The Sun.
London, England, 1844-01-18 00:00:00

England and Ireland, if, in striking the jury, religious
opinion had not been the sole ground for exclusion.
And it would have been more consonant to the prin-
ciples of justice, and to the course that a POLLOCK or
a FOLLETT, a CAMPBELL or a WILDE, would have
pursued, if, instead of throwing every difficulty in the
way of the accused, every leniency and concession
had been shown, that could in fairness have been
demanded.

Then, at all events, would the prosecutors have
gone to the jury with clean hands, and with claims
to their attention, founded upon the purity with
which they had conducted their official duties; then
would the jury have had the confidence of all par-
ties—the Crown might have hoped for favour—the
jury for implicit trust,—and the whole proceedings
would have been freed from the imputations and sus-
picion which now attend them.

The accounts which have been lately published of
the state of affairs in Monte Video are at once dis-
tressing to humanity and disgraceful to our own
apathy. Monte Video has been exposed for about
twelve months, not so much to the more immediate
horrors incident to a protracted siege, as to the more
hopeless and withering process of a land blockade,
efficiently established, and rigorously maintained by
a bigoted and remorseless soldier. General Roses,
commanding the troops of the republic of Buenos
Ayres, invests Monte Video with an ar.ny which cuts
off all communication between the beleagured town
and its commercial resources and connexions. Monte
video contains not only a very considerable number
of English merchants and their families, but Spanish
and colonial mercantile establishments of extensive
connexions and character. It is believed that through
this body, in the aggregate, outstanding credits on
English account are due, amounting to upwards of
500,0001. The passion of Roses having, for its pecu-
liar object, the extirpation of foreign commerce, he
will not permit the cordon which be has established
under the walls of the ill-fated city to be broken
through, on any pretence of communicating with the
native and colonial consumers from whom these
credits are due. The inevitable consequence, it would
appear, must be, that they can never be collected.
The Monte Videan houses must perish under the
continuance of the cruel duresse in which the con-
tending pretensions of Buenos Ayres and Monte
Video thus operate to keep all
.foreigners who are
shut up in the latter. They have especial reason to
complain, and do, accordingly, most vehemently com-
plain, that they have been made the instruments of
aggravating the losses which are likely to be sus-
tained by the strong assurances that were given to
them by Mr. MANDEVILLB, our Minister, when
visiting the shores of the Plata, that the British Go-
vernment would certainly protect British rights and
property in those regions, in the event of the
Buenos Ayrean armament entering the territory of
Monte Video, by repelling force by force. In conse-
quence of this assurance—so the correspondence, re-
cently received in London, declares—" large sales of
merchandise were made on credit, and orders transmit-
ted to this country for further shipments." When
Roses did cross into the territory, there was a
British force in these waters, more than five times suf-
ficient to have effected his instant discomfiture and
retreat ; but he was not interfered with, and has, ever
since, cooped up the unhappy residents at Monte
Video, within the bare walls of their strong posi-
tion, where the whole community experience the un-
satisfied cravings for the common necessaries of life.
In the meantime the native and other consumers in
the interior of the country are becoming, every day,
less and less competent to pay for their purchases,
owing to the unrelenting destruction of all foreign
property, carried on by orders of Roses throughout the
territory subject to his exactions and his vengeance. To
such an extent does Roses indulge his stupid preposses-
sions against external commerce of any kind, that he
had very recently enforced the immediate return,
without unloading, of several vessels which had
arrived with cargoes of produce from Corrientes at
Buenos Ayres. These cargoes were composed, in
part, of returns of the native dealers and consumers
above alluded to, for the British merchandise and
manufactures supplied to them by the importers of
Monte Video. It seems, therefore, that no course
more effective could have been taken for sacrificing
all chances of reimbursing the shippers or owners of
500,0001. of British merchandise, destined for that
market alone.

Now, it is not without reason that the Monte Video
correspondent of the Morning Chronicle complains,
that if Mr. MANDEVILLE was authorised to give such
assurances of protection as he did, the British Go-
vernment is bound to do that instantly, which it
ought long ago to have done, namely—to interpose
its full authority for securing compensation and satis-
faction from the ruling authorities in Buenos Ayres, on
account of losses by British subjects thus sustained :
that if Mr. MANDEVILLE had no such authority, the
fact ought to be immediately proclaimed,—himself
dismissed or otherwise punished,—and his proceeding
formally disavowed by the Foreign-office.
For ourselves we go further. Irrespective of the
question, whether Mr. MANDEVILLE had or had not
due authority for a certain declaration to British
subjects in the territories of a foreign State,—
is the grave consideration how far the honour
of our common country is involved in, and
compromised by, such vexatious pantomimes of State
hostility and diplomatic duplicity, as these crude
and but half-fashioned States of South America are
perpetually " getting up"—to their own gratification,
probably, but to the detriment and injury of the com-
merce of the civilised world, and all the blessings
which follow in its train ? It is true that modern
jurists have ruled very decisively that a blockade—
maintainable as to all other circumstances•.-is good,
so long as it can be effectively enforced. It is also true
that France has concurred with Great Britain in re-
cognising this exercise of the right of blockade by
Buenos Ayres against Monte Video. Nevertheless,
in a case where the sufferers by the interruption and
prohibition of the trade of the place are foreigners,—
English, Spanish, and French subjects, against whom
there is no charge of contraband trading or smuggling,
but who, in the lawful pursuit of their commercial

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operations, are suddenly placed in a position from
which they are not permitted to extricate themselves,
wherein their capitals are sacrificed, their trade ruined ;
and their lives endangered by the proceedings of
belligerents, each of whom is under treaties of amity
with their own sovereigns ;—it does appear to us that

on every principle of expediency and justice those

sovereigns, or one of them, should insist on the per-
sonal rights and liberty of their own subjects being
respected. Reparation ought clearly, we think, to be
enforced in this instance, which comes precisely under
the conditions we have been supposing. The conduct
of ROSAS, in sending back the vessels from Corrientes,
was a wilful interference with the private property
not merely of the merchants of Monte Video, but of
his own compatriotes of Buenos Ayres, that his own
Government should be made to disavow, as some sort of
guarantee against the recurrence of such exhibitions
of wanton folly in future. Let us hope that a little
Cromwollian vigour may yet be aroused in the re-
cesses of Downing-street, to bear upon the wings of
the wind the once dreaded and omnipotent protest of
Britain against all dishonour to her flag, or injury to
her subjects, in any corner of the habitable world I

Of all the questions which have been entered
upon by the public reformer in this country,
there is no one which has presented greater diffi-
culties to his efforts than has that of University
reform. The causes of this seem to us to be
pretty evident. With the majority of topics
which have been from time to time imported
into public discussion, people generally have at
least something like a practical familiarity. Re-
specting, however, the two national Universities
and their concerns, the nation, excepting the
upper classes and the members of the learned
professions, is as completely ignorant as if these
institutions were in nowise connected with the
country. There is a mystery attending every-
thing
transacted at Cambridge and Oxford,
which the uninitiated can only look upon with no
means of solving. Those, too, who have the
power of divulging " the secrets of the prison
house" are apparently restrained from doing so
by a feeling of attachment to their Alma Mater,
and an esprit de corps, which makes them regard
with utter abhorrence, as a species of parricide,
any such publication.

Just nolv, however, things appear to have taken