The Sun.
London, England, 1836-08-15 00:00:00

turned to the Commons, be thrown aside until next I
session, and thus its defeat be effected without the 1
enemies of -free discussion in the House of Com- '
mons being exposed to the odium of its failure. None
can be so foolish as to believe that the Lords would
have consented to the total abolition of the Stamp
Duty ; their challenge to the Ministry on this subject
was mere swagger and bluster, as was clearly evidenced
by the silence maintained when Lord Melbourne,
taking up the gage, boldly asked if a Bill were
brought in for the abolition of the duty Would their
Lordships support it ? The Duke of Wellington
and Lord Lyndhurst hung down their heads and
blinked the question. The registration clause being
an interpolation in the original Bill, made by parties
unconnected with the Government, Ministers 'were re-
sponsible for its introduction only to the extent of a
too ready acquiescence with the wishes of parties, who,
to serve their own selfish purposes, would unhesitat-
ingly sacrifice every interest of the country. We trust
•that the Government will profit by its experience, and
ponder well the justice of the principle and the wishes
of the community, before they yield in future to the
suggestions of designing individuals, reckless of all
interests but their own, and ready to advocate
or oppose any measure, as it may advance . or
retard their own purposes, and not as it may
promote or prevent the general prosperity. The
Bill without the registration clause, which, as we
have said, was not of Government concoction, was a
most popular Bill, .and would have done immortal
honour to the Government. In a House consisting of
about 58 Members, that clause was carried, and un-
fortunately the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not
find a sufficient number of friends to support him in
his anxious determination to frustrate it ; and, there-
fore, no blame rests with him for having allowed it to
pass for the moment : but we beg distinctly to state
once and for all, that that clause was not a Government
clause—that it was repugnant to the feelings of the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, and that those who
assert that it was agreeable to the Government, egregi-
ously lie against what they know to be the fact. We
think, under all circumstances, the Chancellor of the
Exchequer chose the right course, and that Lord Mel-
bourne, knowing the opposition which the Bill would
otherwise have received in the House of Lords, was
right in advocating it, in order to carry the great prin-
ciple of a reduction of the taxes on knowledge. The
penny stamp is now carried without opposition, and
May fairly be remembered not only as the fairest feather
in the cap of the Melbourne Cabinet, but as a measure
which the Tories would never have accomplished in
any stage of their existence. It is the death-blow of
the faction and of all its malevolent qualities:-L--Morn-
ing Advertiser.
There can be no doubt, we imagine, but that the
people of Westminster; of whatever political way of
thinking, must be heartily sick and disgusted' with the
present state of its representation—which may be said
to consist of one worn-out absent Whig, and of another
absent Radical ; so that, while the city of London has
had four active representatives always at their post,
this important portion of the metropolis may be truly
said—for the whole of the present session at least—to
have been virtually not represented at all. No wonder
then that we hear of movements being commenced
to put an end to such a state of things.. As for a disso-
lution of Parliament, which Mr. Hume, in the certainty
of being housted from Middlesex, proposes with so much
disinterestedness to Ministers, we suspect that neither
the Members for Cambridge, for Tiverton, or Stroud,
—to say nothing of some others—find their own seats
secure enough to venture upon so bold an experiment ;
so that, therefore, the electors of Westminster are not
very likely to succeed in their object that way. 'But there
is a way in which we think both their Members shoirld,
as men of honour, afford them the wished-for oppor-
tunity—which is, by each resigning a trust of which
they have both so long neglected the duties, and it is
not unreasonable, therefore, to expect that such will
soon be the case. To be sure, it will seem somewhat
inconsistent in the Honourable Gentlemen to have re-
tained their seats while Parliament .has been. sitting,
and to resign them when the Session is at an end. But
still the electors of Westminster will, we have no doubt,
embrace the " better late than never" with. commen-
dable avidity. We rejoice to learn that the friends of
Sir George Murray are in the field, and that the Con-
servatives of Westminster are likely to have an oppor-
tunity of trying their strength under the banners of so
admirable a leader. Westminster has heretofore rec-
koned among its representatives some of the most dis-
tinguished of cur naval and military heroes. Sir
George Murray, who, as a military hero, yields to none'
of these, adds to his professional honours the not less
distinguishing characteristic of being an enlightened
Statesman, and a thorough man of business.—Morn-
ing Herald.

