The Sun.
London, England, 1844-02-14 00:00:00

Morning 24111.

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1844.

• Lord BROUGHAM gave notice that en Thursday
next he should bring under the notice of the House
of Lads the inventions of Lord DUNDONALD, and ad-
vert to the expenses he had been put to in bringing
them to perfection.
Lord STOURTON gave notice that on Friday he
would call the attention of their Lordships to the
mode in which Catholic oaths were interpreted.
The Marquis of NORMANBY brought forward his
motion on -the State of Ireland, and justified the
course he had adopted, on the ground that all ad-
mitted the affairs of that country imperiously de-
manded the immediate attention of Parliament. 'I he
conduct of the Government, instead of conciliating
the people, had been the very reverse, and it had
roused up against them many who were formerly
their supporters. After commenting on the
mistaken policy of the Government, with
respect to the cry for a repeal of the union, he said
the best way to repress the agitation was to remove
the grievances. With respect to the payment of the
Catholic clergy, he thought the present moment was
Most unfortunate time for such a proposition. If the
clergy, too, were to be paid they should be paid an in-
come for religious duties, and not have a bribe for poll-
paying a high compliment to the
flea' apostacy. After
'irish nation for their domestic virtues, and their gra-
titude for the due- administration of justice, he
ad-
verted to the state of the franchise, to the character of
the*lrish Attorney-General, and the egregious injus-
tice and impolicy of excluding CatholicS from juries,
and more especially that jury which had condemned
the traversers. The Noble Marquis concluded by
moving a resolution to the effect that the House would
examine into the cause of discontent prevailing in Ire-
land, in order to secure to all classes of her MAJESTY'S
subjects the practical enjoyment of equal rights.
Lord WHAENCLIFFE replied to the:charges brought
against the Government, and was followed by the
Marquis of CLANRICARDE, the Earl cd.RODEN, the
Earl of DEVON, the Marquis of WESTMEATH, and
tcrd HowDEN. The debate, on the motion of Lord
CA- Nk PREM., was then adjourned till Thursday.
In the Commons Mr. WALLACE postponed his
motion on the judicial establishment for Scotland, till
the 27th-inst.

Lo.V Jour: MANNERS gave notice that, on the

29th, he should move an address to the Crown in
favour of the liberation of Don CARLOS from cap-
tivity.
Sir E. COLEBROOKE gave notice of a motion re-
lative to the treatment of the Ameers of Sinde, for
the 27th. _ _

In answer to a question from Mr. LEADER, Lord
STANLEY said Sir CHARLES METCALFE did reserve
his consent to a Bill for suppressing Orange Societies
in Canada, but the Bill had not beeh transmitted to
Government, and he could not, therefore, give any
further information on the subject. It would be re-
ceived probably by the next mail.
Sir JAMES GRAHAM, in answer to a question from
Mr. C. BERKELEY, said a Bill on Charitable Be-
quests would be introduced this session at the instance
of the Government.

Mr. HumE suggested, in reference to adjourned
debates, and particularly to the motion of Lord J.
RUSSELL on the state of Ireland, that before the ad-
journed discussion commenced, time should be given
for disposing of the regular business of the day.
A conversation took place between Mr. HORSMAN
and Sir J. GRAHAM relative to the number of troops
in Ireland, when the Home Secretary said that on
the motion of the Member for Coventry a return
would be laid on the table of the rank and file sta-
tioned in that country from January, 1835, to
January, 1843.
Lord JOHN RUSSELL brought forward his motion
for a Committee of the whole House on the state of
Ireland. That country, he said, was not governed
as it ought to be. The Government of Ireland should
be a
,Government of peace; now it was a Govern-
ment of force. After adverting to the verdict re-
ceived that day against Mr. O'CONNELL, the instru-
ment of Catholic Emancipation, he said, if the favourite
of the Irish nation were imprisoned, would that cir-
cumstance be a guarantee for the peace of the country.
The Noble Lord entered at great length into the
grievances of which Ireland had just reason to com-
plain, and more especially to the exclusion of Catho-
lics from juries and all places of trust, as well as to
the undefined and imperfect state of the Parliament-
ary franchise. The exclusion of Catholics from high
offices, whether on the bench or in the State, was a
glaring injustice, and could not be palliated even by
the present Government. Sir ROBERT PEEL had de-
clared that after the passing of the Catholic Bill
all classes would be placed on the same foot-
ing; yet, though he had since his return to
office had the appointment of five or six Judges, not
one was a Roman Catholic. The conduct of the Go-
vernment, in regard to the late prosecutions, was
quite; in ,keeping with all their other proceed-
ings towards the Irish people. The Noble Lord con-
cluded by moving for a Committee of the whole
House, to take into consideration the state of Ireland.
Sir JAMES GRAHAM, in a long speech, opposed the
motion, and when he concluded the debate was
adjourned.

