The Sun.
London, England, 1832-11-24 00:00:00

SPIRIT OP TIIE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

A document has been published which purports
to be " The Substance of the Address of the Mer-
chants of Rotterdam," to their friends the Conser-
vative petitioners for peace in London, thanking
them for their anti-patriotic movement in favour of
an enemy. We have heard of a time in which " a
correspondence" of this kind between Englishmen
and foreigners with whom their Sovereign was at
war, would have been reckoned little short of high
treason. We even know of certain legal and crir&-
nal proceedings instigated by Tory Ministers, and
undertaken by Tory law-officers, in which a political
correspondence similar to that of our present Tory
addressers, exposed the parties to the danger of
their lives and liberties. We are not disposed to
call for any similar visitation at present, because we
feel none of the alarm which the Tories at that time
felt, or pretended to feel ; but we would advise
them to abandon this criminal coquetry with the
enemy. Looking at the address of the Rotterdam
merchants itself, without any reference to the Con-
servative character, or to the factious intentions, of
their English correspondents, we ran only say that
nothing more like a political bull was ever propa-
gated beyond the precincts of Ireland. These
Dutch merchants tell their English Tory friends
that the union between Belgium and Holland was
effected in 1815, by the great Powers of Eu-
rope, and particularly by the political agency of
the said Tories, contrary to Dutch views and incli-
nations,—that the Dutch lost immensely by the
" union," and that they became, of course, martyrs
to the cruel oppression of the English /Forks, who
proclaimed the bans of a political marriage against
their will,—that, for 15 long years the inconvenier!ces
of this unhappy "union" were submitted to in
'Hence, though contrary to the interests of Holland,
—and what then ?—why, that they regard these
same Tories, who have insisted on the continuance
of the said union, as their friends, and the English
Whig Government, which has secured equitable
.erms of separation, and which places them in their
former situation of independence, as their greatest
enemies!! But these Dutch Conservatives are not
satisfied with one inconsequential blunder of the
character above alluded to. Forgetting that
if they themselves were hostile to the union, and
that if the Belgians agreed with them in their desire
to escape from it, the seperation without bloodshed
would be a real favour to both parties; they fall
foul of the Belgians as persons guilty of treason
and rebellion for relieving them from their il!-omened
alliance ! Then what do these Dutchmen desire
which English merchants, or which the sensible
English public can wish their Government to concede ?
The trading interest of Rotterdam and Amsterdam,
which has been the sole lever of Dutch patriotism on
the present occasion, care nothing for questions of
territory, which, indeed, are already settled : they
it) not object to the division of the Batavo-Belgic
debt, which has likewise been agreed to. 'With what
lure, then, do they tempt the support of the British
commercial interest against theirown Government and

against Belgium? Why, by the close of the Scheldt.
And is it for this, which is contrary to the treaty of
Vienna,—which would condemn 4,000,000 of peo-
ple to the deprivation of their only emporium,—
which would destroy a great branch of British trade
and shipping, that our Conservatives are hazarding
the penalties of treason by corresponding with an
enemy—that they are receiving the thanks of foreign
merchants, and are praying for ruin on the naval
forces of England ? Let them declare themsdves
optily on this point ; let them say that they desire
the Scheldt to be closed, and that British shipping
;hall be excluded from one of the great parts of the
continent, whose inhabitants are desirous of our
commercial intercourse. Let them agree with the
Dutchmen in this, and we shall be satisfied of their
diminished power of mischief at the ensuing elec-
tions, or in any town of England. Before we con-
dude, we may mention that our city corcespondent
is quite right in reporting that the most industrious
means have been used to impress foreign Courts with
false ideas of the state of opinion in England, not only
by the ludicrous method which he describes of the
transmission of a not ill-written but languid news-
paper never seen out of the Tory clubs, but by the
most actively conducted correspondence; and this
was not confined to Berlin and the Hague (and we
must frankly admit that the King of Holland has
been duped, though not intentionally, in this respect
even by his own agents), but it extended to the
Courts of Vienna and St. Petersburgh. Indeed, as
we have more than once stated, one main object of
Lord Durham's mission was to destroy the delusion
which, like a fog, obscured the truth from the prin-
cipal foreign Governments. Whether he was able
to annihilate the false impression remains to be seen :
that much was done towards it, the present posi-
tion of the Belgic question sufficiently demonstrates.
—Times.

It would be seen by our private correspondence
from Oporto, in yesterday's paper, that our naval
force in the Douro is considered altogether inade-
quate for the protection of British property, for the
security of British lives, or the assertion of British

honour. In whose hands the direction of our naval
force lies,—by whose order it is apportioned to the
different stations where its services may be re-
quired,—or why it is so reduced before Oporto, it
would be needless in us to inquire. The evil of its
diminished amount in the Douro is alarming, the
danger is imminent in case of any reverse in the
fortunes of am Pedro, and immediate measures
ought to be taken to send a reinforcement. If
an attack is made on British lives or property by
the barbarous soldiers of Don Miguel, in the absence
of a sufficient force in the river, or off the bar of
Oporto, it will be no justification of the neglect to
allege that Admiral Parker has a sufficient squadron
before Lisbon. Our merchants at Lisbon ougb::
not, certainly, to be forgotten; but it would 1.;,
absurd to suppose that a threatened attP_zlc on the
Portuguese capital would secure the, wine-vaults or
the British factory of Oporto, as that a tile on the
roof could secure a drain in the cellar. Our cor-
respondent speaks of a letter from Lord Palmerston,
correspondence
dangersden ce
t o with
‘ yhtichr
Consul,
n oui
in which he gives the Oporto merchants such a poor
ace,
consolation. His Lordship, as Foreign Minister,
most,
u of
bound to know
b e in rre
his countrymen are exposed. He ought, therefore,
od is r,
to see that orders are sent from the Admiralty to
inerease the force before Oporto, even at the haztrd
of diminishing the blockading squadron on the coast
of Holland, or the protective squadron at the mouth
of the Tagus. If Lord Palmerston has suggested
the Lisbon scheme of assisting Oporto, his practical
solecism would show, at least, that his Lordship has
still in him some smack of the "green isle," which
is said to have given birth to St. Patrick.—Tim",

In proportion as the determination becomes from
day to day more manifest of the brave and virtuotti
King of the Netherlands and his loyal and patriotic
subjects, to fight to the last extremity in defence of
the rights and welfare of their country against its
insolent and unprincipled invaders, so does the voice
of the people of England rise daily in a louder and
still louder tone of indignation against the wicked-
ness, the perfidy, and the cowardice of the British
Administration, in lending its assistance to the
iniquitous aggression, and in supplications more and
more earnest to their Sovereign to relieve them
from all participation in an enterprise which is kit
to be fatal to British honour in its commencement.,
which must at every stage of its progress be deeply
ifjurious to the most important interests of the.
British nation, and with respect to the consequences
or result of which all that can be clearly foreseen is,
that Great Britain can by no possibility derive from
it any advantage whatever. The evidence we take
to be complete that the war in which the present Mi-
nisters have involved the nation, from no conceivable
motive unless it be that of abject and slavish obedience
to the will of the revol u Ilona!), Government of France,
is, we will not say the most unpopular war in which
any British Ministry ever engaged, but a war yet
more strongly contrasted with every former wee,
inasmuch as that every former war, without a! ex-
ception, to be found within several preced►ng ceu-