The Sun.
London, England, 1844-08-19 00:00:00

ti-jenin lilt

LONDON, MONDAY, AUGUST 19, 1844.

The present aspect of political affairs is one calcu-
lated to excite profound solicitude among all the
friends of peace and civilisation. They who are least
susceptible to impressions of anxiety, arising out of
the contemplation of distant objects,—of contingencies
rather to be regarded as possible than provided
against as probable,.—must admit that there are some
untoward features in our foreign relations, of which
it is impossible to reconcile the expression with the
consciousness of security, or the permanency of repose.
Any rupture between France and England is to be
regarded—(now, more so than ever)—as a casualty
which the great interests of society, and the cause of
humanity and civilisation throughout the world,
should conspire to deprecate. On the issue of peace
or war are staked, to an almost inconceivable extent,
the happiness of the present generation, and the pros-
pects of posterity, for many years to come. The
progress of events in this particular, guided by the
finger of Providence itself, has made these two great
nations the depositories of hopes and destinies, for the
faithful stewardship of which existing Governments
will be held responsible by yet unborn ages. Never-
theless, fearful as the weight of this responsibility is,
st is a burden to which the hard condition of all
statesmen who live under political institutions as they
are, should teach them incessantly their liability. Let
us hope that the habit of constant reflection upon such
liability may produce
a salutary effect upon those
who are at the head of public affairs on
either side of the Channel, and effectually indispose
them to committing the two foremost nations of the
world to the alternative of hostilities, whilst any
middle course remains open for the adjustment of
political differences which can be appealed to with
honour. On our own side, however, this lastnamed
our
ocondition is indispensible to any mode of approaching
such differences which may be adopted by u
Go-
vernment. We cannot afford
the suspicion, even, of
any indirect or unworthy motive in seeking to avoid
collisions that may have been challenged by the pre-
sumption, or incapacity, or folly of the officers and
servants of any other Power. In reference to the
turn which affairs are taking in the Pacific, in the
Mediterranean, in the Gulf of Mexico, and elsewhere,
we cannot conceal from ourselves that a spirit of aggres-
sion and hostility has developed itself, on various
occasions, to an extent which renders it the most
solemn and imperative of all the duties on the Go-
vernment of England to be prepared, if necessary, for
the instant and most signal vindication of the honour
of its (flag, and our hereditary supremacy upon the
seas. There is yet one possible misfortune greater
than the deplorable calamity of a war between France
and England, an that would be, that England
4°1114 forget to exact from France, whenever occa-

sion shall unhappily have arisen to justify such a de-
mand, the most unequivocal satisfaction and repara-
tion for any act, done in prejudice to the dignity of
our flag, on the delegated authority of our Govern-
ment. If, in a generous reliance on our own strength,
and the equity of our own policy, we have exhibited
of late a becoming abstinence and forbearance
when some impertinent experiments have been
recklessly hazarded upon them, by a few gasconading
aspirants after unlucky distinction, we must be care-
ful to limit the boundaries, whilst we maintain the
principle of this dignified equanimity. We must not
be misunderstood, nor give room to a French Cabinet,
or a French squadron, to mistake our:tranquillity for
apathy; our quietude for timidity; our slowness of
excitement to defective preparation for action. On
the contrary, whatever be the destined evolution of
affairs, their present aspect is our attendant justifica-
tion for adopting the most instant and vigorous means
for revising, extending, strengthening, and multiply-
ing on all hands, the great legitimate arms of modern
warfare for offence and defence. Our first cares
manifestly must be directed—indeed we rejoice to
see that they are being so addressed—to the comple-
tion and perfection of our navy, its staff, armament,
and efficiency. In the unquestionable relative supe-
riority of our war-steamer force, we should find only
an irresistible inducement to carry it on to a pitch of
absolute and irresistible power and excellence.
Among the vaunting and absurd tirades with which
a large portion of the French press has lately been
indulging against the British people and British
grandeur, none have been more childishly absurd or
splenetic than their spiteful, but amusing, attempts at
disparaging our maritime greatness. After all, it
appears our naval force is not so very imposing, and
our rank among the nations not so difficult to be de-
graded. We are to be beaten by the superior tactics
of French naval officers, and the superior courage and
alacrity of French sailors ! We have been defeated,
it is said, by these means, on the numerous occasions
—which they cannot point out—with victorious
results to France, only rendered equivocal by the
destruction of her fleets, and the constant capture of
single ships and vessels under her flag, by British
cruisers, of vastly inferior rating and armament. We
are to be reduced, by some naval manoeuvring,
under the auspices of the Prince de JOINVILLE, and
aided by the intrepidity of DUPETIT TIIOUARS—
with his Otaheite sword on to a "third-rate marl-
tine power ;" in revenge probably, for having vir-
tually dictated the terms which closed at Vienna the
career of NAPOLEON'S success in 1814, and for having
put down, in Paris, at the head of the allied armies,
in 1815, that military brigandage wherewith France
had successfully agitated, and ravaged and plundered
continental Europe for a quarter of a century. But
we have found in the French papers we quote from,
puerile as these follies are, other matters well worthy
of deep consideration. 'We see in the periodical re-
ports of the French Minister of Marine a system of
naval organisation every way entitled to our respect
for the sagacity and forecast which have dictated it ;
—to our imitation, for the means it suggests of get-
ting rid of that odious blot upon the details and eco-
nomy of our own naval force, impressment ; to
our sincerest praise for the considerate hu-
manity which it manifests for the present and
future condition of the French seamen. In all the
ordinances which regulate the manning of the French
navy, the terms of seamen's service, the gift of dis-
tinctions for good conduct, furloghs of leave, &c., &c.,
there is so much that is excellent, that we hope our
own Admiralty will have the courage to emulate, by
adopting, such arrangements to the utmost practicable
extent. No time should be lost by the Board in re-
constructing those numerous portions of our own
naval organisation, in which it must be confessed
that the personal liberty of our sailors on their first
entry into the service, and their personal claims and
comforts, and future provision in the event of be-
coming disabled (except they shall become so under
certain previously stated conditions), are either
needlessly invaded, or grossly neglected, or very
illiberally and narrowly appreciated, under the ex-
isting regulations of the service. They have ever
been the first and most constitutional defence and
force of this empire. Let nothing be done or be
continued, that from being unreasonable or unjust,
may have a tendency to prejudice their devotion, or
their always victorious energies.

