The Sun.
London, England, 1844-04-26 00:00:00

1 otitin (*nit

LONDON, FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 1844.

Perhaps no country in the world is in such a state
of utter prostration as the Spanish Peninsula. Spain
and Portugal appear to be lost to all serrse,Orhonour
and patriotism. , They have nowundergone an ordeal
of some thirty years for improving their condition ;
they have tried almost every kind of government,
the representative, the purely monarchical, the des-

potic, and the radical, and under all these they hare
exhibited the same characteristic features—restless-
ness, without an object, and constant commotion
without any result. The people, like the besotted
Sovereigns that rule them, have become a bye-word
among nations. Though Portugal has been under
the protection of England for more than two centuries,
and has had every opportunity of assimilating her
institutions to those of the country with which
she has been so closely allied, she has not advanced
one step in social improvement or in strength. Her
national Cortes are regarded by the people as a
mockery, her army is open to the highest bidder, and
at the present moment the small fortress of Almeida,
under the command of BONFIM, denounced as a rebel,
sets the Quits, the Government, . and the army at
defiance. Spain is in a still more deplorable condi-
tion. In Portugal something like mercy is shown to
men who, driven to despair, try to benefit their con-
dition, but under Queen CHRISTINA, NARVAEZ,
BRAVO, and Co., butchery is the only instrument of
government. Men even suspected of sedition—that
is of defending their rights or improving the condition
of the country—are arrested, conducted to the
presence of priests, and after due religious ceremonies
are slaughtered like wild beasts. Every vestige of
liberty is swept from that unfortunate country; and,
what is more lamentable, not a voice is raised in
Spain against deeds which are regarded by other
nations with horror. What can be done with such a
people ? We have no wish to excuse the policy of
Louis PHILIPPE towards Spain. He has taken
advantage of her weakness, her
.madness, and her
slavish propensities, and, has established a despotism
stronger than any, perhaps, that ever existed in that
country, but he is not entirely to blame. If the
people had been faithful to themselves—if they had
shown anything like common patriotism, or resented,
as most other nations would have done, the inter-
ference of a foreign Power, he would not have
harboured CHRISTINA at Paris, and encouraged M.
LESSEPS to stir up Spaniards against ESPARTERO.
He knew the people, and treated them as slaves, and
slaves they have shown themselves. The woman
that has destroyed the Cortes and the Constitution,
that has put down the national guards, and abolished
their municipal institutions, has been welcomed as a
saviour; and though but two years since all were up
in arms against the most constitutional and liberal Go-
vernment ever known in Spain, not a voice is now raised
against a system of despotism which has no equal
in Europe. Reproaches have been cast on Lord ABER-
DEEN for tacitly admitting such interference. But
what can the English Government, or any Govern-
ment, do with a nation which is regardless of its ho-
nour and its interests ? We have enough to do with
our own affairs, without attempting to raise up a
fallen people, or make men free who are determined
to be slaves. On Spaniards alone the blame rests.
They have rejected the aid of the only Power willing
and able to assist them, and they must be left to their
fate.

