The Sun.
London, England, 1844-07-20 00:00:00

Malting

LOADON, SATURDAY, JULY 20, 1844.

In the Lords a great number of Bills received the
Royal Assent; among otfiers, the Bank Charter Bill
and the Dittsenters' Chapels
Counsel was heard against the Gaming Bill, and
-witnesses were called. The first witness was a man
te the name of RUSSELL, who stated he was the
nt.':orney in the qui tam actions, and if these actions
were lost, the expenses of one of them would be
,aboue 1,000/. The examination of the witness led to
no result which could guide their Lordships, and the
a, ?air was postponed, the witness being ordered to
atte,‘d au Monday.
They Lord Chancellor called the attention of the
House to a statement in the Morning Chronicle,
relative to the Irish State Trials, to the effect that he
had said there could be no doubt that the array was
fraudulen t. Nothing, he must say, was further from
his intenti ons. He merely made a remark on a sup-
position pu 1: by Mr. HILL.
LordeCY trENHAM said the statement of the Morning
Chronicles vs. g incorrect ; but the misapprehension was
excustiblei, con sidering the difficulty of understanding
long argt unentsl.
The G. reat Aouthern and Western Railway Bill
was read a ethird time and passed.

Lord MONTEAGLE moved that the House resolve
itself into Committee on the Art-Unions Bill

The Duke of CAMBRIDGE supported the motion,
and bore testimony to the great utility of these insti-
tutions. He thought it would be a great advantage
if the Bill were passed in time for the present pur-
poses of these unions. These remarks were received
with loud cheers, and the Bill passed through Com-
mittee.

Some other Bills were discussed, of which the Par-
liamentary report gives a brief summary. The House
adjourned at Half-past Seven.
The Commons met at Twelve o'clock, when Mr.
GLADSTONE moved certain resolutions relative to
Railway Bills, which were agreed to. Mr. PLUMPTRE
hoped that railway travelling on the Lords' Day
would be prevented, but he found no Member to sup-
port him.

The Metropolitan Buildings Bill was ordered to
be read a third time on Monday.
The House, on the motion of Mr. GLADSTONE,
went into Committee on the Joint-Stock Companies
Bill, the clauses were agreed to, and the Bill, with
amendments, was ordered to be reported on Tuesday,
at twelve o'clock.

On the order of the day being read for the House
going into a Committee of Supply, Mr. WYSE called
upon the Government to make some statement re-
specting the disposal of money voted for the purposes
of education.

Lord HowicK concurred in the motion, and urged
on the Government the necessity of encouraging
education among the lower classes by holding out
promises of appointments in inferior stations, such as
those of tide-waiters and excisemen, to the most pro-
ficient scholars. No member of the Government made
any remark at the time, but on Mr. WYSE urging
the Government to express their feelings, Sir R. PEEL
said he concurred in many of the sentiments ex-
pressed by the Noble Lord, and particularly with the
suggestion for giving appointments in public offices
to the most deserving scholars.

Mr. M. GIBSON called the attention of the House
to the incendiarism now prevalent in the eastern
counties, particularly Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk,
and moved an address to her MAJESTY to issue a
Commission to inquire into the causes.

Sir J. GRAHAM resisted the motion. As he had
said on a former occasion, the trials now in progress
would elicit facts, in reference to these fires, pro-
bably of more importance than any that could be ob-
tained by a Commission, and he trusted the Hon.
Member would not persevere in his motion. A num-
ber of speakers followed, and a division took, when
there were for the motion 41, against it 130—
majority, 89.
Mr. WYSE, on the House going into Committee
for a grant to Maynooth College, moved an address
to her MAJESTY for the enlargement and improve-
ment of exibting Catho'ic institutions in Ireland, to
supply the present deficiencies.
The motion, after a lengthened discussion of much
interest, was negatived by a majority of 57.
The other orders of the day were then disposed of
and the House adjourned at a Quarter to Two o'clock.

