The Sun.
London, England, 1846-10-01 00:00:00

not necessary for our argument that we should
do so, suffice it to say that a public
contradiction took place, and that MATTHEWSON
stoutly adhered to the truth and accuracy of his
statement, notwithstanding the denial of Colonel
WiEtym. This would be quite sufficient to induce
the non-commissioned officers and privates of the
regiment to believe that in no way could they do
more to curry favour with their commander than by
bearing hardly upon the person who had made him-
self obnoxious. It is the tendency of human nature
so to do, and we can easily conceive that MATTHEW-
SON was subjected to many annoyances of which his
Colonel might not have been cognisant.
On the day in question MATTHEWSON was visited
by his mother and a brother-in-law, just discharged
from the service, whom he had not seen for nine
years; he naturally wished to be allowed to spend
the short interval during which his relations could
remain, in unrestricted intercourse with them, and
applied for liberty to exchange his term of
duty with another soldier, who was willing
to take his place on that day. This nio-
derate and simple request was unhesitatingly
refused ; he was told (as appeared by the evidence of
Corporal Rouru, who was ordered to take a man with
him to make the communication), that the command-
ing officer " could not grant his request, neither
would he see him." This would appear to throw
some light on the animus existing toward MATTHEW-
' SON—a disposition and feeling which we think should
by no means be encouraged. When on duty, and
irritated, as it may be supposed, by the harsh refusal
he had received, the sergeant of the guard visited him.
It is said that there is a regimental order, that when
a non-commissioned officer visits a sentry on duty he
is to be accompanied by a private of the guard. This
order the complaining sergeant evades, by saying
that he was on duty, but not going his rounds. What,
then, could have been his object or motive in going
to, or entering into conversation with, an excited and
exasperated man ? Does it not, to say the least of it,
look as if he was anxious to goad the obnoxious indi-
vidual into some indiscreet act or hasty expression ?
He takes care that no witness is near who can
bear testimony to the provocation, the language he
may himself have used—his evidence is wholly un-
corroborated, and is most distinctly and positively
contradicted by MATTHEWSON, who declares that he
never used the language imputed to him. The court-
martial is, however, at once convened, and he is de-
prived of the benefit of the testimony of Private
Hirrcumos, the man who had agreed to take his
duty on the occasion in question, and who had
marched with the regiment shortly before the trial.
We shall anxiously await the judgment of the court,
but, whatever it may be, we sincerely trust that an
inquiry may be instituted in the regiment, in order to
ascertain whether any undue or harsh conduct has
been exhibited towards any of the soldiers in conse-
quence of the evidence they have given at the
inquest. The public mind should be set at rest on
the subject, and it should be discovered whether any
abuse of power has been exhibited by any of those
entrusted with authority.

Madrid papers of the 24th ult. have been received.
The Chamber of Deputies was engaged in discuss-
ing a project for the immediate levy of 25,000 men.
After the Bill shall have been disposed of, the Cortes
will adjourn, but will not be dissolved until after the
marriages, at which the Presidents of the Senate and
of the Chamber of Deputies will be present in their
official capacities.

The Heraldo has the following on the subject of
he protest against the Montpensier marriage, which
it is now forced to admit was presented by Mr.
BULWER on the 22d ult.:—
"It appears positive that Mr. Bulwer presented on
the evening of the 22d to the Government of her Ma-
jesty a communication from the British Cabinet relative
to the marriage of her Royal Highness the Infanta with
the Duke de Montpensier. We do not feel ourselves
authorised to communicate the terms of this note, to
which we are sure the Spanish Ministry will reply, as
its decorum, its independence, and at the same time the
good relations which we are desirous of maintaining with
a friendly and allied nation demand. As we have al-
ready said, it is stated in this note that the representative
of her Britannic Majesty had kept to himself for some
time his alarm as to the consequences which might arise
for Europe and Spain, from a circumstance, the even-
tuality of which is so remote that it can hardly be re-
garded as possible. Nothing, however, as we have al-
ready said, can be more easy than to prevent the grave
consequences of this eventuality. Besides, although
England does not behold this affair with pleasure,' the
question, after the vote of the Parliament, is irrevocably
decided, and we have a firm conviction that this event
will in noway disturb the pgace of Europe. The Espanol,
which in its supplement of yesterday attached so much
importance and gravity to this note, might have added
that the British Minister, after having presented it, had
attempted to withdraw it. The position of the English
representative is very difficult after the vote of the
Cortes, and arises without doubt from his vacillations.
Our predictions on this subject will be verified, as they
have been hitherto. The question is legally resolved.
If England, our friend and ally, thought proper to state
its observations, she will now respect our rights."
The .Heraldo is wrong in saying Mr. BULWER
wished to withdraw the note. He offered to modify
certain expressions in i; if M. ISTURITZ would con-
sent to postpone the Montpensier marriage. Both
that Minister and Queen CHRISTINA were in favour
of postponement, but M. BREssort, the French Am-
bassador, who hath of late been indulging in big
discourse, " horribly stuffed with epithets of war,"
declared that no delay should take place, and Mr.
BULWER'S note therefore remains unaltered.
According to the Espanol, Mr. BULWER, on the
23d received fresh instructions from his Cabinet, en-
joining him to persevere in opposing the Montpensier
marriage, and to impress upon the Spanish Govern-
ment the consequences that may accrue from its con-
summation, and to declare anew that England will
formally oppose its realisation until the direct sue.
cession to Queen ISABELLA be insured.
Great apprehensions are entertained of an outbreak
in the provinces.

