The Sun.
London, England, 1841-10-21 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON,TH

trents.ih- all Lranei, crfectire
the array or nave, Lieiegh more,especially in die latter.
But the seeds of that disgust for the service to which
they owed, under all circumstances, their loyal. elle!
glance, were implanted among a large proportiOn of our
sailors years before the " black and white's. reformer
began his evil croakings.
The Herald, therefore, holds Mr. HOME up to
public obloquy at this time, .because the seamen
are not better paid, and because, in consequence
of not being well paid, they desert their
country, and strengthen the United States.
Now it is a fact that Mr. HUME has
long been, and is, a steady and consistent oppo-
nent of the practice of impressment; that he fre-
quently spoke on .111e-iubjact in Parliament ;
,
that he once brought it before the House of
Commons by a specific motion ; and that, on all
those occasions, so fay from -wishing to curtail the
pay of the .seamen, he has uniformly declared
that they were not sufficiently well rewarded,
and that, to secure their voluntary services, it is
only necessary to increase their pay. For ex-
ample, when he moved a resolution, in 1824,
pledging the House to inquire into the subject of
manning the navy in the following. Session, after
adverting to the desertion of: seamen to the
United States, he made the following observa-
tions, which are to be found in the eleventh
volume of " Hansard's Parliamentary Debates,"
pp. 1,175-1,777 :
Why, he wanted to know, did this aversion exist
among the seamen, when there was no aversion among
other 'classes ? Why, he wanted to know, when we got
plenty or Admirals, plenty of Captains, and plenty of
Mldskipmen, why was it that we could not get plenty. of
seamen ? Why was it that-there were no men to be got
fur the navy, when there were plenty of men t ) be'got
for any other situation ? One reason was that they
were not sufficiently paid. The labourer was worthy
of his hire ; and why should not the seamen be paid
like other men ?
1-Ie might here mention the small amount of the sea-
man's pay on board - a king's ship. In the time of
William the Third the pay- of the seaman was 245. per
month. It was at present not more than 325. How
could they be satisfied with sivh pay, when they found
that men in the -merchant service obtained three, five,
seven, sometimes eleven, guineas per month ? This
was in war time. Let the Illuse of Commons look to
the condition of the American navy. There was no im-
pressment. America, the only nation which could
attempt to rival us on the sea, had no impressment of
sailors ; and if they could man their navy effi-
ciently without that practice, why might not we ?
It' we should hereafter meet America in hostility on
the seas we should have to contend on very unequal
terms. It would be a contest of freemen against slaves,
for under the present system our seamen were not free-
men—they were as completely slaves as any galley-slaves
that were ever chained to the oar, and were far worse
than the slaves in the West Indies. America purchased
the voluntary service of her seamen, and why should not
England do the same ? Why should America—a poor
and an infant State, as compared with England--pay her
seamen double and treble the wages that we pay ours? In
America, too, the sailors were regularly paid every two
months, while in our navy the poor seamen, after return-
ing from some distant voyage, were sent to India, or
some other remote station for five or six years, during
which time they did not receive a single shilling ; and
on their return were paid what was due to them, in a
mass, to be thrown away, as, under such circumstances,
might naturally be expected. All this might be easily
and completely remedied.
[The latter complaint has, thanks to Mr. Hume, been
since remedied, and English seamen are now paid part of
their wages, at short intervals, abroad and at home].

We could quote other passages from the Hon.
Member's speeches to the same effect, but this
will suffice to inform the ignorant and unjust
writer in the Herald, and inform the public,
that Mr. HUME, while he steadily endeavoured
to pare down wanton and unnecessary expen-
diture, was as steadfastly the advocate of doing
justice to the seamen, and of paying them
largely and liberally.
Ignorance and prejudice combined have in-
duced the Herald to make this wanton attack
on one of the most upright and useful public
men the country ever possessed.
Having thus exposed the unjustness of the
Herald's remarks on. Mr. HUME, we will go on
to express our satisfaction at the decided part
it yesterday took in exposing and condemning
the disgraceful man-stealing which is still sanc-
tioned in England though repudiated in Africa.
It is with particular satisfaction that we see the
Herald take this line, just at the moment when
its party are probably meditating, to be .pre-
pared for the American war, the revival of im-
pressment.

