The Sun.
London, England, 1837-03-25 00:00:00

Mxneli. di..tree, 'dated March 7, signed by the

Nl:id.ster of Justice addressed to the Attort-ley-Gelle:al,
sends him No. 85 of the Correio, in which is an artic!o
headed " "Remeehido in Lisbon," saying, to be absolutely
guilty of an abuse of the liberty of the press by a scanda-
lous and,direet invitation to rebellion, the said Attorney-.
General is ordered to take the.necessary legal steps that;
such acts may not remain unpuniihed.
MAtten 14.—Yesterday the Minister of Finance pro-
sentea two projects of law ; the first was to impose a new
duty of 120 reis per lb. on tobacco, wl...ich, according to his
1 estimation, would produce a revenue of 200 coutos of reis.
The second project was foe the capitalization of .the
floating debt, on inscriptions bearing interest. As far as
we can judge by a cursory perusal, this project scents good.
and tending to re-estal;tish public credit. *e could wish
that, together 'with this measure, others may be proposed,
, r ointing out the taxes which are to serve as guarantees for
this capitalization.
The Government of the Cortes seem at length resolve&
to put as end to the licentiousness of the press, which ha,:
latterly reached its greatest height in the pestifero,..s •...14c-
legs of the Devoristas. 'Fite Minister of Justice has or-
dered the prosecution of the Cerreio for violating the law of
the liberty of the presS. The infraction is manifest ; the
crime extremely serious, as the Minister of the Interior'is
' notions of the liberty of the press are known to. be gene-
' runs and liberal in the extreme.—Nacional to March 16,
I hid llgiVC.

Cartain Hastings Doyle, • son of General Sir Charles
D0y1...4 who lately joined the depot of the 24th Regiment,.
ha,t a very narrow escape of his life while out hunting ilea--
Y•Jughal a few days ago. His horse blundered witla him Le
a leap, fell, precipitated him on his head, anti. :oiled ow:t-
hin), He was taacri op apparently lifeless, and carried
Youghai. He is out of danger, and although severely late--
rated in the head is fast recovering from the effects of Orr
concussion.—Doblin Paper.
" The good King" (Louis XI!. of France), says
the amusing author of the " Memoirs of payarti," "had en-
tirely altered his manner of living, for iLe sake of his wife .
b;'fore this he used to rise at eight o'clock, and now he tr,as,
ohtiged to rise at noon ; six had been his accustomed ho'
goirig, to bed, and now he frequently sat up till midnigl•
was seeb irregularity: of life, operating on a constitutior already'
eaccbledi hVilq4 lacTi943 riipcc tokl ,rare.,,

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

Our Morning Contemporary, the Times, in its
eagerness to excite in the Royal mind suspicion of the
Duchess of Kent, and the establishment of Kensing-

ton, seized with avidity a paragraph from the Tyne
Mercury, copied into most of the London papers,
connecting the return of Lord Durham with the ma-
jority of the Princess Victoria in May next. It so
happens, however, that the Princess Victoria is not of
age till she attains the age of 21, except in, case the
Crown should descend to her. The Bill introduced by
Lord Lyndhurst, in Nov. 1830, was merely to provide
for the administration of the government of the coun-
try, in case the Crown should descend to her Royal
Highness the Princess Alexandrina Victoria, daughter
of his late Royal Highness the Duke of Kent,
being under the age 9f eighteen years, and for the
care and guardianship of her person. On her
Royal Highness attaining the age of eighteen
she will merely be qualified for the sovereignty in
case of the lamented death of his Majesty. She
is now merely heiress presumptive, and not with-
drawn by special legislation from the ordinary
law, but in the precise situation of any other British
subject. If the Princess of Victoria had been, as
Heiress Presumptive, declared major at 18 without
reference to the contingency of the death of the So-
vereign, if his Majesty had subsequently to such de-
claration had issue, in consequence of which she would
have ceased to be Heiress Presumptive, we should in
that case have witnessed a still more striking anomaly
respecting the law of majority. We cannot imagine
that the Times will, attribute any treasonable inten-
tions to Lord Durham in returning at this time. And
yet so long as his Majesty lives and reigns there can
be no room for the interference of Lord Durham for
years to come. His Majesty is in the enjoyment of
excellent health, and the Times has not informed us
whether Lord Durham has had the opportunity of
consulting any persons gifted with second sight at
