The Sun.
London, England, 1831-08-13 00:00:00

'ino'k into the contents of such paperS Uri the code-
roam was assembled, ol'.ould pardon his Noble
Friend for not have opened the letter; but be should at
the same lime think that it was a part of his Noble Friends
defy to watch the receipt of such communications ; and
,n the instant to take some steps with respect to them. and
tot to wait for 24 hours, when the great and petiloina fates
of the world, which were thnt treYolding in t4.balitwie,
might depend ess thz }otter he hind r&cived.—'(Chcers.;
If, fontre:T', With was the'fOrM, he had mi.* to regret that
be eutted e perate against what he
Must be t ertnitted tt call the peaceful interests of man-
kind.--(Jfeal-, bear.) Nothing gave hint greater
than that a British Ministernd'oOthang could give
hint greater private pain—:',Tat,-.11 that his No!ile Friend
should, upon a lirlocipio of mistaken etiquette, have left
this itnii-Ortant letter unopened. That letter was most im-
. especially with reference to the charges which
had afterwards been brought forward against the King of
Holland. In that letter the King of Holland said, that in
compliance with the demand of the fire Ministers at the
Conference, he had sent new powers to his Plenipotenti-
aries. Now, who would tot have believed- nhy, more,
oho did not believe—When this 'subse' ct wt(s under con-
sideration on a 'forma ()retsina that the king of Holland
had sent these new powets to his Minister as a blind, as
a curtain, behind which his military movements were to
be madc,—(ilear, hear.) That was the effect produced
hi that House—(Hear, hear).-,•an' in the country by what
had taken place. Now, ,:ellat was the fact ? The confer-
ence of London hat neat to the Dutch Government to ask for
new powers to be sent to its Ministers. The rene.twai of hos-

tilitien happened to have occurred thlaasione time with this
renewal of the powerato Otis lenipotentiary ; but, except
that accidental erittcaderice in time, these two events had
nothing t'3 do With each other. In that letter the Dutch
7`liniatet stated, that in obedience to the commands of his
raaster he desired to inform the ceafeaseact that the King
of Holland would supoott the neaociations by hia military
In thn dialogue to which he had before alluded,
it was etatisi that the words were', "by military mea-
snres."—(A laugh.) It was much the cone thing.
(Hear, hear.) Aril it should be observed, that the Dutch
Minister not say his master would have recourse te
Isis otilitary means if negociation should fail, best that he
sVould support the negociationa as they g'en't on by his mi-
litary means.—(Hear.) No*, his Noble Friend was in
possession of that !"_later on Wednesday, at noon, but he
did not hoora The words of it till Thursday, at noon ;
theehow could lie assume to charge the Dutch Covetin-
:tient with having broken the armistice toithont notice ?
His Noble Friend might be able to explain this—it was
a difficult treks bttt he might do it, and certainly it was
requis;ee I:a be explained, for in the dialogue supposed to
at,Ve occurred in another place—noexplanation of the matter
was given. The letter went un—" As the plan of eve-
blishing an armistice has never been realised, there exists
at the present moment only a cessation of hostilities."
With that letter) of which they were in possession on
Thursday noon, hoav could his Majesty's Ministers come
down to Parliament, and on Friday assert, and on Saturs
day reiterate the assertion, that the Dutch Govern-
meOt had violated the armistice? Why, the Dutch
Government said that it was no armistice. He knew
there were often great differences about words—there
had been truth dispute about the meaning of the
word protocol, and a treatise had been written on the
subject ; and there might be an r goal dispute about the
meaning of the word armistice ; but such cavils, thous h
they might possibly do well enough for diplomacy, should
not do in the House of Commons.— (Hear, hear.) The
Mirlizters ought at least to have stated that though they
accused the Dutch Government of having. broken the
armistice, that Government assert, d that there was no
armistice whatever, His Noble Friend ought to have
said, " I am able to prove that there was an armistice,
although the Dutch Government deny that there was ;"
but still he ought to have said that the denial was made.
When he was charging a great, aye, and an honest nation
—(Hear, hear)—with such an offence as that of the
breech of an armistice, be should have been most cautious
in his mode of proceeding ; he should have been careful to
.guard not their character so much as hia own, and in
stating their acts, he should have given those acts the
guarantee of their previous expressed opinion.—(Hear.)
