The Sun.
London, England, 1845-09-20 00:00:00

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t

LONDON, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1846.

The policy of our Foreign Department is certainly the most
inexplicable problem—and has been, for some few years past

—which the science of modern Government presents to our
observation. It is .perfectly impossible to calculate, before-
hand, the point to which the forbearance of Downing-street
may be extended, or the insignificance and tenuity of the
power which it will allow with impunity to heap insults upon
our flag and outrages on our fellow subjects. It may be the
evidence of a very high strain of generosity, but it is not less
the evidence of- a very questionable policy—that in proper-
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tion to the insignificance of the quarter from whence these
affronts proceed is the degree of indifference—we had almost
said of favour—which our Government extends to them.
We are great favourers of the general principle of non-inter-
vention, so long as it can be persevered in without the sacri-
fice of the first duties of states, which, as with individuals,
are identified with those of self-defence and self-vindication.
To carry it to any point beyond that at which it can only
be persisted in through such a sacrifice, is like the
attempt to compel respect by manifesting a dignified
indifference to the ignominy of a blow. To endure such in-
solence without chastising it, on the ground that it is offered
by some mushroom offspring of political excitement, in
every sense of the word weak and contemptible, is to act
with that sort of discriminating indulgence which would
prompt a passenger by a railway, train, mischievously over-
set, to decline prosecuting the detected culprit, on his proving
to be only an overgrown boy. We make no scruple to as-
sume a determined attitude with France, - or Russia,
or the United States, whenever their demeanour becomes
menacing. To some wretched machine of old and worn-
out government, like that of Spain, some mass. Of incongruous
factions and opinions, institutions and establishments in the
Old World, only cohering together in virtue of the energy
that sustains the conflict of one of its elements with another ;
to some ephemeral republic in the New World, which, since
its emancipation from the feeble dominion of an exhausted
monarchy, has passed through every stage and fluctuation of
political change, ever storm of revolution, every degree of
moral guilt, every excess of popular anarchy, every sangui-
nar7 outrage of a remorseless and irresponsible des-
potism—we show a contrary bearing—we are all
placability, all forgiveness. There is no falsehood, however
gross, which we do not accept as an apology for the
offences committed, when we complain of them. There
are no promises, however hollow and without guarantee for
their redemption, to which we do not lend a willing and ready
ear, when they are proffered. But of all the petty states at
whose hands we have thus unaccountably and for years
together tolerated unheard-of indignitiel, to our flag and to
the lives, and fortunes, and liberty of British subjects, the
miserable federation which is represented by the Government
at Buenos Ayres is at once the most flagitious, cruel, and in-
sufferable, The interests of humanity and civilisation have
appealed for years past, but in vain, to that British protec-
tion which till our time was scarcely ever withheld under such
exigencies as those in which that appeal has been made.
The measure of those offences is now full. The career of
those crimes is now consummated, and we cannot, and will
not, believe that this country will venture any longer to sus-
pend the infliction of a signal and righteous vengeance on the
ruffian chief, RosAs, whom she has too long permitted with
impunity to perpetrnte crimes that are a scandal and disgrace
to our common nature, to our age, to our civilisation.
We need hardly -rival to the recollection of our
• readers the unheard-of barbarities perpetrated by the
▪ troops who, under the command of this execrable chief,
in the course of that war which has associated

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his name and the name of Buenos Ayres, in company with
the desolation of the wars of the Uruguay and Argentine

Republic to the latest posterity, with reminiscences otrevolt-
ing tortures, of slaughters in cold blood, and destruction
undertaken and persisted in for its own detestable gratifica-
tion. It is unnecessary to dwell upon the infamies com-
mitted on the unfortunate Argentine prisoners, who
were captured during the investment and siege of Monte Video,
or the sport made with the heads and skulls of the
massacred Monte Videan soldiery ; or the sufferings to which
the English residents in that city were, and still are exposed,
together with the enormous losses of property sustained by
them during these long-continued operations against
it. The more recent sufferings of our countrymen
in Buenos Ayres itself; the avowed hostility of
ROSAS for foreigners of all kinds, but for the English
in particular; the plunder, pillage, and assassination to
which the latter hive been long exposed, without one Lund fide
effort on the part of ROSAS to prevent or to punish such enor-
mities ; and all the extravagances of his pretensions to mono-
polise for Buenos Ayres the whole trade of the River Plate,
after accomplishing as a preliminary the ruin of Monte
Video (which is so much nearer to its mouth than Buenos
Ayres) ; his refusal to allow the merchant ships
of France and England to discharge their cargoes,
or even to break bulk at Buenos Ayres, on the preposterous
ground of offence assumed " that they had taken in pilots
at Monte Video" (and without them they could not hope to
reach Buenos Ayres in safety)—these are matters which
being, as it were, but of yesterday, must be still more
freshly within the public remembrance. But, accustomed as
we have too long been to details of horror, to deeds of blood
and violence in all the accounts we receive from Buenos
Ayres,- the increase of murders and assassinations, some of them
committed in open day, on the persons of foreign residents,
and too probably of foreign prisoners. also in that city, has
now become absolutely hideous. The worst and *darkest
epochs of the " reign of terror," the most frightful_excesses
of the French Revolution, do not exceed in their blood-
guiltiness and atrocity, those which, on a smaller scale, are
being exhibited under the detestable auspices of Ros As. We
published a day Or two ago one of these fearful narratives of
murder, rape, and pillage, committed on a Scotch family of nine
persons, in broad day, in the immediate vicinity of Buenos
Ayres, suppressing, however, some of the details as too revolt-
ing for our pages. To-day we give insertion to a singularly
interesting document—touching and pathetic by its very
simplicity, and the absence of all effort to be the one or
the other—which has, we fear, but too close a bearing on the
story of the atrocious career of Ros As. We allude to the
account by General O'BRIEN, formerly a distinguished
servant and minister of the Bolivian Republic, of his capti-
vity and sufferings under the direction of ROSAS, by whom he
was perfidiously kidnapped, although at that time in execu-
tion of an important mission on behalf of an independent
state. Of the pusillanimous and inconsistent conduct of our own
Minister, the Hon. Mr. MANDEVILLE, we have long since re-
corded an opinion which this paper too fatally confirms. The
ample details, however, given in the document itself render
farther comment unnecessary. "The casus bells," as the Times
observes, "has been already prepared by the absolute inter-
ruption of our trade with the Argentine Republic, in direct
violation of our treaties with that state.

Madrid journals of the 11th inat. have been rececording to the latest accounts the QUEEN was at
,as
Letters from Barcelona state that the Madrid diligence was
attacked by banditti about four leagues from that place some
days Previous, and that several of them had been arrested and
iveVdittoArica:
t-itah-Y court-martial. Four men were sentenced to death,
and one woman to the galleys for life. On the day after the
trial three of the men were shot in their native village. The
fourth was rospited in consequence of information which he
gave to the authorities, and which led to the arrest of forty
persons. The French squadron under Admiral PARBEVAL
DESCHENES, consisting of seven ships of the line, passed Bar-
celona on.the 11th, sailing towards the Balearic Islands.
No business was done on the Madrid Bourse,

jr fold little in the Paris papers that can interest the
English reader, The Government paper, the Journal des
.Debaky has an article on the high charge for postage o'f
IL tters in France, and expresses a conviction that the question