The Sun.
London, England, 1832-11-16 00:00:00

which might stimulate the national pride of
the Belgians, and incite them to main-
tain their rights, and consummate the work of
their independence by their own valour and re-
sources. The' reason is that Leopold relies on
foreign aid ; and having been called to a throne
to defend it by his martial prowess, stoops his
diadem beneath the ample shield of France, and,
under that protection, contents himself with an
inglorious security. When danger was more re-
mote nothing could surpass the warlike alacrity
and patriotic decision of Leopold ; he was conti-
nually moving from place to place, reviewing
his troops, and making speeches to them full of
heroic anticipations of their future conduct and
his own. He rode in laurelled camps, to the
sound of triumphal music, and accompanied by
his Royal bride, and the beauty and chivalry of
the land, distributed those honours before battle,
which usually follow a victory. Having worked
up his troops and the Belgian people, as we were
repeatedly assured, to a high pitch of enthu-
siasm, no sooner does the moment for action
arrive than he descends from his war-charger
and assumes a peaceful attitude. He talks with
composure of the soldiers of another nation
achieving by the sword\ the settlement of the
Belgic quarrel, instead of putting himself, as he
ought to do, at the head of his " brave Bel-
gians," and maintaining the credit of his own
Crown, and the cause of a country with four
millions of people, against an adversary who
rules a population of only two millions. When
Belgium separated from Holland, we con-
tended for her right to independence, pro-
vided she could keep it, as she had won it, by
her own right hand. But if Belgium cannot
maintain her own independence single-handed
against Holland, her separate existence cannot
long be an independent existence. She must
become a province of some greater Power. At
present France, by ordering the Belgic army to
remain passive, while her own troops proceed to
fight the battles which ought to put Belgian cou-
rage to the test, exercises something very like the
rights of sovereignty over the people of Leopold,
and, indeed, the speech of the son-in-law of
Louis Philip is more like the speech of the
Viceroy of a French dependency than that of an
independent King of the Belgians. It is in
vain for the Treasury scribes to attempt to hood-
wink the good sense of the people of England
by debating this question as a party one, and
making it a tennis-ball of Whig and Tory tactics.
If every error that the Whigs commit—if every
abuse that they advocate, is to be patiently
borne, because the Tories, if in office, would
have acted in a similar manner, of what benefit
is it, we ask, that the question of Parliamentary
Reform has been carried, for the only ♦alue of
that measure was to insure wise, and good, and
cheap Government, by making public opinion
be felt in the Councils of the Empire above the
selfish clamours of faction or party. That the
present warlike proceedings against Holland are
absurd and mischievous in the extreme—that they
are the result of that conceited intermeddling in-
capacity at the head of our foreign affairs which
we accurately estimated from the beginning of
the protocol-follies, every man of sound mind,
and who has not an interest to the contrary,
now acknowledges. The opinion of the great
commercial interest of London has been pretty
strongly expressed upon the subject, without dis-
tinction of party----the supporters of Ministers,
but not their servile tools, being as ready to con-
demn them for their conduct in this matter as
any other persons. But though the advocates
of liberal opinions have the " thunders" of poli-
tical excommunication► fulminated against them,
because they venture to remonstrate with Minis-
ters upon this question, yet, as all " free-born
Englishmen" are not easily reduced to the state
of gagged helots, without even the privilege of
complaint, there are some who will still venture
to look more to the wisdom or folly, the good or
evil of the measures of a Government, than the
party-badges which its Members wear. As to
the conduct of Leopold in acceding to the de-
mand of the French to enter Belgium, it would
he bad enough, under any circumstances, while
there was none except a Dutch enemy to op-
pose ; but it becomes much worse when it
appears that he has, in so doing, acted against
the wishes of the majority of the Belgian people.
Our Brussels correspondent says—" The ma-
jority of the country is strongly opposed to their
Gallic friends, and the instant the formal de-
mand of Leopold (for the French troops) is
known, he will be the most unpopular Monarch
in Europe ; and, supposing the city of Antwerp
to be destroyed, I would not give him six
months' purchase of his throne." We can ea-
sily believe, from the anticipations of the peace-
able submission of the Dutch King, which were
made from day to day in the Treasury Journals,
when the Convention between France and Eng-
land was first announced, that the statement is
not far from the truth which asserts that" Talley-
rand completely entrapped Lord Palmerston--that
he persuaded the sapient Minister it was only
necessary to show a strong demonstration of co-
ercive measures and the Dutch would yield."