St. Petersburgh. Though we conceive our Morning
Contemporary will hardly venture to throw out malicious
insinuations against the Duchess of Kent on the
ground of Lord Durham's expected return, yet the
animus displayed in the number for Thursday last
forbids our indulging the hope that the matter will
not find some other vent. The wolf is never with-
out a pretext for assailing the lamb. " There was an
attemptmade a few months back," said the Times,
(and an impudent attempt it was) " to obtrude upon
the people of England, and on the young Princess
herself, some foolish notion that the'choice oT a con-
sort for her Royal Highness was an affair in which
nether she herself, nor the King, her Sovereign and
uncle, who has stood towards her, both naturally and
politically, ever since he came to the throne, in loco pa-
Iris, had the least particle of concern ; but that it must
lie in the supreme dictation of a Prince and Princess of
the foreign house of Saxe Coburg to settle, without her
free consent or that of the Vonarch of these realms—
Jo impose upon her, the heiress to the British empire,
wi.ltever husband it might suit their purposes of
fainiiy aggrandisement to provide. We exposed at
tfie time the mercenary audacity of this revolting pre-
tension." We have seldom read a more malicious at-
tempt to create dissensions between near and dear re-
latives than the above. That the Duchess of Kent
ever entertained a thought of sacrificing her daugh-
ter's happiness by forcing an improper marriage on
her, or that she could be so ill-advised as to imagin;
that ,the King would consent to any unsuitable mar-
riage. no one acquainted with the affectionate re:a-rd
of her Royal Highness for her illustrious daughter.
and the uniform prudence of her conduct, will for a
moment believe. The people of England are too gene
rous to witness with any other feelings than those of
disgust such ungenerous attempts to sow dissensions
between parent and child, and between the King and
his sister-in-law. Surely it cannot be the intention of
the Tories to countenance an ungenerous system of
warfare against the Duchess of Kent and her illustrious
daughter, in order to poison the happiness of that fa-
mily. We are sure, at all events, that his Majesty
cannot behold with satisfaction these assassin-like at•
tempts.—,Morning Chronicle.
The public is now informed ex cathedrel that the
IVliniaters have nearly made up their minds to go no
further with the Irish Tithe Bill—and why ? Because
" there is no chance that the House of Lords will have
yet learned any thing more of wisdom or moderation
than they possessed last year ; " and we are asked,
" Why introduce a measure yet, which, under pre-
sent circumstances, is not likely to pass ?" Very well,
if these be good and sufficient reasons why the Irish
Tithe Bill ought not to be brought forward, are they
not equally valid reasons against the perseverance of
Ministers in the two other measures which they have
designed for engines of subversion to the Church ?
If they consider it ridiculous to bring forward a
Bill for the settlement of Irish Tithe because it will not
pass, is it on the likelihood of passing the Church, rate
Bill that they attempt to justify its introduction on
the 21st of April ? Or is it the prospect of getting their
Irish Municipal Bill passed into a law that induces
Lord John Russell to propose it for discussion on
the 7th ? No—the fact is that they are ashamed of
the wretched figure they have made with their cele-
brated appropriation clause, which was declared last
year to be " vital" to their Ministry, as the Munici-
pal Bill is now. They dread its re-appearance as the
signal for an uproar of derision from one end of the
empire to the other. It is not the commutation of
tithe that they want or wish for, or the settlement of
the tithe question, or the relief of the poor clergy
from poverty and persecution. It is the cursed spolia-
tion principle to which they have pledged themselves,
and for which they are anxious, as a means of still
further unsettling the Church, and it is the affinity
which the so-called Municipal Bill, and the anti-
Church-rate Bill, bear to that other project, which
drives them onwards with both. The Irish Papists
will not suffer Lord Melbourne to retreat from the
Popish Corporation Bill. The turbulent Dissenters
tie him down to the English anti-Church-rate Bill.
But if consistency of argument were to do, what it
has never yet done—determine the conduct of the
Noble Lord and his colleagues—the despair of carry-
ing any one of those measures ought to act equally
.against the introduction of them all.—Times.
