The Sun.
London, England, 1828-04-28 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF flit, PUBLIC JOURNALS.

'We alluded some time ago to a certain discovery,
touching a sum of 250,0001.,—for the precise amount
we care not—it may be '200,000/., 2505000/., or
300,0001. The question is, who were the jobbers
The transfer of a large sum of money, the unappro-
priated balance of a sum still larger, paid to the
British Government by a Foreign Power, and for
public purposes;—the transferring, we say, of such
a sum, the surreptitiously withdrawing it from under
the eye and disposal of Parliament, and turning it
over in compliance with irresponsible importunity,
to hands who had no right, either legal, moral, or
constitutional, to meddle with, or touch, still less
to squander it !—what is the name for such a pro-
ceeding ? Is it impeachable ? And will it be
brought forward by the Finance Committee—or by
that which was the instrument of its detection': A
z.ery short time will show.—Times.
It is quite true, as stated by an evening paper of
S,attirday, that the Finance Committee have, after a
division of eleven to seven, decided on recommend-
ing that the office of Lieutenant-General of the Ord-
nance should be abolished. We understand, that in
coming to this resolution, the Committee have taken
an opposite view of the question of upholding the
above office or extinguishing it, to that which the
Duke of 'Wellington had entertained, and had stated
in the course of his examination. There is nobody
who, from observing his Grace's administration of
the Ordnance, and the anxiety for economical as well
as other reform which he there exhibited, and on
avhich he regularly acted, will accuse him of having
gfaien a dishonest opinion to the -Finance Committee,
or of having endeavoured to impose upon the coun-
try the continuance of an expensive and superfluous
office, for any purpose connected with his own pa-
tronage As a Minister. We go further, and pay tri-
bute to the Duke's consistency in his recent de-
claration that the Lieutenant-General of the Ord-
nance ought to he maintained. For when, some years
ago, he tendered ;hat oce, st to Lord ill,
who declined it, and nexffit to fir
Lord BeresfordH, by
whom it was at once accepted, we recollect his ac-
companying the proposal by an intimation that the
Lieutenant-General was an efficieiat officer, and must
be constantly resident in London. Thus much,
therefore, in jnstice to the Duke. 13nt although
Siis Grace's opinion may be (and is, we doubt not),
;strictly conscientious as regards himself, it does Not
rest on such incontrovertible authority as ought to
induce the Finance Committee to abandon the exer-
cise of their own judgment, and to saddle the country
avith 2,000/. or 3,000/. a-yeas, because an official
personage, however honest, considers that a depart-
ment over which he himself presided has room for
ail officer who might be disposed to work for such a
-alary. The office, we trust, will be abolished, in
he teeth of the Duke's wish to retain it. There is
hardly a department in the state which has not for
half a century been loaded with inmates, and de-
,7toured by them. Retrenchment is the first duty of
Finance Committee; and the present instance will
afford a salutary example to its successors, as well as
to the Ministers of the Crown.—/biel.
The country may judge how much it has gained
7)y the dismissal of Lord Eldon from all share in the
management of its concerns, by the." mischievous"
nature of his interference with public questions, even
aosy when no longer able to direct them es he thinks
Cif, and by the monstrous combination which he
manifests from day to day in Parliament of every
thing obsolete and barbarous in opinion, with a spirit
so restless, arbitrary, and inflexible. The conduct
pursued by this pertinacious old lawyer reflects no
eredit on the tendency of long practice in the Court
which under him became a public nuisance, to en-
large the mind by wholesome principles of political
Justice, of Statesmanlike sagacity, or of Christian
charity. His Majesty's advisers, instructed by the
representatives of the people of England, have fur-
nished to Lord Eldon, on the Corporation and Test
Acts, a useful lesson of the duty he °wee the State.
duty to the church has been with equal clear-
ness, with honourable independence, and powerful
pointed out to this inveterate partisan, by
prelates who adorn the established religion of their
ieotiatry, and in whose wise and manly toleiance of
errors which they do not share, the church find a
snpport more certain and enduring, than in whole
piles of tests and of exclusive statutes. The bench
of English Bishops has earned for itself well-
-merited praise on this very important occasion,—
not by disregard of the interests of the eharch,—
not by criminal apathy, as seems to have been insi•
»tutted by Lerd Eldon, (a.cd most criminal would
such apathy have been in them, its chosen guardians)
hut by its discerning and enlightenial estimate of
that in which consists the real security of the Church
of England, and by its manly admission, on behalf
of those who dissent from its own precise ritual and'
doctrines, of that sacred right of religious freedom
which was appealed to by the first great fathers of
the Reformation in defesice of the Church of Eng-
land herself. There was one associate of Istnsi El-
don, in opposition to the civil privileges of the Pro-
testant Dissenters, whose presence et any time in
the United Kingdom would be dispensed with by a
.large portion of society, and whose presence In the
mouse of Lords, on such an occasion, so inetante-
neot,aly after his setting foot on English ground,
few besieles Lord Eldon could have thought very
graceful or Lecoming. The gentleman we speak of
may as well gas back an again, we fain
would say—to thse land from which he has thought.
proper to migrate, lie never, we suppose, will
have any business here. Though his soo. is paid for
being a resident of this cousery, we haVe nGt heard
that any human being ever dreamed of bribing, the
father to such a visitation.—lbid.
Some of our contemporaries have asserted foe
some days, NN ith a great deal of confidence, that the
crossing of the Pruth by the Russian armies was
postponed till the middle of May, and that the set-
tlement of the Greek question was left to the arbitra-
tion of Austria, adding, that these' results were
owing to the almost threatening tone of remonstrance
used by our Government against Russia. This is
very far from being an accurate statement. The
delay in crossing the Pruth is, we suspect, owing en-
tirely to local causes, such as the badness of the
roads and the wet seasota—causes which may cease
to exist from one day to another. The Greek ques-
ioo, so far frosn being left to the arbitration of
Austria, (a power which certainly has, by its eon-
duct at Constantinople, disqualified itself from being
an unexceptionable judge), is more than ever in the
bands of the three contractine- parties to the treaty
the 6th of July. Lastly, the state of our re-
lations with Ruseisa is more friendly and
cordial than it has Leen, at least for some
time past. It will be recolie,ated that we, not
10'0,g ago, gave a concise bat cortect account of a
note Pt* great itnp4rtance sent by Russiat on learning
the com!-enta of the Terkish manifesto. Our readers
will recolisect that the tone of this document was•of
a nature to cause serious apprehensibtis that the
peace of Europe would be its great jeopardy, inas-
much as Russia seamed determined, syhatey6a might,
be the views of Eingieud and France, to commence
a war with Turkey on zeparete grounds, and to
claim, in consequences separate, and perhaps very
large, indemnifications- Such measures, it was evi-
dent, might, though justifiable in themselaes, lead
to consequences involving other countries in the
quarrel. At all., events, their necessary and im-
-,
,mediate tendency was to embarrass the negocia
Lions on the subject of Greece, It i
theyefore
with great pleasure we learn, that Russia, asesseitas
atandines the confessedly great provocation she
has received from Turkey, has, from a eonyie-
tion of the sincerity and good faith of England,
sent to her Ambassador here the most moderate acid
pacific instructions: she gives up any idea of in-
vading Turkey upon her own separate ground pf
quarrel, and confines the compensation which she
intends to claim from Turkey to indemnities for the
injuries to the Russian commerce, (which cannot be
of a very extensive amount), without any thought
of territorial aggrandizement; arid lastly, she will
live instructions to her Admiral in the Mediter•
sensate to act in concert with the Admirals of Eng-