The Sun.
London, England, 1844-01-09 00:00:00

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LONDON, TUESDAY, JANUARY 9, 1844.

A Tory Contemporary, of this morning, con-
spicuotis by his old-fashioned politics, and the
twaddling, old-fashioned manner in which he
enunciates them, is more than usually lugubrious
at thought of the cruel sufferings which'hence-
forth must be the inevitable lot of the agricul-
turists. He has discovered that they are all
doomed to death, and is only doubtful on the
point whether their dissolution will be a sudden
or a protracted one. " The tariff," he says,
"dooms the British farmer to a slow death—to a
death of gradual poverty, saddened by blasted
hopes. The sentence of the League, on the
other hand, is prompt as the guillotine. Let the
agriculturists of England choose between these
for►ns of execution." Cheering remarks these, to
open a new year with, and every way calculated
to infuse balm into the heart of the farmer !
But let him take heart ; he will neither
be slowly put to death by the tariff, nor guillo-
tined' by the League; but, on the contrary, de-
spite the operation of these dreaded influences,
he will find himself at the close of the year just
as far remcved from dissolution as he was at the
commencement. The Post's croakings are worth
no sane man's consideration for a single instant.
They are the mere frantic outbursts of dispirited
Monopoly, which, because its own doom is irre-
vocably sealed, takes for granted that the doom
of the British flamer is sealed also. Our dis-
' quieted Contemporary indulged in precisely the
same triste spirit when tho great question of Re.
form was in agitation, and never failed to predict,

day after day, the utter overthrow of the
Constitution as the immediate and inevitable
consequences of that measure. Yet the Reform
Bill was carried, and the Constitution evinced not
the slightest symptom of giving up the ghost;
and at this moment—twelve years after the pe-
riod when, according to the Post, it ought to
have resigned its last breath—it is just as alert,
as vigorous, and as efficient as it was in its best
days. And so will it be with the agriculturists,
even when the tariff and the League shall have
achieved a perfect triumph. They will be among
the first to laugh at their own idle apprehensions;
and will look at each other, and wonder how it
was that they could ever have put faith in the
gloomy vaticinations of a one-sided monopolist
journal. The remarks on which we have been
commenting, occur in the course of an article,
suggested to our Contemporary by a late
agricultural meeting in Lincolnshire. Though
this meeting is decidedly on his own side
of the question, yet his troubled spirit is so far
from deriving comfort from it, that he eyes it
with the same " jealous leer malign" with which
MILTON tells us the Devil eyed EYE in Paradise.
Even the suggestions of such monopolists as
Messrs. CHAPLIN alld CHRISTOPHER fail to meet
with his approval. He is a bigot of the "nil-
admirari " school, and can find nothing but
what is tainted in the whole political atmosphere.
Dismissing our Contemporary, we may observe,
that at the Lincolnshire meeting in question, Mr.
CHAPLIN indulged in the following very strange
—say to the least of it—language. "Possibly," he
observed, " if Mr. COBDEN should again present
himself in Lincoln, and if thepeople did notput him
in the river, they ought to;get a man accustomed
to mob oratory to answer him." Now imagine
a significant suggestion like this directed by a
member of the League against some sturdy
mo-
nopolist—say, for instance, Dr. SLEIGH or the
Duke of BUCKINGHAM ! Imagine Mr. COBDEN
slily hinting the expediency of throwing one or
both of these amiable individuals into the river !
What an uproar there would be among the
Tories What a wringing of hands, uplifting of
eyes, and shaking of thick heads ! Sir ROBERT
PEEL—as on a former memorable occasion—
would take the earliest opportunity of accus-
ing Mr. COBDEN in Parliament of recom-
mending assassination ; and Mr. FERRAND—
he whose genius for finding mare's nests is
so remarkable—would write long prosy letters
to each of the Tory journals, wherein he would
volunteer to prove before a Committee of the
House, that the Hon. Member for Stockport had
publicly and deliberately advised the murder of
an unoffending Doctor of Divinity, or a Duke,
illustrious by courtesy. Were the League
disposed to make such fools of themselves as
the Tories, they might easily get up as plausible
a case against Mr. CHAPLIN, as their enemies
got up against them ; but they are far too wise to
dream even for an instant of following in the
track of a parcel of spiteful, doting, old women.

