The Sun.
London, England, 1831-06-08 00:00:00

officers, when she was going into the house, she,
instead of confining them to the house, directs them
to walk out till dinner-time." The mother might
think the officers impudent puppies; but we dare to
say it never entered into her head to suppose for
one moment that any of them would coolly entertain
the design of ruining her children. The Lord Chief
Baron says in his charge—
" You have it from his brother-officer, Mr. Phillips,
that before the 21st of July, Dundas knew her to be the
daughter of Dean Adams. He must have made the ob-
servation the first day he saw her walking with her father,
and when, Ipresume, he was struck with her beauty : it
must have led him to inquire into her connexions. I can-
not but bring myself to believe that he knew whose
daughter she was. That is a strong circumstance for an
aggravation of damages. If in watering places, persons
pick up on the roads girls of free and liberal conduct, of
whom they know nothing, so much blame cannot be at-
tached to them, as young men, from following up the con-
nexion. But the matter is different when he knew her
to be the (laughter of a Dignitary of the Church—when
he must have known the injury he must have inflicted
upon that gentleman and his family. I think these things
should be' taken into consideration in the measure of
damages."
The Chief Baron here indicates pretty plainly
that the offence would have been greatly extenuated
had the party been lower in society than the
daughter of a Dignitary of the Church. Of course
Major Dundas is not such a novice in the ways of
the world as to be unaware that the station of the
party would at all events give much more notoriety
to the offence. Now it strikes us that this disre-
' gard of the rank of the father is indicative of a con-
sciousness that he had little to dread from the noto-
riety. It conveys the severest satire on the laxity of
principle of the class of society, before the tribunal
of which he would have to appear. In the case of
an humbler female, he might mitigate the resent-
ment of the parents by money. In a case of this
kind he could have no such hope. He must, there-
fore, have been by no means apprehensive as to the
effects on his reception in society. No man unne-
cessarily commits what he supposes will make him
an outcast from the society in which he moves.—
We fear we must place the cool indifference
of Major Dundas to the account of the lax
morality of the caste to which he belongs.--
He did not, of course, calculate on the influ-
ence of the more rigid morality of the middling
classes on the higher. We are told by the Paper
that claims more particularly to be the organ of
" the fashionable world" (the Morning Post), that
Major Dundas " has, since the period of this unfor-
tunate transaction, received the Majority of his re-
giment—a sufficient proof of the estimation in which
his character was held by his Colonel, the Marquis
of Anglesea, and the official persons at the Horse
Guards, who were made acquainted at the time it
happened with the circumstances attending it."
The Marquis of Anulesea probably thinks with Sir
Walter Scott in 31arntion, that he who first scales
a lady's bower, will be the first in scaling a fort.
As this is probably the opinion of the army in ge-
neral, who have never been suspected of asceticism,
we do not well see how this offence could stand in
the way of his promotion. If seduction, in its most
aggravated shape, would not lower an officer in the
esteem of his fellows, expulsion from the army is
out of the question. Perhaps the Morning Post
is hardly warranted in attributing the promotion to
the estimation in which Major Dundas is held by
the Marquis of Anglesea, or at the Horse Guards;
but this is not our affair.—Morning chronicle.

If Prince Leopold has refused the Crown of Bel-
gium, we cannot say we regret it. His near alliance
with the Royal Family of England, and the almost
parental situation in which he stands with regard to
the heir-presumptive to the Throne, makes it not
improbable that his Belgic politics, which afford no
present prospect of a tranquil arrangement, would
entangle England in Continental broils—and that,
too, on the wrong side of a great principle, as the
affairs of Hanover did in former times. We never
expected to see the day when a Whig Ministry in
England would lend themselves to the views of the
" Holy Alliance," from whose fatal connection Mr.
Canning had the energy and virtue to sever the des-
tinies of England when he advised the Crown to
recognize the independence of the South American
republics without asking the permission of the
Courts of Vienna or Berlin, or even deigning to
enter into a partnership of protocols with the diplo-
matic agents of the Northern Autocrat. Alas the
chains of that fatal connection have again been
thrown round our foreign policy, and hence its
i cha-
racter is the reverse of what English policy, n the
glorious days of this ceuntry, has been. It speaks
in the feeble tones of timid subserviency to the
" Great Powers," and in a voice of thunder'
to the weak. It addresses itself in bland and
courteous terms to the tyrant who devastates
Poland—who meditates the destruction of liberal'
institutions in France, and the ruin of the cause
of freedom all over the world—while it menaces
Belgium with extinction if that country, which
has just shaken off the incubus of a mean and
sordid system of Government, should dare oppose
the resistance of free opinion to the dictation of
loftier despotism. Do we want proofs ? Not one
manly remonstrance has been made with the bar-1
barous Czar to prevent or mitigate the horrible de-
solation and carnage which his iniquitous ambition
caust aon the plains of Poland. But, though we do
not dare to ask the Imperial " thunderer" why he
wages an exterminating war on the people of
Poland, after violating all the terms of the treaty
which guaranteed their independence, and to which
England was a party, we demand of the Belgians,
in the most threatening language, an unconditional
acquiescence in whatever measures we, in coteunc•
don with the " Holy Alliance," choose to enforce
for the abridgment of their territory, the disposal of
their finances, or the controul of their liberties. The
letter, or rather the despotic rescript of Lord Pon-
sonby, is in the worst tone of the worst taste of the
Holy Alliance in the days when they arrogated a
snit of divine power to settle for ever the destinies
of Europe, but only deposited the materials of
abundant revolutions by their insolent injustice
—verifying the emphatic denunciation of Holy
Writ, that " they who sow the wind shall reap
the whirlwind." It is because we wish well
to the present Government that we are sorry
to see them keeping such company. If they
allow their flatterers to betray them still further
into errors, we shall have the conscious satisfaction
of having given them wholesome advice, in the
exercise of that independence of opinion in which
consists the vital usefulness of the Press. We re-
probated the conduct of the late Administration in
enlisting itself, as far as it then dared to go, on the
side of the " enlightened King of the Netherlands"
against the Belgians. The members of the present
Ministry, then in opposition, took the same view of
the subject in Parliament as we did in the Press.
If we support men because they profess certain
principles, we cannot admire conduct which be-
speaks a dereliction of those principles. We have
no right to :intermeddle in the internal affairs of
Belgium. W hen Mr. Canning was most anxious
that Portugal should adopt that Constitution which
Don Pedro had sent from the I3raxils for her ac-
ceptance, he nevertheless said, " It is net the duty
nor the practice of Great Britain to offer suggestions
for the regulation of the internal affairs of foreign
States. It would not be for us to force that Con-
stitution on the people of Portugal, if they were
unwilling to receive it." Thus Mr. Canning would
not use dictation or compulsion to induce a foreign
State to adopt liberal institutions ; but our present
Government threatens Belgium for not regulating
her own affairs as a confederacy of Continental
despots please ! We hope they will retrace their
steps before it be too late.—Morning Herald.
As the moment of execution, without benefit of
clergy, draws nigher and nigher, the Anti-Reformers
are beginning to exhibit the convulsions attendant
on such an nwful moment, and in a shape not likely
to secure the sympathy of the public with their dying
groans. They are sending round circulars in all
quarters, with the view of prejudicing the public
mind against the Reform Bill; and that too under