The Sun.
London, England, 1845-05-13 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, MAY 13, 1845.

Wednesday evening last, it appears, that the existing
law, in its terms, makes full provision for the poor of
Scotland ; and puts into the hands of those who have

savages. The geographical and commercial import-
ance of the Soloo islands, always very great, has
become infinitely enhanced by the extension of our
mercantile establishments, and our intercourse with
China. Two years ago, a very able writer in the
Indian News, in a paper admirable for its various and

the administration of that law the power of assessing
all parties liable to contribute under it to any extent
which may be necessary for that purpose. It is from
no indisposition to do justice to the merits of the Lord
Advocate's Bill that we propose very briefly to in-

valuable statistics of the Indian Archipelago, wrote
thus prophetically :—" But the supineness of Great

quire—on the assumption that the existing law en-
ables, as the Learned Lord tells us, the authorities
charged with its administration to assess nll parties
liable to any extent adequate to the making full pro-

Britain, with regard to the splendid Indian Archipe-
lago, is quite inexplicable. Even Singapore we

owe not to the Government, but to an individual,

E'er it was with great reluctance that Sir ScArl-

vision for the support of the poor—how has that

FORD RAFFLES was permitted to create this
valuable entrepOt; and at the present mo-
ment, when Manilla, from its propinquity to
China, promises or rather, threatens to be-
come one of the most important settlements in

power been exercised ? With what satifactory results
to the poor ? From the statistics embodied in some
of the returns that have just been brought before
the House, we collect one or two remarkable results.
Ot the counties of Ross, Cromartie, Inverness,
Caithness, Sutherland, and Argyle, the total popu-
lation, in 1841, was 340,928. The total amount
received by assessment, and contributions at church
and from private sources, was for that year 7,6821.
Of the total population, 8,463 were reported to be
legally entitled to relief as impotent or destitute poor,
and more than double that number were returned as
equitably entitled to demand similar poor relief.
Among the latter it was administered to 1,174,am0ng
the former to 4,798. Thus the average of relief
administered to each of this number of poor persons
per week was 21e1., exclusive of „hat additions the
individual may have realised, to this legalised pittance,
by " begging from door to door." Truly the terms
of the existing law may be, as the Lord Advocate
remarked, very extensive. But the practical susten-
tation provided under it must yield but an homceopa-
thic aliment for its unfortunate recipients.
To remedy such a state of things, however, will
prove a task of much more difficulty and trouble than
will be readily believed by the benevolent but impa-
tient philanthropist. "We transfer to our columns a
letter addressed to the Lord Advocate, which carries
a signature that needs no prefatory commendation at
our hands. We may be apt to believe that the writer
permits his solicitude to be too readily excited by
exaggerated apprehensions; but we must concede the
praise of great good sense and moderation to the tone
and spirit in which his views are developed. We
quite concur in holding that it is far more essential
well to consider and digest the scheme and details of the
new measure in this session, with a view to carry it
out into law in the next, than, from the mere desire
to avoid delay, to precipitate a vote upon it before the
rising of the House of Commons. We find it difficult,
moreover, to dispute the force of the case cited to
show that the operation of the new law upon its pre-
sent scheme and detail, may prove ruinous in some
districts of Scotland, to the landlords and other classes,
if it be modelled too closely "upon the wide, strag-
gling, and uncertain basis of the present law." In the
parish which has supplied the illustration it has been
the practice of the Kirk Session to give aid to as great
a number of the poor requiring it as it was found
possible to afford. On the clear rental of that parish,
amounting to 2,7001. per annum, the charge for the
poor under the new law would be no less than
37 per cent. Now this is certainly a very startling
statement; and, from peculiar circumstances connected
with the tenure of ]and in Scotland, we have no
doubt that the result would be as the writer anti-
cipates, that although, nominally, the greater pro-
portion may appear likely to be contributed by the
feuars and heritors, the burden must really be
borne by the landowner. Again, we have reason to
know, that the possessors of estates in the north-west
highlands and islands of Scotland have, in many
cases, within the last few years, through the extinc-
tion of the once lucrative manufacture of kelp, been
compelled to abandon, as he states, their lands, and
migrate to distant colonies. How are the present
possessors to contribute from their fearfully dimi-
nished rentals, these increased contributions to the
support of the poor ? Both these points are well
worthy mature deliberation and inquiry before the
Legislature, ere its sanction be given to a new poor-law,
however unexceptionable in principle, or excellent in
many of its details. But there are other considera-
tions suggested, of which w e cannot too strongly cor-
roborate the force and importance. One of these re-
gards a great general principle, namely, that the grant
of this sort of aid to the poor, in any given case, under
the existing law, shall not, of itzelf, as necessarily con-
stitute a right in the same party to receive it under
the new law. The laxity cf the rule under which
this aid has hitherto been extended, would render it
equally dangerous and absurd to give it, under a new
system, anything like the same application. Even Scot-
tish Jurists of high eminence have held that the relief
in question is rather to be considered under the existing
law "as an aid than for maintenance." The next
point which we trust will be distinctly affirmed by
the decision of the Legislature, is that under the new
law power should be given to the parties entrusted
with its executive administration, to fit up temporarily
old houses, and other existing accommodations, for the
purposes of poor-houses, at least for a given and ade-
quate period, and so as to give to parishes and unions
ample opportunity for ascertaining the wants and re-
quirements of parishes and unions, before committing
themselves to the adoption of needlessly expensive
constructions, devised by the costly fancy of the
parish-union architects. All these will be found
topics well entitled to very serious investigation, and
we do hope that for once the people of Scotland may
not have occasion to reproach the Imperial Legisla-
ture with its habitual indifference to questions of
purely local interest and importance to that country.

