The Sun.
London, England, 1840-03-09 00:00:00

EVENIN EDI ri ON.

LONDON :
MONDAY, MARCH 9, 18411.

On looking at the speeches made by Mr. Fox
MA ULE, and Mr. STEWART, the Liberal Candi-
date, which appear in another . part of the Paper,
and the enthusiasm with which they were re-
ceived by the great body of the electors, we had
strong hopes that the Liberal interest would
prevail. In these hopes we have been disappointed.
The influence of Tory power and intimidation was
too great to be overcome. Perthshire was Tory ; 1
the electors, notwithstanding all the noise that die I
non-intrusionists made, have proved themselves
Tory still, and have returned a Member hostile to
the Government. We have all along had strong
misgivings of the honesty of that portion of i
the Clergy who have been loudest in their
denunciations against patronage, and who seemed prepared to make every sacrifice to oh- i
tain their darling object ; and we confess the Perth-
shire election has confirmed these miAoivings. If
they were sincere in their professed suPport of tha 1
Ministerial candidate, or if their plan of Church
Reform had taken such hold of the public mind
as they infer, how does it happen that the Tory
HOME DRUNIMOND—the patron of the party in the
Church that lean to patronaL,e, and the violent op-
ponent of the Government, that non-intrusionists
look up to for protection—had at. the close of the
first day's poll a majority of four hundred ?
Do this party act on the principle, that
the end justifies the means ? It is well known that
roost of these men are the most violent Tories, and
40 bigoted in their Toryism, that on the Church-
rate question they did everything they could to turn
out the Liberal Government, and maintain in ad its
idleness and overgrown wealth a Church which the
great body of the people of Scotland regard as little
better than Roman Catholic. Did they get a pro-
mise from the Government on the patronage ques-
tion, and, having bound them hand and foot, did
they at the Perth election turn round against
them ? These suspicions are strongly confirmed
by a letter which we have received from Glasgow,
dated Friday, in which are theseeremarl;)ahle
words :--" The Perthshire Tory renegads ,w ho pro-
fess to support STEWART, to serve their present
purposes, will desert him before the election ;"and
deserted him they have.. Mr. STEWART, finding
and after -
ha could not trust totheir promises,
having
been severely beaten on the first day's poll, resicnp-c'd
without further contest. 0 -

Lewes Election is, we fear, likely to be no gain
to the Rt.ifolin cause, for Lard CANTELVP

having, previously to his vacating Heistone, made
all_ right at Lewes, will in all probability be re-
turned without much opposition. The pure, honest,
and independent electors, having received their
price, will in due time render a faithful account of
their stewardship, by returning Lord CANTELUPE
to the House of Commons. And this in a Re-
formed Parliament 11 Oh, Shame, where is thy
blush ?
We have since learned that there will be no con-
test. General TREVOR, having ascertained by per-
sonal inquiry that Lord CANTELUPE had wade all
right on Saturday, announced his determination
to retire, and this day Lord CANT ELUPE will pro-
bably be elected without opposition.

We cannot regret that we misunderstood Admiral
CARDEN'S intentions as to his first letter, since
the publication of it has brought forth a second
almost as valuable as the first. The painful anec-
dote which the Rear-Admiral tells of some seamen
who, having served under NELSON, and on board
the Victory, were found serving on board the
United States, and had named•two of her guns
Nelson and Victory, will immediately arrest the
reader's attention. Such a fact is of itself an in-
structive volume. It tells at once in most impressive
words of deep inbred love of country and of their
profession in the seamen who are driven, by the
most grievous oppression, to commit actions which
their hearts and souls abhor. NELSON'S barge-
men serving against their country, foregoing all
their honest, well-earned reputation, all their hopes
of reward, and all the comforts of old age, which
the country holds ready to confer on them, to serve
in an enemy's frigate, and fighting for life and death
against their own countrymen, is a most melancholy
but a most instructive fact. We will not now say
any more on this painful subject than to beg our
readers will peruse Admiral CARDEN'S second ex-
cellent letter.

On one point Admiral CARDEN seems to have
misunderstood a remark of ours. We used the
word " nominally," in speaking of the two ships,
to mark that though nominally both were fri-
gates, the United States was in reality almost a
line-of-battle ship. Admiral CARDEN now gives
the exact armament of the two vessels, as well as
the number of thair crews, and it can be no dis-
paragement to a brave man that he was conquered
by a vessel having 182 picked men more than
his crew of 297 men and boys, and th►owing
a broadside of 3451b5. weight of metal more
than the Macedonian's 5321b5. Admiral CARDEN
does right in reminding the public of the relative
force of the two vessels, as it not only serves as a
complete vindication of him, and a proof that he
has suffered unmeritedly, but it gives to the public
and the Admiralty a most solemn warning. We
hope it will not be given in vain.

