The Sun.
London, England, 1847-07-16 00:00:00

orwthg2/Allt

LONDON, FRIDAY. JULY 16, 1847.

So remarkable are the circumstances which are
recurring in foreign countries simultaneously with '
the dissolution of our English Parliament, that it
cannot be unprofitable to enumerate those which
demand the most consideration as directly affecting
ourselves. Formerly it was considered in these
islands that any thought about our continental rela-
tions was an injudicious exercise of popular curiosity,
and that those relations were best consigned to the
diplomatic skill of the Chief Secretary for the
Foreign Department and his subordinate colleagues,
while the population at large contented themselves
with the development of their mercantile and agri-
cultural resources. That old pig-beaded notion is
exploded. Neither the immaculate mechanism of the
heavens, as conceived in the Peripatetic PhilosOphy,
nor the beautiful hypothesis of the nebular system, as
imagined by the elder HERSCHEL, are more signally
refuted than this presumptuous adage. Neither the
Galilean telescope, ai applied to the scheme of Pr-
THAGOILAS, nor the monster speculum of Lord ROSSE,
as directed to the nebula in Orion, have more effec-
tually revealed the shallowness of a dogmatic and
theoretic astronomy than the experience of the last
quarter of a century of popular legislation has dis-
played the absurdity of the old drawing-
TOOM doctrine, which restricted the consi-
deration of foreign affairs to a particular class
of statesmen and diplomatists. It is not only, there-
fore, considered allowable, but most advisable and
even most esential, that the people of this free country
should sedulously contemplate, in order that they
may fully comprehend, the position and move-
ments of the Governments of the different nations
on the globe. For in England the conduct of
the State is perpetually regulated according
to the impulses afforded by Thiblic Opinion,
and in order that th-at external authority may in-
fluence in the right direction,
that the affairs
it is absolutely neces-
saryearth should be 9f the other kingdoms of the
mina. Without debateds and digested in. the popular
of the Ministerial e such preliminary examination
doingsbeaer.oss the wat r, the British
Administration could'
perilousessantly plunged into
dilemmas.
the most bewildering anti
Immediately anterior, therefore, dto the dissolution
et. in the of our Parliament, before we are involved
it were a
ex-
citement and ardour of a general 1-
. judicious precaution on the part of the
the franchise to cast a final and ecolZ7ree'hs°:,,ssi,o,fe
glance over the situation of fe •
a mrs, not only °i
•
a
Christendom, but of Heathendom into the bargain.
But, above all, one fact should he remembered, one e
paramount circumstance should be continually borne
in recollection, and that is—that the two great forces
are still at war in the cause of civilisation, the im-
pulsive and the repulsive, the progressive and the
retrogressive. And—a remetnbrance, this, pregnant
with meaning I—that an affection for freedom seems
dying away in the council chambers of the land of
liberty, while that sublime love of the natural rights
of the people is rising into life in the council chambers
of which has for centuries been in a particular
ma nera land of slavery and degradation.
We have recently referred to the denationalising,
and despotic tendencies of the policy latterly adopted
-
by the KING of the F
RENCH, and we have contrasted
with it the ennobling
and
d liberal policy recently
adventured upon
by the Sovereign PONTIFF.
As a fitting corollary to
thosei,nroemneibnioui‘st convic-
tion observations, we
now hear from Paris
of the
p
of the associates of the
PARMENTIER, CUMEEES, TESTE, and PELLinaißsteA. r— ;_.
we receive the di,,greceful details of their official
peculation—we receive accounts of the ineffectual
attempts made by M. TESTS to pistol himself to the