The Sun.
London, England, 1844-12-31 00:00:00

anin

LONDON, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1844.

The Caledonia, which effected her rapid passage
from Boston in thirteen days, arrived, yesterday
afternoon, in the Mersey, bringing, among her other
important papers, including intelligence from Mexico

and from Canada, the penultimate " Message " of the
President, Mr. TYLER. In an early period of the
month of March next the Presidential plumage of
this gentleman will disappear. It is no wonder,
therefore, if he ruffles it somewhat, and makes
a great show, previously to " moulting." The
old Roman poets had a fancy that the dying
swan, prescient of her approaching dissolution,
always sings her own requiem, by au instinct of
anticipation. Whether a flickering President, just
about to go out, can sing as harmoniously as a mori-
bund swan, we will not undertake to pronounce ; but
if the song of the expiring bird be half as long as the
" Message" of the departing Chief Magistrate, a
swan must amply make up in articulo mortis for half
a century of taciturn existence. We have heard, in
England, of Governments, Cabinets, and Ministers
being de'cribed as composed of "squeezable mate-
rials," which, flow little promising so ever before they
are subjected to the "gentle violence" of a pertinacious
badgering in Parliament, are found to yield abundantly
on the application of adequate pressure. In the
United States the chief officers of the Government
must possess a contrasted power—that of expan-
sibility. It must have required a very high pressure
to raise the steam from the few ideas which Mr.
TYLER has collected in the shape of pabulum for
the combustion of his Message to the Senate,
into a volume of bulk enough to fill four
columns and a half of our largest London
newspapers. In point of fact, even for a document
of its class, this " Message" is unusually wordy, un-
reasonably " lengthy." But it does touch some topics
of high interest to countries on this side of the At-
lantic. Mr. TYLER adroitly felicitates " the Senate
and the House of Representatives" on the peaceful
and orderly conduct of the United States' population
in the various stages of the late election of a Presi-
dent, throughout all the districts in which the votes
of the vast Electoral College of that country
were recorded. We do not detect any over-
zealous tendency to congratulate his fellow-citizens
on the fact of not having re-elected himself; or any
self-denying admissions that they have done well in
choosing one more worthy than himself far his suc-
cessor to the great office. He expatiates on the ex-
cellency of a political confederacy composed of many
States, each of them supreme as to the direction and
arbitriment of all matters within its own peculiar
jurisdiction, but entering with other States into a vo-
luntary compact to submit the general government of
the whole to the direction of the majority of all their
citizens, as the sense of that majority is to be
collected from the Legislative body organised by the
Federal Constitution. In a further section of his
Message one perceives all the bearing of the pro-
minent position which the "Election" occupies in
his exordium. On the subject of the foreign rela-
tions of the United States, he observes, in that quaint
phraseology which is naturalised nowhere else, that
at no former period were the apparent guarantees
of peace among the various Powers " of that en-
lightened and important portion of the globe, Europe,"
more firmly established. Mr. President TYLER then
directs the earnest attention of Congress to the pend-
ing negotiations for the occupation of the Oregon
Territory, the value and importance whereof he
warmly dilates upon, recurring at the same time to
certain of his former messages, in which he had
urgently recommended the establishment of a succes-
sion of military posts, to be occupied by soldiers in
the United States' service, on " the long line of land
travel," for the double purpose of facilitating and
protecting emigration thither. This point is touched
upon with some show of malicious indulgence, as if
it would prove toCongresa at large a question the
more agreeable in the ratio of the disapproval with which
it might probably be regarded in this country. That
such an idea did pass through the PRESIDENT'S mind, we
may infer from the circumstance that, without having
specifically noticed the fact of the proposed Oregon
occupation having been already a matter of disagree-
ment between the United States' Government and
ours, he unconsciously proceeds to notice, in the
very next paragraph, " other matters in difference
between" them. As to one of these, the seizure of
American vessels on the coast of Africa by British
cruisers, the officers of which had acted under the
mistaken impression of such vessels having been en-
gaged in the slave trade, he is pleased to
assume that former consessions of the Bri-
tish Government have already proved that
it admits its responsibility to make good the damage
occasioned by such seizures—under one of the arti-
cles of the Washington Treaty. With all submission,
this is a little too far and too fast. We must have
the argument before, and judgment pronounced by,
our High Court of Admiralty on each of such cases,
before we can encourage Mr. TILER to expect that
sort of conclusion to these affairs which he affects to
look forward to. It is also possible that these cases
may become, in the ensuing session, the subject of
some inquiry by the British Parliament.
The tone of the other passages of this Message,
except those which regard the improving condition
of the public treasury, are rather lachrymose and
petulant. He regrets that the running of the boun-
dary line between the territories of the United States
and the territories of Great Britain in North America,
—a work of such signal importance to both Powers—
has been seriously retarded, owing to the failure of
Congress to make a timely appropriation, before the
conclusion of its last session, for the expenses of
the United States' Commissioner. Then, the
enlightened policy of the Emperor NICHOLAS in
advancing Russia in her career of civilization
and improvement (!) is spoken of in terms of equal
panegyric with the sagacious policy of " the wise
Monarch" who governs France. Belgium and Brazil
are eulogised, too, for the commercial treaties into
which they have respectively entered with the United