It appears, by the extracts which we gave on Fri-
day from the Scotch Papers, that the Non-intru-
sionists, as they falsely denominate themselves, are
not to have it all their own way. These people
have artfully and actively endeavoured to make it
appear as if there were hardly any persons in
Scotland of a different opinion from them. But to
estimate their numbers by their noise would be to
commit a very great mistake. The majority of the
clergy, there can be no doubt, are Vetoists, and
hence the clamour for the veto. How easy is it
for the minister of a parish to get up a petition
against non-intrusion, when he can hold out to a
select class of his parishioners the bribe that the
patronage hitherto exercised by others shall be
transferred to them. He must be a bungler indeed
who cannot manage to get signatures to such a pe-
tition ; but when these signatures come to he
counted by the Petition Committee of the House of
Commons, they will prove, unless we are greatly
misinformed, that a very small proportion of the
people of Scotland have enlisted themselves
on the non-intrusion side of the question. The
truth is, they see through the juggle.
In the mean time it is gratifying to perceive that
the moderate party are on the move. At Glasgow
the members of the Church, without distinction
of party, Whigs, Tories, and Radicals, are signing
a declaration in direct opposition to the claims of
the Vetoists, and disapproving of the rebellious
course pursued by a section of the Clergy. Reso-
lutions to the same effect have been passed at an
important meeting of the nobility, gentry, landed
proprietors, tenantry, and other s of the county of
Haddington, and at a meeting of the land-
holders, commissioners of supply, and justices of
peace of the county of Banff. It also promises well
for the cause of moderation and honesty, that the
friends to the present constitution of the Church,
among the Clergy of the Aberdeen district, with
Dr. MEARNS, the Professor of Divinity in the
University of Aberdeen, at their head, have adopted
a temperate but firm declaration of their views on
this subject, which has already received the signa-
ture of upwards of sixty ministers. Similar pro-
ceedings will no doubt be resorted to in other parts
of Scotland, and a check will thus be given to the
career of fanaticism and imposture.
Lord ABERDEEN made some very just remarks
on this question in the House of Lords on Thurs-
day night. It is not often that we agree with that
Noble Lord, but we entirely concur with him in
thinking that much more evil is likely to arise from
precipitation than from delay in legislating on this
subject, and we hope and trust that Lord MEL-
BOURNE will pause before he interfere with the
constitution of the Church of Scotland, which has
hitherto worked better than that of any establish-
ment of religion yet tried, and which we maintain
will, upon calm examination, be found to contain
within itself such self-correcting powers as render
the application of a legislative remedy in this case
unnecessary, and not merely unnecessary, but ex-
tremely dangerous.
In another point we also cordially concur with
Lord ABERDEEN, and that is in stigma-
tizing the injustice—not to say iniquity—of
that Veto Act which limits the right of objec-
tion to heads of families being communicants.
Can anything be more arbitrary than such a
restriction ? any thing more at variance with
the professed objects of the non-intrusion section
of the Clergy ? "It is fit and proper," say these
just and holy men, " that the people should have
the power of preventing the settlement among them
of a minister to whom they object, even without
being compelled to assign any reason for their ob-
jection—there must be no intrusion against the
absolute will of the people—it is enough that they
allege they cannot be edified by Mr. Such-a-one,
for the Presbytery to reject him."
Now, upon what principle are the wives, the
sons, and daughters, of communicating heads of
families, and the other parishioners, to be excluded
from the right to object ? Have they no souls to
save ; or, are none but " heads" to be edified ?
In the matter of edification, may it not happen
that the wife may find spiritual nourishment in
abundance in the food distributed by the man whom
her husband nas denounced as an incapable ; or that,
on the contrary, the seed sown by the man of the
husband's choice may be nothing better than dry
husks to the
wife, having in it no germ of fructifica-
tion? For SAUNDERS and JANET, though they
twain be one arc, be it remembered, not one
conscience, much less one soul. They doubtless
have their spiritual differences as well as other
little bickering!.
May not also the sons and the daughters have pre-
dilections on the score of edification, clashing with
those of the " head," and indy not others who are
not heads, think it a hard case that they should
not be allowed to judge who is fit to edify them,
and who unfit? But
your thorough-going Vetoist
leaps over all these considerations at a bound.
He, so anxious and
rights of Christian c"
pertinacious a stickler for the
t
allow a minister to be.s,
intruded"
the will of ic
etha t
ohn s‘ e a
c• ooun lgdr
gn
ao
people " has not the
tion
lea t aolb:jaeileitsit " the
on that only a few of the
people should
enjoy the rights belonging to all, and that the wills
and the consciences of the nine-tenths should be
ever-ridden by the one-tenth. According to his new
light views, will, and conscience, and edification
arc worthy of all respect, of all tender regard in
the head of a family, but in no one else do they
deserve a moment's consideration !