The usual weekly meeting of the Anti-Corn-laW
League was held on Wednesday at Covent-Garden
Theatre. Though these meetings have been of
regular occurrence since the commencement of the
session, yet there is not the slightest symptom of any
falling-off in public interest; the houSe still continues
to be crowded—which is more than can be said of
St. Stephen's ; and the attention paid by the audience
to the proCeedings is still as Vigilant and earnest
as ever. Mr. EWART, who was one of the
principal
,speakers of the evening, made several
apt remarks on the subject of the great progress
which free trade had made in the minds of the people,
and, alluding incidentally to:negro-slavery, observed:
"If they were to have the iron fetters- shaken from
the hands of the slaves, the nation said, Jet us also
have the commercial fetters shaken from our hands.
The negroes were freed, but the people of this coun-
try continued bound, and unless they imperatively
demanded the abolition of these restrictions, they would
. ,
continue to be so, till nothing short of the compulsion
of necessity should drive the Legislature to redeem its
pledge." The emancipation of the negroes, not-
withstanding the prodigious cost at which it was
effected, was unquestionably a generoui, politic,
high-!nainded act worthy, of a mighty nation like
England ; but the emancipation of trade from the
shackles, with which it is at present encumbered, is
an act at least equally politic, equally necessary,
equally called for by humanity. For who would be
the gainers by such emancipation ? All classes to a
certain extent; but more especially the poor—the
oppressed—the despised operatives, on whom the
present restrictive system falls with terrible seve-
rity, crippling their energies, narrowing their
field of labour, _throwing a cloud over the
present, blottng out hope from the future, and
sowing, almost as a matter of. necessity, the seeds
of ill-will between- themselves and their employers, by
placing each in a. false position with the other. It is
but .a :tame, halting, one-sided humanity that re-
dresses the wrongs of the blacks, while it can endure
to perpetuate the slavery—for what is the present
factory system, so far as, the women and chil-
dren are concerned,, but slavery ?—of the whites.
Referring to the vacillating policy of Ministers,
Mr. EW.S.B.T went on to saY:—" Gpvernment were
sometimes by their friends and foes charged with
being free-traders. He ,gave them full credit for
what they did. lie could only with they were more
open in carrying into practice their theory of free-
trade.' One Minister' had just made the declaration
he hid already quoted; and others said that the prin-
ciples of 'fiee7trade were the principles of common
sense. AnPther was supposed to write in favour of
the 'Government principles Of free-trade. If such
were the-fPrinCiples entertained by the Ministers,
why did they not act on them ?" This is a question
that ha's often been asked, and answered in an infinite
variety of ways, according to the views of those who
replied to it. Our own opinion, which we have 'ex-
pressed more than once, is that Ministers have aban-
doned an oldffashioned notion of principle, and
adopted expediency as their slieet-anchor. On this
alone they act, and will continue to act, so -long as
they remain in office. Lofty and comprehensive
views are clearly caviare to theni ; they consult
only their majority, which is to them a sort
of political barometer. And yet, strange to say,- not
withstanding the vaunted majority, rarely has there
been of late times so utterly inefficient a Ministry:
It seems nearly powerless for good, and not over-
influential even for evil. Quarter after quarter it post-
pones, struggles, equivocates with, and abandoni, While
the country looks on astonished at the phenomenon of
a Government scarcely able to make a single decisive
movement, with: a majority of ninety at its buil

, • , • ..•..
No apology will be expected; by our readers for xe-
newing our earnest appeal to their Most serious atten-
tion, on the subject of our colonial policy. * Without
participating in-the apprehensions expressed by more
than one of our Cdntemporaiies, and their correspon-
dents in Paris, that the Otaheite question—precipitated,
as it has been, by the vapopririg and coxcombry Of the
French naval commander, Rear*-Admiral Durnrrr
TuovAus—may yet be destined to involve this country
in !hostile Collision
_witk France, we must admit that
the fait arid lOoie tone of our own diplomatic corres-
pondence in the affair, and the " would and would
not" character of the intervention—half demonstra-
tion, half menace;--of qur naval officers in those' seas,
have not heen of a character to sustain the lofty in-
fluence of our national reputation, -to vindicate our
moral or Political good faith, "or to up hold' the unsullied
dignity of the British fla It is impossible peruse
the
to
thestate Paper, -entitlel"' terrespendence relative to
the Society 131;nds; 1843, in continuation of papers
• in August that y
to both Houses, by
command," the -b presented
withqUi coming.' • teegli:o,R; the' present • session,
unhappily, that poor
utterly viatimited; "through
cu?eneeni\t°ns.
th7A.REThhaes., I been
utterly
of
her own fears, and the . intrigues influence
of . her corrupt . chiefs," (sich are Lora
Miza.
DEENS own words,) " in signing a deed so fatal to her
independence" as that by which she' *placed h-Otielf
under the protector*, of the IPng of the Faxmcn.
The second conclusion this cqrrespondence irresistibly
invite's is,-that the statesmanship exhibited by Lord
ABERDEEN throughout the whole affair, subsequent to
the date of Mr. Consul PEITCHAED' s first. cerntolini-
cation to'hini of the possession taken by the French of
three of the Marquesas Islands, and OtahOte. and
imeO, of the Society Islands-4as of the lowest pre-
tensions:in- point of Ina or spirit. I The first eigonlit-
nication was dated " Sydney, New South Wales, Bth
December, 1842." On the 14th June, 1843, Lord

