The Sun.
London, England, 1839-08-12 00:00:00

tiLIE s UN,

and Bristol, and the plea that the punish-
ment for an offence is to remain t!apito.l 1
because others have suffered for it, is the plea, not
of civilized Christians advancing in improvement,
but the plea of barbarous tyranny, following out its
vindictive spirit under the cloak of justitet The
Government admit by their own acts that severity .
is not the best way to prevent crime or
reconcile the people to the law—they have
found the beneficial effects of Lord NORMANBY'S
humane and conciliatory administration of justice
on the Irish, and they cannot fail to see the policy
and the humanity also of applying the same prin-
ciple to the equally kind-hearted and grateful,
though at present misguided, people of England.
An act of mercy like this, for which petitions will
be sent up in hundreds, would do much to
strengthen the hands of Government, and recon-
cile the excited multitudes in the middle and
northern districts to existing laws. The full
execution of the sentence would do more than
excite sympathy—it would excite the worst
feelings against the SOVEREIGN and her advisers,
who had remitted punishment even for murder, but
who would not listen to the voice of mercy in be-
half of men led astray by wicked demagogues and
convicted of crimes infinitely less atrocious.
Since writing the above we see from our Bir-
mingham Correspondence that the greatest excite-
ment prevails in that quarter on the subject—the
excitement will spread over the country, and stern
severity on the part,of the Home Government is all
that is wanting to raise these unfortunate convicts
to the rank of martyrs.

We have already called the attention of our
readers to the ridiculous position in which the
House of Lords has placed itself by its proceed-
ings on the question of the Portuguese Slave Trade.
Anything more eminently absurd than the conduct
of that body of Gothamites, it is hardly possible to
imagine. The slave trade was the very last ques-
tion which men endowed with a particle of common
sense would have chosen as the subject of a party
contest, for there is no point of policy on which
men of all parties, out of doors, are so unanimous as
on the absolute necessity of putting an end to
the horrible enormities of that daily increasing
trade. We did not expect that in the considera-
tion of that or any other question the Lords would
give- much weight to the arguments derived from
humanity and justice, which might be brought to
bear upon it. Their starvation laws, and other enact-
ments of the same heartless description, forbade
us to entertain any hope of that kind ; but
we did think that they would not have
been guilty of committing an act of gra-
tuitous, wanton, and wide-spread mischief ; an act,
in short, from which no possible benefit could
result to them, but which, from the universal con-
demnation which it calls forth,_ must seriously da-
mage any little character they can pretend to.
Their excuse—what an excuse I—is that they did it
. .

