The Sun.
London, England, 1832-11-30 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF TRW PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Ultra-Tories, we grieve to say, are pro-
ceeding in several parts of the country with their
scheme of self-immolation. That some amongst
them have begun to look about them, and draw
back from the precipice, we are well apprised ;
but others, again, are insane, and, it is to be '
feared, incurable. The whole band of " Con-
servatives" have been warned more than once
in this journal of the fate which infallibly be-
tides th, m, if, from blind hatred towards the
existing Government, they fall into the tray
which the Anarchists, or " Destructivss," have
prepared for them, by coalescing, either as a
body or individually, with the latter interest for
the promotion of any Ultra-Radical object,
because it may tend to embarrass or annoy the
i•ters. There are two dangers which beset
the Conservatives, and, we may add, the coun•
try, both which may be powerfully averted or
agsravated by those Conservatives themselves.
By throwing themselves into the arms of the
Anarch sts, they may very possibly carry some
point against the Liberal Government, possibly
they may force it to retire—and what then ?
How lone. will the Ultra-Tories keep the helm,
if they should succeed in gaining it ? Just so
long as the clubbists please, and not another
lour. If Lord Grey .and his colleagues,
with the good sense and moderation of the
whole United Kingdom at their back, find
the post of Administration untenable, what
chance of stability exists for those to whom the
mass of enlightened friends to constitutional
liberty are adverse, and whose extermination,
both as politicians and proprietors, is at the same
t: me little less a fithdamental principle with the
clubbists than that of the Whigs themselves ?
Let but the Ultra-Tories help the Ultra-Radical-
to power, :and they will lament the infatuated
blindness of their own enmity to this interme-
diate and protecting Government, in sackcloth,
al:d unprofitable despair. There is a second
Luger likewise hanging over the country, and
affecting not the " Conservatives" only, though
produced by their extravagance and wretched in-
capacity of amendment. There adherence to,
and abuse of, the borough power, occasioned
filially such a burst of national indignation, that
the boroughs were swept away, and have disap-
peared for ever. They are now exhibiting a
wantonness and recklessness in their abuse
of the landlord-power, which bids fair to raise a
storm against property not less violent than that
in which the boroughs perished, and of which
the ballot and universal suffrage will be
perhaps among the least noxious conse-
sprences. Look at the state of Marlborough
amid the conduct of Lord Ailesbury's agents.
Will it be endured that the tenant-right
of England shall degenerate into a misera-
ble tenure by political prostration ? 110
Ailesbury'sLod drivers and other great-man's
devils imagine, that if Sir Alexander Valet be
thrown out ofthe representation of Marlborough,
and that Dutch-American Conservative, Mr
Baring, be brought in by force of ejectments
served upon the liberal-minded tenants of the
Noble Marquis,—do the aforesaid stewards and
drivers, or does the Marquis himself, suppose
that such proceedings will turn eventually to the
good of Toryism ? Has a Mr. Shrimpton, or
has he not, been threatened with destruction to
his family, in the shape of a loss of his tenantry
at will, unless he shall compel his two sons, who
are independent of their father, to vote as the
great Lord chooses ? If John Jordan, a poor
blacksmith of Manton, has been told that he
forfeited a great Marquis's custom for no crime
but his attendance at a meeting of Sir A.
Malet's friends, is there any simpleton of a
Tory so thicksculled as to believe that Toryism
will be the better for such offensive tyranAt ?
If so, let him learn that the roused itiFa-
bitants have already raised between 8001. and
9001. to indemnify their oppressed neighbours.
If this goes on, there will be a convulsion
through the country, and the relation between
laedlord and tenant—as, if the clergy do not
leave off politics, the relation between parson
and parishioner—will soon arrive at the same
happy state as that under which Ireland now so
eminently prospers. The truth is, that these
Conservative bloekheads are playing the very
game which has given birth to Ultra-Radicalism
in this country, and by their perseverance in it
the desperado clubbists are encouraged to hope
for the success of their own plans of subversion.
