The Sun.
London, England, 1844-01-03 00:00:00

SECOND EDITION

A 1),
,Jl*, 10-twilt eifr
LS,J,7
LONDON, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 3, 1814

The letter, a copy of which we pubt:zheil rester-
(lly, from Messrs. P. D 1 Llz_unn an I Cs., agents
for the State of Mexico, to G. R. itoTriN‘ms, Esq.,
Chairman of the Committee of Arr.cric:;n
llondlphlers, is an instructive in its way.
To those who have not had the ini,ifortune—or corn-

(pitted the folly—of confiding in the " promises to
pay " of these experimental ll(publies, it would even
be amusing, but for the sympathy created on behalf
of the ill-used creditors, by the high personal and
commercial character of the ("11.1r:nan, and very
many of their general body. Upon ourselves it may
be supposed to come as no matter of,:urprise, after the
terms in which we expressed ourselves some months

ago, on the conduct of the Mexican Government, and
the correspondence of the same parties or their agents.
,Out seeing that the communication from the Committee
to which Messrs. Da LizAupi's answer, dated the
:113th of December last, is now lyii g before us, com-
prised simply a protesty against the agents retaining
1 certain remanet of 11,3301., out of.tbe money (al-
ready short-remitted), confided to them fur the liqui-
dation of the dividends, on the plea that so much and
more being due to them from the Government for
which they acted, on account of co:ninission, they
had, therefore, appropriated it for their own account;
whereas, by the very special agreement subicribeti to
by the Mexican Government in September, 1837, its
said agents were authorised and required to appro-
priate said remittances to the payment of the dividends
on its bonds, exclusively ; we must own that Pt
LIZARDS and Co. have rather overrated the ingenuity
and legality of their plea for prior payment, and
rather underrated the proximity of that point of en-
durance at which even the long t ; ;
of a British capitalist will bear the intenso strait) of
Trans• Atlantic assurance and dishonesty.
The Committee, however, desired on the 28th of
December to he categorically answered upon this
series of questions :—" 1. Did
the
Messrs. LIZARDS
intend to restore the sum so withheld to the dividend
account ? 2. What remittances hail come to Messrs.
LIZARD! and Co.'s hands from their Government
since the payment of the dividend on the October
coupon
3. Were Messrs. LIZARD'S and Co. pre-
pared_ to complete the payment of the coupon at
once?" In similar dealings between any parties in
this country (always excepting Mr. Alderman Gums
and the benighted parishioners of St. Stephen, Wal-
brook, in the City 9f London) nothing in the world
would have been so easy as for the authorised agent
f the one to obtain distinct responses, affirmative or
negative, from the authorised agent of the other. Isir.

Alderman GlBBS—who will forgive us for alluding to
him again,—might indeed have answered to any other
body, as he does to rate-payers, " Wait tilbyou can
enforce your right to make me answer. If ycu can't
do that, I think I might establish a bad precedent by
volunteering information on such frivolous questions as,
what has become of your money ?" But the Alderman
is a pluznix. There is but one to be found, and but
one, who will thus publicly sacrifice himself, in a
whole century. We are very -sure than there is
but one description of financial agents who would
meet Mr. ROBlNioNciThiee plain demands with such
evasive Gibli-erish (v.e cannot get out of Wal-
brook) as this,: " Sir,—NVe have received your letter
of the 28th inst., and are unable to reply to the ques-
tions therein contained—until we receive further in-
formation from Mexico; especially as regards the
distribution of the funds in hand," &c. &c. How very
singular. They have received 11,3301. among other
moneys remitted to them for payment of divi-
dends some months ago. They withheld
it at the time, from the parties justly
entitled to it, namely, the Mexican Bondholders,
on the pretence—(an intelligible pretence at least, on
the same principle that to appropriate any money,
in transitu, to one's own purposes, instead of the pur-
poses of him to whom it is specially remitted, may be
dishonest, but is still " a great fact")—on the pre-
tence that they had taken it in order to pay them-
selves a like amount due to them from—whom ?
The English Spanish-American Bondholders ? Not
a bit of it. From the Mexican Government who had
forwarded it, not to satisfy their claims, but the
claims of the English holders of their stock. Messrs.
LIZARDS have continued ever since in the same mind.
They still withhold the money. Nay, by their own
showing, it is gone—paid—absorbed by their own
demand. And now, forsooth, they gravely tell Mr.
ROBINSON, that to all his three questions, including
the first, relative to their own determination as to

restoring or not the abstracted 11,3301. to the divi-
dend account, they must defer their answers till they
have been further instructed from Mexico! The
ancient Governments of the Toltzeck and Azteck
Princes of that fine country may have been
as arbitrary and cruel as historians have represented
them to be; but we greatly doubt whether they ever
asserted so tyrannous,' so monstrous a pretension as
this which Messrs. DE LIZARDS and Co. would in-
timate is exercised by their successors in the govern-
ment of the modern Republic. For, according to
those agents, they are actually compelled to appeal to
Mexico for further instructions as to whether or not
they have made up their own minds to an act already
committed and avowed in October last, and never since
recalled !