The Herald of Saturday, in reply to some stric-

tures of a Whig Morning Journal on the versatile
and fluctuating policy of Government, insists on the
uniform consistency of Ministers and their Conser-
vative supporters, and clinches its arguments by the
oracular declaration that " Sir ROBERT PEEL, when
Secretary of State under Lord LivxßrooL, twenty
years since, was as good a Reformer as he is now !"
Were our Contemporary, instead of being of an ar-
gumentative and didactic turn of temperament, at all
addicted to the jocular, we should conclude, by the
above remark, that he was passing off a harmless quiz
on his readers ; but the undeviating staidness and so-
briety of his conduct forbids the hasty hypothesis. He is
evidently impressed with a weighty sense of the truth of
what he writes, and really believes that the PEEL of
1824—the staunch supporter of the LIVERPOOL sys-
tem of policy, and the recognised leader of that more
bigoted section of the Tory Cabinet which objected
to Mr. CANNING and his party that they were too
liberal, and were going too far a-head—was just as
vigorous a Reformer as the PEEL of 1.844, who, like
Mr. BARING, the rejected of London, professes him-
self a free-trader " in the abstract ;" is regarded
with hope and confidence by Mr. COBDEN and the
Leaguers; and is engaged in a continual squabble
with his Conservative subordinates, who accuse
him of being much too Whiggish in his
views of improvement. Now, for our own part, we
cannot see the slightest resemblance between the
PEEL of the present day and the PEEL of twenty
years since, except indeed that the same specious,
guarded, evasive course of conduct that in earlier
times characterised the one, still continues to cha-
racterise the other. In 1824 the Home Secretary
was the upholder of Toryism in its most unmitigated
form. He was the sworn opponent of the Dissenters

—the sworn opponent of the Catholics—the sworn
opponent of Parliamentary Reform, so much so in-
deed, that he could not reconcile it to his political
conscience to grant even so niggardly a boon
as the extension of the forfeited franchise of
East Retford to Manchester or Birmingham.
In 1844, the same man, now Premier, carries
on the Government on principles not one of which
but is diametrically opposed to those which he main-
tained when acting under Lord LIVERPOOL He
tampers with ecclesiastical Reform, so abhorrent to
the Toryism of his youth and manhood, and which he
would no more have dreamed of meddling with in the
days when hew as Home Secretary, than he would dream
of taking the air at midnight on a witch's broomstick;
he repudiates, in theory at least, the darling Tory
doctrine of monopoly ; relaxes the accursed corn-
laws ; alters the tariff to such an extent as to set all
the agriculturists howling like so many furious
wolves ; gives up his Education Bill at the
first frown of the Dissenters, of whom he was so long
the determined enemy ; throws out from time to time
significant intimations to the Whigs that he is by no
means so averse to their policy as they may imagine,
but is merely biding his time to make a move in their
direction that will electrify them ; and, finally, to
complete the metamorphosis—more entire than any
recorded in OVlD—takes into his Cabinet, and to a
certain extent, therefore, into his confidence, a
man who was once " a Whig and something more,"
who for the earlier and better years of his life was
the uncompromising foe of Toryism, no matter
how latitudinarian might be the complexion it as-
sumed, and who still boasts that he has not changed
his principles, but is just as much devoted to Whig-
gery as ever ! We do not speak of these startling
changes of opinion in Sir ROBERT PEEL in the way
of reprobation ; far otherwise—we merely mention
tehx..etena,tihnedorraderto show the utter fallacy of the Herald's
dogma that he was just as vigorous a Re-
former in 1824, as he is in 1844. The truth is, at both,
periods of his life he has been guided by expediency
and by expediency
be guided to his only, and he will so continue to
dying day. Of political principle,
in the earnest, conscientious,
makes martyrs
sense of the
term—in that sense which ramartyrs and patriots
—he has not one atom in his composition ; and, like
Sir ROBERT WALPOLE, whom he resembles in his
cautious and temporising policy, though he lacks the
higher qualities of that most far-sighted of statesmen,
he evinces a strong disposition to doubt their
existence in others. In a word, be is just

