The Sun.
London, England, 1844-08-15 00:00:00

gff ARE&

Birmingham and Gloucester (100 paid)„ 113%
Chester and Holyhead ( 5 paid) ... ..... ........ ...... 5%
Chichester and Brighton, 5 paid 4%
Great Western (75 paid)
Ditto Half Shares, 50 paid . 2
Ditto Fifths. 12 paid
London and Birmingham (Stock)
Ditto, New Thirds, 2 paid 39
London and Greenwich (124 15s. 4d. paid) ..... „, Bji
London and Croydon (Trunk) 19%
Manchester and Leeds (70 paid)
Ditto, Half Shares, 30 paid
Midland Counties (100 paid)....... .......... ..... ..... „ lO9
Newcastle and Darlingron Junction. 11 paid 43
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Yarmouth and Norwich (18 paid)
Paris and Orleans (20 paid)

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF THIS DAY.
GLOBE.—The Times of this morning contributes
a rather large instalment towards balancing its ac-
count on the Otaheitian question. For some days the
entries in its columns were principally on the other
side; and a large amount of sound argument, inter-
spersed with wholesome invective, were introduced to
show the unprovoked and indefensible character of the
outrages perpetrated by the French authorities at Ota-
heite ; and also to impress upon our Government the
obligations by which it is bound to demand and
enforce indemity and reparation for the indignity
offered to the British flag in the person of Mr.
Pritchard, the Consul of this country, and for the
abuse of the powers assumed by the French officers
under the " Protectorate " they had set up. No
longer than yesterday an article of this cha-
racter, of no ordinary excellence, enforcing these
views, appeared in the columns of the Times.
" A change has this morning come o'er the spirit"
of our Contemporary. As if scared by.the sounds
itself had made: apparently fearful of having assisted
to rouse the spirit of the nation ; or, possibly, of hav-
ing " roared" too loudly in the ears of Lord Aber-
deen, and disturbed the dreamy repose which con-
stitutes his delight; the Times suddenly becomes
mild as a sucking dove ! Recently so big with rage
Against French aggression and outrage, for which re-
paration must be demanded, and atonement made, our
Contemporary—in the spirit of Shakspere's popinjay,
now " talks like a waiting gentlewoman ;" of " the
pity, so it was—"
" That villanous salt-petre should be digg'd
Out of the bowels of the harmless earth,
Which many a good tall fellow had destroy'd
So cowardly."
The occasion of this marked change—at once both
sudden and complete—is not very obvious. The
meeting at Exeter Hall yesterday, convened for the
purpose of enabling the Directors and members of the
London Missionary Society to make a public demon-
stration of their views and sympathies upon the state
of things at Otaheite, is made the peg upon which the
Times hangs its new opinions on this question. We
neither adopt the whole of the views put forth by the
speakers at the meeting referred to, nor undertake to
defend the language in which some of them gave
utterance to their opinions. There are, however,
strong provocations to regret and indignation in
the ministers and gentlemen on whom the Times
pours out the vials of concentrated contempt
and wrath for their interference. The argument
of our Contemporary will induce an opinion
that the Society which met yesterday on this matter
had obtruded itself into a dispute with which it had
no peculiar concern—that, in fact, their interference
is impertinent, and their agitation mischievous. Has
the Times forgot, or did it never know, that by the
patient, persevering, and devoted labours of the agents
of this Society—not composed exclusively ofDissenters,
but of clergymen and members of the Establishment,
uniting with Dissenters in this noble enterprise—
Otaheite and the other islands in the Georgian
groups were civilised and Christianised ? Had the
South Sea Islanders continued in their state of bar-
barism, they would not have attracted the regards of
the French, nor would the subordinate authorities of
that nation have forced their " protection" upon them.
They were reclaimed from barbarism by the agents
of the Society which met yesterday to express
its sympathy with the islanders whom they had
raised from the debasement of senseless idolatry, and
the vices and cruelties which follow in its train.
Those shores, once unsafe for any vessel to touch at,
were rendered approachable and hospitable through
the heroic courage and indomitable energies of the
missionaries who were sent forth to, and supported
by the contributions of, the Society which is upbraided
. by the Times, in one of the fitful changes for which
it is remarkable, with exceeding their vocation by
expressing their views on such a subject. If
the Times did " not know what particular call"
the meeting of yesterday had to " involve itself in
such matters," it is now informed ; and will doubt-
. less admit the ignorance which induced the reflections
upon the meeting and its proceedings, and apologize
for the discourtesy and injustice of which it has un-
wittingly been guilty. The marked discrepancy of our
Contemporary's present opinions on the main question,
with those it has recently put forth, may be less easily
reconciled. But as we are not the " protectors" of our
versatile fellow-journalist, we refrain from dwelling
upon what we cannot explain, and are not called upon to
defend. The Times thinks Otaheite too insignificant, in a
commercial sense, to deserve the attention of the British
nation. Would you provoke a war between the two
Governments about " a row in Otaheite ?" This ques-
tion is, however one of those which cuts two ways.
If Otaheite be of little value to England, it is of far
less importance to France. Yet France has deemed
it worth putting forth its best acts of circumvention
to secure it ! France has juggled Lord Aberdeen into
conceding the " Protectorate" of Otaheite to itself.
And now, when outrage and havoc have grown out
of the " Protectorate;" and indignity and outrage to
the British Consul have followed the deposition and
banishment of the Queen, the question is gravely
asked, whether this had not better be hushed
up ? Who would think of disturbing the pacific
relations existing between two great nations, because
" a row has taken place at Otaheite ?" Otaheite
is not altogether so contemptible, even in a commer-
cial point of view, as some persons suppose. The
following return of the average yearly number of
vessels of commerce, belonging to different nations,
which touch at Otaheite, is from a quarter on which
implicit rel;ance as to its accuracy may be placed : it
will also show That France has less interest of a com-
mercial kind in Otaheite that any other civilized
State :

