The Sun.
London, England, 1844-07-19 00:00:00

not to wish er do not wish to our next-door neighbours
all the prosperity and happiness they can desire for
themselves. In speaking of the settlement of Algiers,
our allusion to which- is -seized upon as a ground
of offence, we gave expression to a conviction which
I is, we believe, universal in this country, and
in most other countries of Europe, and which
is certainly held by a very great number of
intelligent men in France itself—the conviction that
the settlement cannot be permanently maintained upon
any very extensive scale, if at all. All the circumstances
of the case considered, this conviction is not in the
least shaken by any votes which the Chamber
of Deputies may- be compelled by " the pressure
from without" to pass, or the Government may,
by force of the same pressure, be compelled to pro-
pose. The history of the world, ancient and modern,
presents no example of a territory as extensive—half as
extensive—one-tenth as extensive as Algeria, per-
manently retained under such circumstances as those
under which France has acquired and now holds that
country. England, with her vast naval superiority,
and the resources for military service which her one
hundred millions of Indian population could sup-
ply, would deem it madness to attempt such
an acquisition of territory. But the prevailing opinion
of England in the matter is most plainly written in our
policy. An equality, if not predominance, in the
Mediterranean is of course as desirable to• us as
it can be to France ; but how have we sought to
secure this object ? By large territorial conquests ;
expensive in their acquisition ; more expensive, and
always hazardous in their preservation ? No ; though
in 1800 we might have laid our grasp upon Sicily and a
great part of Egypt—though in 1816 we might have
effected a lodgment in Algeria—though in 1840 we
had the whole of Syria, to say nothing of the facility
with which we might at almost any moment during
the war possess ourselves of the Balearic Islands, or
any of them ; notwithstanding all these opportuni-
ties, England- contents herself with half-aklozen islands
of the smallest size and the rock of Gibraltar, and these
she finds amply sufficient for the protection of her com-
merce. Be our opinion respecting the permanence of the
large French settlement in Algiers, however, correct or
incorrect, it is surely unjust to ascribe that opinion to
envy or ill-will.

THE BIRMINGHAM ELECTION.
(From the Cheltenham Examiner.)
This catastrophe has been consummated, and the
country has this week witnessed the humiliating spec-
tacle of a great constituency sacrificing certain success
to the gratification of internal fends and dissensions.
Thus has Birmingham been lost to the Liberal interest--
the Tory candidate has been returned, and Mr. Joseph
Sturge entitled himself to the lasting gratitude of the
party for his services on the occasion. The unhappy
split which manifested itself immediately on Mr. Schole-
field's death, remained unclosed to the last • and
the result was, that the Liberal party, weakened,
dispirited, and frittered away in unworthy rivalry,
was unable to cope with the united and sanguine
party opposed to it. The Conservatives are not a little
vain-glorious at the fact that they have polled more
than the combined forces of their opponents. But, re-
garded as a mere party victory, they have little to con-
gratulate themselves on ; Mr. Spooner purchased the
votes of many of the middle- men by his distinct decla-
rations against the present Ministry ; he announced him.
self as a No:Peelite ! and as one who, on the Factory
and Sugar Bills, would have voted against Ministers,
and scorned to do as many of his party did—rescind
his vote to keep them in office. So far, then,
the Ministry gains but little in Mr. Spooner's
advent to Parliament. As to the causes of defeat to the
Liberals, they are simply these : united, they were un-
doubtedly able to carry their man ; their unfortunate
dissensions destroyed that certainty, by cramping the
energies, and destroying the unitedness of the party, and
preventing many, from the improbability of victory,
from going to the poll at all. As we before stated, the
only means of healing the breach was for the weakest
party to give way ;
.the result has showp which
that party was. The smallness of Mr. Sturge's mino-
rity proves the hollowness of his pretensions to repre-
sent the borough ; he must have known, long before he
went to the poll, that he could not command 500 votes ;
in fact, that the only end of his opposition must be not
his own success, but the defeat of his brother Libe-
ral, and the letting in of a Tory. Mr. Scholefield,
on the contrary, had a prospect of success. No one
questions that had he stood alone, he would have com-
manded a majority ; with The undivided support of
the Liberal interest, his success was certain. But fate,
and the folly of party, decreed otherwise. Birming-
ham was destined to have the enviable notoriety
of giving the first victory to disunion, and its name
will hence be a word of warning, and caution, and
disgrace to the constituencies of the empire. The public
voice will not fail to visit this disgrace upon the right
quarter—the man who, with 300 votes (not a tithe of
the polling constituency), set up his own ambition and
his own pretensions against the all but unanimous voice
of his party. It would scarcely be credited, but for the
living example that so much professing philanthropy
should be a cloak to selfishness and personal ambition.
But, in these days, unfortunately, professions and prac-
tice often run to opposite extremes ; and the consti-
tuency of Birmingham have lent themselves to the full
development of the phenomenon. In plain language,
Birmingham has been Sturged.
(From the Cambridge Advertiser.)
We live in strange times, and consequently may ex-
pect to witness strange things. There is, for instance,
the result of the Birmingham election—few will hesi-
tate' to admit the strangeness of that event. Indeed,
seven years ago had any one ventured to predict
that Radical Birmingham world choose a per-
son of Conservative principles for its repre-
sentative in 1844, he would be laughed at
for his folly ; but yet the thing has come to
pass. We, being no party politicians, can afford to
admit this fully and unreservedly, but at the same time
we think the solution of the political phenomenon to be
simple and obvious. A house divided against itself
cannot stand, neither can a party, nor the section of
a party • and, therefore, ever since we heard of the split
that had taken place in the Liberal interest in Birming-
ham, we set down Mr. Spooner's return as certain and
inevitable. Besides, he is, we be believe, a gentleman
of great local influence, and deservedly popular with
the electors of Birmingham—that coupled with the dis-
union and antagonism in the ranks of the Birmingham
electors, easily, we think, accounts for his triumph over
the moral-force Chartist, and the mere Whig.
Of course, if local jealousies prevail, men must
make up their minds to see the common cause sa-
crificed—if personal antipathies intervene, men
must lay their account with witnessing the
ruin of public principles. Nothing is surer than that.
The Liberals of Birmingham have themselves to thank
for the defeat they have sustained, and it is only to be
hoped that they will profit by the lesson that has been
read them. If they do, the Liberal cause will be rather
served than injured by Mr. Spooner's return ; but dozens
of sunk returns cannot make up for the loss of
strength occasioned to the Ministry by the feelings of
distrust and disappointment that obtain amongst their
supporters, and that are so spreading amongst Con-
servative constituencies in every quarter of the empire.
Look how severely their conduct on Earl Powis's
Bill has been censured by their friends both in and out
of Parliament—look what a storm of odium Sir J. Gra-
ham's tampering with the Post-office called down upon
them; these things are not to be forgotten, or atoned for
by the addition of one unit to the number of their par-
tisans in the Lower House. Character is everything with
the country in the long run ; and, indeed, in the present
condition of rarties, with a servile majority of ninety at
the beck of Ministers, the result of an isolated election
can only be a matter of very secondary importance. Ii
is only as a sign of the times that it is at all worthy o
notice.

