The Sun.
London, England, 1830-03-06 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

Its the diiicustioret 11p Lords on-Thursday even-
ing, Lord Lansdowne stated with great truth and
• good sense, that some of our colonies were of a de-
scription which ought to. be called upon to support
themselves; and it is obvious that their inclination
to do so must be infinitely enhanced by such a mild
and generous system of government as would rivet
their affections to the mother country. It has never
been made clear to our understandings why Canada
should have been tormented by arbitrary and repul-
sive governors, requiring immense fortresses and
numerous forces, es substitutes for that attachment
to the Crown 'of England in which consists a de-
fensive power, at once the most unconquerable and
the cheapest. To shew a distant people that you
are resolved on ruling them for your profit, regard-
less of their detriment, is to offer them a bounty on
rebellion. If Canada be governed in the same spirit
as were those colonies which now constitute the
United States, in her neighbourhood, it is undeniable
that with the very first opportunity she will seek to
be, like them, her own protectress. If, on the other
hand, we rule Canada on Canadian principles, and
for Cansdian objects, that colony will be as inse-
parable fem.' Great Britain as New Jersey now is
from New York. There are again other colonies—
it' such they can be called—which are, more strictly
speaking, monuments of our national weakness,
and charnel-houses for our unfortunate countrymen;
—we mean the pestiferous lodgments which have
been made from time to time on the western coasts
of Africa, for the avowed purpose of effecting
that good- towards'which no man is now so mis'n-
formed, or such a hypocrite, as to pretend that we
have ever a fair 'chance of approximating—we mean
the abolition of the slave trade carried on under
foreign flags. It is affirmed, and we believe the
fact, that by all her efforts and sacrifices for putting
down the slave-trade, England has just achieved
(a great point certainly) the honour of being the
only state which has really and honestly abandoned
that brutal traffic. We believe that the ships of
other nations convey at least as many slaves from
Africa across the Atlantic, as ever were, at any
former period, so borne away by British merchant.
men and foreigners united. This, no doubt, is an
equal disappointment to the humanity of our phi-
lanthropists and to the policy of our statesmen ; but
how do we cure the evil by sending thousands of
native Englishmen to perish on the coast from which
so many millions of Negro victims have been trans-
ported ? The slave exportation, we see, goes on in
spite of us ; but our unhappy countrymen who are,
morally speaking, kidnapped into the service at
Sierra Leone and Cape Coast, have as little chance
of revisiting the land of their birth, as have the
black tenants of the French, Brazilian, or Spanish
slave-ship. Yet for the civil establishment only of
these pest-houses the country' is charged, in the
miscellaneous estimates just published, little short t,f
18,0001. per annum I What the troops, the artillery,
the engineer service, and the naval may cost us, ill
not appear, we presume, without some specific
motion on the subject ; but the civil establishment
shine of Sierra Leone is 10,1801.; Fernando Po,
3,6011.; Cape Coast Castle, 4,000/.--Total 17,7811.
'1 here is a spell, we suppose, in patronage, too
strong for any virtue to shake off, otherwise it seems
hardly probable that the nerves of four or five suc-
cessive administrations would have endured the
yearly mortality of their countrymen, sentenced to
destruction in these horrid regions, and there gra-
tailetaly lost. To come nearer home, on turning to
the article under the head of " public works" in
England, we find the following charges :—For form-
ing, &c., walls on the East side of Penman-Mawr,
(a useful work), 3151.; for deepening 1-lowth har-
bour, 1,0001.; for surveys of the road between Lon-
don and Lives-pool, 3801.; but for salaries to Engi-
neers, Secretaries, &c., 1,832/.; and for Lawyers'
charges, 1,1641 s So the work done amounts to
about 1,7001.; and the fees, salaries, law expences,
and so forth, to within four pounds of 3,0001.
There is a subject, however, which has been men-
tioned to us, and which, although it fills no place in
any estimates for the present year, involves so much
culpable neglect of public duty in the finance de-
partment, not of the present but of many preceding
sessions, that it is difficult to pass it by unnoticed.