The Morning Post of Thursday has another of
those rambling, eccentric articles which, of late, have
occasioned so much surprise and division to that por-
tion of the " Pension public," which constitutes its
readers. The first part of the article is devoted to a
wholesale condemnation of Ministers for having
abandoned the principles which they upheld when in
opposition, and disap2ointed the just hopes of their
friends who gave them such a triumphant majority at
the election of 1841 ; and the last part is taken up
with a sort of indirect defence of them—that is to
say, it is an attempt to show that they are by no
means so bad as might be imagined, notwithstanding
their avowed duplicity and tergiversation, being
neither " vulgar clutchers of place," nor " schemers
for power and patronage," but, on the contrary, men
of the strictest personal integrity and the best inten-
tions ! We do not exactly see how disinterestedness
and integrity are to be reconciled to craft and abandon-
ment of principle ; and most men would be inclined to
say that these qualities are clearly incompatible, but as
the Post appears to think otherwise, we shall leave it to
explain the discrepancy in the best way it can to its
readers, while we proceed to quote a remarkable
passage in which Ministers are dealt with in the
most unceremonious manner possible, and roundly
accused despite their admitted " integrity"
and " good intentions" —of having falsified
their pledges, and betrayed their Conservative
supporters. " The Minister elected by the
nation," argues our Contemporary, " has done
more, and said more, than any one who went before
him, to carry forward the practices and the princi-
ples which he was to have used his power to thwart,
impede, and obstruct. He, and his most active col-
leagues, have, with all the emphasis of gesticulation,
recorded their conviction of the truth and the com-
mon sense of the extreme maxims of the Anti-Corn-
law League. For a moment forgetting the intrinsic
effect of what has been already done, consider the
spirit of the Ministerial course ! Is it not still all in
one direction ? Every step in the very road which
Conservative electors said was the wrong road ? Not
simply an isolated act, but the whole scheme of Mi-
nisteiial action has been to loosen what it was to se-
cure, to pull down what it was to prop and strengthen."
And yet the men who have acted in this unprinci-
pled style, who have gained office under false pretences,
and adopted the very system of policy which they had
led their supporters to believe they " would thwart,
impede, and obstruct" by every means in their power
—the men who have played this tricky game of ex-
pediency, are immediately afterwards patted on the
back by our Contemporary, and even warmly
eulogised as men of " personal integrity" and "good
intentions !" Truly the Post is a most unaccountable
logician,at least as it regards its comments on the conduct
of Government, fur what it says in one sentence it
almost invariably makes a point of unsaying in the
next. In fact, it is never in the same mind for two
days together, and he must be a wonderfully shrewd
fellow who can diccver exactly what its politics are.
It is not Liberal, it is not Conservative, it is riot
Radical, it is not even Tory, for it is the cha-
racteristic of Toryism to repudiate all crotchety
opinions, and discountenance everything like
fcee, bold discussion ; and Heaven knows the
Post is free, bold, and sweeping enough in
its discussions ! If, then, our Contemporary be neither
Whig, Tory, nor Radical; if he hate Lord J. RUSSELL,
take fright at Sir R. PEEL, and consider Mr.
COBDEN to be the great dragon mentioned in the
Revelations, what is he ?—to what man or party
of men does he adhere ? So far as we can
gather from the tendency of his diurnal lucubrations,
we should say that he was a Jacobite of the year
1688, who looks on the Revolution of that year as the
most unconstitutional of all possible Revolutions,
and the House of Commons, whether reformed or
unreformed, as the worst of all possible institutions.
Such being his politics—or, rather, such being
the only intelligible politics we can discover
in him—no wonder he is horror-struck at
the bare idea of the Premier making con-
cessions from time to time to the spirit of
the age, and acknowledging, by his professions Gf
good-will to the principles of free-trade, that he looks
on the Anti-Corn-law League as "a great fact," to
whose fast-spreading moral influence he will one day
or other be compelled to succumb. But, despite the
hysterical agonies of our Contemporary, and his convic-
tion of " the right divine of kings to govern wrong,"
the popular movements he so much deprecates must
proceed; and, in particular, that great national move-
ment of the League must of necessity, year by year,
acquire an additional impetus, till it has achieved a
decisive victory over all the combined forces which
prejudice, ignorance; and self-interest, may bring to
bear against it.

