The Sun.
London, England, 1836-01-02 00:00:00

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.

Sin,—Wbile we exult over the triumphs lately achieved
by the sound Protestant anti loyal feeling of the country,
we must remember that onr holy warfare; though thus
far victorious, is not accomplished. Much has been
effe: ted, but much also remains to be done.
The Conservative hand is the House of Commons is
daily g-iining strength, but that strengt:i must be concen-
trated to the utmost before it can effectually cope with the
motley but desperate Parry of the Revolutionists.
I say then, and I believe I speak the feelings of every
Conservative in the empire, let every one of our representa-
tives be at his post on the first hour that Parliament as-

sembles.
The gaieties of Paris, the allurements of Italy, and the
sports of ne field, must be forsaken by the men to whom we
have intrusted the defence o our monarchy, our laws, our
liberty, and our leligion.
• The direst nec(-7ssity can be the only valid ground of
excuse for absence.
In their hands we have placed the most weighty, the
most hallowed trust, and we look to see that trust zealously
and fearlessly discharged.
With a iealolis eye will the list of every division be scru-
tinized, and lightly indeed will that man be esteemed who
is found wanting in the day of battle.
A large proportion of the Radical members have no al-
lurements and but few comforts to forsake, the lobbies of
the House are in their estimation the hails of luxury, and
to a man will they be found in their places.
Once more then I say emphatically, let every Conserva-
tive member be at his post before the contest commences.
Neither distance, trouble, expense, nor the sacrifice of pri-
vate inclination can be weighed for one moment against that
duty which each of them has solemnly and voluntarily un-
dertaken to discharge.
Let it be remembered, that upon a single vote may de-
pend the fate of the Monarchy and the Protestant faith of
Britain. • f

Your obedient servant,
AN ENGLISHMAN.

Dec. 29.

The Portfo.lio, in its last number, adds to the list
of curious official documents throwing light upon the
designs of Russia which it has published—one rela-
tive to Circassia, of a very novel character. It is, in
fact, at once humiliating and gratifying in the revela-
tions which it makes. It is another proof, added to
those which we have so often before adduced and de-
precated—that notwithstanding the succession of tra-
vellers who have visited the various provinces of the
Turkish empire, and the paraded display of their in-
formation thus obtained in the works which record
those travels, we know disreputably little of the in-
ternal condition of that empire. The document we
refer to is an Address of the Circassian people appeal-
ing to European succour against the oppression of
Russia. Till we saw it we were not aware of the exist-
ing condition of Circassia, and we are quite ready to
admit our share of the responsibility of an ignorance in-
finitely more discreditable to European statesmen than
to ourselves and Europeans generally. The address
is at once characterized by spirit, feeling, and good
sense. There is in it the frank boldness and the cou-
rageous simplicity -which mark the morals of an una-
dulterated people. It is impossihle for a man of hu-
manity to read without entertaining a deep sympathy
for a people so wronged, and so undeservedly, and for
the wrongs they have endured. Nor will the advo-
cates of European liberty be less prompted by political
expediency than by the feelings of humanity, to extend
to them the succour they invoke. The Circassian
people are at this day both de facto and de jure the
subjects of the Sultan of Turkey. Neither Russian ra-
pacity nor Russian craft has been enabled hitherto to
corrupt or absorb this mountain and uncivilized
people into the bloated frame of the Russian empire.
The Circassian chiefs who address 'their declaration of
independence to the free
nations of Europe, avow
with touching modesty their
poverty, their unin-
structed, and their comparatively helpless condition ;
but they avow at the same time their unconquerable
spirit of liberty. While they assert their almost
desperate determination of maintaining their strucra -
gle with Russia, they with noble pride declare
that they have beaten the Russians in all
the conflicts in which they have been engaged
with them, and that notwithstanding the wily pertina-
city with which their colossal neighbour is cutting
them off from all their resources, moral as well as phy-
sical, they will continue to defeat her myrmidons. If