Lord John Russell appears to have been determined
to give eclat to the temporary close of the Parliamen-
tary Session at Easter. His notice of motion for the
Rs4orm of the Criminal Law, on Thursday night, was
a brilliant and useful effort which is calculated to
illustrate the finale of the first act of the Parliamentary
drama. It is calculated to rally round the Whig
Ministry the good wishes and applauses of all the best
friends of philanthropy and of human improiement.
The measure was equally unexpected as it was laud-
able. His speech, in moving for leave to bring in a
Bill to abolish the punishment of death, in certain
cases, which bf! stipulated, was admirable in every
respect,—both to regards the deliberate and conscien-
tious spirit of pract;cal research which it displayed,—
and as regards the high ground of broad and philoso-
phical reasoning which it assumed in concurrence with
the spirit of the age. Although he does not go so far
as we have ourselves gone while recently and repeatedly
,advocating the advantage,expediency, and safety of abo-
-14. hing the punishment of death, we hail the proposition
of ,r.ord J. Russell,—coming as it does from a high func-
tionary of the Crown,—as one of the most gratifying
earn es.'s of that general Reform of the Criminal Code
of the country, to which we and some of the most
honourable and eminent of our Contemporaries have
devoted steadiest energies, and dearest aspira-
tions. Lord ..John Russell proposes to act upon the
recommendation 01 the Report presented to Parlia-
ment last Session, by the Comoissioners appointed to
inquire into the state of the crimina.l law of the coun-
try, in which the Commissioners statel that capital
punishment ought to be limited to a sma;.l number of
offences. His Lordship proposed that it should be
removed entirely from the crime of forgery, as w-ell as
.from burglary and theft under certain stipulated cir-
e,,unstances. He was not prepared at present to sugges.
an entire alteration in the definition of such crimes as In,
sho mid leave subjected to the punishment of death—but
he stated that he was prepared to introduce a number of.
Bill a, specifying the number of crimes which he wanted
to rt !move from the description of capital offences. We
st, all!. at once admit that the progressive process which h
ip
L,,,,rl.lship adopts in carrying out his reform is the most
pru ujntial course; although we may be inclined to regret

that he does not extend his ultimate views beyond the
limitation of punishment of death to a certain num-
ber of specified offences. Nothing can be more
statesmanlike, nothing more philosophical, than the
view which his Lordship takes of the crying griev-
ance which at present besets the frame-work of our
criminal code. That grievance may be expressed in
a few words—namely, the want of due mitigation
and certainty of punishment. His Lordship justly
argued, as we have done, that the infliction of the pu-
nishment of death never was intended to wreak revenge

upon the culprit, but to deter from crime by the terror
of example. He argued, as we have done, that this
object was entirely frustrated by the present uncer-
tainty of the law, which renders the chance of punish-
ment for crime so problematical, or so distant, as to
produce no deterring effect upon the mind of a practised
criminal. The proofs which he adduced in the cases of
burglary and theft from the person, from official returns
during the last eight years of committals, convictions,
and executions, were most curious and most convincing:
the proportions of executions to convictions being an ave-
rage ratio of one to two hundred. What deterring example
can there be in a law which places before an offender
the distant chance of 199 to 1 in his favour, against
being punished for his present gratification ? Lord
John Russell might have carried his argument still
farther by urging that the law, so far from deterring,
by making punishment a mere game of chance, often
directly prompts to crime and encourages its perpetra-
tion. We have said enough on this subject lately, and
need not repeat our arguments. We have appealed
alternatively to the mitigation of the criminal code in
France, Prussia, and the United States. Instead of
the punishment being limited to the few cases desig-
-1 nated by the recommendation of the Commission last
year, on which his Lordship bases his present motion
—it is our settled conviction that it might be limited
advantageously and safely, as in Pennsylvania, to the
single instance of murder in the first degree. In that
State the system of silent seclusion and solitary con-
finement is effectually applied to all the other class of
*crimes which are generally visited with the extreme
punishment of the law. But if it be effectually applied
to them, why should it not be applied to murder in the
first degree ? It is admitted on all hands that the ex-
treme penalty is awarded for the purpose of deterring by
example, and not for the purpose of inflicting revenge.
Now it has been proved over and over again that solitary
and silent confinement for life would have more terrors
for criminals than the punishment of death ; and there-
fore would be more effectual for deterring by example.
