The Sun.
London, England, 1844-08-12 00:00:00

Paerld 24M3

LONDON, MONDAY, AUGUST 12, 1844.

Accounts have been received from Tangiers which
leave little doubt that the war between France' and
Morocco is at an end. This will be a terrible blow
to the fire-eaters in Paris. They calculated upon
serious results from the march of Marshal BUGEAUD
into the territory of the Moors. They repudiated the
interference of the English, and would be satisfied
with nothing less than some important station oppo-
site to Gibraltar. They knew well that England
could not stand by quietly and allow any maritime
power to establish itself on the Straits, and they
cheered on therefore BUGEAUD and Jonivii.Ln
to act with decision. Wofully have they been
disappointed, and furious will be their outcry
against M. GulzoT for suffering the English Consul
to have one word to say in the matter. There is no
chance of war then in that quarter, and they must
fall hack upon the Pacific for some more substantial
ground of quarrel. There must be no compromike
then. " One PRITCHARD" excited the Otaheitans
to rebellion against their protectors. PRITCHARD must
be sacrified, and B&UAT and D'AUBIONT exalted
to the rank of patriots, and if their Foreign Minister
acts with common justice and common honesty, he
will be denounco.. as a traitor to his country. No man
who has attended to the spirit which animates the Op-
c.sition journals of Paris for some time can fail to see

that their object is war—war without rhyme or
reason against England and Louis PHILIPPE. We
believe, however, that these rabid journals do not re-
present the feelings of the French nation. There are
many good and great men in that country who know
that war could not benefit France, that England
wishes to live at peace, that they have gained much
under the administration of the present Sovereign,
and that before they risk a collision between the two
greatest nations in the world there must be some
other casus belli than a miserable squabble about a
petty island on the other side of the globe.

When a Prime Minister of Great Britain, in the
thirtieth year of a profound peace, is compelled to
supplement the vast revenue of the country, amount-
ing, on an average, to some 48,000,0001. per annum—
by the continued infliction of so intolerable an impost
as the income-tax, producing between five and six
millions a year additional, the unfortunates who en-
joy the distinction of being mulcted 7d. in the pound
on their respective incomes, in addition to their pro-
portionate contributions, in all manner of taxes, to the
general annual revenue in question—have some
prima facie reason to complain. All Sir R. PEEL'S
plausibility will not overcome the reluctant conVjction
of those who are to be mesmerised out of their seve.7l-:
pences for the satisfaction of this cross-bred property
and income•tax—that the superfluous cash, of which he
would so blandly relieve them, would be better in
their own pockets than in the Treasury coffers.
There is, in natural philosophy, no principle of re-
pulsion so strong as that which is excited in a tax-
payer by the contact of a tax-collector. In the
whole range of chemistry, no affinity has yet been
detected so active, universal, or tenacious, as that
which directs the fingers of the Government to the
money of the governed. In practical finance the
extinction of a profitable tax, whose productiveness
has once been tested and realised, is a result more
hopeless than, in human pathology—the extirpation of a
cancer that has once established and rooted itself in
the system. These, or some such reflections, operate
with your tax-payers, when they demand how it hap-
_ _

pens that with a rapidly growing trade—on which
the Minister dilates with the view of eulogising his
own Government ;—with a largely accumulating pub-
lic income, on which he expatiates in order to decry
that of his predecessors ;—with an economised expen-
diture, on which he relies for inducing the Parliament
to grant his estimates ;—the greatest and surest
branch of permanent revenue should have, for the last
seven or eight years, exhibited an almost uninterrupted
tendency to decline ? Does the Government, which
demands a cool addendum of six millions, to the
vast product of Customs, Excise, Stamps, and Post-
office Duty, Land-tax and Assessed Taxes, hereditary
and miscellaneous heads of revenue, sufficiently
watch and examine into its receipts in these various
departments ? The recent investigations into the
unbounded and audacious frauds practised at the Cus-
tom-house give a general negative to the last ques-
tion—founded on a particular case, which will well
repay the cost, the trouble, or inconvenience of the
most searching and protracted scrutiny that can be
applied to it. If there be one man in the empire who,
at this time of day, is prepared to concur in the ex-
pectation, avowed with a simplicity, which we might
almost term effrontery some twelve months since,
on the part of the Board of Customs, that'
bad as the case was, "the public had been by that
time apprised of the utmost extent to which the re-
venue had been plundered in the department of her
Majesty's Customs ;" we take it his credulity will be
dissipated by the most cursory perusal of the last
Report (supplementary to that of 22d May last) of
the Commissioners of Revenue Inquiry—ordered by
the House of Commons to be printed on the 17th ult.
From this report we have no space at present for
making any quotations ; but in the course of next
week we shall feel it our duty to submit large ex-
tracts to our readers, for their better insight into a
system of wholesale fraud, conspiracy, and robbery,
such as, perhaps, was never before practised to an equal
extent on the revenue of any State. From such an
exposé of utter demoralisation in so many
liberally paid servants of the Crown—of
participated guilt common to lower and higher
classes of officers, each, and all of them, charged with
responsible duties, that they have most scandalously
violated—of imbecility, neglect of duty, and in-
conceivable inefficiency, in the superior authorities of

