The Sun.
London, England, 1837-10-31 00:00:00

TBE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1837.

pared by the Ballot Union of Cirencester, the lan-
guage of which is so appropriate and convincing
that we cannot do better titan present our readers
with it—premising that we hope ere long, to see a
Ballot Union in every parish throughout the entire
United Kingdom
" To the Honourable the Commons of the United King-
dom of Great Britain and Ireland, in Parliament
assembled.
The Humble Petition of the undersigned Inhabitants of
the borough of Cirencester, and its Vicinity,
Sheweth,—That your Petitioners deeply regret the existence
of the disgracefnl rioting, drunkenness, debauchery, coercion,
intinzidation, exclusive dealing, bribery, and corruption of
every kind, and the commission of the foul crime of Murder,
which have taken place and been committed in numerous
places at the late election, which result from open voting, and
which render it imperative on all good men to seek the attain-
ment of the Ballot with all their might, as the only cff•ctual
remedy for such evils. That the time is arrived when any fur-
ther delay in using every possible means for procuring protec-
tion to the electors of the United Kingdom, will be highly
criminal. That witnessing the coercion which is exercised
over the electors, your Petitioners are painfully convinced that
an extension of the suffrage without secret voting, would
greatly increase the present corrupt practices. That your Peti-
tioners disclaim all party motives, feelings, or prejudice, and
are convinced that Election by Ballot would equally protect
the honest candidate against the corrupt voter, and the honest
voter against a corrupt candidate. That the sense of the people
can only be taken by secret voting, and that elections by
open voting are entirely fallacious.
" Your petitioners therefore humbly pray that the first Act
of her Majesty's new Parliament will be an Act for Vote
by Ballot."
To offer a word in support of the principle of pro-
tecting the Voter by Ballot were a work of superoga-
tion, as well as an insult to the common-sense of our
readers. The expediency alone of its introduction at
the present period can be made matter for discussion.
And on this point men " out of doors," whatever
wavcrers elsewhere may think, have made up their
minds : the Ministers ought to seize the golden oppor-
tunity which the new Parliament will present to them
for carrying the question of Vote by Ballot. If the
Court be really with the MELBOURNE Administra-
tion, no difficulty can occur which might not be sur-
mounted by the dread of a dissolution, and a deter-
mination, if needs be, to purify the Peerage by a
liberal infusion of fresh and better blood. We do,
therefore, earnestly desire and confidently hope, that
the great grievance of unprotected voting—that crying
evil and enormous wrong of our electoral system—will
be redressed in the ensuing session. Without pro-
tection to the humble voter the franchise is worse
than nugatory : it acts as a great and positive evil upon
the possessor. The political plague spot, then, of
our mode of voting must be cured effectually and
promptly ; for in the Ballot alone lies the salvation of
the country.

By the -arrival of the Iberia steamer, at Falmouth,
from the Tagus, we have received advices from Lisbon
to the 25th inst. Senhors CASTRO PEREIRA and
BOVEDA have positively refused to continue in office
as Ministers of the War and Foreign Departments.
Who are to be their successors was not known, as it
seems to be the study of every man of character and
influence in Portugal to have nothing to do with the
Cabinet. The Cortes were engaged with their consti-
tutional labours. To make the QUEEN amends for
conferring on the people the right of electing the
House of Peers, they had voted, by a majority of 44
votes to 17, that her Most Faithful MAJESTY should
be empowered to prorogue and dissolve the Cortcs at
pleasure. The Chambers, however, must be sum-
moned again within a limited time, and should the
QUEEN decline so to summon them, they can meet cf
their own authority, and enter upon the discharge of
their proper representative functions without the formal
sanction of the Crown.

