The Sun.
London, England, 1830-10-06 00:00:00

SPIRIT OP TIM PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The arrival of Dutch papers to the 4th instant
does not put us in possession of any important in-
telligence of a later date than that which we com-
municated yesterday. It is admitted (how, indeed,
could it be denied ?) that the insurrectionary spirit
has acquired an extraordinary vigour by its success
at Brussels; and that it every where overpowers
the efforts of the Dutch to repress its violence or to
arrest its progress. Meanwhile the proceedings of
the States-General have ceased to be of any more
interest than those of the Council of Trent. It is
quite evident that any effectual step which can now
be taken,—in the present moment of excitement,
and with the present consciousness of success on
the part of the Belgians,—to bring about an accom-
modation, or to arrange preliminaries of peace,
must begin with the Belgic Deputies, or the other
parties which represent the Belgic people—not at
the Hague, but in Brussels. The reported request
of 40 Belgic notables to the King to allow his son
to proceed to Brussels, may be very well intended
on their part, but may be what is called " a reckon.
ing without their host." The de Potters, and their
republican partisans, are now at the head of affairs
in Belgium, and their " high mightinesses" of the
States-General are only the subjects of the new
Government which de Potter directs. Their invite-
don, therefore, to the Prince of Orange to proceed
to Brussels, may be of little value. had his Royal
Highness been as popular as he once was in Bel-
gium, and had his merits, us the advocate of the
project of separation, not been counterbulauced by
other eonduct to which we need not more particu-
larly advert, he would naturally have occurred to
the insurgents as the proper person to be placed
at their head. But we defer to a future oppor-
tunity any farther remarks or speculations on
this subject. The Brussels and English papers
seem, since the repulse of the Dutch troops,
to have taken a particular pleasure in dwel-
ling on the atrocities which they are alleged
to have committed during their fruitless at-
tacks. The accounts which they give are
either entire fictions or gross exaggerations, and we
feel not a little mortified that any respectable Eng-
lish journal should have allowed itself to become the
'vehicle of such incredible calumnies. We shall not
go over the catalogue of alleged excesses one by
one, and point out their gross improbability in the
cireumstances of the parties, but shall content our-
selves with one sample, which ought to have opened
the eyes of our contemporary to the character of his
authority. After ascribing to the malignity of the
Dutch against the English, some misfortunes (such
as the death of Lord Blantyre) which are known to
have been purely accidental, and some acts of cruelty
which, either never occurred or were perpetrated by
the Brussels rabble, this inventory of crime has the
following most appalling article of intelligence :----
•' An English servant, living in the faubourg of
Schaerbeck, was crucified at the door, burnt by a
slow fire, and his body pierced with balls and
bayonets," We shall not allow ourselves to make
a scene of real calamity the subject of profane merri-
ment; but if we could be tempted to such an act,
what a rich treat we should find in the bill of fare
here presented by our contetnporary I We are aware
that he might have been misled at first by the
reverend character of his correspondent, from whom
the public may afterwards learn further details, under
the captivating title of Dutch Atrocities " Il-
lustrated," but he should have inquired whether
that correspondent might not have the little judg-
ment which be possesses so perverted by partisan-
ship, as to make him the dupe of any impostor who
personates the character of a Belgic patriot. If be
had so inquired, he would have found that his letter-
writer not only has adopted the side of the Belgians
against the Dutch Government—not only has worn
the tri-colour of independence—but has actually
shouldered the musket with the Burgher Guard.
Far be it (tom us to suspect him of exposing his life
during the battle, when perhaps he was only 'Welt-
lug of sap owing the character of his enemies, but
the very circumstance of his joining the insurgents
invalidates hie testimony on those points in which
his Belgic friends had the greatest interest to deceive
him. Let him say that he himself saw the cruci-
fixion and conflagration of an English servant, and
we will believe the story, but not till then. In a
former age, when our jealousy of the Dutch was to
be wrought upon in order to exasperate us to a slecla-
ration of war, Dryden accuses them of a disposition
to "pickle" John Bull,—but never to crucify him.
" he Straits, the Guinea-trade, the Herrings too,
" Nay, to keep friendship, they will pickle you."
