The Sun.
London, England, 1831-11-01 00:00:00

themselves, who were disposed to commit those I
outrages, from punishment, and consequently
frpm the disgrace and repentance which must
inevitably have attended it." Along with this
extract he sent' us the following communication,
from whiCh it appears, that while Blandford,
Dorchester, Poole, Sherborne, and Yeovil, in
which the inhabitants are not organized, have
,been the theatres of dreadful riots, Salisbury has
been in,the enjoyment of tranquillity. The com-
munication is important at this moment :

would deceive. It is plain that a voluntary na-
tional armament, offering to include men of all
ranks and shades of opinion who are able to pro-
vide themselves with clothes and arms, and have
fixed habitations to shelter them, is an, institu-
tion which may be said to embrace the nation
itself. Will the nation, then, make war upon
itself, or upon the delegated depositories of its
own political and civil power ? No ; but it will,
be better qualified than it ever yet has been to
protect itself, and its rights and interests, against
a usurping faction, which has hitherto held the
King in trammels, and the State as its owl)
proper inheritance. The faction which has
propped its lever upon the borough system,
and with it drawn up the treasures of
England, and employed them for its selfish
uses—that faction is the natural enemy of
all expedients and of all measures, which
may enable Englishmen to resist its pre-
' datory machinations ; and accordingly it is from
that faction alone that is experienced the hostile
fury we complain of. The Tories do not dread
the mob : the mob is their natural ally. Its
prejudices, nursed by the barbarous ignorance in
which Tory policy has for ages striven to retain
the humbler classes,—such prejudices, fostered
by such folly, are always convertible to some
subtle purpose. A mob, of the right old Tory
Church-and-King calibre, can at any time he
wrought up to the destruction of lives, or houses,
or possessions, of which the owners may be
obnoxious to men in power. Thus was Dr.
Priestley, the simple-minded, benevolent, and
enlightened philosopher, stormed in his peace-
; ful dwelling, and banished from his in-
sulted country. A mob may with little art
or labour be instigated to any frantic out-
rage, fitted to be afterwards brought up as
evidence in favour of new coercive laws.
Was it not avowed even by the wary Lord Liver-
pool, that no Government could be carried
on without the aid of spies, when it was in proof
,hat the business of his Lordship's spies had been
.o seduce the mob to insurrection ? The real ob-
ject of terror to the Tories is a union and orga-

,--
lization of the people, as contradistinguished
,ro►n the mob. The Political Unions, therefore,

