The Sun.
London, England, 1834-01-17 00:00:00

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11114

LONDON,
FRIDAY EVENING, JANUARY 17, 1834.

The Paris papers of Wednesday arrived this
morning. They contain no news of interest.
There are private letters, however, which state
that General QUESADA, the Captain General
of Castile, had positively made to the QUEEN
REGENT a representation similar to that o
General LLANDER ; the reply to which was,
that the QUEEN would take the matter into con-
sideration. QUESADA, so far from having been
rebuked for his conduct by the QUEEN, has, it is
said, had conferred upon him a Castilian title. The
Marquis de las AMARILLAS has been, it is said,
directed by the QUEEN REGENT to form a new
administration, of which he was to be President.
M. MARTINEZ DE LA ROSA was to be the
new Minister of Foreign Affairs, and M.
DE REMISA, Minister of Finance or of the
Interior. MM. BURGOS and ZARCO DEL
VALLE were also to have office ; and the
Cortes are to be convoked. Such is the state-
ment of the private letters which have been re-
ceived. We cannot, of course, vouch for its
correctness. The road between Vittoria and
Irun is again open.
The French Funds are rather heavy. The
following are the quotations of Wednesday :

FRENCH FUNDS.—Paais, JAN. 15.
Five per Cents., 104 f. 75c. 84c.
Four per Cents., 92f.
Three per Cents., 75f. 30c. 35c.
Bank Actions, 1,697 f. 50c.
Rente de Naples, 91f. Isc.
Roman Five per Cents., 91%.
Rente d'Espagne, Five per Cents., 18►4.
Rente d'Espagne, Three per Cents., 38%.
Royal Spanish Loan, 79%.
Rente Perpet. d'Espagne, Five per Cents., 61.
Belgian Loan, 1831, Five per Cent, 974.
EXCHANGE ON LONDON.
One month, paper, 25f. 30c. ; money, 25f. 25c.
Three months, paper, 25f. 15c. ; money, 25f. 10c.
—Cours Authentiaue.

The internal situation of the country presses
so heavily upon every reflecting mind, that we
trust the public attention will not be diverted
from it by any external circumstances whatever.
We have been too apt to concern ourselves with
the affairs of others, and have been too negligent
of our own. " Quenz Deus wilt perdere," &c.,
is an observation made two thousand years ago.
It is equally just at all times. Providence acts
by means, and it is only when we have done
everything which we can do in the situation in
which we are placed, that we can leave the
event to Providence, and place our reliance
upon Him who never has forsaken the de-
serving. But to sit with our arms across, and
to open our mouths in the expectation that
manna will drop into them from heaven,
is a mockery of the ways of Providence. Ne-
vertheless, this is pretty much what we have
done. With the exception of the year 1825,
and the short time that the Duke of WELLING-
TON was in power, there has not been a speech
from the throne since the year 1816 to the pre-
sent time, in which the distresses of the country
have not been alluded to, coupled with some
such expressions as the following, which occur
in the speech delivered by his late MAJESTY
from the throne on the 25th of February, 1826,
forming an humiliating commentary on the
Royal Speech, delivered on the 3d of February
in the preced►ng year:—" His MAJESTY con-
" fidently believes that the temporary check
" which commerce may at this time expe-
" rience, will, under the blessing of Divine
" Providence, neither impair the great sources of

