The Sun.
London, England, 1837-12-25 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Queen's Bench
animadverted on the commitment for trial of Lord James
Beresford for such a ridiculous affair as that on which he
was charged. The manner in which the Jury kicked the
case out of court does not say much for the sagacity of the
committing Magistrate. Now that a Lord has been a suf-
ferer from the oppression to which Englishmen, more than
any other nation in Europe, are subject, of being involved
in proceedings, in many cases ruinous, for the most absurd
causes, we may hope that attention will be drawn to the
subject. In no other country than England would the
circumstances alleged against Lord James Beresford have
been deemed deserving of a moment's notice ; but here it
warrants the depriving of a citizen of hisliberty, and may ruin
him in in toll.). Suppose the alleged offender had been a poor
man,be might not have been able to find bail, in which case
he must have been withdrawn from his daily avocations
and immured in a prison till trial. 0 that holding to
bail ! How glibly are the words pronounced by magis-
trates, without reflecting on their awful consequences. A
matter which no one would think of punishing, even if exer-
cising the utmost severity, by more than a shilling fine,
may first, if the defendant, be held to bail, subject him to
a long imprisonment, and then lead him to expend large
sums in a trial. Lord James Beresford, in this trumpery
case, must have spent at least 200/. in fees to counsel and
other costs. The system of holding to bail in cases in which
outlawry would be an infinitely more severe punishment
than any which a Court would think of pronouncing ought to
be done away with. In all such cases a notice to appear
in Court ought to be deemed sufficient. In the constant
state of emigration of the people of this country our towns
always contain multitudes of strangers, many of whom
must find it utterly impossible to procure bail. This out-
rage on common sense ought not to be suffered longer to
ex;st.—Morning Chronicle.
Little, if anything, is yet established with regard to the
unfortunate state of Lower Canada beyond the amount of
Saturday's intelligence—viz., that there had been conflicts
between the Royal forces and the P.ipineau faction, with
va ious, but no decisive, success on either side—that the
insurrectionary movements were confined, with perhaps
here and there an individual exception, to, inhabitants of
French descent—that amongst them the hostile spirit to-
wards Great Britain was extensive, though far from uni-
versal, and that the British population of both provinces
were arming genAaelly, and with great eagerness, to sup-
port the dominion of the mother country, and put down
the rebels. If this simple outline were to embrace and
to express the tuhole condition of the question, it might
not be very difficult to foretell the result ; at the same
time, no candid or strong-minded man can shut his eyes
to the obvious truth, that let the conflict, so far as its
military character is concerned, issue in defeat or vic-
tory, it will require a long period to restore the relations
of parent state and colony to the same footing of mu-
tual tolerance (we say nothing of friendship) which existed
even two years ago. To take the most favourable view of
the case—namely, the prompt and absolute suppression of
the rebel power—what must. be the feelings of the Cana-
dian malcontents towards those '.mho by force v;:11 have sub-
dued them ? Mortification, soreness, bitterness, vengeance.
What must be the spirit of the British Government in its
treatztient of them ? Distrust, coercion, arbitrary, military
(lietatio,;. The exercise liencefo.th of any deliberative or
legislative iencdons by a body of representatives composed
of delegates chosen from among the chiefs of the present
insurrection, or men who sympathise with them (and none
others would assuredly be elected by the French Canadian
multitude, on the heels of a civil war). is a mere chi-
anent, unless Great Britain means to vest authority in
the bands of her declared enemies, to be employed in
a/claiming her own councils, and harassing and ob-
structing every breech of h, r system of colonial govern-
ment. The disslhition, therefore, of the representative
Constitution of Lower Canada appears to be one among the
..neca.:sary consequences of this di,astrnus rebellion. But
there is no alternative betwe,n civil and military govern-
me at. Supposing, therefere, the former to be at an end, or
indefinitely suspended, a question would then arise for the
people of England to consider—y,;., whether the retention
of Layer Canada by the open and un :vied exercise of mili-
t try force would or would not be worih the attendant
cast and trouble. That, we repeat, may and must be a
question by and by. The qmstons which actually press
upon us are of a far different character. It has
heee a standing argument used in palliation of
stall extensive insurrections at all times, that if the
pe eple did not feel grievously galled and vexed by some
oppression or suffering caused by misgovernment, they
tleve., would plunge into rebellian. There may be some
truth in this a priori apology for insurrection, and when
taken with certain qualifications ; but positively true, or
without exception, it tindoulitedly is not. There are such
things as rebellions for specific objects, but for the fur-
therance of which among the multitude the real end is not
promulgated ; nor are those circumstances in the condition
of the people to which rebellion might administer any prac-
tical cure brought prominently forward or dwelt upon by
irs authors. Rebellions differ in their principles and mo-
tives. The Scotch rebellions of 1715 of 1745 were re-
bellions for a definite purpose. They were not caused by
any sense of practical grievance on the part of the lower
orders who engaged ;in them. They were insurrections
against civil and religious freedom in favour of Popish
intolerance and of feudal and Courtly power. The
rebellion of our North American colonies in 1774
-was one founded on the joint consciousness of right
and confidence of power against the injudicious asser-
tion by perverse and unreasoning rulers of princi-
ples inconsistent with the habitual relations of parent
state and colony, as well as with one great fundamental
maxim of the Constitution of England; and no enlightened
Englishman has ever quarrelled with the justice of the
cause against which his country then contended, however
he may have deplored the dismemberment of empire which
followed. The Irish rebellion of 1798 was not caused by
any peculiar pressure of grievance or suffering upon the
body of the people. Their enjoyments or privations had
undergone no change in the 18 months following the
Christmas of 1796. Yet we find the peasantry of lqunster
at that inclement season harnessing themselves by hundreds
to drag the King's artillery against the French invaders,
and in the June of 1798 confronting the bayonets of the
same troops, and the fire of the same cannon, in the cause
of united Irishism, and for the expulsion of the Protestant
a d British power out of Ireland ! How was this ?
Why, there has been, it is unquestionable, an inherent
and general sense of destitution and consequent suffer-
ing among the peasantry of Ireland, on which, as a natural
and convenient basis, any instigator to rebellion can at
any time erect his machinery, and raise " the people,"
though without assigning the relief of hunger as the specific
benefit which he proposes. The rebellion of 1798 in Ire-
land, therefore, was the immediate consequence .of an active
and successful organization applied to the perennial
wretchedness of the South of Ireland by emissaiies from
the United Irish Directory in Dublin—in its form and cir-
cumstances a factitious and false rebellion, but potently
assisted by causes deep seated in the nature and the growth
of Ireland. Now, it is but just that we should bring the
argument a priori abovementioned into contact with thia
Canadian question, and sce how far it goes to excuse,
or to account for, the general concurrence of the French

