The Sun.
London, England, 1836-10-01 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNAL.

With whatever anxiety the public may regard the
events which are hourly occurring in Spain and Por-
tugal, they are not, we apprehend, likely to derive
much information, as to their progress or tendency,
from the expositions of the Tory press. The revolu-
tions at Ildefonso and Lisbon have, since their occur-
rence, become cherished subjects for Conservative de-
distorted, and principles per-
elamation,—lacts being
verted, for the purpose of more effectually assailing
the character of the British Government, and the
existence of liberal institutions in the Peninsula. We
are told, however, that the controversy which has
arisen upon these events has hitherto been, on the part
of the Conservative press, " very simple." The writer
who favours us with this assurance, then proceeds to
illustrate his meaning, and he would certainly require
to impart some of his " simplicity" to his readers if he
expects them to attach much credit to his revelations.
As we are desirous of considering the two questions,
which are alone of importance, that have been raised
by the Times, we shall separate them from the irrele-
vant abuse and misrepresentation with which they
have been mixed up, giving them to our readers as we
find them set down in that journal :
ct From the outset (says the Times), our proposition has
been, that France and England, since the revolution which
was forced upon Queen Christina at La Granja, were re-
leased from all such obligation of interference between Don
Carlos and his niece as had rested on the provisions of the
Quadruple Treaty:"
The same proposition we subsequently find thus
repeated :
" After the revolution of La Granja, our proposition was
distinctly, that to all practical intents and purposes the
Quadruple Alliance was at an end ; that Louis Philippe
would do nothing as between Don Carlos and the rabble
dictatorship at Madrid, and that England ought to do no-
thing." _ _ _

From this statement of the case, we are entitled to
assume what, if questioned, We are prepared to prove,
that before the events of Ildefonso England was le-
gally bound to the fulfilment of certain obligations
resting on the provisions of the Quadruple Treaty.
The sole question, then, upon which discussion can
be raised is—Were the events of Ildefonso of such a
nature as to release England from the obligations of
her treaty ? Without piling ponderous authorities
upon each other, we shall be borne out by all
writers on international law, when we allege that the
treaty would cease only, first, upon one of the
contracting parties losing its existence as an indepen-
dent State ; secondly, upon such a change taking
place in the internal constitution of the Government
as to render the Treaty inapplicable. Now we main-
tain that Spain has not, by the events of Ildefonso,
lost its existence as an independent State ; nor has the
internal constitution of the Government undergone
such a change as to render the Treaty inapplicable.
No foreign interference having taken place since the
events of La Granja, it is clear that Spain is now not
less an " independent State" than before the Consti-
tution was proclaimed. We at once admit that the
internal constitution of the Government of Spain might
undergo such a change as, by rendering the Treaty
inapplicable, to release the other contracting parties
from their obligations. No such a change, however,
nothing like such a change, has been effected in the
Spanish Government by the events of Ildefonso. May
we ask those who tell us that the obligations of the
Quadruple Treaty are cancelled by the revolution—
what are the limits within which change in the Con-
stitution , of a country may be wrought, with-
out periling the stability of its relatoins with Fo-
reign
Powers ? If you sanction the principle
of passive intervention in the internal affairs of a
nation, by withdrawing from alliances under the pre-
text of their being cancelled by " changes in the con-
stitution of the Government," it is obvious that even
the progress of legislation may be arrested at the
caprice of any unfriendly State with which we may be
connected by treaty. The passing of the Reform Bill,
or the revision of our municipal laws, would, according
to this doctrine, have afforded ample justification to
any State with which we may be in alliance at once to
sever their connection with England. Nor can we
find in the uniform practice of Governments any pre-
cedent to justify the principle involved in the assertion
that the events of Ildefonso release us from the obli-
gations of the Quadruple Treaty. We have already
referred to examples not altogether inapplicable, as
we think", to the question we are considering. It
has been held that the English Revolution, result-
ing in the dethronement and decapitation of Charles,
did in nowise affect the relations (then in their