Yearly.
English Merchant Vessels
American ditto
French.
Queen Pomare and her people have a strong claim
on the British Government itself. This must be ad-
mitted, if the promises of protection they have re-
ceived from successive Administrations be regarded
as of any worth.
STANDARD.—If we were not well aware that
the first, nay, the only consideration with particular
classes of persons is to keep themselves constantly be-
fore the public, we should be at a loss to guess the
purpose of the gentlemen who collected to make
speeches at Exeter-hall yesterday. These gentlemen,
one and all, deprecated the suspicion of a wish to
involve the country in war ; but we defy the
most sagacious to suggest any purpose consist-
ent with the preservation of peace their meeting
and their speeches can serve ; taking them
upon their own representation, they adopted a pro-
ceeding which can do no good, but which it is
obvious to every one may be productive of evil.
be
Let us notmisunderstood ; we are very far
indeed from
undervaluinglabours,
missionaries
the beneficial effect of
missionary buto we protest against the
interference
direction
nes andf the Government
usefule missionary so-
cieties in the
of the country. Themissionary is in-
spired by one and one only feeling,
zeal for
the propogation of true religion
is passion, and government, like law,
; but zeal
oght to be
64 mind without passion." If, in the
administrationthe complicated affairs of a great empire feelings,
eventh
of
the most noble and exalted, are allowed to take
command of calm reason, there must be an end ofcon-
e
con-
sistency and systematic government. Without even
departing from the subject immediately before us, we
can see a striking example of the danger of this inver-
sion of the proper order of influences, in the prevail-
ing temper of a considerable portion of the French
people, acting so powerfully upon the Government of
the country as to threaten it with an overthrow, if it do
not persevere in a course which every unprejudiced
human being must see to be both imprudent and
unjust. We do not wish to say it offensively,
but we certainly anticipate the judgment of
posterity when we assert, that each successive step
taken by the French officers in Otaheite has been
wrong. We have it, indeed, upon the acknowledge-
ment of the best and wisest men in France, that the
principal step thus taken is indefensible, and such as
ought to be retracted. Nevertheless, by a misappli-
cation of one of the most honourable feelings of
(=Ppmmaintaining nature,
patriotism, our neighbours insist
as just and right the