There is, as we have been told, a sum of not less
than 600,000/. due to the country by a class of men
who have experienced a great deal of undeserved
and disgraceful indulgence—we mean those gentle-
men defaulters who have made off with the public
money intrusted to them. The names of Chinnery,
Delaney, and Villiers, are represented to us as being
well known in the records of the Treasury, under
the title of " Public Defaulters." What has spared
the property which some of these people either still
enjoy, or have died possessed of ? Is it because
they had fashionable connexions, that the people
of England should esteem it an honour to be robbed
by them ? Why has not some Lord or Commoner
the spirit to ask from Ministers an account of the
manner in which such extensive depredations upon
the public purse have been repaired, or of the steps
which have been taken to recover the loss inflicted
by them ? Where are the famous extents in aid ?
Why sleeps the Exchequer thunderbolt ? Middling
men, for trivial offences, have soon been made to
disgorge the fruit of their spoliations. Why are
great men—the sons, or brothers or allies of Lords
—thus suffered to escape ? Or why, rather do riot
their high-pretensioned relatives come forward and
redeem the family honour, by surrendering, even
to the last penny they can raise by mortgage, for an
object so indisputably upright and just ? We recur
Ito the one thing needful; the peapte want relief,
and they must have it. Some of the taxes must be
reduced ; and we have sufficient confidence in his
'Majesty's present Ministers to persuade ourselves
that they have no indisposition to relieve the national
burdens, if Parliament will support them. Let a
diminished taxation produce a necessity of retrench-
ment, and, we dare say, no long time will be lost in
fixing on those spots of the public expenditure which
Ate most susceptible of diminution.—Times.
We have already deli veered our sentiments on the
questisen respecting the Indian Judges. It was well
Lord Ashley, that there
stated on Friday night by
was no analogy between the situation of Judger in
India and Judges in Ersgisrid. In every country
there must be somebody to which Judges are re-
sponsible for their conduct, it lop mean that
Judges shall riot be masters without COnifn4l of all
that is in It. In England the sovereignty ;a
divided between the King and Parliament; and
there is s sort of compromise between the King and
the Parliament, that the Judges, when once ap-
pointed, shall not be removable by the King, except
on an address from Parliament, stating incapacity or
misconduct. In India the Sovereignty is not
divided; the interests of the people of India are
committed exclusively to the Company, and if the
Company vrere not to have the power to leterfere
with Judges, they would be completely irre-
sponsible. Independence, therefore, in India
means irresponsibility; and to give independ-
ence to Judges, is giving them the sovereignty.—
In the United States even, where there is a cote of
risings much resembling that of this country, much
inconvenience has been felt from a too slavish ad-
herence to English analogy. In England we have
seen the Judges are only independent of one branch
of the Legislature—the King, when Parliament
does not stir. But in the United States the Fede-
ral Judges were made completely independent ; and
where the Democrats obtaiiied the ascendancy,
Jefferson complains again and again that the Go-
vernment was very much impeded by the Auelges,
who had all been appointed by the Federalists. In
a Government named by the people, with a Repre- '
sentetion purely popular, it duet seem strange that
there should be any order of men independent. In a
Monarchical Government, Judges are, eons: leteetly
enough for the sate of the people, made independent
of the Monarch, lest the Monarch should use them in
oppressing the people. But in a purely Demucratical
Governrneut, to make Judges independent, is' an act
of felo de se on the part of the people. The powers
given to the Indian Judges by the Act uti4; which

they are appointed are very indefinite. The part of
their powers which admits of the most mischievous
' construction is that where they are allowed to decide
between British subjects and natives; for there is
no saying whom they might not conceive themselves
entitled to drag before them. Once allow the Judges
to issue their writs to compel natives of all rank to
repair from the remotest extremities of the respective
Presidencies to the seats of -the Courts, and dismay
would be spread throughout India. It must never
be forgotten that the Europeans in India are but a
handful; and the great object of a good Govern-
ment ought to be the protection and security of
the millions of natives, rather than the making the
welfare of those rr:Tees of natives secondary to the
designs cf those handful of Europeans. In fact,
English Tribunals, and Judges administering Eng-
lish law, ought never to have been introduced into
India at all. But be this as it may, it is clear that
nothing can be more absurd than would be the
allowing these Judges to range over an Empire of
a hundred millions of people, strangers to English
usages and English law, and thus to throw society
. into disorder. There are Judicial Establishments
in India spread over the country, adapted to
the wants of the natives. The Judges of Cal-
, cutta, Bombay, and Madras, if their energies
. were a hundred times greater than they are, could
never administer justice to the hundred millions of
Hindoos ; and the sooner they abandon the idea of
extending their jurisdiction by dragging the natives
beyond the boundaries before them, the more they
will gain in peace of mind.—Morning Chronicle.