ABERDEEN apprises Mr. PRITCHARD that our Go-
vernment "had already been informed of the pro-
ceedings of the French squadron under DUEETIT
THOUARS at the Society Islands. Why then, may
we ask, had not instructions been immediately there-
upon sent out to our Consul nearest to the scene of
action, as to the distinct course he ought to adopt in
reference to such proceedings ? But Lord ABERDEEN
first admits that the matter had been left to the
chapter of accidents ; and in the next place evidently
labours to show, not so much that it was not our
duty to interfere on behalf of the unhappy QUEEN, as
that the French had so ably availed themselves of her
own act and deed, obtained in the absence of any
friendly authority upon whose consideration and in-
tervention she could have thrown herself. He,
therefore, intimates that our Government do not in-
tend to call the right assumed by the French into
question. He also relies for a corroboration of this,
his view of the subject, upon two documents which
had been forwarded to him by M. GulzoT—the one
being an address of congratulation and approval to
the French Rear-Admiral on his recent proceedings,
by the (British) ministers of the Protestant mission,
in the isles of Otaheite and Moorea ; the other, a similar
address of British inhabitants, residents at Otaheite.
These two documents certainly enhance the difficulty
of our Government ; for, as M. GulzoT writes to the
Count DE ROItAN CHABOT (11th September, 1843),
they amount to an acquiesence on the part of our own
resident subjects in the reality of those alleged
grievances under which French shipping had laboured
when visiting Otaheite, and which, as "faits notoires et
ividens," had called, imperatively, for "une energique
intervention!"

Now we complain that for a state of things which
was almost morally sure to arise out of these " no-
torious and evident facts," no British authorities,
civil or naval, had been sufficiently instructed by their
Government to be prepared. If there had been, the

missionaries and other British residents who would
have addressed it on the point, would never have com-
mitted themselves or this country to two such docu-
ments. Commodore NICOLAS acted upon the im-
pulses so natural to a British sailor, in expressing his
resentment at the bullying and insult offered by
the French authorities to the defenceless QUEEN in
person. They set up a flag which he hauled down,
and a few other vain exhibitions of feeling escaped
him. But he soon proved the danger and difficulty
of acting without orders, and therefore desisted.
The French carried their point and realised their
demands, not merely with impunity, but with the
prestige derived from having done so despite this
desultory and unauthorised opposition. The Earl of
ABERDEEN, we must say, seems to have been be-
wildered by the affair from the first. His dispatches
in this instance have the defect (very unusual in
his papers) of being even illogical, at least when he
writes by the hands of Mr. ADDINGTON. For the
latter (letter to Sir JOHN BARROW, Secretary to the
Admiralty, 11th July, 1843,) writes thus :—" It
certainly would appear, from various reports received
by her MAJESTY'S Government, respecting the trans-
actions which ended in the surrender by the Queen
of TAHITI of a portion of her sovereign authority to
the French Admiral, that that cession was brought
about partly by intrigue, and partly by intimidation."
Therefore, it would appear, " that this cession or
surrender was NOT voluntary ;" yet Mr. ADDINGTON
proceeds—" But the surrender WAS, notwithstanding,
VOLUNTARILY made, and completed in due form, by
Queen POMARE—under whatever impulsion she may
have acted." That is as Much as to say, "her will
was constrained in part, and in part it was violated;
but it was her free will notwithstanding, however
much violated, to whatever extent constrained."

The logic is as unintelligible as the policy of Lord
ABERDEEN'S office.

In his letter of 13th March, 1843, Mr. Consul
PRITCHARD thus writes to Lord ABERDEEN, from the
British Consulate at Otaheite

On my arrival, I found Queen Pomare about eight
miles from this place, driven from her proper restdence
by the continual threats made by the French to fire upon
her. Under the protection of Commodore Nicolas, in her
ajesty's ship Vindictive, Queen Pomare has returned
to her own residence.

Commodore Nicolas and I have endeavoured to act in
accordance with the repeated promises of assistance and
protection made by the British Government to Queen
Pomare. Permit me to refer your Lordship to Mr. Can-
ning's letter, dated March 3, 1827, to the late King of
of Tahiti. "His Majesty, however, commands me to say,
that although the customs of Europe forbid his acceding
to your wishes in this respect. (hoisting the British flag),
he will be happy to afford to yourself and your dominions
all such protection as his Majesty can grant to a friendly
Power at so remote a distance from his own kingdom."_
Lord Palmerston's dispatch of the 9th of September,
1841, is of similar import :—•' You will assure Queen
Pomare that her Majesty will at all times be ready to
attend to any representations that Queen Pomare may
wish to make, and will always be glad to give the pro-
tection of her good offices to Queen Pomare, in any dif-
ferences which may arise between Queen Pomare and
any other Power." In your Lordship's instructions of
July 30, 4842, the same sentiments are reiterated
Upon the occasion of your return to your post at Tahiti,
it will be expedient that you should be able to prove to
the governing authorities in these islands, that her Ma-
jesty's Government continues to take that interest in their
prosperity which has heretofore been professed."

