The Sun.
London, England, 1840-03-24 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDA Y, MARCH 24, 1840.

parishes, containing many scattered farm-houses,
is petformed by a man on foot, who walks daily not
less than twenty miles. We know another place,
i❑ Norfolk, where the people send ten miles for
their letters, and generally get them only once, or,
at most, twice a week. Doubtless there are many
sitbilar districts in every part of the kingdom, and
it is very probable that, by a little attention on the
part of the local members of the Post-office De-
partment, facilities for delivering and collecting
letters in such places might be devised, which
would be of great use to the inhabitants of those
places, if they added nothing to the revenue.

For several days past the Tory Press, and par-
ticularly the Times—which is still the leading
Journal in all that is rascally in journalism—have
been amusing and misleading their readers by foul
and libellous charges against the Duke of SUTHER-
L AND. They—or at least the Times—have as-
serted that he has improperly used his influence in
Sutherlandshire to cause Mr. HOWARD, the pre-
sent Member, to resign his seat, in order to place
in the representation some one more disposed to
vote with the Ministers. The men of Sutherland

have been appealed to not to submit to the degra-
dation, and the empire has been warned against
the disgrace of submitting to a Government which
required for its support the degradation of its
noblest friends. To give a complete answer to
and refutation of these Tory lies (we like plain
words), Mr. HOWARD has written the following
letter :

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.
Goldings, March 21.

Sir,—l feel it necessary to send an answer to some
observations which have appeared in your paper, relative
to my intended resignation of my seat in Parliament. Im-
mediately after the decease of the late lamented Duchess-
Countess of Sutherland, I intimated to many persons with
whom I am connected my determination to resign my seat
in the House of Commons, and among others, to the pre-
sent Duke of Sutherland. It was a spontaneous act of
my own, and totally uninfluenced by any human being.
I remain your obedient humble servant,
W. HOWARD.

In this case, the Times has grossly and falsely
calumniated the Duke of SUTHERLAND. By the

falsehood the Post told of Lord CANTILUPE,

that journal falsely calumniated the Ministers.
The assertions all the Tory journals lately made
concerning Mr. FOOT were of the same character.
A London solicitor changed his country agent,
and out of that the Tories trumped up a charge of
intimidation and corruption against the Ministers.
Such are the vile arts, worthy, we admit, of the
Tory cause, by which the Tory journals endeavour
to mislead the people and restore Tory statesman to
the possession of that power they so long and so
shamelessly abused.

Since the moment it became known here that the
Government had adopted hostile measures against
China, our patience has been unceasingly put to
the severest trial by the perusal of the nonsense
daily written about the inviolability of Chinese
laws, the simplicity of Chinese manners, the purity
of Chinese morals, the refinement of Chinese
tastes, the intellectuality of Chinese pursuits, and
the benevolence of Chinese Governments, by per-
sons knowing no more of China or the Chinese
than they do of the pedigree of the White Ele-
phant of Thig-ya-Men with its seven heath, each
head having seven tusks, each tusk seven tanks, each
tank growing seven lilies, each lily having seven
blossoms, each blossom seven petals, each petal
bearing seven palaces, and each palace containing
seven wives of the said Thig-ya-Men, King of the
Bhooddhist Paradise, and one of the Chinese divi-
nities. To talk in a Christian country about the
high morality of a Government and a people among
whom infanticide is not regarded as criminal—who
punish the slightest offences with strangulation—
who, in seasons of great scarcity, anticipate the
consequences of famine by " stopping the wind,"
as our Transatlantic neighbours would say,
of the surplus members of the commu-
nity and whose judicial administration is
mainly supported by the application of the
brand and the torture—appears to us to argue the
most consummate ignorance on the part of the
talker, or the most unbounded reliance upon
the ignorance of those to whom he addresses him-
self. Not that in the present case it matters one
jot whether the Chinese be habitually better or
worse than ourselves. We are not going to war with
them either on account of their morality, their reli-
gion, or their learning. Their criminal code, which
dooms a traitor to be cut into ten thousand pieces,
and a smoker of opium to be strangled, may indi-
cate to Tory scribes a higher grade of civilization
that we have vet reached ; but, as we said before,

this has nothing to do, one way or the other, with
the appearance of a British fleet in the waters of
China. Still we must confess that it is trying to

