The Sun.
London, England, 1844-08-09 00:00:00

(017 cent-us :)4.11ut

LONDON, FRIDAY, AUGUST 9, 1844.

On the Marquis of NORMANDY presenting a peti-
tion from Leeds, drawing the attention of the House
of Lords to the efforts of the Protestant Missionary
Society for the last fifty years in the island of Ota-
heite, and • complaining of the violation of the law of
nations by the French authorities, the Earl of ABER-
DEEN said he would say no more on the subject than
was absolntely necessary, but he must, at the same
time, state that though Mr. PRITCHARD was divested
of his official character, he was no less entitled to the
protection of his country. He still believed that
moderation and justice on the part of the Govern-
ments of England and France, would disappoint the
object of the war parties in both countries.
A brief conversation took place about Spanish
finance. The Earl of ABERDEEN seemed to have
great confidence in the honour and ability of
Senor MoN, the Chancellor of an Exchequer which
is empty ; but we doubt much if one Spanish creditor
agrees with him.
The Poor-law Bill was read a third time, and
passed.
The Marquis of CLANRICARDE gave notice that he
would this day make a motion relative to the pro-
gress of the Houses of Parliament.
On the motion of Lord WHARNCLIFFE, a discussion
took place on the amendments of the Commons to the
County Coroners' Bill, and, on a division, the numbers
were equal—fourteen on each side. The question
was decided in favour of the non-contents, and the
amendments were rejected.
After passing some Bills of little interest, the
House adjourned till Half-past Three this day.
In the Commons, the amendments made to the
Merchant Seamen's Bill by the Lords were agreed to.
AiNaPtiliep.toi:f.'question from Mr. WYSE, the
4/141Paiar19+3C-thelxcnEctuna said it was not his
40intfoil_lo cfiz;*itt- the return of Stamps issued to
i "bi inliT:l4Ltial \llow9f) per. Dr. BOWRING said he
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would bring the isubject before the House next
Session. Mr. WAKLEY hoped the return would
never again be made, as by these returns the grossest
frauds were committed on the public and on adver-
tisers.

A brief discussion took place between Mr. T.
DUNCOMBE and Sir JAMES GRAHAM, relative to the
affairs of Guernsey ; but the main facts being
purely personal, it was of no interest to the public.
Sir J. GRAHAM obtained leave to bring in a Bill
for the alteration of the law of settlement, the main
object of which was to repeal all the laws on the
subject and begin anew, and that birth only should
give a settlement. The measure was received with
general approbation.
The Lords' amendments to the Poor-law Bill were
brought up and agreed to.
The House adjourned at Nine o'clock till Half-past
Three this day.

We really know not what to make of this wild out-
cry in France about the Otaheite islands, and the
public seem to be in the same predicament. What
would the French be at ? Do they wish to go to war
with England ? Without the possibility of a doubt,
that is the great object of the Opposition papers, and
we regret to say also of some of the most influential
men on the Opposition benches. It is a strange
mania. We have not offended the French in any way.
We have not interfered with their occupation of the
islands in the Pacific. The British Government have
assented to all their plans of colonization in that dis-
tant region ; they have allowed them to take posses-
sion of an island which is associated with the early re-
collections of the present generation, from the inter-
esting accounts given of it by missionaries who
established themselves there forty-five years ago,
and when the natives rebel against this usurpation,
and fight against the French, England is denounced
as the cause of all the mischief, and " one PRIT-
CHARD," as M. D'ALTBIGNY designates him, one of
the oldest settlers, and almost up to the moment of
his arrest the British Consul on the station, is treated
with great indignity. No proofs are adduced that
he was an active party in the insurrection, yet, when
our Government complains of this strange proceeding,
the whole of the Opposition press of Paris become
furious at the presumption of Englishmen. It is
painful to witness such an exhibition. It is lament-
able to see a powerful nation planted in the heart
of Europe, which has such means of doing good,
and which can afford to be magnanimous, thus im-
pelled by blind rage against a neighbouring country,
anxious to live with it on peaceable terms. Is France
still to be the general fire-brand, and the world to be
thrown into commotion to gratify the vain aspirations
of Republicans and the hopeless worshippers of the
Bourbon dynasty ? We confidently trust that the
rational men of France will take a different view of the
question, and not rush headlong into a scheme which
cannot benefit their country, which would entail great
calamities on the human race, and would, to a cer-
tainty, end as most wars with this country have
ended. Great battles, of course, would ensue, and vast
destruction of property and human life, and when ex-
haustion took place both parties would sit down
quietly to arrange the differences, and probably leave
off precisely as they began. The nation which
commences such a terrible contest incurs a fearful
responsibility in the eyes of all Europe, and it would
be well for it first to consider whether it can justify
its conduct, and whether in these days it is not more
honourable to settle disputes by calm reason and
judicious negotiations, than by an appeal to the sword.
Lord ABERDEEN last evening justly observed that it
mattered little whether Mr. PRITCHARD had or had
not resigned his official duties. He was still a Bri-
tish subject, and must be protected. Sir ROBERT
PEEL has not altered or in any way modified his
expressions which have given such offence to the 'War
party in France; and we therefore presume that the
British Government have just grounds for demanding
reparation, and that they will not be deterred from
their course by men who are equally enemies of
England and their own Sovereign.