the department ;—we rise with feelings of mingled
astonishment and indignation. Not one member of

the Board of Customs—of the Commissioners them-
selves—ought to be exempted from the most
rigorous examination by this Commission of In-
quiry, as to the grounds upon which he proposes to
excuse the culpable, the slumbering, incompetency of
the body, in its collective and in his own individual
capacity, pending the long existence and practice of
these delinquencies. Not only do the most alarming
circumstances, when brought to their notice, appear
to have awakened but a very slight or absolutely no
suspicion of misconduct ; not only do discreditable
acts and general conduct, notorious through all other
branches of their office, appear to have been profound
and sealed mysteries to them, and to them alone ; but
their demeanour in reference to proceedings ultimately
adopted, in some few eases, seems to have been still
marked by the same incapacity. Officers were
suspended, only, by them against whom they had
ample evidence -to justify a sentence of immediate
dismissal ; or, after being reported, were not even in-
terfered with at all until their later offences,
or the subsequent examination of confederates,
compelled the Board to steps of tardy punish-
ment. Nor does our accusation against the Com-
missioners of Customs themselves stop here. We
concur with the Commission of Revenue Inquiry on
reprobating the mode in which they delegated the
examination of offenders, whom they should have in-
terrogated themselves, to authorities more or less im-
mediately subordinate, whose conduct in managing
such inquiries was exactly conformable to the antici
pations that might have been formed from the impro-
priety of their selection. In the case of WYCHERLET,
a weigher, it is abundantly evident that inferior officers,
having most important testimony—afterwards fully es-
tablished—to tender against the malfeasance of the func-

tionaries next above them, were so discouraged, so
manifestly intimidated, by the apprehension of se-
riously prejudicial consequences to themselves from
coming forward with such information, that they
either withheld it or gave it in a form much more
meagre than they would have done. In the affair
of Mr. LONG (a landing waiter since dismissed, his
malversation having been unquestionably proved on a
subsequent investigation), the Board remitted
the case for examination to Mr. Ross the Surveyor-
General (an officer whose own conduct is shown to be
open to much animadversion in another part of the Re-
port). " Mr. Ross (Report, p. 3) did so ; and recom-
mended the acquittal of Mr. LANG, and reported un-
favourable of WYCHERLEY. The Board coincided in
his view of the case, and continued to place
confidence in LANG, but removed WYCHERLEY
from where he was a check upon LANG,
' and sent him to the docks ; a removal which was, in
fact, tantamount to a punishment." The Commission
add—" We found from the admission of Mr. Knox,
the landing surveyor, that when before the Inquiry
the story was mentioned to him, WYCHERLEY was sent
for, and cautioned as to his proceedings, and told
that such a course would cause his dismissal
Prom the service, by making charges which he
could not prove." Again—" There was evidently
a predetermined impression that WYCHERLEY was
sure to be wfong; indeed, the whole of the proceed-
ings bear more the character of the trial of WYCHER-
LEY for misconduct and drunkenness, than an investi-
gation into the conduct of LANG for being concerned
in defrauding the revenue." We only add, at pre-
sent, that this accusation was substantiated. What
must we think of the whole system on which the
Customs' Department has for years been conducted ?