It is a great general principle of the law of Eng-
' land, that no man shall be put upon his trial for any
offence without a previous judgment of his Peers pro-
nouncing that there is a prima facie case against him.
This preliminary investigation is properly the pro-
, vince of a Grand Jury; but the Court of King's
Bench possesses the power of superseding the func-
tions of that tribunal, and may, by what is called a
rule for a criminal infotanation, send the party to be
tried at once. The Attorney-General may also,
upon his official responsibility, proceed in a like sum-
mary manner. In the exercise of the discretionary
power with which the King's Bench is invested,
the Court is accustomed to regard all the facts of the
case, and to afford the party against whom the ap-
plication is made an opportunity of stating any cir-
cumstances which he can allege in his own exculpa-
tion ; nor will the information be granted unless the
imputed offence should prove to be of a nature such
as is proper for a departure from the ordinary course of
proceeding by indictment. In the case of the
Morning Journal, Sir James Scarlett, in the first
instance, applied to the Court of King's Bench ; the
defendant appeared to resist the application, and
with that object stated the nature of the defence.
The rule was granted; but the Attorney-General,
instead of acting upon that rule, thought fit to file
an information by virtue of his own official preroga-
tive. As regards the case of Mr. Alexander, no
particular hardship can be alleged from this pro•
ceeding, because it was indifferent to that individual
whether he was tried on the one information or the
other; but in a constitutional point of view it is of
the first importance; for if, after referring a case to
the arbitrement of the Court, the Attorney-Ge-
neral is at liberty to withdraw it again, and to
avail himself of his prerogative, he may do so
when the judgment of the Court is adverse to
his application, no less than when it is favourable.
Of 'such a nature was the proceeding of Lord
Plunkett in the case of the Dublin Rioters. He
first sent up a bill of indictment to a Grand Jury,
and when that bill had been ignored he filed his
prerogative information. What has been done in
defiance of the finding of a Jury may be done in
contravention of the judgment of a Court; and
though the Justices in Banco Regis will generally
he pretty much of the same mind as his Majesty's
Law Officers, there have been conjunctures in the
history of England when the will of the Monarch
was virtuously and nobly resisted by the Judges. It
is to Juries, however, that in political matters we are
chiefly to look for the protection of our liberties;
and Lord Plunkett's proceeding was for that reason
a more dangerous precedent than Sir James Scar-
lett's : but the principle is the same; and if Sir
Charles Wetherell shall, according to his declared
intention, ask leave to bt ing in a Bill, retraining
the AttorneyfGeneral from the exercise of his offi-
cial prerogative after a previous application made to
the Court of King's Bench, he will also include the
case of a previous application to a Grand Jury if he
be in truth animated by the Constitutional feelings
which he professes, and which prescribe the same rule
in both c Aes, namely, that the King's officerbe bound
by the decision of the tribunal himself has elected.
