The Sun.
London, England, 1845-03-03 00:00:00

011ang ,--,r) nit

LONDON, MONDAY, MARCH 3, 1845.

The debate in the House of Commons, on Friday
night last, elicited by Mr. T. DUNCOMBE'S motion for
calling to the bar certain officers of her MAJESTY'S Post-
office department, with a view to their examination in
reference to the charge of opening letters addressed to
that Honourable Member,—terminated as we had anti-
cipated. A majority of 75, in a House of 301 Members,
negatived his motion. It results that, to-day—to-mor-
row—at any time between the present moment and that
at which the felony-indemnifying statute of Queen ANNE
shall be repealed,—the most private and confidential
correspondence of every man who was a constituent
element of that majority may have its seals broken,
after being forged by remodelling ;—its contents pe.
rused, transcribed, and communicated to third parties,
may be with impunity violated, surreptitiously resealed,
and fraudulently forwarded to its original destination,
without any intimation or evidence to the parties ad-
dressed of the fact of its having been so tampered with.
Entertaining the strong opinions we have never hesi-
tated to avow on the criminal nature of the delinquency
which her MAJESTY'S Government have, in effect,
pleaded guilty to, we cannot help saying that we should
be well pleased if every one of their supporters on this
memorable question should be placed in the position of
having his own letters experimented upon by the Home-
office and Post-office authorities, after the same fashion
by which Mr. DUNCOMBE has been a sufferer. The plea
relied upon by Sir ROBERT PEEL, and other Members
for refusing the very reasonable application which Mr'.
DUNCOMBE'S motion, if carried, would have enforced,
was, as on former occasions, of a kind the most unworthy
and even puerile, to which a public man could
be supposed, at this time of day, capable of
resorting. In fact, it amounted to little more than
the stale clap-trap of throwing himself upon his cha-.
racter—the course of official precedents—the impos-
sibility of a Minister, in his position, being su guilty
of pandering to the appetite of foreign courts for con-
traband news. There was no indignant repudiation.—

such as would have.well become the Prime Minister of a
constitutional Government—of au odious and detestable
espionnage, such as should be tolerated only under the
most corrupt or the most unmitigated of despotisms.
There was no generous expression of confident r, liance
on the cordial attachment to the institutions of their
country of the people which, in its recent cheerful
acquiescence in the imposition of extraordinary burdens
to meet extraordinary deficiencies of income at an ad-
vanced period of a protracted peace ; an attachment that
surely supplied the best argument against the necessity
of such atrocious inquisitorial powers as those embodied
in the Act of ANNE. We have not been slow to bear
our testimony to the merits of Sir ROBERT PEEL'S ad-
vances in the right direction of free-trade and fiscal
reform, as a finance Minister. But on all occasions,
where there is a great constitutional principle to be vin-
dicated—a large scheme of national policy with regard
to our foreign relations to be discussed—a claim of
equity or justice to be determined against suggestions of
official convenience or Exchequer expediency—we must
own that he is too apt to fall beneath the level of even
subaltern mediocrity. Bis statesmanship is without
philosophy ; his philosophy without statesman-
ship. lie argues like a functionary more or
less immediately interested in the issue to be
tried by the Legislature. He seldom or never
risers to the enlarged and comprehensive views of
a legislator, whose business it is to devise and preseribe

the rules which shall govern the conduct of public fund
tionaries in the various departments of the public ser

vice. On Friday last the feebleness with which he me

the flagrant charge established against the Home De-
partment on a former evening, and evaded the just and
reasonable appeal of Mr. DUNCOMBE—was almost piti-
aLle. A majority of 75, at the price of such an exhi-
bition, was dearly purchased. The failure of the Right
Honourable Baronet to gainsay the general axiom we
have so often contended for, and which we perceive was
powerfully enforced both by Mr. DUNCOMBE and by
Mr. D'IsRAELr, was still more signal. That principle
was thus put by Mr. D'ISRAELI;—
" You have a popular government, you have a strong local
system ; you may, by not prying into the correspondence of
individuals, be subjected to great calamities. You may have
Bristol burnt, as Bristol was burnt; you may have Birming-
ham assailed, as you had it assailed—but the country strikes
the balance. It agrees to suffer these great injuries for the
sake of a popular Government, instead of a Government of
police; and the country, after all, must decide it.—(Cheers.)
Now, Sir, I believe that is the impartial view as regards
the general question."

