The Sun.
London, England, 1844-06-26 00:00:00

disgrace to this country, and he hoped the Government ! time, and at the rising of the House Lord CAMPBELL
would do everything they could to remove it.
! gave notice that on Tuesday be would move the third
The Marquis of CLAsIRICARDE expressed himself I
highly gratified at the Bill. reading of the Law of Libel Bill.
After a few words from Lord WHARNCLIFFE, ti c In the Commons, after many petitions had been
Bill was read a second time.
presented, Lord J. RUSSELL put some questions to
LAW OF LIBEL BILL.
Lord CAMPBELL gave notice that, onTuesday next, Sir R. PEEL relative to the state of affairs between
ho would move the third reading of the. Law of Lite' Morocco and France, and intimated, in language not to
Bill. be misunderstood, that the appointment of the Prince
Their Lordships then adjourned. DE JOIN VILLE to command the expedition was a matter
of serious importance. We have no apprehensions of
the kind. The young Admiral goes out with instruc-
tions from his father, and though he may be very an-
xious to make a dash and show off among the Moors
of Tanjiers and Mogador, the affair will all end
in mere display. The Emperor of Moaocco
has conducted himself, as far as we can judge from
the French papers, with the greatest imprudence; and
cannot expect support from this country. Sir R.
PEEL said he knew nothing more of the last affair
than what had been communicated by the telegraphic
dispatch. The French Government, however, had
assured Lord ABERDEEN that nothing was further
from their intention than to enter into hostilities with
Morocco.
Lord JOHN RUSSELL said he might, possibly, at
another period, call the attention of the House to the
subject.

TO COUNTRY BOOKSELLERS AND
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TA) procure copies of the NEW NOVEL ".CONINGSBY," by the
Author of" Vivian Grey," are informed that A NEW EDITION IS
NOW READY FOR DELIVERY; but to prevent disappointment
they are requested to forward their orders to their respective Agents
on or before the 29th instant.

Sir ROBERT PEEL then stated the course which he
intended to pursue with respect to the business before
the House, for which we refer to the Parliamentary
report, because it is impossible, in a summary, to
state what is likely to take place. No positive fact
was stated. Everything depended on contingencies.
The strong Government has lost all its power, and
trusts to the chapter of accidents. It would appear,
however, that the obnoxious and partial Bill, called
the Irish Registration Bill, is to be pressed on the
House on Monday. We trust every Liberal Member
will be in his place, and fight the battle on
this question to the last. Why make Ire-
land an exception ? Why interfere with the
registration of electors in that country, while Eng-
land and Scotland are to be left as they were by the
Reform Bill? While Ireland calls out for a repeal of
the union, the British Parliament is doing everything
in its power to make that call more effectual.
Lord PALMERSTON put a question to Sir JAMES
GRAHAM relative to the gaming laws, but the Home"
Secretary could give no satisfactory answer.
In answer to a question from Mr. B. COCHRANE,
relative to the fate of Colonel STODDART and Captain
CONOLLY, Sir ROBERT PEEL said that on Thursday
or Friday next he would give him the latest informa-
tion in possession of the Government.
Mr. VILLIERS then brought on his motion for a
repeal of the corn-laws.
Mr. FERRAND moved an amendment, which will
be found in the Parliamentary report.
This motion occupied the House for the remainder
of the evening. The debate was adjourned.
The other orders of the day were then disposed of,
and the House adjourned at Half-past One.

