The Sun.
London, England, 1844-07-30 00:00:00

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LONDON, TUESDAY, JULY 30, 1844.

In the Lords': a number of Bills received the royal
assent, among others the Sudbury Disfranchisement
Bill, Actions for Gaming Discontinuance Bill, and
the Irish Marriage Bill.
The Debtors and Creditors Bill was read a third
time and passed.
The third reading of the Unlawful Oaths (Ireland)
Bill was postponed till Friday.
The Duke of BUCCLEUCH moved the second read-
ing of the Metropolitan Buildings Regulation Bill.
Lord CAMPBELL opposed the second reading, on the
ground that the House had not had time to consider
its provisions, and moved that it be read a second
time that day three months. After some conversation
' a division took place, when there were for the second
reading 31, against it 8 ; and the House adjourned.
The Commons met at Twelve o'clock, when the
House went into Committee on the Merchant Sea-
men's Bill ; all the clauses were agreed to, and the
report was ordered to be brought up this day.
The Criminal Justice (Middlesex) Bill was read a
third time and passed.
The Art-Unions Bill was read a second time, and
ordered to be committed this day.
Sir J. GRAHAM moved the second reading of the
Charitable Donations and Bequests (Ireland) Bill.
Mr. MORE O'FERRALL opposed the Bill, chiefly
because it was the first attempt at legislative interfe-
rence with the Catholic religion, and he would re-
commend the Government to pass those clauses only
which related to the charitable boards, and to leave
those clauses which interfered with the Catholic reli-
gion to another session ; fur the Government 'had had
ample time to consider the effect of the measure, while
the parties interested had not had sufficient time
afforded to consider what would be the effect of the Bill.
The Earl of ARUNDEL said the Bill evinced a dispo -
sition to conciliate the Catholics of Ireland, and he
would support it.
Sir R. PEEL heard with great satisfaction the re-
marks of the Noble Lord, and said her MAJESTY'S
Government had no other object in view than to cor-
rect what they had understood from Catholics was a
defect in the present law with respect to bequests.
Mr. SHELL, Lord STANLEY, Mr. WYSE, and some
other Members, addressed the House, when a division
took place, and there were for the motion 71, and
against it 5. The Bill was ordered to be committed
on Thursday.
After some routine business the House adjourned
at Half-past Ten o'clock.

The second reading of the Metropolitan Buildings
Regulation Bill was moved in the House of Lords last
night by the Duke of BuccLEucrr. In explanation of
the character of this measure, his Grace observed that
it provided for the proper width of streets, alleys, and
courts ; for the secure building of houses, for the con-
struction of drains for every house, for ventilation,
the height of rooms, and the spaces between the rear
of houses. Moreover, it provided means for prevent-
ing the- erection of dwellings in the metropolis unfit
for human habitation, and required that all sur-
veyors should pass an examination as to their
qualifications for the office. The principle of
this Bill is undoubtedly good, and some such
scheme has long been wanted—and every succeeding
year has increased the want—for the improvement of
our crowded and overgrown metropolis. At least one
half the diseases that occur among the lower classes
in London and its suburbs, may be directly traced to
defective drainage, and an inefficient supply of air.
Innumerable are the courts and alleys, and even
streets, to which free ventilation is an utter stranger,
and in which mephitic vapours and unwholesome
smells are of constant occurrence owing to the into-
lerable state of the drains, to which the inhabitants
by long habit have become indifferent, and which no
one seems to have thought it worth his while to en-
deavour to remedy, on the principle, we suppose, that
what is everybody's business is nobody's business. In
a medical report presented some few years since to
Parliament, the accounts giyen of the numerous deaths
originating in the two causes we have just alluded to,
were really appalling; and sure we are that the
evil has not diminished since then, but on the contrary
has annually increased, just in proportion to the in-
crease of metropolitan population. A little sedulous
attention might long since have removed the sources
of these frightful periodical visitations, but in mat-
ters of this kind Government is proverbially slow to
move, and seldom interferes until the matter has be •
come one of pressing necessity. However, better late
than never, and we are glad to find that the question
of drainage and of a free ventilation of air has at
length attracted the notice of the Legis-
lature. The secure building of houses is also
a subject to which they have most justly turned
their attention, for who is not aware of the scanda-
lously inefficient and insecure in inner in which build-
ings are run up now-a-days ? The timber used is
often wholly unfit for any useful purpose, harbouring
nests of vermin, shrinking, after it has been laid
down but a few months, and leaving large gaps and
apertures so as to cause a constant succession of tho-
rough-draughts, which however acceptable they may
be in the hot summer months, are apt to be somewhat
inconvenient when the atmosphere is impregnated
with the fogs of November, or the keen, searching
east-winds of March are blowing; the walls in many
instances—indeed we almost say in the majority—
are but of the thickness of a single brick ; and it not
unfrequently happens that the whole crazy concern
either stands in need of general repair, or comes
down with a crash, before the landlord has called for
his second year's rent. Yet, however inefficient for
the purposes of comfort and convenience these
buildings may be, they are. invariably showy
and attractive to the eye ; hence they are
no sooner completed than they are let, and
are no sooner let than they are vacated, the
unhappy tenant finding, in addition to the incom-
parable facilities which they afford him for catching
cold by the huge yawnings in the doors and windows,
arising from the shrinking of the timber—that they
smoke like a brewery, and are by no means immacu-
late in the matter of drainage. The reason of all
this is, that the houses are frequently run up by
greedy speculative adventurers, ignorant of the first
principles of architecture, and utterly regardless of
every consideration, except that of getting an imme-
diate return for their outlay of capital. It is high
time that this system should be checked, if not put a
stop to ; and if new buildings are necessary, that
such buildings should be erected under the superin-
tendence of competent architects, so that they may
be rendered available for the purposes of human
habitation.