In short, the axiom that your Government should
possess no such authority for violating the integrity of
this important department, was not even touched by the
opponents of Mr. DUNCOMBE'S motion. The moral im-
putation on the conduct of her Majesty's Ministers in
this affair, and of the Right Honourable the Home
Secretary in particular, remains not only unremoved,
but absolutely unnoticed by those whom it most concerns.
Sir JAMES GRAHAM, indeed, is brought at last to ac-
knowledge that a warrant was issued in every case
where letters have been opened, whilst he has been in
office, so that Mr. DUNCOMBE may conclude that his
letters were opened under warrant. But Sir JAMES
GRAHAM, on commencing his address, and in dealing with
the spirited protest of Mr. DISRAELI against the politi-
cal ilicotinetism of Sir ROBERT with any of his sup-
porters who presume, on large questions, to have an
opinion of their own, he spoke with the atrabilious
astonishment of an usher astounded at the demonstra-
tions of a rebellious boy on the upper forms against the
aristocratic majesty of the head-master. His reproof was
in the very spirit of an angry pedagogue. It was a melan-
choly specimen of the obsequiousness of political col-
leagueship, which an apostate from the politi-
cal creed and associations of the far larger por-
tion of his existence may be brought to mani-
fest under so exacting a master as the Premier.
The speech of Mr. DISRAELI was, certainly, the hap-
piest and molt successful effort he has yet made in
Parliament. It was well calculated to fortify the

strongest presumptions of serious divisions in the
Ministerial camp, or between the Ministerial staff and
the Tory rank and file. Spirited, caustic, and epigramatic,
it was received probably by every person in the House,
except the two Right Honourable Baronets, Sir ROBERT
himself, and Sir JAMES, with visible favour, being more
cheered than any other address delivered throughout
the evening. If Sir ROBERT can retain, under the
excitement of such a castigation, that self-possession to
which he is so often indebted for learning prudence
from his dangers, and for deriving advantage from
his own errors, he will do well to profit by
the unpleasant lesson which the Member for Shrews-
bury has read to him. It does not follow that because
he has for some time past managed to lead the House, not
only without, but in despite, to some extent, of his party,
he will always be able to employ the same tactics with
the same success. It may be prudent, therefore, for him
to pause before he again strains the cord of leadership
too tightly, where its stress is to affect those who are
among the ablest and most intelligent of his champions
whilst they are in the ranks, but are among the most
formidable and harassing of his antagonists the moment
they have fallen out of them. Mr. DISRAELI was very
sparkling in touching upon the " sic vos non vobis" sort
of fortune that established the present Government in
power on the ruins of its predecessor, exactly because
(it should seem) the present men were (luckily fortunate)
to do that, which the others for merely proposing to do
were expelled for. The figure of the spoliated bathers
was capital. The simile of PETRUCIIIO scarcely less
striking:—
" The Right Hon. Gentleman has only exactly to remain
where he is. The Right Hon. Gentleman caught the Whigs
bathing, and walked away with their clothes.—(Much
cheering and great laughter.) He has left them in the full
enjoyment of their liberal position, and he is himself a strict
conservative of their garments.—(Continued cheers and
laughter.) I cannot conceive that the Right Hon. Gentle-
man will ever desert his party ; they seem nevert to desert
him. There never was a man yet who had less need to
find new friends. I, therefore, hope all these rumours will
cease. I look on the Right Hon. Gentleman as a man who
has tamed the shrew of Liberalism by her own tactics. He
is the political Petruchio, who has outbid you all.—(Cheers
and great laughter.) If we could only induce the Right Hon.
Gentleman, therefore, to takea larger and more liberal view of
his Parliamentary position than he seems to adopt in mo-
ments too testy for so great a man to indulge in, he would
spare us some imputations which, I assure him, are really
painful."
But there is a chapter in the past political life of Sir
ROBERT PEEL, to which we think it is well that the
public mind should be now and then referred, although
with the view of working some abatement of the prestige
which a long career of Parliamentary and of Ministerial
success has thrown around that Minister's reputation.
his deportment to Mr. CANNING in the ascendant—his
utter want of generosity and confidence towards his early
friend and political comrade,—his ready and somewhat
overeager adhesion to the most bitter and unscrupulous
enemies of that great statesman,—the coincidence cf
this remarkable estrangement from the companion and
fellow partisan of so many political campaigns, with that
illustrious individual's attainment to supreme rank in the
Councils of the SOVEREIG:4 ;—these are recollections
which we doubt not are not those that are dwelt upon
with the greatest degree of complacency by his successor
in that supreme position. With the very neat allusion