The House' of Commons is surely, affecting a
return to the good old times of its puritanism and its
prudery ! We see nightly indications of the " Crom-
wellian" facility which carried the decisions of the
Parliament of the Protector always one way—
namely, that which had been previously indicated to
it as the course which "his Highness" would have this
or that particular question or business to follow—ac-
cording to the communications vouchsafed by one of
his Secretaries of State or Chief Commissioners of the
Treasury. This practice has been accurately fol-
lowed by the majorities of the present House in dealing
with such matters at the "Factories Labour Bill" and
the " Sugar Duties." When the head of her
MAJESTY'S Administration remonstrated with the
$6 COLIVCtiVO wisdom" of the country on the injudi-

cious determinations they had recorded, by impOrtant
majorities against the Government propositions re-
specting those measures, the majorities we speak of ,
listened and waxed penitent. But when " his High-
ness," with all the gravity and plausibility of the
Protector, and with not one atom less of that arbi- 1
trary stateman's well-known truthfulness and sin-
cerity, protested that if they did not rescind their
determinations he was determined to expose
the empire to the calamity of his retirement
from office, the obsequious parties to such
unpalatable exhibitions of independent judgments,

submitted themselves to his. They unvoted, by
equally important majorities, what they had voted,
and so enabled the Minister to carry his points—
points which it seems " to have repented them" to
have ever thwarted. But the House of Commons of

1844, carrying its rage of imitation to a period some
ten years earlier than the Cromwellian Parliament, is
evidently bent on rivalling its predecessor of 1644 in
its abnegation of all " self-glorifying pretensions.'
It might have already passed the most " self-denying
ordinance" which a Chamber of Conventiclers or
Covenanters could have devised for the expression of
their humiliation, were we at liberty to form our own
conclusions from the tone of the debate of last night,
on Mr. THOMAS DUNCOMBB'S motion. Constitutional
firmness, public dignity, and self-respect, appear to be
properties that are becoming obsolete in the House of
Commons even in theory; and in practice, or vindi-
cation, to have fallen into as utter desuetude as half
of its own " standing orders."
Mr. DUNCOMBE complained that the " Post-office
Committee," recently appointed, could not, as at pre -
sent constituted, carry out its inquiries in a proper
and efficient manner; that unless he were permitted
to be present at the examination of witnesses, they,
either from fear of ultimate consequences to them-
selves, or from other causes, would not depose to all,
or to the most important, facts, which they would
otherwise speak to. He concluded his speech by
moving that he should be " present at the examination
of such witnesses as he might think proper to produce
in support of the charge which had been made by
him." To this motion an amendment was subse-
quently moved, " that the names of Mr. DUNCOMBE
and Mr. MANNERS SUTTON be added to the Commit-
tee." This proposition was lost on a division. It
was supported by 51, opposed by 141 ; and rejected,
therefore, by a majority of 91.
But the important feature of the debate was this.
In complaining that the Committee "had not' made
searching inquiry into " facts of which he himself
was fully cognizant," he took occasion to ask Sir
JAMES GRAHAM " whether any letters of his (Mr.
T. DUNCOMBE) had been opened by the Right Hon.
Baronet's orders ? This was a question justified by
his oath of allegiance, as a Member of that House.
If his letters had not been opened by order of the
Right Hon. Baronet, they had been pryed into by
other persons, and therefore it was doubly incumbent
on that House to investigate .the circumstances, and
to place the facts on record." This was a most serious
question to be propounded thus solemnly to a Minister
of the Crown. All we can say upon the "justification"
to be adduced for it, is, that we should think an outrage
upon the public confidence so gross and scandalous as
the violation of a sealed letter, is one upon which the
meanest or most insignificant member of the commu-
nity has as indefeasible a right to complain, and in
terms, too, of indignation and displeasure even the
very strongest—as the highest personage in the
country. We have not the most remote doubt, that
the little being who absorbs so signal a share of the
attentions and caresses of royalty and of the aristo
cracy in this country—the soi-disant General Tom
THUMB himself—would have a good action to-morrow
against all or any of the higher Post-office authorities
for any fact of letter-breaking which he might prove
to have occurred in the case of a billet addressed to bis
own imperceptibility. But in an assembly of English
gentlemen—in the presence of the assembled represen-
tatives of the Commons of the United Kingdom, such
a charge, brought by one of their own body in respect
of his own letters—against a public functionary, sitting
there in the double capacity, as it were, of a delegate
from the people and a Minister of the Crown; must be
allowed to have a character of grave and fearful
responsibility about it, which it is impossible to ex-
aggerate. Any man in the situation of• §it JAMES
GRAHAM, Secretary of State for the larthie-Depart-
ment, it might be imagined, would have responded to
it under a full and deep perception of this responsi-
bility. But how did he meet the question ? By (in
the first place) a vague (and surely an unmeaning)
compliment to Mr. DUNCOMBE on his little proneness
" to vapouring." Vapouring, forsooth! As if to com-
plain,loudly, on the assumption of having been the object
of a base, a scurvy, a dishonest system of trickery and
fraud, unknown to the spirit and genius ofEnglish deal-
ing in public or private business, were a mere ad
captandum exhibition of bullying ! Sir JAMES pro-
ceeded thus :—" At the same time he could not re-
frain from reminding the Hon. Member that he had
put a question to him which he was already aware
con not, consistently with the avowed and known
sense of duty entertained by him (Sir J.GRAHAM), be
answered by him." Well ;—we do protest that the
serene assurance of the Right Hon. Baronet in ven-
turing to talk of what his "sense of duty" will prompt
him to—and in taking credit for it, too, with the
House—in the face of his yet unforgotten, and never-
to-be-forgiven tampering beforehand with re-
porters for the public press, on his private missions
to Clontarf or to Donnybrook, or anywhere else,
where Repeal agitation meetings were likely to be
held, at which Repealers could be caught tripping,
by some " chiel amang them taking notes ;"—this as-
surance, we say, though from the Home Secre-
tary, overcomes our gravity, and shocks even
our large allowances for his adventurous mo-
desty ! Nevertheless, what follows is better.
" He had already stated to the Hon. Gentleman, on a
former occasion, that the sense of public duty which
he entertained forbade him to give any answer to the
question put by him.—(Hear.) He (Sir J. GRAHAM)
was alone the judge of that sense of duty, and he,
acting under that judgment, said, that he could not
and would not, give any reply to the Hon. Member's
question.