Indeed the Government Papers at one time in-
formed the public gravely that " William only
required a decent pretext for submitting." The
Convention between the two Powers was to
afford that pretext. Thus were our Statesmen
outwitted by the Doetrinnaires.—Morning
Herald.

their legislative Chambers. None of them could
conceive that this flaming emissary of the nor-
thern Czar could visit the Courts of Germany
for a trifling object, and none of them could
imagine that his object could be a good one.
The mighty Emperor of all the Russias, it was
sagely concluded, never could travel from Court
to Court, and from Government to Govern-
ment, in the person of his most intriguing Am-
bassador, for nothing,--as there was never a
comet without its commission.
" Nunquam futilibus excanduit ignibus rather."
What will such politicians say, then, should
we be enabled to point out some even laudable
object in the diplomatic travels of this Russo-
Italian Count ? Will they believe us ? We
fear not ; though we can assure them that we
have no intention to mislead, and that we have the
means of knowing what we state. It is well known
that last summer the two leviathan Powers of
the Germanic Confederation assumed the dange-
rous initiative of proposing measures to the Frank-
fort Diet, alarming to a considerable portion of
the German people, and offensive to all the
constitutional States of Europe. The smaller
kingdoms, or principalities, of southern and
western Germany were particularly attacked in
what they justly considered their guaranteed
rights and liberties. It was evident that, were
the same system continued, the discontented
friends of freedom in Germany must begin to
plot against their own Governments, and look
for aid in attack, or an asylum in defeat, to the
west of the Rhine. France would thus natu-
rally be forced to become the protectress of Ger-
man liberty; and already the Holy Alliance party
in Germany spoke of France and England as
enemies of general tranquillity, because they are
the friends of constitutional freedom. Had this
state of things continued, an explosion was to
be apprehended which (without the subsidies of
England) might have dislocated the German
empire, and renewed a war of political doctrines.
Russia, though not a German Power, was sup-
posed to have urged to extreme measures, and
was known to have great influence at the German
Courts. In such a state of things, it is under-
stood to have been one of the objects of Lord
Durham's mission to explain frankly to the Rus-
sian Cabinet the consequences likely to ensue
from an intestine contest in Germany for free
institutions, or against the abolition of such as
existed, should France be invited to mingle in
the quarrel, and England rather countenance or
assist than oppose the malcontents. The Em-
peror was consequently invited rather to allay
than to excite a tempest that might become dan-
gerous to the party whose cause he was desirous
of espousing and supporting. His Lordship him-
self, had he been able to undertake a journey to
Vienna, as he did to Berlin, might have been
requested to explain the new views which the
Emperor had thus obtained, and which he him-
self had suggested to the German Courts ; but
as he felt it would be useless for him to go on
such a mission, the duty devolved upon that
able diplomatist whose movements have created
so much speculation. Such, after all, is a very
plain history of transactions on which so much
mystification has been grounded. The simpli-
city of a statement of facts is not always a
reason for doubting its truth, whatever some
cunning Conservatives may say ; and we there-
fore leave them to take our account or that of
the alarmed politicians of Germany respecting
the mission of Count Pozzo di Borgo, as they
think proper.— Times.
Without attempting to preach a visitation ser-
mon, or to detail for our readers the especial
and positive duties of parochial clergymen, it
can do no harm to give some of them a hint as
to duties which are of a negative and general
description. It becomes, then, as we conceive,
most expedient in times like these, that clergy-
men should not do anything to increase the dan-
gers which beset the Church establishment, by
incurring themselves, or entailing upon their
order, any public obloquy or hatred that can be
considered gratuitous, and might by possibility
be avoided. It seems to us more desirable than
ever, that clergymen should, in the exercise of
their several functions, strive to conciliate to the
utmost the confidence and good-will of their
neighbours,—that for such a purpose they ought
to show themselves free from undue selfishness,
and easy to deal with,—but above all things,
that they should cautiouslyabstain from provoking
the laity by exhibiting a spirit of arrogant dicta-
torship in affairs over which, properly speaking,
they have no control,—by the assumption
of powers which the law has not vested in
them ; and which they render themselves
ridiculous as well as odious when they
affect to enforce upon their parishioners.
