The Sun.
London, England, 1836-12-21 00:00:00

requires-61ess sufficient reasons can be given fdr
ptistponing important measures—then, we thi-fl
journal has 'sh'el the wirae tides without eneleer be-
forie---then;;;'e say, let the ReierinerS. conititire toge-
ther to cease that Ministry to make wti.,e
know What the PS-e:4o:t ri'nictUre demands, 'and arc pre-
pared te, Viialte the reqiusite concessions. we re-
peat what we haVe Ofte'n said befo'r.cl ;titWid.!;.; diet
Lord Melbourne ine peculiar position in
whieh tits'',.ate of parties has placed the country, and
that he possesses the.decisiOn of character' to act in a
mintier becoming the occasion. It is bet right. et any
rate, that lie should have a fait icial. We may be
told he l'as had t.hih 'already. He has had no sneh
thing ha situation of the country at this moment is,
owing to the daring. and desperate cOnalnet Of' the Lords
last Session, difrerent what it ever was before. It
rel-pion therefore, to be seen whether with these
his
circumstances he is not, prepared to alter nis
course of policy—whether he is not prepared with the
aggeavatol tlini:!lise to employ a corresponding powerful
reinetly. • We repeat our firm conviction) that the No-
-1 ble Lord is fully prepared for this.—Morn. Advertiser.
The Briti,eh tfiercenaries at St. Sebastian are repre:
seuttd as having at length received from the Govern-
ment of Madrid, not their arrears of pay, but promises
of payment of those arreers at some distant and indefi-
nite ;Aerial. if they think proper to be satisfied with
wishes, hopes, and promises, " the currency of idiots,"
instead of solid caah, every body else ought to be con-
tent. They ought surely to know the value of Spanish
promises by this time, and if they accept them as good
security for their arrears, their heretic faith, since they
went to the dominions of her Catholic Majesty, must
have become strongly tinctured with a belief in the mi-
raculous. To be sure, there is a large sprinkling of the
Irish there, who must not be confounded with the here-
tic auxiliaries of England and Caledonia. Those Irish,
if we may credit O'Connell, require no arrears- of pay,
nor, indeed, require any pay at all, for in illustrating
his generous theory of the advantages of habitual starva-
tion to his destitute countrymen, he exultingly ex-
claimed, to the great delight of his audience in the Inti-
midation SOciety the other day, " Look to the legion in
Spain where Irishmen, while the Englishmen and
Scotchmen were dying of hunger, were playing at leap-
frog." He seems to estimate the soldierly qualities of
the men of England at as low a rate as he had previ-
ously valued the chastity of the women. But what an
inestimable acquisition to the Spanish Government
would be an army entirely composed of those Irish
" leap-frog boys," who would jump the more the less
pay they got, and become merrier and more active under
the process of starvation. But why have not the
" leap-frog boys" jumped over two entrenchments,
within which the Englishmen and Scotchmen are glad to
esconce themselves, and given the handful of Carlists
who dare to blockade them there a regular Tipperary
threshing ? Why do they only " leap" within stone
walls, while the enemy are waiting for them .without ?
As to their spirit of fun and frolic, if it has really.im-
proved by privation, they arc likely to be put in a
better condition for Christmas gambols than any other
people on the face of the earth, with the exception
of O'Connell's famishing countrymen at home, for
whom he deprecetes all legal provision, lest, we sup-
pose, they should lose their frog-like activity, and sink
from the beautiful independence and frolicsome viva-
city of utter wretchedness into the -dullness of com-
fort and the stupid contentment of repletion. Con-
currently, however, with the enlivening intelligence of
the promising result of Brigadier Godfrey's mission to
Madrid, which, at least, to the English and Scottish
troops at St. Sebastian, must open an agreeable pros-
pect of the future, if they can only contrive to live on
until it be realised, there is a statement in a French
paper, the Messager, which throws a new light upon
the " non-intervention" system at St. Sebastian. The
French paper states that the British Ambassador, M.
