The Sun.
London, England, 1844-09-28 00:00:00

ettonitts. Int

LONDON, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1844.

Accounts from the north of Scotland state that on
Tuesday last the firing of cannon was distinctly
heard on the hills to the north of Blair Athol, which
was said to be a royal salute in honour of the arrival
of the Duke of CAMBRIDGE at Black Mount, a shoot-
ing-lodge belonging to the Marquis of BREADAL-
BANE, near Glencoe, a pass notorious in history. The
Queen of ENGLAND is residing at the foot of Schehal-
lion, in a district famed for the devotion of its inha-
bitants to the house of STUART ; and the clansmen of
ATHOL, who in the last century risked their lives and
property in opposing the BEuNswlc family, are
now the guardians of royalty, and the most
ardent supporters of the present dynasty. These are
remarkable features of the present times. It is true
the STUARTS are extinct, there are no competitors to
the throne, and the loyal Highlanders have no other
idol than the House of Brunswick, yet it is impos-
sible not to remark the chan&which has taken place
since the commencement of the reign of GEORGE 111.,
when his most gracious MAJESTY might equally have
trusted to the fidelity of his northern subjects. He
never took a voyage to Scotland, or Ireland, or even
to Hanover, the birth-place of his family. He
remained ensconced in Windsor Castle or Ken
Palace, to be worshipped by cockneys and occa-
sional strangers ; he imposed the same rule on
his children, and not one of the Royal Family, except
by stealth, passed the frontier of England. Now one
of his sons, the only surviving son in England, has
set out on his travels at the goodly age of seventy,
and is shooting grouse and red deer in the mountains
and valleys that had so often resounded with the war-
cry of the enemies of his family. Even the odious
name of CUMBERLAND would meet with respect from
these kind-hearted and loyal people. We attribute
this remarkable change to the good taste and judg-
ment of her MAJESTY. GEORGE the FOURTH, it is
true, visited Ireland and Scotland, but he went
thither with his usual pomp ; he did not mix with
the inhabitants—he went to be worshipped.
The QUEEN goes as a simple individual among her
subjects, she converses as familiarly with the lowest
is the highest, she exhibits herself to her people as
their friend, she abandons all that foolish etiquette so
fatal to royalty, and so much regretted by a Liberal
Contemporary, but is she the less a QUEEN in the
eyes of the Scottish nation ? Should a doubt arise,'
or an occasion occur, in which their loyalty could be
tested, these friendly visits to the northern part of
her kingdom would rouse every man in her defence.
We hope the day will yet come, and speedily, when
she can pay the same compliment to the sister
I.,land, and endear her family to a nation equally
loyal and generous. Only one obstacle stands in the
way of this peaceful achievement—the wicked policy
,f the Tory party. They will rule Ireland as a con-
iuered country ; they will maintain a Church with-
.mt a people ; they will exclude Irishmen from all
places of trust and emolument, •and hand over the

government of seven millions to a fevr Orangemen
whom the Irish justly regard as foreigners. What
reconciled the restless and turbulent Scotch will re-
concile the Irish—equal laws, an equal administra-
tion of justice, a due regard to the religion of the
nation, and a generous confidence in the honour and
loyalty of the people. We should then be an united
;lotion, and the Queen of ENGLAND would be wel-
comed with more enthusiasm at Killarney, and even
Derry nave Abbey, than she is now at Blair Athol.

The establishmentand extension of Railway com-
munications throughout the wide extent of Great
Britain appear to be the all-engrossing topics of public
attention. Week after week, nay,' from day to day,
we receive reports of the important proceedings and
'peeches that attend the assemblings together of those
.vho are the legitimate representatives of the property,
the intelligence, and the local interests of the district:,
within which they are held. It is thus made
evident that the public mind is fully awakened to the
incalculable benefits which, notwithstanding the pre-
sent grievances and displacement of invested capital
that, in:the great majority of cases, they undoubtedly
occasion, must, eventually, flow to the community at
large from the construction and organization of these
roads. It is no longer a conflict of undis-
guised private interests, embittered (as tie
case occasionally really was) by the angry politics
of neighbouring sections of country or adjacent towns
It is no longer a question to be determined in refer-
terence to the political party—and its strength, or its
weakness—to which the projectors belong. The an.
uouncement that a public meeting has been convened
`o consider of a scheme for a proposed railroad in an
given locality, is now sure to enlist the attendance,
.ind to elicit the opinions, of all who are best quali-
fied to give them by their position, their experience,
their knowledge, or their possessions; of all who are
he most competent authorities on the question to be
lecided, and the details and calculations to be preli-
narily submitted.

Among all these magnificent undertakings, we have
,een few or none which, so far as we can form our
judgment upon the statements comprised in the
printed prospectuses that have come before us, will
have exceeded in social and civil utility, or in na-
tional importance, two—to the particulars of which,
as they appear in our advertising columns, we would
earnestly recommend the careful attention of every
reader. The "Cornwall Railway," with a proposed
capital of 900,0001., contemplates, and will accom.

