The Sun.
London, England, 1839-12-05 00:00:00

EYEN ING EDITION.

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS

FROM THIC MORNING PAPERS OF THlii DAT.
(From the Times.)
The Palmerston print was ordered last night to get
itself out of the scrape it had got into on Monday night.
That scrape consisted in its sneering (whether by order
of its masters or through its own baseness andignor-
ance) at a provision of the Constitution which, if
violated, would expel the Monarch from the Throne ;
calling that provision "perhaps a necessary security
when it was passed"—thus intimating that it has grown
obsolete—and saying, that " nobody at present looks
upon Popery as anything more than a mere watchword,
used by the most violent leaders of a faction to impose
! upon the most ignorant of its followers." In rebuking
this impudent and iniquitous attack upon the Constitu-
tion, we called the attention of our readers to the Act
of Settlement, 'and to the 9th clause of the Bill of
Rights, which, it would seem, we are sorry to say, can-
not be too frequently brought under the notice of the
Ministers and their adherents, and which we therefore re-
produce here :—" And whereas it hath been found by ex-
perience that it is inconsistent with the safety and wel-
fare of this Protestant kingdom to be governed by a
Popish Prince, or by any King or Queen marrying a Pa-
pist, the said Lords spiritual and temporal, and Commons,
Ido further pray that it may be enacted, that all and
every person and persons that is, are, or shall be recon-
ciled to, or shall hold communion with the See or Church
of Rome, or shall profess the Popish religion, or shall
/marry a Papist, shall be excluded, and be for ever in-
capable to inherit, possess, or enjoy the Crown and G. o.
vernment of this realm, and Ireland, and the dominions
thereunto belonging, or any part of the same, or to have,
use, or exercise any regal power, authority, orjurisdic-
tion within the same ; and in all or every such case or
cases the people of these realms shall be, and are here-
by, absolved of their allegiance ; and
.the said Crown
and Government shall from time to time descend to,
and be enjoyed by, such person or persons, being Pro-
testants, as should have inherited and enjoyed the same,
in case the said person or persons so reconciled, holding
communion, or professing, or marrying as aforesaid,
were naturally dead."—Bill of Rights, clause 9. In
this passage we see that Popery, which the
" Ministerial print " treats as a mere watchword of
modern faction, is held by the Constitution to be
something so dangerous to the State, that if the
Sovereign profess it, or marry one who does, the people
are ipso facto absolved from their allegiance, and the
Crown and Government descend to the next in succes-
sion who is a Protestant. In two ways, each of which
is eminently characteristic of the Ministers and their
scribes, the Palmerston print endeavours, after 48 hours'
meditation, to shelter itself from the indignation, which
it has discovered, but too late, that its unconstitutional,
false, and flagitious doctrine must provoke from (the
Papists excepted) all commonly well-informed and well-
intentioned persons of whatever party. The first of
these ways is the hackneyed one which consists wholly
in having recourse to the "enormous lying" machine,
and which we therefore pass without further notice.
The other, however, includes something besides that, and
is deserving of all attention. Assuming that the
Ministers had been charged with intending to vio-
late the Constitution in this particular of the Queen's
marriage—which is not true—for the charge was
that the Ministerial scribes had made light of such
violation, and called Popery a mere watchword
' of modern faction—the Palmerston print proceeds
I to give a most remarkable reason why the Mi-
nisters cannot be charged with any such intention by
any man in his senses. And what is this reason ? It
lis this,—and we pray our readers to con it well,—that
if her present Majesty were to forfeit the crown,—as
the print in question admits she would if she were to
marry a Papist,—the crown would descend to the King
of Hanover, avho would forthwith kick the O'Coneell
Cabinet out of office! It is not, therefore, to the inte-
rest of the Whigs that her Majesty should forfeit the
crown, and consequently they cannot be supposed by any
body who knows them as well as the Tories know cheat,
to be capable of advising her Majesty to any step which