to this epoch in the public history of Sir ROBERT,
with which the llon. Member for Shrewsbury concluded

Lis address, we shall conclude this article :---

"He never refers to any author who is not great, and
sometimes who is not loved—Canning for example.—(llear,
hear.) That is a name never to be mentioned, lam sure,
in the House of Commons without emotion. We all admire
his genius. We all, at least most of us, deplore his untimely
end; and we all sympathise with him in his fierce struggle
with supreme prejudice and sublime mediocrity—(Cheers
anti a laugh)—with inveterate foes and with candid friends.
—(Loud cheering.) The Right Hon. Gentleman may be
sure that a quotation from such an authority will always
tell. Some lines, for example, upon friendship, written by
Mr. Canning, and quoted by the Right Hon. Gentleman
The theme, the poet, the speaker—what a felicitous combina-
tion ! Its effect in debate must be overwhelming ; and lam
sure, if it was addressed to me, all that would remain would be
for me thus publicly to congratulate the Right Hon. Gentleman,
not only on his ready memory, but on his courageous con-
science."—(The Hon. Gentleman, afteriseconding!the motion,
sat down amidst loud cheering.)

In the pamphlet embodying Mr. GRANTLEY BERKELEY'S
" Reply to the Press," to which we have adverted, on
the game-laws, there is a pervading error which is com-
mon to the defences sot up by the advocates of that
offensive branch of class legislation. Country gen-
tlemen are prone to assume that the game-laws are ne-
cessary—expedient—of public utility, and that the case
for their existence being thus established and admitted,
the only question to be settled is, whether they are the
best sort of laws that can be devised for their object, or
may not, by remote possibility, be susceptible of some
amendments ? On this account it is, we presume, that
Mr. GRANTLEY BERKELEY imagines that in his former
enterprise on the character of game-law champion, " he
stood forth to the field, not as the first challenger—not as a
wilful assailant," but simply in succour of the dis-
tressed." Both these propositions are false. Every
game-preserver (a class with which our author ostenta-
tiously announces his own identification), is the "chal-
lenger" in the " first" instance; and betakes him to the
oppression, NOT tl the succour of the distressed." He
challenges the reprobation of public opinion : he assists
the action of statutes of grinding tyranny upon the most
friendless and impoverished members of society. The
public, as a body, is act interested in the secondary
question of the degree in which the game-laws may be
excused or reformed ; but it is in the general issue,
game-laws or no game-laws. All Mr. BERKELEY'S ad-
vocacy turning upon the apology and defence he thinks
he can make for the game-laws as they are, his argu-
ment is addressed, in fact, to that very small minority
in the empire who are fur game-laws " at all ;" not to the