Formerly, in the high and palmy days of the
Jesuits, it is well known that there was scarcely a
Court in continental Europe whose affairs were inac-
cessible to the pryings and machinations of that in-
triguing brotherhood. If they could not contrive to
have an abbe or two in official employment as Minis-
ters of State, they generally made it a point to worm
themselves into political influence as tutors to young
Princes, or as private chaplains to Queens, or still
better, as confessors of the mistresses of Ministers ;
nor were these emissaries of Rome ever so indifferent
to the interests of the Holy See, and of their own
order, as to content themselves with shriving the softer
frailties disclosed at the confessional, without at the
same time disburdening their penitents of such State
secrets as any of them might chance to be possessed of.
Now, in this organized system of spies, sentinels,
agents, and abettors, the Sovereign Pontiff appears to
us to have found a very promising imitator in the ex-
isting Autocrat of Russia. Intent equally with his
Holiness on extending the territory and influence of
his crown, it has latterly been the policy of the crafty
Muscovite to retain certain secret emissaries at every
considerable station in Europe, whose principal duty
seems to be to aggrandize the maritime and commercial
importance of that power ; to invent lies in vindica-
tion of the breach of treaties ; to wheedle, bully, or
circumvent the: whole corps of British and foreign di-
plomatists; te:palliate, by all sorts of artifices the ag-
gressions and enormities of Russian absolutism ; and .
more especially to 'make a dead set at the weaknesses of
poor Lord Palmerston, whose unsuspecting subser-
viency to the designs of the imperial despot is found
to be the more useful and attainable in proportion as
he possesses the means, and is bound in duty to watch,
expose, and counteract them. On the frontiers, and
in the capital, of almost every country of any impor-
tance, the wily Czar appears to have established a re-
gular cordon of political writers, monied loan-mongers,
and commercial reporters, all constituting a busy in-
visible agency in support of his ambitious views ; and
hence we find that, according as circurnstunces hap-
pen to require it, their interposition behind the scenes
is sure to be at work. An apparently disinterested ar-
ticle in defence of the Cracow affair makes its appear-
ance at Frankfort ; an anonymous apologist for the
speech at Warsaw springs up as "Vienna ; the aggres-
sions upon Turkey are justified by an emissary at Ber-
lin ; and more recently, a published official document,
showing the advantages Russia is deriving from her newly
created trade in the Euxine, finds as a matter of course,
a translator and trumpeter in London. The original
of the document just alluded to, entitled " A Report
on the Commerce of the Black Sea, made to the Rus-
sian Government by Julius de Hagemeister, at the
instance of Count Woronzow," was published at
Odessa in 1835 ; and is now done into English by a
Mr. T. F. Triebner. How far this document derives
any weight from the discrimination and good sense of
the translator, may be judged of from the fact, that
he actually addresses it toViscount Palmerston in a
highly laudatory dedication ; and as, in common with
the rest of the nation, the Noble Secretary for Fo-
reign Accidents must be surprised to receive such com-
plicents, it is but proper that all parties should bo dis-
tinctly aware of the grounds upon which a solitary in-
dividual has at last been found having sufficient intre-
pidity to profess himself an admirer of Lord Palmer-
ston. Keeping in mind, then, that the great object
of the published Report is to show by certain re-
turns that the principal ports of the Black Sea (origi-
nally wrested from Turkey) have of late been singularly
conducive to the advancement of Russian commerce,
and, more especially, that the export trade from Odessa
and Taganrog is rapidly rising into equality with the large
and undiminished exports of Riga and St. Petersburgh,