It is not to be supposed, a priori, that a
Premier is a conjuror ; and we have not yet
seen, in the powers or the administration of Sir
ROBERT PEEL, anything which should subject
him, by implication or construction, to the
charge of having graduated in the black art.
But we stand aghast at the fond expectations
which both friends and foes profess to entertain
of the Right Hon. Baronet's " power magical."
He is, according to some, to come forward be-
fore the Easter recess with a scheme for cor-
recting the present dangerous and defective
condition of the currency. This class of political
puppets, not content with predicting the advent
of so incalculably beneficial a remedy, are so
extravagait in their credulity as to believe that
Sir ROMMT will have the candour to acknow-
ledge at the same time, that, after the late Mr.
Husxissort, no man has done more than himself
to create or to aggravate that diseased state of
our monetary functions which now threatens the
speedy paralysis of our whole industrial and
commercial system. Then, we have among our
Contemporaries some journalists who look to the
same hands, within the next six months, for the
development of matured plans for the extension of
our foreign commerce; the resuscitation and
permanent maintenance of our manufacturing
activity ; the effectual counteraction of Russian
intrigues against our power in Europe, and in
North-Western and Central Asia, in Persia, and
in China ;—the adjustment of the Oregon and
boundary questions, and of the seizures' com-
pensation claims by American citizens in the
United States; the pacification of Mexico ; the
settlement of the South American Republics;
and various other questions of some little im-
portance, and not without their modicum of
difficulties. For our own part, we are so fearful
that, in the matters thus hastily recapitulated,
there will be found stuff enough for the fullest
occupation of the Premier's time, that we have
scarcely margin enough of conscience left us to
add our own wish—rather than expectation—
that the Minister would be good enough to ap-
prise the country, in the first week of the en-
suing session, when he means to withdraw his
destructive property and income-tax—that mon-
strous concomitant of the twenty-ninth year of
our uninterrupted peace with Europe ? We are
sensible, however—having repudiated the notion
of his being invested with magic influences—that
Sir ROBERT PEEL can no more manufacture time,
than Mr. DENT, the great horologist, can multiply
it by any of the delicate and ingenious pro-
cesses which he applies to the manufacture of
his chronometers. And if this be so, it is not to
be imagined that the Premier, within the short
interval which has yet to elapse before the re-
assembling of Parliament, can scrape together a
sufficient stock of this " time "—the most pre-
cious, after all, of all currencies—to the elabora-
tion of one-tenth of all the purposes for which
people so kindly give him credit. Nay, it is
not, in reason, to be supposed that he will be
able to set apart, for any one department of the
public service, more of this commodity than the
portion which the course of official business has
already assigned to it.

Nevertheless, although we may not look
even to that Minister who understands so well
the technique of the art of raising "ways and
means" to supply the deficient annual product
of our taxation, by further taxing the very
capital which has hitherto paid it, or the income
of that eapitalr—tor a power to prolong the
duration of the natural day by Act of Parlia-
ment or Order in Council; we would entreat him
at this period,—before the fight of parties in
Parliament has begun,—to remember how much
of real business it is indispensable for him to
crowd into the transactions of every twenty-four
hours which will elapse before an ad-
journment, by prorogation or dissolution, in
the ensuing summer. Let him carefully
avoid the mischievous error of his predecessors in
office, who, by neglecting to calculate before-
hand the time—limits within which certain ob-
jects of periodical legislation and general ques-
tions of political or official detail, the discussion
of which can be certainly foreseen, may be pro-
bably disposed of—and by omitting to arrange,
also, their priority and sequence, have found
themselves compelled, with the approaching
termination of a session, to precipitate, or abso-
lutely to cashier and burp, affairs of the most
important relations, with a degree of injury to
the public service absolutely incalculable. We
would urgently recommend to the Minister to
prepare and organise a code of official regulations
under which each branch of the civil service
shall be required to prepare all the returns, re-
ports, accounts, &c., for which ma have been
already called on, by order of her MAJESTY, or
of either House, or which, by usage or precedent,
and under statute, it may be bound to supply to
Parliament,—by the earliest period at which it
may be practicable to get such documents ready
for presentation after the re-assembling of Parlia-
ment. Let these regulations enjoin that in every
instance wherein, according to the opinion of the
responsible superior head or officer of a depart-
ment, it may be impracticable to get such papers
prepared by the time suggested in the regula-
tions, such superior officer shall report to him,