great bulk of the population, who are clearly in favour of
" no game-laws." The real majority of Mr. BERKELEY'S
compatriots, therefore, cannot enter into the merits of
his personal squabbles with cool-headed magistrates, or
g,ann.-keepers who deliberate before they "punch people's
heads." The whole system of game-laws is on its trial
at the tribunal of public opinion, on the great principles
of natural, and even of social, law, which we enunciated
ly. Mr. BERKELEY does not appear to suspect
that his views are all based upon, and referable to, mere
local aspects under which tl-.e operation of this system
has presented itself to his observation in given localities.
He must be prepared to learn that there is a world,
beyond the topographical circuit of his experiences, as
to be rude enough to discard all considerations of the
extent and manegfment or game-preserving establish-
ments, even if they belong to Berkeley Castle—and
whether they be found in Gloucestershire, or Sussex, or
H:.iinpshire. The public at large is now disposed to
c insider whether any degree of indulgence with which
it might be inclined to regard the sports of coantry gentle-
men, by throwing a greater ora less rlegree of protection
around the game which is the ohjr et of so many of those
sports, will not be much too dearly granted at the cost
of leading to so many outrages, offinices, crimes, convic-
tions, and the county expenditure consequent on the
legal proceedings tin reby occasioned, which our game-
laws have heretofore entailed in a continuous and fearful
succession. It will be a mournful day—a day of agrarian
humiliation and quarter-sessions sackcloth, to be sure,
when the exclusive rights of property on the game, of
preserving, and (dearest of all !) of exterminating it,
with all the mysteries and qualifications of certificates,
and deputations—informations and convictions—night
watches and captions of poachers, with all the incidental
luxuries of battaes for the exclusive friends of the game
owner—shall be put down by the repeal of the statutes
we are contemplating. But many calmly-thinking men,
of judgment, crscretion, and talents, perhaps even of as
much experience as Chairmen of Quarter Sessions as
Mr. BERKELEY himself, have expressed their conviction
that it may be better to repeal the game laws altogether
than leave them to reproduce, year after year, their
constant cycles of petty oppression and insolent persecu-
tion on the one hand—of perjury, treachery, violence,
crime, and bloodshed, on the other.

We cannot flatter Mr. BERKELEY by saying that he
has in his last pamphlet approached the true gist of the
game-law question. We can as little compliment him
on his talent for controversy. His style is the oddest
imaginable. A species of private-theatrical, stilted
declamation, seems to be the " vein" in which he is most
given to indulge. But there is one yet more favourite
purpose which he is'bent on establishing—namely, the
announcing to all whom it may—or may not—concern,
that he is of the aristocracy. "If we, the aristocracy,
the landed gentry, and the preservers of game" (p. 3)—
" that we, the upper classes, make the criminal" (p. 6)
—" the class to which I belong" (p. 19)—" we, who are
taunted with calling ourselves the nobility" (p. 22)
" I completely repel accusations against my order"
(p. 24). The inverted commas and italics, being Mr.
BERKELEY'S, not ours, may serve to point the va-
lue which that gentleman attaehts to these im-
cortant hints of his quality. But they are not even satis
factory to this extent. The darling sin of being figurative
is another of his infelicities. Be rushes into similes
and expatiates in metaphor, the parts cif which have no
more relation to one another than those of the nonde-
script suggested by Honnee, in his epistle, "Ad
Pisonem." He writes (page 2), " Not even a rivet of
my armour—or an outer defence—has been won by the
enemy." The rivet would have been a treasure among
the spolia opitna of a defeated antagonist. Addressing
certain opponents of the game-laws (page 14), he says,
"You are at such loos for argument, and so Vs, eadbal e
in your ,ourees of real arrangement." What kind of
sources " threadbare" ones may be, has never been deter-
mined by those who have tracked the Nile or the Ganges,"
or the Burhmapoota to its fountain head. But this is
mere geographical rhetoric. Mr. BERKELEY can call in
the aid of chemical illustration :—e. g., " Does this lessen
the turpitude of an offender in the one instance, or neu-
t^alize, by a vi: taous soda, the filthy acids of the vice so
violent in the other ?" Henceforth, on the scale of
pharmaceutical morality, let potass take precedence of
tartme salts. But if Mr. BERKELEY sometimes is thus
careless, he is at others more guarded ; for at p. 46,
when he has a topic to handle with which he is better
acquainted than the principles and operation of laws, his
caution and solemnity are edifying. " The present
price of cheese (I am speaking advisedly, and of the pre-
sent year, 1845) does not remunerate the maker in the
vale." The present price of absurd pamphlets (we say
it " advisedly") will never remunerate Mr. BERKELEY.
So we leave him, with his cheese in the " vale," from
which he will do well not readily again to ride forth on
such adventures as he has undertaken on behalf of the
game-laws.