The person who stepped forward to oppose Mr.
HUME'S motion in 1824, was Sir G. COCKBURN,
and Sir G. COCKBURN is now the chief naval
Lord of the Admiralty. On all occasions the
Tories, whether in office or out of office, have
been the active advocates of white-man stealing;
the Whigs have been in office, from official ne-
cessity, the luckless apologists of a system which
their principles led them to condemn. How
can Sir G. COCKBURN and the. Tories now brand
their former conduct and opinions by abolishing
impressment ? And yet if they do not, their
party journal, the Herald, shows that they will run
imminent risk in making war against the United
States; so imminent, indeed, that we would comn...
sel them to patch up all differences with that Go-.
vernment, at any sacrifice, rather than again
have recourse to impressment.
The Herald seems to think that the little lore.
it has put together on the subject, has been pre-
sented to its Tory patrons for the first time.
Nearly twenty years, ago the two import-.
ant facts of the British seamen having,
in former times, deserted in shoals to
Holland at the commencement of any war,
and the better asylum which the United
States now offers them, was distinctly brought
under the notice of the Tory Admiralty in the
Edinburgh Review. Upwards of half a century
ago, somewhere about 1788, the former fact was
pressed on the attention of the public by a Lieu-
tenant TRITSCOTT (that, we think, was the gentle-
man's name), and on the attention of the House
of Commons by Mr. LUTTRELL. Over and over
again the costly and ruinous consequences to the
country of our brutal system of man-stealing
have been brought before the Admiralty and
Parliament, and both bodies have turned a deaf
ell- to the voice of justice and expediency. It
was only a few thousands of the canaille who
were concerned ; neither pheasants nor partridges
were affected by impressment; and therefore
your Sir G. COCK-EURNS, backed by the ready
votes of the Tory landowners, disregarded all
the appeals that were made by Mr. HUME and
ethers, and refused even to inquire into the ex-
pediency of abolishing impressment. Unfortu-
nately the country suffers for tolerating their
injustice; and when we are threatened with •
a war, .it is discovered that our sea-
men prefer service abroad to defending their
country. We echo the Herald's demand forjus.
tice to them. But the first step towards justice
is to denounce 'the Tory policy, and the Tory '
practices, and. declare that impressment, as the
African slave'-trade has been declared, is a piracy, ,
and those who practise it are felons. Will Sir
G. COCKBURN so brand himself and his asso-
ciates? We believe not ; and, therefore, the
country will be doomed to suffer for some time
longer on account of the errors and crimes of the
Tories.

The Paris JournaLs of yesterday have all
reached us. They bring no fewer than eight
telegraphic despatches, with news from Spain,
which will be found in another part of The Sun.
We gather from them and from sundry private
letters, received from. Pampeluna, Tolosa, and
San Sebastian, that the insurrection in favour o
the claims of CHRISTINA MtrNoz has failed f
and that although in isolated points some
resistance to the proper authorities may
coutinee for a time, there is little doubt
but that in a short time it will be wholly sus-
pressed. The people everywhere ask what has
y
CtratsTlNA MuNOz dare for the Basques that
they
should . shed their blood in her quarrels ?
She Promises them the restoration of their fueros,
but they ver
her they well -remember that it was by
•••ey were first declared to be . abo-
lished.
They understand perfectly that she
only seeks to make tools. of them to gratify
her own .
they avarice an
'find d ambition,
that upon bition, and now
,
thather success
depends the
placing a son of King Louts -Pin-
-1./PPI3 uponilift -Throne of Spain, they are fast
lOsing any relish `OA they
,might have had for
the excitement, kJ Another year, of guerilla war-
fare. - - ' '- ..
'

The taking of the first portion of the new French