The Sun.
London, England, 1838-10-13 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF TI -12 PUBLIC JOURNALS

It seems to be now affirmed on all hands, and without
contradiction,. that Louis Philippe and his Government
have nothing more to apprehend from the side of Swi,zer-
land, so far as the question of Louis Bonaparte is con-
cerned. It may be true that his French Majesty has got
out of this dilemma, not with drums beating or colours fly-.
ins, and has laid down his arms in a spirlt of far greater
sobriety and self-knot ledge than that in which he took
them up. But if Louis Philippe has gained no laurels by
the manner of his extrication from the natural conse-
quences of an unjust, and therefore imprudent, act, we
roust admit that by far the wisest and most creditable
course which was left for him, after the first advance of
claims which could never have been effectually or benefi-
cially carried, was to retrace his steps and relinquish his
absurd pretensions. The only stigma thence affixed to
him will be that of hasty and inconsiderate violence,
drawing after it the painful necessity of practical self coe-
demnation. Indeed, it would be difficult to deny that the
policy of Louis Philippe, in more cases than that of Seeit-
zerland, has borne the impress of the same blind im-
petuosity anti puerile inconstancy of purpose which
marked his late proceeding towards the cantons.
Mexico is a further example, if the reports now circulated
hare any particle of truth in them, that rash aggress.on
upon the rights of others leads naturally to humiliating
confessions of weakness on the part of the offender. It is
stated that Louis Philippe has shown a disposition to back
peaceably out of the Mexican blockade, as he did out of
the war with Switzerland. If it be so, we shall unfeign-
edly rejoice—rejoice for his Majesty's own sake and for
that of France—rejoice for the sake of Mexico, which has
already experienced no slight degree of oppression—and,
lastly, for the sake of England, which we are certain could
not long have witnessed the anon destruction of her own
commercial interests, and the prosecution by an insulting
power of the tyrannical system which involved their ruin,
without feeling herself constrained to abandon the mere
passive observation of such wrongs, and to take upon
herself, by force if necessary, the redress of them. It
must be repeated, and well inculcated upon the minds
of our countrymen, that from these mean and feeble Mi-
nisters they can look for no protection. When the As-
sociation of Merchants trading to America sent in a
memorial to Lord Palmerston, of which the only fault
was its respectful and almost humble language to such
an individual, his Lordship scarcely condescended to ac-
knowledge their letter ; notice the contents of it, neech
ices attempt to answer them, he durst not. We beg
to impress it on the British merchants, therefore, that
they must apply their own shoultkrs to the wheel ; that
they must organize an active and diligerit correspondence
amongst themselves throughout the entire kingdom ; that
they must raise the number of their a:societors from hun-
dreds to thousands ; call commercial meetings ; insist on
the performance of his duty by Lord Palmerston ; expose
him, censure him ; address the Queen ; prepare petitions
to Parliament, and intrust them to the ablest and most
exalted members of that body ; "agitate," not by threaten-
ing physical force, but by acting on public opinion, and
then on public sympathy, until tney melee Downing-street
too hot to hold its worthless inmates. Were Louis Phi-
lippe
to persist in his present course of aeeression toward.;
Mexico and South America, not two months would elapse
without pro.ducing the certainty of a collision between
France and Great Britain. For the sake of both, there-
fore, we do from the bottom of our hearts rejoice at any
symptoms of returning reason and equity in the polities
of the Barricade Monarch. So far from blaming or Con-
temning the retrograde march of his Majesty's pretensions
with regard to Mexico, we deem it the most honourable,
the only honourable, portion of his conduct towards
that inferior power. The real dishonour for France has
been the injustice of her demands, and of the measures
whereby she has striven to enforce them—the real dis-
honour for England would be her suffering the French Go-
vernment, or any foreign Government, to inflict such out-
reges on the welfare of her subjects with impunity. At the
same time, no cessation of the injury thus perpetrated, or
surrender of the claims thus iniquitously put forward, can
exonerate France from the general charge above stated, of
pursuing a general policy characterized by restless insolence,
and followed by ungraceful penitence and concession.
Algiers will, turn out to be another instance of the
same inherent vice. France can never colonize
Africa until she has subdued it, and that day is
as remote as ever. Her treatment of England, in rela-
tion to Algiers, was from the first as offensive as in the
case of Mexico, and net less exasperating than it has been
to the whole population of North Africa. But the Ai-
gerine cycle is not yet complete. It will ere long afford
another illustration of French greediness and eucroach-
ment, followed by lassitude and y. It is the
" just" man only that can afford to be " tenar propositt"
throughout. France, Russia, Radicalism, and Popery are
the "destructive" powers of Europe. The duties of -Con-
servatism devolve on Eng ant—Conservatiim of institu-
tions, principles, and possessions. But with the duties the
rights also belong to England, an ,1 to fu:fil the duties she
must enforce the rights. She mast not endure oppression
if she means not to inflict it.—Timing.