The verdict of the jury, which has been so anxi-
ously expected, is at length delivered, and does not
differ from that which we have always anticipated.
A jury chosen from an imperfect list\ of special jurors,
whose religious creed and political opinions formed
the test of fitness to serve, and upon whom the Crown
officials calculated, with undeviating reliance all
through the trial, for a verdict in accor-
dance with the purposes for which these pro-
secutions were instituted, could not give any verdict
but that of GUILTY against all the traversers. And
this they have done. They have not disappointed the
calculations of the Government, nor have they disap-
pointed• us. We- never had any expectations of an
acquittal. We never placed any reliance upon the
chances of justice from an Irish jury, con-
stituted and selected like that which for twenty-
four days has sat on the case of O'CoxNELL.
The ends of the Crown, as to a conviction, are
now gained—the purposes for which the Crown
officials plotted in secret, and employed all the arts
of espionage, are attained—the objects for which the
jury was put in the box are achieved. And what
then ?

Does any man in the three kingdoms attach the
slightest importance to this verdict, as having any
moral effect, or any beneficial result? Does any
honest, conscientious Tory, in his own heart, ap-
prove it, or look to it as a successful vindication
of the law by legal means ? Does any Irish-
man feel that he has one grievance the less, or
that there is any one more reason why he
should cease to agitate for a redress of his griev-
ances ?

We dislike Repeal—but we hate injustice. Trial
by Jury ought to be free from taint, otherwise ver-
dicts avail not, and are of no effect. This verdict
may be made an instrument of oppression, but it will
not gain respect for the means by which it has been
procured.

