The Sun.
London, England, 1833-06-28 00:00:00

'loss of character which the Government must
thereby sustain ? " Any loss," said the Duke of
Wellington, in his memorable correspondence
with the late Mr. Huskisson, " is better than the
loss of character, which is the foundation of
public confidence." Even supposing the Post-
office to have in strictness of law (which we deny)
a right to do all that they have done, in the way
of breaking open parcels and letters, &c., there
could be no two opinions among rational men as
to the impolicy of acting upon it. It would, in-
deed, be one of thi cases to which may truly be
applied the maxim surrimum jus est summa
injuria. It is an injury inflicted on the interests
of society which we never heard of the Tories
having had recourse to as a means of screwing up
the revenue. Better would it have been to have
kept in the Exchequer the gold Which Ministers,
in fraudem patrics, have paid to Russia, to
enable her to extinguish liberty in Poland, and
break down our commercial interests in the East.
Better would it have been that the money squan-
dered on a nonsensical naval expedition to the
coast of Holland in the season of fogs and
storms—better would it have been that the
twenty millions sterling voted, or to be voted, to
the West India planters, had remained in the
Exchequer to answer the demands of the State,
than that such paltry, vexatious, and truly un-
constitutional modes of augmenting a failing
revenue should be resorted to, as now excite a
just sense of indignation throughout the country.
—Morning Herald. •
In the House of Commons yesterday Mr.
Cobbett presented a petition complaining that a
constable of the metropolitan police had been
employed to ingratiate himself into the confi-
dence of a Political Union for the purpose of
acting as a spy upon its conduct, and that, in
the pursuit of this occupation, the individual in
question had laboured strenuously to urge the
members of the Union to violations of the law.
The Hon. Member corroborated the allegations
of the petition, or at least attempted to do so,
by the statement that he had himself examined
the witnesses, who were ready to come forward
and give testimony to its truth, and that their
evidence had convinced him. This is a charge
which demands further investigation, although
we cannot refrain from the repetition of the opi-
nion we expressed some weeks ago on transcrib-
ing the same accusation from the columns of a
contemporary journal. We could not then, nor
do we now, believe even of the present Mini-
sters (for it would manifestly be idle to suppose
that the officers of the police would adopt the
course imputed to them without instructions
from the Home office) a baseness so unparal-
leled and atrocious as that of going about to
ensnare the members of political unions, while
they were leaning upon the support of those
bodies, and affording them publicly in return
their countenance and patronage. But the
charge is confidently made, and it must be con-
clusively refuted. There have been occasions
in which the Government was bound in duty to
the public to resort to the employment of spies,
in order to discover and defeat the projects
of disloyal subjects and wicked men. Such an
apology would, however, be inadmissible and
inapplicable in the present case. The Ministry,
so long as the political unions were with them,
treated them as meritorious institutions ; and,
even now that the unions are no longer Minis-
terial, and have, therefore, ceased, in Ministerial
estimation, to be positively meritorious, they
are not treated as confederacies from which any
considerable danger is to be apprehended. To
employ spies to watch and circumvent them
would be, therefore, on the part of Ministers,
perfectly gratuitous, and indicative of a natural
propensity to indirect and covert proceedings.
But it is obvious also, even if there were dan-
ger, and the kind and degree of danger which
would justify the employment of spies in
order the more effectually to guard against it,
that neither the present nor any other Admi-
nistration would be justified in employ-
Mg the members of the metropolitan police
in this degrading and ignominious duty. The
metropolitan police is an excellent and most
useful establishment ; but it cannot long remain
so if it is to be demoralized by the example of
spies selected from its ranks, and confided in,
caressed, and promoted in consequence of their
aptitude for this hateful description of service, or
if the public are to be taught to regard it with
the feelings of aversion and contempt which the
whole corps, if prostituted to a use so base,
could not fail to excite. The subsequent pro-
ceedings of the House, which consisted of an
attempt made by Mr. Finch to obtain a vote
condemnatory of Political Unions, and of the
combined and successful resistance of Ministers
and Unionists to this attempt, will, of course,
convince all the world that Ministers can never
have taken secret means to obtain evidence
against institutions which in public they wil I not
venture so much as to reprove.—Morn. Post.
It is understood that the Government plan for
the renewal of the Bank Charter will be debated
this evening in the House of Commons. The
meetings of the Country Bankers in opposition
to Lord Althorp's arrangement with the Bank
of England have excited a considerable degree
of public attention, and it cannot be denied that
they deserve all the attention they have excited,
whether we consider the respectability and ge-
neral intelligence of the parties composing them,
the large stake they have in the question at issue,
the community of interest which may be pre-
sumed to subsist between them and the great
body of the community, or the accurate practical
knowledge which, from their position, they must
have obtained of the subject to which their at-
tention has been directed. The country bankers
have assembled with the feelings of ill-treated
men—of men wounded and irritated by accu-
mulated proofs that faith has not been kept with
them—of men conscious that they deserve as
much as any class of their fellow-subjects the
protection of the Government, and convinced
at the same time that they are left to their own
efforts to protect themselves from injury. It
was unquestionably the duty of the Govern-
ment to consult this useful, respectable, and
intelligent class of the community before it en-
tered into any bargain with the Bank of Eng-
land by which their interests and that of their
connections could be affected, even if the Go-
vernment had not promised to do so. But to
make a clandestine bargain after having given a
pledge to do nothing without previous communi-
cation with the. country bankers, whose interests
must be deeply affected by any arrangement with
the Bank of England, was precisely such a trick
as none but a Whig Ministry could have thought
of, and such as no class of Englishmen will re
gard with any other feelings than those of in-
dignation and contempt. The organs of the
Ministry pretend that the country bankers have
nothing to complain of, since the right of issu-
ing their own notes is preserved to them, while
they are henceforth to be liable to pay thOse
notes, not in the current coin of the realm ex-
, elusively, as heretofore, but in the current cop