The Sun.
London, England, 1833-11-08 00:00:00

PIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

The politics of the Court of Madrid, which
have often been difficult to be understood, would
lately have constituted an enigma too abstruse
for any diplomatic sphynx to unriddle, did we
not make due allowances for the effect of preju-
dice and for the state of parties. The Queen
Regent was of course disposed, by casting an-
chors on the right and left, and throwing out
nets on all sides, to secure herself as much as
possible. in the possession of power, and to catch
as many supporters as she could reach from all
parties, without declaring herself for any. She
had, therefore, pronounced against " political
innoratians" to please the Carlists, and against
clerical abuses to gain over the Liberals. She
had retained at the head of affairs M. Zea Ber-
mudez, who is reckoned, though we believe most
unjustly, an enemy to constitutional improve-
ments, while she bad given places in the
Cabinet and in the provincial administration
to the friends of the Constitutional cause.
She had recalled under her standard many
of the persecuted victims of her husband's
despotism, and still had not published
a general amnesty. She had, perhaps too
precipitately, confiscated the property of Don
Carlos ; but had not restored that of the Con-
stitutional exiles, who are the most zealous
antagonists of his Royal Highness. She wished
to please the Royalist Volunteers, who were her
greatest enemies ; while she discouraged the
Constitutional militia, on whose fidelity and
activity she could alone rely. Yet these nu-
merous inconsistencies seemed, and, in fact,
were forced upon her at the moment by the em•
broiled state of her affairs. The Minister Zea,
however inflexible he had been represented in
his political principles, has had the good sense
to yield to the force of circumstances. The very
circumstance of such a man turning (if we must
call it turning) to support the liberal cause,
when, according to common opinion, it is weak,
affords at least such a guarantee for the strength
of his party as even the most suspicious minds
recognize when a sagacious person adopts a
new course of proceeding. An extract from
the supplement to the Boletin do Cornmercio
of the 16th ult., which will he found in an-
other column, sufficiently shows the embarrass-
ment which was felt by the Government, in
pursuing its new liberal career. This article
seems directed against the Constitutionalists as
the great enemies of Ferdinand VII., while at
present the chief support of his daughter is to be
found among that proscribed class. It was with
no little surprise that we read its unwise allusions
to the transactions of 1814, when the late King
displayed his odious character under the double

aspect ofan ungrateful master and a cruel despot.
If these course of politics had been pursued
much longer, the cause of the Queen Regent
must have beeu lost for ever. People who %%ere
zealous for arbitrary doctrines would have wished
to hear them from other lips than those of her
Majesty, while the friends of freedom must have
been disgusted or alarmed at language which
pointed them out as objects of abhorrence or per-
secution. Since the date of the article to which

we have alluded, however, we have seen the

decree of the confiscation of Don Carlos's pro-
perty, and the politic measure of the recognition
of the young Queen of Portugal. The dis-
arming of the Royalist Volunteers in the capital
on the 27th ult., even at the expense of blood-
shed—the nomination of some more liberal
public functionaries the attempt at a new
territorial distribution of the country for a better
internal administration—the proclamation of an

