The Sun.
London, England, 1840-04-16 00:00:00

Court under the feet of his elephants, instead of
half-drowning him in a morass, and half-starving
him with hunger, as he did Colonel BENSON.

The war with China is somewhat like a bladder

in the hands of the Tories. They distend and
compress it at pleasure, as suits the interests of
faction. They inflated it to the utmost when it
was expected that their faction would return to
office ; but, being defeated, they again denounce it
as the shrivelled object of national scorn and
at first sought to represent. it.
obloquy which they
In a leading article in the Morning Herald, our
venerable Contemporary, reputed of the gentler
sex, asserts positively that " the opium-war [with
China] is still more cowardly, immoral, and in-
famous, than the buccaneering war in Spain ;"
and, in the next sentence, that it "is a war of
buccaneers, who assert, by force of arms, the pri-
vilege of poisoning the subjects of the Chinese
EMPEROR, because a contraband traffic in poison
is more lucrative than any pursuit of legitimate
commerce This is not saying much in favour
of the boasted moral influence of the Church
and State connection. That such pious Prelates
as the Archbishop of CANTERBURY, and the
Bishops of LONDON and EXETER, should sit
silently in the House of Lords, countenancing by
their silence the poisoning of the Chinese, while
the bare mention of withholding a single

tithe-pig from the ecclesiastical larder calls
forth the nightly flow of their ghostly elo-
quence, is a circumstance ill-calculated to
uphold the State pretensions of the Establi,hed
priesthood. But the Herald, like Mr. PALMER,
wilfully mistakes the cause of quarrel altogether;
and we most, therefore, counteract, by a repetition
of the fact, such an indirect attack upon the mora-
lity of the Spiritual Peers. As to the Spanish
illustration, ii is worthy of the logical acumen of
Oid Granny. The Tories denounced the Auxi-
liary Legion as buccaneers because England did
not declare herself either a principal or auxiliary
in the war against Don CA R LOS ; and the Herald
discovers that we are likewise buccaneers and
cowards, because England openly enters the field,
single-handed, against the powerful Empire of
China—because a nation, with a population of
about thirty millions of inhabitants, makes war
upon one fifteen thousand miles distant, having a
population of 360 millions of subjects ! why,
Sir ROBERT PEEL and Sir JAMES GRAHAM
professed themselves terrified at the bare idea of so
gigantic a contest as a war with China. So far
from deeming the commencement of hostilities as
an indication of cowardice, they seemed is fancy
that so desperate an undertaking could only have
been resolved upon after an extra dose of the
smuggled opium, or some still more dare-devil in-
spiring stimulant. But we have before shown that
the humbug of the Tories upon this question is
beneath consideration, save so far as may be ne-
cessary to prevent the people from being made their
dupes, under the plausible pretexts of morality and
When the Tories banish wine, and
brandy, and liquors front their tables—when they
attempt to abolish the disgusting nuisance of cigar-
smoking—when they put down wine-bibbing and
gambling in clubs and west-end hells, we will
credit their professed abhorrence of opium smok-
ing—but not till then.

How the House of Commons is disposed towards
the bulk of the people, is the great fact which they
are closely watching, and the proceedings on Tues-
day will make a deeper impression on them than
all the lengthened debates on the No-Confidence
motion, on the Corn-laws, and on the
,war with
China. The case of NATHANIEL CAVE, a
labourer, unjustly committed to prison, and denied
all redress ; and the case of Messrs. LOVETT and
COLLINS were discussed by the House, and have
since, as our extracts show, been worked into the
hearts and minds of the people by the discussions

of our Contemporaries.
The case of CAVE has been before-mentioned,
and is extremely plain. On a mere and unfounded
report •that he had cut down some trees, the Magis-
trate, without the least examination, sent him to
prison, where he remained eight days on bread and
water. The instant his case was inquired into he
was released ; but for being so unjustly deprived
of his liberty, and so barbarously treated, that, had
he been a black, all the kingdom would have rung
with the inhumanity of the Magistrate, he could
obtain no redress. It was expressly stated,
by Mr. MAULE, that the fault was in the law not
in the Magistrate. By law then the Magistrates
may, without evidence, commit the poor to gaol,
and keep them on felons' allowance, and what
remedy for this vast grievance did the Representa-
tives of the people propose ? None whatever.
Nobody even proposed to amend the barbarous
law. Even the motion for a Committee to inquire
into the grievance was objected to, and withdrawn
on the promise of Mr. MAULE to ask the Magis-
trate something about the subject, which as Under
Secretary of State he ought to have done without
any motion having been made in the House.
Keenly alive, as the people now are, from New-
port to Glasgow, from Lancaster to Brighton, to
the proceedings both of the Executive and the Le-
gislature, they will observe that the Secretary of
State was prompt to call on Mr. FROST, while yet
an unsuspected man, to explain some expressions
he had used, and they will ask why Mr.
MOUNTAIN was not called on to explain his per-
haps 'legal, but very barbarous, conduct to NA.
TUANIEL CAVE ? They will remember the
promptness of the House to attend to the exagge-
rated and factious complaints of the Orange land-
lords about a few Irishmen, who would not be led
by them, voting for Representatives ; and the eager-
ness with which one party rushed to bring forward
a new law, and the other party sanctioned it, till it
was discovered that it might have a most sinister
political effect ; and remembering the eagerness of
the House to strike down by legislation the slight-
est evil encountered by the gentry, the people will
naturally ask why no-effort was made, no notice
given of a Bill to amend the law which allows them
to he imprisoned at the discretion of their superiors
and sometimes their enemies ? The bulk of the
people closely watch the proceedings of legislature,
and the contrast they will observe between its
promptness when they are to be put down, and its
tardiness or insensibility when they seek redress,
will drive into them a conviction that they have
nothing to lose but everything to hope from
the destruction of the Legislature and the Govern-
ment.

If this were an isolated case we might think less
-of it, but unfortunately the provincial papers teem
with cases which the people call Magisterial op-
pression, while they are without a hope of obtain-
ing redress. Recentiv, at Devizes, for example, a
" very good, steady lad," so described by his mas-
ter, who had the misfortune to suppose that a bargain
for weekly wages implied, as many lawyers have
I held and as reason holds, a weekly hiring,
and who left his master's service after giving him
more than a week's notice, was sentenced to six
weeks' imprisonment and hard labour in the House
of Correction for so leaving. Three weeks of the
felon punishment were begged off by his master, the
other three he will live with felons, and on felon
fare, for having in
his struggle to better himself
misinterpreted a contract. At the same place also,