If Mr. DUNCOMBH cannot rely in " unhesitating con-
fidence" on Sir J. GRAHAM'S " sense of duty," he can't
have generous simplicity enough to trust a Jew pedlar
with his gold watch, on the man's assurance that his
" sense of duty " will make him return it to him next
day, when he has ascertained what it is worth. That
Sir JAMlii should be so sanguine about other people's
appreciation of his " sense of public duty," is droll
enough. That the House of Commons should' con-
firm him in his calculations on its credulity is all
but incredible, though the fact is before our eyes !

Madrid journals of the lith have bowl received.
A meeting of the Members of the last Cortes had
been held to appoint a Committee of Direction con-
nected with the forthcoming elections. Letters from
Barcelona state that a ball has been given at Atara-
zanas in honour of their Majesties. A grand review
had taken place, at which the Royal party, attended
by Generals NARVAEZ, MEER, PAVIA, and Azusa,
the bishop of the diocese, &c.
The Castellano, a Madrid journal, contains a peti-
tion to the Government from the sons of General
ESTELLER, who was some time ago assassinated at
Saragossa, praying not only that the four individuals
condemned for the murder be put to death, but also
that they (the General's sons) may have the "honour"
of executing them.
Madrid Bourse on the 11th inst.—Three per
Cents., 274, at 60 days; Five per Cents., 20i, for 2d
August.