The advices from Caba, which have reached this
country by the Patrick Henry—just arrived from
New York—represent that fine island to be in a con-
dition of disorganisation and terror, such as it seems
to be the fate of every possession of the Spanish
Crown, in its turn, to experience. The evil genius of
the home Government—which contrives to paralyse
the energies, to blast the prospects, and to exhaust, in
bloody factions, the resources of one of the most
powerful States, by nature, in the Old World—has
evidently infused itself into the counsels of its colonial
administration. With NARVAEZ supreme in power at
Madrid, and O'DoNrizi.i. exercising an uncontrolled
autocracy at Havannah, it were strange indeed if
affairs did not travel post-haste to some dreadful con-
summation. Often as we have had occasion to de•

RAIP
Pkt 01_ melancholy aspect which Spain presents,
under
ated domestic and internal disasters,
ee accu..7llll
that find in story of but few other States their
equal or their para:lel ; we were scarcely prepared to
.1 submission to that military
witness her disgracefu
despotism which witheinavvs accused individuals be-
fore trial from the protection and cognizance of the
laws, to subject them to the mockery of examination
before packed courts of military inquiry ; or inter-
poses, after trial, with the course of civil justice; and
drags its prisoners away to be butchered by the
disciplined satellites of an unprincipled dictator, in
defiance of all forms and rights of law. Sunk and
degraded as the old Castilian character now is, in
that political debasement in which an obscure military
adventurer—the obsequious tool of a corrupt court, the
corrupter agent himself of a foreign influence—is
permitted to play the tyrant over some millions of a
people whose past renown is mixed up with the
proudest associations of ancient and modern story,
the measure of her shame, it appears, is not yet
filled up. Her wrongs, which, for many years
have excited the pity of civilised mankind, will
soon be overlooked in that abject endurance of her
oppressions, which can permanently awaken no
other feeling in the nations but that of
contemptuous scorn. In the New -World, the theatre
of so many of her greatest and her basest achieve-
ments—of her most brilliant successes and her most
shameful degeneracy—she is doomed to exhibit the
fallen fortunes of a once enterprising Power, which
after conquering remote nations, only to plunder and
enslave them, relaxed voluntarily, in the lapse of
years, the iron bondage it had imposed. By the
introduction of agriculture and husbandry she taught
her swarthy subjects in those distant regions to lay
wide and deep the only permanent bases of plenty and
opulence; but she established at the same time, with
haughty inconsistence, the most scrutinizing, precise,
and inexorable distinctions of blood and complexion,
and of social position in respect of these, that a re-
fined feudal physiology—so to speak—could devise.
In no European-settled colonies or possessions, within
or beyond the tropics, have these distinctive indica-
tions of blood—its purity or debasement being esti-
mated by the greater or less approximation to that of
their white conquerors—been more sternly insisted on
than in those of Spain, whether in the seas of Asia,
or on the coasts and on the islands of America. In
order duly to appreciate the offences now in course of
perpetration by the Spanish authorities of Cuba, we
must bear this in mind. The "negro" slave, in short,
has always been in Cuba without any of the qualify-
ing advantages, as to his social position, which his
ability, his earnings towards the price of his freedom,
or his actual manumission had secured him, for years
before the passing by our Parliament of the Emanci-
pation Act in 1833, in any of our own islands, and
in many of the West Indian possessions of other
Powers. This consideration makes the boon which
our treaties with Spain were suffered, until now, to
have acquired for the " Emancipados" in any Spanish
colony, so much the greater—the scandalous denial so
much the more bitter to the Emancipado himself, and
the less to be excused or permitted by us.
The accounts we publish from Cuba set forth that
the Governor-General O'Doscti.r. (the intemperate
successor we believe of General VALDEZ), is distin-
guishing his government by acts of the most flagi-
tious cruelty, and the most scandalous violations of
existing treaties between Spain and Great Britain.
" Executions are going on daily, under sentence of
the Military Commission at Matanzas. About the
20th June last, eight negroes and one white man
were shot there. Ten were ordered for exe-
cution in a few days, and among them
the poet PLACIDO." (May his strains, like those of
TYRLEUS of old, animate his compatriots and fellow-
sufferers to a signal bu holy vengeance on their bru-
tal enemies !) " Arrests are still numerous—princi-