We believe we assert a fact which can be
vouched by many testimonies,—viz., that a very
high and very upright, as well as clear-sighted.
personage considers the high Tories at this mo-
ment as one and all fit for Bedlam. What,
again, shall we say to the workers of iniquity on
the opposite side of the question ? The report
of the Key-and-. Pearson Meeting on Wednes-
day last states that Mr. Wakley insisted on the
reduction of 20,000,000/. of taxes, as a measure
at once necessary and practicably ! The interest
of the public debt is 28,000,000/., so that,
without robbing the public creditor (though such
an act might be venial enough with some peo-
ple) the country would have minus 2,000,000/.
to support navy, army, and all its civil func•
tionaries! God preserve us from radical
arithmetic ! Mr. Hume might have taught the
gentleman better. A blessed set of Lycurguses
and Solons, of legislators, financiers, and states-
men they must have been who summoned a
meeting of all London and Westminster for the
sake of spouting forth, or listening to, such
tremendous rubbish—of fixing beforehand, and
binding candidates irrevocably to the support of
what may almost be termed a code of laws dic-
tated by these same nose-leaders of the rabble,
and voted by their supreme and unerring wisdom
is be-applicable to the affairs of England at all
tithes, and tinder all circumstances, foreign and
domestic, of peace and war, of famine and abun•
&nee, of prosperous and adverse fortune. We
really cannot, upon looking at the proceedings
(Attie London Tavern, and at those who appear
to have got up and managed them—we cannot
stifle our contempt for the political mean-
ness of the Candidates and Members who so
forgot the respect due to themselves and
their avowed pretensions as to obey the sum-
mons and attend the meeting. If weakness
to impudence—if want of
will thus pander
dignity will thus bow before want of principle,
no wonder things are come to such a pass, or
. that the mob assume to be the masters. The con-
coctors of the above meeting had as much busi-
ness to call beforesthem the whole body of gen-
tlemt n who stood for Middlesex, London, West-
minster, Southwark, and the new districts, and
lecture them, and exact pledges from them,
as they would have had to command the meet-
ing of the Parliament itself to Guildhall, and
there issue mandates to their legislative slaves,
as Napoleon used to those automata whom he
ni.knamed " the Chambers" of his iron em-
pire. The thing is not to be borne—the de-
magogue-and-movement-monarchy must be grap-

pled with'!aiieflung down. LetThe'real friend'
of liberty show a little of that firm spirit which
liberty only can give, and these wretched anar-
chists, who understand liberty as much as they
do algebra, will soon slink into that obscurity
from which they never venture to emerge except
when a false alarm, raised by themselves, has
cleared the field for their operations.— Times.
The result of the division in the Belgic
Chamber upon the Address to the Throne, and
the consequent resignation of all the Ministers
of Leopold, is a very awkward fact, as far as the
veracious reputation of those writers is con-
cerned who have been for some time past busily
engaged in describing the armed interference of
the French in the affairs of Belgium as a mea-
sure exceedingly popular with that nation and
is representatives. The weathercock Journal
and its evening satellite, which, from the begin•
iiing of the protocols down to the present time,
have practised gross delusions on the public
mind as to the Belgic question—fixing day after
;lay, as" if from authority, for its peaceable and
final settlement—ridiculing the notion that fleets
and armies would be eventually necessary to cut
the complicated knot which the sapient Lord
Palm rst m was engaged in tying, and at
last, IN he t coercive measures against Holland
were resolved upon, declaring with oracular
solemnity that Russia, Prussia, and Austria
were consenting parties to the conven-
tion between England and France—these
Joutn tls, we say, have been equally confident and
equa lv false in representing the French expedi-
tion into Belgium as a measure which, if it (lid
not twine any laurels round the diadem of Leopold,
at least increased the popularity of his Govern-
ment. These same Journals threw the most
calumnious imputations upon our Belgic cor-
respondent for asserting the contrary, and pre-
dicting that the result of the debate on the ad-
.ress would be to prove that the Belgians were
not so lost to all sense of national pride—to all
heeling of independence, as to be utterly insen-
sible to the abject, the deplorable state of Immi-
iiation to which the Anglo-Gallic policy and the
coward conduct of their own Government have
reduced them. The result has verified that pre-
diction. It has given the Ministers only an appa-
rent majority of 2 out of a Chamber of 86—but as
three of the votes in their own favour were votes
of their own body, it is clear that the nominal
decision in their favour is a virtual defeat, and
the Ministers themselves, looking on it in this
light, felt that the confidence of the Chamber
was withdrawn from them, and, under that con-
viction, tendered their resignations. One cir-
cumstance, among others connected with this
discussion, which strongly manifested the unpo-
pularity of the French intervention, was the great
applause which followed some poignant re-
marks of M. Fleussu against the Ministerial po-
licy, and the degradation that is inflicted ui:on
Belgium, which applause the President was
obliged to interfere to repress. Now, what
were the remarks of M. Fleussu ? It seems
s me foreign Journals, probably in the pay of
Louis Philip's Government, had charged the
Opposition with being the venal supporters of
the House of Orange, and the Moniteur, the
Government Paper, had, with the hope of
breaking down their influence, in,inuated some-
thing of the same sort. M: Fleussu, having
indignantly repelled this accusation, proceeded to
express himself as follows:—" What is it the Op-
position desires? It asks for the Belgium of the
Constitution, and not the Belgium ofth e protocols.