Canadians in the schemes of M. Papineau, and for
their apparent readiness to shake off the Sovereignty of
the Crown of England, at the risk of being shot in
battle by her troops, or being hinged by the sentence
of her tribunals. Can we infer from what has yet tran-
pired that the rebellion of Lower Canada has bona fide
proceeded from the wrongs inflicted on that province, and
that the people have risen against the laws merely by
reason that the laws oppressed them? That is an impor-
tant question, inasmuch as it involves the whole morality
of the strife between England and Lower Canada. It
vrouldsbe impossible to pursue such a subject through all
its details within the space allotted to an ordinary news-
paper article : but its outline seems to be naked and simple
enough. What say the advocates of the Canadian move-
ment on this occasion ? No Member of the House of
Commons. among the half-dozen who were not ashamed to
reproach the British Government for their abandonment,
late as it has been, of the truckling and despicable system
by which the Canadian rebels had so long been encouraged
in their outrageous insults to this country—no one Mem-
ber, we say, has ventured to describe in other than terms
of the loosest generality what really are the grievances now
suffered by Lower Canada. Vague allegations of griev-
ance, indeed, we have had from these Canadians in abun-
dance ; but beyond a short hint about the heinousness of
this country not acquiescing submissively in a total stop-
page of the supplies by the Legislative Assembly of Lower
Canada, there is not a word indicative of definitive griev-
ance.. Mr. Warburton out-Papineaus them all, for he
chargls it as a crime against Great Britain that she does
not sacrifice the dominion over hers own North American
po,isessions at the first cry of discontent from the most
seditious of her subjects, without so much as stopping to
examine how far the complaint may be justified by facts, or
be utterly and altogether groundless. Mr. Roebuck, in
his letter, published three days ago, does not state dis-
tinctly one single grievance. The Learned Gentleman, to
he sure, talks much about the " atrocity and folly" of the
.British Government towards Lower Canada. but in what
either consists he leaves to the imagination of his readers.
But each and all of these Canadian advocates, in and out of

