The Sun.
London, England, 1845-01-01 00:00:00

Ant

LONDON, WEDNESDAY. JANUARY 1, 1845

It was last we :.k our Flo tsant dutylto advert to till
pacific and dignified speech of a Constitutional Kis(
to the legislative representation of the great monarch 3
he governs. To-day we cannot forbear from touch-
ing on the contrasted topics suggested by our further
examination of the advices from Madrid, and the
rumoured discovery of a serious " plot"—so called—
in Poland against the usurped authority of Russia
over that much wronged-kingdom. The distractions
of Spain, and the disquietudes of Poland, are well
calculated to read a memorable lesson to factious
slaves on the one hand, and stern and relentless
tyrants on the other. Spain, unlike France, has a
feeble SOVEREIGN, "constitutional" only by a title
which can never be applied to her except in
the utmost excess of courtier-like flattery, or in the
license of the most sarcastic mockery. Poland has
been, and should be now, like France—a great
monarchy : but she has never possessed an efficient
legislative representation, through which to address,
advise, or control her KING. Poland has little in
common with Spain, in the nature of historical asso-
ciations, except it be to have been paralyzed by the
personal weaknesses and vices of many had kings.
But, whilst the Spanish kings, from Prime IL to
FERDINAND VII., were, in effect, absolute, the Polish
Sovereigns, from SIGISMUND I. to STANISLAUS
AUGUSTUS, were kept, more or less stringently, in
check by their tumultuous Diets, their military
Nobles, and their Bishop-Princes. When they fell
at last, lamented victims of Imperial and loyal
treachery by the Partition Treaty, they witnessed at
least the agonized repentance of those infatuated
oligarchs, who, to compass the objects of their own
ambition or enmities, had placed the destroying
weapons in the hands of their unprincipled de-
spoilers. Spain, with all the palmy recollec-
tions of her more than Imperial grandeur
about her—of the laurelled days when she was mis-
tress of all the kingdoms of the Peninsula, Por-
tugal included—when her sceptre was extended over
the provinces of Holland and the Low Countries, and
Naples, and made itself felt through some of the
other principal States of Italy—when she assumed and
exercised the proud title of " Queen of the Indies,"
as well in the richest countries .of the great Eastern
Archipelago, as throughout her vast dominions of
Mexico, Chili, and Peru ;—this Spain is now pros-
trated in the most sordid dust which was ever trodden
by the foot of an iron despotism, not before a con-
spiracy of mighty kings—not before a confederacy of
king. like palatines, the natives of her soil—but before
an obscure foreign adventurer, a heartless, callous,
intriguing, unprincipled, faithless soldier of fortune !
The descendants of PELAGIO and the CID, of SAA
VEDRA and of CORTEZ, at this moment hold their per
sonal liberty, their property, their right to reside
upon their natal territory, their very lives, even, at
the good pleasure of such a creature of factions and
of falsehoods as NARVAEZ ! Their best and noblest
blood is profusely shed upon the public scaffold, for
no graver offence than demurring to the pro-
fligate government of the domestic minions,
or political favourites, paramount in a Court
which rejoices in the august auspices of the
quasi widow of FERDINAND VII., and those ready

struments of all sorts of political corruption, %;horo
French gold, French intriguei, and her own passions,
or prepossessions, unscrupulously employ for ends the,
most subversive of tnattConstitutiam and
ties, which they, equilly Ntith herstilf, have heretofore-
sworn to maintain inviolate.
Strange coincidence ! In one' and the same May,
we have news from Wart,aw and Madrid than either
capital has just been the theatre of a newly-made
dis:overy. A plot in each, it seems, had been ()Cgsi
nised against the de facto authority under which it

groans. If the Polish affair sh4:uld determ;ne in
teaching to the Emperor IsTicuoLas the salutary
lesson that an outraged people is an inextinguishable
volcano—that the fires excited by the intolerable
action of foreign rapacity and bloodthirstiness may
smoulder for a time, hut never can be quenched,
until after they have burst forth in overwhelming
fury to consume all whose alien hands have supplied
the materials of such combustion—we should think
the Polish affair a fortunate one for her own interests
and those of Continental Europe at large. Spoliators
on a great scale are to be admonished only hy " ter-
rible examples." It seems a hopeless task to remon-
strate with the AUTOCRAT by petitions ut right or
pleas ad misericordiam, or arguments " ad verecun-
diam." The affair to which we refer, slightly
as i! is noticed in the private correspon-
dence, on the authority of which it has been
announced, may yet have its revelations ; and
these, we are fain to hope, may not be altogether
fruitless of better influences on the moody mind of
the CZAR. But, alas ! fur the luckless Spaniards,
who may be discovered, unintimidated by the past,
and yet hopeful of the future, to have been engaged
in organising new efforts to emancipate their country
from its shameful thraldom. The long-enduring
tolerance of such powerful Governments as those of
Britain and France must have ere now allayed in the
breast of NARVAEZ every tendency to a condition of

doubt or apprehension as to the consequences which
his brutal administration of power may bring down,
from without, on his own head. He has the patronage
of CHRISTINA and her French connexion at his
back—the forbearance cf. the English Ministry before
him—the inconceivable apathy and patience of the
Spanish public on all hands—to encourage and cheer
him on in his work of;proscription and decimation.
Such a man will not be taught. The adventurer, in
the sense of a popular proverb, is mounted, much to
his own astonishment, we doubt not ; and he will
speedily reach his destination, we trust, much to the
satisfaction of all god men.

We cannot refer to the police and assize intelli-
gence in the last week's file of our journal, without
mingled feelings of gratification and of shame. Gra-
tified in the highest degree we have indeed been at
the concurrent testimony of all the Metropolitan
Police jurisdictions to the important moral improve-
ment in the habits of the poorer classes, which must
be inferred from the almost total absence of night-
charges arising out of that inebriety and riotous
bearing that have long been considered the certain
accompaniments of the Christmas festival. Nor has
our satisfaction been less in its intensity or its purity
at the noble responses which in so many parts of the
kingdom have been made by the wealthy and en-
nobled to those urgent appeals to their Christian
charity and benevolence which the Press has, at this
period of privation, suffering, and distress, been
strenuously preferring on behalf of the scores of
thousands among our more destitute and friendless
fellow-creatures, whose title to the consideration and
pity of their more fortunate brethren is founded on
the triple ground of community of country, religion,
and institutions. In the midst of their domestic
misery, in their social degradation, under the grind-
ing pressure of their wants, they have respected
these sacred ties with a patience, a constancy, a good
faith, a forbearance such as we solemnly believe have
never been rivalled in the case of the poorer and
humbler communities of any other European King-
, dom. The possessors of that property which, gene-
rally speaking, has been so sacredly respected under
grievous temptations and-desperate distress, demon-
strate by such timely donations and such extensive
hospitalities as we have had to record within the last
three or four days, at once their good feeling and
their good sense. There is a kindliness, a charity to
be exercised, beyond the compulsory demands of the
law for the suAentation of the parochial poor. On