infancy) of Great Britain with Portugal. Our re-
lations with Foreign Powers were as unimpeached
and as unimpeachable in 1689 as they were in 1687.
Were these changes; in " the constitution of our Go-
vernment" less violent in their operation, or more li-
mited in their effect, than the recent events at lldefonso,
which, we are told, release England from the obliga-
tions of her treaty with the Government of Spain ?
Again, look to the French Revolution of 1830, which,
overturning a dynasty and changing utterly the form of
government, was declared to produce no effect upon
the relations of the country with Foreign States. May
we again advert to the proclamation of the Cadiz Con-
stitution at Madrid in 1820. The Government es-
tablished by this revolution was unhesitatingly acknow-
ledged by the Tory Administration of the day ; and,
as we before observed, an autograph letter from Fer-
dinand, announcing the fact of his having sworn to the
Constitution, was received from the hands of the Spa-
nish Minister by the King of England. We have
been told, however, that the occurrence of 1820
differed materially from that of 1836. What
was Ferdinand VII. more sincere than Queen

Christina in taking the oath to the Constitu-
tion ? Was a less degree of duress put in force
then than now ? Were there in that day no refugees
of the " wisest," the " noblest," and the " purest ?"
—no Alava, no Cordova to damp the hopes of the
Constitutionalists by the weight of their disapproba-
tion ? In what did the Revolution of 1820 differ from
that of 1836 ? Do those who tell us that the latter
was " not so popular," forget the part which the mili-
tary played in the former? In support of the -same
view, we may again refer to the subversion of the Con-
stitution of Don Pedro by Miguel, in 1828. This
" change in the constitution of the Government" took
place whilst England was in the very act of discharg-
ing the obligations of her treaty. Did the Govern-
ment of the day think that we were released from these
obligations ? Or will it be maintained that the subver-
Sion of the Regency, and the temporary re-establish-
ment of Absolutism, was a popular and not a mili-
tary movement? The second ground of argument we
find thus formally laid down in the Times:—
" We likewise clung to the text of the treaty, maintain-
ing it to have been signed with one of two belligerent par-
ties, instead of with the whole people of the Peninsula.
The belligerent party was one which aspired (the British
Government said rightfully) to the Spanish Crown. But
that Crown was the symbol of a constitutional monarchy :
it was not the fool's cap of an armed mob. Our second
thesis was, therefore, that under the Quadruple Treaty, all
duty of interference as between Carlos and Christina had
ceased on the part of England ; that the duty of neutrality,
which had been set aside by the treaty, now returned in
all its original force : that the principle of non-intervention
forming the rule, and that of a stipulated interference the
exception, the right of interference was altogether annulled
by the removal of those conditions under which the inter-
ference had been stipulated ; that, in fact, England now
again was free ; that she ought to leave Carlos unmolested
by the marines and men-of-war which hung upon the coasts
in his possession ; and the Christinos, on their side, un-
burdened by the mock support of a corps of hapless Eng-
lishmen, who seem to have experienced little of warfare but
its wants and mortifications."

It seems to have escaped the attention of this lucid
expounder of international law, that his " second
thesis" was inferred in his first. If the obligations of
the treaty ceased upon the occurrence of the events of
La Granja, in what respect does this differ from the
"second thesis," as laid down in the extract we have
quoted? This acute reasoner will allow us to
suggest, that before he is justified in inferring that
" the right of interference is altogether annulled," it
may be as well for him to show that " the conditions
-under which the interference has been stipulated"
were removed. It is not a very unusual preliminary
with those who oppose or support a " thesis," to esta-
blish some premises before they draw any conclusion.
Speaking of Louis Philippe, the Times is pleased to
apprise us that it " had no intention to malign or
affront that politic and skilful Sovereign." It is pro-

bably the effect of habit, which renders it difficult for
the Times to speak of any man without maligning or
affronting, either by flattery or by abuse ; but the
involuntary felicity with which our Contemporary
has contrived, upon this occasion, to deviate into the
truth with respect to the King of the French, prefac-
ing it with the candid admission that it was uninten-
tional, is really quite marvellous. The Times repre-
sents Louis Philippe as a crafty, speculating politician,
entering into a solemn treaty with a predetermination
to evade it ; engaging the confidence of a foreign Go-
vernment only to abuse it ; seeking the most specious
opportunity for oppressing his own subjects ; or, to
borrow the unoffending phraseology of the Times, of
" putting handcuffs on them ;" and, in giving this re-
presentation, there was no intention of " maligning"
or " affronting " the object of it. Though experience
renders us somewhat sceptical as to the " intentions"
of that honest Journal, we at once acquit it of the fact
of " maligning the " politic and skilful Sovereign ;"
and we apprehend the discrimination of Louis
Philippe is not very likely to be " affronted" at any
censures from such a quarter.—Morning Chronicle.

