The Sun.
London, England, 1837-06-15 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, THURSDAY, JUNE 15, 1837

day espionage, the second reading of Mr. Bucking- I
ham's Public Walks Bill—the object of which is
in direct contrariety to Sir Andrew Agnew's Bill
—namely, to preserve the means of salubrious re-
creation to the industrious population of the me-
tropolis and provincial towns,—should have been
curried without a dissentient voice. We should be
glad to learn from our Legislators, how the working
classes, who can only take air and recreation on the
Sunday, are to enjoy the recreating benefits of the
public walks—the preservation or creation of which is
contemplated by Mr. Buckingham's Bill ? One deci-
sion of the Legislature, is, in fact, at practical variance
with the other. There are to be walks for the public,
but the public are not to have the opportunity of walk-
ing in them. We humbly submit that this Legislative
paradox is somewhat in the style of Laputan legisla-
tion. We have before discussed the subject of Mr.
Buckingham's Public Walks Bill. The principle of
it is excellent. No friend o f the people can avoid
sympathizing with its spirit and supporting its pur-
pose ; but there are details in it which are objection-
able, and they are objectionable on this ground—that
they are conceived in a dictatorial and exclusive—and
not in a popular spirit. For instance, rates are to be
levied on the provincial towns for the purpose of
creating public walks. Mr. Tooke has given notice of
a motion on this subject. The levy of such a rate
may be at variance with the interests and wishes of
the inhabitants. They' may be pressed with too great
an amount of rates already. There may not be the
same relative necessity for the creation of public walks
in some districts as in others. For instance—in dis-
tricts where the public ways have not been illegally
stopped, or the public commons tyrannically usurped
by the spirit of moneyed selfishness and exclusive mo-
nopoly. This matter should be left to the voluntary
inclinations and voluntary contributions—or, at all
events, to the municipal discretion—of the inhabitants,
who are the best judges of their own wishes and in-
terests.
Again ; there is another objection to Mr.
Buckingham's Bill, which applies to the same dictato-
rial and anti-popular characteristic. We rather sus-
pect that it was this characteristic which enabled it to
pass, by gaining for it the favour of the same phara-
saical knot who passed Sir Andrew Agnew's egregious
Bill for the propagation of misery and discomfort on
the Sunday. The clause, if not imbued with their
fanatical spirit, has, at all events, derived its tinc-
ture from the Temperance Societies of Sheffield,
end from the tea-parties of the old ladies whose
influence returned the Honourable Member for that
borough. People, forsooth, are to drink nothing
but tea and coffee in these public walks. No
" strong potations" are to be allowed. There are to
be " no more cakes and ale," and ginger is " not to
be hot in the mouth." Now, we have just the
same objection to temperance by Act of Parliament as
we have to religion by Act of Parliament. We neither
like the straist-waistcoat manufactured for us, in sly
deference to his Sheffield constituents, by Mr. Buck-
ingl,am, nor the strait-wastcoat manufactured for us
by Sir Andrew Agnew in equally sly deference to his
saintly ecnstituents. In regard to the insidious at-
tempt to enclose Primrose Hill, we are glad to see
public opinion successfully roused to the subject,
which we hope will be set at rest by Mr. Hume's
motion to-night. That it is successfully roused is
shown by the great meeting which took place in
Marylebone on the subject last Saturday—by a depu-
LA:on to Lord Melbourne, which was most favourably
received, and by the indignant strictures of the con-
temporary press upon the subject. An excellent letter
en the law of time case will be found in Tuesday's
Advei iiser, from an able and old contributor_
Mr. James, of Hampstcad—to whom the public
are much indebted for the unremitting exertions
which he has devoted to this object. For our
own part we shall briefly say that we should con-
sider the enclosure as a most scandalous encroachment.