These are not times in which England can afford to
compromise her own distinguished reputation for public
faith with the great public of the civilised world.
Politieal accidents of a rare and perilous character,
although they have fallen out in a season of profound
peace,—and even the mere onward march of political
institutions, irrespective of those accidents—have
lately developed, in intelligible characters, in some of
the continental Governments, those feelings of ill-
will, of envy, of impatient displeasure at her prodi-
gious eminence among the nations which want but
the encouragement of a few favouring circumstances
to become an embodied confederacy against her.
Wise and expedient as it is in a State to overlook,
oftentimes, hostile tendencies in the deportment of its
neighbours, where those tendencies have not yet—
though sufficiently intelligible—assumed a tangible
character of implied or overt offence; there is equal
wisdom in watching vigilantly their bearing in all its
details ; and still more, in its retaining its own vantage-
ground of greater frankness and honour in discharg-
ing all the functions of its own Government. It
would be in vain to deny that neither France
nor the United States have shown any great in-
disposition, of late, to a war with us, on pre-
texts of a character the most false—or on pretensions
the most egregiously absurd in law and equity—or on
misunderstandings originating in their own unreason-
able jealousy and suspicion. Hitherto it has provi-
dentially happened that these dangers have been dis-
sipated before arriving at a dangerous maturity.
France indulged her fierce resentment at Lord PAL.
MERSTON'S so-termed scheme of "isolation," till her
naturally companionable disposition, we suppose, re-
conciled her to the resumption of amicable relations
with her allies. Neither the Syrian question nor the
Gambia disputes, nor the brilliant termination of our
differences with China, finally precipitated France
into those extremities which the acts of her Minis-
ters, the clamours of a war faction in her Legis-
lative Chambers, and the aspirations of a large
combined section of her Republican and her Liberal
parties, sometimes appeared to hare rendered inevit-
able. On the other side of the Atlantic—the fron-
tier misunderstandings consequent on the troubles in
Canada, the affair of APLEou, Boundary disputes,
the new Federal Tariff, the Texas annexation, and
the Oregon Territory questions—although they fell
—like ignited shells—one after the other, among the
councils of the two Powers, have been successively
extinguished, or postponed, or thrown over; happily
without that destructive explosion which has so often
been at hand. But these frequent hair-breadth
escapes from the calamities of war should remind us
that the elements of the storm which has passed over
us without bursting, are still careering about the
political horizon ; and that since no man can tell
whether they will be presently dissipated, or may
yet reunite and assail us with their tempestuous visi-
tation, it becomes us to have all our preparations
completed and ready. Among the most enduring and
certain of the resources on which, under Providence,
we can at all times rely, is that national good faith
whose moral influence on the opinions and the friend-
ship of other kingdoms, in the unhappy event of an
European war, will be worth more than the accession
of foreign fleets and armies to our own materiel and
force.