(From the Worcestershire Chronicle.)
The Birmingham election has terminated, as we pre-
dicted, in the return of Mr. Spooner, by a considerable
majority. This is owing to the unfortunate division in
the Liberal ranks, occasioned by the Complete Suf-
, fragists, who must have known, in bringing forward Mr.
Sturge, that there was not the ghost of a chance of
securing his election. The only purpose served by the
line of conduct they thought fit to adopt, is the pur-
pose of the Tories, the hereditary enemies of good
government. They have demonstrated, at the same
time, the absurdity of their pretensions, laid bare
the weakness of their cause amongst the electoral
body, and established beyond the possibility of question
which of the two Liberal candidates ought to have
given way to the other. Three hundred and fifty votes
given for Mr. Sturge; more than seventeen hundred for
Mr. Scholefield! Surely the former and his supporters
could not have expected the majority should give
way to the minority, that the 1,700 should allow
the 350 to impose, as it were, a candidate upon them !
The probale result of the contest, as between Mr.
Scholefield and Mr. Sturge, must have been ascer-
tainable before the election. Mr. Sturge and his
friends, had they made any calculations upon the subject,
as various communications to the press on their behalf
would lead us to believe they did, must have known
sufficient of the comparative position occupied by each
candidate, to be convinced that it was hopeless for them
to contest the election. Yet they and he persisted, and
the consequence of their unpatriotie obstinacy has been
that they have a Tory Member, instead of a Liberal
one. The principle on which the Complete Suf-
fragists have acted is just like that which is mani-
fested in spoilt children, who, because they cannot
have just what they desire,' throw away the good
thing they might have. Because the Complete Suffra-
gists cannot have a member whose political sentiments
exactly match their own, they contrive to let in, not the
one whose opinions come the nearest to his, but the one
who is the farthest removed from him, who has scarcely a
single sentiment in common with the pattern they have set
up. And when they have done this they believe, for we
(rive them credit for sincerity, that they are going the
right way to work to promote an extension of the yopu-
-I.r liberties, and to advance the cause of good Go-
vermient ! We pity their infatuation, and lament its
result.

DEATH OF COOKE, THB CELEBRATED EQUES
:MAN.—This patriarch of the Circus died a few days
aqn in Liverpool, in great distress ; so much so, that a
few friends, who knew him in his prosperity, are now
getting up a subscription for his destitute widow. The
Royal Amphitheatre in the town—that noblest edifice
of its kind out of London—is one of the many structures
he built in the course of his extraordinary and diversified
career ; and there is no town in the empire where he
and his troop were not well• known twenty or thirty
years ago.
COPENHAGEN, JULY 11.—Yesterday morning the
Russian frigate Aurora, of 44 guns, arrived in the Chan-
nel (die Renne) bound from Cronstadt to England. It
took in a stock of fresh water. News is come to-day from
Dragoe, that a Russian fleet, coming from the south, was
in sight at eight o'clock this morning ; three ships were
two miles south of Dragoe.—Haniburyh Boursenhalle,
July 13,