The fierce hostility to which the Church of England
has of late years been exposed by confederated infidels,
Papists, and a section of Protestant. Dissenters, will
eventually, we are confident, work more good than evil
to the religious establishment which it was meant to
overthrow. It cannot be denied that a long course of
worldly prosperity had caused many abuses to grow up
in the Church, which tended to overlay its usefulness
and check the expansion of its Christian graces. The
malice and rancour of its enemies have already had the
good effect of causing a spirit of self-examination to
arise in the Church, which cannot fail to root out those
abuses, and to remove whatever earthly stains defile
the white garment of the Gospel bride, which are
--" Like the spots upon a Vestal's robe,
The worse for what they soil."
In Ireland, indeed, the Church has been, ever since
the concession of the Catholic claims, undergoing the
fiery ordeal of a bitter persecution. The Irish clergy
are acknowledged to be a most pious, learned, and
exemplary body of men. The provision which the
State had made for them, it has been proved before Par-
liament, they were in the habit of not only not demand-
ing to the full, but of exercising so much indulgence
as to accept nearer a twentieth than a tenth of the
annual produce allowed them by law. Were they to
forego the whole, it would of course return into the
pockets of the landlords, and the occupants of the
land would not find themselves a farthing the richer,
even by the total abolition of tithe—but no matter for
that. A pretext was wanted by the intolerant priests
and bigots of the Church of Rome for the persecution
of the Protestant clergy, by way of proving the sin-
cerity of their vows of eternal gratitude for Protestant
concessions. The word tithe was adopted to cover
the real motive of aggression upon the property and
persons of the heretic clergy ; and, under the hoisted
banners of an anti-tithe conspiracy, the envenomed in-
tolerance which formerly burned Ridley and Latimer
at the stake instigated the savage passions of an ex-
citeable and ignorant multitude to commence that cru-
sade against the Protestant clergy which drove them
to the verge of starvation, and shed the blood of many
by the hand of cowardly assassination. Salutary truths
ought to be taught by these facts to Englishmen. They
ought to learn from them that the spirit of the old
serpent of Romish bigotry is the same in the 19th
century that it was in the 15th—that its mode of per-
secuting heretics is only different from what it formerly
was in these realms, because, although closely allied to
the Whig Ministers, it has not yet got the sovereign
power of the State upon its side to enable it to do, by
the mockery of judicial proceedings and by legalised
fire and faggot, what it now does by employing, as the
instruments of its vengeance, the agrarian incendiaries
and assassins who prowl for their prey by night, and
sometimes murder their victims in the noon day. But
great as the sufferings of the Protestant Clergy of Ire-
land are, their Christian fortitude seems to be still
greater. Never did men bear with more equanimity
and patience the most dreadful privations—privations
at one time approaching to a state of hopeless destitu-
tion—than they have done. With a fanatic population
raging around them, instigated to the most desperate
deeds by cowardly agitators and crafty priests, and
with a Government betraying their cause to their op-
pressors, they met the terrors that encompassed them
with a calm firmness that astonished their implacable
assailants, and which could only result from reposing
their trust in Him who placed the Christian Church
upon a rock, and who promised that the gates of hell
should not prevail against it. That the Church,
both in England and Ireland, will come forth pu-
rified from the fires of adversity is the belief and
consolation of every member of its communion,
who contemplates the momentous struggle that is now
going on. The power that persecuted with fire and
sword the earliest reformers of religion, still hates with
the hatred of an unchanged and immutable bigotry the
descendants of those reformers, and all who have fol-
lowed them from the mazes of Popish error into the
path of Scriptural truth. This spirit, it is now fully
proved to the most sceptical, cannot be appeased by
Protestant liberality, but is only made more insolent
by concession. Let the Whig Ministers tamper with
the eternal interests of truth, anti sacrifice the Bible to
a base ambition. Protestant England will feel for anti
protect the persecuted protestant clergy of Ireland. It
will also, as has been lately seen in Liverpool, reject
with disdain the Whig compromise between truth and
error, and more decidedly than ever make the unmuti-
lated Scriptures the corner stone of national education.
—Morning Herald.
The British Scientific Association, since we last
referred to it at the close of its Bristol proceedings,
has not been allowed to fall in the wake of public at-
tention. Its managing Committee have been actively
employed since that time in founding branch Societies
and local Mechanics' Institutes ; in fact, their Bristol
proceedings were adjourned to Cheltenham for the
latter purpose. It is not, however, on account of its
laudable activity that we now advert to this scientific
Institution—the daily proceedings of which at Bristol
we reported and commented on—but on account of a
transaction growing out of those proceedings which
singularly exhibits the inveterate bigotry and persecu-
ting malignity of High Church Toryism. Dr. Hamp-
den was lately selected, on account of his ethical lec-
tures, as a mark for the poisoned arrows of its ranco-
rous inquisitors. Dr. Buckland is now selected as a
new victim by these bigotted assassins, on account of
his geological lectures at Bristol, to which we before
drew attention. He is a churchman, but his opinions
are philosophical and liberal, and that is quite enough
of priestly
to draw upon him the whole
weight
persecution. It is asserted by his opponents—al-
though it is not proved—that he maintained, accord-
ing to the evidences of geology, that the world had
existed for millions of years. This alleged assertion is
immediately pounced upon by the high-church party,
and declared a heterodox, damnable, and infidel doc-
trine. No doubt the orthodox denouncers, would, if
they dared, or if we lived in the 16th century, send
their philosophical brother, without the least mercy, to
the rack or to the stake. They would punish Dr.
Buckland for asserting the geological antiquity of the
earth, in the same manner as their inquisitorial prede-
cessors punished poor Galileo, the astronomer, for say-
ing the earth moved round the sun. 'The spirit is pre-
cisely the same. The will is good, but the power is
wanting. The spirit is willing, but the arm of flesh is
weak. Yet, what after all is Dr. Buckland's crime ?
The supposed allegation of an opinion which is in
perfect conformity with the opinions of a large body of
orthodox Christian divines, and with the interpretation
of the best Hebrew scholars, whether Englishmen or
Jews. Theological discussions are not fit for news-
papers ; nor are we going, in imitation of a contempo-
rary, to drag our readers with us through the en-
tangling mazes or treacherous quagmires of such in-
We might, like others, decorate our co-
vestigatione,
lns v
quotations in Arabic, Hebrew, or Cop-
tuicm;b‘ith
ut we
have no ambition to earn the title of
learned fools or inflated pedants, which naturally and
very properly, with persons of plain sense, accompany
such misplaced and pretentious exhibitions. We shall
briefly say—and in order to enforce the argument we
are confining ourselves to the interpretation of ortho-
dox divines from Warburton and Burnet to Maurice
—that Dr. Buckland's is in reality the orthodox opi-
nion. The wnole question turns upon the Hebrew
word Yum, which our translators, who, by the way,

