The Sun.
London, England, 1823-01-16 00:00:00

[MORN, NG It ERA I.D.]

Independently of what is called the territorial
balance of power in Europe, the interests of this
country are deeply implicated in the, eventual
safety of Coostitutional Spain ; and, moreover,
the hostility of the continental Powers, however
unjust the attack, is quite as natural as the sup-
port of, the British Government. There is no
hatred so genuine as that which springs from
fear, and snch is, the hatred of, the enemies,
of Spain. Nothing can he marts true than the
opinion cow,esed by the, American President,
that Ow present struggle on the Continent is, a
struggle for Sovereignty between the people ana

those who are not the people. What, under
those circumstances, can be more alarming, and
therefore more odious to Governments that do en-
joy, or that xv‘iuld enjoy,absolute power, than the
permanent establishment of a great conquest gained
by the people? But if their hostility is natural, the
support which should, and, we have no doubt, has
been given by the Government of this country, is
equally gratuitous. To preach up the English
to a crusade against tyranny, wherever the
standard of freedom is raised, would be quixotic
declamation, and a disregard of the rights of
other Governments, over their respective commu-
nities. But how does England stand with re-
spect•to Spain in her reformed condition ? There'
is not a shadow of the cause of alarm to other
Powers directed against her.

[MORNING POST.
We received last night, by Express, French
Paperi to the 14th instant. The asserted viola-
tion of the French territory by a detachment of
Spanish Constitutionalists,' for the purpose of
surprisina and slaughtering some Royalist Re-
fugees, has given birth to much controversy
amongst the different parties. By the Conslitu-
timid the fact is altogether denied. The
Quotidierine, on the contrary, believes it in its
fullest extent, and complacently expatiating on
the horrors alleged to have been committed, ex-
ults in the idea that they will defeat the pa-
cific intentions of the Ministers, and must ren-
der war inevitable. " France," it says, 44 caw-
not avoid her destiny, that honourable destiny,
to which it would seem she had only to .re-
sign herself to occupy .the first rank among
the nations. Vainly had we expected. that
the Spanish 'Revolution would have hastened
to justify by its moderation , the 'prudence of
our Diplomacy. It has followed its cruel and
ine):orable instinct in violating our territory, to
strike its victims : it has thus taken upon itself
to undieeiVe those Statesmen who hid hoped to
acquire over it that influence which can only I
operate upon reason, and it has replied to our
ise remonstrances by a double outrage against
humanity and the laws of nations."—The Minis-
ters, however, do not seem to take the same view
of the subject, for the Journal des DAats, dis-
poses of the question of the violation of territory
in the following manner : '
" rumours which have been in circulation respecting
the entrance of the Spanish troops on a part.of the French ter-
ritoryoieern to 'he explained away by the following article in
the Memorial Bearnais.—(See Foreign Intelligence in another
column of Tut Sus.)
We see no difficulty in explaining the conduct
of the Mayor's Adjunct. It shows the spirit with
which, not the people only, but even the higher;
classes are animated in France on the Spanish
question, and instead of exciting the surprise
of the . French Government, ought to be receiv-
ed as a salutary lesson, and a prognostic of
what might lie expected in a much more exterisive
and dangerous degree, if war were declared
against Spain. That Such an unjust and im-
politic course will be adopted, is•once more be-
come problematical. The Minister for Foreign
Affairs, Viscount de Chateauhriand, gave a
grand . Diplomatic dinner on Sunday last, to
which the Spanish and Portuguese Ambassadors
were invited ; an „invitation which they of
course accepted. This was considered the more
remarkablo and important, as they had been
excluded from the dinner given by the Russian
Ambassador a day or two before. Many con-
jectures, were afloat on the subject, and the
most : prevalent was, that it was a kind of
,public, pledge for the continuance of peace
between the two countries, given in conse-
quence of , the arrival of
.satisfactory intelligence
from Madrid. This is in some measure corrobo-
rated by a statement in the Etoile. and Qtroti-
dienne that the Ministers had received by an ex-
traordinary courier the answer of the Spanish
Government to the notes of Francs and the
Allies, dated the 6th inst..

PROVINCIAL JOURNALS.

(From the Miry Grr:ette,' The. 15.)

It is extremely amusing to a bystander who "cares not a doit
for either party to observe the consternation and commotion
which Cohbett his excited amongst the liThigs ; angry, -disap-
pointed, mad, they rave and rage and vent their finite in ana-
thema and maledietion upon the itinerant freeholder and his
thievish project ; and never reflect that they sire acaeseries to
their aim Aherne, arid that Cobbett, all hateful as he is, has
but, with
" even-handed justice,
Return'd the ingredients of the poison'd.chalice
To their own lips."
What man possessed of three grains of common sense but
must have foreseen the consequences resulting from the fine of
conduct the Whigs have pursued from the hour that the ter-
mination of the regeeci restrictions left his present Majesty at
liberty to choose his Ministers , when his knowledge of man,.
kind, and long habits of intimacy with the Whigs, led him to
look elsewhere for wise and honest servants and counsellors ;
from that moment have the Whigs been courting disgrace to
themselves and ruin to.their country. Before. that period, the
Whigs, genteelly speaking, kept themselves within something
like decent bounds, for till they had some point to rest their
hopes on ; but when they saw that the pritice whom they had
marked for their own, whom they had bepraised till flauerY
grew sick of itself, whom they had lauded for virtue till It was
vice to listen, who they had extolled for wisdom to the extreme
of folly ; when they found him too virtuous to delegate
his imperial duties to the profligate associates of unbridled
youth—too wise to sutra his great office to be tainted by faction
—and far too prudent to drive front the helm of the state the
experienced servants of his great' and good father, to make
merit for those known only as the boon companions of' his own
ltotirs of tightness, or as the Prince's friends, because they were
the King'a enemies; than mark the difference of tone in these
place-seeking friends of the people t all their idolatry wasted,
all their high-built hopes of office faded into thin air,. disap-
pointed in their eipectations of cajoling their Severeign, they
Make unto theinselVes a golden calf, and create a nerV
Nip, the Sovereign Peeple7the Majesty of Mob—and this idol
•
they, have incessantly flattered and gulled and worthipped, until
the
using tiny have malls is too powerful for them to manage,
and they receive from the work of their own hands, the re-
ward of their own deeds, disgraee and deiht.

