approaching obligations, po-
litical as well as moral. In referring to that course
of bringing up which would be best adapted to the
formation of a British Sovereign, we beg to disclaim
ail design whatever of insinuating as a matter of fact,
that justice has not been rendered to the Princess
Victoria by those to whom her Royal Highness had
the most undoubted right to demand it. We do de-
voutly pray that those persons may be found to have
conducted her education, and, as an essential portion
of it, her intercourse with society, under a noble and
lofty regard to her fitness for the duties of a Queen of
England, apart from all mean and selfish considerations
of what might most contribute, by and by, to their
own aggrandisement or indulgence. It is manifest
that the same attainments .which might tend to make
an accomplished woman in private life must be wholly
insufficient for a Queen Regnant of Great Britain.
A person of her illustrious rank and trying func-
tions ought to be prepared in early life to think for
herself—to form, under difficult circumstances, prompt
and independent resolutions—to employ her own dis.
cernment upon the characters of all around her—to
take nothing upon trust ; she ought to be influenced by
her elders through reason rather than coercion—to be
taught how to detect the deceitful, to keep the pre-
sumptuous aloof, to hold intriguers in abhorrence. She
ought to be treated even, while a child, with an eye
to her early maturity. Above all this, she ought not,
after her approach to womanhood, to be made the sub-
ject of jealous or vexatious restraint, or be continued
in a state of narrow pupillage after she had reached
that position wherein she might be called upon for the
exercise of a responsible will, of a disciplined judg-
ment,- and an enlarged intelligence. Much of the

sound or unsound which may have predominated in
the moral and intellectual training of this illustrious 1
and most interesting Princess will soon, according to
all human appearances, be brought into extensive ac-
tion, and lie exposed to universal observation. She
has a mighty but honest and tolerant people to pro-
pitiate. She has a glorious political edifice wherein to
shelter herself, and to secure protection for others.
She will not' justify the historian in recording that the
British Monarchy has perished with William IV., or
that the best interests of the reformed religion through-
out this realm have by the successor of King William
been abandonrd and betrayed. May that Providence
through whom Kings reign, and Princes decree jus-
tice, direct, support, and prosper her.—Times.
It is our gratifying duty this day to record another
Conservative manifestation, of greater importance and
value than any which the metropolis has yet exhi-
bited ; we allude to the festival of the City of London
ConsGcvative Association, for a full and accurate de-
scription of which, together with a faithful report of
the eloquent speeches delivered on the occasion, we
refer to another part of our paper. We could almost
wish that some of those sceptics, or those perverse and
hypocritical pretenders rather, who affect to doubt the
existence of a powerful re-action in the political mind
and temper of the people of this country had been pre-
sent yesterday in the immense pavilion erected for the
accommodation of the Conservatives of the city of
London, and which, capacious as it is, scarcely sufficed
to contain the multitudes of respectable and influential
men who crowded it in every part—we could have
wished, we say, that these sceptics, real or pretended,
had been present, that their doubts might at once have
been removed, or then obstinacy and Ailful unbelief have
been put to open shame, were it not that they would too
probably have interrupted the effusions of eloquence,
and truth, and loyalty which their unhappy state of
mind must unfit them to enjoy, and have marred the
generous enthusiasm which they could not partake.
It will be recollected that, about the same petiod of the
last year, the Conservative Association of the city of
London held its first public festival. On that occa-
sion it was thought, and justly thought, a great
triumph of the Conservative cause, that it could draw
together an assemblage as numerous as could conve-
niently be accommodated in Covent-garden. Theatre.
That Has, indeed, a numerous and splendid assembly,
and it afforded a clear and unquestionah'e proof, that
the reaction had not only commenced, but had already
made considerable progress. The number who dined
at the festival last year was, if we recollect right, about
1,000. But what a giant stride in the onward pro-
gress of Conservatism has been made since the festival
of last year I There is now no theatre or other building
in the metropolis sufficiently spacious to receive the
multitudes who rush to place themselves, in the face
of the world, under the Conservative banner. The
Conservatives of the City of London cannot now meet
at all, or must ne2t slum of their fair, proportionr,
unless a building be erected for the purpose of receiv-
ing their accumulated numbers. We find the 1,000
gentlearen who met at Covent-T.arden multiplied in
the space of a single year into 2,500. If, as seems
most probable, this increase of numbers should pro-
ceed in an undiminished ratio, it becomes a matter of
anxious inquiry whether it will be physically possible
next year to enclose and roof in a space sufficiently
large for the accommodation of a general meeting of
the Conservatives of the City of London. And is it
not, as some of the speakers finely and justly remarked,
an extraordinary and an intolerable thing that the mul-
titude of citizens of which we yesterday witnessed the
magnificent arra)", a multitude comprehending so large
a proportion of the wealth, intelligence, and respec-
tability of the City of London, should be without a
single representative of their political opinions in that
House of Parliament which, according to the Con-
stitution of England, ought to represent the people?