THE SUN, Dm:N._

are chargeable with most numerous and absurd errors,
translate ." day ;" but which the best Hebrew scholars
assert to mean an indefinite period—just such a period
as geology and the sense of sight require to account
for the successful stratifications of the earth's surface.
To assert that the word means day is neither more
nor less than to assert a solecism ; for there could. be
no natural day till the sun, the natural measure of
time, appeared, and that was not till three periods or
days, afterivards. It is not necessary to go farther into
the subject. We have only drawn attention to it to
show to our readers how inveterate is the malignity of
Tory prejudice, and how tenacious of existence is the
ancient spirit of State Church persecution. In this
instance the rancour of Dr. Buckland's assailants, on
account of an imagined assertion, overleaps the back
of the horse. In their hurried anxiety to assassinate
a new victini, they cut themselves with their own dag-
gers. They are, in fact, aiming a blow at Christianity
itself through the sides of that victim ; for never was
more singular and overwhelming corroboration offered
to the evidence of .truth, than are offered by the spade
of the geologist, and by the voice of the earth itself,
to the mysterious inspiration, or to the scientific accu-
racy of the first chapter of Genesis. The evidence con-
vinced Cuvier, who began his geological investigations
with infidelity and ended them with
_Christianity.—
Morning Advertiser.
The strange conduct which our Whig Government
has lately been pursuing has given much cause for
reflection to those who watch the course of national
prosperity, and compare England as she now is to
nations which were once as remarkable—who perceive
that, without imitating the full measures of their folly
or wickedness, she does not hesitate to abandon the
principles on which all her success has been founded.
A comparison may well be taken between what Hol-
land was and what England now is. Holland-once
enjoyed free institutions—commerce unlimited—im-
mense colonies in India and Africa—her navies rode
triumphant on every sea. But the demon of avarice
took possession of her sons, and, all their thoughts
fixed on gain, they abandoned principle, and became
indifferent to the sufferings of individuals and of na-
tions. They trod under foot the holy sign of their Re-
demption to trade with Pagan nations—they murdered
the merchants of rival countries—extracted by torture
the riches of Malay Princes—by the whip, the labour
of their enslaved subjects ; and, while giving refuge to
the seditious outcasts of every nation, lent millions to
the devastator of the Palatinate, the licentious despot
enemy of her creed. On this rock—want of principle
—was the prosperity of Holland wrecked. After be-
longing many years to the Usurper's brother, what is
she now—though she be free cf his rule ? She pos-
sesses but a fragment of her colonies—her power is
contemptible—her fleets are of no importance—her
commerce is more like the thrifty traffic of the Jews
than the glorious trade of the merchant Princes she
carried on in past times. The moral of this picture
is, that if England, looking only to her internal pros-
perity, encourages treason, civil war, and dissension in
other countries, while she leaves the noblest nations a
prey to the Vandals of the North, the hour of retribu-
tion must arrive. Like the Dutch, she will offer to
future ages a warning and an example.—Morn. Post.