MADRID BOLSA, SEPT. 23.—The Three per Cents.
were done at 35i for cash; the Four per Cents. at 22;
the Five per Cents. at 224; the Debt without interest, at
; and the Coupons, at 20t.

We have received the Paris papers of Tuesday.
The Presse in the following article admits the fact
of the understanding come to at Eu, and boldly
justifies the duplicity of M. GUIZOT
" There is a point upon which tho Debats gives no
explanation, notwithstanding all the provocation of the
Opposition journals, repeated yesterday by the Siecle.
They represent the conduct of the French Govern-
ment towards England in this affair as perfidious;
first, because the march and incidents of the nego-
tiation have been carefully concealed from England;
and, secondly, because it is thought to have been
concluded in defiance of engagements entered
into at the Chateau d'Eu, between the Ministers
of the two Powers, in the presence of the King of
the French and the Queen of Great Britain. As to the
first reproach, is it really believed to be well founded?
What ! is diplomacy to be carried on in public ? and
must we, under the risk of being charged with want of
good faith, put England in full possession of all the inci-
lents of a negotiation because its conclusion may cause
her some chagrin? Were we obliged to warn her that
she was called upon to display all her activity, all
her address, all her cunning, to prevent or clog an
arrangement we were endeavouring to bring about?
And this when we see that her own policy
is pursued with the most shameful means? See how
she is using all her endeavours to excite Spain
against the double marriage, but, happily, too late, pro-
voking a civil war in Spain, and finding even in the bad
passions of the French, complaisant instruments! What
would she not have done had she been previously made
acquainted with what was going on? In what a state
of disorder would Spain be at this time! Can the Siecle
believe all this? Could the marriage take place without
both civil and foreign war if it had been made known in
time for England to have interfered to prevent it? What
can be meant by the pretended arrangements at the Cha-
teau d'Eu? Wu there any one there authorised to stipu-
late for Spain? We shall pass by the impossibility of the
alleged engagement to postpone the marriage of the
Infanta to the Duke de Montpensier until after Queen
Isabella should have given birth to direct heirs to the
throne of Spain, and which would have kept in suspense
all the intrigues, all questions, all dangerous dupes. Does
not the Si&le perceive that these engagements are in
direct contradiction to the assumed conduct of England,
who, it tells us, claimed for the people of Spain a perfect
freedom of choice? What sort of freedom is that
which is already fettered by conferences to
which Spain remained a stranger ? The Siecle
persists is a belief that the English protests are
neither redoubtable nor serious ; but it says that she
should not be mystified, and that we should not have
retorted upon her the surprise which was put upon us
by the signing of the treaty of July 15. We for our
part see no great evil in this, and think that she would
welldeserve it ; but the modesty of the Siecle may be
spared. It would be, on the contrary, the pretended
engagements at Eu which ought to be called a perfidious
surprise, not upon England, but upon Spain, who would
thus have found her hands bound in an affair in which
she was the most interested, by engagements to which
her Government was an entire stranger."
These might have been very good reasons against
entering into such an agreement, Int haying onco