The Earl of CLARENDON on Monday entitled him-
self to the best thanks of the public at large for the
course he adopted, the British sentiments he avowed,
and the statesman-like views he announced in re-
ference to the present condition of affairs in Spain, and
to our relations with that kingdom. The Noble
Earl, after a speech delivered by the Earl of ABER-
DEEN, in reply, declared himself perfectly satisfied with
the explanations of the Foreign Secretary ; but we
must take leave to protest that the discussion thus excited
has not at all relieved our own mind from the painful
impression which passing events in Spain—and,
above all, the unprincipled excesses indulged in by
the de facto authorities of that outraged country—
have produced upon it. Lord CLARENDON truly de-
scribed the result of the late extraordinary move-
ments to have been—the overthrow of all her former
institutions, and the establishment, in their stead, of
" a military despotism of the most ferocious descrip-
tion." He observed, with great truth, that this
" revolution had been brought about by one of
the most wicked and profligate confederacies
which had been ever organised ; and he foresaw
that a re-action must soon inevitably follow,
the certain tendency of which will be a chronic state
of civil arfare." His Lordship expressed an opi-
nion that foreign influence had been extensively used
to bring about the downfal of the ex-REGENT, and
he referred to the extreme solicitude that had been
manifested in France—especially in Paris, for Es-
PARTERO'S removal. Many circumstances of grave
suspicion corroborate the existence of the feeling; and
more notably, the facts that the intended outbreak of
the late discontents in the Basque provinces had been
known, in Paris itself, long before the event;
and that the same agency seemed to be apparent in
the insurrection that developed itself in Barcelona
accompanied with the demand of an apology on the
part of the REGENT'S Government, for the accusations
which had been made against the French Consul re-
specting his participation therein. Then the prema-
ture accession of .the young QUEEN to the throne,
and other acts to which she had been induced, by her
counsellors, to give her sanction, really had involved
greater violations of the Spanish Constitution than
had ever been committed throughout all the
despotic reign of 'FERDINAND VII. But a
" cordial understanding" had been stated, by the
King of the FRENCH himself, to exist between his
Government and that of Great Britain, on
all subjects of foreign policy in general—on the
affairs of Spain in particular. " On what policy was
this good understanding bastd ?" asked the Noble Earl,
in continuation. And then he adverted to the claim
which the Court of France was understood to set up
to the right of selecting a consort for the Queen of
SPAIN, and to the limitation of that choice to some
member of the house of BOURBON. He hoped that
whatever might be the fact, as to this hitherto un-
heard of pretension, it was not true (confidently
as the allegation had been made) that the right had
been exercised, and the selection made, in the person
of the Count DE TRAPANI, brother to the reigning
King of NAPLES. This Prince had been educated in
the College of Jesuits at Rome, and destined for
holy orders. Now the Court of Naples, it was noto-
rious, was the only Court of Europe which had
avowedly conspired on behalf of Don Ciumos. The
Noble Earl contended that, without imputing to
the French Government any actual connexion with
the movement against the ex-REGENT, yet had it
acted as it should have done towards its own sub-
jects who were known to be intriguing against
ESPAIITERO (to whose constitutional Government he
paid a well-merited tribute), his Regency would never
have been subverted.
We think so too, and never felt a doubt on the
matter. The Noble Secretary for Foreign Affairs
remarked, that in the ten years which had elapsed since

the death of FERDINAND VII. there had been so many
political movements and constitutional changes in Spain
that it was impassible for anybody, he believed, to give,
as to many of these, any intelligible account. He was
one who thought that there had been a disposition at
all times, in the government of this country, to inter-
meddle too much with that of Spain. He was quite
satisfied that the French Government had had
nothing to do with the downfal of ESFARTERO'S
authority; and since, in the short space of six weeks,
there was not a village in Spain which had
not joined in the insurrection against it, the
origin of so powerful a feeling must be sought in
causes more domestic and more popular, within the
Spanish kingdom itself. The marriage of the QUEEN
he looked upon as a purely Spanish question, on
which the Spanish people and Government only were
entitled to decide. As for the remaining question of
the Noble Earl, he had been asked by him on what
basis the good understanding subsisting betwean
France and England was raised? " It was raised on
the basis of an anxious desire to maintain the
complete independence of Spain—(Hear, hear)—a
desire to promote in Spain the establishment
of the constitutional system—a desire to check,
by all proper and legitimate means, every description
of violence and revolution—(Hear, hear)—a desire
to develope the jest natural resources of that fine
country—(Hear, hear)—and to promote and extend
its happiness and prosperity." On a future occasion
we shall inquire how far these objects are likely to be
attained by the policy of Lord ABERDEEN.

