The Sun.
London, England, 1846-09-15 00:00:00

tliening

L ONDON, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1846.

Bad the French Government been desirous of
Zend erirg itself utterly obnoxious to the Spanish
Teop.le, it could not possibly have attained its object
more effectually than by the recent negotiations for a
taarriege between the Infanta LUISA and the Due
:Is IltasTPENsira. Throughout almost every indi-
,Nidual section of that population an intense antipathy
has been thereby excited against everything Gallic, and
.l against evefything that rec.:llls la granule nation to their
:recollection. Not merely hace these sentiments of
linostility been developed by eaus.qc commentaries in
tl ie Madrid newspapers, and by kap,:saioned petitions
to Queen ISABELLA, but, according to plrivate and
.cr edible information, the conversations in the doh:esti°.
eir eles of the Peninsular metropolis are coloured by II
tte same feelings of indignation, and atrabilious pu-
g:* fades against the projected alliance are vended
urd sung in its thoroughfares. All classes, excepting
ally that mongrel cla's entitled the Afrancesados, are
alit-R, lin deprecating the diplomacy of the French
Lan bar ,sador.
,r remember in one of the charming stories
or th e Flemish novelist lIEINRICII SCIIOKKE
he , illu strafes the demoralising and denationalising
infra enc 9of one country becoming subservient to the
habit s, customs, manners, language, and policy of a
.n race: he displays the frivolity, and even the
foreig
ignore
inious criminality of such a petty imitation ;
and a )es so by instancing the Prenchified burgo-
masterand burgomasters' wives and coquettish frows,
Mill -iumerous amongst his countrymen. That little
/500 k hst ; already tended somewhat to the diminution
0 I 1:alio-mania in Flanders. Precisely such a pas-
s ion kg : •,Prench influence has been latterly infecting
t. he gp a uist:: Court and the Spanish officials, while

amongst the Spanish multitude a thorough abhor•
rence of everything French has proportiBnably rhen.
Upon this particular, what says the valiant document
penned by the Liberal party to ISABELLA? " For a
century and a half," it exclaims, " an invading tor-
rent has been pouring down upon us from the crest
of the Pyrenees, and on all sides destroying our na-
tionality. Our customs are French ; our language
would not be understood by the LEONS, the HER-
RERAS, the CERVANTES, or the SOLIS. Our
fathers could not recognise our costume. Our
Government is French, our Administration is
French ; our laws are framed on a French model."
These are the truths which have long impressed
themselves with a miserable forcefulness upon the
hearts of those Spaniards who have retained an af-
fection for the genius of patriotism ; these are the
impressions which have rankled amongst the popula-
tion during several years, and which the recent pro-
position for an intermarriage between the youngest
son of King Louts PHILIPPE and the only sister of
ISABELLA has carried to such an excess as to render
a general turmoil infinitely more than probable.
" Nations, Senora," say the Liberalists in
their supplication to her MAJESTY, " nations
have their prejudices as well as individuals ;" and
they might have subjoined with equal veracity that
the antipathies of nations are so much the more irre-
sistible than the antipathies of individuals, as is an
unit inferior in numerical importance to many mil-
lions. The individual antipathy, like the solitary
stick mentioned by ,Esor, may be subdued or broken,
while the antipathies of an entire community, like
the bundle of sticks in the same fable, would resist
all efforts at their destruction. But the document
to which we have already referred is not satisfied with
these significant and forcible declarations; it cries out
as plainly as language can express it, " There is danger
in the proposed alliance with Prince ANTOINE MARIE
PHILIPPE LOUIS D'ORLEANS, Duc de Montpensier !"
It adjures the Sovereign to prevent an union so ob-
noxious to her subjects generally ; and even utters
these emphatic and earnest words—" Could your
Majesty go amongst the masses of your people, and
hear their voice—the voice of the high, the middling,
and the low—one cry you might hear, one cry
only, and that is, Put no trust in France !' "
When we consider the excitement requisite for the
production of such passionate supplications from such
a people as the modern Spanish to such a
Sovereign as ISABELLA, we cannot but confess to
ourselves that there must be an under-current
of awful and impetuous force already at work.
What will be the course pursued by the political ad-
visers of the Queen of SPAIN ? What will be, con-
ceded or required by the KING of the FRENCH ?
They behold the intense repugnance with which the
subjects of the former hear of the marriage
of her sister with the son of the latter ; one
of them is the recipient of various urgent and
eloquent appeals for the rejection of the French
suitor ; the treaty of Utrecht is quoted as a proof of
the impossibility of such an alliance; such violent
articles are written in the Madrid journals, that the
Clamor, the Espectador, and the Eco del Comercio, are
seized by police agents. The latter print actually
maintains that though one hundred thousand
French bayonets came to uphold the claims of the
DUC DE MONTPENSIER, the protest of Mr. BULWER
would still remain "to wrap them up in, and SpaniAlt
hands to break them !" Notwithstanding all
these" indieation's of the . violent animosities
• excited_ by this matrinaonial alliance with the IN-
FANTA, the Gazette officially announces that it has
been " stipulated. and to -by his Excellency
DOBFRAN.VISCO-JAVIER ISTURITZ;" the day of the
Due 'DE ,MUNTPENSIER'S departure for the Perlin-
Sula is decide.d 'upon ; the' trousseau of the
lera.sv'ra is said to be in preparation in the workshop
of a Parisian jeweller, and the very morning of the
marriage is pre-arranged. The ultimate consequence
of such a clashing between the interests of the go-
vernors and the governed is manifest.