The dishonesty of Governments was perhaps
never more shamelessly e,:hibited than in the nec,o-
ciations which have ben carried on for the last
two years, between the Cabinets of London and
Hanover, for the reduction of an arbitrary and un-
just impost upon vessels navigating the Elbe, under
the denomination of the " Stade Duties." The
Stade is a town in the Duchy of Bremen, situated
on the left bank of the river Elbe, about twenty-
live miles below Hamburg, which became by a
collusive and dithonest purchase, the property of

! GEORGE I. who, in 1716, bought the Duchies of
Bremen and Verden from the King of DENMARK,
who had violently wrested them from the King of
SWEDEN. This purchase is indirectly extolled as
an act of consummate Statesmanship, by Mr.
WILLIAM HUTT, M.P., the author of a clever
pamphlet on the Stade Duties now before us ;
but had it not been for the sudden death of
CHARLES XII. of Sweden, and the execution of
his Minister Baron GORTZ, which put an end
to the Congress opened at Abo, and prevented the
designs of Sweden and Russia in favour of the Pre-
tender, not only would GEORGE I. have lost, as he
deserved to lose, the two ill-gotten Duchies, but in all
human probability his crowns Royal and Electoral.
Nor, as it happened, was the acquisition of the
least value to Great Britain, but, on the contrary,
the fertile source of many annoyances and immense
io,ses. SMOLLETT, whose account of this transac-
-1 tion is generally lucid and impartial, concludes it
with the following just observations :—" Thus
Bremen and Verden were secured to the House of
Hanover, an acquisition towards which the Eng-
lish nation contributed by her money as well as her
arms—an acquisition made in contradiction to the
engagements into which England entered when
King WILLIAM became guarantee for the treaty
of Travendahl—an acquisition which may be con-
sidered as the first link of a political chain by
1 which the English nation was dragged back into
expensive connections with the Continent." But
the advocates of the acquisition (Lord TOWN-
SIIEND and Mr. WALPOLE) contrived to gull the
English Parliament, by representing that in the
year 1691-2 the King of SWEDEN had esta-
blished by treaty a right of exacting tolls on
all vessels navigating the Elbe (the shipping of
the merchants of the city of Hamburg only excep-
ted), and as the exaction of such tolls was felt
as a grievance by British merchants trading with
Hamburg, relief was only to be expected from
Stade being declared a part of the territory of the
King OfGREAT BRITAINas Elector of HANOVER.
Such a representation could not fail to make the
purchase of the Duchies a popular measure in
England ; but no sooner had the continental
Powers acknowledged the validity of that purchase
than the Elector of HANOVER, without any op-
position on the part of his British Ministers, not
only continued to exact the Stade tolls, as regulated
by the treaty of 1691-2, but such tolls have gone
on increasing in numbers and multiplying in amount
from 1730 to 1836, a period of upwards of a cen-
tury I These tolls, being considered as a personal
perquisite of the Hanoverian Sovereign, no Cabi-
net, whether Whig or Tory, ever had the virtue to
insist upon their reduction, although such a re-
duction would have been of the utmost advan-
tage to British commerce, and would have ren-
dered the establishment of the German Commer-
cial League almost impossible. In the inva-
sion of the rights of the people British
Cabinets have always shown themselves uncom-
monly daring and adventurous, but few of
them have ever had the virtue to insist upon de-
priving the Crown of the least defensible of its un-
just and plundering prerogatives. But now that
Hanover is separated—we trust for ever—from the
Regal sway of the Sovereign of Great Britain,
an abuse of some hundred and twenty years' stand-
ing has began to appear intolerable in the eyes of
the British Cabinet. The Ministers are no lon-
ger in fear of bringing the Court about their ears,
for attempting to open the navigation of the Elbe,
which may be said to be blockaded by Hanoverian
Custom-house regulations, and therefore there is
some hope that effectual steps will be taken before
our trade with Hamburg is entirely destroyed, to
modify, if not entirely abolish tolls, which are as
unjustifiable in principle, and as misapplied in
effect, as the tribute exacted in the Algerine
waters, by the corsairs of Barbary.
The ability with which the details of this ques-
tion are grouped together, and the moderation with
which they are discussed, in Mr. HUTT'S pam-
phlet, can scarcely be made apparent here from
the brevity of the extracts, which, in the present
crowded state of our columns, we can only afford
to make from it. "At present," he observes,
" the King of HANOVER collects, not for the