Dr. Lushington has reached the top of his preferment.
His appointment to succeed the late L-arned and es-
timabfe Sir John Nicholi as Judge of the Admiralty Gout t
is aenounced in all the Government Papers of yesterday,
some of which hail the elevation of the Learned Doctor in
their loudest and coarsest notes of gratulation. We agree
with our Ministerial Contemparaires so ter as to think that
in some respects this appointment is a source of genuine
satisfaction. It relieves the House of Commons of one of
its least useful or agreeable Members—the political arena
of Greet Britain of a combatant less qualified perhaps than
any of his compeers to adorn it by the display of grace or
skill, of magnanimity or vigour. It. gives to the Court of
Admiralty a Judge endowed with the reque•ire degree of
learning and acuteness to fulfil in a satisfactory and be-
neficial manner the duties of Lis new olise, and of whom,
therefore, it may reasonably be hoped that, having no
longer many opportunities or any motive to display the
qualities if a weak and sour political partisan, he may cul-
tivate with success the more respectable feelings which be-
fit the bench of justice. One of the necessary couse-
quences of this appointment is that the electors of the
Tower Hamlets will have to choose another representative.
We hope that some gentleman will come forward upon this
occasion as a candidate who by talent, principles, and sta-
tion, is entitled to aspire to the confidence and the suf-
frages of an independent and patriotic community ; and,
on looking around us, we do not find any inde Hued in
whom these various claims to the esteem and support of
the constituency of' the 'rower Hamlets are coinbin-ti in so
great a degree as in the gallant and honourable Chairman
of the East India Company.—Morning Post.
It has often been said, when you everywhere see in a
country the signs of successful industry, you may c.niclude
that the laws of' that country are good. Every effect must
bare its cause ; and the confidence that men said nap the
fruits of their labours, without which they will not toil, im-
plies, where it exists, the substantial goodness of the lews.
Though you may not be able to answer eery objection to
this or that particular law, you may he sure that the work-
ing is good, otherwise the effects would not be what they
are. There is no country in which the people are, upon
the whole, more industrious than in England, and the fruits
of that industry are every where apparent. M. Von Roo-
mer, in his visit to England two or three years ago, was
above all things struck with the uniform s'gns of prosperity,
and observed that, so far from observing any of the signs of
dilapidation and decay which strike the eye in most coun-
tries, he had only seen in going through the country, one
gate tilling to pieces from age and neglect. These reflse-
tons have been suggested to us by the following passage in
the Scotsman of Wednesday last
The most important addition to the law of England is
undoubtedly the Act abolishi T
for debt.
It is errata ~r impri-
sonmentfor in taking from the creditor urrous and complicated code ;
tmeans of doing himself jus.
tice as the despot achieves his we
trary power--it provides a system by whichb by the exercise of arbi•
the law interposes,
instead of the man, to protect the trAder from fraud. One
great instrument of villainy—arrest
of there
niesne process—is en-
tirely abolished, except in the case o
to believe that the debtor is about to leave the et tp:try. By
there being good reason
this law a man had but to swear ad
of 201. against another,
and imprisonment followed instaninet.eously, unless special bail
were found. The amount might be
to an indefinite
height, and thus the fillding of bail rendrercid
ble. The alleged creditor could not be eewx:snratlnrbedll:y_
hime
more
than
iance of ac-
rot be compelled to say whether the suoT
his debtor. its
Bentham amount
could
counts, or if he owed any thing less
to the person be charged with being
with the
raised his reproving voice for lot
years against this see„,tf.,,.
iniquity unheard ; and now, with rn my anotherhottlic g
will practically engraft mere try
sure, its abolition
happiness of his fellow-beings. appealed loudly to the
experience of Scotland ; and the; is not the first leaf which
the conceited common lawyers of England have found it ne.
cessary to borrow from us."
The arrest on mesne process is unquestionably a law
which gives the most ample scope to malevolence ; but
there was a time when it was not even necessary to swear
to the debt. At the time when Mr. Bentliam's father was
in the profession the attorneys exclaimed loudly against
the attempt to impose the sliehtest limitation on thepower to arrest on mesne process, though the most
men hor-
rible abuses frequently took place, such as arrests of
of property for spiteful purposes, at times when their cre-
dit might appear to be affected, by men of straw, who
might leave the country next day. But yet with a law
under which any amount of injustice might take place,
England continued to grow rapidly in wealth, and we do
not hear that the general confidence of the industrious
classes that they would reap the. fruits of their ill-
dustry was ever shaken. The prisons of Eliel,tn.l
were filled with tLe victims of the lieens allotted to
creditors over debtors ; but still the country pros-