Under this conviction of the sound policy—(to put
the moral duty on no higher footing)—of maintaining,
in all departments of the Executive, as well as of the
Legislative, this principle of good faith inviolate to
the utmost possible extent, we have remarked with
pain (as we intimated in a former article) the per-
vading tone of the Commons' Report on the Post-
office. The Department of Posts is the most sacred
trusteeship which the confidence of its native subjects,
and the necessity of their foreign correspondence,
devolve upon the State. It would be difficult to estimate
the extent or degree to which the reputation and
influence of Great Britain have been carried, in the
estimation of other countries, during the last half
century, by the general credit which has been given
to her for the integrity with which she has adminis-
tered this trust—of a delicacy, and yet an import-
ance so difficult fully to appreciate, so much more diffi-
cult adequately to describe. There was something of the
venerable distinction of our hereditary " German
faith" about the unhesitating confidence with which
from one end of Europe to another—nay, from the
remotest corner of the habitable world with which
even the relations of our unlimited commerce have
ever connected us—any man has been, heretofore, will-
ing to confide, under his own seal and superscription,
the most momentous communications that could
effect his fortunes, honour, liberty—even hislife.

From the odious, but admitted espionage which
polluted the Post Bureaux of Frame, and so many
other States, the experimental appeal to the sacred
inviolability which presided over that of England had
long passed into a proverb. We are compelled to
admit that " the Committee of Secrecy," appointed
by the Commons, have rudely, but pretty effectually,
dispersed to the winds all the romance of this im-
pression ! Yet we trust that the power of public
opinion, here, will henceforth embody and consecrate
as an administrative fact, that inviolability which
now turns out to have existed, hitherto,
as a theoretical rule indeed, but subject to
very grave, though not numerous, practical ex-
ceptions. The Secret Committee set out by pro-
proposing, "in preference to discussing the purely
legal question, how far the statute of ANNE, in recog-
nising the practice, on the part of the Secretaries of
State, of issuing warrants to open letters, rendered
it lawful for the Secretaries of State to
issue such warrants—to give the history of
this practice." We will not go to the
extent of differing " toto ccelo" from the
Committee in their appreciation of the duty they had
to discharge to the House ; but with all deference, we
submit that it was more than this bare legal question
they had to inquire into. The terms of their appoint-
ment regard an inquiry-1. Into the state of
the law-2. Into the mode of exercising the
authority given under that law—and 3. A state-
ment of their opinion and observations there-
on." Now we care, for the present purpose, as
little for any law, which in terms can authorise
or sanction so vile and dangerous, and dishonest,
a practice as the opening of sealed letters in her MA-
JESTY'S Post-office, as that noble and distinguished
judicial authority which intimated the other day that
an action could be brought for every letter so opened,
to which specifically and separately, the warrant issued
did not apply. But we do care much—and it im-
ports the honour and good faith of this country much
—to see how a Secret Committee of the House of
Commons express their "opinions," and to note their
" observations " on this practice, as well as this sta-
tute law.

And what are the words in which they discharge
themselves of this part of their commission ? The
concluding paragraphs of their report, which should
embody both " opinions" and " observations,"
.so far
as its nicely-balanced negatives and affirmatives
leave any positive result to be examined, does not
even denounce the practice upon principle ! Upon
grounds of expediency the Committee more than jus-
tify it, as their , own language will show. From the
time of the EDWARDS, to the appointment of Sir
BRIAN TUBE as a quasi Postmaster-General, in 1533,
and thenceforward through all the remaining period of
the reign of the TUDORS, the STUARTS, and the Com-
monwealth, the reigns of WILLIAM, ANNE, and the first
two GEORGES; we would, against our prepossessions
that no compromise of a great principle can ever be
admitted in cases of this sort—concede, for the sake of
argument, the plea defensive set up by the Commit-
tee. This regards the incessant State perils, demand-
ing extraordinary facilities of information for the
Executive, of frequent disputed successors ; the
Crown's jealousy of appeals to, and communications
from, the intriguing Court of Rome ; the unprin-
cipled, struggles for the control of the balance
of power between HENRY, CHARLES, and FRANCIS ;
the subsequent religious and political feuds
of the reigns of MARY, ELIZABETH, the STUARTS,
and the Commonwealth; the claims of the Preten-
ders under ANNE and the GEORGES, &c. But we
never can allow the equal cogency of these " reasons of
State" after the accession of GEORGE 111. The
French Revolution, indeed, and the attempts of the
successive Governments which wielded the resources
of France, to the rupture of the piece of Amiens,
suggested other views of the question to a suc-
cession of English Ministers of all parties, who
used this power unhesitatingly. But even they
had some show of reason, which the present Govern-
ment, or any of its predecessors since the accession of
GEORGE the FOURTH, cannot pretend to. What if
continental Sovereigns, our allies, have reason to be-
lieve that discontented subjects of theirs who have
sought the asylum, and receive the protection of this
country, are combining and plotting to dethrone
them or prejudice their power ? That is no sufficient
reason for our violating, in their case, that principle
of our common law, which holds no man amenable for
opinions not published, or for acts, though calculated
to prejudice such foreign potentates in alliance with
us, so long as they are not overt ones, or are not
otherwise in violation of the QUEEN'S peace or the
laws of the realm. When was it ever heard that a
department of the English Government should volun-
tarily convert itself into a detective police commis-
sion, for the behoof, or at the request, of a foreign
Power ? We blush for, and we protest against, such
a conclusion on such a subject, as the Committee
records in these sentences :

