The Sun.
London, England, 1844-08-17 00:00:00

PRICE OF SUGAR.

The Average Price of Brown or Muscovado Sugar, for the
week ending Aug. 13, 1844, is 325. lid. per cwt., exclusive
of the Duties of Customs paid or payable thereon on the im-
portation thereof into Great Britain.

SPIRIT of tfte PUBLIC JOURNALS.

FROM THE DAILY PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.

GLOBE.—We never could quite understand Mr..
Goulburn's reasons for refusing to publish the en-
dence taken before the Commissioners of Revenue
Inquiry, concerning the conduct of the members
and officers of the Board of Customs. Probably
Mr. Goulburn, not the clearest of thinkers,
did not understand his own reasons. The report
of the Commissioners, which is published, dis-
closes all the charges made against the different
members of the Board of Customs and Custom-house
officers ; gives the circumstantial denials—which
must be satisfactory to every one who reads them—
of all the persons accused, and absolves them all.
The evidence can contain nothing material, in addi-
tion, in the way of charge—certainly no more
serious charges than what are given m detail in
the reportZ.and answered. The only effect of with-
holding the evidence can be to excite suspi-
cions that the Commissioners doubt the conclu-
sions of their report; and are unwilling to let the
public test those conclusions for themselves. The
evidence might have been published with the omission
of names, if there were any object in such omission ;
which, after what we have read in the report, we cannot
conceive there could be. The public would have seen
the nature of the evidence as well as if the names were
given. This, however, seems the very case in which
the House of Commons should have exercised the
power for which it has so lustily contended, of publish.
ing names and everything. The conduct of the mem-
bers and chief officers of an important public board is
directly in issue. Charges against individuals are
the very matters inquired into and reported upon ;
and it greatly concerns the public to be able to
satisfy itself whether the charges are true or
false. The House of Commons claims immu-
nity in the courts of law for libel in its pub-
lished reports; on the ground, that the public
cannot be placed in a position to judge on a sub-
ject of public inquiry without the publication of libel-
lous matter. This is just one of these cases. The
libels are here material. We find that the House of
Commons uses no caution about publishing charges
against individuals with their names, in other cases,
where no object whatever is to be gained by ex-
exposing the names of individuals. For instance :
in the published Minutes of Evidence taken before
the Select Committee on Gaming, we find Cap-
tain Rous expressing opinions about a person
whose name is given, but which we shall withhold.
Captain Rous may, or may not, be justified in his
opinions ; but the person whose character he impugns
has no opportunity of clearing himself, as the
members and officers of the Board of Customs
have had; and a knowledge of the character of
this individual was utterly immaterial to the ob-
ject of the Gaming Committee's inquiry. The
minutes of evidence taken before the Dog-stealing
Committee contain a number of choice com-
pliments to individuals who are named. The publica-
tion of the name of the party whom Captain Rous holds
in such contempt was unnecessary for the purpose of
describing turf malpractices. But dog-dealers, and
the individuals attacked by Captain Rous, are persons
of a humble condition in life ; and of course no one in
the House of Commons troubles himself about their
feelings, or the injury which may be done them in
business, by the publication of these attacks upon
them. The members of the Board of Customs,
on the other hand, are all fine gentlemen, many
of them aristocratically connected ; and worthy,
therefore, of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's
protection. But they are unfortunate in hav-
ing a blunder-headed protector, who only in-
jures them by his protection. The Commis-
sioners of Revenue Inquiry have pronounced the
charges unfounded. The only effect of withholding
the evidence will be to excite suspicion that Mr.
Goulburn, the protector of the Customs Board, fears
to let the public judge for themselves between the
evidence on the one side, and the other—the answers
of the parties accused and the report of the Com-
missioners.

STANDARD.—There is no doubt that in the long
run " honesty is the best policy;" but they who look
merely to temporary objects will sometimes see great
advantage in expedients deflecting considerably from
the rule of right; and of such expedients perhaps
none presents a stronger temptation than to misrepre-
sent the principles and designs of a political opponent.
You have only to impute to a public man, or to a
party, principles and designs odious from their in-
justice or extravagance, and you succeed at the time
in heaping unpopularity upon the object or objects of
misrepresentation, and lay up a good opportunity for
imputing tergiversation and inconsistency, when the
facts prove that you have been dealing out falsehoods.
It is not you who have been lying, but the men who have
deserted their principles. This convenient channel ofes-
cape, too, is very much favoured by the fact that there
are dependent upon every leading statesman, attached
to every political party men who mean more than they
say, expect more than they profess to look for, and
some of these, when disappointed, will be always sure
to justify the charge of inconsistency brought
against their late political patrons or brother
partizans by affirming that their extreme
views were the understood, though not ex-
pressed, views which all held in com-
mon. The Opposition journals are just now
very freely employing this reaction, as it were, of
their own falsehoods, poured forth when the Con-
servatives were in opposition. For nearly eleven
years those journals described the Conservative
party as, by their selfish desire of monopoly and
by their religious bigotry, unfit for the
'admi-
nistration of the government-r-three years ex-
perience of a Conservative Ministry, supported by
a great Conservative majority in Parliament, has
however proved that the Conservatives are neither
monopolists nor bigots, and now the Whig-Radical
press turns round and charges the Conservatives with
apostacy, appealing -to the poor Morning Post as the
only remaining tyke ,of true .Conservatism—" the
faithful found 'among the faithless," though it would