This, we may venture to say, is a state of things too
unnatural and monstrous to be permanent. The meet-
ing of yesterday proves that the Conservatives of the
City of London can, if they will, return at the next
election three at least out of the four Members which
that city gives to the House of Commons ; and we
hope we do not reason rashly when we conclude from
the spirit displayed at this meeting that they will if
they can.-111o7ning Post.

There is nothing carries off the shame of a dis-
graceful act, and serves even to screen its enormity,
so much as cool effrontery in its perpetration. By
the exercise of this audacious self-possession the most
scandalous acts have been frequently committed with-
out detection, or when detected have escaped with im-
punity in the amazement excited by the imperturbable
impudence evinced in their accomplishment. It is
this daring assurance which has enabled impostors of
all kinds to practise upon the credulity, forbearance,
or weakness of their fellow men, and to which the
founders of sects and creeds are especially indebted
—the inexperienced believing it impossible that de-
ception or criminality can exist without evincing some
symptom of shame, some outward demonstration of
their presence, confide in appearances, and suspect
not the guile or the guilt which may lurk behind a
fair face, or wait upon a bold and open bearing. A
remarkable instance of this unblushing assurance was
exhibited by the Bishop of London in the House of
Lords on Tuesday night, when, with the most perfect
unwincing self-complacency, his Grace presented a
petition against the establishment of public cemeteries
in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, on the ground
that they would in a great measure deprive clergymen
of the fees which they now exact for burying the dead,
or for allowing them to be buried in Church ground.
We really arc at a loss for language to designate as it
deserves the nature of this petition. What !is it not
enough that during life conformists and non-confor-
mists should be subjected to the undue and misappro-
priated exactions of the Church, without being made
tributary to its inflictions even in death ? Are the
clergymen of the Established Church so insatiable in
their craving- after the substance of others, that, not
content with the contributions they levy on the
they intit come vampire-like to feed at the grav;?
We are aware that many of the most worthy MiniSters
of the established religion are most inadequately paid ;
but why not make a suitable provision for them from
the exuberant revenues of their more wealthy brethren,
rather than leave them dependant on fees which de-
grades them in their own and the public estimation,
and which are paid for ceremonies which it would
be far more to the interest of the Church to per-
form gratuitously, or at least without any exactions
beyond its general revenue ? In some parishes—
according to the statement of his Grace of London
—these fees amount to 1501. annually—a seri-
ous amount, certainly, to the ill-paid incumbent ;
but the evil is, that it should ever have been. drawn
from such a source. However, even a similar amount
is not legally secured to the Dissenting Clergymen,
and yet we never hear complaints of their impo-
verished condition, nor claims for supporting them at
the expense of any sect but their own. The most dis-
gusting part of this prelatical exhibition was the af-
fected apprehension that, if further endowments were
not granted to the Church, there would be a la-
mentable dearth of religious instruction. We never
hear so much anxiety about religious instruction from
Churchmen as when the dues are in jeopardy. It is
then their zcal for the diffusion of the word burns
most fervently. It is well known that the exhalations
from grave-yards, especially in crowded cities, are of a
most noxious character, and we hope that the health
and convenience of the metropolis will not be sacrificed
to the over-reaching avarice of Churchmen—even if
longevity should be proved to impair the amount of
their burial fees.—Morning Advertiser.
Mr. Hume brings forward a motion to-night on the
subject of enclosing Primrose-hill. We are glad to
see the friends of the people interesting themselves, as
they ought, in the agitation of subjects like these,
which affect equally the morals and recreations of the
industrious class. The preservation of the old subur-
ban walks of the metropolis does, in fact, cal: for the
vigilant advocacy of the friends of the people, in the
same proportion and degree as the attempt to restrict
the people's recreations by the absurd and infamous
Sabbath Protection Bill calls for their vigorous resist-
ance. By the way, it is a curious inconsistency—a
curiosa iyelicitas—in the spirit and mode in which
our legislative business is conducted—that on the same
night whereon there appeared a majority in the House
of Commons in favour of Sunday misery and Sun-