would deprive THEM o/ their places and their pay.
Was there ever exhibited before brazen impudence and
self-proclaimed profligacy like unto this? According to
the reason of the Palmerston print, the Constitution is
nothing ; the Queen, personally, is to be cared no more
for than a cast-off washerwoman ; and the loss of her
Majesty's crown is acknowledged to be a matter of no
importance whatsoever, except so far as it would carry
with it. the loss of the Whig Ministers pay and places !
What next, Cupid ?
(From the Morning Chronicle.)
We never expected to see the day when the Earl of
Liverpool and the Earl of Eldon should be held up as
bad Protestants. Yet this is what is implied in the
late complaints in the Tory Papers, that all allusion to
the Protestantism of Prince Albert was omitted in the
Royal Message. When the Earl of Liverpool was
Prime Minister, and the Earl of Eldon the Keeper of
the Royal Conscience, a number of messages were pre-
seated to Parliament on the subject of marriages in the
Royal Family. The first had reference to the Duke of
Cumberland's marriage on 27th June, 1815. In this
case the Prince Regent acquaints Parliament, " that a
marriage, to which the consent of his Royal Highness
was duly given, has been solemnized between his brother,
the Duke of Cumberland, and a daughter of the reign-
ing Duke of Mecklenburg Strelitz, niece to her Majesty
the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Ireland, and relict of the Prince Sales-Braunfels." Not
a word whether the Princess Sales-Braunfels was Protes-
tant or Catholic, The next case is that of the Princess
Charlotte of Wales, on the 14th March 1816. The com-
munication here is that " the Prince Regent, acting in
the name and on the behalf of his Majesty, having
given the Royal consent to a marriage between his
daughter, her Royal Highness the Princess Charlotte
Augusta, and his Serene Highness Leopold George
Frederick, Prince of Cobourg of Saalfeld, has thought
fit to communicate the same to the House." Not a
ward as to the religion of the party, The death of the
Prineess Charlotte having put an end to all hopes of
direct succession to the Throne, the unmarried brothers
of thg Regent were urged to follow the example of the
Duke of Cumberland. On the 14th of April, 1818,
the Prince Regent thought "it right to inform the
House of Commons that treaties of marriage are in
negotiation between his Royal Highness the Duke of
Clarence and the Princess of Saxe Meiningen, eldest
daughter of the late reigning Duke of Saxe Meiningen ;
and also between his Royal Highness the Duke of Cam-
bridge and the Princess of Hesse, youngest daughter of
the Landgrave Frederick, and niece of the Elector of
Hesse." Not a word here about the religion of the
Princesses. On the 13th of May, 1818, the Prince
Regent acquainted the House of Commons that he
had given the Royal consent to a marriage between
his Royal Highness the Duke of Kent and her Serene
Highness Mary Louisa Victoria, widow of the late
Prince of Leiningen, and sister of the reigning Duke
of Saxe Cobourg of Saalfeld, and of his Royal High-
ness Leopold George Frederick Prince of Cobourg
of Saalfeld." No mention here of the religion of the
Princess. It will not be pretended that in all
these cases, with the exception of that of the Duke
of Cumberland, which preceded the death of the
Princess Charlotte, succession to the throne was not
contemplated. One of the Princesses, the Duchess of
Clarence, became Queen Consort, and the daughter
of the Duchess of Kent now fills the throne. If the
failure to satisfy the nation of the Protestantism of
Prince Albert on the Royal marriage be a culpable
omission, the same reason applies to all the above
cases. No one will pretend that, if the Protestantism
of Prince Albert be of material concern to the welfare
of the kingdom, the Protestantism of Prince Leopold,
the Duchesses of Clarence, Kent, and Cambridge, were
of less material concern. It is quite true that it was
matter of common notoriety that all these parties were
Protestants ; but it is equally matter of common noto-
riety that Prince Albert is a Protestant. If Popery,
therefore, lurk in the omission, in the last Royal mes-
sage, to specify the religion of the future husband of
the Queen, the Earl of Liverpool and the Earl of Eldon
were equally chargeable with a design to favour Popery.
But we suppose we shall hear no more about the Po-
pery of Prince Albert : hypocrisy has overshot the
stark here.