of Parliament, deal properly in reference to the war with
t 'be United States, and the disgrace as well as entire over-
t 'wow incurred by this country ere the close of it. The
et ily tolerable account of the matter—and that drawn from
a poech as meagre and as coldblooded as ever fell from a
M mister of State on an occasion so momentous—is that the
Ca z •dians required a degree of power over the composition
and tcasures of the Executive Government as would

amoun tota abro gr 1;( not merely of t,he Royal
prerogative exercised in aII other parts of the empire,
but a practical renunciation by Canada of the sove-
reign supremacy of the parent state over her colonial
possessions—in fact, to an entire extinction of the actual
relations of the two countries, and the establishment of
Lower Canada with its French population as an inde-
pendent state, with an absolute command over the
course aad trade of the St. Lawrence, and an irre-
sistible mastership over the intercourse between Great
Britain and her own native subjects, not only inhabiting
the noble province of Upper Canada, but possessing nine-
tenths of the property and intelligence of the Lower Pro-
vince itself. The demand, therefore, has not been for the
" redress of a grievance," but for a spoliation of those ac-
knowledged rights by the nature of things inherent in the
British Crown over every colonial dependency thereto be-
longing, and a reconquest from England of that whole ter-
ritory which was assigned to her by solemn treaty in the
year 1763. It is easy to talk about the Government of
this country having invaded the right of self-taxation and
over the " public revenue" possessed by the Canadian people.
What says Lord Stanley on that specific question ? Why,
that any control by the Legislature over the revenues of
the Crown in Lower Canada was matter of express com-
pact between the Crown and the Assembly, stipulating
that on the surrender of its own domains or the proceeds
of them by the Sovereign, the Assembly should be bound
to vote supplies for the maintenance of the civil govern-
ment. And what has since happened? Why, that the As-
sembly broke its faith, and after the engagement •f the
Crown had been honourably executed, the said Assembly
stopped the supplies, thus achieving what in it lay to-
wards a dissolution of the whole machinery of govern-
ment. Whatever three might therefore be in the general
observation fitmiliar to most speculative men, that rebel-
lions usually spring from real oppression, the Canadian
mal-contents have so contrived it as to withdraw their
own case from the benefit of such a conclusion, because
they have stated what they term their grievances, al-
though their English advocotes have not, and have proved
to the world, that the incentive to this rebellion is not
a mass of grievances unredressed, but that it is the
vindictive craving of ambition frustrated, of monopoly
defeated, and of national antipathy met by calm defiance.
We have seen and shown, that the rebellio❑ of 1798, which
arrayed in arms against Great Britain the males of
3,000,000 or 4,000,000 of Irish fanatics, was the result of
a systematic and artful organization, commenced and con-
summated throughout the South of Ireland within the
period of 18 months. It is very easy of belief, therefore,
that the rebellion of Lower Canada may have been the
exclusive workmanship of incendiaries directed by a few
central chiefs, acting upon a far scantier population than
in Ireland, and within a smaller compass, but having for
its materials a race of ignorant men, jealous acid fearful of
their British neighbours, and therefore actuated by an en-
venomed hatred of them, as the Irish are at all timesby a vague
exasperation at the wretchedness of their own physical condi-
tion. We have treated this whole question of the revolt in
Canada more generally, and we apprehend less irritably,than
may suit the excited tempers of tnost English readers at so cri-
tical a time. Had the proposition been put to us four or five
years ago, to fling Lower Canada overboard altogether, as
a dependency more expensive and troublesome than bene-
ficial, we hardly know what our answer might have been,
always securing the rights and interests, and consulting the
inclinations of our dear native countrymen in the Upper
Province, and ialaining the single fortress of Quebec.
Now, the time has gone past for such discussions. The
national honour is involved in the necessity of crushing this
wanton and audacious attack on the integrity of the realm.
Tile rebellion of Lower Canada must be put down ; re-
bellion will not be confined to the western shores of the
Atlantic. What the conduct of our illustrious Ministers
has been, and what is the retribution due to them, we shall
inquire anon.—Tunes.