amnesty, with a few exceptions (but which
ought to have had no exceptions)—the appoint-
ment of a Commission to inquire into the
impolitic laws for regulating agriculture and the
corn trade—are all indications of liberality and
vigour, which inspire us with the best hopes of
the Regent's Government. We may soon,
likewise, expect the announcement of other
measures, which seem the necessary consequences
of the former, ;rid which the present situation
of affairs imperiously dictates. We do not, of
course, allude to the promulgation of a charter,
which would probably at the present moment be
only another element of confusion thrown into
the chaos of peninsular politics, but to the recall
of all the Constitutional exiles, and to a better
distribution of employments among the an-
cient candidates for office. We formerly
pressed upon the attention of the new Govern-
ment another important measure, calculated
to improve the foreign relations of Spain, and
to confer stability on its existing dynasty, with-
out calling for any sacrifice except and of preju-
dice, and without incurring any loss except that
of an empty title—we mean the recognition of
the independence of the South American Re-
publics. We bring forward this point on purely
Spanish grounds, as we are sensible that no
ether claims than those of Spain would be
listened to. Gratitude can seldom or never be
expected from one nation by another—and we
are quite sure that the Spaniards of the present
day would never think of repaying the English
victories of Salamanca and Vittoria by surren-
dering a single acre of their colonies, if they
really possessed such an acre, on which to plant
their foot among all the conquests of Cortes
and Pizarro. But it is precisely because the
Spanish Government has lost all power in its
former colonies, because, by no possibility can
its trans-Atlantic authority be recovered—
because it inflicts an injury without the
chance of a benefit—because it needlessly irritates
states, really independent, by. foolishly calling
them rebels, while it might attach them to its
interests by acknowledging them as allies,—
because, in short, it foregoes all the advantages
of an extended commerce with its former sub-
jects, and incurs the charge of obstinate illibe-
rality with foreign powers fig nothing,—it is on
these grounds, we say, and not for any English
object, that we invite it to an immediate treaty
of recognition with the South American re-
publics. England would, no doubt, benefit by
the recognition, in proportion to her. intercourse
with the new states, and to the improvement
which that recognition would effect in their pro-
sperity and internal order; but the Spanish
Government is requested to consult the interests
of the Spanish people alone, and not those of
the London Stock 'Exchange. These interests
would all be collaterally promoted by an act of
justice and generosity to the inhabitants of its
former possessions in the new world. Speaking
the satne language, professing the same religion,
and partly being natives of the same country,
their predilections would soon return for an inter-
course with their mother country ; and a benefi-
cial trade, under the most friendly auspices,
would be the consequence. At any rate, the
measure would be bailed as a symptom of grow-
ing liberality, and while it tended to raise the
character of the Queen's Government in the eyes
of. European nations, would remove that re-
proach of blind obstinacy which was contracted

by the refusal of Spain to recognise the common-
wealth of Holland till the peace of Westphalia,
nearly seventy years after its real independence
had been established, and its formidable con-
quests made over its ancient masters.—Times.
Those idiots in knaves' clothing, the St. Si-
monians, have been repeating what they call their
" explanations" of the doctrines which they were
sent to this country to propagate. We ought,
perhaps, to apologize for noticing, even as ob-
jects of the most utter disgust, these would-be
pests of a civilized community ; but some of our
contemporaries having, doubtless with the most
innocent intentions, dragged the foul drivellers
into light, no alternative is left for us but to
assist in setting upon their foreheads the brand
of ignominy, loathing, and contempt. Fontana,
accredited Nuncio of the respectable Pere En-
fantin, armed cap a pie in whiskers and other
scaramouclieries, had brought with him Dr.
Prati, who wrote to us some weeks ago a false
account of a certain M. Buonarroti, to expound,
on behalf of the said Tom Fool of a delegate,
the new " principle" by which society was to
he redeemed from all its existing virtues and
advantages. We have announced, in a former
paper, that the two grand mysteries of this
anti-social redemption are, community of wo-
men and community of goods—that is, uni-
versal profligacy and universal plunder. The
illustrious Prati undertook to elucidate what his
fraternity designed by both, and in doing so,
after much preliminary skirmishing with the
terms—" competition," " association," " Chris-
tian religion," and so forth, all which he seemed
capable of turning to equally good account, the
learned Theban plunged in medias res, and de-
clared "matrimony to be one of the great
banes of society." He pronounced " men to
be the cause of general and legal prostitution."
He said that women had " no free education,"
—that they were " taught to assume a false
appearance of modesty,"—that they were "bound
by law to consider men as their protectors" (a
grievous hardship),—that " marriage ought to
be only a moral ! union" (moral and promis-
cuous being one and the same) ; but that
men and women should not be compelled to
live together " longer than they sympa-
thized with each other,"—i. e., longer than
the caprice lasted " that women ought to
have the same education as men ;" and that
when they arrived at their full state of per-
fectibility, they would be found performing the
same functions that man now performed ! ! !
Yes, reader, such things were said—said before
a mingled assembly of English men and women,
none of whom were known to have recently
escaped from Bedlam ; and the blackguards who
thus insulted common sense and common de-
cency were neither spat upon ncr pumped, nor
rolled in the next kennel, nor kicked home to
their garrets, nor had they cannisters tied to their
tails, nor a cry of " mad dog" raised after them
—groans only, and questions innumerable, and
shouts of laughter, and occasional exclamations
of hatred and disgust, interrupted the lecturer in
his unhallowed and obscene ravings. One
honest old gentleman, on hearing that men and
women living together ought to separate when-
ever they liked, cried out, " With your system
you will bastardize the whole world ;" and
this is truly one master key to the atrocity
of the entire proposition of unobstructed di-
vorbe. The institution of marriage, i. e., of close,
fixed, and, except under extraordinary circum-
stances, of inseparable union, is at the founda-
tion of all society, nor can the purpose of those
who would seriously impair or undermine it be
liable to any misconstruction. We know there
are such speculators going ; the continent is
full of them ; but they will make little progress
here, while the people of England retain their
right senses. As for the wretched creatures
who have just been exposing themselves to ridi-
cule under the name of St. Simonians, we take
for granted, from all accounts of their proceed-
ings, that they are by this time defunct. The
apostle Prati left the question of " common
property" unmolested, his audience seeming to
have enough of him already. We suppose that
the next time these animals make their appear-
ance, English manhood will resent in a proper
manner the obtrusion of obscene talk on female
ears.— Times.