We want to know what reply could be made to the
logic of this inference. We see none but one ;
namely, a mere superstition founded upon an axiom of
Jewish legislation which can have nothing to do with
Christian jurisprudence, nor, indeed, with that of any
society, except the Theocracy under which the law
was passed. We mean the axiom that "he who
sheds man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed."
But that axiom is superseded by the explicit and ex-
press prohibition of the second chapter of Genesis,—a
prohibition addressed generally to the whole human
lace,—not to shed the blood of the murderer. His
crime, like parricide in the Roman law, is unrecog-
nizable, ineffable, acd unpunishable. He is by that-
prohibition to be left to the punishment of the pursu-
ing furies of his own evil conscience; and sevenfold
vengeance is denounced upon the head of man inch •
vidually (and therefore socially) should lie dare, by
takiw, his life, to usurp a privilege of punishment
which belongs to his Creator.—Morning Advertiser.
Lord John Russell, in moving for leave to bring in
a Bill to abolish the punishment of death for those
cases of forgery which still remain capital, to be fol-
lowed by other Bills to remove the capital penalty from
various other crimes, has taken occasion to make a
long and elaborate statement to prove the necessity of
a very extensive revision of the criminal law, with a
view to its mitigation. The reasoning upon which
the Noble Lord supported his general proposition to
limit the punishment of death to a small number of
crimes, as compared with the present amount of capital
offences, was strong and conclusive. His arguments
were strengthened by powerful statistical evidence,
showing that laws, with moderate punishments, arc
more efficient in repressing crime than laws that are
intemperately severe. The House to which the
Noble Lords address upon this most important
subject was made, was unusually thin, and a Morn-
ing Journal, oppcsed to Government, that con-
tains a sharp and sarcastic commentary upon the
speech, would have it be supposed that it was the want
of ability in the orator himself, and not the want
of interest in his subject, that had failed to " draw an
audience." During the many years that we have
laboured to impress upon the Government and the
legislature the necessity of an extensive reform of the
criminal law, we have never treated it as a question of
party-polemics, and shall not do so now. We have
had to reprove the narrow views—to refute the fal-
lacious reasonings—to combat the prejudices and ex-
pose the errors of both Whig and Tory Administra-
tions. We no iv feel bound to say that Lord John
Russell treated the question of criminal law with a
good deal of ability, although, as we shall presently
show, the conclusion at which he arrived upon the
consideration of the whole subject, was not one lo-
gically deduced from the premises, which he had
is
placed beyond the reach of refutation, by his argu-
ments and facts. The thinness of the House we
attribute partly to the circumstance of a great num-
ber of Members having left town, as is usual at this
season, for the holydays, and partly to a cause more
discreditable to the " reformed" House of Commons—
viz., that the question not being one of party politics,
was not deserving of much senatorial attention. In this
respect the enlightened public—all that class of the
community, as numerous and persevering as they are
intelligent, who are anxious for such a reform of the
criminal law as a Christian people can honestly approve
and conscientiously execute, have great cause to com-
plain of the reformed House of Commons. The scent
of a job, the command of a Minister, or an opportu-
nity for the display of political empiricism, will induce
the attendance of a considerable proportion of Mem-
bers, who are apt to shun those questions of social
improvement which are really the most useful and be-
neficial to the community of all the labours of legisla-
tion. But a day of reckoning will come, and some
of those questions that have been shunned in the
House, will make their appearance in a shape in
which they cannot be eluded at the hustings. The
public feeling upon such questions will not allow itself
to be without adequate representation in Parliament.
We have said that the premises of Lord John Russell
were ably reasoned, and supported by convincing evi-
dence, but that his conclusion was not logically drawn
from his premises. His premises went to show not
only the uselessness of the punishment of death, as a
protection to society against crime, but even the perni-
cious influence that it has on the interests of justice ;
yet the conclusion at which he arrives is, that the
punishment so useless and pernicious should be retained
not only for high treason and cases partaking of the
nature of high treason, but for a variety of crimes affect-
ing the person, and which are to be all confounded in
punishment with actual murder. Does not Lord
John Russell see that his arguments for removing the
capital punishment from the offence of rick-burning—
arguments which we had repeatedly placed before the
public, and which at one time drew upon us the re-
peated, but impotent attacks of a journal known to be
an organ of ministerial opinion—does not Lord John
Russell see, we ask, that his arguments on the sub-
ject of rick-lnirning apply with equal force to burglary
and robbery, attended with a certain degree of personal
violence, but not destructive of life ? Will juries be
disposed to devote to the doom of the merciless mur-
derer the man who having it in his power to silence
perhaps the only evidence against him, by adding the
greater crime to the less, abstains from destroying life?