We must not conclude without remarking that
ahhough Mr. Alexander was not, in fact, prejudiced
by the Attorney-General's choosing rather to pro-
ceed on a prerogative information than on that
granted by the King's Bench, yet was he most
seriously damnified, as Mr. O'Connell judiciously
remarked, by the previous application to the King's
Bench; because that proceeding led him to reveal
the nature of his defence; armed with a fore-
knowledge of which, the Crown prosecutors were
enabled to prepare the evidence necessary to defeat
it; for, had they not been aware that Mr. Alexander
intended to deny that the libellous matter applied to
Lord Lyndhurst, we should scarcely have seen such
an array of noble and illustrious witnesses to make
out the inuendo.—Morning Chronicle. -
We are no advocates for rotten boroughs. We
wish to see the constitution of Parliament in prac-
tice what it is in name—a representative system. It
may, however, he asked why it is that many of those
Members of the Legislature who are returned for
places possessing the elective franchise in a truly
popular sense, should discharge their duty as ineffi-
ciently or suspiciously as the most enslaved of the
nominees of the most corrupt borough patronage.
Mr. Hobhouse was very severe upon Mr. Sadler the
other night, as having found his way into the Ho-
noerahle House not through the highway of popular
suffrage, but through the by-road of aristocratical
influence. Now, though we ere of opinion that the
only influence which ought to avail a man in obtain-
ing a seat in the House of Commons should be that
which is created by his own merits and capacity, yet
we think the manner in which a Member discharges
his duty, when once within the walls of St. Ste-
phen's Chapel, is still more important than the con-
sideration of the eircumetences by which he finds
his way into it. It is, indeed, a fair presumption,
tibia o.yi individual sent into Parliament by the au-
thority of a Borough proprietor will at all times pre-
fer the interests of his patron to the honest discharge
of his duty to his co'tintry„ Put then he comes into
the House with the badge and lively of his master's
service epon him. There is no deception—no
hoisting of fitise ee)ours, that the country should
confide in him and be disappointed. Can Mr.
Hobhouse, with all his speechifying about the
" purity of election," say as much, and be be•
Hewed? He has been returned for a place that exer-
cises the eleetive franchise on as broad a principle
as is, perhaps, censi,eeent with the safe exercise of
that great Constitutional prlvilege—yet there are
few Representatives of rotten boroi;ghe that are
leas efficient Members of Parliament than Mr. Hob-
house. it ; a evident to any person of common ap-
prehension, who bee oldserved the Honourable Gen-
tleman since he obtained the distinction of being
second Member for Westminster, that he has an
object before Ws pyes far more important in hie own
estimation than the 4bstract good of his country.
What great error of Ministerial policy has he ex•
posed ? What great act of corruption or venality
has he dissected? He babbles, indeed, about
" reforse," because it procures a cheap popularity
without distur,64 the repose, or breaking in upon
the prescriptive enjo-ir4gx.s of Government; but
does he ever expose himself to ase ,toil and danger
of chasing away peculation and extravagase; fitom
the ,state—and oppression and misery from the
people? Does he ever devote himself to the
arduous prosecution of any measures of real practi-
cal good ? Does he ever display any genuine zeal
and energy in defence of the rights itod iib.COPs of i

the people ? These duties, and ten times more, he
had undertaken to perform on the hustings at West-
minster; but no Representative of a close borough
could have been less troublesome to Ministers by
any earnest, fearless, and uncompromising exercise
of public virtue. Ile has, now and then, patriotic
words upon his lips ;—but let his vote upon the
first day of the Session, when he denied the dis-
tresses of the people, be a commentary upon his
principles.—Morning Herald.
This day is fixed for the election of a Member to
. represent the important county of Essex in Parlia-
ment, and gives the freeholders an opportunity
of shewing their disgust at the proceedings of his
Majesty's Ministers during the last two Sessions of
Parliament. We would merely recommend them to
do their duty—to be careful in the extreme with
respect to the political views of the candidate
they support—and to avoid disunion. We know
that it is the object of Colonel Bramston and the
apostates to sow dissension amongst the Tories,
and thus, by dividing the interest, to secure a
triumph. We trust that this mauceuvre will be
defeated, and that the Protestant candidates will
agree amongst themselves, and all, save one, defer
their pretensions for the present. We would also
remind the electors that Colonel Bramston's sons
ratted, and went to Oxford for the express purpose
of supporting the " apostate" Peel; that he him-
self is a servile echo of the liberals, and ready to do
homage at the shrine of the Dictator, or the Pope,
of any other " power of darkness" who may have
patronage.— Morning Journal.