This is what the Opposition desires, and that, in
the presence of a nation reduced to 2,000,000 of
inhabitants, -1)000,000 of Belgians ought not to be
degraded by subjecting them to the humiliating
demands which diplomacy imposed." These
were the expressions that were followed by
‘. disorderly ' bursts of approbation, which the
President interfered to check. Never was there
any thing in this world seen like the absurd state
of complication to which Lord Palmerston's
protocols have brought this . question, which
could have been settled at least 18 months ago,
in the only way in which it could be satisfac-
orily settled, by our abstaining from all inter-
meddling policy, and allowing the Dutch and
Belgians to adjust their own disputes, either by
negotiation or arms, as they best could. There is
hale doubt that, if left to themselves, the
ordeal of battle would have been appealed
to ; and in that case, if four millions of Bel-
gians were not able to successfully vindicate
their rights against two millions of Dutch,
the former people would be proved to be to-
tally unfit for independence ; and, if Belgium
cannot maintain herself suo marte, but must be a
province, it is surely more for the interest of
England, as well as of Belgium herself, that
,he should be a province of Holland rather than
of France. But Lord Palmerston could not see
this, when he was made the " cat's paw" of that
treacherous diplomacy which tramples on the in-
dependence of Belgium, while pretending to
supportit, and makes that betrayed and unhappy
country the theatre upon which Louis Philip and
his unprincipled Ministers perform, for the
amusement of the French people, a political
farce, in several acts, which is likely to end in
some deplorable tragedy. The Treasury scribes,
who generally contrive to make one part of their
argument refute the other, tell us that all the
five Powers . that sat in conference were ac-
tuated by their earnest desire to preserve the
general peace of Europe. Be it so—if they
were sincere, the easiest way of preventing the
general peace from being disturbed was to
have agreed to observe a perfect neutrality,
while Belgium and Holland, having " a clear
stage aad no favour," fairly fought the battle
out. If the intentions of those Powers were
pacific, they could have no objection to allow-
ing the question to be settled in this way, with-
out any trouble to themselves. if so, we should
not see in the Netherlands, at this time of day,
besides the armies of Holland and Belgium,
those of France and Prussia, inflamed by ancient
animosities and national hatred, observing each
other with that fierce vigilance which, though it
is not war, excites reasonable apprehensions of
events, the occurrence of which would open on
the plains of Belgium a volcano that would pour
the stream of desolation over Europe. Is it to
bring about such a state of things that the over-
taxed people of England are to be further taxed
and impoverished ? Is it for this their com-
merce is impeded—their domestic reforms
neglected—and the Ministerial pledges of peace
and economy miserably falsified ?—Morn. Her.
When a whole community suffer to the degree
in which the inhabitants of the metropolis suffer,
from the house and window tax, there is no
• use in cavilling about the mode in which meet-
ings with a view to the repeal of them are got
up.