the temper to hear ignorant boobies, day after day,
talking about the pacific character of a people, at war
among themselves from the middle of the fifteenth
to the close of the seventeenth century ; and who,
during the seventeenth century alone, put upwards
of one hundred thousand persons to the most cruel
deaths for professing the Gospel of CHRIST. Had
the Tories the reins of power, to what different
language would we not be obliged to listen ! How
many :godly homilies should we not hear in that
case about the Chinese persecutions of the Chris-
tians How many impious applications would we
not then have repeated to us about GOD hardening
the hearts of nations to bring clown upon them the
chastisement of his just wrath I GOD forbid that
any Liberal writer should have recourse to such poi-
soned weapons against any enemy ; but it is proper
that we should let the country know the line of ar-
gument that the Ministerial Press would have
adopted had Sir ROBERT PEEL and his faction
had the conducting of the expedition against Canton.
But the logic of the Tories is on a par with
their ignotance and their impudence. Only mark
the precious specimen of ratiocinative humbug—
for it deserves no other name—put forth by some
purblind scribbler, in a leading article in the Times
of yesterday :
" Suppose that a certain number of merchants of France
or of the Netherlands had attempted some years ago,
before the laws were changed, to land a million worth of
silks, gloves, or lace on the shores of Kent, and that after
the goods had been seized and sold at the Customhouse
for account of the British Government, the Government
of France should have sent a fleet and army to get back
by force the value of the articles thus dealt with—what
would the people of England, what would the other States
of Europe, have said regarding such an atrocious outrage
on the rights of all political communities For our parts
we see no difference between that case, and the present one
of our warfare on behalf of the smuggler at Canton."
We will comet the supposition of this booby.

Suppose that instead of seizing directly this
million worth of silks, gloves, or lace on the
coast of Kent, we had seized the persons
of all foreigners in London, deprived them
of food, fire, and water, and given them the
alternative of either procuring tl.e simple delivery
of the contraband goods, then beyond the control of
our Custom-house authorities, or dying of starvation,
would we have provoked the just hostility of the
nations whose innocent subjects we had threatened
with death ? What would be said of the nation that
would submit to such an atrocious violation of the
law of nations as such a mode of enforcing Custom-
house regulations would exhibit ? Is the writer in
the Times such a dolt as to suppose that were we
to attempt to seize French contraband goods b 3
starving the American Ambassador, well aware
that he had nothing at all to do with the contraband
gloves, silks, or laces of French smugglers--we
could escape for twenty-fours a war with the
United States? And yet, this was what the Com-
missioner Liw actually did in the case of an
American merchant, Mr. KING, and several Bri-
tish merchants, whom he officially acquitted of all
participation in the opium traffic. No, no; such
puerilities as the Times indulges in will not do.
If they were suffered to pass current out of Bedlam,
we would have come back to that period when the
gabbling of geese sufficed to save the greatest nation
in the world

We direct attention to a letter, headed " Steam
Ships for Defence," which contains propos-his:Km
well worthy of public consideration, and appa_
rently calculated, if honestly acted on, to save a
mint of public money. One great advantage of
our insular position, and our extensive mercantile
navy is that, with due precautions and acting justly,
it may at all times be, and heretofore was, the basis
of national defence. Nor are we satisfied that the
plan followed in latter times, in imitation of those
countries which had not a large available mercantile
marine, like Spain and France, of constructing a
great number of large ships exclusively for the pur-
poses of war,
than
bmeoerne
a wise h
half
one. the T
which lie by rotting--causing,
ever, a
how-
continual expense to look after them,
time
ttheylate
Sira j
are ino HN
sN existence,cL Ahiaßs
traced the national debt of

the existence of men-of-war. But whatever lesson
the past may teach, as the growing importance
of steam will, as our Correspondent says,
make that the great means hereafter of con-
ducting and terminating a naval war, it
is incumben on the Government to look to that,
and found the plan of national defence on the exis-
tence of an immense number of steam-ships, such
as are suitable to the purposes of trade, and em-
ployed by the merchants. We trust our Corres-
pondent's suggestions will elicit further informa-
tion, by setting to work an hundred minds.
The propriety, however, let us observe, of the
public bearing any part of the expense of con-
structing merchant steam-vessels, unless some se-
curity were taken that those vessels were not sold
to foreigners, may be questioned. Perhaps, even, it
may be unnecessary to do more than suggest that
the construction of the steam-ships should be of a
particular form ; or, if it be necessary, to prescribe
the form without giving the merchants any remune-
ration for the constraint; that will not be, as our
Correspondent observes, a greater interference with
private property than is ordained in many other
cases for the public good. We are sensible that
there are many difficulties in the way, but, neverthe-
less, we regard our Correspondent's suggestion, in
principle, to be well worthy of public attention.

