The Sun.
London, England, 1858-11-09 00:00:00

THE WEATHER.—SUN OFFICE, Nov. 8.

THERM*3IETER, IN THE SHADE.
60—highest since noon yesterday. .
43—lowest this morning and during the night.
46—this day at noon.
BARomETER.-30.48—a sudden rise.
Wrsr, Easterly ; fresh, with fine cold sunshiny wea
ther—a splendid Lord Mayor's Day.

The affair of the Charles et Georges, although

at one time presented a very untoward aspect, may
eventually lead to very benefical results. There was
no doubt that one party to the dispute had deter-
mined on carrying matters with a very high hand—
that although one of those who had very recently
recommended that the arbitration of a friendly
state should be resorted to in every case, he had
totally repudiated any such interference, and, sub •
stituting might for right, had insisted on Portugal's
acceptance of terms dictated by himself—and to
which only the hopelessness of the contest that
might have ensued could have induced the Cabinet
to accede. Any intemperance on their part, or,
we may add, on that of England, might have pro-
duced very deplorable results We shall not at
present speculate on the possible consequences of a
difficulty with France inevitably leading to a general
European war. We shall not inquire which party
would eventually triumph, but it is not necessary to
pretend to any powers of vaticination to say that the
most successful party would have many reasons to
deplore the unfortunate collision. A hasty word,
a point of ridiculous punctilio, might have led to
the sacrifice of thousands of valuable lives and
millions of money; and that so awful a calamity has
been avoided may be attributed to the judicious
temperance of the Marquis of LorLE in the first
instance, and, secondly, of Lord MALMESBURY and
his colleagues in the Government of Lord DERBY.
Had Portugal resisted the improper and unwar-
rantable demand, England must have supported
her. We could not have seen our ancient ally, one
that has been united to us by many—we do not
mean" dynastic"—ties, trampled on. If her cause
were just, and we have not the slightest doubt or
difficulty on the point, we must have supported her
against any and every opponent, and the refusal
of France to abide the decision of an arbitrator even
of her own selection, in the face of the decision
arrived at during the Parisian Conferences, would
have rendered British assistance to Portugal per-
fectly inevitable, and, as we have already said, it
would have been impossible to have predicted the
results.

The prudence of the Portuguese Government has,
however, averted these formidable perils. They
yielded to the pressure under protest, rightly con-
sidering that such a course would induce the
EMPEROR to look more closely to the nature and
character of the transaction than :anything that
they could possibly say on the subject. By so
doing_ they deprived him of the faintest
"scintilla juris," they left him not the faintest
shadow of a claim. He has made himself the
arbiter. It was virtually an appeal from PHILIP
drunk to Pinup sober—froman excited to a cool
man.

Although the v
/e°, Rh
443/rEit
has not yielded a com-
plete arnende honorab
consi-
derable concessions, and it is
.has made very
thoroughly ashamed manifest that he is
of the transaction. He
pretends to justify. his unjustifiable proceedings
against Portugal
on the
ground of his
sincere devotion to the honour
flag. . Surely that ~ hon ~of the French
would not be
vindicated or sustained by compelling an apology
where none was due, or by protecting -those who
Were really disgracing the national standard, While
they availed themselves of its shelter to cover
atrocities that would otherwise subject them to
severe penalties. The Emperor did not cast his
mantle over BARTSZLE3IY, or any other criminal
who had offended - against the laws of Eng-
land, on the ground that they were French
subjects ; why, thn, should he have
complained
against the decision which declared the forfeiture
of the Charles et Georges by a competent tribunal,
and sentencedits captain to a severe, but in, his case,
we are bound, to declare, a comparatively lenient

punishment.
But setting aside that attempt to get over a very
unjustifiable, and at the same time, a very
injudi-
cious act, we are bound to admit that the
rest of the Etrlaton's letter, which ap-
peared in the .71fonit.,:ur and also in The Sun
of yesterday, is very satisfactory: It is addressed
to his cousin the Princs3 NAPOLEON, who is Minister
of Algeria and the Colonies, and therefore but n I
to look to matters (If this description. He declares

that "he had the liveliest desire, when the diffe-
rences with Portugal relative to the Charles-Georges
had terminated, that the question of the engage-
ment of free labourers on the African coast should
be definitively examined and finally settled on the
truest principles of humanity and justice."
It will be seen that he has postponed the claims
of " humanity and justice" to the termination and
satisfactory arrangement of the Portuguese diffi-
culty. While there was the slightest point deroga-
tory to what may be termed his " dignity," his
" vanity," or his self-esteem, he cared nothing for
the interests of humanity, of Europe, or even of
France, with which he was more immediately
concerned, but the preliminary point being
disposed of he could enter on the remainder of
the question with an easy mind and safe
conscience.

He now confesses that, as to the principle of the
engagement of the negroes, his ideas are far from
being settled—emphatically adding, " If, in truth,
labourers recruited on the African coast are not
allowed the exercise of their free will, and if
this enrolment is only the slave trade in disguise,
I will have it on no terms ; for it is not I who will
anywhere protect enterprises contrary to humanity
and to civilisation."