" our wealth, nor impede the growth of national
" prosperity." But while distress, particularly
agricultural distress, was admitted by our Go-
vernment generally to prevail, and has increased
ever since 1815, no inquiry has ever been made,
no consideration has ever been given, to the
causes of such general distress. It was distress,
in truth, which produced the cry of reform.
The people attributed the distress they felt to
faults in their representation (as they unques-
tionably were, and still are). The Duke of
WELLINGTON denied distress, and negatived
reform. Lord GREY, alike incapable, or un-
willing, with his predecessors, to examine into
the causes of the general distress, caught at his
Grace's denial of reform, and bottomed his
administration upon it in opposition to the
Duke of WELLINGTON, who contended that
our Constitution should not be changed, be-
cause as it then existed it was the most
perfect that the world had ever seen. Lord
GREY gave us uniformity of elective franchise
in destruction of the variety of the modes
whereby Members had been sent to the House
of Commons, which, in the opinion of Sir
JAMES MACKINTOSH, and others of the best
Whig writers and speakers, constituted the chief
excellence of the British Constitution. But
what good has Lord GREY'S reform done with
reference to the general distress ? Has distress
been removed, or can it be removed by his
reform, or any reform in the representation ?
The time has now arrived, when the causes of
the distress which has prevailed and increased
during eighteen years of peace must be investi-
gated and removed, and no occurrences abroad
must .be suffered to divert us from the task,
which it is the peculiar duty of Ministers to
perform. This journal has not been wanting
in this respect. It has distinctly told them that
the causes of our distress are legislative restraints
upon our home industry, which we have pointed
out, and again desire to press upon their con-
sideration.

There is one article in the Westminster Review
of such importance that we cannot forbear dis-
tinctly calling the attention of our readers to it.
We allude to an article entitled " Short Parlia-
ments," in which we find elaborately discussed
a question, which will most undoubtedly soon
be brought before the public. The only way
in which Ministers, or in which the Tories, whose
side they seem to take upon questions of further
Parliamentary Reform, can ward off the continual
agitation and speedy triumph both of the ballot
and of shortening the duration of Parliament, is,
as the author of " England and America" justly
urges, by legislating in some degree as if they
really existed. They wish to avoid the danger
of giving perfect freedom of voting to men
whose education does not, they think, render
them fit judges of many matters which they would
urge upon the House. Let them, then, act as
the people would act, being educated, and having
the full power which would be given them by
Universal Suffrage, the Ballot, and Annual Par-
liaments. The writer of the article in the Westmin-
ster Review compares the acts of triennial Parlia-
ments with those of septennial duration, and the
comparison is certainly not in favour of the
latter. After the restoration of CHARLES If.,
the first Parliament he summoned sat for 17
years, and contained 178 Members in the
KING'S pay. It restored prelacy; it ejected
2,000 non-conforming clergy; it restored Bishops
to a place in Parliament ; it repealed the Trien-
nial Act, in short, "it abrogated the most valuable
rights of freedom and conscience which the
people had wrested from tyranny during a san-
guinary contest of more than thirty years."
The doings of septennial Parliaments since the
Revolution, the wars for the support of tyranny
and the maintenance of patronage, the debt
they have accumulated, the corn laws they have
passed, the taxation to screen themselves and
grind down the industry of the country they
have imposed, are they not felt by us all as
consequences of the encroachment on popular
rights made in 1716 ?
But much as we are inclined to agree with
the Westminster Review in what it says upon
this subject, there is one illustration it gives of
the advantages of short Parliaments as compared
with long, in a great measure founded upon a
fallacy. " In the reign of King WILLIAM,''
says the Reviewer, referring to the acts of the
House of Commons in 1698, when triennial
Parliaments existed, " 7,000 men were reckoned
a sufficient standing army for Great Britain, and
12,000 enough for Ireland ; in all 19,000 men
for the United Kingdom.—At present there
are demanded for Great Britain 30,000 men,
and for Ireland about 26,000, making in the
United Kingdom a force of 56,000, or 2,000
more than were thought necessary by Parliament
for carrying on the wars of King WILLIAM
against Louis the Fourteenth in the zenith of his
power, and. almost three times as many as were
thought necessary as a peace establishment in the
time of the same Sovereign." Now, this is
not altogether candid or fair. The writer omits,
in his comparison of the state of the country at
the two periods to which he refers, to notice
one or two very important distinctions which
bear directly upon the question. With respect
both to Ireland and England, it should be re-
membered that their population is now four or
five times as great as it was in the reign of
WILLIAM 111. ; so that if the number of in•
habitants in the United Kingdom were compared
with the soldiers maintained in each at the two
periods, the proportion of the latter would be
found to be less now than it was formerly. But,
putting this fact entirely aside, every military
man knows (and, therefore, are we the more
surprised at seeing this fallacious argument
in the Westminster Review), that the
thirty thousand men kept up in Great Britain
are not so much wanted for the service of Eng-
land and Scotland as to supply reliefs to the
troops on foreign stations. At present such is
the extent of our colonies that a man becoming a
soldier almost passes a sentence of perpetual
banishment on himself, for the probability is
that he will spend 20 or 25 years abroad. The
reason is, that we have not troops enough at

