The Sun.
London, England, 1849-11-26 00:00:00

NOVEMBER 26, 1819

PENINSULAR MAILS.

SOUTHAMPTON, SUNDAY, Nov, 23.—The Penin-
sular and Oriental Stearn Navigation Company's
ship Jupiter, Captain P. Meehan, arrived here at one
rem. this day, with the usual Spanish and Portuguese
mails, in charge of Lieutenant Newenham, RN.
Admiralty agent.
She brings only a few passengers. Her dates are
—Gibraltar, November 16 ; Cadiz, November 17 ;
Lisbon, November 19; off Oporto, November 20;
Vigo, November 21. 'The freight list comprises 622
half chests of oranges, 10 boxes of Tangerine oranges,
11 cases of saffron, 8 kegs of grapes, 32 barrels of
dates, 47 cases of eggs, 49 sacks of chestnuts, 9
packages of specie, and 40 packages of sundries.
Although the Jupiter arrived here and was along-
side the wharf at one o'clock, yet we understand her
mails will be detained until the midnight train, and
cannot therefore be deposited in the General Post-
office till Monday morning. Tte effect of this deten•
tion will be to deprive the provincial and northern
towns of their Peninsular packet letters till Monday
night, at which time they will be delivered, thus
preventing the possibility of replies being prepared in
the north for the Montrose to leave Southampton
with the outward mails on Tuesday. Had the Jupiter
bags been forwarded to the metropolis by a special
train, there would have been ample time for the letters
to be sorted and dispatched by the London night.
trains for delivery throughout England on Monday
morning, as in the case of the India mail by the
Ripon, which vessel arrived this morning.
By this steamer we have received letters from Lis-
bon of the 19th instant.
Some anxiety had existed in respect to the Queen's
state of health. It appears that the royal family bad
hinetreniudeadjetsotyhowna7 with their presence a concert at the
Philharmonic Society on the evening of the 17th, but
during the afternoon, obliged to
notify her inability to attend from indisposition ;
which being communicated to the different members
of the society, had caused more alarm than appears
to have been warranted by the slightness of the ill-
ness, from which her Majesty was reported convales-
cent when the packet left the Tagus, and the Diario
do Govern° of the 19th declares her to be in her usual
state of health.
We learn that this mail brings the Viscount of
Moncorvo's note in reply to Lord Palmerston upon
the Macao affair; it was asserted in Lisbon, in well-
informed quarters, that this correspondence had tended
to aggravate the indifferent terms upon which Lord
Palmerston and the Portuguese Ambassador- at this
Court were said to have been ; that the latter had,
after appealing to Lord John Russell, assured his
Government the affair was likely to be more favour-
ably considered by the British Cabinet than indicated
in Lord Palmerston's first dispatch. The Portuguese
appear very sensitive upon the point, and complain
that his Lordship treats them with illiberality and
chicane in his endeavour to establish the English Go-
vernment's jurisdiction over its own subjects in Ma•
cao, by virtue of the treaty of peace with China,
when they contend no such pretension had existed
before that treaty, and that it ought not now, in the
absence of express stipulation, to be held to alter a
fact previously existing and tacitly recognized for
centuries.

