The Sun.
London, England, 1847-06-15 00:00:00

britidll2,l

LONDON, TUESDAY, JUNE 15, 1847.

Gladly do we announce the amendment introduced
to the attention of Parliament last night by the Hon.
Gentleman the Member for Finsbury, in reference to
the conduct pursued by Government towards the
people and the SOVEREIGN of Portugal. The amend-
ment suggested by Mr. DUNCOMBE is one precisely in
accordance with the spirit of Mr. Husm's motion,
and in every way compatible with the principles
enunciated by ourselves as to the propriety of
an armed interference. According to the word-
ing of this amendment, the House of Com-
mons will pronounce it to be " the duty of
the British Government to endeavour by every just
means in their power to secure to the people of Por-
tugal the full enjoyment of their constitutional rights
and privileges." Beyond the gratification experienced
at the introduction of a proposition like this, a pro-
position which will afford a brilliant testimony
of the sympathy with which the Legislature of these
islands regards the blessedness of a liberal and mode-
rate sovereignty, we are in a particular manner re-
joiced at Mr. DUNcoMBE'S proceeding, as it elicited
from the lips of Mr. MACAULAY an explanation of
the sentiments by which his colleagues have been ac-
tuated throughout towards Portugal—an explana-
tion at once so comprehensive, so terse, so masterly
in arrangement, and so conclusive in argument. If
the Right Honourable the Paymaster of her Majesty's
Forces does not absolutely vindicate the necessity
for the subjugation of the insurgent forces of the
Junta by our squadron of surveillance, he, at least,
testifies in an unanswerable manner to the humanity
of the views by which the Cabinet of England has
been instigated to the adoption of such violent mea-
sures; hg. confirms the opinion we expressed on
Thursday evening, that the Ministerial arrangements
have been characterised throughout by the most
perfect good faith and simplicity of intention.
In the speech delivered last night by the Right
Hon. THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY it was elo-
quently explained that the relations subsist-
ing between England and Portugal are of un-
usual antiquity—dating as far back as the days
of the BLACK PRINCE—and, in like manner,
have continued for centuries of a character so
earnestly indicative of a common friendship, as to be
invested, according to the felicitous expression
of CANNING, with a sort of romantic colouring.
Rendered remarkable by this venerable and ardent
complexion, the cordial understanding between the
two countries becomes in a manner more entitled to
be considered as a matter of the most delicate and
estimable importance. It is scarcely, however, by
allusions to the pageantries depicted in what may,
without extravagance, be termed the emblazoned
chivalry of the Chronicles of FROISSART, that any
extenuation can be discerned for the employment of
military or naval armaments for the reconciliation
of a foreign people and a foreign monarch. It is
scarcely by:reminiscences of the gorgeous reception of
the Portuguese ambassadors in the fifteenth century
at the Court of the King of ENGLAND, in the pre-
sence of the renowned JoHN of GAUNT and of the
puissant EDMUND LANGLEY, that any satisfactory
reason can be discovered for the extraordinary course
adopted by the present Government in empowering
Sir WILLIAM PARKER to impel the revolted popula-
tion of Portugal to a pacification through the iron
logic of his vessels• of-war. Had Mr. MACAULAY
restricted himself to such a line of argument, how-
ever brilliant or heroic it might have been in its
abstract bearing upon the discussion, it would have
left the disputed principle as questionable in point of
justice or propriety as it had appeared to many to be
from the very commencement. But the Right
Hon. Gentleman the representative of Edinburgh
assumed a more cogent and comprehensible ground of
argument, and by the earnestness with which in his
exordium he stigmatised the Government of the
Cabrals and their creatures as despotical and as in-
famously subversive of the natural and constitutional
rights of the Portuguese, he prepared even those who
were most disposed to regard the British Ministry as
reprehensible, to coincide with the abstract principles
which had animated the official dispatches of Lord
PALMERSTON.

Cordially and readily do we acknowledge the
speech delivered last night by Mr. MACAULAY
to be conclusive ; and in uttering this acknow-
ledgment we are by no means waiving a single
one of those liberalising principles which we
have all along endeavoured to advocate as the
only ones consonant with the enlightenment
of this generation and the generous character of
our glorious constitution. Mr. MACAULAY, indeed,
maintained the sanctity of the very principles to
which we are alluding with the recapitulation of
sincerity and in the language of unaffected eloquence.
Speaking of the sentiments by which all representa-
tive Governments should be influenced in similar cir-
cumstances, the Right honourable Gentleman de-
clared that no doubt whatever could exist but that
the rule condemnatory of interference in the internal
concerns of a foreign country is a sound general rule !
He maintained that the Minister who so interfered
would invest himself with a terrible responsibility !
that the throne of Portugal had unquestionably been
encompassed, for a considerable time past by evil coun-
cillors ! that acts which he was compelled to
designate as cruel had disgraced the Portuguese Go-
vernment ! and that no human doubt could exist but
that " circumstances had occurred which justified the
Portuguese people in receiving with distrust the as-
surances of the Portuguese Government !" In a later
portion of his harangue Mr. MACAULAY asserts yet
more distinctly, "If I be asked what the origin of
the Portuguese war was, then, Sir, Ido not hesitate
to say that I believe it was caused by the acts of the
Portuguese Government." Coupling this declaration
with the fact of Mr. DUNCOMBE'S amendment (that it
becomes " the duty of the British Government
to endeavour, by every just means in their
power, to secure to the people of Portugal the
full enjoyment Of their constitutional rights
and privileges"), having been cordially welcomed by
the Paymaster of her Majesty's Forces, we cannot
but augur happily for the consequence of what very
naturally appeared (before the utterances of those
avowals) to be a most ominous proceeding. From
the threatened interference of France and Spain in
the disturbances which had continued so long to
desolate the Portuguese provinces, Mr. MACAULAY
maintained that the matter had changed from a
purely internal question to a strictly international
question, and that therefore the Ministry are justi-
fied in resorting to an armed intervention. Upon
the inflexible humanity of England during her di-
plomatic correspondence with the Cabinet of Lisbon
Mr. MACAULAY spoke most effectively and forcibly.
Observe, he exclaims, the process of the arrangement
about the amnesty promised to the insurgent chieftains.
First, MARIA DA GLORIA says, " Agreed that there
shall be no capital punishment, still some persons
must be sent out to the colonies ?" England replies
to
that, No They shall not be consigned to a
cruel and miserable exile; they shall not be sent to
Africa ; they shall be sent to Paris ; they shall have
their milreis regularly
itser t
transmitted,l and Government
will add somethingtheir. incomes ! " Not
one mile out of the Portuguese ° r
14'7 ! " Let them
be exiled for eighteen months? "
oi ? e !Iv" For
fourteen ?" Not one ! "For only ten
one ! Those are the humane determinations°, not
upon
which the Cabinet have already proceeded. Beyonduon
those, we have now a guarantee that the ministry
will endeavour to secure to the Portuguese people
the full enjoyment of their constitutional rights and