If we recollect right, the present Lord Mayor,
on coming into that important and honourable
office from which he is about to retire, declared
that political considerations should never have
any influence on his conduct in the discharge of
his public duties as Chief Civic Magistrate—
that ho would at all times give every facility to
his fellow citizens in meeting constitutionally to
express their sentiments upon public questions.
The pledge so given has been redeemed—no
Chief Magistrate of London has, within our
recollection, been more free from political bias
in discharging the functions of the mayoralty
than Sir Peter Laurie, and on this account
alone, if on no other, is he well entitled to the
compliment paid him by a respectable body of
his fellow citizens on quitting the dignity and
duties of the civic chair. He has also been a
Magistrate most sedulous and unremitting in
his attentions to the administration of justice.
In this point of view he set an example which
it would be well if some of his brother Magistrates
of the Corporation would condescend to imitate.
The public would not then so often hear as it
does of complaints made touching the absence of
furred gowns and gold chains from places less
convivial than banquetting-halls, and duties
less pleasant than those which are connected
with the animated operations of City feasts.
Again, the retiring Lord Mayor deserves great
credit for his laudable anxiety to rdut out the
habitual and hardened swindlers of the metro-
polis. We regret he was not in office during
the great bubble year, when he might have had
the opportunity of catching in shoals, for the.
tread-wheel and the hulks, a larger and more
dashing race of swindlers than any even of that
school to which Coster has given the immortality
of his name. It would have been well to have
seen the ingenious secretaries, the plausible
prospectus-mongers, the "honourable" and gentle
directors of many of those schemes, through
which the public were plundered, and the sub-
stance of thousands of families exchanged for
moonshine—it would have been well, we say, to
have seen such wholesale traders in profitable
deception taught the advantages of honesty, by
suffering the penal labours and degradation of
convicted fraud. But while we give this praise
to Sir Peter Laurie as an honest and inde-
fatigable Magistrate, we should be flatterers

