The Sun.
London, England, 1844-03-11 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY MON,NING, MARCH 11, 1844,

( convenience of the persons interssted in respect
of the smallest estates in the land subjected
to be inclosed under this Act." This is
but a sorry crumb of comfort, but—so far as
we can discover—it is all that the poor are likely to
get from the present measure ; for though the Bill
states that they may, if they please, enter a protest
against any attempt to inQlose their common lands,
yet we can gather, from significant indications that
peep out in many of the Clauses, that their protest
will be unheeded, and their opposition neutralised, by
the more influential residents in the neighbourhood.
As for presenting them with an allotment in lieu of
their old right to feed their ducks, geese, sheep, pigs,
and donkeys on the waste lands in their vicinity, this
appears to us at best but a doubtful compensation ;
the more so as it will be forced on them, whether
they like it or not. Under no possible cir-
cumstances can we bring ourselves to regard
a project for inclosing common-lands—that is to say,
the only lands that still remain to the poor—with ap-
probation ; and accordingly we shall watch the pro-
gress of this very. equivocal Bill with the utmost jea-
lousy, for though it professes to be founded on prin-
ciples of justice and humanity, yet, if we mistake not,
it contains the seeds of serious injury to the interests
of the poorer and more defenceless classes of the com-
munity. We cannot believe that the respectable
Members who prepared and brought in the Bill have
any design to rob the poor cottager of his right, but
can they control the machinery of this Commission
when once set agoing ?

Since the Opposition Press was extinguished at Ma-
drid, no accounts of the slightest importance have ap-
peared in the Government journals respecting the af-
fairs of Alicant and Carthagena. Nearly the
same silence prevails with regard to the state of the
capital. Mystery, military despotism, and that horrible
system of sanguinary retaliation sanctioned by the Du
RANG o decree are the orders of the day. To the outrages
on personal rights, liberty, and property, which are the
certain consequences of this most humiliating, and at
the same time most terrible of tyrannies, are super-
added those wanton sacrifices of human life, those in-
cessant demands for the blood of political opponents,
which are only dreamed of under a reign of military
terror. And as if even these atrocities were insuffi-
cient to glut the appetite for carnage, which is the
disgraceful distinction of almost every Spanish parti-
san in the factious and insurrectionary movements of
these days—prisoners of war, guilty of the crime of
being taken in arms against the intolerable rule of
NARVAEZ and the ferocious malignity of RONCALI,
are decimated ! In a recent case, after some fighting
against a detachment of the troops commanded by
RONCALI, a party of 200 men surrendered to the vic-
torious banner of the " Captain-General." The com-
manding officer of the besieging forces (the affair was
a sortie) ordered every fifth man to be shot ! In the
most recent communications that have been received
touching the progress of the young QUEEN'S troops
against the insurgents, we read the following:—
" The naval commander, Colonel Pinzon, sends the
account of his taking possession of the Island of Ta-
barca, which the insurgents did not attempt to defend,
the few persons there having hoisted a white flag on his
commencing to cannonade it. This was on the 13th,
and he admits that the blockade was almost fruitless.'
On the 14th he went with the steamer in front of Alicant
to silence the fire of two feluccas, the Pluton and Proser-
pina, which were firing on the English manufactory, where
the Government engineers were at work : this object he
effected, the feluccas retiring within the Mole, but the
fire from the Castle cut up the steamer a good deal, one
shot going right into the poop, and another, after carry-
ing away the chimney, took off the heads of a sapper and
artilleryman; upon which he retired to the anchorage at
the island. The insurgents who were taken in the two
guarda costas were to be shot upon deck. The Govern-
ment has so-far given way that the insurgents taken at
Alcoz are not to be shot, as ordered at first, without the
form of a trial. The court-martial is now sitting there
upon th• case.
" The soldiers of the carabineers taken at Elda were to
be decimated; and the Heraldo states that a dispatch has
been received from General Roncali to that effect."
Even this passage conveys but a feeble idea of the
blood-guiltiness which has stained, at this early stage
of them, all the operations directed by the QUEEN'S
officers against those of her subjects who will not
submit to the domination of such monsters. The
whole of their fine country seems about to be overrun
by the same remorseless agents of a sanguinary and
jealous Government, with which Spain in former cen-
turies, had become familiar at the hands of a PEDRO
or a PHILIP. Domiciliary visits of authorised spies
and police agents, secret arrests, long and painful
imprisonments of innocent men on the mere whispers
of hired and unprincipled ruffians who have the ear
of the Minister, are once more filling the ancient
dungeons of Madrid. In the field and in
garrison the military commanders are almost rivalling
the atrocities of the execrable MINA, in whose person
our English hospitality and humanity were destined
to be so signally dishonoured and forgotten. In the
capital, and in the towns, the mischievous activity,
the secr-'t combinations, and the uncontrolled harsh-
ness at 1 brutality exercised towards captives, who
are rotting in obscure and solitary confinement, recal
the dark and dreary period in which the spiritual
predecessors of the present political inquisition in-
sulted Heaven,
v:and disgusted all mankind with its
diabolical discipline ; its- alternations of deceptive
hope and Physical torture, of treacherous deception,
and unqualified intiinidation.

Now long are these horrors—the reproach, the
shame, the revolting infamy of Europe, in 1844—t0
continue ? Englishmen impatiently demand, in the
name of popular liberty and of Christian civilization,
that these scenes of wantou and of useless carnage
should at once cease and determine. Their moral
example at present, their evil influence on the future,
are incontrovertibly European evils, which it is pal-
pably- the interest of all European States to remedy
and to remove at once. But how is this remedy