The Sun.
London, England, 1844-12-04 00:00:00

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LONDON, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1844.

The intelligence brought by the Overland Mail
from India and China is altogether very favourable.
With the exception of a slight insurrection in the
31ahratta country, and the capture of the fort of
Samunghur by the British troops, the utmost tran-
quillity prevails. Accounts from Sinde describe that
newly acquired district as increasing every day in
prosperity, and to such a degree, that the calumnia-
tors of Lord ELLENBOROUGH and Sir CHARLES
NAPIER are dumb on the subject. The revenue
was increasing, and more money had been
colleeted under the mild and legitimate autho-
rity of the gallant General than had been
obtained by the extortions and violence of
the Ameers. Kurrachee, a town situate towards the
mouth of the Indus, was daily rising in importance;
substantial buildings were springing up in all direc-
tions, water was abundant, and the climate healthy.
The people of India, and especially the inhabitants of
Bombay, were beginning to see the vast importance
of opening the Indus for trade, and the advantages
which the occupation of Sinde would confer on the
extensive territories along its banks. We never
from the beginning had any doubt on the sub-
ject—we defended almost alone the policy
a the Indian Government, and did justice
to the wise plans and the daring manoeuvres of the
:gallant NAPIER; and it is therefore gratifying to find
that the result has been such a 3 to convince even the
most obstinate that the annexation of Sinde to the
British possessions constitutes one of the most glorious
and beneficial events of the present day. We rejoice
to hear that Sir CHARLES NAPIER enjoyed good
health, and was about to visit some of the more dis-
tant portions of the country placed under his autho-
rity. From every account his wise measures, for
preserving peace and securing good government, ex-
cated equal admiration with his warlike exploits.
The

_ Post of this morning, in an article suggested
by a meeting of the Somersetshire Agricultural
society which took place last week at Wincanton,
speaks out in a frank, manly strain respecting the
present position of the Anti-Corn-law League, and the dtgree of moral influence which it exercises over
the public mind. The majority ~f• the journals which
espouse the cause of monopoly still continue to re-
present this great national confederacy as in a de-
clining state. According to their statementsit has
lost the strong hold which it had over the popular
Mind a year or two since, when the distresses of the

~~

country and the general discontent which they occa-
sioned conspired to favour its progress; with an im-
proved condition of things have come an improved
spirit—a more collected and sagacious judgment
on the part of the people ; and the League
is now suffering from this altered tone of the
public mind, and at no distant period it
will be numbered among the " things that once were.'s
So say the journals that are favourable to monopoly ;
and the RICHMONDS, the BUCKINGHAMS, the BANKESES,
and all who think with them, make a point of echo-
ing the sentiment. But the Post—to its credit be it
mentioned—is too frank, too manly, too intelligent
to adopt this false, one-sided view of the case. Though
an uncompromising enemy of the Anti-Corn-law
League and of every single principle, without ex-
ception, which it advocates, our Contemporary is not
guilty of the foolish error of underrating its influ-
ence, but blurts out the strict truth, careless whom
it 111 ty offend. We wish the Post were always as
explicit and intelligible in its opinions as it is in the
significant passage whie,la we shall presently sub-
join. But there too often a vagueness a
haziness—an incoherency in its political views which
for the life, of us we cannot understand. To-day it is
Young England—to-morrow it is Old England after
the fashion of Lord ELDON. Now, it advocates a
standstill system of policy with a dogged inveteracy
of purpose that would have endeared it to the heart of
a St DMOUTH or a CASTLEREAGH ; and now, it is all for
stir and movement in the Church as well as in the
State. One moment it startles us by a bold theory or
sug;estion that breathes the true spirit of Reform in
its most enlightened and comprehensive sense ; the
next, it is a bigoted admirer of the " wisdom
of our ancestors," and scouts the bare idea
of every innovation, no matter how slight,
that should hays a tendency to bring that
wisdom into disrepute. Our Contemporary is
too sagacious to be a confirmed ribbon-Tory, and he
is too honest to be a decided Conservative. What
then is he ? To what party does he adhere ? Who
is his " Magnus Apollo " in statesmanship ? We
cannot answer these questions, and we now put them
respectfully to him, in the hope that he will vouchsafe
to enlighten our ignorance. But now for the signi-
ficant passage to which we have alluded, and which
we quote from his columns of this morning. After
expressing his satisfaction that the country people in
Suinersetshire have not been misled by the erroneous
statements in the Ministerial journals respecting the
actual condition of the Anti-Corn-law League,
which journals have given out that nothing more
need be feared from it, inasmuch as it is effectually
crushed, our Contemporary goes on to observe :
" They assume this fact, and endeavour to lead their
readers to the inference that the policy of the Govern-
ment has been so able as to have led to that result,
notwithstanding all the money which the League has
collected, and all the efforts which it has made. This
is altogether erroneous. The Government has not
quenched the revolutionary mischief of the League.
The League still relies on compelling the Minister to
carry out by practical measures that principle con-
cerning buying in the cheapest markets and selling
in the dearest, which he has declared to be in the
abstract a sound and just principle." This direct ac-
knowledgement of the vitality and influence of,,the
Anti-Corn-law League will be anything but ac-
ceptable to the monopolist readers of the Post.
Mr. Minas, however, one of the Members for Somer-
. setshire, who is strongly opposed to the views of this
confederacy, holds pretty nearly the same opinions
as our Contemporary, and warns his constituents not
to put the slightest faith in the statements that the
League is crushed. We agree with these two com-
petent authorities that the League is not crushed and
is not likely to be crushed; and we will go further
and add, that it will gradually increase in influence,
day by day enlarging the sphere of its operations,
until the great principles of which it is the exponent
and representative are fully carried out into practice.