The Morning Herald of Saturday last came out
with a desperate rebuke to the Anti-Corn-law League,
en mos*, and a censure (meant, to be extremely dig-
nifieg,for Mr. COBDEN, in special. The exhibition,
as, usually happens to very angry remonstrants, is a
most unfortunate one for our Contemporary " at her
time of life"—for Mr. COBDEN, it seems, has now lent
his authority to the vague rumours that have long
prevailed as to the sex and senility of the complainant.
People should not permit themselves to be
betrayed into such a pucker about what she
calls " Mr. COBDEN'S impertinences." The
very exclamation one might have anticipated
from ancient and somewhat irritable prudery ! But
we did not expect to find our doubting question of

Friday last, so speedily justified, as well as an-
swered. " What will be thought in Shoe-lane," we
then inquired, " of the license which Mr. COBDEN
allows himself in toying, in Covent-garden Theatre,
Iwith such disreputable topics as political economy ?"
And, lo! on Saturday, the lady of that manor repu-
diates all Mr. COBDEN'S good-humoured pleasantries
(delivered, too, in such a place and neighbourhood)
as " impertinences," and, with a sad lack of temper,
asks—" What is to be expected from uneducated
persons, placed by circumstances in a posi-
tion for which they are ludicrously un-
fitted." Mr. COBDEN, for whom this is palpa-
bly intended, needs no vindication at our hands—
nor from any others. He is so well able to vindi-
cate himself, that we are sure, it will never occur to
him that this is matter which should call upon him
for any notice of a feeble—scolding ! Besides, his
sobriquet has attributed a certain age to the party.
" Hine ill lacrymee." He can scarcely have a
right to complain of any resentment exhibited at
such an affront. Yet let it be permitted us to
remind the Morning Herald that the facts attend-
ing Mr. COBDEN'S attainment of the "position" he
occupies supplies the best proof that he is eminently
" fitted " for it. To have been the rallying point
of the League, the inexhaustible, indefatigable, in-
Nl;ncible,-exppsitor of its "great argument," within
the w:lls of Parliament, and without it in a hundred
different
i,Nrts of the kingdom,—to have faced all op-
position, coin'
ted all discussion, challenged all anta-
gonists,—to have
achieved, in these combats, so many
victories, acquired so many supporters, conciliated so
many enemies—all this ./'esPeaks, surely, the posses-
sion of no ordinary average
f intellect—no every- day
amount of moral and physi'cal energy. We say
nothing of the discouragementi
and difficulties
under which he has obtained the I:`lsPect of both
parties in the House of Commo.'°, and a
high degree of consideration even amore those
classes of the community—(they are few, inde,Nl)
who are still opposed to his doctrines of free-trade, cx
that much larger portion of the public who still resist
his doctrine of low prices. But the Herald, of all
papers under the sun, we should have expected to find
among the most eulogistic admirers—or enviers—of
a man, through the instrumentality of whose extra-
ordinary tact and unremitting perseverance, a fund of
50,000/. in one year, and of 100,0001. in another, has
been subscribeed towards the purposes of the League.
But the Herald, with the report of last , week's
League meeting in black and white before it, is so
infirm or so jaundiced of vision, that it believes the
Association's," influence, consideration, and respecta-
bility (if it ever possessed any) have disappeared."
There are certain ages, and certain social relations---
that the Herald is supposed to know something
about—which require artificial aids for the cor-
rection of natural infirmities. Where were its
spectacles when this was written ? Or could nobody
be found to read its own report aloud? But in what
follows there is something which implies so great a
hardihood in an ancient lady—who should, in all
things, discourage the habit of speaking untruths—
that we almost blush for our friend.

" In good truth the life or death of the Anti-Corn-
law League, considering the quantity of influence it has
had on public opinion, is a matter of the greatest indif-
ference, except inasmuch as it is to be lamented that con-
federations for the extortion of money have become so
frequent as to be springing up and disappearing almost
annually. Whether the League be at present dead,'
or merely in a swoon, we do not possess sufficient skill to
decide. If it be only the latter, however, its managers
would do well to look tkat the public be not deceived
by its quietness, and bury it in oblivion by general
consent.'