The business of Parliament has begun—not with•
out the exhibition of some incipient symptoms of
languor even at this- early stage of its sittings, if we
may judge from the adjournments and "No House"
interruptions that have already interposed in
the progress of public business. The debate on
the affairs of Sinde appears to have interested all
parties in a degree commensurate with the import-
ance of the transactions upon which it was founded.
But, without disparaging the gravity of the topics_
urged on Friday night, or on the discussion upon
the " Address" to the Throne at the re-assembling
of the two Houses; or the subjects of any speeches
delivered, subsequently, in either of them, we must
own that we had expected to find, ere this, one or
two vital questions of nearer domestic concernment,
and of even superior interest, occupying the primary
attention of the Legislature. Let us instance one of
these—the income, or property-tax (for, like the object
of CLEVELAND'S apostrophe, it is " both or either.")
We can but marvel at the fortune of a Minister,
who, after such an experiment as he has induced the
country to submit to in this monstrous infliction, is
permitted by the Legislature, in the second or third
year of its protracted application, to pass unchal-
lenged for his hazardous emriricism. Yes; this
statesman-like expedient for arresting the internal
decay of our financial system, in the nine-and-
twentieth year of an unbroken peace between Great
Britain and all the other Powers of Europe. is the
very "Elixir," that noona but a political empiric,
would have ventured to recommend to his distracted
patients. Sir ROBERT PEEL has caught the mantle
of the late Mr. ST. JOHN Lor). His treatment is
founded on a theory of counter-irritation. Has the
Public Treasury a morbid tendency to decline, year
after year? His first care is to exhaust the
sources which alone sustain it. Is the public
income, with a taxation of more than 43,000,0001.
sterling inadequate to meet the public expendi-
ture ? He claps on another tax-blister, in the
technical hope that "it may RISE." Do the
Customs and the Excise, and other bvinches of
direct and indirect contribution, annually decrease
4n productiveness, becoming " small by degrees and
beautifully less," and showing diminished means as
to our capacity, both of foreign and domestic con-
sumption ? Our Premier draws upon the remaining
capital of those diminished means to make good the
deficient product of their contribution to revenue.
Since the fiscal duties of all kinds appropriated to the
public service, and paid out of the profits of the
capital invested in the trade, or absorbed by the con-
sumption which yield them, are already too heavy to
permit of that consumption, or to carry on their
trade to the former extent of either, the " Stat•
Doctor" (it is his own sobriquet) depletes the capital
still further by drawing off five millions of what he
must really suppose to be superabundant vitality in
his unhappy patient ! When a man complained to a
quack of the counter-irritant school that he suffered
from severe shooting pains in his shin bone,
the quack applied himself to the case by an external
exasperation of the complainant's shoulder-blade, or
his cranium—no matter which. It was evident that
the artificial or superinduced agony, must either
expel or neutralise the original pain. It was like an
equator of powers in algebra; plus skin, minus
shoulder In this manner Sir ROBERT proceeds
to prescribe for the financial evils resulting from
diminished consumption of exciseable articles, by
diminishing the means of consuming them, as to the
largest number of consumers ; and he seeks to bring
up the waning revenue of the Customs, derived en-
tirely from the energy with which commerce may be
enabled to pursue its active functions, by further in-
cisions into the capital that represents the legs upon
which it walks, and by persisting to retain the
clumsy fetters which, under the notion of preserving
the straightness and vigour of its limbs, have absurdly
cramped and deformed them.