The Dutch papers, from which we yesterday gave
extracts, contain some very remarkable statements
connected with the financial statistics of the Govern-
ment of Holland. It appears that the Ministerial
plan for reducing the interest on a vast proportion of
the public debt of that country is working out with
signal efficiency and success. Within three months
only, from the promulgation of the law authorising
this scheme of conversion, one-half of the whole
amount of public debt hypothecated for this opera-
tion, has been actually converted ; the interest thereon
being lowered from four to five per cent. Consider-
ing the vast extent of the debt she owes, and the
smallness of revenue—(this does not much exceed
5,000,0001. sterling per annum)—the object achieved
becomes of so much the more importance to her. The
relief she has thus secured to herself is so much the
more immediate and buoyancy-giving. For Hol-
land, sufficiently released from the trammels of that
disproportionate annual charge for interest on her
public debt which she has hitherto had to meet, there
are commercial prospects of the most encouraging
nature. In such an event, the private capital still
distributed among her highly industrious community
would be soon called into energetic and extensive dif-
fusion. The very many advantages arising from the
incidents of her geographical position, her ancient
and still subsisting commercial relations in the East
and West Indies and on the Spanish Main ; and her
locality in the high road of European traffic, as an
intermediate emporium at all times for interchangeable
commodities, of which she was, heretofore, the general
carrier; these may, in the course of events, within a
few years raise her again into an attitude of first-rate
eminence among mercantile nations. She has ap-
proved herself, at all times, an active, able, vigilant,
and jealous rival, whenever she has met competitors in
her path. And though she has been immeasurably
distanced and beaten in the race for maritime and
commercial superiority by the genius, the fortune,
and the inflexible progress of Great Britain, it may
be a salutary recollection for us to cherish, that during
the latter period of that memorable rivalry for the
dominion of the seas, and of the empire of trade, we,
ourselves, had not the same formidable rivals in other
States to divert our undivided attention from the
growth of Dutch greatness that we now have. The
federation of the United States of America was not
vet in existence. The States of the German Union
had not been associated in such an Anti-English
League as that which is now presented by the
Zollverein. Saxony, and Prussia, and Belgium, had
not appeared in the markets of the world as manu-
facturing countries. The cotton and other fabrics of
Switzerland and of France were unknown as sus-
taining any competition with our own. Russia,
•Nhich, on many accounts, as well as from the force
of ties of family connexion, it may now be assumed
would eagerly support the efforts of Holland to
make good her pretensions, as against the influence of
England, to re-occupy the once proud elevation from
which she has long since descended, was then a
fourth or fifth-rate Power, so far as commercial in-
fluence or marine was concerned. France had not
then established a species of monopoly in the profit-
able gum trade, and other branches of commerce, on
the western shores of Africa and elsewhere. How
distant soever the probability may, prima facie,
appear of Holland's reviving any considerable share
of her former maritime and commercial greatness,
these, then, it will be allowed, are considerations
tending to bring that probability nearer to our
contemplation the more dispassionately they are
looked at.
The moral which this somewhat startling financial
ability of Holland suggests to our own minds is,
that it well behoves the Government of Sir ROBERT
PEEL, by timely concessions to the principles of free
trade end financial economy, to improve upon the
example set by Holland, as the only means open to
us for retaining, in permanency, that paramountahip
which we at present enjoy, against the challenge of
all competitors. Holland, with her circumscribed
population, and area, can have retrieved the scale of
her public credit to the extent of conducting so vast
an operation as we speak of, in diminishing the in-
terest of her debt, only by a rigorous and exact• ad-
ministration of her annual revenue. She accom-
plishes this remarkable measure in the thirtieth year
of an European peace, not by the dangerous and
most unjust expedient of a tax on that property and
income which any far-seeing statesman will endea-
vour, always, to preserve intact as to such im-
posts, until there arises the invincible exigency of a
war ; but she—Holland—achieves her purpose by a'
business-like, unsleeping, systematic supervision of
her revenue. There are no huge " Custom-house
frauds " perpetrated at Amsterdam or in Rotterdam,
whose colossal amount, in one year, renders it neces-
sary (as we have seen the case to be in this country
ever since 1842) to supplement a deficient revenue
by new and odious taxes, to an extent commensurate
with the defalcations of that department in which the
frauds in question have been committed. There are
no stupendous forgeries successfully practised on
that precise bureau in which it is the especial duty
of our Minister of Finance to provide the securities,
and test the machinery of such provision, against the
spoliation of the national treasure. The 40,0004
forgery the other day of Dutch National Bank paper
is scarcely to be noted as an exception to this remark,
when our Exchequer forgeries, alone, have amounted,

" The Ot‘noque steam-frigate arrived at Marseilles
on the 23d from Algiers, with Colonel Eyrard and the
colours and the tent and parasol of command of the son
of the Emperor, which were taken at the battle of Isly."
2Vlen findl
8 43, thtehefollowing
in a Havre journal :
the natives of Cape Lahou, on the western coast of
Africa. An attack was directed against them to force
14, King them to a just reparation ; and by an engagement signed
in December,
pay the value of the pillaged goods, and 134 ounces of
gold,
ingPeter, their chief, agreed to
various objects taken from the
captain and crew. This promise was not, however, kept,
and Captain Bonet, the Governor of Senegal, considered
it necessary to have recourse to other measures. Pass-
ing in March last by Cape Lahou with the Nisus brig,
as indemnityB 3
for
he fell in with a number of canoes belonging to the
natives, and opened a fire of grape-shot on them. Being
obliged continue his course, he left Lieutenant Jance,
with the Eglantine gun-brig, to obtain the promised re-
paration, or punish the people severely. This was
deemed the more necessary as they are one of the richest
tribes on the coast, and have been encouraged by the
rampart of breakers which defends Cape Lahou, to prac-
tise considerable exactions on the vessels which came to
traffic with them. Lieutenant Jance has addressed a re-
port, dated March 11, 1844, to Captain Bouet, in which
he informs him that be has performed the duty assigned
him. He states that on the evening of March 9th he
opened a fire on the liouachi quarter of King Peter's
town, and speedily caused that district to be evacuated.
He continued to throw in balls from time to time during
the night to prevent the natives from re-occupying
it, and the next morning he ordered out the boats,
crossed the bar, succeeded in effecting a landing
and set fire to the town, amidst cries of " Vfve
le Roi" from the Eglantine and the boats. The men then
got back safely to the vessel, which continued to fire on
the natives, who wore endeavouring to extinguish the