Madrid journals of the 23d have been received. Ac-
cording to accounts from Valencia a serious collision had
taken place in the garrison of that place between the
infantry and artillerymen, in which one officer and four
men were, killed. It was said that General RONCALI had
hastened to the spot, and after some inquiry appointed a
commission to try the offenders. The Clamor Publico
states that QUEEN CHRISTINA had resigned the pension
of 3,000,000 reals granted to her by the Government.
The rumour requires confirmation, though, according to
the following list of revenues, she can well afford to make
the sacrifice.

" The Queen-Mother," says that journal, " could not pos-
sibly continue to receive a pension of three millions wrested
from a suffering people. when she is so rich, and the owner
of the salt-works of Drenu in the Jura mountains, of the
magnificent palace of Malt-liaison, near Paris, of the fine
estate of Vista Alegra, of the lucrative gas-light works at
the Havannah, of enormous sums invested in England and
France, and above 130,000,000 roals, the sum to which the
pension she has hitherto received amounts, not including
King Ferdinand's legacy."

The Three per Cents. left off on the 22d at 331 at 60
days; the Five per Cents. at 24i for cash, and 24i at
60 days; and the Debt without Interest at 7 for cash,
and 7i at 60 days.

The Paris papers bring further details of events in
Switzerland, which may be considered on the whole as
s:ttiifactory. There appears on the part of the public
authorities in general a disposition to settle disputes
amicably, and make allowances for the excitement caused

by the restless spirit of the Jesuits. The Extraordinary
Diet which assembled at Zurich on the 24th, as stated
in The Sun of Saturday, proceeded to verify the returns

of the Deputies from the different cantons. That from
Vaud excited some discussion, but, on a division, the
Members elected by the new Council were admitted by
a majority of twelve and a half to nine. It may be ne.,
cessary to mention that some of the small cantons have
only half a vote. The Deputies from the following can-
tons voted against the admission of the Deputies from
Vaud :—Uri, Unterwald, Zug, St. Gall, Valais,
Neufchatel, Fribourg, Schwitz, and Lucerne. The
President of the Diet, M. BoussoN, Burgomaster
of Zurich, made a peaceful and judicious address to the
Diet. After adverting to the resignation of the consti-
tutional "Authorities at Lucerne, he said, " It is super-
fluous to dwell at greater length on the imminent dangers
that threaten the federal alliance, if questions of the
greatest moment be settled, not by the proper autho-
rities and after mature examination, but by violent deci-
sions. To remedy the evils of the country, to restore
and consolidate profound peace between the confederacy,
such is the principal task of the supreme federal au-
thority. It behoves the concurring cantons alone to
devise suitable measures and to enforce them." Lord
ABERDEEN in his dispatch to Mr. MortrEn, the
English Envoy, to the Swiss Cantons, which we have
given in another place, states the view which

the British Government takes of the question, and re-
commends, as the only means of preventing foreign inter,
ference, the adjustment of differences without destroying
the constitutional compact, and forming a New Switzer-
land, which would necessarily involve the intervention of
the foreign Powers which, in 1815, sanctioned the ori-
ginal compact. A letter from Zurich, of the the 25th,
states that a long discussion arose in the Diet, whether

they should proceed first to the question of the
Jesuits, which was affirmed by a majority of thirteen
States to ❑ine. These papers announce no collisions
between the contending parties, but the people ihrough-
out the federation take a deep interest in the decision of
the Diet, and look to it with anxiety.