We are informed that the Portuguese Cabinet is
doing all in its power to induce our Government to re-
cal Lord HOWARD DE WALDEN, our Ambassador at
the Court of Lisbon. For this purpose a note has
been addressed to Lord PALMERSTON, suggesting
that the Ministers of Queen DONNA MARIA would
prefer corresponding directly with his Lordship. This,
of course, is tantamount to a request that Lord
HOWARD DE WALDEN may be recalled forthwith.
What course Lord PALMERSTON will pursue we
know not. The Queen of PORTUGAL disapproves of
the conduct of her Ministers in this affair. For
our own part, we think the question of secon-
dary importance. Lord HOWARD DE WALDEN
has rendered England very little service by his
residence at Lisbon, and except in the recent
case of the Viscount DAS ANTAS' proclamation, was
at no trouble to assert the inviolability of our national
honour. It may be possible, too, that he held out
expectations to the QUEEN, in the event of the late
rebellion succeeding, which might justify the fears of
the Constitutionalists of the observance by England
of a strict neutrality. We therefore repeat, that to
us the question of his Lordship's recal is one of no
national importance.

Senhor MANDEL DE PAssos, the late Minister
of Finance, was so dangerously ill when the Iberia
sailed that his life was despaired of. his death at
the present moment would he a national calamity.
He is one of the few honest patriots of whom Portu-
gal can yet boast. Admiral NAPIER has arrived in
England.

The whole of the Paris „Journals of Sunday have
been received. All the Liberal Opposition prints con-
tend that the victory of the French in Africa was pur-
chased at a frightful sacrifice of human life—that in
the attack on Constantine a thousand French soldiers
were killed, and thrice as many wounded—and they
emphatically ask what occasion was thew for such a
waste of human life ? The Moniteur and the Charie
maintain that the despatches were correct, and that no
reliance ought to be placed on statements vouched for
merely by extracts from pretended letters from Con-
stantine.

On Friday the medical students accused of hav-
ing plotted the murder of the KING, during the
celebration of the ORLEANS' marriage festival at
the Hotel de Ville, were brought to trial, and
acquitted. The witnesses for the prosecution were
two sergeants and a corporal, whose evidence was
not believed by the jury. These wretches were
themselves the concoctors of a plot which nearly ter-.
initiated in the judicial murder of four innocent young
men, who have already been doomed to endure months
of imprisonment under the suspicion of being inten-
tionally guilty of parricide. We shall see what steps
the Government will take to punish these false wit-
nesses. Bad as was the state of the criminal law in
England before time passing of Lord JOHN RUSSELL'S
Acts, our code was perfection itself compared with
the practice of the criminal tribunals of France.
We have received advices of the arrival at Estella
of the Infante DON SEBASTIA N. It is further ru-
moured that the Pretender was following in the wake
of his nephew, and had, on the 23d, approached to
within a few leagues of the Ebro, with the intention
of wintering in Navarre. The heavy rains were
beginning to render the river impassable at the
fords, and it was the opinion of the Carlist Chiefs, that
were the Ebro to rise it would be impossible to effect
the passage of the river at any of the bridges, as the
QUEEN'S Generals were hanging on their rear, and
could anticipate their movements. On the 22d Es-
PA RTEnO was close to the city of Soria, in pursuit of
the main body of the Carlists, who he supposed to be
i
sheltered n the pine woods in that neighbourhood. It
was rumoured at Sarragossa on the 23d that Don
CARLOS actually crossed the Ebro on the night of
the 21st. and morning of the 22d ; nor was the report
contradicted when the latest advices left that city.
The following are extracts from the Journals :
(Private Correspondence of the Constitutionnel.)
SARiGOsSA, OCT. 22.—General Oraa has occupied with

his division the villages around Cantavieja. His brave sol-
diers have carried the outworks, and it is this which has
given rise to the report of the taking of the fort of Canta-
vitja. Oraa has been obliged to detach Borso's brigade to
cheek the bands of Cabanero ; but as soon as that brigade
returns he will storm the place. We have had no news of
his army these three days, for some detachments of the
Chief Sanz infest the country between Teruel and Saragossa.
OLORON, OCT. 24.—1 can announce to you without he-
sitation that the Pretender is at his old covert at Estella.
This is also the opinion of the Captain-Gcneral of Arragon.
The National Guards of Valcarlos and Isara behave like
heroes, and their bravery is such, that the faction of Zubiri
has not yet been able to enter those towns.