be difficult to show what useful light our melancholy
Contemporary shed upon Conservative principles
during the eleven years of the party's eclipse. We,
for ourselves, can only recollect that it abused us
with much regularity for the shortcoming of our
Conservative notions. Now, the true test of consis-
tency is surely not the exaggerated imputation of
enemies, or the absurdities promulgated by
very slightly regarded hangers-on, but the
farmer professions and the previous acts of the
party against whom the charge of inconsistency is
alleged; and, tried, by this test, the Conservative
party generally, or its distinguished head, has little
to fear—neither the one nor the other professed
monopoly or bigotry, or any opinion or design that
could be properly described as monopolist or bigoted.
if either did let the proof be advanced. We do not
affect to conceal that both enemies and hangers-on
have, in the practice of former Tory Govern-
ments, an apology for imputing to th 3 pre-
sent, an under system of policy, very dis
tinct. from that which is_
_professed. The re-
cently published " Life of Lord Eldon" proves
that, from whatever course arising, the administration
of Lord Liverpool, and the latter part of the admi-
nistration of Mr. Pitt, had generally two faces, one
to the public, one for the Cabinet, and sometimes
(when it was convenient to keep the just and vig►lant
Sovereign in the dark) even a third face for the King.
A letter of his father, lately read at a repeal meeting,
in Dublin, by Mr. Henry Grattan, presents a curious
picture of the Protestantism of even Lord Sidmouth's
Government. The letter from which we are about to
quote was addressed to Mr. Fox, and bears date
Dec. 12, 1803:

" All the subjects you mention—Catholic emancipa-
tion, for such I must call it—payment of the Catholic
clergy by the State, and perhaps some little improve-
ment regarding our Church—and, above all, a- faith-
ful and cordial execution, by the executive magistrate,
of the laws in favour of the Catholic—their appoint-
ment to a share in offices to which they are now
qualified (I believe there are scarcely any of them so
advanced) the withdrawing ' from any intrigue to
exclude them from the corporations to which they
are admissible, but excluded by a faction—the im-
posing silence on any Government press who would wish
to sustain a religious war—the withdrawing of the coun-
tenance of Government from all such who are notoriously
and inveterately foes to the Catholic body—the gracious
reception of their persons (it was so in the time of Lord
Fitzwilliam)—these things, themanners of the Court as
well as their measures would be absolutely necessary for
that security and unity which you desire. Legislative
provisions are not enough ; it is necessary that the
Minister should love those provisions ! "
The writer of this letter was, at the very time of
writing it to the great leader of the opposition, the
adviser—we should rather say the master—of Lord
Sidmouth's Viceroy, the Earl of Hardwicke, and con-
tinued to really exercise the Irish Government until
March or April, 1806.
TIMES.— Since the Emperor Charles V. retired to
the monastery of St. Just, the world has scarcely
witnessed so singular and unexpected an act of volun-
tary abdication-as that of Mehemet Ali, which has
just been announced by the French telegraph. Al-
though the retirement of the Pasha of Egypt from
public affairs to the precincts of the Holy Cities can
not be compared, in political.importance, to the seclu-
sion of the august head of the House of Austria in
the 16th century, yet as an instance of individual
force of character it is not less remarkable ; and it
would seem as if the most signal renunciations of
political greatness were to crown the lives of those
men who had been must eager in the pursuit of it.
Mehemet Ali will occupy a conspicuous position in
the history of Oriental nations, as one of the greatest,
and probably the last, of those men who rose by the
sole energy of their natures and the capricious in-
fluences of Asiatic manners from the lowest orders of
society to all but the supreme dignity of Mussulman
empire. fdike Hyder Ali, or the low-born heroes
who, in pas t ages and in various countries, disputed
the ascendancy of the cross over the crescent, Mehe-
met Ali found within himself resources equal to the
pressure of the most eventful times, and superior to the
declining tendencies of his race and of his creed.' But,
unlike any of the other heroes of Mahoramedan history,
he was resolute without fanaticism ; and he combined
to a remarkable degree the habitual exercise of arbitrary
and absolute power with a true respect for more
civilized countries and a practical tolerance of other
forms of religion. If we attempted to sum up his
character in one word, it would be in that of " self-
possession." The most cruel and violent acts of his
life, such as the destruction of the Mamelukes, were
performed with a coolness and design quite distinct
from the ordinary excesses of Oriental vengeance.
The administration of Egypt was conducted with the
same stern indifference to all but the steady growth
of that power which the Pasha was labouring to esta-
blish. During the events of 1840, when a less pru-
dent or a more timorous man might have compro-
mised his existence by an act either of defiance or of
submission, he kept his temper, and therefore he kept
his pashalik. To his immortal honour,he forwarded
the British mails to India whilst our fleet was attack-
ing Syria and menacing Alexandria; and on no sub-
sequent occasion has he betrayed the smallest resent-
ment for conduct which, on the part of certain high
servants of the Crown of England, was harsh, impo-
litic, and unjust. Indeed, we may here allude with
peculiar satisfaction to the very marked reception
given by the Pasha to the present Governor-General
of India when he passed through Egypt a few weeks
ago ; and we trust that the treaty which was rapidly
aegotiated at that interview will afford a permanent
and effectual protection to our overland communica-
tions with India. Lastly, as if even death itself was
not to find him unprepared, or as one wha is anxious
to witness at least the commencement of his own pos-
terity, the old man retires from the shores of the Nile,
which he has once more opened to life and to a second
greatness, and betakes himself in meditation, if not in
devotion, to the consecrated City of the Prophet. It
is, however, premature to assume that his career is
already closed. His life is probably even now better
than that of Ibrahim ; and in the vicissitudes which
are now crowded on the surviving members of the
Ottoman empire, it is impossible to foresee any secure
repose but in the grave. Some uncertainty, indeed,
still hangs about the actual fulfilment of this great
land sudden determination. Within a few weeks,
and by the last accounts from Egypt, the Pasha
was in all his usual vigour of body and mind
—full of projects and active designs which seem
calculated rather to prolong the duration of his
life and power, than to forestal the close of
them ; and at no time was the abrupt cessa-
tion of his interest in public affairs more unforeseen.
The personal remarks arising out of this singular
event are not unconnected with other and more ge-
neral considerations. It is impossible for any one
who takes an enlarged view of the condition of
the countries contiguous to Europe, whether in
the south or in the east, not to perceive the same
universal symptoms of decrepitude, wherever
the Mussulman rule and Mahommedan institu-
tions still maintain their ground. From Persia to
Morocco, and throughout the whole expanse of the
Turkish dominions, the same results obtrude them-
selves on our notice ; the causes are probably
different—sometimes foreign agression, as in Al-
geria, or foreign intrigue, as at Constantinople—
more frequently a bad internal policy, and a
corrupt and depraved class of public servants, most
unfit to be the organs of absolute power ; but the
results are the same. Every part of these Mahome-
tan countries is more or less insecure ; none of them
are in a condition to defend their independence, if it
were seriously attacked; and since they w t
le their
e
.
be presentaran e
eo politicalf
tb e
Christian existence to
Powers, t het
bperyo protection ntorfo
morer-
st
eh
caunt
etenants atth the
contemn. will
Theofinevitable
those w homeotnheeyq stillu
ence is,
that rights so ill-defended are peculiarlys
liable
encroachment; and that the resistance to such en-
croachment proceeds,
mefdrsc:n
the
e from
indirectthe consequences power di directly
affected affected by it,
it
might produce on the European states. The Govern-
ment of Mehemet Ali has furnished a solitary in-
stance in our time of a Mahometan state sufficiently
enlightened as to its true position, and invested with
a sufficient control over its own resources, to will
what it thought expedient, and to accomplish what it
willed. The use of absolute, power in the hands of
the Pasha has doubtless created anew the land of
Egypt, and restored the valley of the Nile to the im-
portance which it justly held in the ancient world :
but he leaves behind him no tradition of his system
of government; that system has called into existence
no other men capable of fulfilling his designs ; and as
far as the descendants of his own house are concerned,
it may be apprehended that they will relapse into all
the vices of that fatal system of misgovernment which
he either entirely shook off or adapted to the objects
of a wiser administration. The retirement of the
Pasha of Egypt cannot but be regarded as an event
of the more importance, since it will show what ex-
pectations or apprehensions we may entertain of the
fate of that country under his successor ; and the per-
manent establishment of the overland route to India
has rendered this subject one of the greatest interest
to the British possessions both in Europe and in Asia.