ittnnday were remanded till that day, to abide
on Coroner's hilliest,
tlte;t;evisualst
that :.I.le, Coroner's fury" !laving received
statedman that the infant
was still-
it,heer
ne, (al
teinreeet
eo
ndma verdict Mr. GRovE said that though hen ow, tie evidence to
prove that the deceased was tint AM or which the pri-
rfaeedicalat effect, duis, exonerating
the prisoners so tar. L
saner had been delivered, yet tho'e Was but little moral
doubt of the case ; And this, he understood, was not the
first illegitimate child that Ylasoain had to lay to his charge.
they
could vature to return home,
since office this p6pulaee WON rO4dY to
tle di d a
fi not
their know
way
tear them to pieces. They would be despised and detested
the remainder of their days.
The prisoners were discharged.
On Anne Churchill leaving the liar she gave an hysteri-
cal shriek, and, on going out of the office into the street,
she involuntarily exclaimed, " Oh, my child ! my child I
I'm dead! I'm dead !" A crowd instantly gathered round
them, from which they made their escape by getting into
a cab.
Henry Beaman, whom lean and forlorn look was a true
picture of distressed feelings, was placed before Mr. GROVE,
on a peace waarant, being charged by Miss Frances Hud-
son, a rosy-faced lass, of about eighteen years of age, who
appeared of that class of tormenting females, who, like
Polly in The Beggar's Opera, could very well do without
either.
The complainant stated that the defendunt was her first
cousin, and for the last eighteen months he had been paying
his addresses to her. On Monday last he came into her
room, while she was at work, and commenced declaring his
attachment to her. As she had often done before, she told
him that she did not wish to speak to him. Upon saying
this, he declared that lie would shoot her and himself too.
--(Complainant here laughed.)
Mr. GROVE—You seem to treat the matter lightly.
Complainant—No, your Worship. On Monday he took
up the Bible, which was lying on the table, and kissing it,
declared that the first time he saw me in the street he
would shoot me. She never saw him so serious before.
Sergeant M‘William, of the H division, said that the
complainant was afraid to go out.
Mrs. Jane Smith, for the complainant, said that she
heard the defendant say that sooner than she should have
any one else, he would make away with her.
Robert Emery, the other lover, here stepped into the
witness box, and looking sternly at the defendant, swore
that, from what he knew of the matter, she never liked him.
Mr. GROVE—Do you think she will ever have him ?
Witness—Dear Sir, I have heard her say that she would
suffer fifty deaths before she would have him.
The defendant said he had no intention to do the com-
plainant any harm. Then, addressing the complainant, he
exclaimed, " Oh, Fanny I you know I would not hurt a
hair of your head."
Mr. GROVE—You must find bail.
Defendant = Only last Sunday she declared that she
would not have any one but me, but when I am out of hu-
mour, she says she does not like me.
The complainant said that she required bail.
The defendant, for want of sureties, was locked up.