The Sun.
London, England, 1839-05-25 00:00:00

the Liberal cause, it will not fail on this occasion
to set an admirable example to the whole empire.

We take correction, when deserved, with humi-
lity and thankfulness, though we wish our Con-
temporaries a better office than watching our faults.
The Livopool Mercury having apperently no-
thing better to notice, censures The Sun for not
supplying an antidote to the many Chartist poisons
our Paper has circulated, by reporting the speeches
delivered in the Convention. With all deference to
our Liverpool monitor, it never is and never was
our custom to give a contradiction to every false-
hood, and rectify every error we are obliged in
the performance of our duty to report. Our
friendly critic is in fact quite unreasonable in ,

requiring it. Heavens ! what a task, to unweave
all the sophistries of the Sir PLAUSIBLE which fill
our columns when the Parliament is sitting, to con-
tradict all the little parliamentary fibs of Lord
STANLEY, and to expose all the humbug exagge-
rations of Sir JAMES GRAHAM or Mr. Recorder
SHAW ! Obliged, as we are, to allow an immense
number of errors to circulate in our columns uncon-

tradicted, we did not imagine, till the Mercury im-
plied it, that the misstatements of Messrs. BRON-
TERRE O'BRIEN and PEARGUS O'CONNOR were
of such surpassing importance, and their cha-
racter stood so very high, that it was our
especial duty to dwell on their minutest errors.
Do not the Mercury's remarks give more weight to
these men than our silence ? We have allowed
them to speak for themselves, and our reports of
their speeches and of the proceedings of the Con-
vention have done more to bring them to their exact
bearing, and make their true value known, than all
the leading articles of all the anti-Chartist journals
of the empire. To speak a book is probably as
certain a way to give a man into the hands of his
enemies as to write one, and we have allowed these
gentlemen to speak each his book. They have
placed themselves before the public, and in our opi-
nion require no comment, remark, or contradiction
from us.

We have given at considerable length the de-
bate in the General Assembly on the Auchterarder
case, on account of its importance to the Esta-
blished Church of Scotland, and we may add also,
to the Church of England. Three distinct motions
were made, which all agreed on the main point that
the law of the land must take its course, and that
the General Assembly should offer no further

resistance to the appointment of the Clergy-
man, who, with the Patron, Lord KINNOUL,
appealed against the act of Assembly of 1834,
abolishing patronage in the Church. The amend-
ment of Dr. CHALMERS was carried, but what
will it lead to ? The appointment of a Com-
mittee : and what is the object of that Committee ?
To place itself at the head of the people of
Scotland, and demand of the Legislature a distinct
recognition of the rights and privileges of the
Scotch Church in the election of her members.
What earthly chance has Dr. CHALMERS
of succeeding in this point with
either the Bishops, who are patrons of so many
livings, or with the Members of both Houses of
Parliament, many of whom have the same selfish in- •
terest in refusing any such recognition ? We should
rejoice to see this question set at rest, because we
are convinced the longer it is prolonged the more in-
jurious will the result be to the Church of Scotland.
Neither this Committee, nor the Government, can do
anything to forward Dr. CHALMERS' views ; and,
in our humble opinion, the Assembly would have
acted a wiser part for the peace of the Church and
the spiritual edification of the people, if they had
agreed to Dr. COOK'S motion, which expressly de-
clared that the Church Courts should not only
judge of the learning and piety of the presentee,
but also of his fitness for the parishioners to whom
he is presented.

Gradmamtna is unusually frisky this morning,
and nods her palsied head, and kicks up her heels
with all the would-be vivacity of a giggling, mercu-
rial school-girl of sixteen. Surely, it is vastly silly
in an old lady at our Contemporary's advanced time
of life, to be cutting capers, and making an exhibi-
tion of herself in this unseemly fashion ! We can
forgive her, however, rude as is her treatment of us,
for who can take offence at the freaks of dotage,
especially when perpetrated by one of the fair
sex ? But though Grandmamma is free to rail
at us, and to employ for this occasion lan-
guage borrowed from the vocabulary of the late
Mr. SIMPSON of Vauxhall; though we allow her
the privilege of all testy, paralytic tabbies, to have
her full swing of tongue ; we really cannot allow
her to bring forward a charge against us, like that
which she has brought this morning, without ex-
posing the old woman's mendacity. Her rigmarole
about our libellous propensities, and all that, we
pass over ; but what does she mean by insinuating.
that The Sun is the hireling advocate of O'CON-
NELL and the Papists ? A more wanton falsehood
was never yet tittered, even by Grandmamma herself,
which is saying a great deal. We strongly suspect
that it owes its origin to the old lady's" drop of com-
fort" in the corner cupboard. The Sun is the hireling
advocate of no man, nor set of men ; it swears
neither by Whig, Tory, nor Radical ; but main-
tains—as it always has maintained, and always will
maintain—a strictly independent course. In a
word, it is the unpurchased, unpurchaseable advo-
cate of the people, whose feelings and interests
it represents, just in the same way, and precisely to
the same extent, that the Morning Herald repre-
sents the feelings and interests of all the gossiping
old women in the empire

The Hamburgh papers received last night bring.
advices from Hanover of the 18th inst., which an-
nounce that the Supreme tribunal at Osnaburg
has decided that the taxes being no longer levied
according to a law duly promulgated, no punish-
ment can be awarded against those refusing to pay
them. ThiS is bringing the question of the KING'S
assumed right of abrogating the Constitution to a
direct issue. We stated before that it would come
to this at last, should King ERNEST persist in his
mad attempt to substitute his mandate for the esta-
blished Constitution of the Kingdom of Hanover, and
the event has conic to pass even sooner than we ex-
pected. To increase the difficulties of the KING
it was understood that nine more Deputies were
about to resign their functions, so that there would
not be the requisite number to form a House at
the opening of the Session on Tuesday next ; and
before a new election could take place it was ex-
pected that the other tribunals of the kingdom
would have confirmed the verdict of the Court of
Osnaburg respecting the non-liability to pay
taxes. In consequence of these manifestations of
copular hostility the friends of King ERNEST were
eginning to think that it was high time to bring
-nestion before the Diet of the German C ,fe-

the pit— ,on.
deration, the more especially as petitions from
Celle, and other towns, were in the course
of being forwarded to Frankfort in favour
of the Constitution attempted to be set aside by the
KING. It is certainly bad policy on the part of
Kings to suffer their ambition to carry them so
strongly in opposition to the will of their subjects
as to drive them in self-defence to meditate the
refusal of taxes. When a people unan:mously
resolve to button up their pockets there is no resist-
ing them. In an instant the KING is reduced to
a mere cipher. A victory which, with arms in
their hands, might cost them rivers of blood, is
obtained without the movement of a foot or the
raising of a finger. There can, therefore, be no
madness on the part of despots, as regards their
self-preservation, equal to that of making the
people familiar with the employment of this
mighty talisman. But King ERNEST is after
all only an intentional autocrat. The weakness
and emptiness of his head neutralize the sterner
purposes of his heart. He wants talents, tact,
moral and physical courage, and above all the
look and bearing of a man capable of generous
aspirations. Nature has stamped " beware I"
upon his countenance so legibly, that any measure
sanctioned by him would excite suspicion. The
Hanoverians are evidently more than a match for
him, and as they have truth, and justice, and
patriotism, and the principles of Representative
Government on their side, we rejoice at the early
prospect of their success.

'We have received the whole of the Paris Journals
of Thursday. An article from the Courrier Fran-
cais on the influence of secrect societies in France,
for which we have not room in our colunms of this