Lord. ADERDEEN, in his dispatch of 25th September,
in reply, rebukes Mr. PRITCHARD for having "alto-
gether misinterpreted these passages in the letters of
Mr. CANNING and Lord PALMERSTON ;" and justifies
the non-interference of England in the matter, on the
ground of that illogical fallacy which we have just
exposed.

Her Majesty's Government sincerely deplore the pain
and humiliation inflicted on Queen Pomare. Moreover,
they are willing to do everything in their power to alle-
viate her distresses. But, unfortunately, the letter in
which French protection was solicited, was, by her own
will and act, signed by the Queen • and the agreement
which followed was equally entered into and completed
by the Queen's own will and act. _ _

However much, therefore her Majesty's Government
may be disposed to regret the coarse of conduct by which
the Queen was brought to sign a deed so fatal to her
independence, they are deprived, by her own voluntary
and formal twt, of all just and available ground for oppos-
ing the assumption and exercise of the protectorate by
the French:

Her Majesty's Government do not. therefore, intend to
raise any que3tion as to that exercise of authority, nor
as to the legitimacy of the now flag which the French
have thought proper to substitute for the old Tahitian
flag.

But all this was not the poor woman's "act" or
" deed." Lord ABERDEEN himself once more admits
that it was not, when—(to get rid of an ugly case,
illustrating that absence of a forecasting and vigorous,
though unaggressive, policy of which we complain)—
he hinds her to the cruel consequences of scandalous
arts which he thus characterises in another part of the,
same dispatch. He is giving counsel which we blush,
to find ascribed to a British Cabinet Minister. It is
cajoling the victim of oppression into an unworthy
compromise with unprincipled power, merely because,
it is power :

But Queen Pomare would do wisely in submitting to the
evil circumstances which her own fears, and the intrigues
of some of her corrupt chiefs, have brought upon her.
Resistance to those who have assumed the rights of pro-
tectors over her, would but aggravate the miseries of
her position, and provoke even worse treatment than she'
has already received.

Madrid journals of the 17th have been • received,
from which we learn that, on the 16th, Queen Cams?lNA reviewed her regiment, the " Reina Guberna-
dors," to which she had lately been Colonel. She
was attended by General NeavArz, Duke DE SAN
CARLOS, Duke na LA BOCA, General Coenove, and
several other officers of rank. Her MAJRSTY was
enthusiastically received by the regiment. Accord-
ing to accounts from Gibraltar, the Emperor of Mo-
ROCCO is making great preparations to resist the
proposed attack from Spain. He has proclaimed war
against the Infidels, and called out forty thousand
horsemen. The subjoined decree appears in ,the
Madrid Gazette, put forth probably to gull the fo-
reign creditors, and prepare the way for a loan :

" The Queen, in her anxiety to re-establish and consoli-
date, by all possible means, the national credit and confi-
dence of the creditors of the State, and being persuaded that,
in order to attain that end, nothing is more efficacious than
the rigorous observation of the laws and special ordinances,
and the execution of contracts, has fixed for the Ist of May
next the drawing of the foreign deferred debt, which is to
take place in the present year, conformably to the law of the
16th of November, 1834. A:Committee, appointed to that
effect, will proceed to draw, under the presidency of the
Director-General of the Sinking Fund."
More butcheries have been committed in the East
of Spain, as will be seen from the following procla-
mation of General Esnare, addressed to the inha-
bitants of Gerona on the 16th :

"Although. the authorities of the neighbouring kingdom
(France) have, thanks to their excellent vigilance, arrested
47 Spanish emigrants, Inost'of them chiefs and officers vile
wanted to revive tivll war in their country, on-the lith and
13th, nine other emigrants • attempted, to -enter Spain• by
night. Seven were apprehended by the people and detach-
ments in the army. After an inquiry into the affair, and
spiritual assistance being administered t 9 them, they have