This is a noble declaration, sufficient to cover a
multitude of sins. It atones for every previous
error, and places the EMPEROR once more in a
right position. It would have been more satisfac-
tory if, having once seen the mistake into which he
had been betrayed, he had completely rectified it ;
but we shall trust to his magnanimity to render
complete justice to Portugal eventually.
The most complete proof of his sincerity, how-
ever, is the desire "to resume with the Eng-
lish. Government the negotiations which
were entered on a few months ago." This
is a graceful act, and we cordially
render to the EMPEROR all the credit to which he
is so justly entitled in consequence. It is an addi-
tional illustration of the truth of the doctrine, that
now frequently we
"Pluck from the nettle danger the flower safety."

Mr. BRIGHT has not gained much, we fancy, in
the way of repute by his recent oratorical displays
at Birmingham. In everything—saving in regard
to the question of Parliamentary Reform—it is not
too much to say, he went directly counter to popu-
lar opinion. Even when endeavouring to repudiate

the notion of his being un-English and anti-
national, he only contrived to prove himself more
and more clearly to be both one and the other.
Instead of suggesting wholesome and rational eco-
nomy, he propounded doctrines such as, if carried
out at Whitehall, would transform the Chancellor
of the Exchequer's premises in Downing-street into
an elaborated establishment for the skinning of

flints and the paring of cheeses. Never, we be

lieve, were any sentiments ever enunciated by an
eminent public man more diametrically opposed to
the genius of the nation than those recently- ex-

pressed by the hon. member for Birmingham.

has often been said, no doubt, that an Englishman
dearly loves a lord; and that in these islands, more-
over, there has long been flourishing a baneful sys-
tem, scornfully dubbed by the chief among mu. living
satirists (men like CARLYLE and TIIACKERAY)
tiunkeyism and snobbishness. We don't believe,
for our own part, in the universality of this moral
stain or social taint among us as a people. The im•
putation is, to our thinking, nothing but a libel
upon the general multitude. It is rife among cer-
tain classes, no doubt, as in every other population
of Christendom, but that those classes even predo-
minate in England we simply deny as an extrava-
gance. And therefore it certainly does appear to
us to be nothing less than a gratuitous piece of im-
pertinence when any man in a great public assem-
bly rises for the purpose of inaugurating (in the
outraged name of principle) the most vulgar of all
class movements—a movement against the aristo-

cracy. Hitherto we have assuredly imagined that

our constitution was essentially a mixed constitu-
tion. It has appeared to us that that very blending in
it of different elements constituted its strength and
excellence. This, according to our view of things,
has been above all the distinguishing characteristic
throughout the whole of our national annals, dating
from our modern Parliament back to our ancient
Wittenagemote. Precisely the same political truths
in this way have been stamped upon our annals,
though in different characters, century after cen-
tury, generation after generation—whether it were
the Mickle Synoth or the House of Commons—
thanes and ealdormen or the five orders
of the nobility—the princes of the heptarchy
or the one constitutional Sovereign. It is
merely the same thing by a different name
—the apparently contrasting identity of six

- -
and half-a-dozen—whether we speak of the popular

assembly as it was when it consisted of the repre-
sentatives of the ceorls and the borsholders, or as it
is nowadays, when it consists of the representatives
of yeomen, burghers, and potwallopers. Monarch,
nobles, people -1- king, lords, and commons—the
same story is told from the time when on the death
of BRIHTRIC, EGBERT returned to seize the sceptre
of Britain, after his three years' exile at the Court
of CHARLEMAGNE. Even during the so-called in-
terregnum of the Commonwealth it was the same
intrinsically. Then—as before, and as since—there
were the two houses of Parliament. There was the
House of Commons, and there was—" the other
house !" The Upper House being no more called
the House of Lords under CROMWELL than it is so
termed nowadays in the debates of the House of
Commons. During the Commonwealth, therefore,
we repeat, even during the Commonwealth there
were the same elements of the constitution as there
had been before, as there were to be afterwards.
There were the two houses of Parliament—the
House of Commons and " the other House"—and
in lieu of the Crowned and Anointed King there
was his Highness OLIVER CROMWELL, the Lord
Protector. And " Long live his Highness ; God
save the Lord Protector," shouted the spectators in
Westminster Hall on the 26th of June, 1657—as
OLIVER sat there in a magnificent chair of state,
robed in a purple mantle lined with ermine, hold-
ing a sceptre of massive gold in his hand ! There

- _
on one side of his Highness the Lord Protector,
stood the Lord Mayor, with the sword of the city
—and on the other the Earl of WARWICK, with
the sword of the Commonwealth. With different
namCdoencsletasim, ptelalgeants, and costumes, it is the same story
constantly throughout.
suchgho t.
vulgarS o th aztzh
againste n Btahie
G H Th a
Houses
of Peers and the Orders of Nobility, he is not only
himself un-English
an hisan and anti-national, but his ideas,
his arguments,principles are simply un-
constitutional. Beyond
member for Birmingham articulates' moreover,
e irn, e tohne.
grgously a complaint against the sti exclu-
siveness of the House of Lords when
he
says
that.
as distinctly as at the entrance to the Parks there
the announcement "No dogs are allowed to enter"
—so at the door of " the 9ther_House" there is vir
the positive intimation "No traders are
allowed to enter." Nothing less than ignorance
of the gravest kind could speak of the House of
Peers in this way, as the palace of an exculsive oli-
garchy. Why, in the House of Lords there are
scarcely a dozen peers who can trace back their an

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THE SUN.
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1858.