Let it be conceded that, like other empirics, our
modern Dr. WARD is very lucky. His " pills" have
not yet killed whom they cannot cure. Nay, more
—the constitution of the patient, which, on their
own candid and manly admission, had assumed some
alarming aspects under the attendance of such men
as MELBOURNE, RUSSELL, and PALMERSTON, has ac-
tually rallied under the perilous operations of PEEL.
This is one of those fortunate vindications of physical
strength against physic, of which the rarity makes
us sceptical as to the reality. Yet the fact is, that
trade is reviving, that the Customs are improving,
that the Excise is on the " look up." Is the im-
provement organic and constitutional, or accidental
only and transient ? Can the " patient" retrieve his
former condition under the exhausting processes he
is sub;ected to, aggravated by the additional bleeding
of the income-tax, and the paralyzing ligatures of so
many tight monopolies ? We doubt and dread the
issue. But if any think it dangerous at this time ex-
tensively to alter the treatment and utterly to discard
the " doctor," at least let us entreat of the Legisla-
ture to watch the effect, if it will not discontinue the
annual practice of this " income" phlebotomizing
Be it remembered that the essential premises, predi-
cated by the Tamworth practitioner, of his proposed
remedy have been suspiciously underrated. The pro-
duct of the new tax has largely exceeded his avowed
anticipations on the subject, and this excess of its
product has not elicited any announcement as to the
accelerated termination of the experiment. Parlia-
ment itself, without distinction of party, seems dis-
posed to congratulate the Premier on the language of
the Speech from the Throne, on the auspicious dis-
tinction of this year in the fact of the revenue
being fully adequate to defray all the charges of the
expenditure. Ministers assume a lofty tone of
self gratulation at having achieved this re-
sult ; and the Opposition forbear to remind
them that it has been accomplished by the
revival in a period of profound peace of the most
odious and inquisitorial of taxes ever resorted to in time
of war. Even the economists—apt to watch with
jealous vigilance the increase of customary, or the in-
troduction of new items of charge on the estimates—
abstain from showing that by how much the antici-
pated product is exceeded by the actual receipt on
account of the income-tax, by so much is a case of
irresistible force made out for the reduction of the
rate of per centage. They forget to insist that, in
the alternative of retaining the present per cent ge,
yielding this excess ,of product, a case as unanswer-
able is established for the Minister's abridging the
term during which this iniquitous impost shall be
levied on our overburdened country. Finally, per-
haps, from very weariness, they cease to expose the
juggle of a surplus income, derived not from the legi-
timate yield of previously-imposed taxation, more or
less equal, but from the screw force brought to bear
upon private property and income, by the application
of that perilous and unnatural high pressure which
the most inapt of financial Ministers has ever ven-
tured to invoke under similar circumstances.

Surely some Member of the House of Commons
will presently call on the Premier for an explicit
statement of the views entertained by her Majesty's
Government on these points. The country has a
right to demand how much longer it is intended to

charge upon her a growing tax, which she consented
to bear only on the express assurance, that it would
be so charged for a very limited period, and on the
express assumption, that its annual produce would re-
present a sum greatly inferior to that which it is now
realizing. And should the Member, who may make
this demand, be met with one of those petulant " flings"
of official ill-humour, or personal arrogance, with
which Mr. PATTISON, the representative of London re-
turned, instead of " BARING the preferred," was res-
ponded to the other evening, on his question touching
the sugar duties, we trust he will not lose so fair an
opportunity of apprising the Premier with what sen-
timents of disgust and indignation the public at large
regard the Right Hon. Baronet's whole scheme of
income-tax—with what hostile suspicion they scan all
his acts in connexion therewith. Let him lay bare to the
Right Hon. Baronet's observation, and the judgment of
the Legislature, the whole iniquity of that character-
istic selfishness and egoisme which must have devised
the principle and determined the scope of this tax—
a principle and a scope of common application to the
ducal rent-roll of hundreds of thousands per annum,
and the starving salary of 150/. a year. Let him
show how the inheritors of splendid patrimonies,' the
recipients of large public salaries, the dispensers of
official patronage, have responded to that " impera-
tive State necessity" which has been relied upon for
the justification of this intolerable expedient. Let
him illustrate the fairness and equity with
which only sevenpence in the pound is abstracted
from the redundant income of the great proprietors
and large capitalists, and wealthy nobles, in whose
revenues this amount creates scarcely any sensible
diminution ; and so much as 7d. in the pound is
equally taken from the small tradesmen, the ill-paid
clerk, the toiling artisan, or the thrifty small annui-
tant, to diminish their respective pittances below that
point at which they had hitherto managed to maintain
themselves out of the reach of debt and its concomi-
tant disquietudes. The tyranny of Sir ROBERT, as a
financier, is the exact converse, of Procrustes as a
destroyer of his species. The tyrant lopped off limb
and member from all whose proportions exceeded the
limits of his iron bed. The Minister cuts down, after
one and the same measurement, all incomes which
can be made to come within the limits of his not less
cruel " standard."

Accounts from Madrid of the sth, leave no doubt
that Carthagena had followed the example of Ali-
cant, and that the movement had been successful.
The garrison, together with about 1,200 military
prisoners, who had been marched to the place from
Catalonia, for safe custody, had joined the insur-
gents. Reports prevailed at Madrid, and supposed to
be well-founded, that similar risings had taken place
in Valencia, Murcia, Jareda, Elche, Santander, and
Bilbao. According to the Government papers, how-
ever, Murcia, up to the 3d remained quiet. One of
these journals, the Castellano, says the gold of Eng-
land has done it all.