the Premier, directly, the reasons or causes of
the delay, and set forth the more distant period
at which it can be guaranteed that such papers
shall be severally ready. Of all Parliamentary
papers, in like manner, which may be still
passing through the press, let the Minister on
the first day of the ensuing session call for a
return, setting out the present stage towards
completion at which the documents may have
arrived, and the date at which the printer under-
takes to have the copies delivered at the Parlia-
mentary Paper-office in Abingdon-street.
By some such measures as these, previously
concocted, it may be possible to avoid that in-
decent hurry, that hopeless confusion, and that
very serious mischief which the " clearing off"
the Return and Notice Paper in the penultimate
stages of a session usually exhibit:. It is in this
way that the go-by is given for another year,
not only to important Private Bills and muni-
cipal and county business, which have been
introduced or conducted at very heavy expense—
all of which for the most part in such instances
has to be re-incurred—but to public questions,
the progress of which has been anxiously but
vainly watched by the people, whose expecta-
tions in like manner must be postponed to the
" next session." We have no wish to see the
important questions of public education, the cur-
rency, the renewal of the Bank charter, the general
policy of free trade, the adjustment of our con-
nexions and dominions on this side and beyond the
Indus, the position and bearings of our foreign
policy, the revision of our domestic taxation, the
reform of our fiscal establishments, especially
the Customs, and the careful retrospect of our
financial system (all of which must, in a shape
more or less substantive and direct, come under
the deliberation of the Legislature in the en-
suing session)—we have no wish to see subjects
of this vital
,magnitude sacrificed to defective
arrangemerits and deficiency of time, which a
little previous management may surely obviate.

Accounts from Madrid of the Ist announce
the arrival of Mr. BULWER, the new British
Envoy, on the Alst ult. He shortly afterwards
had an interview with M. BRESSON, the French
Minister. On the 2d, the Marquis de MIRA..
FLORES was to give a grand soirée to M. and
Mme. BRESSON, to which the other Foreign Mi-
nisters had been invited. New Year's Day was
observed as a close holiday, and the Bourse, con-
sequently, was closed.

