The Sun.
London, England, 1844-06-11 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

FROM TIIE EVENING PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
GLOBE.—We perceive that Mr. Christie has given
not'c • of a motion to insert a clause in the Ecclesiastical
Courts Bill, for admitting graduates of all the English
-Universities to practice in the Ecclesiastical Courts. We
hope the House of Commons will agree to this reason-
able proposition. It would do something towards lessen-
irg the various mischiefs which the Bill proposes to
inflict on the public, among them, that of allowing
the country practitioner to unite in his single person
the combined characters of proctor and attorney, and
to pocket the costs of the double profession. It has
been found in practice, that a business in common law
and conveyancing, with occasionally a little bankruptcy,
is as much as a country practitioner—deprived as he
is of the opportunity of immediate reference to coun-
sel—can conveniently manage. Although fond of ap-
pending " solicitor " to his name, it is very unusual,
except in the large towns, to practise in that branch
of the law. If, then, a competent knowledge of
the practice and procedure of the Ccurt of Chancery
is found incompatible with a due attention to the tech-
nicalities of bankruptcy and common law, we leave it
to our readers to imagine what a medley of confusion
will arise from this incorporation of ecclesiastical
" quips, quaintnesses, hieroglyphics, and enigmas." It
will be something to alleviate the mischief by a mixture
of !gentlemen who have received a liberal education.
Another effect will be, that Dissenters who, on ac-
count of objections which hare force with them, may
hereafter find themselves involved in a church-rate suit,
may have their interests represented, if they choose it,
by counsel who have graduated at the London Uni-
versity, and are themselves Dissenters. We do not
consider this of particular importance so far as any
Individual contest may be alone concerned. We have
ho doubt that the case of a Dissenter is as sedulously
and efficiently advocated by a counsel of the most High
Church principles as it would be by One of his own
views. But it does nut end here. It is but reasonable,
it is indeed important to the general well-being and to
the interests of the Establishment itself, that among the
gentlemen who practise in its Courts, should be found a
not inconsiderable section whose personal feelings lead
them to look with jealousy on any procedure which
bears hard on the Dissenters. The Church gains no-
thing by making martyrs. John Thorogood's range
of neat cottages at Chelmsford, built with the proceeds
of a subscription raised by his sympathisers, and,
quaintly enough, called after the churchwardens who
imprisoned him, settles this point. The severity of his
punishment has not more deeply impressed the good
people of Chelmsford, or the generality of the commu •
ratty, in favour of the Establishment. We may. there-
fore, take it for granted that the Church will maintain
its ground with more ease to itself, and advantage to the
public, by cultivating peace with the Dissenters, and by
divesting collision, where collision is unavoidable, so
far as possible, of its present irritating character. Now
we all know the influence of the bar upon the adminis-
tration of the law, and even upon legislation. While
the administration of ecclesiastical law is entrusted
to a body, the entire of whom are, if not hostile, at
least alien to the feelings of Dissenters, nothing can
be more certain than that, as against them, much un-
necessary hardship and irritation is unavoidable. When
A Dissenter has pleaded his own cause, he has frequently
damaged it by a woful ignorance of ecclesiastical
practice. Where he has confided it to counsel, however
eminent, the strictly legal points of the case have alone
been brought before the Court. When the judge has
pronounced sentence it decides against a course of
conduct which the very counsel who defended it
was unable to appreciate or even understand, and
with which, therefore, he could not sympathise.
Few as may he the parties whom defeat leaves satis-
fied with the justice of other courts, it is morally im-
possible that, as things are at present consitituted, a
Dissenter should ever be satisfied with the justice of the
courts ecclesiastical. He looks now to an adverse de-
cision, and his consequent imprisonment, as the last
links in the chain of oppression. His enemies, he thinks,
have then done their worst ; and he naturally resolves
that when that worst is ended, he will do his. Upon
the unhappy effect, as to both parties, we will not com-
ment. We trust the House of Commons will consent to
the introduction of Mr. Christie's clause into the Bill.
We cannot but believe that the hardships of the existing
law, so far as regards Dissenters, would be mitigated
by it. and we hope ultimately reformed altogether, by
the admission of Dissenters into the ecclesiastical courts.
It might produce a series of improvements, like many
of the Chancery orders of the last sixteen years. Pro-
ranlged like them, after being subjected to the careful
scrutiny of the leading members of the profession, the
practice would receive many ameliorations, which no
Act of Parliament can be expected to effect. Were the
law thus made certain, rather than harsh, and prompt in
decision rather than oppressively expensive, a different
spirit would speedily be imparted to these contests. The
effect would be similar in kind to that which the cha-
racter et' an eminent minister of the Establishment is
known to have produced—who, for his fervent piety and
a tolerance so ample that he is probably unconscious of
its influence, has been repeatedly characterised as " the
most dangerous enemy with whom Dissent has had to
deal,"