The business part of the matter remains. The
Committee of Bondholders must memorialise the
British Government—and if their efforts fail with the
Minister, then renew them, forthwith, with the Parlia-
ment—to insist upon the Mexican authorities making
instant satisfaction for conduct which, whether the
fault be with them or their emp/olies, has every ap-
pearance of impudent fraud. English credulity has
paid a penalty sufficiently severe in the loss of scores
of millions of money by foreign debtors within the
last 25 years. England's own honour would be com-
promised by further acquiescence in such barefaced
trickery, attempted to be excused on such flimsy
grounds.

We are not inclined to magnify the existing dan-
gers of the country, nor to look on the dark side of a
cene, which is resplendent with many beauties. In
he ensuing session of Parliament many subjects of
:he most vital importance to the British nation must
be brought forward, and not only brought forward
and discussed, but settled, and in a way, too, satis •
factory to the nation. Not a few of these are sur-
rounded with many difficulties ;—we need only men-
tion the state of Ireland ; the all-engrossing question
of the corn-laws ; the principles of free trade which
are gaining ground every day ; the education of the
people, perhaps the most ignorant in any civilized
state; and we wish we could add the improvement
of the clergy, and a reform of the national Church.
The two last, however, must be sometime de-
layed. The violent antipathy between Churchmen
and Dissenters showed itself so strongly last year,
that the case appears utterly hopeless : and the
Church—that is to say, those interested in Church
livings, ecclesiastical perquisites, ecclesiastical
abuses, and in the division (S property belonging to
this enormous national establishment—is too powerful
for any Minister. But without these, there is enough
)f work for the forthcoming session, and if the, Minis-
ter has only the spirit to undertake reforms in a vigorous
and judicious manner, all the difficulties may be easily
surmounted. Several measures introduced by Sir
ROBERT PEEL show that the landlords and tenants
are not so obstinate and bigoted as they have been
described. They murmured for a few weeks at the
new tariff, they now see that it has done them no
harm ; and we ma; therefore generously suppose that
other classes, whose supposed interests are at stake,
would yield with the same composure, if the Minister
would only muster courage to take a bold,
a straightforward, and just course. Ireland,
and especially the Irish Church, cannot remain
as it is with safety for another year. Many
parts of that country are not habitable for civilised
beings. The law is set at defiance, murders are com-
mitted in open day, witnesses will not come forward
to give evidence at a trial or an inquest, and the very
magistrates themselves are afraid to perform their
luty. Scenes have lately taken place in that un-
fortunate land, which, with a numerous priesthood
daid by the people, and the most wealthy Established
Jhurch in the world, are unparalleled among the
frost barbarous nations of the earth. Ibis does not
happen without a cause. In every country laws which
ire found just and merciful are willingly obeyed.
rho Irish, 'when properly treated, are generally an
'bedient and grateful people. Convince them that
they have fair play, and no class of men are more
easily governed. History confirms the fact. Under
‘'‘-o administrations, short unfortunately they were,
!he whole of Ireland, even including the wilds of Tip-
perary, was more peaceable than any part of Great
Britain; one-half of the-usual number of troops was
withdrawn, and the remainder were as little wanted
as the few scattered depots in Scotland to preserve
order. This might partly be produced by hope, and by a
conviction that the existing Government was willing and
anxious to redress their grieyances, and, with the
usual generosity of the people, they waited the result
—they waited to see the Church reduced to its
proper limits—to see Catholics promoted to offices of
trust as well as Protestants, au i to see magistrates
appointed in whom they could place confidence. But
when all these bright pictures were swept from the
iew, and the Home Minister, in one of his many
unguarded speeches, declared that concession had
reached its utmost limit, can any man be surprised
that the disappointed hopes of the people broke
through all hounds, and that, like madmen, they re-
solved to carry a measure which would destroy
them and their oppressors ? This is the whole secret
of the present agitation, and we trust Sir ROBERT
PEEL will be wise in time. England cannot part
with Ireland. She must be attached to thin country,
by fair or other means ; and what Christian can hesitate
for one moment about the alternative ? Place her
Church, her laws, her magistrates, and her govern-
ment, on the same footing with those of England, and
Scotland ; and Ireland, in place of being a constant
source of anxiety and alarm, would become the
strongest bulwark of the United Kingdom. She is
not to be put down by dismissing magistrates, by
Arms Bills, or even by fifty thousand troops.
but she is to be put down by jutlice, and woe to the
Minister who rebels against it. All the other dif-
ficulties of Sir ROBERT PEEL arc nothing as com-
pared with Ireland ; and he will find that unless he
put down his bigoted colleagues, and bring forward
a great, a generous, and comprehensive scheme for
the regeneration of that country, he and his Con-
servative Cabinet must give way to other men. On
this subject, as well as others adverted to, we quote
the following from an able pamphlet by a Whig
Writer, just published by RIDGWAY, entitled
" What is to be Done ? or, Past, Present, and
Future :" " There must be no longer delay or
double dealing. The way of free trade is
open before the Government—so is the way of ge-
neral education—so is the way of frank and friendly
recognition of Ireland's rights and Ireland's religion.
The Government has not, as a Government, abso•

lutely compromised itself against any of these active
principles—it has stood between them and their op•