States. But as to Prussia, and the commercial treaty
which the American Minister had successfully ne-

gotiated at Berlin with the Zollverein, on terms which
would have been so essentially advantageous to

the trade and manufactures of the United
States ;—again the Congress had spoiled all. Their
failure to take this treaty into consideration
within a certain prescribed term, had carried
the matter over that day, which was the utmost limit
allowed for its ratification. The PRESIDENT, how-
ever, infers that Congress would have sanctioned it
and his darling scheme of a Tariff, had they gone
into the'', matter : so he has directed the negotiations
to be renewed; but he speaks coldly of the chances of
ultimate success. Then all the negotiations of the

American Ministers severally accredited to the Go,

vernments of Mexico, New Grenada, Chili, Peru, and
to the Congress of Venezuela, for the satisfaction

c.f claims preferred against them for compensation due
to American citizens, either still hang fire, or have

utterly failed hitherto. On the annexation of Texas,
Mr. TYLER speaks out. There is no chance of mis-
taking his notions of political independence—in the

weak ; of political power—in the strong. The doc-
trine he proclaims is of a public morality which
might put 111AcutAvEL to the blush, quite as much
for its wholesale treachery to the rights of nations as

for its absurdity. He admits that —Mexico had for-
mally notified to the United States her intention of
reducing Texas, as a revolted member of her empire,
to its obedience, and that again and again she had pro-
tested against the scheme of its annexation,
to the United States. He admits that not only did
the A merican Executive secretly encourage that

scheme, but that they negotiated a treaty foi effect-
ing it! And then he desires to show, first, that Mexico
was not wronged by this conduct, of which he is
compelled to allow the Senate and the House of Re-
presentatives have as yet no legal cognizance; and,

- . - -
secondly, that Mexico will be benefited by the dis

nemberment of Texas.

What would the old Flo-

rentine we have named have said to reasoning like

;his :

"Mexico has no right to jeopardise the peace of the
world by urging any longer a useless and fruitless con-
test. Such a condition of things would not be tolerated

on the European continent. Why should it be on this ?
A war of desolation, such as is now threatened by
Mexico, cannot be waged without involving our peace
and tranquility.
ground of displeasure against this Government or
people for negotiating the treaty. What interest
of hers was effected by the treaty ? She was de
spoiled of nothing, since Texas was for ever lost
to her. The independence of Texas was recog-
nised by several of -the leading powers of the earth
The interests of 'Mexico, therefore, could in nothing be
better consulted than in a peace with her neighbours,
which would result in the establishment of a permanent

boundary. Upon the ratification of the treaty, the
Executive was prepared to treat with her on the most li-
beral basis. Hence the boundaries of Texas were left

undefined by the treaty:

The Executive proposed to

settle these upon terms that all the world -sho-uld have
pronounced just and reasonable."