The clergy of the Established Church are oc-
cupied in signing requisitions for calling meetings,
and getting up petitions in favour of the Devil's
laws. They only act in their vocation. Their
cursed avarice, stealing endowments from the poor,
and appropriating to their own use the wealth
which our God-fearing ancestry set apart for in-
struction, has for upwards of a century weighed
heavily on the land. By giving both the religious and
the legal sanction to such worldly vices, the clergy
have nourished in the land a vast crop of plunder,
which stifles all the good seed they or others can sow.
They only act consistently with their whole cha-
racter and conduct in striving most zealously to
keep up the Corn-laws, which appear to enrich
them, and certainly starve the people.
When they are active on one side it is incum-
bent on their sectarian opponents to be active on the
other. The Dissenting ministers led the way
in promoting education, in meliorating our crimi-
nal code, in abolishing slavery, and now again they
are showing the State priesthood the path of
Christian duty. In addition to Dr. PYE SMITH,
whose letter we have already adverted to, our jour-
nal yesterday contained a notice of a meeting at
Arnesby, in Leicestershire, for the abolition of the
Corn-laws, at which two Baptist ministers took
an active part. From the Manchester Times, too,
we learn that a Mr. ROBERT BAXTER, who is
daily employed on behalf of a congregaticn of
Evangelical Presbyterians in visiting the habitations
of the poor, afflicted by the scenes of distress
which he continually beheld, and justly ascribing
much of it to the Corn-laws, has petitioned the
House of Commons for the abolition of them.
Other visitors of the poor, and Dissenting minis-
ters, will, we trust, follow these excellent ex-
amples, and make the whole land resound with
a demand to repeal the starvation laws. They
must be prepared, like all good men engaged in a
good cause, to encounter all the calumnies and
vituperation which the Tory press can heap on
them. The State priesthood are to be permitted to
exert themselves to fix the starvation laws on the
community ; and if Dissenting ministers take the
other side they are called political Dissenters, and
asked what imaginable connection is there between
Corn-law repeal and dissent ? Just as much as
there is between Corn-law preservation and Church
of Englandism. The real connection is not be-
tween Dissent and Corn-law repeal, but between this
and Christianity—between this and justice ; while
Church of Englandism being neither justice nor
Christianity, naturally allies itself with laws that
are iniquitous and unchristian. The Dissenters
did not advocate education, the melioration of our
criminal code, and the abolition of slavery, as Dis-
senters, but as just men and good Christians. In
the same noble character they are now ranged on
the side of Corn-law repeal, and they leave to the
unjust and unchristian State priesthood the odious
,ask and odious character of defending the Devil's
aws.

We see that the Protestant landowners of Ire.

land—the Lord LORTONS, and other widow- 1
expelling Christian men, who doom the Catholic
peasantry to lumpers, rags, and slavery—are getting
up meetings in Ireland to petition the Legislature
in favour of the Corn-laws. If ever there were a
useless, worthless, and, for the bulk of the Catholic
Irish, mischievous class of men, the Protestant
landowners of Ireland are such a class. The pre-
sent condition of the Irish is an irrefragable proof
that they are not benefited by the Corn-lav:s. At
the same time, the income of the Protestant parsons
of Ireland, as well as those of England, is•kept up
by the Corn-laws. They are a tax on the poor
peasantry for the rich landowners, and on the Ca-
tholics for the Protestants. It is a religious duty,
therefore, on the part of the Catholic priesthood, to
follow the example of the Dissenting ministers, and
aid the Corn-law repealers in putting an end
to this unchristian impost. Mr. O'CONNELL is a
declared repealer, and his warm desire to benefit
Canhdta curb the rampanth
hi his
powerp 000 fr t
hc
eo udnotmr yimnn
aent,
urch, should prompt
to give the cue to the Catholic priesthood, and in-
cite them and their flocks to petition against the
Protestant landlord's tax.
In conclusion, we call attention to two com-
munications, one from Manchester and the other
frotn Liverpool, one describing the great fall in the
the price of weaving within twenty years, and the
other the great distress which at present prevails
amongst the poor of Liverpool. Both these com-
munications were produced by Mr. THomAssoN's
excellent letter from Bolton, and both add proofs of
the terrible injustice of the Corn-laws. When the
price of weaving, an art which supplies the corn-
growers with clothing, has fallen to a fifth of what
it was, without any effort on the part of the Legis-
lature to sustain it, why should the payment for
agriculture, the art by which the weaver in turn is
fed, be bolstered up by the law ? The lesson which
the Mancliegter letter teaches, is the gross injustice
of a law to enhance the price of food to the weaver.
The second letter enforces the important truth that
wages do not rise with the price of corn. The
great bulk of the artisans and day-labourers of the
empire are paid daily or weekly wages, and the rate
of their remuneration has not risen five per cent.
since 1836, while the price of food has risen cent.
per cent. That peat distress pervades the nianu-
factoring districts is testified by both letters, and by
all the journals which come to us from that part of
Cie empire. We are afraid that it is not yet at its
height. The community has borne up against the
Corn-laws by successive reductions of taxation
during the last twelve years, each of which has set
capital free from providing for the wants of the
State, and has given a stimulus to one branch of
trade or the other. Those reductions have now
ceased. There is a talk of new taxes, which will
place additional burdens on our people, and make
it impossible to bear both the taxes of the State and
the tax of the landlord.