(From the Morning Advertiser.)
The great anti-Corn-law inference of Dr. Bowring's
late declaration to the Manchester Chamber of Com-
merce, assumes every day a character of more alarming
and urgent importance. It is a most note-worthy fact
thatd
h Dr. Bowring (after a prolonged Continental tour,
anaving been officially deputed by Government to at-
tend them eeting of the Prussian Commercial League)
istates that there is no unfriendly feeling among the
members of that League towards the English, but the
contrary. " The Continentslists," he says, " waited
long, but in vain, for a relaxation of the duties on their
corn ; and they formed, only in self-defence, a league,
now co
m milpr esising
of surf 26,0
a ce,"00,000 of people, and about 5,000
square This league cannot readily
be broken, it posseses vast power, and it tells us that
it must increase the duties on our manufacture, un-
-1 less we diminish those imposed on their corn. On
the other hand, it is willing to meet us, even in a
gradual change, if our Legislature will not at once
abolish the destructive impost. It is a momentous
' consideration that the mischief, in this case, is pro_
gressive ; that unless strong remedial measures be
adopted, things must become much worse. We are
arrived, therefore, at a great crisis. The
present is h
favourable time for efforts of some kind in the cause
of free trade ; and the deplorable state and prospects
of tile manufacturing operatives, ought to urge all who
can do anything in this treat and good cause to re-
eouhle their exertions. Our foreign cuitomers,dis-
gusted by the gross selfishness of our Legislature,i are
rapidly taking means to supply their %vents indepen-
dently of us, and the many thousands whore the
foreign trade has hitherto provided with a subsitance
have now no prospect before them but lingering sta!va•
tion and a premature grave ; while every branch of our
complicated interests is deeply suffering from the ope-
ra:ion of the same dreadful system. We are persuaded
that dear bread is one of the chief incentives to crim a
and insubordination. Dear bread is under any 10: m
an unmitigated evil. It is not, however, so much in

O ‘7""e7

their immediate as their remoter effects that the Corn-1
law operates as an incentive to revolution and crime. It
is the fearful paroxysms of commercial distress and
famine produced by them which constitute their chief
atrocity. On commerce the population of our large
towns depend for subsistence. The Corn-law; not
only shut us out of the wealthiest marts of Europe,
by denying us the means of commercial exchange with
them, but they subject our home trade to ruinous fluc-
tuations, by destroying the demand for our products at
the very time that its utmost activity is required to
supply our wants. Can any commercial man, who re-
flects upon the state of the country, doubt for one mo-
ment as to the causes that have produced the present
stagnation of trade, and the utter disorganization of
every branch of industry ? Is not the cause palpable
in the fact, that upwards of twenty millions more money
have been paid for bread alone, (luring the past year,
than were paid in 1835? The home demand for our
manufactures mus have been proportionably lessened ;
and if we add another twenty millions as the increased
cost of other kinds of agricultural produce, we have a
sum equal to forty millions suddenly withdrawn from
the internal trade of the country. It is not, how-
ever, the loss of trade only consequent upon the ab-
straction of such an immense amount of demand—the
glut produced both in the home and foreign market
has depreciated British wares below the cost produc-
tion, and entailed not only a loss of profit, but on
many hands an incalculable sacrifice of capital. To
make confusion worse confounded under such circum-
stances, English traders are suddenly compelled to car-
Ty their gold to other countries for corn ; thus raising
the rate of interest and doubling our difficulties at the
very time that our home market is closed against us,
and our capital piled up in warehouses groaning beneath
the unsaleable products of the hand loom and steam-
engine. The commercial panic of the past year has been
but one of a series of similar shocks that have recurred
periodically, with constantly increasing violence, for the
last five and twenty years. There is not a single instance
on record of commercial panic in connexion with a low
price of food. These destructive vitiations of the ba-
lance of trade are produced only by the impious and ab-
surd policy that restricts onr population to a limited
soil, and a single climate for its food, denying us the
full benefit of those advantages which the bounty of
Providence has placed at our command, and building up
feelings of hostility, hatred, and rivalry between nations
who had else,
" Like kindred drops, mingled into one."
(From the Morning Post.)
The new regulations with respect to the postage of
letters come into force this day, and great we have no
doubt will be the increase of the work at the Post-office
this evening. Business correspondence will probably not
suffer much alteration, at least at the beginning, for no
one would have postponed a business letter until to-day
merely on account of getting it conveyed at a cheaper
rate. But the first rush of increased private corre-
spondence will probably be immense. In this vast
metropolis there are probably many thousands who have
for the last week postponed the letters they would other-
wise have sent, in order to despatch them on the first
day of the cheap postage. Every one almost will be
eager for some short time to enjoy epistolary communi-
cation with distant friends at the small charge of four-
pence, but before long the fourpenny impulse will lose
much of its power. The trouble of writing letters will
once more occur to the indolent, or those who have some-