As far as was known in Lisbon at the time of closing
be mail, the municpal elections throughout Portugal
bad be en conducted peaceably, and in general the
members chosen were moderate Chartists favourable
to the Government; in a few places the Septembrist
influence has always prevailed, in others the
Royalist, and it was in these that those Oppositionists
had contested and carried the elections, whilst in other
municipalities they abandoned the ballot and revived
the usual questions of falsified registrations, undue
official interference, &c. Our correspondent writes,
" With reference to the election fur the capital, I can
state from personal inspection at a great number of
the parishes that the ballot appeared to be conducted
in an orderly and legal manner. I, however, inva-
riably found that the voters did not amount to one.
fourth of the names called over from the register; in
a parish in the centre of Lisbon, there were only 80
votes out of SOO, and the entire number of votes
tendered in 25 out of the 38 electoral assemblies was
only 3,986 ; the returns from the other 13 have not
yet been made, but personal observation convinces
me they will only confirm still more the oft-asserted
indifference of the people to the most important of
constitutional forms. It is true that the election was
deprived of the excitement of a contest, and thus it
was that with a splendid clear sunshiny day, such as
would be prized in England in the middle of summer,
the streets of Lisbon presented yesterday no bustle
beyond that usual on a holiday, and in fact, the
greater part of those tempted abroad were more in•
terested in the public gardens and exposition of
national manufactures, which has made the great
room at the arsenal a fashionable lounge."
Bills upon London continued to be little sought for
on the Lisbon exchange, and the rate for three
months' paper comes quoted at 541; Paris, 520;
Hamburgh, 50; Amsterdam, 43i- ; Portuguese Five
per Cents. 54} to 55 ; Four per Cents., 44 to 46 ;
Bank of Portugal shares, 60 to 50 milreis discount
per share ; Bank of Oporto shares, 30 milreis premium
per share. As usual, the aboxe :etas far stocks 'end
shares are given in Lisbon Bank notes, which were at
a discount of 19i per cent.
The following ships of war were at anchor in the
Tagus :—Her Majesty's steam-frigate La Hogue,
Captain M‘Dougal, under quarantine until the 20th ;
her Majesty's steam-corvette Encounter, Captain
Gordon; and the Russian frigate Pallas.
The Portuguese Government expected to arrange
with the impracticable Lisbon Board of Health some
reduction of the quarantine after the arrival of the
mails sent from Southampton on the 17th inst..
The following is an extract from the letter of a
Lisbon correspondent, respecting the commencement
made towards a reform of the Portuguese Financial
Administration :
"Upon a report of M. Avila, a decree signed by
all the Ministers bas been issued, to reform the or-
ganization of the finance department, by virtue of an
authorization granted during the last session of the
Cortes.
"It is impossible to give in your columns more
than the general features of the 61 articles of the de-
cree, and these I shall divide into two parts, with my
reasons fur approving the one and condemning the
other, that your readers may form their own opinion
of this step towards the financial reorganization of
the country.
"By this measure the Fieance•office is divided into
general departments, viz., for direct contributions,
Customhouse and indirect contributions, trea-
sury, and accounts ; each of these is to have a
general director, and the four directors will form a
consultative tribunal whenever required by the Fi-
nance Minister; but otherwise each wilibe sufficiently
occupied in the direction of his own department, and
its ramifications throughout the country.
"The four counsellors who sat in the pomp and
state of a tribunal of the Treasury, apparently for the
purpose of wasting the time and patience of claimants
and others having public accounts to settle, are now
dispensed with, and the four general directors left un-
shackled to decide end dispatch the business of their
respective departments ; and they will only recur to
the Minister upon extraordinary occasions, whilst
parties aggrieved by their acts will have a right of
eppeal to him and to the Council of State. All this
is ati improvement, as also the steps taken to simplify
ns of the fiscal departments in the
wherepro-
vthireicoep.,era
public will new be in direct contact
tb
with delegates of the ....-fasury, who in their turn give
direction in Lisbon,
direct accounts to the genes
without the interference of the adm;:.istrative autho-
rities.

"I believe that an active, intelligent, and persOve:- I
lag minister of finance like M. Avila will make these
reforms work well, save the time of the public, and
give the minister a more immediate insight into and
check upon the public moneys throughout the country.
It is in these general features of this new organi-
zation of the financial system that I find much to ap-
prove, because the simplification of the business is
attained with better checks upon peculations, and a
declared reduction of the number of employes ; but I
my objection is, that this reduction is left to the
operation of time, and meanwhile those found to be
unnecessary are allowed to retain their snug berths
and perpetuate a system of general inattention to duties
there are confessedly too many hands to perform.
The public expenses of Portugal require great reduc-
tion, and this opportunity should have been availed of,
the more so that it would have come with good grace
on this occasion, as it would have included four
councillors of the Treasury who have been Ministers
of State, and are otherwise well provided for ;
instead of this, they are added to the five coun-
cillors hitherto forming the tribunal of accounts,
which after being ,increased to seven, still leave two
without anything to do ; it were much better to pay
these and other functionaries the bread of idleness
than to keep their offices open in the budget of the
finance department, and I am sorry to see M. Avila
adopt this principle in his reforms, as it promh_es no
good for the country, which is eaten up with unne-
cessary employis."
Our accounts from Gibraltar and Tangier by this
packet both confirm the report previously received of
an amicable settlement of the dispute between France
and Morocco. Accordingly the French Consul-
General, M. de Chasteau, with the whole of the per-
, sons under his protection who had left the Moorish
territory! embarked on board the steam-frigate Pomone,
and returned to Tangier on the Bth instant. M.
Martino, the Neapolitan Consul-General, also re-
turned to Tangier, and the representatives of both
Governments were successively saluted on their
landing. The French flag was likewise saluted on its
being hoisted over the residence of the French
Chargé d'Affaires. N. de Chasteau su..,sequently
interceded with the Emperor in favour of one of the
judges who had directed all gcod Mussulmens to fall
upon and ill-treat the French subjects, and likewise
in favour of the Moors who had executed his orders.

At Gibraltar the exchange on London had slightly
declined; the ]a=t quotations for bills oa London, at
90 days' date, were 49:1 to 49i; on Paris 51. 34c.;
Marseilles, sf. 37c. ; Genoa, sf. 47c. At eight days'
sight on Madrid, Cadiz, and Seville, par ; Malaga,
premium ; Alicante, discount; Valencia and Bar-
celona, h discount; paper scarce on the four latter
cities; Spanish pillared dollars, 4 per cent. premium.
—Tunes.