Amongst the many remedies recently put forward
on behalf of the landlords of Ireland, and for the
mitigation of the existing distress, is one suggested
by Mr. HORACE ROCHFORT, a gentleman of con-
siderable landed property, a magistrate, and deputy-
lieutenant. He proposes that the State should
become the creditor of the vast majority of the land-
owners ; that the Government should lend money at
three-and-a-half per cent. to all landed proprietors
who possess encumbered estates, to pay off their ex-
isting mortgages, taking from them a first charge
at five per cent., and binding them down to lay out
the difference of interest between three-and-a-half
and five or six per cent. annually on their estates in
permanent improvements, these improvements to be
carried out by the landlords themselves and their
tenants, under the immediate supervision and control
of the Board of Works, assisted by a staff of com-
petent officers. He rather innocently assures us
that the landlords would probably have no objection,
to have the State for a creditor instead of an indi-
vidual, and that the paying off of so many mortgages
would have the effect of unlocking so much more
capital for investment in land and its improvement.
Most assuredly modesty is not the prevailing fault
of Mr. ROCIIFORT. Often before has the principle
been mooted, aye and acted on, that the country
should lend money on sufficient security for the pur-
pose of being expended on permanent and lasting
improvements ; but it is the first time that the State
has been called on to minister to the extravagance,
the improvidence of one particular class, by lending
money for the purpose of paying off their debts, and
enabling them to improve their estates at the expense
of the nation. We do not know what the landlords
would say a measure should be brought forward
providing that the manufacturers and millowners (a
really industrious and useful class, employing a vait
quantity of human labour, and of the greatest benefit
to the nation at large) should be permitted to increase
their capital to any extent they pleased by borrowing
from the State, and applying to their own use the
profit to be made thereon over three-and-a-half per
cer.t., and letting the nation take the risk and respon-
sibility of loss, the entire expense of the staff of
officers who should be employed for the purpose of
ascertaining that the work was duly executed, the
quantity of employment afforded. According to the
terina of the contract, we venture to say that such a
proposition would be received with one universal
shout of ridicule throughout the length and breadth
of the land. It would truly be said to be a most im-
proper and unjustifiable interference with private
speculation ; that the nation should not become money-
lenders, and take upon itself the business of capitalists,
who are always prepared to advance money on
adequate security at a fair and reasonable rate of
interest. And what is there in the present times to
induce Mr. ROCIIFORT to believe that a proposition
fully as objectionable, one productive of far less be-
nefit in the way of affording full employment, should
be adopted, for the sole benefit of the landlords ?
Most assuredly he must fancy that the good old days
when the corn-laws were enacted had returned, and
that a legislature could again be found who would tax
the food of the hard-working and laborious artizan,
fetter our commerce, and impose extraordinary re-
strictions on our trade, for the purpose of increasing
the incomes and maintaining in idleness a favoured
class. We shall suppose for a moment that such a
step was practicable ; that the 150 millions of pounds
sterling, which would at the very least be required
for the purpose of liquidating the charges affecting
land in Ireland, could be procured ; that there is so
large an amount of surplus capital in the country,
yvi.;:eh could be obtained by the nation at three-and-
a-half
ireq -per cent. interest, in addition to the amount
already
',tired for the completion of the railway-
that are in co, irse of construction, or have received
the Parliamentai unction, and for the other public
works throughout t. tie country, and the ordinary re
quirements of trade aI, 4 oommerce; that the monetary
disarrangement consel iverit upon a transaction of
such enormous magnit eeaulit be got over, and that
the other classes would
to the monstrous in-
justice of being taxed fo ve the exclusive benefit of the
landowners—a suppositic tt ttt4t the history and pro-
gress of the Anti Corn-lay. League enders not very
probable. Let us inquire
here woold be the public
benefit commensurate with at,
great a risk, so large
an expenditure. It woul, I piolong the evil under
which Ireland has been so I ong suffering, one of the
chief causes of her impovex ished and wretched state,
viz., a landed proprietary, who, from their encum-
brances and embarrassments, are unable to discharge
the duties incidental to their I woperty, who exact from