home to relieve the regiments in foreign service
oftener. Whether this great hardship might
not be lightened by making certain regiments
(the household troops) that now constantly stay
at home go abroad in regular rotation, or whe-
ther the colonies, under proper management,
would not cheerfully pay the expenses of all the
soldiery they might want, are other questions.
All we would do is to show the absurdity of raising
a cry against the numbers of the army because
they are not as low as they were under totally
different circumstances. The advocate of short
Parliaments has a case which ,does not require
to be bolstered up by fallacies like this,—a case
that must eventually triumph and which can
only be prevented from triumphing, nay, speedily,
and perhaps with some degree of danger, by Par-
liament as at present constituted, doing as it
would do if frequently elected by the free voice
of the people, uninfluenced by fear or corruption.

Intelligence has been received from Portugal
of the blockade of the port of Faro, in the
Algar ves. _

No communication has yet been received at
the Portuguese Embassy from our Govern-
ment respecting the proposal for sending troops
to Portugal. It is understood that no decision
on the subject has yet been come to.

We have this morning received Dutch, Ger-
man, and St. Petersburgh Papers, from which
we have given extracts. An article from Berlin
states that Austria and Prussia are doing all in
their power to prevent war between Russia and
the British and French Governments, it being
feared that such a war would very materially in-
jure their own commerce.

The merchants and others interested in the
receipt of newspapers and small parcels from
foreign countries, having remonstrated in vain
with the Post-office authorities against the rigid
enforcement of the law by which captains of
ships are compelled to deliver these parcels to
the Post-office of the port at which they arrive,
and the enormous charges of the General Post-
office upon such parcels, contemplate a petition
to the Legislature for the removal of this op-
pressive regulation. In a recent article on this
subject we mentioned several instances of the in-
jurious effect of the law against the transmission
of foreign newspapers and letters by private
hand, and more particularly of the unnecessary
severity with which it is enforced by the Post-
office Authorities ; and, to-day, we find the
following in a Morning Paper :

" The following parcels of newspapers from the United
States of Americi were brought to the North and South
American Coffee-house this morning, from the London
Post office, viz.:—
Parcel No. 1, weighing 27 34 ounces
—2, 19 y, -
-3, 7 %
—4, 1

Total 56 % ounces.

" These parcels arrived by the private ship Susquehanna
at Liverpool. The demand of the London Post-office for
delivery was 211. ss. The captain of the American ship
charged nothing for bringing them from Philadelphia to
England.

" Hail the Post-office regulations permitted the commer-
cial agent at Liverpool to send them by coach, they would
have arrived in London twelve hours sooner, and the
whole charge would have been 3s. 2d. Such facts furnish
their own comment. The importance of intelligence from
the United States was never greater to commercial men
than it is at this moment, the dispute between the Bank and
the Government there having produced a species of panic
in the mercantile and money transactions of the country."

THE FUNDS.-(THIS DAY.)

CITY, TWELVE O'CLOCK

We have no arrivals of the least consequence to the present
hour, with the exception of the express from Paris, and that is
of a very meagre description. The National French paper
states that a courier has arrived at the Spanish Ambassador's at
Paris, who left Madrid on the 6th inst. Great agitation
prevailed in the above capital, owing to the information re.
ceived from Catalogne, on which the Queen had a consultation
of M. Rayneval ; and it was expected she would demand the
interference of France, but the measure found great opposition
in the Cabinet.