The Sun.
London, England, 1841-04-10 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS,

FROM THE DAILY PAPERS OF YRSTERDAY.
(From the Globe.)

It is nothing more than natural, and in the every-day
way of business, that the organs of the party who are
out of power should find all grapes sour that are plucked
by the party who are in—and which the Tory vulpine
sagacity had imagined, or feigned, to be out of reach.
This is done, however, by the several morning malcon-
tents " with a difference." The Times is not stupid
enough, though the Herald is, to suppose it can suc-
cessfully dissemble the great advantages procured to
this country by the conceded arrangement of the
Chinese affair. The latter has discovered that there is
a very much larger island ( Lan-to-oo), to which it
infers, we presume, that we should have accorded
a preference. No doubt, had such been the case
(and Hong-Kong is in all conscience large enough,
besides its great advantages of anchorage, so absurdly
depreciated), we should have been told of the folly
of taking possession of a station embarrassing by its
extent. The Times takes a more correct view of
the local advantage conceded to us :—" This arrange-
ment, if bona fide carried into effect, will certainly
be most beneficial to our mercantile interests. The si-
tuation of Ilona-Kong is infinitely more convenient
for the purposes of trade than that of Macao ; a settle-
ment formed there will be capable of maintaining itself
independently of the Chinese, and the recognition of a
territorial right in the British Crown, as well as the
terror of the British name, will give our countrymen
advantages which were never possessed by the Portu-
guese in China." It being, however, as we have said,
all in the way of business that holes should be picked,
or seem to be picked, somewhere in the announced
arrangements, the Times affects to find a flaw in the
silence upon the question of the opium trade, which
it describes as having been " the reel cause of the
war." The cause of-the war was the violent spoliation
and coercion of British subjects, and the insolent disre-
card of the rights of the representatives of this country.
For reparation of these wrongs, and not for the opium
trade, or any ether trade, we showed ourselves in arms
on the coast of China. It is true that the same con-
c:ssions which secure the future rights of our func-
tionaries will secure the advantages which will naturally
flow from those rights to our commerce. And the ter-
ritorial position which we have obtained as further in.
dernnity and security, will confer advantages of the
most important nature on our commercial interests.

(From the Courier.)
The Non-intrusionists in Scotland are preparing to
play their last card. By dint of agitation they have
gathered around them a goodly number of silly old
women, and, as the late Dr. Andrew Thomson, of
Edinburgh, happily expressed it, "sillier old men
and if they do not obtain from Parliament the recc',
nition of their " fundamental principle," as demanded
and the eacrificc of the Ministers of Strathbogie, as vic-
tims on the altar of the Church's independence, they,
along with their congregations, are to secede! and, being
the majority, to break up the Establishment ! The plot
is developed in n " Letter to Dr. Cook and the Mo-
derate Brethren," who, in order to save the Kirk from
this terrible calamity, are very coolly called upon to
sacrifice all the principles that uphold the Reformation
itself ! In our paper of the Ist of March, we warned our
readers of this plot, which is now maturing. It is, no
doubt, thought " a good plot"—" an excellent plot :"
but we venture to say, that it will not succeed. Since
Dr. Forbes, of Aberdeen, published his" Considerations,'
the points at issue in this Scotch-kirk-controversy are
standing forth in broad relief ; and the contest is
resolving into the narrow field of civil or spiritual su-
premacy in this land of Protestant light arid liberty.
The issue of this context cannot be doubted ;
hut independent of this we venture to say, that the
discoveries that will be made under the search-
ing ordeal of • judicial decisions will astonish
" the weak capacities"' of our Presbyterian friends,
on " the north side of the Tweed " They have
been indulging in a dream of spiritual independence,
from which, thanks to their own folly, they arc about
to be awakened with a witness ; and if at the Re-
formations in 1560 and 1638, and at the Revolu-
tion in 1688, it is found that this dream was very
far from being realized, the chances in its fa-
vour are wonderfully diminished in 1841. In the
meantime we venture to predict that, whether
patronage is to be sacrificed to Non-intrusion, or to
what extent the monster is to be muzzled, the Strath-
bogie ministers will never be sacrificed to the indepen-
dence of the Kirk; and if this is the tenure on which
the dominant faction are to remain within the Estab-
lishment, the sooner they secede the better. It would
indeed be a pity if the Church of Scotland should fall
with them ; but, " Fiat juslitia, real cceluni."