Clerical Magistrates are throughout England
a hated race,—partly because there exists
a strong and just dislike amongst right-thinking
people to the degradation of the sacred office of
a clergyman by its intermixture with the harden-
ing duties of the temporal magistrate,—partly,
and chiefly, because it cannot be denied that
clerical justices, as a body, have the reputation of
discharging their magisterial trust with less ad-
' mixture of mildness, forbearance, and impar-
tiality, than most other classes of Englishgentle-
men. We fear that this abuse of their judicial
authority, alleged against the parson justices,
has gone far towards indisposing the minds of
men towards a patient hearing of the claims of
the Church, as an ancient establishment incor-
porated in a great measure with the social as well
as political constitution of the country. But if
this be the result of political power, beyond all
question legal, when injudiciously employed, in
how much worse estimation would the clergy be
held were the grasping at unlawful power on
their part as general and flagrant as is their sup-
posed misuse of that which the law concedes to
them ! A statement on this subject has reached
us from Brighton, at which we refrain from
expressing the full measure of disgust that fills
us, because we can scarcely yet believe the
fact, -however well authenticated, to be real.
It is said that, between the two manias
of cant and presumption, the parochial clergy
of Brighton went so far as to order that
the shops of that populous and busy town should
be closed throughout yesterday, the churches
being by the same high ordinance opened, with
a view to the formal celebration of a thankigiving
for the exemption of Brighton (by name) from
the cholera. The Supreme Omniscient Being
is informed by these humble and pious minis-
ters, that there has been no cholera within
Brighton or its purlieus, and his attribute of
omnipotence is inv(oikfedpotslsiaibtiteh;e
braevagweasrdoedf theoff
all the rest of the Christian
dfriosmordßerrigmbatoyos—tilllet
population of Great Britain shift for themselves
how they may ! Now, passing by the wretched
humbug of this spectacle, let us look at its
enormous impudence. What ecclesiastical au-
thority sanctioned the notification of a public
thanksgiving upon that particular subject
for any given day ? Was the Bishop of the

war.

diocese consulted ? Was any recognized
power or jurisdiction a party to it ? Again,
by virtue of what Order in Council, or other
legal and accustomed measure, were the shops
of the trading portion of the King's subjects
closed upon a week day--the town of Brighton
being undisturbed by any mob or tumult—and
not, ever so remotely, threatened with such a
visitation ? Talk of clerical encroachments I
Why, no corporation of Jesuits under Charles
X. were ever guilty of so daring an attack upon
the body of society. The King, as became him,
felt and acted like a man of sense, and as a
hater of hypocrisy, and officious cant, or osten-
tatious folly would do. His Majesty loudly de-
clared his displeasure at the usurpation of power
by these groundlings of the Church. He for-
bade the projected service in his own chapel,
and ordered that neither the Royal Household
nor the troops on guard should attend it else-
where. The Bishop of Chichester, we take for
granted, is the diocesan, and will probably tell a
bit of his mind to the impertinent functionaries
who figured on this troublesome ocsasion.—
Times.

The Whig Ministers, if we may believe
their organs of the Press, are so committed to
their rash and disastrous policy as to be com-
pelled to persevere. As Bonaparte would say,
they are " fulfilling their destinies." The ve-
teran Talleyrand has taken them one and all
in the toils of his expert diplomacy, and France
exults in the idea of being avenged on England
for the unforgiven 'glories of Waterloo. The
ancient characteristics of the rival nations are
again exhibited, and the changing cycles of
time furnish fresh illustrations of the so-often-
noted fact, that what we acquire by the ho-
nourable toils of war we are foolish enough to
surrender to the fraudful artifices of negotiation.
Once more, it would seem, the well-known
lines are to be verified—
" Ardent in arms, impetuous Britain fights ;
Refined in arts, France plots and overcomes."