:he Eastern Seas, we have not even a Consul there

o look after our trade, and report to Government

at home!" Have we any Consul there now ? We
doubt it; though this question was suggested so far
back as April, 1843. We recollect that, at the close

of the last session, when Mr. GLADsToNE's notable

theme for admitting Manilla sugar under discritni-

nating duties, to evade its free-labour production, was
being forced through the House of Commons in
spite of its often predicted (and its now often
proved) futility, the Premier attempted to
conciliate objectors by the announcement of

some magnificent plan for sending out sala-
ried agents to Manilla, among other foreign sta-
tions, qualified to test and report upon the qualities of
the sugars to be admitted into our home market. We
nfer, though we cannot speak positively, at this
moment, that we have no Consular agent at Manilla.
"Our Gallic neighbours " (continues this writer in
the same spirit of prescience) "are more on the alert,
although with not a tithe of the cause ; and we learn
from a private source that the French Consul is a per-
son of great talent and shrewdness. As for the Ameri-
cans they never sleep. Without a foot of land in the
Archipelago, and without manufactures for barter,
they are yet the busiest traders in these seas. An ac-
credited agent of Congress is perpetually roaming
among the islands, and a Yankee frigate is never far
distant where their flag requires protection." Three
words suffice to explain the facility and impunity
with which the Americans can thus break through
the Dutch prohibitory system, when we do not.
They are not hampered by the blunders of Lord
CASTLEREAGH s restitution-folly of 1814, nor the
disgraceful and self-imposed disabilities of the treaty
of 1824.