Fie! fie! If the life or death of the League be so
indifferent to you, why so angry at its proceed-
ings and its leaders' speeches ? If you suppose it
dead, why denounce in the intemperate terms that
' crowd the article before us, the vehicle of a
"screamer," as brother Jonathan has it, against Mr.
COBDEN, Mr. BRIGHT, and all Radicals,—against
Mr. D'IsRAELI, and all others of Young England or
Old, who are opposed to the policy of your hard task-
master, Sir ROBERT PEEL ? If you believe thatthe
League is only slumbering, why in such haste to
pronounce a parting denunciation against it ?
Another time, our fair (?) Contemporary will do well
to be less angry or more artificial. She defeats her
own object of misrepresenting, by exaggeration and
inconsistency. Vituperation is not the language of
indifference. Iro be believed in charging Mr. COBDEN
or any other Member of the League with " scurrility
and abuse," the Herald should not recriminate in
language precisely of that quality. But if it thought
the League, indeed " a ricketty speculation," how
came it to devote a very conspicuous article to its at-
tack ? it ought to have fallen, of its own accord.
On the contrary, it will live to quiz the Herald again,
next year, and to the tune, we suspect, of " money in
both pockets."

We have received Madrid papers of the 2d inst.,
but they bring no fresh intelligence. The capital
was tranquil.
The Three per Cents. were done at 27}, at6Odays;
the Coupons at 24k, for the 13th of September ; and
the Floating Debt at 59, at 40 days.

A cowardly article in an Evening Paper, which
has pretensiowto official information relative to the
arrest and expulsion of Mr, PRITCIIARD from Ota-
heite, has induced the war party in France to believe
that the English Government have yielded to the
French, and that no reparation will be demanded for

the " gross outrage, accompanied by gross indignity."
Even the French Government papers, though they
ought to be better informed, infer that the affair is
all but settled. These are the words of the Journal
des Debati' :—" The English journal admits, and it is
what we have said from the commencement, that the
English residents, after having protested against
French occupation, were bound to wait for instruc-

tions from their Government; that if they have
thought proper to resist by their own strength, they
have done so at their own risk and peril, and without
having a right to claim in any way the protection,
or engage the responsibility of, their Government,
which they had not consulted. It admits that, in

the case where Mr. PRITCHARD had commenced by
his own actions a private war against the Government
at Otaheite, the English Government was not bound to
follow in that path one of its subjects, who was acting
without its authority ; and that the French authori-

ties considering themselves legitimately in possession
of the sovereignty, it was not only their right, but
their duty, to deport Mr. PRITCHARD. The ques-
tion, it will thus be seen, is much simplified, and we
are persuaded will be promptly and honourably ar-
ranged."

We believe that the statements referred to are
entirely destitute of foundation, and that the Eng-
lish Government have in no way altered their views
of the subject. Sir ROBERT PEEL, the Duke of
WELLINGTON, and Lord ABERDEEN, have all ex-
pressed their sentiments in language not to be mis-
understood, and though the outrage has been repeat-
edly referred to in both Houses, they have never made
an admission, or anything resembling an admission,
that they would yield in this manner, and throw
Mr. PRITCHARD overboard. Such random statements
do immense mischief. Far from satisfying the war
party in France, they only make them the in their
demands, and heap additional abuse on England.
The Courrier Francais, and, indeed, most of the Op-
position journals, have songs of triumph on the oc-
casion.

The accounts in these papers from Morocco,
though they add little to the previous intelligence,
are, on the whole, of a peaceable character.

According to the Presse, the French and Belgian
Governments have entered into new Commercial ar-
rangements for a mutual reduction of duty on certain
articles of import. The following are said to be the
proposed modifications :

France is willing to lower the duty on raw hides, imported
from Belgium and of Belgian origin, from If. 20e. per 100
kilogrammes to 50c. per 100 kilogrammes. On dry hides the
duty will be lowered from sf. to 2f. 50c. The present duty on
rough marble is 2f. 70c. ; it will be reduced to if. The duty
on hops would be lowered from 65f. 50c. to 45f. And the
duty on pit coal will be also lowered from 10c. per 100 kilo-
grammes to sc. per 100 kilogrammes.
Belgium, which has hitherto exacted a duty of 83c. on
French pit coal, will reduce it to sc. The manufacturers of
Ghent having to complain of the opposition they meet with
in the printed cottons of England, the Belgian Government
has resolved to raise by 50 per cent. the duties exacted at
present on English printed cottons at their frontiers. It offers
to France to except it from the ordinance upon that subject,
and, as far as regards France alone, to maintain the present
duties. Lastly. The resolution of the 14th of July, 1843,
which raised the duties on woollen thread and cloths, and
upon fancy articles and artificial flowers, will be withdrawn,
as far as the pro-visions regard Frante ; or, in other ivordo