Villiers, has concluded with the Spanish Government
a convention in two articles, in addition to the treaty
of the Quadruple Alliance, by the first of which the
British Government takes upon itself to clothe, feed,
and pay an English Legion of 10,000 men, and by
the second insures to the Madrid Government, until
Don Carlos shall be expelled from Spain, a monthly
subsidy of 1,000,000 francs, or 40,0001., to be
increased to 60,0001. from the Ist of next Feb-
ruary, if Parliament gives its assent to the arrange-
ment. The convention, as to the legion of 10,000
men, it is said, is to be executed without delay.
It is added, that a secret article exists, by which Eng-
land has reserved to itself the right to keep a garrison
at St. Sebastian until the whole of the sums due, by
virtue of the new convention, shall haVe been repaid ;
which, we suspect, will be on or about doomsday.
Now, if there be any truth in this account of additional
articles to the treaty of the quadruple alliance, and the
obligations which those articles throw upon England ;
if the whole statement be not a mere bubble, like a
multitude of other inventions during this Spanish con-
flict, to produce a temporary effect upon Spanish funds ;
then, indeed, our Government has, at last, summoned
"courage enough to creep out of the snail's shell of piti-
ful " co-operation," and to put out the horns of direct
intervention. Whether a tap from any of the Northern
Powers will make them draw them in again, we cannot
say ; but this is quite ccrtain, that if our Government
send an army, which is openly and avowedly a British
army, into Spain, it must be prepared to :tin the risk of
a European war-and for what British object? None
whatever. England, whether'lsabella or Don Carlos
sits on the-throne of Spain, will still be the heretic and
hated England. Look at the bitter fruits which our
British merchants gather front the policy of Whig inter-
meddling in the domestic disputes of Portugal. Will
Spain be more grateful ? The experience of -all history
answers in the negative. Does any generous sympa-
thy with free principles animate our Government in
rushing into the internal disputes of Spain, at the ex-
pense of an enormous annual sum to the British na-
tion ?, Can the Ministry that abandoned and betrayed
the Poles, whose independence we were bound by
treaty to maintain—whose cause was so righteous—
whose efforts for liberty were so unstained with crime
—can that Ministry, we ask, be stimulated by any
generous motive in plunging this country into the ex-
pensive obligations, and perhaps inextricable difficul--
ties of direct intervention in the national quarrels of
the Spaniards, where libeialism is only another name
for the most ferocious and blood-thirsty licentiousness,
and where revolution, fraud, cupidity, and cruelty,
have gone hand in hand ? No, such a Goveinment
can only be actuated by motives as discreditable as
their policy is dangerous and absurd. What those
motives arc we do not pretend to divine, but if Par-
liament sanctions this convention, and allows the pub-
lic money CO be thus squandered upon foreigners, while
our poor are kept upon a starvation subsistence at
home, the sooner the highest authority in the realm
puts an end to its existence the better. Is it possible
that such a project can seriously be entertained by the
peace and retrenchment Ministry ? What ! having
thrown an enormous stun already, taken out of the
pockets of the overtaxed people of this country, into
the all devouring gulph of Spanish polities, is our
retrenchment Ministry about to settle an annuity of
750,0001. a year upon the sanguinary and dishonest
while they are pinehinee the
Government of Madrid,
diet. of the
,helpless poor at home down to a famine
allowance, on the plea of a necessary economy ? As to
keeping Si. Sebastian as a security, we have suspected
from what has been going on there for some time past,
that such an intention was entertained in Downing-
street ; but we supposed it was to be a. pledge for the
repayment of past advances to the Spanish Government,
not a security for future sums of good money thrown
after bad. How will France take this, o see another
English in Spain, close to her
Gibraltar created by the
frontiers ? Even in that respect are we not sowing at
St. Sebastian the seeds of a future war ? What busi-
ness have with the internal disputes of the Spaniards,
any more than they could have in the'domestic quar-
rels of England ? Supposing Russians or French-
men chose to pay us a visit, to settle our national
question of Reform, would not all parties, however
hostile to each other, join to chase them back again as
insolent intruders ; and yet Russians and Frenchmen
would have just as much right to interfere in our
.do-
mestic politics, as we have to intermeddle in the con-
flict now going on in Spain, to decide who has the best
title to the Spanish. throne. Liberals say the " will
of the nation ought to prevail ;" so say we ; but we
also say that the will of the nation can only be ascer-
tained by all foreigners withdrawing from the contest.