But the best is to come. Feeling that he had con-

fessed too much, in owning that the annexation scheme
was not yet sanctioned by Congress, the PRESIDENT
has what we must call the assurance to say that the
favourable decision of the whole American people has
been abundantly manifested by the result of the late
Election ! An admirable contrivance, these Elec-
tions, for superseding the rights of nations and the
useless forms of diplomatic discussion ! But we do
not imagine for a moment, that the American people
are to be caught by clap-traps so palpable as this.

In considering the progress of the Tractarian
heresy, which just now engrosses so much of public
attention, nothing is more remarkable than the
gradual, stealthy manner in which it worked its
way, and the tact with which it kept out of sight
every dogma that might come like a shock on the un-
prepared mind of the community. Nothing could
well be more modest, and apparently more harmless,
than the pretensions of its advocates, when they first
entered the field of theological controversy. Their
gentle infancy gave no promise of the bigoted, un-
compromising manhood, that has since distinguished
them. They merely wished, they said, to roue the
lukewarm spirit of the Church ; to set an example of
zeal to all the working clergy ; and impress on them
a more earnest and active sense of their responsibility.
They did not desire—not they I—to make any in-
sidious or dangerous innovations on Protestantism.
They had no intention to do otherwise than keep
strictly within the pale of orthodoxy, as determined
by the usages of nearly three centuries. Nothing
was further from their thoughts than the idea of
giving a new interpretation to some of the more
stringent Articles of the Established Faith. As for
entertaining any sympathies with the Church of
Rome, or regarding certain of its tenets and cere-
monial observances with an eye of partial fondness,
they repudiated the notio❑ with indignation. To re-
store the Church to its state of original efficiency by
fully awakening the zeal of its members, was the
Alpha and the Omega of their ambition. By this
jesuitical mode of proceeding—by adroitly keeping
in the back-ground the real objects which they had
at heart until the public mind should be prepared for
their development, the Tractarians succeeded in
winning over to their ranks no inconsiderable portion
of the younger clergy, to say nothing of certain
ecclesiastical dignitaries who saw—or imagined they
saw—that their exertions had no other aim than to
increase the temporal and spiritual authority of the
Protestant Establishment. But gradually as they
felt their way, the Tractarian heretics began to adopt
a bolder course of conduct. The meekness and
apostolic simplicity that had at first distinguished
them slowly disappeared. They assumed a loftier—
a more decided—a more imperious tone. What was
at first mere zeal became downright fanaticism, as
their successive Tracts abundantly manifested, each
of which was of a more bigoted character than its
predecessor. Still, however, they forebore from dis-
playing the cloven hoof, or outraging public opinion
in too marked a manner; and it was not until the
appearance of the furious Tract, No. 90, when they
fancied that the pear was at length ripe, that they
boldly threw off the mask and displayed themselves
in their true colours. From that time to the present,
their course has been one continuous, systematic out-
rage on common sense and the great principle of re-
ligious toleration. They have endeavoured to degrade
the naked, straightforward, majestic simplicity of the
Reformed Faith, by engrafting on it a variety of
superstitious mummeries and showy ceremonial ob-
servances avowedly borrowed from Rome; and what
is far worse, they have recommended the revolting
practice of Auricular Confession, the worship of the
Virgin and the Saints, and similar Popish usages, the
attempt to enforce which cost JAMXS the SECOND the
loss of three kingdoms. They no longer deem it
necessary to conceal their real sentiments. Not a
few of them have already gone over to the Church of
Rome; and those who still keep within the pale of
the Establishment, sharing in its emoluments while
they disavow its tenets, several are constantly oc-
cupying themselves in sounding the praises of the
antagonist Religion, and boldly proclaiming in their
Tracts, pamphlets, sermons, and reviews, that the
further we have wandered from Rome, the more have
we been mistaken in our estimate of the true Faith.
When these Tractarian heretics first began to awaken
public attention, we thought—in common, no doubt,
with the majority of our readers—that they vs ere a
set of mere recluse, simple-minded, unworldly theo-
logians, who meant well, and whose very excess of
zeal sprung out of the simplicity and integrity of
their character. But we no longer entertain this
favourable opinion of them. We have watched
their progress, and the gradual, artful development of
their intrigues, with some attention, and are at no
loss to recognise in the whole course of their pro-
ceedings the presence of a subtle, jesuitical intellect,
essentially worldly in its character, well acquainted
with the springs of human action, and skilful and
ready in availing themselves of some of those weak-
nesses to which all humanity is more or less subject.
With scarcely one single exception, all the moves of
the Tractarians have been made with the judgment
and dexterity of accomplished chess-players.