STANDARD.—The intelligence brought by the
Queen of the West, which left New York on the 21st
ult., developer a little more fully the projected policy
of Governor Tyler, in reference to the annexation of
Texas. The President has made, upon the demand of the
senate, a communication, from which it appears that,
anticipating no difficulty at home to the final ratifica-
tion of the late treaty, he had prepared for a war with
Mexico as the immediate consequence of the arrange-
ment, ordering a fleet to the Mexican Gulf, and an army
to the frontier. This is the President's own account of the
affair, but Mr. Tyler must be a very weak man
if it is a true account. None but a very weak man
could so much miscalculate the feelings of the
Senate to say nothing of the interests of the whole re-
public, as to fancy that the treaty would not be ob-
structed; and, under that delusion, to present belligerent
preparations, justifying the obstruction, and making his
government ridiculous. A solution of the affair more
respectful to Mr. Tyler's understanding, if net to his
honesty, is the hypothesis that he sought to provoke
a quarrel with Mexico by martial display,
the effect of which would be to enforce the success of
his darling scheme of annexation ; for though 'a
war might not necessarily follow the final rati-
fication of the late treaty, it is very cer-
tain that all parties in the United States
Would agree to a hurried ratification, as soon as
they had heard of a single act of hostility on the
part of the Mexicans. Be this, however, as it may,
ono fact seems to bo clearly established by
Mr. Tyler's Message, and that is, that whether before
or after the annexation of Texas, a war with Mexico
must accompany that arrangement ; and this war
will be a very serious thing. It is true that there is
Apparently no proportion between the respec-
tive powers of the two republics, but when
• climate and a difficult country are on the side
of the defenders, these will go a great way
to compensate the preponderanle of numbers, and even
of mititary qualities, vn the other side. And then
there is the slave population in the United States ;
and everywhere a slave population is, and ought
to be, the ally of the enemy of the slaveholders.
The contest on the land side would there-
fore be by no means so inevitably favourable
to the United States at first might appear, and though
successful in the end, the United States might find that
they had made but a sort of Algeria conquest—an
earnest of future and more perilous • wars with more
formidable opponents. On the side of maritime war,
again, the United States appear to possess an itnmense
superiority over Mexico, which may be more apparent
than real ; the States themselves, we believe, it was who
first set the example of wry liberally lending a national
flag to privateers, and even borrowing the enemy's
own ports to fit out these torments of commerce. It
cannot be forgotten that the so-called American
privateers by which our commerce suffered • most
in the American revolutionary war, wore in fact
. fitted out in British ports, and too often manned by
:renegade British seamen. Now, the United States must
expect something of the kind in a war with Mexico.
The drab men of Pennsylvania, would not scruple a pro.
fitable investment in the plunder of their felliw-citizens,
any more than they would balk at a project fur
cheating their kinsmen of England. A war even
with Mexico would, in this way, annihilate the
commerce of the United States ; while Mexico
would all the while become. richer and stronger,
both in resources and alliances. The journals of the
United States seem to have a pretty just view of the
necessary effect of this disgraceful scheme of Pre-
sident Tyler, to entrap the commonwealth into a
ruinous war ; and some go so far as to call for his im-
peacktnent. As to the impeachment, it is a matter
upon which we, as foreigners, have no right
to oil r any opinion, further than to remark that the be-
ginning of a course of impeachments is unfortunately
most dangerous in those systems of government where
unfortunately impeachments arc most frequently neces-
sary—namely, in democracies. The case must be a strong
one which authorises unsheathing the sword of justice
against a magistrateanyw here, particularly where the ma-
gistrate's commission is the sole controlling influence; and
yet in dvmocracies, for this very reason, that they are
subject to no rivalships of royal, aristocratical, or other
traditional moral influence, magistrates are most likely to
p
rovoke vindictive justice by abuse of their position.
rhe inference is, that democracy is a bad form of govern-
ment, that giies birth to dangerous crimes. which itself
makes more dangeious to punish. These considerations
however, apart, it is. satisfactory to see that the Presi-
dent's warlike and ambitious propensities are not popular
- in the States.

As a proof of the total disregard of the Emperor of
Russia of the luxuries and splendour with which he was
• surrounded, we may state that the Emperor always sl: pt
on the ground, on a leather tick, stuffed with straw, as
being more conducive to health. Ills Imperial Majesty
adopted the same course on the occasion of his first visit
to this country, in 1817.
When the Emperor of Russia took leave of her
Majesty on Sunday, at Buckingham Palace, the Queen,
Prince Albert, the Prince of Wales, and the Royal
Princesses, wero present in the Marble Hall. On the
• departure of the Emperor, he graciously saluted . the
Queen, and cordially shook hands with all the ladies
- and officers of the household. The Emperor left the
munificent sum of 20,000 ducats, to be distributed
among the domestics.
It tslunderstood that the Court of Directors have
ree-introduction of the system of corporal
"uTiTttie we army of India.—Naval and Mill-
,
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19.40; bia mist isluoitili se of taking out the letters, he
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