because the Duke of WELLINGTON desired them
So the Noble Duke, as his intellectual faculties
decay—and every day affords new proofs of that
fact—is to be installed thinker-general for the
irresponsible branch of the Legislature ! Lord
BROUGHAM next night did all he could to undo
what these sagacious Senators had done. He bam-
boozled them into the belief that they might with-
out the least inconsistency, vote the address to the
QUEEN proposed by him, which address, be it re-
marked, pledged their Lordships to do the very
thing that they had solemnly decided not to do.
We are far from blaming the Learned Lord for
having recourse to his unrivalled power of mystifi-
cation on this occasion. His Address was one of
those happy contrivances happily executed, which
must elicit unqualified approbation.
But the Lords are not yet entirely out of the
scrape. They have a more humiliating process to
go through still ; a considerable quantity of word-
eating remains yet to be accomplished. It would
be observed that on Thursday night Lord PAL-
MERSTON brought in the same Bill which has
already been so cavalierly rejected by them, and that
the Standing Orders of the House were suspended
that it might pass through its various stages in
double quick time. Sir ROBERT INGLIS, Sir
THOMAS ACLAND, and other Tory chiefs, strongly
supported the Bill. The former Gentleman, who
is perhaps the honestest man of the party, compli-
mented the Noble Secretary on his admirable
speech—" A speech," observed Sir ROBERT IN-
GLIS, " more worthy of the subject than that of
!he Noble Lord he thought had not been heard in
this House, at least of late years ;" and he
emphatically added, as well he might, that
"it was important not to delay a measure which
affected, as he believed, 300,000 persons every
year." He also expressed a hope that the Bill
might be agreed to unanimously in the other
House--a hope which, notwithstanding the hitch
occasioned by the " untoward affair" of Thursday
last, we have no doubt will be realized.
Lord PALMERSTON'S speech unquestionably
deserves all the praise bestowed upon it by the
Hon. Baronet, and we strongly recommend it to
the consideration of every person, whatever be his
politics, who feels an interest in the question of
slavery. Many readers, we doubt not, will find in
perusing it that they have been labouring under a
most miserable delusion in supposing that there
has been any mitigation of slavery generally, or any
diminution of the accursed slave trade, in conse-
quence of the emancipation of the Negroes in the
British Colonies. The truth will be found to be
directly the reverse.
Does it not make one shudder to think that
since Portugal engaged by a solemn treaty to put
an end to this abomination, a million of
human beings have been stowed away into
slavery under her infamous flag, of whom 120,000
perished under the indescribable horrors of the
middle passage ! I This is the way that Portugal
has fulfilled those engagements which she entered
into with this country, and for entering into which
we have paid her, one way and another, two millions
of sterling money. And yet men have been found
in the British Senate who refused their con-
sent to the legislative measures necessary to com-
pel this mean, treacherous, and contemptible
Power to do that which she has bound herself to
do by treaties purchased with so much gold !
Such men are a disgrace to a Legislative Assembly.

The state of affairs in the East excites the live-
liest interest in the French capital. In general
the Journals cordially approve of a decided energetic
line of policy, as at once the safest and most digni-
fied ; but there is little agreement among them as to
the exact course which France ought to take, or what
should form the precise aim of her interference.
Viewed in any light the question is surronded with
the greatest difficulties. Most of these are so ob-
vious that it almost seems unnecessary to point
them out ; were it not that their enumeration may
indicate more clearly such as are more remote.
In the first place, suppose a Treaty of Amity
concluded between the SULTAN and MEHE-
MET ALl—Egypt and Syria made over peace-
ably to the VICEROY, with the right of here-
ditary succession in his family .= -the payment of
an annual tribute—it is evident that this is a viola-
tion of the integrity and indivisibility of the Otto-
man Empire, and leaves the SULTAN in a position
which the Representatives of the Great Powers
repeatedly informed the Divan would not be sanc-
tioned by their respective Courts. Turkey would
soon find not a vassal but a rival in Egypt ; and
by intrigues at Cairo, Russia would more effectually
than ever direct her destructive attacks against the
defenceless Government at Constantinople. ME-
' HENIELALI may restore the Turkish fleet,but he can-
not restore the national confidence, destroyed by its
betrayal to him. He will always appear as a con-
queror ; and, though be may abstain from marching
upon Constantinople, the people will attribute his
conduct to the prudence he has all along shown in
avoiding a collision, not with Turkey, but with her
European allies. A treaty with him is, therefore,
equivalent to the establishment of a Throne in
Egypt ; for if, hereafter, on any pretext, he refuse
to pay the tribute, the SULTAN will be unable to
compel him ; and, should he continue to pay it, so
trifling an addition to the finances of the Ottoman
Empire will neither add to its strength nor secu-
rity. Besides, MEHEMET ALI can easily represent
it to his own subjects, as a religious tax paid to the
supreme Caliph of Islam—a tax which, in the most
flourishing state of Mohammedism; the Caliphs of
Granada, tahe S
nd
Syria,ele
iriffs of
were eßarbary,accustomed
and
to reml a
t ns
of Egypt to
the Caliphs of Bagdad, then the Sovereign Pontiffs,
for the maintenance of their ecclesiastical state and
authority, and the enabling the Faithful to perform
the pilgrimages to Mecca and Medina. On the
other hand no assistance which it would
be expedient to place at the disposal of the