The Sun.
London, England, 1833-10-14 00:00:00

time we confess it gives us great pain to see the
people having recourse to measures which ought
only to be adopted in the utmost extremity. The
assessed taxes must be repealed. There is no doubt
of their being repealed. Why, then, having a Con-
stitution under which the people can return a majo-
rity of Representatives, will they set aside Parlia-
ment, and act by revolutionary means ? The threat
of Lord Milton was conditional. We were then in
a crisis. The object of the struggle was to set aside
an Oligarchy, and to obtain the Constitution of the
Reform Bill. But to continue to use revolutionary
means after a Reformed Constitution has been ob-
tained, is madness. Some of our contemporaries
make too little of these assc.ciations to resist the
payment of taxes. As another specimen of the
exaggeration of John Bull, let our readers take the
following :
" The accounts from Ireland are dreadfully appalling—
crime appears to b- on the increase, ant murder, rapine,
and destructio❑ are the order of the day and night; yet
we are told of the tranquillity of that country. At
home, we regret to say, incendiari•m is getting just as
common as it was two or three years since—farm yards
are fired, cottages burned, mills destroyed in different
parts of the country; but neither are any observations
made upon the subject, nor any means adopted for the
prevention of the atrocities, or for the conviction of those
who commit them."

We question if ever there were fewer appalling
crimes in Ireland than at this moment. With the
power of life and death, however, which the land-
lords of that country possess over their tenants and
cottagers, no one will be surprised that the distress
of the people should drive them to wild exc<sses.
With respect to this country, there are, it is true,
but too many instances of incendiarism at present ;
and mere incendiarism, when unaccompanied by
riots, is the most difficult of all crimes to discover.
Ministers succeeded in doing what Sir Robert Peel
and the Duke of Wellington declared they could
not do—they put an end to the assemblages of la-
bourers—anti to open violation of the laws. But
we fear, after what the labourers of England have
been taught with regard to incendiarism, it will be
no easy matter to put it down. Witnesses and pro-
secutors are evidently intimidated. The gentry of
England have dreadfully neglected their duty to
both Irish and English labourers, in making no pro-
vision for the former, and allowing the latter to be
exposed to a ruinous competition with half starved
Lis!). These fires are a lesson from which the
English gentry ought to profit. The evidence be-
fore the Agriculiural Committee connects the im-
proved condition of the labourers with the intimida-
tion. Is it to be supposed that this doctrine is not
carefully instilled into the minds of the labourers ?:
We repeat it, this is not a subject ,to he discussed
with the nonchalance of John Bull.—illorning
Chronicle.

The Corporation of Leicester have promulgated
to the world the resolutions on which they announce,
explain, and vindicate their determination to submit
no further to the illegal and unconstitutional inqui-
sition which his Majesty's Ministers have thought
proper to establish. We refer to those resolutions
with unfeigned satisfaction. They contain a calm,
firm, straight-forward, and manly exposition of the
principles and feelings by which, in the circum-
stances in which the Corporation of Leicester is
placed, it is perfectly natural that a body of upright
and honourable gentlemen should be actuated. We are
glad to perceive also that the Corporation of the city
of Dublin meditates a similar resistance to the un•
authorized and illegal inquiries of the Commissioners,
which will be so much the more valuable than that
of Leicester, and so much the more eflicacions to
bring the public and the Commissioners likewise to a
just and moderate estimate of the powers and duties of
these gentlemen, that the former meet the question
more fully and completely than the latter,alleging their
objections at the very threshold of the investigation,
and stoutly refusing to permit the inquisitors so much
as to erect their usurping tribunal within the precincts
or purlieus of corporate authority and rights. The
submission which other Corporations have yielded
to the Commissioners, and the ready answers they
have afforded to their inquiries, having been entirely
voluntary, and merely courteous, it now remains to
be seen whether those to which it yet remains for
the Commissioners to make their approaches will
give them a reception equally favourable. We
hope and believe that the same acquiescence on the
part of Corporations will not henceforth be generally
experienced, since it seems that the submission
which has been yielded in the spirit of courtesy and
the consciousness of rectitude is to be employed as
an argument in support of the authority of the
Commissioners, and as a topic of reproach against
such Corporations as have not thought it their duty
to aid in the execution of a Commission
which, so far as respects legal authority, is no
better than a sheet of waste paper. The
Corporations ought undoubtedly to unite in a
league for their common defence; for it is evident,
from the course pursued by some of the Commis-
sioners, and more evident sill from the tone of that
portion of the press which labours to sustain the
authority of the Commission, that nothing like fair
play towards corporations is intended. It is, for
instance, confidently inferred, and irrationally, from
the refusal of the corporation of Leicester to submit
to investigation, that this particular corporation has
been guilty of malversation, while the inference of
general purity which springs legitimately from the
all but universal promptitude with which corpora-
tions have offered themselves and their affairs to a
searching and arbitrary scrutiny, is scrupulously
avoided. Is this fair play? Or is it not rather a
proof that it is predetermined to discredit and
defame corporations generally, by means of
this commission, in order to prepare the way
for the ultimate object of revolutionizing or de-
stroying them ? The question is simply whether
corporations shall continue to assist the commission-
ers by communications which the corporation of
Leicester has shown to be strictly voluntary and
gratuitous, now that it has become evident to all
mankind that the purpose the Commission has in
view towards these institutions is inimical and de-
structive. The commissioners at Leicester have
permitted themselves to be defeated in their osten-
sible object of collecting authentic information, while
they have prosecuted sedulously the real object of
their mission in directing popular odium and cla-
mour against the corporation. From this state of
things the inferences seem unavoidable—first, that
the Commission is a thing so utterly repugnant to the
spirit and principles of British law that in the first
instance in which it is withstood it is found to be
utterly destitute of any legal means of enforcing its
authority ; and secondly, that, although incapable
of any alliance with the law, it combines and
amalgamates spontaneously and instinctively with
all the clamour, prejudice, and violence that exists
or can be excited in society against existing institu-
tions. If the Commission be legal why should not
the Leicester Commissioners proceed at once to
vindicate their slighted authority by the use of such
legal means as upon this supposition must exist, in
order to compel the Corporation of Leicester to an-
swer for its contumacy ? If the Leicester Corpo-
ration can safely disregard the summons of the Com-
missioners, why may not every other Corpo-
ration disregard it with equal safety ? And what
is the value of a Commission which may safely be
thus treated, or in support of which, when thus
treated, all that the Commissioners can do is to ap-
peal to a mob, and proclaim their readiness in the
absence of the direct and authentic evidence which
is thus placed beyond their reach, to receive and re-
gister whatever anybody may please to bring them
us a substitute ?-111orning Post.

DIPLOMACY OF AMERICA.—The compen-
sation of diplomatic agents of the United States is as
follows: Salary of Ministers, 9,000 dollars per annum ;
Charges d'Affaires, 1,500 dim.: per annum ; Secretaries of
Legation, 2,000 ditto per annum. Ministers and Charges
d'Affaires are allowed on going out an outfit equal to one
year's salary, and a quarter's salary on their return home.
The Legations are allowed the amounts actually expended
in postage, stationery, and other contingent expenses.