there be something of apparent boast in this, the con-
dition of this people warrants them in bringing in the
most emphatic, manner before the eyes of Europe the
fact, that they are fighting the battle. of
European liberty, and that within the arena of
their mountains, narrow as it may be, the success
or triumph of the combatant involves consequences no
less extensive than the fate of Turkey, of Persia, and
of British India. They justly state that the moun-
tain barriers which they occupy, are the gates to the
heart of Persia, and to the southernmost and most vul-
nerable provinces of Turkey. They add, that 'Rus-
sia has—with her usual undermining and unjusti-
fiable rapacity—seized upon Georgia ; and upon the
provinces to the south of Circassia, between the Euxine
and the Caspian Seas. Yet while the mountain
fortresses of Circassia are unconquered, she cannot
leave them behind her without risk ; and the auda-
cious rapidity of her advance upon southern Asia,
which she tilready clutches and considers to be her
own, is thereby beneficially obstructed and delayed. It
is no exaggeration, therefore, in this brave people to
say—that preferring, as they do, in the words of the
great Chatham, " poverty and independence to gilded
chains and sordid affluence," they are maintaining the
battles of England as well as the interests of Euro-
pean liberty and happiness. The representatives of
the Circassian people who- have made this " declara-
tion" state, that they have vainly applied to their here-
ditary and rightful sovereign, the Sultan of Turkey,
and that their appeal has been neglected. The
Turkish Pachas have successively betrayed their towns
and fortresses into the hands of Russia. The Rus-
sians are now deceiving Europe with the idea that the
Circassians are her subjects, having been either by de-
fault or gift transferred to her by the Porte. This they
deny, and they moreover deny the power of the Sultan,
or his will to make such a transfer. Mortified
by his contemptuous abdication, they remind the
Sultan that it was from the heart of their poor
but independent mountain regions, that the race of
Othman sprung, and they announce to him the admo-
nitory intimation that if he neglect to extend to them
his proper protection, there still remains among them
one of the same race, a Khan of the Crimea. They
have appealed to Persia, but Persia is neither willing
nor competent to assist them. They have appealed to
the Pacha of Egypt, but the Pacha of Egypt, though
willing, is too far oft. They now appeal to the
European nations, and to France and England as the
foremost. Shall the appeal be made in vain ? Our
voice, as we have said, is not for war. War would
play too pots erful a card into the hands of the
Tories and Absolutists of Europe, and enable them
to stop the march of Reform. But our voice de-
cidedly is for a vigilant warfare of organized pre-
paration, commercial and diplomatic, previous to
the great war of opinion between Russia and the
liberal States of the world, which must some day
come, and of which the whole world will be pro-
bably the battle-field. In pursuing that object, we
urged before that the most obvious course is to
strengthen the intended victims of our great enemy, by
the moral aid of our countenance, and by favouring
their commercial intercommunication with us. Cir-
cassia comes under this category. Not only there,
but in every locality where the means present them-
selves, we would have intelligent agents,—not such
agents as we have now in the East—planted for the
purpose of pacifically baffling the pacific treacheries
of Russia. That is the preparatory warfare which we
suggest.
We would surround the restless machina-
tions of her ice-hound despotism with intelligent agents
as restlessly active as herself, but in Waif of a better
cause. We would surround her with what might be
termed a diplomatic police on behalf of Europe, for
.t purpose of placing her under surveillance,—not
for the purpose of pla.yhirtlM-"rorr
for the purpose of compelling her to
Morning Advertiser.