I:er, (1. Agai.,, the laws regarding real property in
England are as bad as laws can well be. Convey-
ancing is a mystery in England known only to a handful of
iniii%i3uals. In disposing of real property a man may,
from inab:lity to give a perfect title, find himself involved
in a Chancery law-suit, attended with more expense than
the value of the property at issue. From the want of a
register, the raising money on real property is attended with
much difficulty, and the security of creditors is often pre-
carku4. It would be much more difficult to discover ex-
cellencies in the laws of England than to point out grievous
defects ; but yet it cannot be denied that under these laws
the people have prospered, and entertain the conviction that
what they have acquired they will be enabled to enjoy. It
has often struck us, that however objectionable it may
appear in principle that justize should only be placed within
the reach of the rich, as rich men only caa command all the
resources of professional skill, yet as the decisions of
Courts, when parties can pay for them, are at least free
from suspicion of impurity, it is chiefly to this we
are to attribute the prosperity of England. A man in
England knows that when he becomes rich he is secure.
O❑ the other hand, the security of the poorer classes rests
chiefly on public opinion and publicity. A rich man might,

by means of the law, oppress a poor man; but sympathy
would be enlisted in behalf of the oppressed individual ;
and the cases are few in which poor men are actually
wronged by means of the command which rich men have
over the law. In the case of the poor among themselves,
if they cannot defend themselves in courts from the ex-
pense Cf the law, the same circumstances prevent their
becoming aggressors. In the countries in which the people
are without the confidence which is necessary to industry,
he who' bribes highest carries the day ; but this is very
different from obtaining an upright decision after expensive
litigation. There can be no check %8 hatever to fraud in
such countries. Any man who knows what the tribu-
nals in Spain and Portugal are, will be able to speak to the
difference in result between bribing a judge and paying
high or justice. In the Chronicle of yesterday there ap-
peared a case in which it was alleged that a rich man had
bought off the party aggrieved by a bribe. This in the
particular instance might or might not be true ; but no-
thing is so common as the gaining over a prosecutor in
criminal cases either by money or other means. Were
there a public prosecutor it would be a :natter of more
difficu'ty to elude punishment. But though the knowledge
that wealth can so far secure impunity that. if the aggrieved
party be quieted no penal consequences will follow is cal-
culated to demoralise a people, ye t it is not calculated
to render men less sensible of the value of wealth, or less
disposed to acquire it. It might not be diftcult to show
that defective as the English laws are, yet they have so far
a tendency to make men industrious as they compel them to
hasten to become rich. It was an observation of Montes-
quieu, after visiting England, that in France he could do
without wealth, but that were he an EnFellshman he should
never forgive himself if he omitted any opportunity of be-
coming rich.—ilforning Chronicle.
The work of revising the reg;strati, ns is nearly over.
And what is the result ? There is no use in disguisng the

fact ; the Conservatives have signally triumphed over the

Liberals. We cannot estimate with confidence the exact
amount of gains by the Tory party ; but we know enough
of those gains to inspire us with. the deepest regret at t►,e
success of our opponents. But how, it will be asked, has
this
_disastrous result been brought about? Is it that the
Tories had better cases than the Liberals ? Nothing of the
kind. It is entirely to be ascribed to the fact, that while
the Tories have been most active, persevering, and un.
wearied in their endeavours to increase their gains, the
Liberal party have been altogether remiss. They, indeed,
have scarcely exerted themselves at all. They have either
been entirely inactive or very lukewarm in their exer-
tions to vindicate the claims of their own party to a
place in the list of voters, or to exclude tho§e of their
opponents
who have no legal right to have their names
there. In many instances, while the Conservatives have
objected to every Liberal claimant against whom the
shadow of an objection would lie, not a single objection
hss been urged to Tory claimants, even where the title
of the parties was so manifestly invalid- as that.ohjection
had only to Ee made to insure the expulsion of the parties'
names from the list of voters. *ln fact, in many cases, the
Liberals have been so remiss as not to have an agent at all
in their interest in the Revising Courts. The Tories, on
the otht r hand, have rigidly examined into the validity of
the title of every claimant belonging to the opposite party.
The consequent diminution in the number of Liberal voters,
and the increase in the number of the Tory constituencies,
has been very great ; so great, that we have not a doubt
that through the co: joint operation of Liberal remissness
and Tory activity, it wilt in many cases be decisive of the
election. Nor is th7s, bad as it is, the full extent of the evil.
At other times the L brim' cause would have been suffi-

wently strong to suffer styli losses wiihout being seriou,:y
affected by them. It is far otherwise at presrnt. So
nicety balanced are the two great parties in the State.
that a doz-n Parliamentary ♦otes lust by th. Liberals and
g.iined by ti.e Conservatives will for a time pro‘e fatal to
the cause of good government. Should such, unhappily
in the present case, prove to be the result, the Reform
party will. have to blame them-elves. Their remissness
has been extreme ; it is discreditable to men professing to
bold liberal principles, that they should not, at such an
emergency as this, have done something to prove that their
principles are not merely theoretical. The Tories read us
a lesson in this respect ; they set us an example which we
ought to imitate. They embody in practice the principles
they entertain. They labour as well as speak ; and the
ILt of their labours they will reap at the next general
election.—Morning Advertiser.