But, after ages of suffering from this one cause,
we ought surely to have become more wise; and
the people at large, if half as enlightened as
they are said to be, will not allow the Whigs to
relieve themselves from the difficulties of their
position, or to gratify their malignity as a beaten
party, by undermining the foundations of the
peace of Europe, and opening again the flood-
gates of revolutionary war. Whilst a single hope
remains of averting this catastrophe, be it ours to
endeavour to rouse the attention of our country-
men to the impending danger. We call the
Whigs a beaten party, and we have a right thus
to designate them, from the complete and ludi-
crous failure of all their measures, and from the
contempt or detestation with which they are ob-
viously—regarded by the country. The memo-
rable Reform Bill was their sole stay, and, this
being removed, the pigmy pretenders have
shrunk into their natural dimensions, to the
scornful wonder of the community. Stung by
distress, the natural result of Whig policy, a
considerable portion of our countrymen forgot
for a moment their characteristic good sense,
and allowed themselves to be duped into the
belief that some good might be extracted from
the nostrum of Reform, which now stands re-
vealed to the conviction of the dullest mind as
one of the most elaborate of their egregious mis-
takes. The people seized upon a few of the
leading provisions of the Bill, and imagined that
what tey did not comprehend involved some
hidden wisdom, or at least was not wholly
absurd ; but they now discover the whole busi-
ness to have been a deception, designed to fence
party interests, but unable to accomplish even
that object, from the mere fatuity of its authors.
Yet this was their best move, their single gleam
of temporary success ; all else was deplorable
failure from the very outset. We therefore call
them beaten, and beg to ask the people of Eng-
land, who must act for themselves in the unac-
countable absence of their Paliament, how much
more public mischief they will allow this despe-
rate faction to inflict upon their country and
Europe for the sake of floating on from one
quarter day to another. Nobly has the mercan-
tile body of London done its duty by summon-
ing public attention to the injustice and impolicy
of the Dutch war, and we trust the example will
be instantly followed throughout the country.
Such meetings are " gall and wormwood to the
enemy," and may be successful, even at the
eleventh hour, in preventing much of the
threatened mischief. Ministers are thus put
upon their defence, and the shuffling sophis-
try of their hireling scribes shows the titter
worthlessness of their case. The proper course
was, if the award of the Conference were not sa-
tisfactory, to leave Holland and Belgium to
settle the dispute, no third party interfering. If
in that case France attempted to assist Belgium,
ma marched
France would stand out to the view of Europe
the
ed
aggressor.to Paris
would
drs w
e l which
know s o
howrecently
tochastiseas the avowed disturber of its peace, and the
Would France fight upon her own soil
for the
dynasty of the barricades, with the certainty of
immediate defeat, and ultimate
dismemberment?
Certainly not ; she would instantly abandon her
'nsolent interference, and there would be no
The Belgian question would be settled
one way or other in a single month, Parisian
intrigues being at an end, and all would
be tranquillity. There would be no wars
of opinion, no revolutionary collisions, no
alternations of anarchy and despotism, but, the
causes of contention being removed, neighbour-
ing nations would content themselves with a ge-
nerous emulation in the arts of peace. The gra-
dual progress of knowledge, and especially of
Christian knowledge, would speedily bring about
those constitutional improvements which harmo-
nize power with liberty, not indeed by means of
theoretical institutions, based on the speculative
rights of man, and forced upon reluctant com-
munities by dominant partisanship, but through
the quiet and resistless influence of growing
intelligence and improving virtue. Such we
believe would be the results upon Europe at
large of a steady perseverance in the well-known
principles of British foreign policy. But these
principles are all set at nought by the hateful
measures now in progress. If the fact be, as the
Times asserts on behalf of the Ministry, that we
are going to war in order to limit French
aggression by joining it to a certain extent,
in what an unprecedented and horrible position
is this country placed. The unnatural war is
certain, the future fancied advantage contingent.
France gets all she wants, a license frnm Eng-
land to break the peace of Europe in support of
a revolutionary throne, and this she can plead as
a sanction for future measures of aggression rest-
ing on similar principles. But we maintain that
there is yet time for this country to arrest the
fraudulent and anti-national procedure of its
unworthy Government,Morning Post.