cep the peace.—

The extraordinary degree of exultation which the
Whig Press has displayed since the result of the Cor-
porate Elections has been made known, is only to be
accounted for upon this principle—that any thing like
success has been so long unknown to them and to their
patrons, that they are ready to catch at a shadow,
without waiting to see or to inquire whether there be
really any substance to lay hold of. We do not deny
that the strongholds of Radicalism are to be found in
the borough constituencies ; yet we should do even
these great injustice were we to he led away by the
notion that, because they are sick and tired of cor-
porate abuses, they are therefore one and all ready to
bow the knee to O'Connell Popish dominion—for
that, after ail, is the question, as it at present stands,
between the people of England and Lord Melbourne's
Administration. We will take the old and corrupt
Corporation of Leicester as an instance. That borough,
at the last election, returned two staunch Conservatives
to Parliament, and, in the new registry, 'the prepon-
derance of Conservative voters has, we believe, been
rather increased than diminished. But had the Mem-.
hers in Parliament shown, as the members of the Cor-
poration have done, a disposition to vote plate and
money out of the Corporation funds into their own
pockets, we will venture to say that Mr. Goulburn
and Mr. Gladstone need never have ventured to show
their faces there again. Without some such provoca-
tion and cause of disgust as this, the Conservatives of
Leicester would, we have no doubt, have returned
many of the old Corporation to form members of the
new ; but when they saw these persons meeting at the
eleventh hour, actually to rob and plunder the corpo-
rate funds by voting plate and annuities to each other,
their disgust and indignation was such that they in-
stantly withdrew all support from such persons, and
left them to be annihilated by their Whig-Radical
opponents. Under these circumstances, if the Con-
servatives of Leicester have been defeated, they have
been defeated by themselves, and have offered a strik-
ing proof of the high and honourable feelings by
which they have been actuated. Whether Whigs
could or have done the same in any instance where
similar premonition has occurred to them, we will not
stop to inquire. Sufficient for our purpose is it to
infer, from this instance, that Conservatives are not.
prepared to go through thick and thin for undeserving
objects, and that their rejection of unworthy persons
for the office of Town Councillors is no proof, either at
Leicester or anywhere else, that in the election of
Members of Parliament they. are prepared to hand
over their votes to Whig-Radical candidates. • If
Lord Melbourne's Cabinet think so, let them advise a
dissolution and try the experiment. It really would
be as well then if the Whig Press, instead of making
such a loud shout upon this occasion, were to adopt
the old maxim of not " holloaing till they are out of
the wood." Let them remember that Sir Robert Peel,
the head of the Conservative party, is quite as much
opposed to corporate abuses as they or any of, their pa-
trons are—that it was owing to his support that the
Municipal Reform Act passed as it did so quietly
through the House of Commons, and to Lord Lynd-
hurst that it was not defeated in the House of Lords.
It is too late, and too stale a trick, to give themselves
credit for all the purity and all the love of substantial
reform that exists in the country. Let the various
bundles of faggots in Huntingdon, Bedford, Blooms-
bury, and elsewhere, shame them into silence ; or if,
after all, they really think they have the country with
them, let them appeal to it by a dissolution as the only
sure and unerring test of their correctness or their mis-
take.—Morning Herald.
. The proceedings of the Scotch Church Commis-
sion have incurred the disapprobation even of the
warmest friends of the present Administration. It
is universally felt that, for sake of gratifying the Se-
ceders from the Scotch Church, they have sacrificed
the ostensible purpose for which they were appointed.
That purpose, we need not remind our readers, was
to ascertain the truth or falsehood of the allegation,
that additional funds for the maintenance of religion
in Scotland had become necessary. It is quite true
that the funds at the .disposal of the Dissenters ought
not to have been admitted to any place in the ac-
count. But it is equally true that they were regarded
by the Dissenting body as an essential element in the
question of a proposed grant to the Church, that they
were brought forward very prominently in all their pe-
titions to the Legislature upon that subject, and that,
in deference to them, it was practically conceded, for
the first time by the British Government, that Dis-
senters have a right to plead the means they possess
of propagating their various and fluctuating creeds in
bar of the claims of the Established Church to the