Does riot Lord John Russell see that he really eri
dangers the lives of the inmates of houses, or of tra-
vellers on the highway, by confounding what are called
aggravated cases of robbery and burglary with mur-
der, because, as it has been well expressed by Dr.
Johnson, he " provokes the commission of a greater
crime to prevent the detection of a less," the robber
and the burglar knowing that if they destroy life they
may escape conviction altogether ; and, at the worst,
can incur no :greater punishment ? Would it not be
a more :rational way of viewing the subject, and a
efficient protection to life, that aggravated cases of rob-
bery and burglary should be punished with the severest

cess.

degree of secondary punishment, and so a clear distinc- '
tion be drawn by the law, as there is in fact, and in
morals, between them and murder ? As to high trea-
son, it is one thing ; but cases partaking of the nature
of high treason, are another. We should like to see
the crime of high treason, whether the punishment of
death be retained for it or not, somewhat better de-
fined than it is at present ; but, under all circum-
stances, we protest against annexing a capital penalty
to " cases partaking of the nature of high treason."
By such cases the Noble Lord must mean cases of
constructive treason—the scandal and disgrace of our
system of political justice. It is monstrous to apply
to cases of constructive treason, which the ingenuity of
Crown lawyers may stretch to most extensive limits in
evil times, the punishment of death, and call it a re-
form of the Criminal Law. This retention of the
worst part of a code of blood we will resist to the ut-
most, and we feel confident we can resist it with sue-
___ _ Again, is it to be tolerated that, under pretence
of mitigating the Criminal Law, the Lansdowne Act, al-
ready only worthy of some country far less civilised than
England, shall have a fresh infusion of the spirit of le-
gislative barbarism poured into it, by the introduction
of a sweeping provision to extend the punishment of
death to every conceivable offence against the person
which may be supposed to constitute an attempt upon
life, and in which actual injury is inflicted ? What is
the principle of such an enactment ? The confound-
ing personal injuries with murder, while, in other cases,
unnecessary to name, a distinction in punishment exists
very properly between the attempt and the actual com-
mission of the offence. What is the policy of such an
enactment ? It is to cause the person who is insti-
gated by revenge to make sure of his victim—it is to
urge him to the completion of the crime, once he has
began it, by taking away the locus penitentice. Will
juries co-operate with the Government in enforcing such
a law, or will they not oftener sympathise with the
offender, and will not the inordinate severity of the law
thus cause many guilty persons to escape with impu-
nity, who, under a more reasonable law, would be sure
to be visited for the exercise of their violent passions
with coercion and punishment? Besides, all vague
and indefinite enactments against crime are fitter for a
tyrannical Government than a country of free institu-
tions. The crimes to be punished should always be
clearly defined. To leave them vague and obscure is
disgraceful to the Legislature and dangerous to the sub-
ject. We protest against applying the penalty of death
to constructive attempts to murder, as well as to con-
structive acts of treason. We are aware that, in the
course which Lord John Russell has taken, he has
acted upon the recommendation of the Commissioners
appointed to revise the Criminal Law. Like the
Home Secretary, the Commissioners have argued well,
and laid down premises wholly irreconcileable with the
conclusions drawn from those premises, and which are
embodied in their recommendations. This monstrous
proposition for extending, instead of diminishing, the
ensanguined provisions of the Lansdowne Act is theirs.
They have even gone further than Lord John Russell
has thought proper to follow them, in advising that
the capital punishment, in all cases in which it shall
be retained or newly enacted, shall, if possible, be in-
variably executed, thus cutting away from the Crown
its most beautiful prerogative—the saving attribute of
mercy ; but we must defer other remarks upon the
Ministerial plan and the recommendation of the Com-
missioners until a future opportunity. Let us only
add that in the case of forgery, that plan for reform-
ing the law is in perfect unison with the reasoning with
which it is introduced, and the facts which give to that
reasoning the advantage of experience. Would that
we could say the same of the whole Ministerial mea-
sure, and then the punishment of death would be re-
served for murder alone.— Morning Herald.