It has struck us, and we think it must have struck
every one who has the slightest knowledge of the
subject, that the determination of the Government
to throw open, if it can, the whole beer trade of the
kingdom, is not only a bungling attempt to furnish
a tub to the whale, but a resolution pregnant with
mischief to the morals and good order of the corn-
munity, and neither more or less than a direct, gross,
and aggravated, attempt to rob of their property
those who are engaged in the trade. The Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer, in his speech on Thursday
List, exhibited great anxiety to convince the brewers
that they, as well as the community, would be
greatly benefited by the destruction of what had
been miscalled their monopoly, and the throwing of
the trade completely open ; but it never struck the
Right Hon. Gentleman that there was a third
class—the dealers in beer—interested in the matter,
and accordingly he never once deemed it neces-
sary even to allude to them Yet we will be bound
to aver, that if any one had spoken of the
abolition of the Established Church in Ireland—of
an equitable adjustment with the fundholder—of a
reduction in the pay of officers in the army
and navy—or even of the abolition of a
patent office, 'however injurious its existence might
have been to the public, the Right Hon. Gentleman
would have found no terms too strong to express
his indignation ! The House would have rung, if
it had not been instructed, with the sanctity of vested
interests—the necessity of keeping faith with the
public, and the usual common places, so useful to a
second or third-rate speaker, when he wishes to ex-
cite a sensation, arid crush his opponent by a volley
of " hear, hears !" All these interests are as
sacred as the salaries of his Majesty's Ministers—
and they are sacred enough, at least, in their
own eyes—they must not be touched, meddled, or
interfered with ; and yet in no respect do they differ
from those which the Chancellor of the Exchequer
passed over in such contemptuous silence, except that
the Licensed Victuallers are entitled to the protection
of the law, because under the existing law, and in the
full faith of its continuing to be the law, they have
invested the whole fruits of their industry in their
houses and trade, and that the others to whom we
have referred have only a vested interest for life, at
the terrninatim of which the law may be altered with-
out injury to any one. So much for the consistency
of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and for the prin-
ciple of the measure which it is his anxious desire to
pass into a Liw. Let us next look into its operation.
It is well known that the Licensed Victuallers of
the metropolis have embarked large sums of money
—in many instances more than they are actually
worth—in houses which bear a higher value than
other constructions of brick and mortar, simply be-
cause licences have been attached to them. This,
it will be allowed by all parties, is no fault of theirs.
The law made the system, and not they the law;
and we put it to every reasonable man, if under such
circumstances it would not be a gross and unjusti-
fiable robbery to strip those of their property by
a change of the law, who, under the supposition
that the law would not be altered to their injury,
hail placed that property under its protection ?
The ruin that would be caused by the contem-
plated change would be incalculable—nay, we he-
sitate not to aver, that many who are now liv-
ing on the fruits of their industry would be reduced
to beggary ; and is the Chancellor of the
Exchequer prepared for this ? Is lie altoge-
ther prepared for the disorder, the immora-
lity, the evasion of the revenue laws, and the
many other evils which would result from throwing
the trade open, arid permitting every pennyless fellow
who could find a roof to shelter him, to set up as a
vender of liquors ? We say, without hesitation, that,
if such be the result, there must be three Magistrates
for every one that is now appointed, and twenty
excise officers where two or three would perform the
duty; while, instead of an increase, there would be
an actual decrease, of revenue. To conclude for the
present, the trade may be thrown open, and those
who now have property in public-houses be ruined
by the measure; but it is our firm conviction that the
Legislature will be again compelled to resort to the
present salutary restrictions.—Morning Advertiser.

BANKRUPTS' COURT.