unauthorised wrong-doing of the officers of
France with all its injurious consequences. is,
may be unjust and unwise, and so it is, but
. it s,
nevertheless, the effect of an honourable passion. The
French people are, as they ought to be, jea.lous of the
rank and honour of their country, and their jealousy
is naturally directed against the most eminent in
power and in reputation of the rival nations. France
can afford to submit to a wrong from Naples or Bel-
gium, because submission in either case could be
ascribed only to the magnanimity of the
more powerful state ; but it is hard for human
passion to yield, even to right, in a dispute with an
equal, because such submission may be misconstrued.
This state of things, of which we have the evidence
before our eyes, demonstrates the danger of permit-
ting passion to interpose in the higher concerns
of Government. Yet, if not to excite a passionate
feeling of resentment against the French people,
though not, perhaps, against the French Govern-
ment, what can be the effect of a meeting and
speeches like those of yesterday at Exeter Hall ? It
is true that the effect in this country will be incon-
siderable, because the speakers and their general prac-
tices are pretty well known here. The speakers all,
with the exception of Mr. Baptist Noel (if it is right to
except him), Dissenters from the Established Church,
and as much separated by political opinions (in this
Mr. B. Noel is no exception) as in religious profes-
sion, from the vast majority of the people. The Mis-
sionary Society is a society wholly unconnected with
the Government, the Church, and all the other insti-
tutions of the country, to which it is pretty generally
hostile, as our own colonies have experienced in more
than one instance. The people of England, indeed,
rejoice at the success of its members in the conversion
of the heathen, as they rejoice in the success of
American missionaries in the same glorious work,
and the people would anxiously support them in
protecting their converts from the errors of Roman-
ism—but we are too well acquainted with the habits
of some of the missionaries to hold ourselves respon-
sible for all their proceedings, or to wish that they be
allowed to claim from the Government more than
the protection to which they are entitled as
British subjects. Nor have they any right to
claim more : as Dissenters they renounce the au-
thority of the state to govern their movements,
and it is too much for them to expect that the
state shall support a line of conduct which it is not
permitted to influence. It certainly was an un-
fortunate choice which selected a Dissenter as the
British Consul at Otaheite ; for that gentleman, how
just and honourable soever his disposition, could
not help considering himself more as the represen-
tative of the Missionary Society than of the Sove-
reign of the United Kingdom. So far, there-
fore, as regards the effect upon the mind of
this country, we apprehend no evil from the
demonstration yesterday, which, indeed, shows how
very slight has been the political connexion be-
tween this country and Otaheite, and so slight,
chiefly because of the care of the Dissenters to keep
the Queen and her people in their own hands, to the
exclusion of the British in common with every other
Government. It is in France—where the absence of
rank and total want of political importance of the
speakers at Exeter Hall must be less known, and
where the interior politics of our dissenting sects
can hardly be appreciated—that the mischief (if
any) of the display to which we refer will ope-
rate. It becomes, therefore, our duty to set forth
the truth as plainly as we can, and we surely say no
more :than truth in asserting that the meeting at
Exeter Hall does not speak the sense of the
people of this country, but the sense of a
class which hardly ever concurs in sentiment with
the great majority of the nation, and certainly
will not bring the people to concur with it
by coming forward in its dissenting character
to dictate to the Government upon a mo-
mentous and most delicate question of foreign policy.
We have not disguised our opinion that the French
officers at Otaheite have been in the wrong from first
to last. The first error was, however, the parent of
all that followed, by a very natural transition, and
the gradual advance from the imposition of the
original paltry fine, upon grounds which no pub-
lic law can justify, to the last act of extreme violence—
the seizure of the sovereignty—is, after all, perhaps
the best excuse for what appears at a hasty view so
shocking. It seems to us, however, that the proper
course to be pursued by England in such circum-
stances is, while she takes care to protect her sub-
jects, and to assert the honour of her flag, to refer
all besides to the native justice and generosity of the
French people. A few incendiaries and Jesuits
may deny justice to poor Queen Pomare, but it is
impossible to suppose that an intelligent, a high-
minded, and gallant people, like the French,
will permanently, and after all motive for
national jealousy shall have ceased, pursue a
course of unjust aggression, such as every man must
consider that, which has hitherto been pursued towards
the Queen of Otaheite. We have spoken with many
Frenchmen upon the subject, but we have not met
with one who does not acknowledge that the justice of
the case is wholly against his country, and acknow-
ledge also that the judgment of posterity will be as
unfavourable to France in this affair, as all admit the
lublic opinion of Europe to be at present.