We learn from the Helvetie of the 24th inst., that
the Government of Lucerne has issued a decree order-
ing the re-organization of the landsturm, " to protect
persons and property against the attack of foreign
hordes of brigands." All men able to carry arms were
to be incorporated with the landsturm, and to assemble
in the chief town of their respective districts at the
first sound of the tocsin, and " march to destroy the
invaders." Dr. STEIGER, one of the prisoners taken
during the last revolt, had been permitted to visit his
patients, accompanied by two gendarmes and eight
soldiers. The authorities of Lucerne had seized a sum
of 80,000 f. in specie, deposited by M. Juxxs SALZ-
MANN in the bands of a banker of that city. Colonel
GUGGENBUITLER had died at Lenzbourg in the arms
of his wife and sister. Confined by illness during
the whole summer, he left his bed to defend the cause
of liberty, and the fatigues he experienced in the out-
break of the Bth inst. had completely exhausted his
strength.

Accounts have been received by the Levant Mail
from Constantinople to the 9th instant, and from
Alexandria to the 7th. At Constantinople, on the 9th,
one of the Sultanas was confined of a Princess, to
whoin the name of MUNIRE (Brilliant) was given.
The birth of the Princess MUNIRE was celebrated
with public rejoicings.
The postal treaty between the Pacha of EGYPT and
England had not yet been arranged, but hopes were
entertained that it would be speedily settled.
The new dry dock at Alexandria had been opened,
but its efficiency could not be judged of.
The PACHA has left Alexandria for Cairo, where he
will remain for some months.

The Madrid papers of the 20th and 22d have been
received. On the 21st, in the Chamber of Deputies,
the Minister of Finance, in reply to a question of M.
ORENSE, stated that if the conversion of the Five per
Cents. had given rise to any stock jobbing transac-
tions, the Government was perfectly unconnected
with them. On the same day a scene occurred in the
Chamber between M. MoN and the Marquis 174-
r.umA, in which the former, after making a violent
ittack on the latter, was at length obliged to apolo-
4se. Notwithstanding the apology, however,
El Tiempo, of the 22d instant, announces that the
Marquis DE VILUMA, the Duke D'ADRANTES, and M.
EGUIZADAL, had resigned their functions as Members
•,f the Chamber of Deputies, in consequence of some
expressions used by the Minister of Finance during
the debate in the Chamber of Deputies on the pre-
ceding day. El Clamor Publico of the 22d instant
states, that notwithstanding the efforts made to pre-
vent a Ministerial crisis, such an event is inevitable,
and that -it will take place at the moment of the de-
hate on the Clergy Bill.

It would appear, that in consequence of the resig.
nation of M. DONOZO CORTES not having been ac-
cepted, General NARVAEZ had resigned his office of
President of the Council ; but, at the request of the
QUEEN-MOTHER and the members of the Cabinet,
had consented to withdraw his resignation.
It was generally believed that a treaty with Great
Britain, for the suppression of the slave trade, would
be shortly laid before the Chambers.

The Paris papers of Friday and of Saturday have
been received. The only business of importance
transacted in the Chamber of Peers was the election
of Secretaries, and the nomination of Members to
draw up the address in answer to the Speech from the
Throne.