The following is the extract in which this wicked
accusation appears :

" General Roncali has left Valencia with 10,000 men. He
is marching to Alicant, whither he must have arrived on the
3d or the 4th. The Council of Ministers sits continually,
and is adopting the most vigorous measures to stifle the in-
surrection which has broken out on those two points, and will
perhaps break out elsewhere, for it is evident that the Ali-
cant and Carthagena movements are but the exeqution of a
plan concerted at Madrid, whence the emissaries of the Re-
volutionists had started a few days before, nor is it doubful
that these movements have been provoked with the gold of
England, which is interested in subverting the monarchic
and religious institutions of our country."

The same journal relates another story equally en-
titled to credit—namely, that the Finance Minister
had received offers for a loan of 1,000,000,000 of
reals, on good conditions, but that he refused to enter
into any negotiation of the kind until the funds were
much higher than they are at present.
On the sth the Three per Cents. were done at 27i
for cash, and 28k, at 60 days; and the Five per Cents.
at 20, for cash, and 20 15-16, at 60 days.

The intelligence in the French papers, of any in-
terest, relates chiefly to Spain, but it, furnishes no
new facts relative to the outbreak at Alicant. The
Journal des Debate infers, from the preparations of
the Spanish Government, that a vast conspiracy ex-
tends its ramifications throughout the south-east of
Spain—a conspiracy directed by M. LINAGE and
other Esparterists residing at Gibraltar, and acting
in concert with the Exaltado party against the com-
mon enemy, which is the Government. The Com-
merce states that the French and English Ambassa-
dors at Madrid had applied to the Minister for Fo-
reign Affairs for explanations relative to the\arrest of
was, that letters had
reply
ysed them ; but it is not
btheeenDseeipzuedtiews,hicahndcotniheprroemp
said whether the letters had been written by the De-
puties. According to a letter in another paper, Lo-
PEZ and MADGE had made their escape from the
BRAVO Government, and numerous arrests had taken
place in the provinces. Great complaints are made
against the French Ministers for delaying the publi-
cation of the telegraphic dispatches, and well-
grounded suspicions are excited that the state of
affairs in Spain is worse than they would lead the
public to believe. It is said that Queen CHRISTINA
Will *not leave for Madrid for some weeks.

On Sunday the Funds remained stationary, the
Three per Cents. closing at 81f. 90c.

The vacancy created in the representation in Parlia-
ment of the northern division of the couuty of Wilts, by
the death of Sir Fracis Burdett, Bart., was on Monday
supplied by the election of Mr. Sotheron, the late Con-
servative M.P. for Devizes. Mr. Eldridge, of Puckeridge
House, in the same county, who had stood forward to
contest this honour, as the avowed advocate of free trade
principles, and in compliance with a requisition to that
effect, which had been addressed to him by the North
Wilts Reform 'Association, declined to go to the poll.
He has alleged, in a frank and handsome manner, his
reasons for this determination. They seem to have been
the indifferent chances of ultimate success, which his late
appearance in the field held out to him, and his unwil-
lingness, under this impression, to subject his opponent
aEilldridge and to their pro-
to the expenses which a continuance of the contest would
iAg. benefit to the great
in the county, from the
y
among the pvgenerrriet:asresil.ig,pureelissttthadiiosonuvtahtobocalauentgeychdhtca,borwunttmeerrrvo.
however,
many
signa-
tures attached to the requisition forwarded to Mr.
Sotheron, and the strong feeling which the Anti-Mo-
nopolist party have created in the great body of the
Wiltshire people in favour of their doctrines, that had
not the nomination of Monday been unopposed, and
the election thereupon consummated, Mr. Sotheron's re-
turn would have been very doubtful.

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