It is actuated by the same grasping and gothic spirit
which attempted some years ago to enclose and ab-
stract from the public a spot, unrivalled in variety and
picturesque bezuty, and clear to the artist and man of
taste, as well as salubriously recreative to the artisan—
we mean the whole south-west range of Hampstead-
heath. There is nothing like it in picturesque beauty
within a hundred miles of the metropolis. As to
Primrose-hill and the few green spots which remain
around it uninclosed, or uninvaded by brick and mor-
tar, they have been the haunts of the industrious po-
pulation of London during all the few leisure intervals
which they can snatch from the anxiety or confinement
of their labours, from infancy to manhood. Shame to
the Vandals who, for some paltry penny,
,farthing
purpose, attempt these disgraceful encroachments on
the people, which, be it never forgotten, degrade the
social morals and the manufacturing taste, whence our
commercial profits are derived, as much as they dimi-
nish or pervert the people's healthy enjoyments.
These men must have " fronts of triple bronze."—
Morning Advertiser.
The stock-jobbing fabrications transmitted from
Bayonne per telegraph to Paris, touching the closely-
blockaded condition and approaching destruction of
time Carlist expedition at Barbastro, are now made
manifest to the world, though, like time multitude of
fraudulent inventions from the same quarter, which pre-
ceded them, they were successful for a time in imposing
upon the credulity' of the public. Even many of those
whose feelings are in favour of the cause for which the
Basque people have so long and bravely contended,
were induced to consider the situation of the Carlist
expedition as desperate, notwithstanding the victory
which it had so recently obtained at Huesca, when the
Guipuzcoan anti Navarrese battalions, led by the able
and enterprising Infante Don Sebastian from Hernani
to the centre of Aragon, proved that they wanted
neither the courage or conduct necessary to conquer
the enemies of their national rights and liberties on
the plains whom they had so often beaten in their
native mountains. But the victory which they ob-
tained on the 3d inst., on their advance from Barbastro
to the river Cinca, appears to have been a still more im-
portant one, and attended with more disastrous conse-
quences to the revolutionary cause, than that which they
achieved over Iribarren in the neighbourhood of Huesca.
A few clays ago, while the Christino journals teemed
with accounts of imaginary successes of the Queen's
arms, and the capture or extermination of Don Carlos
and his force was confidently predicted, we warned the
public, as we have often felt it our duty to do, against
giving any credit to such statements. We said " The
public must be prepared to expect a great deal of fabri-
cated news respecting this expedition of Don Sebas-
tian until something very decisive shall have been
achieved, which news is generally manufactured at or
near Bayonne, by the Christino agents and fund job-
bers, who forward it to serve the interests of their em-
ployers on the Bourse, per telegraph to Paris. There
the lie of one day, though completely contradictoryof
the lie of the former one, is as greedily swallowed as if
the telegraph had as immaculate a character for truth
as it has a bad reputation for notorious lying." The
correspondence which appeared in our columns yes-
terday, from one of our Spanish correspondents, li
dissipated a whole mass of. those stock jobbing
falsehoods, one of which was what was repre-
sented to be a " well-authenticated account" on
the Paris Bourse, and which informed the public that
" Don Carlos was still at Barbastro on the 3d, whilst
General Oraa carried his reconnoisances even to the
very gates of the town, driving the Carl!sts before him
n ithin the walls which they were fortifying, the Baron
De Meer being in the mean time in watchful charge
of the left bank of the river, and, Espartero marching
from Pampeluna for Aragon." Now, according to this
account, the situation of the Carlist expedition was
desperate indeed ; for, if it could not make head against
the forces of Oraa and the Baron De Meer, it was
quite clear that it could have no chance of escape on
the coining up of Espartero and his army. Even
without that, it was clear that a close blockade, which
of course implied the cutting off all supplies, must
soon compel such a force, shut up within the walls of
Barbastro, to surrender at discretion. Indeed, the
" well authenticated close blockade" was soon fol-
lowed up by account of a proposed capitulation, in
which a sale-conduct into the French territory was
asked for Don Carlos, Don Sebastian, and a few
civilians attached to their Court ; also, that the
officers and soldiers should be considered prisoners
of war, and exchanged as soon as an equal number
of Christino prisoners could be got together, along
with some other terms, all of which were indig-