support and assistance .of the State. Government,
having so far indulged and flattered the Dissenters as
to permit them thus to plead their services to the cause
of religion in abatement or refutation of the claims of
the Church of Scotland, the least, surely, that could
be expected of them was, that they would manifest
the utmost alacrity in producing evidence to' the facts
upon which that plea must be founded, if it had any
foundation whatever ; and the least, also, that could
be expected of the Government Commissioners ap-
pointed to investigate the whole subject, in the event
of the Dissenters refusing to submit to the inquiry
they had themselves invited, was, that the investiga-
tion, thus rendered hopeless and futile, would at once
have been abandoned. The matter has, however, taken
a course, altogether inconsistent with the idea of fair
dealing, either on the part of the Scotch Voluntaries,
or of the Commissioners of Inquiry. The Volun-
taries refuse to give any information to the Com-
missioners as to the state of their funds and re-
sources, of those funds and resources of which they
boasted so loudly in their petitions to Parliament,
and their representations to the Whig Goyernment ;
and the complaisant and accommodating Commis-
sioners content themselves by saying, that they
would be glad of information upon this point if
it were freely given, but that their friends, the Dissen-
ters, arc at full liberty to refuse it if they like. No-
thing more can be required to show that the Dissen-
ters place unbounded confidence in the partiality of
the Government towards them, and its indifference, if
not hostility to the Church ; and that the Commis-
sioners act in the entire and well-founded persuasion that
the safe course for them to pursue, if they would af-
ford satisfaction to the authorities who appointed them,
is to be very careful not to disappoint any expectations,
however unjust or unreasonable, of the Dissenters.
We have already said that such flagrant partiality on
the part of the Commissioners to the Dissenters, and
such manifest injustice to the Church of Scotland and
to the very question which they were appointed to in-
vestigate, have excited strong feelings of disgust and
indignation among our northern brethren of every sect
and party. .Already the most unequivocal evidence of
those feelings begins to appear. At a recent meeting
of the Church Extension Committee of the General
Assembly an Unanimous resolution was adopted in
direct and express censure of the conduct of the Com-
missioners. That resolution was in the following
wards :
" That in an inquiry as to the means of religious in-
struction in Scotland an investigation into the pecuniary
affairs of all unendowed places of worship is an clement of
such essential and paramount importance, both as respects
the permanency of such places of worship and their avail-
ableness to the poor and working classes, that a report
founded upon an inquiry in which that investigation is ex-
cluded must not only be essentially defective, but must be
calculated rather to mislead than to enlighten, and, there-
fore, must fail in satisfying the just expectations of the
Co The ."
body, which passed this resolution, although
friends of the Church, are not enemies, or have not
been so until the present moment, of the Administra-
tion. The majority of its members are men whose
politics have hitherto been considered liberal. The
mover and seconder of the resolution were Mr. Gra-
ham Speirs and Mr. Earle Monteith, both
Whig Barristers, steady and consistent in their
political opinions and conduct, and one of them
(the former) a person upon whom the favour of
the Cro-,vii hail descended through the hands of
Lord Melbourne. In what light must the conduct
of the Commissioners, who had their appointment
from Lord J. Russell, and may fairly be supposed to
act in what they deem a- manner conformable to his
inclinations, be viewed 'when two. Whig lawyers, one
of whom is indebted to the present Premier for
promotion, while the other probably would have no
ou3ccttrsrrso a similar mark of the oyal favour, pub-
licly pronounce upon it so strong a sentence of con-
demnation ? It is evident from this that no '-partial
person can regard the Commission as any oe than
an unprincipled job intended to sacrifice the Church
to the Dissenters, in order to secure their political sup-
port at the next election. One of our evening con-
temporaries (the Courier), a staunch advocate of the
Whig-Government and the Commission, observes upon
this subject, " We agree with Mr. Earle Monteith and
Mr. Speirs in thinking that it is necessary to obtain
information as to the funds and probable permanency
of the chapels of the Disseaters in, parishes at all af-
fected in relation to the subject of the inquiry, by
the existence of such chapels ; but if this informa-
tion cannot be obtained under the present Coin-
mission, and if the Dissenters withhold it, it may,
as we formerly mentioned, be obtained by an order
from the House of Commons. We have iio notion,
however, that the Dissenters will withhold ample infor-
mation." Upon this all we shall say is, that notions
are rather slow in finding their way into the head of
our Contemporary, for the Dissenters have long ago
refused ample information, or any information what-
ever, upon " the funds or probable permanency of their
chapels," still persist in withholding it, and within the
last fortnight have, if we do not greatly err, been ho
noured by more than one public testimony of the appro-
bation of our worthy and candid, but somewhat, we fear,
forgetful, Contemporary for so withholding and persist-
ing. Perhaps an order of the House of Commons
might, as the Courier suggests, extort from the reluc-
tant
Dissenters of Scotland the information they have
refused to the Commissioners of the Crown, appointed
in consequence of their own representations. But
why did the Dissenters lead their friends of the Admi-
nistration into the fools' paradise, and make them be-
lieve that nothing could be better or more efficacious,
as means of inquiry, as we all know nothing is more
convenient or agreeable to them as a means of gratifying
and benefitting their friends, than the appointment of
a Commission ? We do not stop to discuss this ques-
tion, as we really entertain no doubt that the leaders
of the Dissenters of Scotland and the Home Secretary
of his Majesty understand each other perfectly well,
or that the appointment and the proceedings of the
Commission, the progress which it has made, the dis-
appointments which it has endured, the contumacy
which it has brooked, and the ridiculous nullity in
which it promises to end, are all alike the effects of a
collusion between Ministers and the voluntary leaders,
having for its ultimate object to elude the just claims
and to impair the salutary influence of the national
Church.—Morning Post.

AGTUCULTURAL REPORTM) t.
DECEMBER.

The labours of agriculture are now nearly at a stand ;
the wheat is well got in, and a seasonable fall of snow will,
if it last, not too long, secure those benefits which, though
not yet perhaps traced to positive causes, are perfectly vi-
sible. The destruction of mischievous insects, and the
nourishing properties believed to reside in snow water, to-
gether with the protecting influence of the covering of ve-
getation with that rare body, are all obvious advantages
which the earth has not enjoyed for some years. There
may also be no little benefit in filling the springs with mois-
ture by the permeation of the countless little rills that find
their way through every pore of the soil when the thaw
sets the water at liberty. The turnips are going away fast,
and many farmers are using large quantities of wheat in
lieu of hay and oil-cake, in the double hope of raising the
price of wheat, and saving in cost of food for the cattle.
If this practice obtain to the degree we are told it does
prevail, there can be no doubt that it will have some effect
on the markets. We know one farmer who has been con-
suming forty stone of meal per week for some time in
feeding his bullocks ; the pinch is not yet come, there still
are turnips, and we have observed, for some years past,
that towards the close of the spring a great surplus has re-
mained and gone to waste. But should this winter prove
long and severe, there will be more need of artificial assist-
ance in the feed of stock than within any period during the
memory of man.