11 we were to say he has shown himself an
exception to the Roman poet's maxim—nem°
nascitur sine vitiis. He has his faults,
which, as a public man, somewhat blemish
his magisterial portrait, if it be painted with
the pencil of truth. One of those faults is
a too familiar mode of expression on the judg-
ment seat, which sometimes degenerates into
levity—gives hardened culprits an opportunity

of bandying sorry jests with the bench, and
detracts from the solemnity of a court of justice.
This has sometimes pained us in reading the
Mansion-House reports; for, even in this age
of sweeping innovations, we cannot get rid of
the old fashioned notion that the administration
of justice is, and ought to be, a grave and
solemn thing. In this respect we believe the
superior courts in England excel all others in
the world. Whatever we may think of a great
portion of our criminal laws, we are bound to
say that in the administration of criminal justice,
the superior judges of England, generally speak-
ing, for calm, dispassionate, and patient in-
vestigation—for the dignified impartiality with
which they hold the scales of justice, even
between the prosecutor and the prisoner, and
for the severe decorum which they maintain
in their proceedings, conic as near the pure
model of judicial excellence as can be well
conceived. A petulant and intemperate ex-
ception now and then appears, clothed with
the folds of the judicial mantle, though
not with its dignity, but exceptio probat
regulant. In the French Courts the prectice of
interrogating the prisoner, which our laws do not
allow, leads, as every body who has ever read or
witnessed the proceedings in those Courts, to
the most unseemly scenes. Sometimes the
Judge and the prisoner—sometimes the latter
and the witness—sometimes all three engaged in
dramatic and noisy dialogue together. We re-
gretted to observe the Lord Mayor attempting
to introduce this method of interrogation into
our Courts of Justice. We gave our reasons
for objecting to it at a former time. If any one
wants to understand how the interrogation 01
prisoners assists the development of justice, let
him read the proceedings before the revolu-
tionary tribunals at Paris at the era of Murat
and Robespierre. He will there see that the
prisoner was never believed, except when he ad-
mitted an accusation against himself ; his de-
nial brought nothing but bitter vituperation,
and criminatory remarks upon him, from his
prosecutors and Judges. If he confessed the
charge, he was, of course, sent to the guillotine ;
if he denied it, his denial was taken as a contu-
macious proof of guilt ; ,and if he remained
silent, as the most just of men did before Pilate,
of course he was obstinately impenitent in
crime, and in all cases the transition was very
quick from the dock to the place of execution.
This is a sort of practice which we never wish
to see introduced into the Courts of England,
although it has the sanction of such high pre-
cedent as we have cited, We were therefore
pleased when, on Mr. Savory's trial, Mr. Baron
Vaughan and Mr. Justice Parke severely repro-
bated the practice of interrogating a prisoner, and,
if he declined to answer, imputing to him guilt.
Those Learned Judges said it was not the law
of England, and they hoped the time would
never come when it would be the law of England.
The case to which we have alluded, and that of
Mr. Laird, who was tried for selling counterfeit
stamps, were sent to trial under the disadvantage
of strong expressions of prejudice by the pre-
siding Magistrate, yet in both cases the Jury
honourably acquitted the accused. At a recent
hearing of some criminal charge, the Lord Mayor,
adverting, we presume, to what fell from Baron
Vaughan and Mr. Justice Parke on the occasion
above mentioned, said, although his mode of
examining prisoners was disapproved of by some
high legal authorities, yet he was glad to say it
met with the approbation of the Home Office.
We are sorry that any magistrate, especially one
in other respects so useful and worthy as Sir
Peter Laurie, should, in the discharge of func-
tions connected with the administration of justice,
prefer the authority of a Secretary of State or
any Minister of the Crown, to that of the con-
stitutional Judges of the land. If all our ma-
gistrates were to take their law from the Home
Secretary of the day, and set the judicial autho-
rities at defiance, we had better dispense with
the common law and statutes of Parliament
altogether, and let Ministers, of their own will
and pleasure, frame the laws for the peo-
ple. We have made these observations
upon what is, in our opinion, the great defect
in Sir Peter Laurie's mode of adminis-
tering justice on account of the public prin-
ciple which it involves. The high estimation to
which he has entitled himself in other respects
in his capacity of Chief Magistrate of Lorton,
as an active, and protector of the
property and interests of his fellow-citizens,
makes us the more regret being compelled to
say any thing in the way of dispraise. He had
been thought to be rather favourable to capital
punishments, but the emphatic disclaimer which
he made at the Sheriffs' dinner, when he said
that " he who would rather repress crime by the
sanguinary penalty of the law than by a more
rational mode of punishment was a monster, and
not a man," deserves to be written in letters of
gold over the doors of Parliament, for the instruc-
tion of the legislators of England.—Morning
Herald.