But we recur to the conclusion of the paper we
have quoted for an incidental notice of the Soloo
Islands that is calculated to give a casual, but striking
notion of the admirable position of those islands, and
he relations of that of Manilla to them. " Let a
British Consul," he says, " be established at Manilla
to watch the progress of events which, under the new
relations of China with Europe, may, at no distant
day, render that settlement the most important
entrepot on the Eastern seas, and finally let the
Government take steps to acquire a knowledge of the
extent and present state of the general trade
of these valuable islands, the duties chargeable
at the several ports, and the impediments which exist
in the way of British commerce."—(How much, may
we parenthetically inquire, of this sort of information
is really in possession of the Foreign or Colonial office,
or the Board of Control, at this moment ?)—" A
single commissioner, if well chosen, would supply all
that is wanted as regards trade, and at the same time
throw valuable light upon the natnral history and
state of society in the whole region ; although it
might be well that, in the first place, his attention
should be more especially directed to the principal
ports in Sumatra, Borneo, Celebes, and the Soloo
Archipelago.
Now we have no doubt that the necessity of an
intermediate station for her trade with China will be
at least as sensibly felt by France as her want of
such a station for her Levant trade. Will
she be less indifferent to national rights in
supplying this deficiency in the one case, than
she showed herself to be in the other ?
It' the credulity of English statesmanship be still as
plastic as it was in 1830, and again in 1834, French
duplicity may play over again, with equal success,
the game in which it so completely
_finessed the Ca-
binet of St. James's—touching, first, the conquest ;
and, secondly, the permanent occupation of Algiers.
On both occasions our Foreign Minister was wilfully
or preposterously blind to intentions that were univer-
sally seen through by the common sense of the Eng-
lish people. When the expedition of General (now
Marshal) BOURAIONT, in 1830, to demand satisfaction
for so:ne insults to the French flag, terminated in the
deposition of the Dm', and the overthrow and extinc-
tion of that Turco-African Government, it was
apparent to Englishmen in every part of the king-
dom—except the little precinct of Downing-street—
that a permanent establishment in the Mediterra-
nean was the real object of this French aggression.
A degree of natural uneasiness and distrust was
created in the public mind, and especially among the
commercial community. Remonstrances were ad-
dressed to the Government, and in Parliament on
several occasions the attention of Ministers was
directed to the suspicious character of the transaction.
Four years rolled on, in the course of which our
Foreign department perpetually assuring all inquirers
" that there was no design on the part of the French
to retain the Algerine territory," was being utterly
bamboozled by that shameless duplicity to which a
French Minister unscrupulously resorts, whenever
there is a coup d'etat to be effected, the results of which
are likely to be of magnitude sufficient to warrant
to Frenchmen the experiment. At the end
of May, 1834, the declaration of the French Mi-
nistry (in the teeth of the solemn assurance which
had just before been given to ours, in the name of the
KING, to the contrary) confirmed the apprehensions
of the British public and the infatuation of the British
Ministry. The French Government coolly " pro-
nounced" for permanent occupation, and it was found
that the moment for preventive negotiation was
passed. That the French have since bungled and
mismanaged their conquest is only in the usual
course of their inaptness at colonial organisation ; but
it might have been imagined that such a lesson of poli-
tical perfidy would not have been soon forgotten.
To judge, however, by the little sensation hitherto
excited by the announced design they have of occupying
the Soloo Islands, we are afraid that we shall be little
better prepared to counteract this movement on the
Indian ocean, than we unfortunately were to neutral-
ize their movement in the Levant.
Our readers, who will, perhaps, from the considera-
tions above premised, concur with us in our estimate
of the positive value of Manilla, and its enormously
enhanced value in relation to the Soloo Islands, will
participate also in the apprehension with which we
regard the possible result of their occupation
of the Soloo territory, in an exchange with the
Spanish Government, under some pretext or other, for
Manilla. That would be, indeed, a change of pro-
prietorship by no means to be desired. But when
we recollect the paramount, absolute, and all-efficient
influence of the French Cabinet on the Court and
Councils of Spain, we must not close our eyes to
that contingency even. And who shall say that other
and higher considerations would deter the French
Cabinet from seizing so advantageous an opportunity
of Oriental aggrandisement, should it once present
itself? Let us hope the Soloo question will not
quite escape the present notice of her MAJESTY'S
Government.