Most of the Paris papers contain accounts of
the procession of students to the Hotel Laffitte,
to congratulate the senior member of the Cham-
ber on the speech which he delivered a few days
since. Some of the journals reckon the number
of young men who joined in procession at 300,
and others at 500 and 1,000. The display
gave some alarm to the authorities, and a
considerable number of troops were un-
der arms during the night of Friday
The police, too, watched their movements, and
captured a few of the most noisy. The Journal
des Debats gives the following account of the
affair :—" A newspaper announced yesterday
morning that M. LAFFITTE was to receive a visit
of felicitation from a certain number of students,
on account of the speech which he delivered last
Saturday week in the Chamber of Deputies.
Accordingly groups of students met yesterday
morning at the Place de Pantheon and the Place
de l'Ecole de Medicine, and in a short time
about 300 of them set themselves in motion
towards the Pont Neuf, which they passed in
silence. Arrived at the Rue Richelieu, they
saluted the new monument to MOLIERE with
three cheers, and " Vive MOLIERE !" Having
arrived at the Hotel Laffitte, they drew up in the
court of the mansion, and about a dozen of them
went into M. LAFFITTE'S house, and presented
to him a written address. M. LAFFITTE after-
wards came into the court, and addressed to the
students some words of thanks. On leaving the
Hotel Laffitte, the young men seemed at a loss
what direction to take, but ultimately some one
called ' To BERANGER at Passy,' and accordingly
they took that direction. In going along the
Boulevard they were very quiet, but on reaching
theloffice of Foreign Affairs they set up a most
tumultuous shouting, amidst which the words,
A bas GUIZOT,' were to be distinguished.
The authorities were hitherto content to
watch the procession, but they now in-
terfered, and a commissary of police, who was
present, called upon them to disperse. Accord-
ingly they separated, but the greater portion of
them came together again in the Rue:St. Honore,
from which they proceeded forthwith to Passy.
No disorder took place until they reached the
house of M. BERANGER. On learning that M.
BERANGER was absent, they expressed them-
selves very much dissatisfied, and commenced to
abuse the police agents, who were present, call-
sinpgies'), out,
bassom le e f
m them h a
even
to the Commissary of Police who had followed
them. The police agents immediately arrested
several of the creators of this disturbance, and
o ouc rds ' (' Down with the
lifting their sticks
the rest dispersed. The number arrested is
eight or ten. An investigation is going on.
The authorities, who were previously aware of
the intention of the students, had taken steps to
prevent disturbance ; but they were rendered of
no avail, as the demonstration was altogether
more ridiculous than dangerous."

" A thousand or twelve hundred young people
(says the National) went yesterday (Saturday)
to M. LAFFITTE'S, to express the sentiments of
patriotic sympathy with which the young men
of the schools had received his speech in the
Chamber of Deputies. T
reward M. LAFFITTB has received for his noble
applaud conduct; .but an the true friends of the Revolu-
tion and of the country, at his
least,
is the
only publichin
.
With the exception of the Doctrinaire faction,
there is not one in France who does not render
homage to the firmness with which the respect-
able President of the Chamber recalled the
principles of a revolution which he was not suf-
ficiently strong to defend against intrigue and
cupidity."
The following is the speech delivered to M.
LAFFITTE..It was read by one of a deputation:—
. Sir,—The youth of the schools agree with you entirely in
the masculine truths which you caused to be heard from the
tribune. They do not come here to felicitate you for having
courageously fulfilled the duty of a good citizen, for having
obeyed the noble inspiration of your conscience as a public
man ; they come solely to give you a further proof that they
are not so indifferent-to the affairs of the country as people
pretend. The portion of the Patliament that lives by the
budget only answered 3,our prophetic words by irony and in-
sult, but the whole of France has learned them through the
medium of the press. France will preserve the recollection of
which now oppress her,
them until the day when, having rid herself of the shackles
herh e Neither
smt
raurgc Parliamentary
e towards
sFrwhichan ce
struggles
pthefroer
cgheosi
dgi'tet
heedn woa
fitnl
the destinies
taehrbee great
abhorred
ou rmtroeedpw,
Restoration—thea
rhdwiytei
ntwhhuhs
thayeeh. fiiysrsom appointed.uheetro
ok pnkan memora-
blecwi en 3
that the popularity of your name served as a pedestal for the
enthronement of a new regime. You have asked publicly, in
the face of the same France, pardon from God and man.
Honour be to you, Sir. History, severe and inexorable, will
give every one his due ; and stigmatise with its fatal seal these
that deserve it.

" Before leaving this house, for ever celebrated, which was
the centre of our revolution of three days ; may the young men
who now address you be allowed to express one wish. The
opposition of 1815 was organised and disciplined ; it upset the
dynasty. May the present opposition organise itself similarly.
May it march as one man. In that manner it will will in-
crease its means and strength a. hundred fold, and let it not
doubt but that the whole country, that army of 34 millions of
men, will march in a body after it."
M. LAFFITTE answered--.