tered into it, M. GUIZOT cannot, without a breach of
good faith, violate it. The following article in the
Constitutionnel, the organ of M. TBIERS, puts thf
conduct of M. GUIZOT, in thus wantonly tampering
with the entente eordiale, in its true light. It purport
to he a reply to the article in the Debats :
" The principal object of the article of the Debuts is to
weaken the impression produced in the public mind, alai
to exterminate as much as possible the gravity of the
facts. But the Debuts goes further; it wishes to make
it believed that the Opposition has systematically exag-
gerated and perverted what it has reported. It, there-
fore, hastens to deny that any comminatory expressior,
any formal conclusion is to be found in the verbal note de-
livered by Lord Normanby. But who has ever pretendee
such a thing? No one has ever said that the English Go
vernment had made the marriage of the Infanta a casu,
belli. No one has transformed into a definitive step
the note of the day before yesterday, and the Debut,
is guilty of a miserable equivocation when it declares
that no direct note has been delivered, but that the Eng
lish Ambassador had read to M. Guizot and left him a
copy of a dispatch from his Government. Every one
knows that this is what is called a verbal note. When
an affair presents grave difficulties, and may be at-
tended with serious consequences, Governments, before
irrevocably engaging themselves by definitive steps.
exchange at first verbal notes, in order to leave, until
the last moment, a door open to conciliation. A
verbal note is then always an indication of the gravity
of the state of affairs, but it is not an ultimatum.
No one has endeavoured to give this character to
the note in question. We will even go further than the
Dibats. We hope that, in spite of the many faults, and
the imprudent course followed by our Government, war
will not arise out of this question, however envenomed it
may become: it is our hope, at the same time that it is
our warmest wish. But does that take any of its importance
from the note handed to M. Guizot by Lord Normanby?
Read the Debuts, and in spite of the interminable phrase
ology in which it drowns the confession which it is obliged
to make, it results from those words themselves, that the
English Government has protested, that it has made its re-
serves, that it has expressed its dissent, its regret, and is
mortOcation. Does not the Debats find this enough for
a first direct communication? It nevertheless little re-
sembles, even with the perverted version which it gives
of it, the laudatory words of the addresses, and the offi-
cial speeches, and the effusions of tenderness of other
times. We have said, and we repeat it, that this is a lan-
guage quite new in the relations of the two Govern-
ments. The Ministry through an affectation of firmness
or through e mbarrassment, may, contrary to diplomatic
usages, delay its reply to the note of Lord Normanby.
It may have given the signal for departure
without any official announcement to any one ;
but of what advantage will it be?—not even a gain of
time. The reply which it defers, if demanded to-
day, must it not be given to-morrow? What will be
the nature of that reply? This is what the public is
more particularly interested about, and what the Dthats
will take care not to communicate. But let us now go
to the groundwork of the question. Let us lay aside the
note of Lord Normanby, and the reply, whatever it may
be, which M. Guizot will be compelled to give. What is
the real fact of the discussion? It is that England, after
having protested at Madrid, protests at Paris; it is, that
she expresses her dissent, regret, and mortification;
it is, that the Chronicle was right in saying that
the entente cordiale is broken; it is, in a word, that
the English alliance, if not for ever broken, is completely
compromised. Have we not, therefore, a right to
demand of the Government that it shall explain to us
for what grave motives, for what preponderating, and
to us hidden reasons, it has sacrificed that alliance
which has been so many times re-purchased at a price
so onerous, and by concessions so painful to the
national amour-propre. The public does not under-
stand this sudden change in the feelings and the
opinions of the Government, which affects now to disdain
what it has often declared to be indispensable, what it
has so often made its real cause of existence. It is not,
moreover, the fear of war that occupies our minds ; we
are convinced that the Government will use all its efforts
to calm the too real resentment of England, and to revive
the English alliance. Bat, warned by its previous con-
duct, and sufficiently edified as to the sense in which it
understands national honour, France asks herself at what
price it calculates on re-purchasing that which it now
tramples under foot ?"
The National, in a somewhat coarser strain, puts
the matter in a nut-shell. It has M. GUIZOT com-
pletely on the horns of a dilemma. It says—
" Where are you now ? You confess that England
has become cool towards you, and that you have pro-
voked her rancour, and for the miserable amour-propre
of a head of a family, and the clearer profit of a rich
dowry, you now compromise the alliance which was in
your eyes the sole guarantee of peace. You lied, then,
when you affirmed that you were bound to sacrifice the
noble instincts of the country, its influence, and its
grandeur, to the odious exigencies of England, or you
must be forced to acknowledge that you have not hesi-
tated to risk everything when your dynasty was in
question."
The Journal des Debats gives, evidently from
authority, the following quasi contradiction to the
accounts which have been given of the events of the
memorable night between the 24th and 25th of
August. " The evening of the 26th and that of the
27th of August," says the Debuts,
" Were exclusively devoted by the Queen of Spain to