what the temper and complexion of the times make
him, and nothing more. His is not the resolute
master-spirit that guides, controls, and bends events to
its will, but the dexterous supple nature that yields to
their force, changes as they change, and adapts its
policy to the caprice or the emergency of the passing
hour. As the cameleon is said to take its hue from
the leaf on which it feeds, so Sir ROBERT PEEL takes
his opinions from the circumstances by which he is
surrounded.

We have received the Madrid journals of the
10th. They contain accounts relative 16 the pro-
ceedings of the French naval force off Tangiers, but
they are all anterior to the date of the telegraphic
dispatch, and possess no other interest than in the
announcement that most of the European families,
with a considerable number of Jews, had been able
to take refuge in the ships off the coast previously to
the bombardment. There is no Spanish news of any
importance.

A Barcelona letter states that a serious accident
had happened there while the guns of the fort were
answering the salute of a French man-of-war. An
explosion had taken place, by which several of the
artillerymen had been very seriously wounded.
Madrid Bourse on the 10th—Three per Cents. for
cash and for account, 28+; Five per Cents. not
quoted; Debt without interest, 6 1-16 60 days.

We have received the Paris papers of Saturday.
The Evening Ministerial paper contains a resume of
the intelligence brought by the courier, who arrived
in Paris on Friday, with dispatches from the Prince
DE JoiNviLLE. From this we learn one new fact—
namely, that the Pacha of LARACHE stipulated in his
answer to the ultimatum of the French Government
that Marshal BUGEAUD should be recalled.
The Moniteur Parisien states, that " the Govern-
ment has received news from Tangiers of the 7th inst.,
respecting facts announced by the telegraphic dis-
patch given in the Moniteur of Thursday last. On
the 4th the answer arrived which the Pacha of La-
rache, SIDI BOUSELEM, had made to the ultimatum of
France. That reply was not satisfactory :it said no-
thing of the intended dissolution of the bodies of
troops collected on our frontier of Algeria, the num-
bers of which would be augmented by the arrival of
the Hereditary Prince with 20,000 or 25,000 men.

The answer renewed the promise that exemplary pu

nishment should be inflicted on the Moorish chiefs
guilty of the aggression upon our frontier, but making

it a condition that Marshal BUGEAUD should be
recalled.

" In fine, the part of the letter relative to ADD.
EL-KADER appeared in truth more satisfactory than
what we had hitherto obtained, but the style of it was
vague, obscure, embarrassed, and full of restrictions.
" His Royal Highness the Prince DB JOINVILLE,
and M. DE NioN, Charge d'Affaires to his Majesty,
could not regard this reply as acceptable, which ap-
peared to have no object but to gain time. His Royal
Highness, conformably to the instructions of the
King's Government, determined to attack the fortifi-
cations of Tangiers.
" The following facts appear to result from the
report addressed to the Minister of Marine :
" It was on Tuesday, the 6th instant, about half-
past eight o'clock in the morning, that the squadron
under the orders of the Prince, at anchor under the

walls of Tangiers, opened its fire with shouts of Long
live the KING. In one hour the fire of the place
was extinguished, the batteries were dismantled, and
the guns dismounted. On our side the loss was not
considerable.

" Notwithstanding the difficulty of the ground, the
squadron took its position in a most successful man-
ner. The ship Suffren, commanded by the Prince,
anchored in six fathoms and a half, with a rocky bot-

torn, and the position nearest the enemy's batteries
was that chosen by the Admiral.

" The fire, which commenced at half-past eight,
was not entirely discontinued until towards eleven
o'clock. It continued during this time with order
which did not exclude for one moment that steadiness
and precision necessary for taking good aim. It was
to the accuracy of the firing, as much as to the pg.
tion chosen by the Prince, that the rapid success is to
be attributed.