kis urged on all hands, and repeated to the,Yery echo that
the Petition of the County of Norfolk (for it 19flica cob-
bett's Petition) is so notoriously disgraceful and dishonest

that such principles in private life :would shut a man from
the pale of society. Granted. Yet this petition, so generally
execrated, does but ask the immediate consummation of that
which the Whigs have been long preparing the way for, Give
us the property of the Clergy," says the petition : Mr. Hume
has been saying something very like this for some time past.--
Mr. Brougham was not far from the mark at Durham a few
months ago. The Edinburgh Review, too, of this quarter, lends
Cobbett's plan a lift. Mr. Macdonald, at the Fox and Reform
Meeting at Ipswich, aided the cause when he talked of the
vista of parsons and pine apples, and the.balance sheet of the
Clergy. The Morning Chronicle is playing the same game.
Every Whig print in England is seizing every opportunity of
magnifyiv individual instances of depravity, in order to im-
'press theisublic mind with an idea' of a large aggregate of„
crime in those they wish to rob. To what does all this tend,
if not to the plunder of the Church ? And why condemn
Cobbett and his crew for that of which' Whigs and Radicals
are equally guilty, and which is alike infamous In both ? And
yet, in lhe face of the hourly repeated proofs of the design of
the party to pillage the inheritance of the altar, there are to be
found, for the honour of human reason they are but few, Cle-
rical Whigs and'Clerical Radicals. If such men see the ten-
dency of the measures of their compatriots, we must give them
credit for a self-devotedness, an immolation of their interests
almost super.human ; if they be blind .to ,the certain effects
which must result from acts so obvious, we must attribute
.to them a stolidity which places them in the lowest
scale of animal creation. It is hardly possible for them
not to feel convinced that the aim of their political associates is
the subversion of that church which they have sworn to uphold
and knowing that, it is hard to reconcile their profession with
their practice by any, rule of ethics we are acquainted with. I
a soldier in a garrison were to collude with the enemy when off
duty, he would be shot; The minister of the church is God'
own soldier; to him is given to defend, not merely the tem,
poral church and her patrimony, but the spiritual church, the
minds, the morals, 'the souls of his fellow-men—he should never
be off his duty, his business is holy, his responsibility awful ;
if he then, unmindful of the trust reposed in hint, and negli-
gent of the' oath.be has taken in the nanie of his master, who
is, and was,!and is to be,join with the common foe, and ta-
citly consent to the spoliatibn of the sacred charge which he is
paid:.to defend, the: minds of his people, as well as the property
of his order, can be deemed other than criminal?--criminal in
the highest degree; in that he has betrayed his trust, a trust re-
posed in him by his God. That there is a powerful and ex-
tensive league formed against the Church 9f England it is im-
possible to doubt, and that the property of the church is in dan-
ger it is worse than folly to deny ; but danget does not neces-
sarily imply defeat ; on the contrary, the present danger may be
the means of rousing into action the energies of hundreds' of
able and good men, who now, with reprehensible Supineness,
sit tamely, Aown in the flattering assurance that the church is
in safety because they know it ought to be safe, and are con-
tent With an unostentatious discharge of their sacred duties,
while the spirit that is abroad calls for a more active and ener
getic line of conduct. It is not enough that the ministers of
the church are exemplary in their lives and zealous in their
duties,-ithe peril .of the time mills upon them to put on the
.whole armour of faith, to tight the good light of their muter,
to resit even unto death the legions of godless inadelity, and
save generations yet unborn from the horrors ill-concealed be-
neath the veal of liberalism and reform. Inactivity in such, a
cause is crime. The effort alone almost secures victory. It is
a labour of holiness, and the reward is glor3r,
lire are far from attributing to all who call themselves Whigs
a . participation . in the..guiluness of the faction r there are
amongst them very many whom, while we pity and blame, we
esteem and honour; we are not pointing at individual instances,
but sliming theoonsequencea which follow, of necessity, from'
the acts we condemn. To bnng the Clergy into contempt is
the first step toward the subversion of the church. To slander
.the King and his. Government is no trifling advance towards
such changes, as honest men tremble to contemplate. That
the Whigs are in the daily practice of these dangerous and cri-
minal abuses of our liberty is known to all Men ; it is there-
fore incumbent upon every
honest niari. who has hitherto iden-
tified himself with the party, to exert himself strenuously to
abate the abominable nuisances, which, under cover of Whig-
gistn, infest' society; and if he fail in his honourable endea-
voor, then Jet him rally beneath the banner of that Constitu-
tion, of which the Altar and the Throne are the Heart and the
!feed.