When we look back to the scenes which have takesn
place on the Cantabrian coast, from the morning of
the 10th instant, when the ill-fated Legion, British
mercenaries, and their Spanish allies, along with the
British Royal Artillery, Marines, and rocket brigade,
issued from the gates of that fortress, in confidence of
victory, until the evening of the 16th, when they re-
turned in dismay and disorder, flying before the enemy,
whom they had expected to exterminate, we 'Can find
no language adequate to express our indignation at the
conduct of a Government which has produced events
so dishonourable to the British name, and so afflicting
to humanity. On three of the seven days which inter-
vened between the attack upon the Ametng.ina-hill and
the retreat from Hernani, viz., the 10th, the 15th, and
the 16th, we find that, according to the admission of
Christino writers, not less than 3,000 of Gen. Evans's
troops have been killed and wounded. The casualties on
the 10th being about 1,000 men ; on the 15th, 500 ;
and on the 16th, 1,500. We have yet to bear what
the Carlists state as to their own loss and that of their
enemy. There was some fighting between the 12th and
15th, but it was of a less serious character, and what
the loss was we do not recollect to have seen stated.
All this bloodshed, terminated as it was by most dis-
astrous defeat, rests upon the heads of our peace-pro-
fessing Ministers. It is true Lord Palmerston has
been more particularly the " getter up" of the Canta-
brian tragedy—he is the stage-manager, who has
startled the repose of Europe with these spectacles of
blood. We observe that one of our Contemporaries
calls loudly for his dismissal, asserting that the King,
whose flag he has dishonoured, ought not to keep him
in his service twenty.four hours longer. We concur,
as we believe the majority of the British public do, in
that sentiment, but we think it applies to the whole
of the Ministry, or to none. However absurd, sense-
less, and mischievous the political enterprises and
military speculations of Lord Palmerston have been,
they have received the full assent and concurrence
of his equally sapient and consistent colleagues.
Why, then, should he be selected for punishment,
and his accomplices escape with impunity ? As long,
as the King pleases to keep any of the present Minis-
try about him, we trust he will .keep all. Their
criminality is common, and their common downfall
will be accelerated by avoiding all partial change in
the composition of the Cabinet. Not one of those
Ministers who have assisted to bring upon England
the indelible disgrace of the iniquitous non-interven-
tion war, in addition to the dishonour of the British
flag in Portugal and the east, should be allowed to
remain in the Councils of the King, if Lord Palmer-
ston were dismissed for lowering the foreign policy of
England into its present depth of humiliation. Be-
sides, it is only right that as long as we have a so-
called Whig Ministry, the " juvenile Whig" should
be allowed to bear the responsibility of his own foreign
policy—" bad now appears, but worse remains be-
hind." Lord Palmerston's policy has not yet been
worked out in all its absurd and injurious conse-
quences. Why should any one be compelled to work
out that policy but himself ? Unless our foreign
policy be changed altogether, we should be much
disappointed if the author of our present system
were not allowed to bring it to its consumma-
tion. Shall he be allowed to escape from the- case
of the Vixen into the irresponsible security of
private life ? Shall he be allowed to throw
ow upon
the shoulders of any other man the „
of the two unfortunate Queens of the Peninsula, who
have both had a loan of the " royal marines" to guard
their interest, and have both been dragged captives by
victorious mobs—the victims of a false confidence in
British assurances of support ? Shall any but the
to
the
great protocolist himself be requested once more
" settle" the Belgico-Dutch question, which by years
of diplomacy,he brought into a state of " most admired
confusion ?" Really, unless
i the o
the political
of thosealexistengcereaotf
the Whigs be cut short altogether, we do not see why
any other artist should fill u)
plans of foreign policy which this distinguished master
of the diplomatic art has sketched. Let him finish his
work, by all means, that the offspring of his peculiar
genius may have no disputed parentage. But turning
for a moment from the great author of the non-inter-
vention war to the chosen champion for carrying
ryisnc
its peaceful principle into execution with. fire and
sword, let us ask how its happens that the (
cause, which General Evans informed the electors of
Westminster several months ago, was " irretrievably
and hopelessly ruined," has been strong enough to drive
into disgraceful rout his 12,000 or 13,000 men before
Hernani, with the co-operating Palmerstonian force of
the royal marines, royal artillery, and rocket brigade ?
