The Sun.
London, England, 1844-08-21 00:00:00

with the largest professions of a love of peace upon
their lips, and the most philosophical appreciation, in
theory, of its infinite blessings, are really playing a
double game, and fomenting and aiding the war-
craving of the reckless masses of the French people.
It is at all times at once a violation of the received
maxims of State policy adopted by every Cabinet in
Europe, and a signal indecency on the part of the
French Government in respect of Morocco, as a
Power with which we have diplomatic relations, and
extensive trading intercourse, to commit to a Prince
of the blood—a very young one, too—the conduct of
an armament with such a destination, and under such
circumstances, as this expedition against Morocco.
Nor is it possible to run away from the suspicion that
such a charge would never have been confided to such
hands by a man of Louts PHILIPPE'S extraor-
dinary sagacity and cinurnspection, if he had not
reasoned in his own mind, after this project, as an ex-
cellent means of propitiating the extreme movement-
party among his subjects, with whom he is so un-
popular, without at once breaking through all " his
pledges and responsibilities to the Government and
people of England." "If" (he must have argued)
" these hostile demonstrations produce the effects we
desire and anticipate, they will not only establish my
popularity with my people, but will secure to my
children and successors the permanency of the throne
I shall leave to them. If, on the other hand, these
demonstrations fail, the British people and all Europe
will readily accept my plea of having been committed
by the rashness and presumption of a giddy boy."
Heartily do we trust, that if this notion be a well-
founded one, such tortuous policy on this, as on all
other occasions, may be destined to signal and
disgraceful failure. That it will be, we little
doubt, for another reason. The French cannot
conduct successful colonisation anywhere; and
whilst there is this national disability about them, so
long will they furnish a long and melancholy fulfil-
ment of the Duke of WELLINGTON'S prophecy. Al-
geria will be a grave—a charnel-house, which they
will yet be too happy to abandon ; but which they
will not have left until some of the bravest blood of
France has moistened its arid plains, and the most
honoured bones of its commanders and its soldiery be
bleaching among its rocks and mountains, on its
sands, and among its creeks and bays. The Marshal
BUGEAUD himself; instead of infusing into the bar-
barised minds of the Moorish and Arab population a
respect for the rights of humanity, and the civilising
influences of modern European government, disgraces
his profession and dishonours his country by the reck-
less adoption of all the exterminating processes
of Arab warfare. He borrows from their
ignorance and ferocity the dreadful scourge of
his rehzias, his expeditions of pillage and murder with
fire and sword. He adds the curse of famine to the
sterility of a burning climate, and enhances by the
wanton sacrifice of all husbandry and tillage, their
labour, and their products, new desolation to the
deserts ! Here is the key to the elevated, national,
and high principled career he is pursuing :—" All
that we know," says the Correspondent of the Times
(from Oran, under date of the Bth instant), "of
Marshal BUGEAUD is, that he has advanced beyond
Ouchda a considerable distance. On a former occa-
sion he had advanced, and burnt and destroyed every-
thing before and around him within a circle of some
forty square leagues (!) The Marshal will certainly
advance upon Fez, and then proceed with all haste to
Mequinez, where it is pretended that the negro
guards protect a treasure of some 11,000,000 of
dollars.

A Morning Contemporary observes, with reference
to the game-laws—" There is every reason to believe
that another session will not pass without a complete
revision of these laws. We may also add, that since
Sir JAMES GRAHAM has been at the head of the
Home Department, the evidence on which committals
and convictions for poaching have been founded has,
in every case of alleged severity, been required by
him from the convicting and committing magistrates.
On every account it is most desirable that the admi-
nistration of the game-laws, during the approaching
autumn and winter months, should temper mercy
with justice; and a broad distinction be taken by
magistrates between poachers from necessity, and
poachers from idleness and confirmed vicious habits."
There is both good sense and good feeling in this last
remark of our Tory Contemporary, though we doubt
much whether his suggestion will be acted on by
our provincial magistrates, many of whom—if not
the majority—are ardent sportsmen, and, regarding
poachers as criminals of the blackest die, look on
them NNW' the same sort of shuddering horror with
which ST. DUNSTAN—AS the old legend tells us—
iooked on the Devil. We must confess also that we
entertain strong doubts as to the probability of the
game-laws being subjected to a searching revision in
the course of the next session. That their exceeding
rigor may be partially relaxed, and the amount of
their notorious injustice be diminished, is likely
enough ; but when we bear in mind of what class of
men the major portion of the. House of Commons is
composed, and consider the power which they have in
their hands, when united in a body—as they would
probably be on this question—we are far indeed
from anticipating that any very important altera-
tion will be made in the game-laws. At
least two-thirds of the country-gentlemen in
Parliament—who, whatever other good qualities
they may be endowed with, are by no means remark-
able fur the possession of " absolute wisdom"—at
least two-thirds of this non-sapient fraternity, cling
to the despotic, feudal laws which regulate game, with
the same desperate tenacity with which they cling
to the laws which regulate the price of corn. In
their partial eyes, each of these oppressive statutes is
a miracle of senatorial sagacity—the most glorious
monument of the wisdom of our ancestors ; and to
subject either to a process of sweeping revision, they
world look on as one of the most unconstitutional
acts; possible—an act calculated to draw down the
vengeance of Heaven on this offending country, and
make it a byeword and a mockery among nations. As
a parson sticks to his tithes, and a placeman to
his sinecure, so does a sporting country gentleman
stick to his game-laws. He thinks of his preserves
and plantations—his moors, his marshes, and his
stubbles—and is impressed with a sickening apprehen-
sion that all would be rendered wholly valueless,
whether for
-the purposes of profit or amusement,
were the present statutes which regulate game once
to be subjected to a rigorous process of amendment.
We anticipate, therefore, a fierce opposition in Parlia-
ment to any measure which Ministers may bring
forward for an alteration in the game-laws--unless,
indeed, it be of a tame, inefficient, milk-and-water
character; but we trust that they will not allow
themselves to be brow-beaten by the interested hos-
tility of sporting members, but carry out their scheme
in a bold, independent, impartial spirit, such as the
importance and necessity of the subject demand. Few
things indeed require the prompt and serious attention
of the Legislature more than the game-laws. They
are the origin of half the crimes that are perpetrated
in the agricultural districts ; they sow the seeds of
ill-will between the landholder and his tenant-farmers;
they fill our poor-houses with paupers, and our gaols
with criminals ; they people our convict-ships, and
send constant supplies of wretched victims to our
penal settlements ; and finally, they put the torch
into the hand of Swing, and light up county after
county in a broad, destructive conflagration. How
many a poor, simple-minded peasant who might
otherwise have been a useful and
.creditable mem-
ber of society, may lay his utter ruin at the
door of the game-laws—laws the justice and
common sense of which, he, in common with thou-
semis of other people, could never be brought to com-
prehend ! If the Legislature had always been as
scrupulously attentive in providing for tha amuse-
ments of the poor, as it has been in providing for
those of the rich ; if the peasant's common land had
always been as jealously guarded from invasion as
the nobleman's or squire's preserves, we should not
now have witnessed the ill-omened spectacle of a
sullen, discontented, alienated peasantry, who, instead
of regarding their superiors as their benefactors, re-
gard them only as their oppressors.

Madrid journals of the 12th inst. have been re-
ceived. Their contents are not without importance.
In one of them, the Eco del Comercio, we find some
explanation of the mysterious concealment of the pro-
ceedings previous to the bombardment of Tangiers.
Mr. HAY, the British Consul, had made an arrange-
ment with the Emperor of MOROCCO, but that did not
satisfy Marshal BUGBAUD and the young Prince.