" The example given 'by the Suffren was followed
by each of the ships of the squadron. Everywhere
on this occasion did officers, seamen, and soldiers,
rival each other in ardour and steadiness. The re-
sistance was much more vigorous than was gene-
rally imagined ; several of the guns on the ramparts
did not cease their fire until they were destroyed
by our shot.
"Mr. HAT arrived during the action in the Vesu-
vius, coming from Mogadore. In the evening he
waited on his Royal Highness the Prince de Jong-
mix, who had an interview with him.
" The Spanish division, a British man-of- war and
frigate, some Sardinian ships, as well as some
Swedish and American ships, were present at this
brilliant exploit.
" According to measures adopted during the day
of the 7th, the fleet would be ready on the following
day to proceed to sea." .
It would appear that the unfavourable impression
which had produced a fall of 75c. on tile Bourse
during the day continued. The Three per Cents.
were done._ay -tiin 9:Flock:on Saturday night at
80f. 45f. '• '''l•,',..' p•'',.,,:.- -, i
glt was r-‘•••• ted ' iToirom's, t ' t the Prince DE
JOINVILLE 11. 0 41arler A liaken session of Tan-
giers, and tklnt IM;4.',4itnektmonn air had taken re-
fuge on boar,typi Oilikhean ship,.-`
f4ty
This latter.pertifhiltilleast oft e rumour seems
entirely inciiillbWilip the fac - the landing is
probably on/yi fictajo •if gip ato obbers.
The Consiiititiqttn4 s taitt t eyrince is at once
to attack Zetuan and! ' rache.':
On the sulijet-41he.distsiche e Constitutionnel
makes the fcillowing remarks:--L -,:!"
" The telegraphic dispatch, announcing the attack
upon Tangiers, was delivered to the King about half-past
seven in the evening of Wednesday, during the dinner
given at Neuilly, on the occasion of the christening of
the new-born daughter of the Prince de Joinville. His
Majesty, afterliading it, put it into his pocket, saying
C'est Men, a"_ did not make the contents known till a
later period in the evening."
~. ~...•
The same journal' says--

"It is beyond all doubt that the report from the
Prince de Joinville, of his attack upon Tangiers, arrived
at Port Vendres in the afternoon of Tuesday, and
reached Paris yesterday morning. It was talked of
last evening as a document seen by several persons and
it was said to state that we had two sailors killed,
and twenty-five wounded. It was further asserted
that the Prince directed the attack in person, and took
up the position in which there was the greatest danger.
It was likewise added that, on the 7th, he had taken
his departure for Mogadore, a fact which could only hare
been known by a subsequent dispatch. We shall add,
in order to complete the rumours of the day, that it was
stated that orders had been sent to Marshal Bugeaud to
march direct upon Fez. We cannot but praise the Mi-
nistry for this resolution, for, under such circum-
stances, half measures are bad."

The most intense interest prevails in all classes
of Parisian society to ascertain what are to be
the further operations of the Prince DE JOINVILLB,
and to learn if Marshal BUGEAUD is to advance on
Fez. Rumour says that the Prince, after debarking
a sufficient force to occupy Tangiers, has gone on with
the squadron to act against Mogadore, and that
firing has been heard at Oran, in the direction of
Lalla Megrena, to indicate that the Marshal was
either attacking or attacked. It is also said that an
aid-de-camp of the Prince has arrived with dispatches,
but no official communication had appeared.

It was reported that letters of the 7th, written on
board the flag-ship of the Prince DE JOINYILLE had
been received at Paris on Friday, announcing that
the fleet was then getting under weigh for Mogadore,
which place the Prince had orders to bombard.
We also find that two more ships of the line had
been ordered by telegraph from Toulon to reinforce
his squadron.
From the Afoniteur Algerien we learn the submis-
sion to the Duke D'AUMA.LE of the tribe of OULED
ZEIAN, one of the most important of the district of the
Aures. A grand dinner was given in honour of the
Prince at Constantina, on the 29th ult., by the garri-
son. His Royal Highness was present, and addressed
the officers, congratulating them on the choice they
had made of the anniversary of the revolution of July
for their fele.
TICE BOURSE—SATURDAY, AUGUST 17.
First Highest Lowest Last
Price. Price. Price. Price.
French Five per Cults . • .... 120 75 .. 120 75 .. 120 45 .. 120 45
Four-and-a-Half.... 112 75 .. 112 75 .. 112 75 .. 112 75
Three per Cents..... 81 10 .. 81 10 80 50 .• 80 50
Bank of France 3040 ..3040 ••3040 ..3003;
40
Belgian Fives, 1831
1840 •••••••• 104¢ .. 104 g .. 1041 .. 104 i
.. 1
1842 •••••••• 107¢ .• 1071 .. 107¢ .. 107¢
Threes .••••• •• 76 50 .. 76 50
..
321 76 60 ••
32%76 50
Spanish Threes •• •
Active ...... •••• •. 301 .. 30¢ •• 30 .. 30
rusty, .. 5¢ •• !. 54