Let those most arrant simpletons or most shuffling
tricksters, who take upon themselves to save the body
of Westminster electors the trouble of thinking for

themselves, take General Evans's letter in their hands,
and ask him that question. Why should we take
credit to ourselves for having warned the Government
and the public all along of the disgrace and disasters
that would follow from the wanton and impertinent in-
terference of England in the internal concerns of
Spain ? It required only common sense to under-
stand the false position in which our Government
placed itself by such interference, and independence
of opinion, to warn the Government and the nation of
the consequences. Our warning, if attended to, would
have prevented much unavailing slaughter—much
waste of British treasure, and deep dishonour to the
character and military reputation of England.—
Morning Herald.
We are very glad to learn that Sir James Graham
intends to call the attention of the House of Com-
mons to the principle of the Registration of Voters
Bill before it is allowed to go into Committee. It is
difficult, indeed, to say what is to be understood by
the " principle" of a measure which, of course, is
but a series of enactments upon various points of de-
tail. Many however, of these particular enactments
are of sufficiently prominent importance to claim a more
deliberate consideration than the conversational dis-
cussions of the House in Committee would give to
them ; and we presume that Sir James Graham, with
this view, intends, upon the motion for the Speaker's
leaving the chair, to take a comprehensive view of the
several clauses to which we allude. No man is better
qualified to deal with a subj ect of this nature, which
requires much patient industry, much practical know-
ledge, a good deal of discernment, and not a little
courage ; for by the timidity or by the carelessness
of the Conservatives, stupid prejudices and preposses-
sions have been suffered to grow up upon all matters
connected with the registration of voters, which render
sound legislation upon it now extremely difficult.
It is hard to overrate the importance of the ques-
tions involved. The Reform Act may (we assume
it for the sake of argument) have been a necessary
and a salutary measure, in so far as its extension and
its curtailment of the elective franchise are in their
turns concerned. But the machinery by which its
provisions are to be carried into effect must be per-
fected before its operation can approach to perfection.
It is not enough to have determined in what hands the
vote shall be vested. There must be a process for
claiming the vote, an opportunity for proving the vote,
and a facility for giving the vote. If in any of these
stages the machinery introduced should be defective,
an election will still present anomaly instead of regu-
larity, error instead of certainty, and corruption instead
of purity. We shall notice successively the different
features of the proposed Bill to which, we suppose,
Sir James Graham's attention will be directed ; but,
in the first place, let us briefly recal to the recollection
of the Conservative Members of the House of Com-
mons the steps previously taken by Parliament for the
amendment of the Reform Act in this respect. In
the observation of the gradual changes by which
the Registration of Voters Bill assumed its present
hue and shape, we cannot help thinking that they
will see cause for a more diligent attention to its pro-
gress in the present Session that they seemed inclined
to apply to it in the last. In 1835 the House of
Commons appointed a Select Committee, to inquire
into the defects alleged to exist in the system of the
registration. That Committee laboriously investigated
every part of the subject, and agreed to certain recom-
inendations, upon which, we believe, little difference of
opinion was exhibited. In 1836 a Bill was intro-
duced into the House of Commons, founded upon the
recommendations of the Committee. It was intro-
duced by the At,,orney-General, as the legal adviser of
the Government ; and it contained, as might have
been expected, after the diligent researches of a well-
selected Committee, little that was objectionable, and
many provisions of great and obvious utility. If the
Bill had been left in this state it would probably have
become law with little or no opposition, and would
have been distinguished as nearly the only measure
of the Melbourne Cabinet calculated simply for the
production of practical benefit. The Rp.dicals, how-
ever, and the Dissenters saw betimes that- in so-
lengthy a statute there was room for plenty of jug-
gle and plenty of job ; and they proceeded to sug-
gest and recommend to the plastic judgment of his
Majesty's Attorney-General a number of alterations
which Sir John Campbell, " nothing loath," approved
and adopted. Of these alterations some had never
been proposed in the Committee ; some, having been
proposed there, had been almost unanimously rejected ;
some were grossly erroneous in their principle ; some
were evidently pernicious in their effect. The result
of the whole was that Sir John Campbell's amended
Bill no more resembled Sir John Campbell's original
Bill than Sir John Campbell's ultra-Radicalism
when he last canvassed Edinburgh resembled Sir
John Campbell's ultra-Toryism when he first can-
vassed Stafford. The Bill, thus transformed, still
called by courtesy the Bill of the Government, but
in fact the Bill of IVIr. Warburton, the Bill of Mr.