One of the most remarkable signs of the
times is the attempt which we observe is making
to propagate the St. Simonian doctrines in this
country. In France they have followed upon
the heels of the liberal and democratic principle
at the present day with the same natural affinity
as on the occasion of the former Revolution. It
is not, therefore, very unreasonable in the apos-
tles of St. Simonianism to hope that, as the li-
beral and democratic principle has also been ac-
knowledged as the rule of government in Eng-
land, a similar progression may be calculated
upon among us. The English people are, how-
ever, not yet ripe for the inculcation of these
doctrines, whatever they may become hereafter,
should the cant of liberality, freedom, and
equality continue to influence our Councils.
For the- present St. Simon is received with
jeers and ridicule; and the odious and profligate
character or the system bearing his name is
justly considered to be equalled only by its
wretched absurdity.—Morning Post.

The Sun of last evening, in adverting to what
we expressed the other day upon the subject of
a more liberal commercial intercourse betwee❑
tnis country and France, observes that it " has
reason to believe that the points alluded to by
the Advertiser, have not been overlooked."
We ca❑ confirm this observation of our con-
temporary now, in its fullest extent, and upon the
best authority ; for not only has the attention of
the Vice-President of the Board of Trade been
specially directed to the admission into France
of the articles to whose introduction we adverted
the other day, without being in possession of
any positive information upon the subject, but
we have the gratification to announce that, to a
certain extent, his labours have not been in vain.
There are many of the Members of the French
Cabinet who are strongly opposed to the esta-
blishment of any thing approaching to a
system of reciprocal, commercial intercourse,
between this country and France—not from a
conviction of its being likely to prove injurious

to the latter, but because they are, by them-
. selves or their immediate relatives and connec-
> tions, monopolists in the very articles in which
the establishment of a free exchange would be
f most beneficial to this country. Such is the
case with regard to iron, cotton, coal, and the
I various manufactures growing out of them ;
and it is not, therefore, to be expected that
1 more than a commencement of the good work
can be accomplished at present. A commence-
ment, however, will, we have the best reason
to believe, he accomplished, and the wedge
once in, there appears to be no ground for
despairing that the force—the growing force—
, of public opinion will not drive it home. Our
evening contemporary The Sun is perfectly right
in stating that " many of the large towns in France
have already expressed their desire to have
a more liberal system of commerce established 1
between Great Britain and France ;" and we
may add the equally gratifying fact, that the
French journals, daily, weekly, monthly, and
quarterly, provincial as well as Parisian, are
pervaded by the same desires, and are zealous
' advocates of the same doctrines. Although,
therefore, the interested feelings of different
IVlembers of the French Cabinet may be suc-
cessful for a time, in preventing such a free
exchange of commodities between the two
countries as would be beneficial to both, it
is evident that the spirit of reformfrom without
will ultimately gain the ascendancy, and cause
the triumph within the Cabinet of those very
principles which only a feW of its members will
at present advocate. That the negotiations on
this subject, carried on by the Vice-President
of the Board of Trade during his recent resi-
dence on the Continent, have not been so suc-
ee,sful as could be desired, we have already in-
timated. For the labour and pains, however,
which he has bestowed upon the subject, as well
as the zeal and skill manifested by him in the
negotiations, he is entitled to the highest credit ;
and, for our part, we are satisfied that he has
even succeeded, in the face of such a host of
prejudices and difficulties he had to encounter,
in effecting a beginning. The first step is al-
ways the most difficult—the remainder are always
certain to follow.—Morning Advertiser.