For some weeks past the French journals, and more
especially those which usually affect to be well in •
formed upon the intentions of the French Govern
ment, have been putting out those minute but signi-

ficant paragraphs which may be called the "antenna"
of journalism—the feelers of that policy of which
they are the organs—and these feelers point to the
intended occupation of a part or the who'e of the group
of the Soloo islands, at one extremity of the Great
Indian Archipelago. Our attention was arrested by
the first " protrusion" of these feelers, and we thought
it would not be long ere the action was repeated. In
another ten days, cur expectation was realised. The
object had now assumed a more definite form.
Whether because no notice had been taken of the
former demonstration by the English journals, or in
the English Parliament, we cannot say, but the ob-
ject was more boldly defined to be the "seizure" of
the Soloo islands. And last week we encountered
some speculations in the same journals as to the par-
ties to whom this expedition and the direction of its
proceedings would probably be confided. There can
be little doubt that, in due time, on some one of those
fine mornings—nothing daunted by the failure of
their hope in grasping the Marquesas by a coup-de-
main, and establi4bing themselves in Otaheite under
false pretences—we shall hear of our neighbours
having domiciled themselves on some island of
the Soloo cluster (not on the whole, as some
of our Parisian brethren surmise, with more
of territorial appetite than geographical ac-
curacy.) But the importance of a position
there, coupled with the anxiety and vigilance they
have shown to avail themselves of the opportunity
afforded by our successes in China to establish com-
mercial relations with that empire, they have not, as in
the cases of the Marquesas and Otaheite, exaggerated.
It is much to be dreaded that the importance of their
intention is grievously underrated by this country, or
rather by that miserably incompetent branch of the
Government which so ruinously administers its
Colonial possessions. On former occasions we
have devoted some articles to show with what
suicidal folly a Tory Government—after we
had conquered Java, and in a brief posses-
sion of three years, given freedom to its people,
their industry, and its vast commerce, so that in re-
venue, as well as in natural products, it had become,
under our rule, the richest of all the eastern islands—
we restored, without compensation or guarantee of
any kind, Java to the Dutch. We have shown how
scandalously the Dutch have since, and, to this day,
evaded, and violated, the terms of the treaty of 1824,
after we had, with almost equal childishness, agreed
to their own construction of those terms. At least,
let us profit by the example we have had of Dutch
cupidity, and, since there seems no likelihood of our
regaining Java, negotiate, immediately, with the Go-
vernment of Holland, who have interests in that distant
region, and the native princes who exercise hereditary
dominion there, for a position in the Soloo groupe
also. This is a better, and every way more respectable
a course than seizing clandestinely, and backed by
an vervehelming force, on the lands of defenceless

We have intelligence from Madrid to the sth inst.
In the discussion on the budget of receipts, whic]
commenced that day in the Chamber of Deputies, a
proposition was brought forward by Senor AGUA YO,
for raising an annual revenue of 150,000,000 Teals
(1,500,0001.), by an income-tax and tolls at the gates
of the principal towns in Spain. The motion, which
led to some discussion, was adjourned. Acctxcding to
accounts from Barcelona great preparations were in
progress for the reception of the Court.
The Three per Cents. closed at 34+ for cash, and
348 at 60 days; the Five per Cents. at 25 11-16 at
60 days; the Provisional Debt at 81 and the Debt
without interest at 8i at 60 days.

There is no intelligence in the Paris papers of
much interest. The last accounts from Africa, are
considered unsatisfactory. ADD. EL-KAD. ER, as we
stated yesterday, is making preparations for- another
outbreak, and as the French Government s. !emed in-
clined to believe that the Emperor of MoP.occo had
failed in using proper exertions to expel hi' from the
country, General DELARUE is to be sent 416 Conn*,

sioner Plenipotentiary to the Court of ABDERRAHMAN
to remind him of his engagements. According

to a letter from Oran, ABD-EL-KADER is in the
south at the head of ten thousand men, and the late

attack upon a party of French at Tenez is considered
only a part of the plan for a new rising against the
invaders. Several columns of French troops are in conse-

quence moving towards the south of Algeria. The grants
just voted by the Chamber for improving the liar-