Hume, the Bill of Mr. Buller, went up to the House
of Lords. Their Lordships removed from it the interpo-
lations of the Movement, and returned it to the House
of Commons in nearly the form in which it had been first
introduced there—the Bill which was recommended
by the Select Committee, which was prepared by the
Government, which was brought in by the Attorney-
General. It-suited the petty and dishonest malignity
of the Cabinet to represent the Lords as obstructing
the course of practical improvement ; and, therefore,
the Bill for the Registration of Voters was abandoned
by the Ministers tv/so had framed it ; because the
Lords had restored it to that form in which, by those
very Ministers, it had been originally framed. In
the Bill now before the House of Commons the Radi-
cal legerdemain of last Session, with some slight va-
riations, is again attempted. Once more let us ex-
press our gratification that Sir James Graham has un-
dertaken the task of exposing it, before its knavery is
obscured by the mass of uninteresting and unimportant
talk with which a Committee of the whole House con-
trives for so many hours to amuse itself.—Morn. Post.

TIIE ANTIQUARY.—WiIIiam Clerk (son of John
Clerk, of Eldin, and an intimate friend of Scott's) well re-
members his father telling a story which was introduced in due
time in The Antiquary. While he was visiting his grand-
father, Sir John Clerk, at Dumcrieff, in Dumfriesshire, many
years before this time, the old Baronet carried some English
virtuosos to see a supposed Roman camp ; and on his exclaim-
ing, at a particular spot, " This I take to have been the Prae-
torium," a herdsman who stood by answered, " Prwtorium
here, Progorium there; I made it wi' a flaughter spade."
Many traits of the elder Clerk were, his son has no doubt,
embroidered on the character of George Constable in the
composition of Jonathan Oldbuck. The old gentleman's
enthusiasm for antiquities was often played on by these young
friends, but more effectually by his eldest son, John Clerk
(Lord Eldin), who, having a great genius for art, used to
amuse himself with manufacturing mutilated heads, which,
after being buried for a convenient time in the ground, were
accidentally discovered in some fortunate hour, and received
by the laird with great honour, as valuable accessions to his
museum. The most remarkable of these antique heads was
so highly appreciated by another distinguished connoisseur,
the late Earl of Buchan, that he carried it off from Mr.
Clerk's museum, and presented it to the Scottish Society of
Antiquaries, in whose collection, no doubt, it may still be ad-
mireel—Lockhart's L.
NATIONAL BENEFACTORS.—The names of those
who have enriched our gardens with useful and valuable
plants are deserving of record and remembrance. Sir W.
Raleigh introduced the potatoe ; Sir Anthony Ashley first
planted cabbages in this country—a cabbage appears at his
feet on his monument : Sir Richard Weston brought over
clover-grass from Flanders in 1645 ; figs were planted in
Henry the Eighth's reign, at Lambeth, by Cardinal Pope—
it is said the identical trees are still remaining. Spilman, who
erected the first paper-mill at Dartford, in 1590, brought over
the first two lime trees, which he planted, and they are still
growing. Thomas Lord Cromwell enriched the gardens of
England with three different kinds of plums. It was Evylin,
whose patriotism was not exceeded by his learning, who
largely propagated the noble oak in this country, so much so,
that the trees he planted have supplied the navy of Great
Britain with its chief proportion of that timber.
NATIONAL DEBT.--Mortgaging the property of
our posterity that we may be better enabled to destroy our
contemporaries. —New Monthly Magazine. [Taking the na-
tional debt at 8:30 millions sterling, which is between 6 and
7000 tons weight of sovereigns, this enormous sum would take
a person 43 years to count it over, allowing him to count 100
sovereigns in a minute, and to work ten hours every day, Sun-
days excepted. It would also pave a foot-path a yard wide,
from Manchester to London; load as many waggons as would
extend forty miles in a direct line, allowing each waggon to
carry one ton of sovereigns, and to ()occupy a distance of ten
yards. The interest to be paid annually, allowing five per
cent., would consequently amount to 41 millions, whiell
would
load as many waggons with two tons of sovereigns,_
and 20
yards to each waggon, as would extend one mile and a halt in
a d'rect