The Jesuits themselves, true to their cautious policy,
seem anxious to withdraw from the contest, at present,
under the advice of the POPE. " The Swiss journals,"
says the Journal der Debuts, "announce that, in conse-
qunce of an intervention of the Court of Rome, the
company of Jesus has rescinded the compact entered into
with the Government of Lucerne, and that the Jesuits
have renounced the idea of making an appeal to the
canton. We have reason to believe that the statement
is correct, but we must confess that we do not think that
this wise,and conciliating step will be accepted in the
same spirit by the Radical party. The men who wish
to revolutionize Switzerland will in all probability try to
urge matters to extremities ; they will require that the
other cantons which have hitherto been open to the Je-
suits shall b' closed against them."
The other Ministerial paper, the Globe, says in jest, but
there is much wisdom in the advice:—" If we were the
general of the Jesuits, we would transport the whole
order to America, and thus make the charivarists of the
Vaud and the ConsOutionnel of Paris die of chagrin.
Let us acid that there, where there is much to correct

and civilise, the Jesuits may do great things. In Europe
there is little or nothing left for them to do. The Jesuits,
by coming to this resolution, would bosides render I
real service to the cause of religion; for it would be
saved from attacks under the pretence of attacking them•
This would prevent the whole clergy of France froze
being confounded with the order, which, whether right-
fully or wrongfully, excites mistrust."

Affairs in the French Chamber of Deputies go on
rather unfavourably for M. GuizoT. On Friday the
Presidents and Vice-Presidents of the Monthly Com-
mittees were elected, when only five Ministerialists were
elected out of nine candidates. At the commencement
of the session Ministers had seven votes and the orro•
sition only two. On Saturday the Finance Minister at'
tended the Budget Committee, and stated the intentien9
of the Government relative to the conversion of the Five
per Cents , and it was understood that he was in tiv°lll*
of the measure, though at present it would not be carve',
into effect.

THE BOURSE- —SATURDAY, MARCH 1.
fist Highest Lowest cast
Price. Price. Price. .t", 46
French Five per Cents— •• 121 GO .. 121 60 .. 121 30 .•
Three per Cents.—.• 85 10 .. 85 10 .. 85 14
••,,,,,7,
Rank of Franco 3240 ..3210 . 3240 ••"""
Golan Bank, I,ooof. Shares 1090 ..1090 ..1090 ••1090 50
Iselai 8ank........ 652 50 .. 652 50 .. 652 50 65i2L;
11.1gian Fives, 1840 .. 104!4 .. it 104! ** !!„IC
1842 ....•• 10fl .. 106 4 .•
Two-and-a-Half.. 62 15 .. 62 23 .• 62 ••
Spanish Threes •• •• 4018 .. 461,4 .. 404 ••
Portuguese Five per Cents 60.74 .. 604 •• v"-
100 tO
Neapolitankn
Roan 105 105 y, .. 10534 .•
wa

RAILWAY SHARE,.
St. Gema
Versailles,r 11.11 a
—.1516750 ....1517605 ....1516750 ILL: 00
L. 8....... •• 381 25 .. 381 25 .. 377 50 .0
Rouen •• •• —1125 —1127 §0 —1125 ..1127
Rouen to Havre.
Orleans ......... •.•_ •.....1228 75 ..1232 50 ..1228 75 .•1232
Strasburg to Bale —.... •• •. 325 .. 325 .. 323 76 .. 325
Avignon Marseilles.... ..1070 .. 1070 —lO7O ..1071
Bordeaax to Teste ........ 225 .. 240 .. 225 .• 240

RAILWAYS FOR THE ACCOUNT, Marten 16.••
1167
St. Germain ..........1175 -.1177 50 ..1167 50
Versailles, R. 13 .... ••• • • • 560 .. 560 .. 560 • • 5„6°2 ~
L.8.............382 50 .. 382 50 .. 375 ••
"'
Rouen •• • •••••• • • .. • .1123 75 ..1128 75 ..1122 50 • •112
Rouen to Havre.• .• •• •• •• -. 940 .. 947 50 .. 940 •• 945 `'i5Orleans •• ..•••1132 50 ..1236 50 ..1230 ••1232
Strasburg to Bale— 326 25 .. 25 .. 325 • 325
Avignon to Marseilles•• •• —1063 75 —1072 50 ..1060 •••
,„60 50
Bordeaux to Teste • .... • 225 .. 232 50 .. 225 • • 20`