boura of Toulon and Port Vendr-s, meet with the

general approbation of the French press, as the object
of the Government in propo,ing these estimates is to
facilitate the communication between France and the
coast of Africa. Port Vendres especially is well
adapted for that purpose. The Presse thus points
out the advantages of this harbour :—At Port Ven-
dres it is intended to construct for the present a pier
at the entrance of the harbour and to deepen the outer
port. The expense is estimated at 2,500,000/., which
will complete the amount demanded by the Minister of
Marine. Port Vendres is so well situated that the
genius of VAIJiIAN, nearly two centuries since,
foresaw the advantage to be derived from it. It
is close to the frontier of Spain, at the extremity
of the Gulf of Lyons, and at a period of maritime
war would afford our steam-boats a secure refuge.
Moreover, it is even more than Toulon the centre of
our communications with Algeila. The high lands
surrounding Port Vendres protect the ships in the
harbour against the effects of the north-west wind
which sometimes blows so violently in the Gulf of
Lyons. The distance from the port to Algiers is
twenty leagues shorter than from Toulon to that
point. Every consideration, therefore, combines to
recommend this part of the coast to the attention of
the Government, as it is possible to establish there at
a trifling expense another harbour of refuge."
It appears from a report made by the Committee
on the Paris fortifications that the total sum ex •
pended since their commencement in 1841 is
108,000,000 f., about 4,000,0001., and that thirty-two
millions voted in addition to that sum by the
Chamber remain in the hands of the Government.
The following is a brief outline of the report. It
may be necessary to state that the metre is equal to
rather more than thirty-nine inches, and that the
continuous wall extends to fully twenty-three miles :
" The whole of the continuous wall is laid down, and
amounts in length to 38,625 metres. The scarp has
been commenced to the extent of 38,141 metres, and of
this number 35,358 are completely finished. It will,
therefore, be seen that the masonry of the circle is
nearly complete. The fifteen advanced forts are all in
course of construction. All of them have their escarpes
finished and covered with their coping, with the single
exception of the fort of Aubervilliers, which was not
commenced till 1843, but which is also in a state of great
forwardness. The counterscarps in masonry have been
commenced in the forts of Romanville, Noisy, Rosery,
Nogent, Charenton, Ivry, Issy, and Mount Valerien, to
the extent, in all, of 6,334 metres, of which 5,716 metres
are completed. All the casemates of the forts are made,
with the sole exception of that of Aubervilliers, which
will be executed at the commencement of the approach-
ing season. As regards the buildings with which
the forts will be provided, twenty-two powder
magazines have already been built and covered in,
and two more are ready to be roofed. The interior of
these magazines will not be completed till the last mo-
ment, in order that every precaution possible maybe taken
against damp. Four ball-proof barracks at Charenton
and Mount Valerien are covered in. The one is already
occupied, and the other can be so at any time. Thirteen
other buildings, not proof, and intended as barracks for
soldiers and officers, have also been finished in the dif-
ferent forts. Of these five are already occupied by the
troops. Five other barracks have been commenced, and
are in a forward state. The military roads on the right
bank were completed last year, but on the icit bank only
those have been made which lead to the forts of Ivry,
Bicetre, Montronge, Vanves, and Issy. The road from
Mount Valerien to Suresnes is nearly finished, and will
be in use in the course of the approaching season. The
greatest number of workmen employed at any one time
during the year 1844 on the fortifications was 11,518, of
whom 5,076 were military."
Accounts from Lucerne of the 7th inst. state that
the. Catholic cantons which aided in defeating the
volunteer corps, lay claim to a share of the ransom-
money, but Lucerne is not at all inclined to accede
to the proposition. Much interest is excited in Paris
respecting the fate of Dr. STEIGER. Strong repre-
sentations have been made in his favour. Delegates
have been sent for that purpose to the Lucerne
Government by several of the other cantons, and the
representatives of the Foreign Powers have thrown
their influence into the balance on the side of mercy.
These means, it is thought, will be ultimately suc-
cessful, so far as that the life of Dr. STEIGER will be
saved. The Paris Globe says it is enabled to state
that his life will be spared, and we cordially hope
that the Government of Lucerne will not render itself
infamous by carrying the sentence into execution.
At TORTONI'S, on Sunday, the Three per Cents.
were done at 86f. 20c.