.•••••.-
From the Report
....
of the proceedings in the Con-
sistorial Court of Norwich on Tuesday last, inserted
elsewhere in our paper, Mr. CHILD'S Church-rate
suit seems to grow interesting as it proceeds. Gross
partiality in apportioning the amount of the " ne-
farious exaction" among the parishioners has
been the ordinary practice in the parish of nungay
St. Mary ; and those who have been the foremost
and the most active to lay the burden upon the
Dissenters, will be found, if we are not mistaken,
to have been the readiest to escape from it them-
selves. Mr. CHARLES CHILD'S appearance to
the citation in the Ecclesiastical Court appears to
have taken the leading persecutors of the locality by
surprise. They doubtless imagined that he would
act as another member of his family had done, and
refuse any recognition of the Ecclesiastical jurisdic-
tion. But in this they have been wofully mistaken,
and in order to prepare themselves for the conflict
into which they saw, when too late, that they must
enter,
what did these worthies do but actually
alter and interpolate the document on which the
rate was founded, and which had bgen sanctioned
and adopted by the Vestry at a regular meeting j
They dared not lodge the evidence of their iniquity
in the
Registry of the Consistotial Court, and
therefore they eominittgd a greater iniquity to
conceal it I But why should we wonder 0 this?
Church-rates rest on a foundation of injustice and
oppression. Fraud and robbery are part and par-
cel of the system. _ _____

The Paris Journal P4nday contain no domestic
news of interest, Nothing is talked ot, Whin spews

to be thought of, but the debate which is fixed for this
day in the Chamber of Deputies on the Secret Service
Bill. The stability of the THlr•.Rs-Cabinet is still
doubtful ; and it is our firm opinion that unless he
adopt a bold and decided policy—unless he abandon
altogether the Juste-Milieu system of Conservati_m—
unless he give up coquetting with the leaders of the
extreme Right and Left, and the partisans of the Court,
all at the same time—unless, in short, he throw him-
self boldly and confidently upon the nation's support of
his foreign and domestic policy, M. Thans will
soon be driven from office without carrying with
him in his retreat either the respect or the
gratitude of any party. The bolder and the
more decisive his policy, the more ground be have
for hope and the less for fear. He may, it is true, be at
first defeated ; he may be unable to retain the reins of
Government in the present disposition of the Chambers,
but he can render the formation of any other Cabinet
impossible, and by compelling the KING to have re-
course to a dissolution, he will be borne into office upon
the shoulders of the people. THIERS ►s mistaken it
suppose that he can ever cut a figure as a courtier.
Persons like him can only influence the conduct of
Kings through the medium of their fears. Louts
PHILIPPE fears and hates him, and only seeks to detach
him from the people, to despise and trample upon him.
At present M. TIMERS is paving the way for a
coalition between the ex-Cabinets of the 12th of
May and 15th of April, or in other words, the
SOULT and MOLE Administrations, and should such a
coalition take place his official death-warrant is signed.
All will depend upon his grand exposition in the Cham-
ber of Deputies this week of the policy of his Govern-
ment. If he be but true to himself, to the principle of
the Revolution of July, and to the French people, by
whose sympathies he reached his present elevation in
the State, he may laugh at the intrigues of the Court,
and even make its hostility administer to his own great-
ness and glory; but it, instead of this, he affect a tone
of great moderation, and assume a task of accomplish-
ing the fusion of parties, we shall regard his downfall
as certain and irretrievable.

The French Journals report that the Emperor of
MOROCCO has declared war against France. A semi-
Court organ has made the discovery that France is in-
debted to the good offices of Lord PALMERSTON for
the hostility of the Mauritanian Monarch ! It would
be offering an insult to the common sense of our readers
gravely to refute so vile and pitiful a calumny.
The Gazette de France has the following paragraph

" A report is current that the Emperor of• Morocco has
declared war against the French Government, and that he
takes part with Abd-el. Kader. We are assured that, in
consequence, orders have just been transmitted by the
Minister, of Marine to Admiral Rosamel, to send a force
to the coast of Africa."—Le Conslitutionnel.