The remains of her late Royal Highness the
Princess SOPHIA MATILDA will be interred in the
family vault in St. George's Chapel, at Windsor, on
the evening of Tuesday, the 10th instant; and, in
compliance with the wishes of her late Royal Highness,
the ceremony of lying in state will be dispensed with
and the funeral will be conducted with as much pri-
vacy as is consistent with the rank of her late
Royal Highness.

The intelligence which continues to reach us from

two European countries now sunk in the depths of
political turpitude and degradation, though they suc-
ceeded to an inheritance of historic recollections more
glorious than can be boasted by almost any other
two in the family of nations this intelligence is
calculated to excite in British bosoms the liveliest
emotions of indignation, contempt, and pity. But
the great social lesson which it teaches is one of such
infinite moment to the welfare and prosperity of
other States, who, thanks to a long enjoyment of
happier institutions, and to the salutary influence of
these upon their people, still preserve the noble pre-
eminence they have attained, that we cannot do
wrong in endeavouring to impress upon our readers
its singular force and application to a community
nearer home.

Of all the nations of antiquity, Greece may justly
claim to have transmitted to posterity the most
precious inheritance. In the divinest exercises of
pure intellect—philosophy, poetry, and metaphysics,
in logic and history—she has bequeathed exemplars
of such matchless excellence as to have served,
through the lapse of more than two thousand years,
for the models, hitherto unrivalled, of our reverential
admiration—as the guides, whom it has not yet been
permitted us to overtake, of our most ennobling
studies. If it be the just and gratifying pride of
modern times to have far surpassed our great in-
structress in the physical sciences, and the arts of
civil economy—to have measured the whole visible
field of infinite space, divined the laws and ascer-
tained the ellipses of planetary motion—to have cal-
culated the most eccentric orbits of the most remote
comets discernible from our own system, and to have
proved and established the revolutions of the satellites
that revolve around other solar centres, we must ac-
knowledge our obligations to Greece for those ele-
ments of political government under which, alone,
that ancient civilisation could have been attained by
her from whence we derive, at this day, the benefit
of her profound principles of domestic polity, and
the guarantees provided by them for the maintenance
of individual rights and public liberty. This is not
the place to speak of those all but miraculous embodi-
ments of Grecian genius, in which the Hellenic
mind almost thinks and speaks and acts to us, in
marble and in bronze ; but the refining and exalting
influences which these productions of a sublime
antiquity still exert upon our intellectual develop-
ment, must never be forgotten in any estimate
of the debt of gratitude which the Europe of our
days owes to the Greece of classical antiquity—its
generous rebublics, and their more renowned citizens.
Let us turn to another nation. If old Greece handed
down to us the theory, Gothic Spain re-established
and vindicated to us the practice, of free institutions.
When other European communities were humbled in
the dust beneath the incessant aggressions of feudal
tyranny--now vexed by the despotic cruelty of their
sovereign princes, now tormented still more grievously
by the insatiable rapacity of the still more powerful
nobles, the people of Spain, with indomitable per-
severance, contended for, and exacted from successive
rulers, large and ample popular privileges. Through-
out the different kingdoms between which their noble
country was divided, the same bold and independent
spirit asserted itself; now successful in forcing the
establishment of deliberate assemblies in their Cortes
and their Municipal Councils, now wringing from the
reluctant heads of hereditary oppressors the fueros
of the maritime provinces. To Gothic Spain must
still be ascribed the solid glory of having success-
fully devoted herself to become the bulwark of
Christianity in Southern Europe, and of having, on
repeated occasions, turned back the invading tide of
French ambition and aggressiveness. The discoverer
and planter of a new world, however, can want no
other blazonry to distinguish her "escutcheon of pre-
tence" among the trophies achieved by the national
chivalry of Europe.
What is the present condition of these States, so
illustrious by their past associations ? A condition
of iocial niiiery, of civil degradation, of political
pemriniiiriad.ste,of civic treachery, of royal duplicity, of
profligacy, of arrogant favouritism, of
hopeless corruption in high places, of venal faithless-
ness in low ones, of successful faction, of defeated
patriotism, of triumphant intrigue,' of .