pally of free people of colour, whose property is imme-
diately coqfiscated ; and a system of wholesale robbery
is thus established." Numerous bodies of natives—
free, coloured, and black—were getting out of the
island by hundreds at a time ; and even the Spanish
Intendant on the island, the Count VILLANEUVE, was
too intimidated to remonstrate with O'DONNELL.
O'DONNELL'S insolence had gone to the extent of
" positively refusing the British Commissioners to
liberate any of the Emancipados." These are negroes,
captured long since by English cruisers, and who,
having served out their probationary term, are en-
titled, under the treaty with Great Britain, to their
free papers. The Governor-General, whose atro-
cious career bespeaks so nice a sense of morality
and religion, has the effrontery to pretend, that
though their probationary terms are completed,
the religious and moral education of these
poor blacks had been hitherto much neglected;
that he shall keep them till it is sufficiently
advanced to make their freedom of any use to them !
In the m antime these unfortunates are hunted up in
all quarters ; compelled to work on the public rail-
road, and re-assigned to their former masters, or the
highest bidders for money prices, and for terms of
five or seven years. Not less than 5,000 of these un-
happy men, who may be supposed to have hailed the
dawn of each succeeding day, while undergoing their
legitimate probation, with a bounding hope of being
so much nearer to the boon of freedom, and its new
existence, and with a benediction on the great nation
through whose august intervention in their favour it
was on the point of being obtained ; are thus, by the
treachery, the avarice, and the brutal cruelty of a
Spanish Governor, thrust back into the "house of
bondage," and remitted again to the chains, the ago-
nies, and the despair of slavery and shame!
Are the recent significant words of Lord ABER-
DEEN, when he said of these recusant or contumacious
States, that if they would not fulfil their' obligations
under treaty they must be compelled to do so, to be
mere sounds as of a tinkling cymbal ? Or will the
long •suffering indignation of British power be at last
terribly aroused, and visit with some such memorable
arguments as have been heard ere now at Algiers,
when treaties " on behalf of slaves" had been less
wantonly broken through—the bad faith and pre-
sumption of a Spanish West India Governor ?
Our advice would be to waste no more time in
dealing with a Government so helpless, so enslaved,
so NanvaEz-ridden as that of Old Spain_; but to
save ourselves further trouble and expense in our
costly, sincere, And ill-requited efforts to put down
negro slavery, to give every facility to the free black
population of Jamaica, and to offer no impediment to
tt
hh
eoisre es
nv effn of e r
ing S t.
brethren
in
n Cuba
takingh a
into
the case
their o
own
hands and management. General O'DONNELL, like
his friend NARVAEZ, may bluster a little more; but I
what could he do to dispense with the inopportune I
civilities of a hundred thousand black petitioners—
robust and ready—for justice to these Emancipados,
under the faith of treaties between Great Britain and
Spain ?

Madrid journals of the 22d inst. have been received,
but with the exception of raising the state of seige at
Saragossa, they bring no intelligence of the slightest
interest.

The Three per Cents. were done at 26 5-16 for
cash, and 26 at 60 days, and the Five per Cents.
at 20. at 50 days, with premium.

The anniversary files in celebration of the " Three
Days of July," commenced at Paris on Saturday.
Low masses were performed in all the churches, and
a special service took place in the church of St. Paul,
which is nearest to the Bastile monument. The
Prefect of the Seine, M. DE RAMBUTEAU, General
JACQUEMINOT, Commandant of the National Guards,
and all the officers of his staff, were present at that
service. At noon the posts were doubled, says the
Courrier Francais, and entrusted to the command of
staff officers. In the barracks of the Municipal
Guard the men were ready to mount their horses, or
to rush to arms. The rounds of the superior officers
were unceasing, the Prefecture de Police was crowded
with Municipal Guards and policemen. At Neuilly,
the garrison of the Palace was tripled as early as
nine in the morning. Neither the Journal des Debuts
nor the Constitutionnel mentions these circumstances,
and probably the precautions taken by the Govern-
ment against any outbreak are much exaggerated,
as the Opposition journals attempt to show that all
these ceremonies are sanctioned by the Government
rather from fear, than from a wish to celebrate the
Revolution of July. Alluding to the attend-
ance of the Prefect and the Commandant
of the National Guards at the church of
St. Paul, the National says :—" These gentlemen
are the only public functionaries that have taken part
in the mournful commemoration. The other autho•