It would not have entered into the imagination of
the satirist, who has recorded the massacre of Am-
boyna, and who always allows his enemies a suffi-
cient portion of revolting cruelty, that a Dutchmen
would " crucify, and roast and riddle with bans,"
the subject of his English ally out of mere pastime,
when be might have been so much better employed
in killing his Belgic foes. But it would appear now,
that with every motive to treat our ancient Allies
with kindness, and with none of the ancient rea-
sons for jealousy, we are to heap upon them every
measure of calumny, exclaiming with the satirist
whom we have above alluded to:--
1e Think on their rapines, falsehood, cruelty;
" And that which ;motley were, they still would be
We beg leave, in conclusion, to point the utter-
ties of the reader to a most interesting narrative
of the conflict between the Royal troops of the
King of the Netherlands and his revolted killdeers
of Brussels, by a hand very different from the coo.
contemporery. The narrator per-
respondent of our
tielpated in the scenes which he describes; and as
from his known character he may be implicitly re-
lied pion, his account will tend to correct many
errors and misrepresentations. We need scarcely
request attention to the Coincidence betweemi the fact.
stated by our correspondent, end the estimate which
we have given front time to time of the character
and strength of the Brussels insurgents.---Timee.
It cannot, we imagine, have escaped either die
notice or the disgust of many of oar readers, that,
shock the death of his late Majesty, (Trent persons,
and those, strange to say, professing a more than
ordinary high torte of loyalty, have been imlefati-
gable in the sneers and Omits which they have
heaped upon his successor. Nu Oa of our excellent
King sad Queen appears to suit the taste of these
persona, whose standard of both King and Queenly
excellence senate 10 be, that such personages should
have reetiega, and habits us little as possible in unison
with those of the reit of mankind. One of the
tricks which these persona resorted to, to gratify
their spleen, is to allude to reports which they pre-
feas to discredit, anti then to deal with them es true.
Of this we have a striking specimen in a Sunday
Paper remarkable fur its taste in Kingly matters, and
which, in the saw colonel that it assails King
William and Queen Adelaide, holda up its idol,
Don Miguel, to universal sympathy mid applause.
Among other proofs of her Majesty's excellent on.
derstending and correct view of things, she is said
to have set her face against much of the tawdry
finery which she has found in sonic or all of the
Boyel Palaces : and the Kiter, instead of paying
high prices, and taking immoderate credit, it is
ma, wishes his household to be ses veil upon
reasonable terms, and his tradesmen's bills paid
whim punctuality. Who can be Hared by these
sets—and what reasonable person can find in them
nosy but a ground of approbation, we are at a loss
to conceive. That they are more in the old English
fashion than borrowed from the Migimelite school We
"1 readily imagine, and as tomb are culieduted to
please every John i/mull but one. But is it not, we
would ask, either the grossest blindness, or the most
yarrow) diatortioo of mule right feeling, and com-
mon woe, for any public writer, who professee to
bat a friend to established institutions, thus to per,
Vert what he ought to admire into a subject of
blame ? Is it, not notorious to every but the most
blighted and jaundiced vision that our present King
and Queen are a real ee Gott-seud" to the coinl tr ?
And is it not, beyond measure, base and ebsurd,Yiti
those who pOSSeaft a more than ordinary shame „i
loyalty and attechment to crowned heads in general,

thus to assail, by unmanly taunts and insinuations,
the individuals who have done more to exalt. Royalty
in the eyes of the people, and to endear themselves
to the hearts of their subjects, then this or any other
country has experienced for a long time past ? We
will not undertake the invidious task of drawing
comparisons, either at home or abroad, but this we
will fearlessly affirm, that if, in the present new and
uncooked-for state of things in other countries, a
man had been asked to suggest a counteracting feel-
ing in this, he would have prescribed just the course
which the personages in question have, in all re-
spects, adopted.—Morning Herald.
We would fain persuade ourselves that there is
exaggeration in the accounts of the outrages to
which the English at Brussels have been subjected,
but we fear that there is too much foundation for
them. The letter which we inserted yesterday is
from a gentleman who gave us his name, and we
have seen no contradictions which were not
anonymous. The following letter, on the subject of
the death of Lord Blantyre, sufficiently disproves
the statement in the Courier of last night, that it
was accidental. Our correspondent is a respectable
gentleman of this metropolis, and his authority is an
officer just returned from Brussels, whom we know
to be of unquestionable character :