The French Government have received dispatches
from Marshal BUGEAUD, dated July 3, giving account
of another skirmish, for it cannot be called a battle,
between the French and Moors on the frontiers of
Morocco. It would appear from the Marshal's ac-
count that while encamped on the banks of a river
called Oued-Isly for the purpose of protecting a
tribe who had announced their submission, the Moorish
chief, on ascertaining this fact, informed the French
that he would resist their approach to the French
camp and confine them to the mountains. The Moors
established themselves in considerable force within
cannon-shot of the French ; BUGEAUD, in order to
avoid a contest, retreated, and the enemy fired on his
rear-guard. Upon this he acted on the offensive, and
totally dispersed the Moorish force, which consisted
entirely of cavalry, and amounted to about 4,000 men,
3,000 of whom were regular troops. ABD-EL-KADER
was present. The French had only six men wounded,
and the Moors also suffered very little. The dispatch
giving an account of this trumpery affair is given in

another part of the paper. A discussion took place in
the Chamber of Peers, on the Marquis DE Boisar
asking if it were true that an Englishman,
who acted as Consul for England and Sar-
dinia, had obtained an exequatur for the latter,
and had not demanded one for the former ?
M. VUXEMAIN declined to answer the question, as it
had no reference to the business before the Chamber.

The Marquis then tried his hand in another quarter,
and said—" Since the French Ambassador at the
Court of England was in the Chamber, he could per-
haps give some explanations on the subject. It would
be the means of removing much anxiety from the
country." But here he met with no better success.
The Count DE SAINT AULAIRE felt convinced that
there was not a single Noble Peer present who would
not be astonished to see him so thoroughly forget his
duty, and what was due to propriety, as to enter into
a conversation on such a subject with the Marquis
DE BOISSY. The Chamber applauded the cutting re-
buke. The following are extracts from the papers
:
"The report of General Paixhans,on a credit of 1,662,000 f.
for the construction of three steamers between Calais and
England, was distributed last week in the Chamber of
Deputies. The Debats, in mentioning this fact, says :
' The English have at present for Calais and Ostend eight
steamers, which altogether have 650 horse-power. They
have given to some of these packets engines of a very supe-
rior description, and have placed them under the direction of
the Admiralty. The Princess Alice, of 140 horse-power,
crosses the Channel in 130 minutes, with wind and tide
against her. France has on this line but three steamers, to-
gether of 160 horse-power. They are old crazy vessels, often
obliged to demand the assistance of the English steamers
when the sea is high, to take over our dispatches.' "

The Committee is unanimous in approving of the Bill.
The France says :—" The loyal and energetic re-
monstrances of the Viscount DUBOUCHAGE, in the
Chamber of Peers, have borne their fruits. We learn
that M. CHARBONNIER DE LA GUESNERIE and M. DE
LESPINOT have been set at liberty on bail."
The Quotidienne says:—

" The Archbishop of Paris, and the Bishops now in the
capital, have presented to the Keeper of the Seals a protest
against the proposition in the report of M. Thiers for restor-
ing to the ecclesiastical schools the 12,000 Bourses created by
the ordonnances of 1828. The Prelates at the same time
protest against the perfidy of attributing to them motives
which they do not entertain, and declare that they are ac-
tuated by no other than the honour of the Church, which
will not allow them to accept the wages of servitude."

A letter from Rome, in the Gazette des Tribunaux,

says :

" On the 4th, whilst thousands of persons were visiting the
Berberini Galleries, examining the rich collection of statues
and objects of curiosity left behind by Thorwaldsen, the
sculptor, to o huissiers entered, and, after haviug notified to
the public to go out, placed seals on all the doors. They
acted thus at the demands of the Kings of Bavaria and Wur-
temberg, who declared that Thorwaldsen had given them a
verbal promise to allow casts to be taken of works of sculp-
ture which belonged to him. This the executors of the de
ceased artist state they have .no knowledge of, and conse-
quently refused to permit, particularly as such an operation is
likely to injure the marble, and still more the cast of his
works, of which the Berberini Gallery contains a complete
collection. The civil tribunal of Rome has authorised the
opposition of the seals on the declaration of the two Kings;
but the executors have had a protest served on them at the
respective residences which they have chosen at Rome, and
have appealed against their proceedings."