thing
,else to do, and the floods of business at the Post-
office will subside. Had the regulations which come into
force this day been framed honestly and judiciously, they
would have afforded every possible inducement to the
public to adjust their correspondence in the mode least
onerous to the Post-office clerks, for, whatever the re-
sult may be by and bye, the immediate result will un-
doubtedly be a press of business which the c:erks will
have great difficulty in getting through. But the real
object aimed at in the forming of the new regulations
boems to has been an increase of letters greater than

hat which mere diminution of postage would occasion.
A premium of at least five-and-twenty per cent. is of
fensd to every banker, merchant; broker, attorney, or
she pkeeper, who inas, live money or papers to ine'o-re in
his letters, to send two or three, where one would serve
hit; purpose far better. E.ers one having a letter to
send, with enclosures which make it exceed an ounce,
wi 'lout exceeding an ounce and a half, will save twenty-
fiv e per cent. of the postage by sending the enclosures
in two or three letters instead of in one ! The new
rages arc, that on letters not exceeding half an
ounce weight there will be taken one rate of post•
age or fourpence. On letters above half an ounce,
and not exceeding an ounce, two rates of post-
age, or eightpence, will be taken. Thus all letters
not. exeeding an ounce have the benefit of the first prin-
ciple, that is fourpence per half ounce weight, and, if
the half he not exceeded, only one postage will be
t aken. But, presently, " postmasters" are ordered to
"bear in mind that after the first ounce, no distinction
it; so be made between the ounce and the fraction of
an ounce. A letter, for instance, which turns the ounce
tvs!ight is liable to four rates of postage, and a letter
ws ighing a fraction above two ounces is liable to six
rat es of postage, and so on." Thus it will be seen that,
im mediately upon passing the ounce, the principle of
foe irpence per half ounce is given up. Two half ounces
will have to pay but two fourpences, yet three half
ounces (if in one letter) will have to pay four fourpences ;
n a: r, the minutest fraction above one ounce will have
to pay as much as the whole ounce of which it is the
mil lute fraction. As soon as you go beyond the ounce,
ir.s teed of having your letter conveyed at fourpence
p e. r half ounce, with which principle you start, you
rr ir iy have to pay eightpence for five grains.
N N here is the sense of this ? Can any one believe
t hat a regulation bearing inequality and absurdity upon
I Lc face of it (unless the multiplication of letters were
'As real object) would have been adopted without some
si ich purpose ? Letters not exceeding an ounce are
a 'lowed an advantage which is not allowed to letters
I ,bove an ounce. In other words, a premium is offered
• to the dividing of large letters into small ones, and a
consequent burdening of the Post-office with a perfectly
needless addition of business, at the very time when
every inducement should have been given to a directly
contrary course. If the new regulations had adjudged a
premium of five and twenty per cent. to such letters as
were above an ounce, it might well have been justified
on the ground that to make the correspondence as
compact as possible was a desirable object when
commencing with a new system which was
likely very much to increase the business of the Post-
office clerks ; but what justification there can be of
the plan which mulcts the public in proportion as
the public endeavours to save the Post-office
trouble we cannot conceive. The reason of such a re-
gulation we believe to be, that a fictitious appearance
of increase of correspondence upon the reduction of;
postage may be given to the working of the system ;