The extorted admissions of the Secretary of State
for the Home Department touching the violation of
private letters passing through the General Post-
office, under the authority of his warrant to the Post-
master-General for that purpose, continue to form an
absorbing topic of public attention. We are glad that
this is so. If the British public did not feel indig-
nant at the exposures elicited by the motion of the
Hon. Member for Finsbnry from the reluctant ac-
knowledgements of Sir JAMES GRAHAM, we should
blush for our countrymen. The sacredness of private
communications, contained in sealed letters, has been,
ever since the Revolution, a subject of gratulation
among all classes of Englishmen, jealous of their own
honour, and alive to the eminent reputation of this
country for the good faith and integrity of its admi-
nistrative departments. The dangerous and disgrace-
ful profligacy of the Revolutionary Government of
France was in nothing so execrable as in its matured
and wholesale system of letter-violation. From the
closing years of the reign of Louis XV. to those of
the Emperor NAPOLEON, this political felony had at-
tained the maximum of its extent, its insolence, and
its impunity. Foucur, in these latter days—
the unprincipled and unscrupulous FOUCHE—
has survived the termination of his natural
career, only to live in the recollection of this
generation as " the " arch letter-opener, purloiner,
eaves-dropper--" the" official burglar of a bureau,
" the " seal-breaker, " the " spy upon the thoughts
and hearts of social existence in France. Hitherto
the crafty ex-Minister of the most nefarious Go.
venni-lent which had ever been spawned by political
convulsion and anarchy, occupied an individual, ex-
clusive, isolated, unapproached notoriety. In the
year 1844, Sir J. GRAHAM, the Home Secretary in
the constitution of a Tory Government, being minded
to have a " little go " of his own in the lottery of
" Eminent Living Statesmen," put in fbr a chance,
and drew—the enviable distinction of a case or two of
seal-breaking "a la Foucur," with a warranty for
practising in these new arts of a British Minister,
under an obscure clause in a forgotten statute of Queen
ANNE. This clause, it seems, has been revived
by, and smuggled into, the labyrinth of clauses in
a " Consolidating" Act passed in the first year of her
present MAJESTY.
In the House of Lords, however, last night, the
Earl of RADNOR, not at all satisfied with the defence
attempted for Sir JAMES, on the enactments in
question, moved the Peers to address the Throne,
praying her MAJESTY to direct to be laid before
them the several warrants. which had been issued
by that functionary, authorising any letters to be
opened at the General Post-office. Although the
Noble Earl subsequently withdrew his motion, it
led to an animated and very important discus-
sion, upon which we have a few words to offer.
Had the matter been pressed to a division and
affirmed, it is evident that their Lordships would have
got at the solution of the important question, whether
more than one warrant was issued by the Home
Secretary in this instance—and what were the specific
letters such warrant or warrants authorised and re-
quired to be opened. Sir J. GRAHAM has hitherto
been doggedly silent as to the main points pressed in
the interrogatories addressed to him in the House of
Commons ; but he is abundantly credulous if he
suppose that that silence is not accurately understood
by the public. They put their own unhesitating con-
struction upon it, on the principle that " dum facet
clamat." Lord R ADNOR, in propounding his motion,
after a very cursory allusion to the complaints of M.
MAZZINI and others, stated that he
" Was not going into a consideration of the subject as to
whether the Secretary of State ought to have this power;
his own opinion led him to the conclusion that he ought not
—that it ought to be confined to cases in which the security of
the State or the safety of the person of the Sovereign re-
quired such an exercise of it. But it appeared that it had
been used for other purposes, as letters of foreigners had been
opened and their contents examined-.a thing unheard of
before."

Now these are precisely the grounds on which all
parties should meet the proposal of his Lordship.
The Duke of WELLINGTON, in declaring himself op-
posed to it, remarked " that Parliament had thought
fit to entrust the Secretary of State with the power
to issue warrants for opening letters of individuals at
the Post-office. There could be no doubt of this
power ; and it ought to be proved to have been used
for an improper purpose before their Lordships
made any :inquiry into the matter." May we ask,
with all submission to his Grace, how it could be
possible to prove the abuse of the power, if the llouse
of Commons refused to Mr. THOMAS DUNCOMBE a
Committee of Inquiry, and the House of Lords
denied to Lord RA.DNOR the production of these war-
rants ? Really this sounds like a mere quibble—a
fencing with the proposition that was before the
Lords—quite unworthy of the usual frankness and
simplicity of the Noble Duke. The Earl of
TANKERVILLE adduced two precedents, we sup-
pose in the nature of a plea of justification ;
the one, a warrant in the handwriting of the late
CHARLES JAMES Fox, directing all letters to and
from foreign ministers in Great Britain to be opened.
The other, a similar warrant, in the records of the
10
respecting the letters of Lord GEORGE
Dome-office,
(as was remarked by Lord BROUGHAM
and GORDON. Now
Lord DENm AN ) , the circumstances of the first
American war, and the coincident armed neutrality of
p 1
tha northern powers of Europe, coupled with the intes-
tine
I
such
u c h
peculiar discontents
am composed a case of
this re-
markable warrant from such a Minister even as Fox
and Lord GEORGE GORDON baying been an undoubted
mailman, there could be no impropriety in subjecting
him to the same civil grievance, enormous though it
be, which is visited, every day, on any other dangerous
lunatic,
,for the well-being of society at Jose. The