The Sun.
London, England, 1830-04-26 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

A weekly print, which of all the newspapers
,of
Great Britain stands alone in the honour of writing

up the perjured Miguel each succeeding Sunday, at-
tempts to draw a parallel between Cuba, as a depot
for Spanish armaments against Mexico, and Ter-
ceira, as a starting point for expeditions against the
Portuguese usurper. Stupidity has strong nerves.

Because we declared it to be the duty of England
to forbid all attacks front Cuba upon Vera Cruz, or
_ .

other Mexican ports,—ergo, says this Lisbon mis-
sionary, we ought to prevent all armaments from
Terceira against Lisbon. We are not sorry to have
this question moved. The argument against per-
mitting Spanish expeditions against the &tate of
Mexico, to be fitted out from the Spanish islands,
rests upon two grounds. Ist. That we have recog-
nised Mexico to be a sovereign and independent
state, from which we receive an accredited minister,

and at whose seat of government an English Mi-
nister has for many years resided. 2d. That, pro-
fessing a system of strict neutrality between the
Governments of Mexico and of Spain, and seeing
that the Mexican Government, with a view to frus-
trate any Spanish invasion, had prepared a naval

and military armament against Cuba,--the only
spot from which invasion was to be apprehen&d,—
we (Great Britain) did expressly prohibit the
sailing of such Mexican armament, and inti-
mate to the Mexicans that we would pre-
vent them from conquering Cuba. It fol-
lows, therefore, on every principle of common

- . - - -
sense, integrity, andjustice, that we must not per-
mit Cuba to exercise against the republic those ho,-
tilities which we forbade the Republican Govern-
ment to carry on against that Spanish island;
otherwise our neutrality is a gross fraud. But
where is the parallel case for this in the relations
betneen England, Portugal, and Terceira ? For
the advocate of Miguel pretends that we should say
to the Government of Terceira, " You shall not

invade Portugal," as he does not deny the obligation
of saying to Cuba, " You shall not. make a prey of
what has ceased to be Spanish America. We answer,
lst. That England has never acknowledged Miguel
for a lawful and independent Sovereign, as she has
recognized Mexico for an independent Republic;
and that, so far from sending him an Ambas-:
sador, we withdrew the British Ambassador
hitherto resident at Lisbon from the first hour
of Miguel's claiming the Portuguese Crown. 2d.
That England has actually acknowledged Donna
Maria da Gloria to be lawful Queen of Portugal,
and has received a Minister from that Princess as
such. 3d. That, so far from having treated Miguel
in the same peremptory manner as we did Mexico,
by ordering him to refrain from attacking the island
of Terceira, we suffered him, laid out remonstrance,
to invade the island, at that time garrisoned by the
troops, and in the name of that Princess, whom we
had already recognised for lawful Sovereign of all
the Portuguese dominions, both of Portugal itself,
from whence the hostile armament sailed, and of
Terceira, against which it proceeded. 4th. That
having permitted Miguel, whom we treated openly
as an usurper, to attack the insular possessions of her
whom we recognized as Queen, it would be titteily
iniquitous and abominable now to turn round and
tell the lawful Queen, that she shall not make use of
Terceira as a means of overthrowing the usurper !
The bas..:ness and blind folly of such a notion would
probaidy prevent it from being so much us dreamed
of in the Cabinet ; and sure we are that it would not
bear one moment's discussion in Parliament.—Times.

The number of letters which daily pour in upon
us, all in deprecation of the probate duty, show suf-
ficiently the degree as well as nature of the interest
which that painful subject has excited. Two epistles,
taken almost indiscriminately from the mass, and
happening to be on opposite sides of the question,
we have now found room for. They both refer back
to communications from correspondents which ap-
peared on the 15th inst., and it may be as well to
recur to the contents of one or more of them, for the
sake of connecting the several topics of complaint,
whether founded on the principles of this odious
law, or on the abuses pracuse►! by its agents.—
Beginning with a statement of our own, which ap-
pears to have been a good deal misconceived, we -
affirmed in a former article, that one of the most op-
pressive hardships of the law was, that which.-com-
pelled a poor and embarrassed family, though with
large nominal assets, to advance an amount of pro-

bate-duty, not proportioned to the actual poverty of
their funds,- nor measured by the surplus of their
means above their debts, but commensurate with
what would have been the legal claim of Govern-
ment, if they had not owed a shilling. This parti-
cular grievance it'e illustrated by asserting, that if a
testator left his family 100,000/. subject to the pay-
ment of 80,000/. of debts, the executor would have
to come forward with the probate-duty on the
gross sum of 100,000/., although the estate
was of no higher value than 20,000/. This
position was misconstrued by otte of our corre-
spondents, who charged us with maintaining that an
estate worth only 20,0001. would have to pay as
much probate-duty as one of 100,000/. We need
not repeat that we said no such thing; we alleged
merely, that a sum equivalent to the duty on
100,0001. must be advanced, in the first instance,
by the executor of a property not worth more than
a fifth of the amount; and this we think will be ad-
mitted by all considerate persons to constitute no
slight persecution. Another grievance alluded to by
sufferers under a law nearly connected with that of
probate, is the frequency with which executors, and
the executors of executors, have been called upon
after a series of years, and long after the accounts of
the several estates were settled, to prove that the
duties on such and such legacies had been paid. In
a case adduced by one of our correspondents, it
appears that a will was proved in the year 1806,
and the affairs of the executorship wound up in
18J4; notwithstanding which, no longer ago than
last September, the Legacy Duty-office sent let-
ters to demand why the duty on the • residue
had not been paid up 16 years .before ? After
infinite vexation and expensive searches, a deed
was found which had been signed by two • de-
funct executors, demonstrating that there had been
no residue whatever; with which, after some diffi-
culty, the men in office were forced to be content.
Now we submit that such obsolete claims are most
disgraceful to any Government. If the books of
the office had been regularly kept, it is impossible
that the above demand could have been made, ex-
cept with fraudulent intentions; and if the books
were not correct, was an innocent individual or
family to bleed for it? Other instances were fur-
nished wherein the exactions of the office were de-
feated by the production of their own receipts for
the very sums which they required to be paid a
second time ! This is monstrous. If Government
acted fairly by the public, such an occurrence would
always be followed by the dismissal of those clerks
or officers through whose gross neglect of duty the
testamentary transactions had failed to be recorded
in the books : for it is plain that if the receipts had
from inevitable accident been lost, a.positive rob-
bery would have been committed. It is rt ally quite
dreadful that the public accounts, which we pay so
enormously to have well kept, should thus, from
their incorrectness, expose the people to a double
demand of taxes. Next comes the eattilogue of
abuses under the name of fees to officers of the
Ecclesiastical Court called proctors. What a
digrace to our laws, that to give validity to a
er
than tth the proctor's
on wills,
w%vhiolllse
oppressive
pl
paid
ae
iswds
ihvefeur
under 3,0001., a sum of more than 60/. must first
stamps! The taxes on administration are still more
ie:t trouble,
ratotheueb proportioneo:s:aincluding fam
oysf,:vL'oa:esi
believe, one third. It is asked why so great a dif-
ference should be made between real and personal
property ; and a gentleman, a sort of fiscal optimist,
whose effusion appears in this day's Times, answers
by pointing to the expensive conveyances of landed
property, which he says required that personal pro-
pert:- should be tormented after the above fashion,
by way of striking a balance between them. It is
eiletigh then to sAisfy a teasetiable man, that instead