FROM FRIDAY NIGHT'S GAZETTE

DIVIDk;NDS.
At the Court of Bankruptcy, 13asinghall-street.
W. Tatchell and S. Clarke, hemp dealers, Great Eastcheap,
Jan. 19, at twelve—W. Bennett, tavern keeper, Arundel-street,
Strand, Jan. 22, at half-past twclve—W. Ilibbert, butcher,
Mount-street, Grosvenor-square, Jan. 22, at half-past eleven
W. 11. Page, linen draper, Plymouth, Jan. 22, at half-past one—
A. Colviu, merchant, Calcutta, Jan. 16, at twelve—C. George,
hattor, Hunter-street, Old Kent-road, Jan. 12, at half-past tweli.
—E. Baily, cattle salesman, Yately, Hampshire, Jan. 12, at twelve
—J. Drabble, axletree maker, Kent-street, Surrey, Jan. 13, at one
—J. Rawlins, dealer in building materials, Curtain-road, Shore-
ditch, Jan. 13, at two—J. Roots, milk dealer, Cross Keys-mows,
Alarylebonc-lane, Jan. 13, at eleven.
In the Country.
J. Haworth and S. Davis, ironmongers, Manchester, Jan. 16, at
eleven, at the Commissioners' Rooms, Town Hall, Sheffield—S.
L. Tapscott, coalmcrchant, Minehead, Somersetshire, Jan. 16, at
eleven, at Sweet's Hotel, Taunton—J. Weekes, tanner, Sidburv,
Devonshire, Jan. 17, at twelve, at the Old London Inn, Excter—
T. Oldham, calico printer, Manchester, Jan. IS, at twelve, at the
Commissioners' Rooms, Manchester—J. L. Radley, dealer, Old-
ham, Lancashire, Jan. 20, at eleven, at the Commissioners' Rooms,
Manchester.

CERTIFICATES, JAN. It
M. A. Stevens and A. Oldrayd, lodging-house-keepers Bed-
ford-square—T. Vertue, merchant, Woodbridge, Suffolk—R.
Perry, dealer, Aston, Birmingham—R. Hutchinson, and R.
Hutchinson, curriers, 3linories—W. Mill, builder, Little Britain—
C. Parker, flax spinner, Haughton-le-Skerne, Durham—S. and
T. Simpson, dealers, Arede, Louth—J. Sumner, carpenter, Edg-
baston, Birmingham—T. Holt, cotton spinner, Birtle-cum-Baus-
ford, Lancashire—J. Idorsfall, stuff-dyer, Leeds—J. Pensam,
victualler, Fleet-street—N. Wehnert, tailor, Leicester-square—T.
Wiggerhain, ale merchant, Birmingham.
PARTNERSHIPS DISSOLVED.

J. Vassiere and 11. S. Bayly, brace manufacturers, Commercial-
road, Lambeth.—H. A. Raymond and R. Still, attorneys, Lin-
coln's Inn—G. Creswick and T. Walker, stone dealers, Sheffield—
B. Walker and J. Edmondson, worsted spinners, Mytholm Royd,
Yorkshire—G. Hammond aid J. Lebley, flax spinners, Leeds—G.
and J. Gamsom, corn merchant, Buckingham, Nottinghamshire—
E. Wilson, J. D. Wilson, and J. E. Wilson, hatters, Gracechurch-
street—J. Bailey, J. Floyd, and G. Shubotham, manufacturers of
china, Lane-end, Staffordshire—S. S. Wayte and S. Alford, at-
torneys, Bristol—J. Barsham and W. Nockells, oxalic acid manu-
facturers, Marsh-gate, Stratford, Essex—S. Smith and T. Nutter,
manufacturing goldsmiths, iliddleton-street, Clerkenwell—E. 11.
Watts and W. Miller, tallow chandlers, Blyth, Northumberland—
S. Clarke, J. Clarke, and M. C. Clarke, linen drapers, Great An-
eoats-street, Manchester—T. Flockton, W. Flockton, and 'l'. M.
Flockton, tar distillers, Webster's Wharf, Potter's-field, south-
wark (as far as regards T. Flockton)—W. Chaytor, J. Frankland,
J. Wilkinson, W. R. C. Chaytor, and M. 11. Chaytor, bankers;
Sunderland—W. Matthews and P. Newman, grocers, Winchcomb,
Gloucester—A. Bray and.W. Sykes, dealers in rags, Huddersfield,