such as have existed for some time at Birming-
ham and elsewhere throughout the north of Eng-
land, where 150,000 citizens have assembled and
separated with as much decorum as the congre-
gationlolthe Chapel Royal at St. James's,—such
are the real sources of agony to the borough-
monger crew. Men who know their rights, who
fulfil their duties, who love peace, as the mother
of industry and property,--who obey the law, as
their own best shield and protectress,—who suf-
fer their actions to be directed by chiefs of tried
integrity and understanding, in whom they can
implicitly confide,—men instructed, disciplined,
self-restrained, calculating on distant though sure
results, and willing to wait until time and cir-
cumstance shall mature them,—men, in short,
who will give the Tory enemy no pretext or
handle for trampling on the country, under
the cloak of guarding against popular ex-
cesses,—these are the men at whose combina-
tion a boroughmonger trembles ; these are the
sober reflecting citizens, whom it has been
our eager wish and strenuous recommendation
to array, whether armed or unarmed, as occasion
may prompt, for the defence of England against
all foes foreign and domestic. Is it, then, ex-
traordinary that the domestic foe should eXhaust,
the language of Bedlam in railing at a project
so subversive of his system of misrule ? Those
who know how the unions of the north have
been conducted, and who will be at the trouble
to read our report of the proceedings which
took place yesterday in Lincoln's-inn-fields, may
judge whether the disastrous occurrences which
have been communicated to us from Bristol
could by possibility have there been witnessed
had a Political Union, under the guidance of
able and respected leaders, been in operation
before the wild exposure of Sir Charles Wethe-
rell to the resentment of the people whom he
had for months been misrepresenting and pro-
voking. It is making us pay too dear for
proofs of boroughmongering falsehood and
audacity to write the "no-reaction" of the city
of Bristol in characters of blood and fire. If
there be those who blame the mob of Bristol for
their atrocities, we join our hearty reprobation
to theirs. The sword of the law ought to fall
with its sharpest edge upon the enraged and
brutal incendiaries, and we trust will do so still.
But what caused the evil? What provoked
it ? Against whom, and by whom, were the
people so incensed ? Was it other than
madness in Sir Charles Wetherell to proceed at
such a time to Bristol ? Was it a sane act of
the constables to commence an attack upon the
mob after they had secured the safe entrance of
the Learned, albeit unwise, Recorder into his
Court-house ? Be these things as they may, the
crimes committed, and the destruction perpe-
trated, are altogether frightful. But we return
to our first question, and ask, whether if a
t' Conservative Guard" had been formed at
Bristol, comprehending the property and intelli-
gence and numerous householders of that great
city, it would have been possible for the mob to
execute an hundredth part of the ruin which the
want of such a force unhappily enabled them to
complete ? It is now obvious that the regular
troops and peace officers are not of themselves
sufficient to defend the lives and properties of
the peaceful and well-disposed, on occasions of
sudden and very general emergency. We say,
then, to our fellow-subjects, organise and arm ;
to Ministers we say, hasten the meeting of Par-
liament ;—to Lords and Commons we say, sleep
not until you have passed the Bill. We need
scarcely contradict an absurd rumour in an
Evening Paper,—allowed to be questionable by
that Paper itself,—that the 3d Dragoons aban-
doned its fidelity by taking part with the mob,
and that the 14th Light Dragoons exceeded its
duty by an excess of cruelty. For neither of
these statements does there appear to be the
slightest foundation. A regiment of Infantry
has been ordered to Bristol, and would arrive this
morning.— Times.
In transcribing on Saturday the French tele-
graphic despatch, which simply announced the
death of the President of Greece by assassina-
tion, we mentioned it as our belief, that from
the heated state of factions and parties in that
distracted country, his Excellency had fallen by
the dagger of political, rather than of private
revenge. The account, which we extract from
the French journals, in another column, con-
verts this conjecture into a reality. The Presi-
dent had met with factious opposition, if not
with armed resistance, from several of the Chiefs
who had figured in the revolution. He had in
vain used the legal force with which he was in-
vested, and even the foreign influence with
which Le was surrounded, to counteract their
machinations or to ensure their submission.
Whatever may have been his good intentions,
or his powers of management, he does not ap-
pear to have succeeded in converting enemies

into friends, or in preventing friends from
becoming enemies. He even seems to have
produced a greater alienation every day
of the persons who had distinguished
themselves in the revolution, or who were
known for their eminent services and nume-
rous followers. He had disgusted the French
General Fabvier and other French officers,—the
English General Church, and some German
officers,—and, what was worse, he had provoked
the hostility both of the Princes of the Fanar,
such as Mavrocordato, and of the native chiefs,
such as Miaulis and Pietro Bey. To talk about
observing any of the numerous Greek constitu-
tions which had been put on paper, but never in
practice, during the course of the revolution,
to speak of following the rules laid down for
the government of a state by a band of ignorant
and turbulent chiefs, called the Congress of
Argos, who, for want of the shelter of a house
in which to deliberate, were obliged to promul-
gate their forgotten decrees from an orange
grove, to insist on conforming to legitimate
order, or on permitting unrestrained discussion
among a set of liberated Turkish slaves, would
have been the height of absurdity. But when
the President otherwise became unpopular, the
charge of putting down constitutional rights, and
of destroying the freedom of the Press, became
an excellent make-weight in the scale of
popular odium. It was echoed from the
mountaineer-robbers of the Morea to the
revolutionary workmen of Paris,—from the
heroes of Sparta and Hydra, to those
of the barricades,—that Capo d'lstria had be-
come a tyrant, because he had not convoked a
Constituent Assembly, and had enforced a cen-
sorship of the Press, where no free Assembly or
free Press had ever before existed. Pietro Bey,
and other ambitious leaders, who contested with
him the possession of power, could' easily cover
their selfishness with the mask of patriotism, and
affect indignation at a public wrong, while they
really desired only a private advantage. It is almost
superfluous to those who have ready any history
of the late Greek revolution, to describe the cha-
racter or to enumerate the services of this Pietro
Bay, the chief of Maina,—a mountainous dis-
trict which forms the southern promontory of the
Peloponnesus. Though his territory had never
been subjected to the Turks, being exempted from
their tyranny for the payment of a slight tribute,
its chieftain was one of the first to join the
standard of insurrection in 1821 ; and he has
continued faithful to the Greek cause ever
since. He was one of the most respectable
and least selfish of the Moreot leaders, enrich-
ing himself less than the rest by plunder or pe-
culation. He was the only considerable chief-
tain whom the Turks left in the command
of a district, and accordingly got the title of
Bey, though a Christian and an enemy. This
is the person with whom the late President un-
fortunately quarrelled,—whom he imprisoned
for some time in the citadel of Nauplia, and by
the hands of whose immediate relatives he has
lately fallen. The crime is perhaps confined to
the family of the Bey, and the removal of the
President, though by an atrocious deed of as-
sassination, will most probably facilitate an ulti-
mate settlement of the Greek Sovereignty. We
subjoin the following confirmation of the French
accounts above alluded to, in an extract of a let-
ter received in London from Napoli di Ro-
mania :—" Count Capo d'lstria was assassi-
nated here on the 9th instant, whilst attending
divine service, by two members of the family of
Mavromichaelis, the chief of which family
(Pietro Bey) had been imprisoned since last
January. One of the assassins was killed on
the spot, the other escaped through the con-
nivance of two of the President's body guard.
A Commission was immediately appointed by
the Senate for carrying on the Government, un-
til the meeting of the National Assembly."-
7imes.