her usual consultation with her Ministers; and, accord-
ing to her custom, her Majesty, before she withdrew to
her private apartments, received, at an advanced hour
of the night, some of her household. Those who
pretend to be well-informed on the customs of
the Spanish Court ought to know that the
habit of the Queen, as it was that of her mother,
Queen Christina, is to consult her Ministers during
the evening, and to give receptions (hold a drawing-
room) during the night. It was some hours after quitting
her Ministers that the Queen, who received only M.
Donoso Cortes, and afterwards waited on her mother,
recalled her Ministers, to announce to them her resolu-
tion. Several amongst them were still in the palace, at
the office of the First Secretary of State. The others
had withdrawn. All immediately assembled in her Ma-
jesty's presence. They quitted her after having received
her orders, and it was during that evening that the
Queen signed the convocation of the Cortes. The French
Ambassador did not interfere in the slightest degree.
" This simple exposition of facts is sufficient to cause
to be appreciated the value of the accounts published in
the English journals. It is the only reply that ought to
be given to them. Any other explanation would appear
to. be a justification, and would be an insult to the Queen
of Spain, to her mother, and to the representative of
France. Did we wish to excite for a political purpose
those feelings which such ignoble calumnies must rouse
in the heart of every Spaniard, we should have too
much in our favour. We rather regret to be so well
served, and not to take advantage of it."
The Journal des Debats, which is the organ of the
Government, discusses this subject with that modera-
tion which has always characterised it. Not so the
_Epoque, the organ of M. Guizot personally, as dis-
tinguished from his colleagues in the Ministry :
" Nothing can be more natural than the ill humour
into which the English Cabinet in general, and Lord
Palmerston in particular, has been thrown by
the double marriage of the Queen and the Infanta
of Spain. Lord Palmerston had long been try-
ing to get the Queen married to Don Henry, and
the Infanta to a Coburg Prince ; but the double
negotiation has, unfortunately for him, proved a
failure. His diplomatic sensibility may therefore well be
irritated, and we truly have not the courage to find fault
with him for it. The Cabinet cannot see without re-
gret the old Spanish policy of England defeated al-
most irrevocably. For half a century England has
been constantly endeavouring to destroy the French in-
fluence in Spain. Thanks to the empire and the restoration,
it succeeded too well. Under the empire she protected
Spain against our arms, and under the restoration she
saved her from absolutist principles. Since the death of
Ferdinand England has alternately defended and over-
thrown the various ephemeral Governments that have
attempted to rule the country. The marriages of the
Queen and of the Infanta resolved upon independently
of English influence, and accomplished in spite of nume-
rous protests, are manifest signs cf her influence
being on the wane. Spain is evidently resolved
to free herself from the moral domination of
England. The rather mismanaged measures of
Mr. Bulwer have exposed this to open day.
There are things too disagreeable for an able man
to suffer himself to say twice. The British Ambassador
at Madrid, however, does not seem to be sufficiently
imbued with this principle, for his protests have
driven the Spanish Cabinet to make declarations,
the energy of which it would have been prudent not
to have provoked. It is scarcely within reason to believe
that England will confine herself to these protests. No
game is lost without trying a revenge, and it cannot be
doubted that Lord Palmerston will seek to gain his.
He will do well if he succeeds, and we shall have
nothing to say against him, if he plays with
the same fairness towards France as our Cabinet has
done towards his Government. It is a property of
the Conservative policy to march straight forward,
guided by the sincerity of its principles, and not to halt
before any obstacle which may be thrown in its way by
the recriminations of its most intimate allies, any more
than before any act of manifest condescendence, whenever
truth and justice dictate that it should move forward. This
is the way to be neither too humble in yielding nor too
arrogant in persisting. By taking up this point of view,
all the strength of good sense and conviction are placed
on our side. The Opposition has for six years been
incessantly accusing our Government of weakness
towards England, and now it accuses the Ministry of
mad temerity. Our Government never has been weak
—and is not now rash. In its conduct towards foreign
powers in general, and towards England in particular,
France has been more moderate and equitable; know-
ing how to sacrifice small things to great, making for
the sake of peace such concessions as were worthy
of her, and always preserving her owa freedom and
dignity, which never can, when lost, be regained at any
price. In 1846 an opportunity offered for strengthen.
ing by extending the influence of France, and the Go-
vernment seized it. There is not a single Cabinet in
the world that would not have been proud of having
done what ours has accomplished. Lord Palmerston
knows this well ; he who envied the slightest suc-
cess, and considers, with good reason, that which
has just taken place as a political aggrandisement
of higher consideration than any that has bee
made since the empire. We are asked— aftern
having brought the marriages of the Q
and Infanta of Spain to such a solution nee')
it possible to go hack from them on account
oTwthe
as
protests of England? No man of sense and right feel-
ing will take the trouble of exculpating
our country

G, OCTOBER l, 1846.