but we are far from considering this a justification.
Another of the new regulations is that " all letters
• exceeding the weight of an ounce (with the exception of
- letters addressed to France) must have the postage
I )aid in advance. Should the postage not be paid in
a dvance, the letters must be charged with double the
r rtes to which they would otherwise be liable." Here
it . another inducement, and perhaps a more powerful one
t nan that already adverted to, for dividing large letters
i ato small, and thus heaping a needless addition of work
'upon the Post Office. The number of letters every
evening containing money or papers above an ounce
-which the bankers, merchants, and solicitors of London
have occasion to send by post must be immense. It is
contrary to their rules and habits of business to pay the
postage on such letters in advance, and yet they will not
like to subject their correspondents to a fine of a hun-
dred per cent. for not doing so. But the rule only
applies• to letters which exceed an ounce. Break the
letter into two or three letters, and not only will the
five-and-twenty per cent. be caved as already described,
but the rule about paying in advance will be completely
• evaded. It will no longer apply. The Post-office
clerks will be the sufferers, and the correspondence of
the country will appear to have wonderfully in-
creased. But the Post-office clerks will not be the
only sufferers. In the transmission of every letter
there is undoubtedly some risk, and as undoubtedly
) there is more risk in the transmission of two or
1
three letters than in the transmission of one. The
greatest risk is in respect of letters containing en-
closures, but it is with respect to such letters that
the new regulations provide a penalty upon not di-
viding them. So far as risk is concerned, it is the
i nterest of the sender of money or papers to put the
e nclosure under one cover, and, as that is for the
c onvenience of the Post-office as well, it might hays
b een expected that that mode would• be encouraged.
I lut neither the interest of the public nor the conve-
x lience of the Post-office has been consulted. The in-
I crease in the number of letters is the one thing thought
i . of, and for this, common sense, public convenience, and
\ general safety have been sacificed. It were much to be
\,v i shed that the notice issued by the Post-office had said
suomettling distinct about the future postage on foreign
'totters, and especially letters to France. The notifies-
/
tion is that the single rate of inland postage on all
general post letters, transmitted between places in the
United Kingdom, will be the uniform rate of fourpence,
I I 'xcept in the case of foreign letters transmitted by packet,
c ts which the rate of inland postage at present taken
n list be continued, although the charge must be calcu-
li eed in both cases by weight, and not by inclosure. We
3; qspose this means that there is to be certainly no re-
d action in the postage upon French letters ; but it would
II aye been far better to have said so at once.

FATAL ACCIDENT ON THE RIVER.—Ye.s-
-\
A erday Thomas Dailey, a sailor on board the Bella-I.a
v.et, sel to the next tier, slippcd, and fell a height of up-
wart is of twenty feet, into a coal barge beneath. He
was ~!,..,,ken up in a state of insensibility, and remavA
to the LCndon Hospital, where he died in a few minutes
after hi% at:mission.
ruld Ann, collier vessel, whilst crossing a plank from his
N'AGRO \ll IT.—A clergyman once undertook
)
to •convi..‘rt a necro, who was all but incorri:zible. As
ian argWilentzon a, I hominent, he told Cuffy that the
/ vir !ked did not liva half their days. " Dat dare is
(Jo ~,er," said Cuffy ; 4‘1,,tal no lib him day, hah. Wcll,
Lif n I s'pose him die,uou.t leben o'clock forenoon I"