The fatal outrages of which Bristol has beet
the scene will furnish a fruitful theme of decla
mation to the Anti-Reformers and their Press.
They will say that they always predicted, from
the agitation of the Reform Bill, those convul-
sions which lead to revolution. But we believe
there are among the Anti-Reformers not a few
of that class of prophets who take pains to
realize their own predictions. We said some
time ago that the emissaries of Anti-Reform
were abroad, endeavouring to instigate the people
to disgrace and weaken their cause by violence.
The atrocious and sanguinary placards which
were exhibited in many places, by unknown
agents of mischief, were evidence of this. It is
clear they could not be the work of Reformers,
because, conscious of the strength of a measure
which the vast majority of the nation embraced,
and which the King and the Ministry supported,
they had no need of violence to assist a
cause whose peaceful and constitutional
triumph was already er.sured. Who were the
violent men in both Houses of the Legislature on
that memorable day when his Majesty dissolved
the Parliament, and appealed on the question
of Reform to the sentiments of the people ?
Were they not the Anti-Reformers, whose dis.
appointment engendered malice, and whose
sense of weakness exasperated them into fury?
Have the yeople of England, powerful in their
union, and in the virtue and justice of their
cause, and who, therefore, can afford to carry
on the contest with good-humour and mode-
ration, become infected with the frantic passions
of which their adversaries gave them a sample ?
Even the .Auti-Reformers, who assert that the
people have the subversion of order, and not
the restoration of their legal rights, in view, do
not believe it. But there is a rabble, distinct
from what is properly called the people, in Lon-
don, in Nottingham, in Bristol, and other
places ; and it is not difficult for the emissaries
of the Anti-Reformers to instigate such a rabble
to transgress the laws when a multitude has once
been assembled on any exciting occasion—and
the spark which falls into a large quantity of com-
bustible materials soon becomes a conflagration.
The exciting occasion which drew a large mul-
titude together in the present instance was
the arrival of Sir Charles Wetherell in Bris-
tol—where. he bad so recently stated a re-
action on the question of Reform had taken
place. It may be asked why he was so rash and
imprudent as to go there after venturing such
an opinion. It may be that he believed his own
statement-.-and certainly his personal appearance
at such a time seems like a proof of it. We
must also do him the justice of stating that he
had a duty to perform, as he was bound, by his
office of Recorder, to preside at the Sessions,
which could not proceed without him.. Besides,
if he calculated upon the people intending him
no violence, we believe that he calculated rightly.
That many persons would have assembled to sig-
nify by hissing, and other harmless marks of dis-
approbation, that their opinion ou Reform had
not changed, was to be expected. They no