Of course all men who are seeking popu-
larity will naturally seek to obtain favour by
taking a prominent part in denouncing an un-
popular tax. The question is not what the mo.
, Lives of certain individuals may be, but whether

object pioposed be a proper one. The best
answer to that is the zeal and unanimity of the
meeting at the London Tavern. It' any man
says that the meeting did not speak the senti-
ments of nineteen-twentieths, or rather ninety-
nine-hundredths of the inhabitants of the
metropolis and its environs, lie knows nothing
of what is passing around him. Five-eighths of
the house tax are levied on the metropolitan
districts. The proportion paid by all Scotland
for the year which ended the sth of January,
1832, was only 91,6461. that is less than one-
eighth of the amount paid by the metropolis.
Scotland contains a number of large and flourishing
towns, and it is absurd to suppose that there is
any proportion between the respective shares of
wealth and the respective shares of this tax.
What ! Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Dun-
dee, Greenock, Paisley, Perth, containing a
population of 600,000, to say nothing of a
number of third and fourth rate towns, with all
the seats of the gentry, not equal to one-eighth
part of the metropolis! The idea is prepos-
terous. The assessed taxes altogether amount
to upwards of four millions. Some of them are
unobjectionable and ought to be continued. The
tax on servants, carriages, horses for riding, &c.
dogs, the game duties, &c. &c., are not in the
same predicament with the hduse and window
tax. One of our contemporaries (the Globe),
while admitting that the house tax is more
I rigorously exacted in the metropolis than in any
lother part of the kingdom, and that in many
cases it must be exacted from persons who hap-
pen at the moment of the demand to be little
able to afford it, still seems to have a sort of
hankering after this tax because a great part
of it is borne by the fiindholders, and bes
cause shopkeepers would pay higher rents
if assessed taxes were repealed.

" The assessed taxes (he says) setting aside the inequa-
lities which have prevailed in the assessments, are not th e
most objectionable of taxes, if people were to be guided in
their antipathies by reason. A very large proportion of
them is paid by persons very well stile to pay them, and
particularly by the reeeive4s of taxes. It is very well
known that a large proportion of the funilholders, for in-
qsnce, live in London and its neighbourhood, and in the
description of houses on which the assessed taxes have
been allowed to fall most heavi'y in proportion to their va-
lue. Besides thet,e, there are within the same heavily
taxed district a greater numb:•r of pensioners and office-
holders, besides the persons living less directly on sums
paid out of the taxes, than in any other part of the king-
dom. The sums paid by them for assessed taxes are in
abatement or re-basement of the dividend, or pensions,
or salaries which they receive. The shopkeepers in the
Strand and Regent-street, and other public thoroughfares,
pay, no doubt, enormously in proportion to their means,
but these are persons also, who, though not idle or opulent
themselves, supply the wants of the opulent and the idle,
and calculate their assessed taxes among their outgoings.
If the houses in these advantageous situations have a pre-
ference over the other places for the purposes of business,
equal to that which is now paid for in higher rent and
higher taxes,and those demanded elsewhere, the whole would
s -on be paid in increased rent if the increased taxes were
taken away."

It is possible that. a large proportion of the
flindholders live in London and its vicinity ;
hut if the object be to reach the fundholders, it
would be better to tax them at once as annui-
tants, than by a process which reaches a large
number of persons who are in most straitened
circumstances. And with regard to shops, one
of the things which most disposed the people to
make a stand against the house tax was, that
though rents had fallen greatly throughout the
metropolis, all attempts to have the rate lowered
were obstinately resisted. The inhabitants of
S.. Paul's, Covent-garden, who began the op-
position, had made a new valuation, but the Go-
vernment surveyor would not admit of any al-
teration, and surcharged them. It was stated
by them that the Duke of Bedford, the landlord
of the most of the parish, had lowered his rents
about 30 per cent. This, however, was deemed
of no weight, because, though the rent might
have been lowered to the occupying tenant, the
holder of the lease was bound for a higher rent.
The case put by our contemporary is singularly
rnapplicable to tenants under lease during a pe-
iiod of a fall in rents.—Morning Chronicle.

COURT OF CHANCERY, Nov. 29.