benefit of the State, but for his own private emolu-
1 ment, tolls and duties on all ships and their cargoes,
(those under the Hamburg flag alone excepted)
passing the town of Stade, proceeding upwards.
And these duties on merchants' goods amount,, in
some instances, to five per cent..on their value:
By requiring certificate° of return, also, he obtains
nine rix-dollars two schillings from every vessel
passing Stade, proceeding towards the sea. Under
the title of ship's expenses, another tax is imposed
on all vessels arriving off Stade, of seven rix-dollars
forty-six schillings per ship ; and the King of HA-
NOVER'S officers at Stade exact, as their perqui-
site, a sum equal to six and a fourth per cent. on
the whole amount paid to the King I" The
enormity of this system of piratical plunder is
established by the fact, that while eight distinct
taxes are thus levied upon shipping in the Elbe by
the King of HANOVER, the whole charge of
lightage and buoyage, and all other expenses in-
cidental to the safe navigation of the river are
defrayed by the citizens of Hamburg. Ob-
jectionable in amount and mode of exaction
as are the Sound Duties, it is to be borne
in mind that the King of DENMARK
sustains the whole charge of buoys, lighthouses,
and beacons, from the Catiegat to the Baltic.
But the King of HANOVER not only pockets his
plunder, but, the better to increase it by every
fraudulent and pettifogging pretext, grants his
officers a commission upon whatever amount they
can contrive to turn into his coffers. " Like mas-
ter, like man," is an old adage, always true of the
inferior officers of a Government. When the
fountain is corrupt, the merest rill proceeding from
it will participate in that corruption. Hence the
cause that more scandalous impositions have been
practised upon merchant vessels navigating the
Elbe, than nearly all the other navigable rivers in
Europe. Mr. HUTT's pamphlet supplies several
cogent, well-authenticated, and by no means re-
mote examples, to which we promise an early in-
sertion in The Sun.
Much as we are opposed to the despotical views
of the King of HANOVER, let not our readers
suppose that we discuss this question with the re-
motest view of making any attack upon him. The
parties really to blame are the past cabinets of
Great Britain, from the Ministry of WALPOLE to
that of Lord MELBOURE. This is a view of the
i question, indicative of the moral turpitude of past
Governments, wholly overlooked by Mr HUTT,
and yet it is this view which is alone calculated to
teach the people of England the necessity of a
wholesome distrust of the morality of Princes, and
the patriotism of hireling Statesmen. The Con-
gress of Vienna declared the navigation of the
great rivers of Europe free, and authorised the ap-
pointment of a joint commission for regulating on
an uniform basis the dues to be collected on
them to defray the necessary expenses of buoys,
lighthouses, and harbours ; but the SID-
MOUTHS, the CASTLEREAG HS, the PEELS, the
Corn-law ROBINSONS, and the other Tory idols
then at the head of affairs in England, entered into
a collusion with the profligate representative of an
idiot Monarch to cheat the merchants of Great
Britain out of the boon granted them by the Con-
gress. The Stade Duties, instead of being reduced,
were greatly and otipressively increased ; nor was it
till the King of HANOVER ceased to be Kiwi; of
ENGLAND that the enormity of such imposts ex-
cited a murmur within the walls of the British
Council Chamber.
Our commercial readers will easily see that this
article is merely introductory. In our next we shall
endeavour to find room for extracts from Mr.
I I UT T'S very clever and interesting, pamphlet.

By the arrival of the Braganza steamer at Falmouth
on Saturday afternoon from the Tagus, we have re-
ceived the important news of the dissolution of the
Portuguese Cortes on the 25th ult. The advices
brought by the Braganza from Lisbon are of the 2d of
March ; and up to that date the sudden dissolution of
the Chambers was disapproved of by nobody but the
faction interested in the maintenance of the slava traffic.
We subjoin the Report of the Ministers, recommending
the dissolution, which is an extremely temperate docu-
ment, and well calculated to make a favourable impres-
sion on the electoral body. The QUEEN was again
known to be in that way " which ladies wish to be who
'the
ehe Presidentse servicesun-
mindful
of theof their
Chamberfriends
itn tle l ate
Cortes.
of
Deputies,
Senhor G. H. DE CA
avALHo was promoted to the
Bishopric of Leiria ; the Archbishopric of
the 11i5hoprics of Algarve, Aveiro, and Be,ja, have re-
warded the services of
otherbees
ecclesiastics, while the
bn
civil promotions have proportionately still more
numerous, Portugal was gradually becoming more