The Chamber. proceeded to the election of the per-

manent Secretaries, and Count D'AUDIFFRET, Presi-
dent BOULLET, Viscount CAVAIGNAC, and Count DE
COLBERT, having obtained the greatest number of
votes, were declared duly elected.
The Marquis DE LA PLACE, Count PORTALIS, M.
MERILHOU, Baron GIROD DE LAIN, Count ROY,
Count BEUGNOT, and M. BARTHE, were nominated to
draw up the address.
In the Chamber of Deputies on Friday, the order
of the day was the election of President of the Cham-
ber. The number of votes was 331, giving the re-
quired majority at 166. M. SAUZET obtained 164
votes, M. DUPIN 95, M. 0. BARROT 63, M. DU..
PONT (de l'Eure) 3, M. de SALVANDY 3, and MM.
BERRYER and HERNOUX I each. None of the candi-
dates having obtained a requisite number of votes, a
second ballot was proceeded to, in which the number
of voters was 323, and the Absolute majority 162.
M. SAUZET received 177 votes, M. DUPIN 129, M.
0. BARROT 15, and MM. BERRYER and M. DUPONT
(de I'Eure) 1 each. Consequently M. SAUZET was
proclaimed President. The smallness of the majority
by which M. SAUZET, the Ministerial candidate for
the Presidency, has succeeded, is considered by the
Opposition press as an indication of Ministerial weak.
ness. In the organisation of the bureaux, the success
of the Ministry was complete. Of the nine Presidents
chosen, eight are Ministerial, and only one of the
Opposition party. Of the Secretaries, six are Minis-
terial, and three belong to the Opposition.
On Saturday the election of the four Vice-
Presidents took place.
The following is the result of the first ballot :
Number of votes, 303—Absolute majority, 152.
M. BIGNON
M. DE SALVANDY
M. DUFAURE
M. DE BELLEYME
M. BILLAULT
M. LEPELLATIER D'AULNAY ll3

The first three candidates having more than an ab-
solute majority, were elected. A second ballot took
place for the fourth Vice-President, when neither
candidate having an absolute majority, the election
was adjourned till Monday. Of the three chosen, two
are considered Conservatives, and one is of the
Opposition.

THE BOURSE-SATURDAY, DEC. 28.

Tint Highest Lowest Last

Price. Price. Price. Price.
Frond, Five per Cents .. l2O 75 .. 120 75 .. 120 GO .. 120 60
Four-and-a-Half 113 113 .. 113 .. 113
Fours..•• ••••.•••.• 104 .. 104 .. 104 .. 104
Three per Cents.— 85 45 .. 85 50 .. 85 45 .. 85 50
New Loan B6 75 .. 86 80 -. 86 70 86 75
Bank of Franco • 3200 ..3200 ••3200 "3200
Lailltte Bank, I,ooof. Bhareslo9s ..1e96 • • 1090 .. 1090
5,000 f. Bharesso7s ..hlOO ..5075 ..5101
Belgian 8ank....•.

1841....
Belgitua Fives, 1840 •
1842 ••• • • •
Threes •• •• ...... •• 79 80 .. 79 80 .. 79 80 • . 79 80
Two-and-a-Half.• .• 62 40 62 40 .. 62 30 62 30
Spanish Threes ••• 39 39 .. 381 .. 381
Active •••••• • • • • • • 361 • • 37 .. 361 • • 37
Passive .• 61 61 .. 61 • • 61
Portuguese Five per Cents • . 611 .. fili .. 61/ • • 611
Roman ••••• • • 1041 1041 .. 1041 1041

RAILWAY SHARES.
St. Germain ..... • • ........1027 50 ..1027 50 ..1027 50 ..1027 SO
Versailles,R.B.
L.B.•••••• •..... 390 .. 390 .. 375 .. 381 25
Rouen•••••••• •• ••••••••••1060 . 1061 25 ..1060 ..1060