But, instead of that, his Noble Friend had left the Dutch
Government for seven days under an imputation most in-
jurious to their character—for seven days (a matter more
full of event bad hardly occurred to them since Marl-
borough was knocking at their gates) they had lain under
a aurae made by a British Minister of violating their en-
gagetnents—a charge which from any mouth ought to be
intolerable to a nation as to an individual—(Hear, hear)—
and which was only the more intolerable when proceeding
from so high an authorliy.—(llear.) Having said thus
• much, lie thought he had made something of a prima
facie case to justify him in saying that his Noble Friend
should have been more or less communicative, and that
the Noble Lord, the Member for Northamptonshire, should
still have preserved the prudent silence he maintained on
the first occasion when this subject was mentioned to the
House ; or that, when he had resolved to deviate from
that silence, he should have done justice to the unfortu-
nate Dutch.—(Hear, hear.) He came now to the second
scene of this most extraordinaiy drama. He had asked
his Noble Friend about a letter of the 2d of August, hut
his Noble Friend at first only remembered the letter of
the Ist of August. He called his Noble Friend's atten-
tion in a particular manner to this letter, and then his
Noble Friend, with that courtesy of manner which so
much distinguished him, got up, and wished to know
what his Right Hon. Friend (for so his Noble Friend
called him, and so he trusted his Noble Friend would still
call him) knew :of that letter? When his Noble Friend
was asked about the letter, his answer, in effect, was,
" Oh, before I tell you what 1 know abut that letter, I
should wish to know what you know about it."—(A
laueh.) Why it was impossible but that he must know
something about it, for it had been published in a well-
informed and influential journal, tILe Times of that very
morning. His Noble Friend then said that he recollected
the letter, but that it hail been read by the Dutch Minister
in a very hurried manner. Indeed ! what a Dutchman
in a hurry—(A laugh)—in a fuss—in a bustle?—
(Laughter.) But if the Dutchman was iii a hurry,
that was no reason for the Englishman being in a hurry.
The phenomenon of a Dutchman in a hurry ought
to have awakened the attention of his Noble Friend.
He should have said there must be something strange in
this matter, thus to awaken the sensibility of a Dutchman
—to arouse the vivacity of a Netherlander. Had it done
sV ? No such thing. His Noble Friend had been in a
hurry too, and answered him, that he forgot whether the
letter was received on Friday or on Saturday. Why this
was not the affair of an hour, and the hurry of inatten-
tion was the more to be regretted ; for if they recollected
the information they had received, it did not appear that
France had lost an hour. The French Minister, when
applied to, at once granted an aid of 50,000 men ; he did
not forget the application, and forget on what day the ap-
plication was made—(Cheers)—be attended to it at the
moment, and the application lowing been made at one
o'clock in the day, the hour of two had not struck by the
clock at Notre Dame when the telegraph at Paris an-
flounced the event, and, for aught he knew, the garrison
of Lille was within an hour afterwards under ammo.—
(Hear, hear.) It was not for the men to whom the des-
tinies of the world were committed, to say that they had
received papers, but did not know what the contents of
these papers were. And with respect to this particular
paper, he
.(Mr.- Croker) would fearlessly assert, that it
was the key-stone of the whole business—it was the ex-
planation of -all the diplomacy that hail taken place.—
(Hear, hear.) The communication was said to have been
made at five o'clock on the Friday evening. Would gen•
deafen recollect how they bed come down to that House
at .that hour in great numbers, expecting to hear some-
thing most momentous—and would they recollect the
state. of the citizens of London and -Westminster at that
motnent ? He would assert,tbat he never recollected to have
seen them more agitated on any public event than upon
the subject of the; information then believed to have been
received from Belgium ; and yet even then, when public
expectation was upon the tiptoe—when the Noble Lord
himself was in wonder at having received no communica-
tion from the Dutch Government—at that moment was
it not to he expected that when the Dutch Minister did
at length come to make his statement, he would have been
received With anxiety—he . would have been heard with
attention, and his statement would have been sifted with
accuracy.—(Hear, hear.) At that important moment he
came with an important document, with a despatch from
his Government ; he was no pretender—he had the docu-
ment with him; yet he was heard with such noncha-
lance, and the document was read in such a hurried man-
ner, that his Noble Friend did not know the contents of
it ; and above all, the thing was considered so trivial that
his Noble Friend did not know whether the occurrence had
taken place on a Friday or a Satuiday. That was a fit
prologue to what followed. The second letter was more
formal than the first—it repeated some of the same ex-
pbrzsaidoonrs—heirte,watos
badedlraeisdeed before not
te merely
conference, totheDutcth Am-
it
was
directed to the Government* themselves. It wouldbu
travel to
Petersbutgh—it would be sent toVe. ienna—it would he
dispatched to Berlin—it would be conveyed to Paris and
ai
it was therefore drawn up with greater care, and with
more formality than the letter of the Ist of August
ought therefore to have attracted! the attention of ;tII,
Noble Lord. But besides this, it explained the meaning