" Gentlemen—l am touched with the sentiments you
have expressed towards me, and I thank you for them. Your
patriotism, your intelligence, and
your courage, have long been
known to me, and perhaps you have not forgotten that, in spite
of the clamours of the party which dominates to-day, I have
been able to render to your services, and to your devotion during
another epoch, public and solemn justice. The revolution
of July was then the word ! It has lost that dif-
tinction since that time, by the ingratitude of some,
and the carelessness of others
; and you know how people
listen to those who have continued faithful to their promises
and their engagements. I have recalled to the recollection of
the Chamber the responsibility under which it lies in the face
of dangers which threaten us, and corruption, which is
disgraceful. The Chamber did not choose to understand
me. As for me, gentlemen, I am nearer the grave than any
of you are far from your cradles ; but to the end I shall do my
duty; ; and my heart, I swear to you, will never cease to beat
for the liberty and happiness of France."
The procession then moved to gassy, the residence of
M.
Beranger, to invite him, it is said, ,to preside at a meeting in
honour of Moliere. But the administration of the Tartuffes
and the police of the " infinitely little," did not wish for the
fete. Disguised agents precipitated themselves upon the
students as they left the house of M. Beranger, who was not
at home. Acts of violence, which nothing cau justify, were
committed upon the young men, and several arrests took plaFe.
Thus ended a day in which the young men had the audacity
to manifest their attachment to the revolution. The Govern-

ment, which M. Laffitte aided to upset fourteen years ago, the
"barbons" of Beranger, and the " Tartu es," and the Mar-
quises of Moliere, could certainly not have done more.

In the Chamber of Deputies, the Committee
appointed to draw up the address, are proceeding
with their labour. On Saturday, in answer to a
question relative to the collision between the
Church and the University, the Minister of
Public Instruction said, the Government would
with all its power resist the pretensions of the
clergy to interfere with the public education of
youth. The reply was received very favourably
The Minister of Finance also made a statement
which gave satisfaction, and showed that there
would not only be a surplus of revenue to the
amount of 800,000 f. over the expenditure for the
last year, but that the various deficiencies for
the years 1840, 1841, 1842, and 1843 would be
reduced to a sum of 350,000,000 f. (14,000,0001.)
The Budget is to be brought on in the course
of the present month.

OPENING OF THE PORTUGUESE
CORTES.

LISBON, JAN. 3.—The Cortes were opened
again on the 2d inst. by the Queen in person.
The_ following is her Majesty's Speech on the
occasion :

Worthy Peers, and Honourable Deputies o
the Portuguese Nation,

With pleasure I see again assembled, in this
respectable place, the representatives of the
nation, whom the fundamental law of the State
has invested with the noble character of legiti-
mate interpreters of the national opinion and
wishes.

With the view of learning from closer obser-
vation the wants of my people, I left the capital
for some weeks, accompanied by my august
Spouse, and two of my children, to visit the
principal places in Alemtejo and Estremadura ;
and I hope that that excursion will not have been
without utility for the welfare of the people of
those places, of whose love, loyalty, and respect
for me, I am happy to make this public acknow-
ledgment.
Since the solemn opening of the last legislative
session, it has pleased Providence to grant, by
the birth of a Princess, another pledge of secu-
rity to the Throne of this kingdom. _

I have the satisfaction to be enabled to assure
you that I continue to receive from all allied
nations sure proofs of friendship; and I fully
trust that ere long the negotiations with the Holy
See will be terminated without detriment to the
rights of the Crown, and with due regard :to the
wants of the Lusitanian Church.

It is exceedingly gratifying to me to assure
you that public tranquillity has not been in the
least disturbed throughout the kingdom.
In fixing the amount of land and sea forces
you will attend to the national honour, interest,
and security.
Conformably to the dispositions of the consti-
tutional charter of the Monarchy, the estimates
of receipts and expenditure for the ensuing
financial year will be laid before you; and both
in regard to this subject, and to the different
branches of the public service, my Ministers will
submit to you such proposals as may be thought
expedient, and as experience may have shown to
be necessary. _ _ _

I am fully confident that the Chambers will
afford to my Government that co-operation
which is to be expected from their zeal and in-
terest in the public welfare.
The Session is opened.

DESTRUCTION

OF