"If the result of this inquiry had been such as to im
press your Committee with a conviction of the im •
portance of the frequent use of this power in the ordinary
administration of affairs . . . they would have been pre-
pared to recommend some legislative measures for its re-
gulation and control ; and it might not be difficult to de-
vise regulations which would materially diminish the
objections to its exercise.
" It is, however, on the other hand, to be considered
whether any legislative measure of this kind might not
have an indirect effect in giving an additional sanction
to the power in question, and thereby possibly extending
its use.

" Under these circumstances, it will be for Parliament
to consider whether they will determine upon any legis-
lative regulation, or whether they will prefer leaving the
power, on its present footing in point of law, in the hands
of the Secretary of State, to be used, on his responsi-
bility, in those cases of emergency in which, according
to the best of his judgment, its exercise would be sanc-
tioned by an enlightened public opinion, and would ap-
pear to be strongly called for by important public in-
terests."

This doctrine and this " opinion" are not English,
nor common law; nor common equity; nor common

sense.

Intelligence has been received from Madrid to the
2d instant. The troops were again under arms on
the night of the Ist instant, but the cause is not as-
signed. More arrests had taken place. Barcelona
papers of the same date have been received, but they
bring no additional information respecting the con-
spiracy which was said to be in contemplation in the
garrison.

MADRID Bouass, AUG. I.—Three per Cents. 27
for cash, and 271 at 60 days. Five per Cents. not
quoted.

The accounts in the Paris papers from Morocco
are, on the whole, more favourable ; and it was gene-
rally anticipated that the EMPEROR would accept the
ultimatum of France. If we are to believe the Globe,
a Government journal, however, he is prepared to go
further, and turn his arms against ABD-EL-KADER.
"Without having lost anything of its gravity," it
says, "the affair of Morocco has assumed quite a new
appearance. The Emperor Muir ABDERRHAMAN,
seeing himself blockaded by sea and:seriously menaced
on shore, has finished by perceiving that his situation
was very critical ; and what was difficult to be fore-
seen, he has suddenly taken an energetic determina-
tion, and has declared war against ABD•EL•KADER.
A considerable army, commanded by his son, is
already in full march against the Emir. On his side
ABD-EL-KADER informed, it would appear, of the de-
signs of the EMPEROR with regard to him, had already
taken a similar resolution. At the head of as many
of his partisans as he could get together, he has him-
self taken a hostile attitude in regard to the EMPEROR,
and has arrested and put to death two couriers
charged with orders for different points of the empire.
It is therefore untrue, as stated by several journals,
on the faith of the Semaphore of Marseilles, that the
EMPEROR, yielding to a national and religious move-
ment, had himself preached a holy war. The good
intentions of the Emperor of MOROCCO were never i
doubtful, and he was confirmed by England in the
justice and moderation of the demands of France,
and of the necessity of yielding to them."
The other papers make no allusion to such
an event, but the following statements in the
Journal des Debats lead to the belief that affairs
are in a fair train for settlement :—" The Governor
of Tangiers has published an edict forbidding any
insult to be offered them, but such edicts are quite
insufficient against the passions of fanaticism. The
English Consul is still up the country, endeavouring
to see the SULTAN and his Ministers, that he may
urge them to accept the ultimatum of France. The
English Vice-Consul remains at Tangiers, but all the
families of that nation have taken their departure.
This general retirement of the Europeans has as-
tounded the Moors, and made them reflect on the