The Eclaireur de Toulon, of March 18, has the follow-
ing paragraph :
" All the ships of the line now in the roads are com-
pleting their repairs, in order to be ready to put to sea at
the s.rst order. This squadron, as has been already stated,
will very soon sail to cruise on the coast of Africa, from
Algiers to Morocco, during the whole time that the expe-
dition against Abd-el-Kader shall last.
" It is nearly certain that the Emir receives ammunition
and men from the dominions of Morocco, notwithstanding
the vigilance which we exercise on the coasts; but all
these supplies come to him by land, and we have no power
to binder this incessant contraband trade. Our Consuls
receive only evasive answers to all the remonstrance! they
make on this subject."—Le Commerce.

The Moniteur Parisien of Sunday Evening publishes
the following telegraphic despatch from the Spanish
capital. It it not a little surprising that the two facts
of any moment which it announces—namely, the raising
of the siege, and the election of ISTURIZ to the Pre-
sidency, were stated in The Sun of yesterday :

" THE FRENCH AMBASSADOR TO THE MINISTER OF FOREIGN

AFFAIRS.

" Madrid, March 18.

" The Congress of the Deputies is at length consti-
tuted. Senor Isturiz has been named President by a
large majority. The other members of the standing Com-
mittee are of the same party. Madrid is tranquil. The
news from the provinces is quite satisfactory. The state
of siege has just been raised."
The Phare des Pyrennees of the 19th inst. states, that
in the reconnaissance made on the 12th in the direction of
Castellote, General Espartero had traversed during five
hours a mountain road of the most difficult character. 0•
reaching within a short distance of the place, he found
the Carlists strongly posted in a narrow gorge, where he
did not think it prudent to attack them, and retreated in
the evening on Mas de las Matas. This road not being
found practicable by the artillery, the General-in Chief
resolved on proceeding to Castellote by Ejulva and La
Meta, in which last village ho intended establishing his
head-quarters on the 16th.
The Memorial des Pyrennees states that the Carlist force
opposed to General Espartero, near Castellote, consisted
of eight battalions, and that two officers of his escort bad
been wounded in the reconnaissance.

PENITENTIARY, MILLBANK.—The Report of the
Superintending Committee of the General Penitentiary
at Milibank has just been published, and represents the
state of the prison as very favourable. The number of
prisoners in the Penitentiary at present is 501, who are
thus classed :—males 270, females 101 ; for transpor-
tation 15, and soldiers 115. The total number of sol-
diers received in 1839, under sentences of Court-
martial, was 697. The daily average number of pri-
soners employed at different trades is about 3:36, the
majority of whom are tailors, amounting to no less than
263. These people work six hours a day, and the
net profit for the year, after deducting 6071. 4s. Bd,
for salaries to manufacturer, clerk, and charges for
coals, stationery, &c., is 1,4721. 3s. I I d., the sub-
sistence money received for soldiers is 1,0911. 18s. 3d.,
and the total net expense for the whole establishment
for the year amounts to 13,394/. ls.

WAIL wax CHINA.—We have received a letter
under this head from a Correspondent, who designates
himself " an English Whig," and also gives his name;
but we cannot subscribe to his doctrine, or even believe
that he is a Whig. The Whigs, in general, are a
shrewd people, and their principles are favourable to
liberty and the independence of the electoral con-
stituency ; yet "an English Whig" contends that the
Duke of Newcastle was justified in the remark, that
he had " a right to do as he liked with his own," that
is, that he was justified in turning out every tenant
who would not vote against his conscience ; and he
also contends that the Chinese are justified in making
the English submit to their laws, however
cruel, and, consequently, that an English sailor
who had never seen the " Killed Chinaman,"
ought to have been given up to be banged for an offence
about which he knew nothing ! His words are—" They
also had a right to demand the person of the sailor who
killed the Chinaman, for when in a foreign country we
must submit to the laws of that country, though they
may. not be in accordance with our ideas of strict jus-
tice.' We only wish that this " English Whig" and
some of those ignorant philanthropists who take the
part of the child-murdering Chinese, were submitted
for a week to the tender mercies of a people who chop
off the hands of a smuggler for the first offence, chop off
bis feet for the second, and hang him by the neck till he
is dead for the third. They would then know some-
thing about these immoral scoffers at Christianity.