The Sun.
London, England, 1844-08-21 00:00:00

J' tititill 11 (,--z,- itIV
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LONDON, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 21, 1844.

The calm which has followed the noisy and multi-
tudinous meetings of the members of the Repeal As-
sociation, since the imprisonment of Mr. O'CONNELL
and his friends, is a remarkable feature in the present
times. But a few months ago all Ireland was in com-
motion, nothing but separation was talked of; now we
have only the echo of the mighty sound. The Tories,
of course, rejoice in this. They say, " it is their
thunder," but they are grievously mistaken if they
imagine that the wrongs of that country are to be
hushed by State prosecutions, or the spirit of liberty
which animates the people is to be put down till their
grievances are redressed, and they are placed
on the same footing with Englishmen and
Scotchmen. We have said all along that
Mr. O'CONNELL committed a great blunder in
resting the salvation of his country on the repeal of
the union, and every man who wished well to Ireland
saw with regret that the false policy which he adopted
only became more ruinous by the attacks which he
made on the Saxons, on almost every man of note; in
England and Scotland, and, above all, on the men
who bad done and suffered much for his country.
The Whigs and the Liberal party, and among them
we include many Tories, paved the way for Catholic
Emancipation, and it required only the finishing stroke
of Mr. O'CONNELL to make it complete. But what
would have been the state of the Catholics at
the present time, if the House of Commons had not
been divided against itself, if CANNING and CASTLE-
REAGH, and many others of the same party, had not
fought as manfully for emancipation as the best Ca-
tholics ? WOUld WELLINGTON or PEEL have yielded
if the Legislature had been as unanimous on that
point as they are on the question of repeal ? Ireland
is a populous country, it contains many brave men—
men fit for the highest offices in the State and the
army—but it is now what it has ever been, only an
appendage of Great Britain, and could not exist with-
out her. To carry a repeal of the union with-
out the consent—nay, we may say, in direct
opposition to, the universal national will in
this country, and in opposition to a vast
majority, too, of the influential classes in Ireland—is
an utter impossibility. Great Britain would sacri-
fice everything to:avert such a calamity. No foreign
war could terrify her into such an act of suicide—
even the French and Americans united against
her, would only rouse the energies of the people,
and make them strive for the integrity of the empire
as they would strive for life. It is true that in times
of difficulty Ireland has obtained a partial redress of
grievances, but the abatement of these grievances was
advocated, not by Irishmen alone, but by many of the
first statesmen, and by a large proportion of the
people of England.ls there one Englishman or Scotch-
man that advocates repeal ? We can make allowances,
for Mr. O'CONNELL. His cry for repeal was only the
effect of despair. He had tried every legitimate
means in Parliament to raise his country to the level
of Great Britain ; he had made motion upon motion,
and sometimes succeeded in the Commons, but in the
Lords his applications were invariably rejected with
insult. • The Tories came .intolpower, Orangemen

were selected to rule over Catholics, every place of '
trust, of emolument, and honour, was given to the
enemies of seven millions of people, and he then broke
through the rules of prudence, and, as the last hope,
demanded repeal. Had he taken any other subject;
had he taken the gorgeous Church, with 600,000
Protestants, or the poor Catholic Church, the only
guardian, friend, and protector of the native popula-
tion, without a penny of tithes or public money, yet
administering consolation, and performing every
' religious rite and ceremony to a population more
than ten times as numerous, the case would have
been different. But these are only a few of the
real grievances of Ireland, and had Mr. O'CONNELL
chosen any one of them, or of twenty others that he
could have easily discovered, he would have found
support both from Saxons and Celts. He has lost a
fine game. In a fortnight we believe he will be set
at liberty, and we trust he will then pursue a course
in which all the friends of independence and the
integrity of the empire can join with him.

We can find nothing in the intelligence from Mo-
rocco which has any tendency to modify the suspi-
cious complexion attaching to the proceedings of the
French in that territory. But the general tenor of
all the advices which have yet reached Paris or
London from the scene of action is well calculated to
confirm the gravest apprehensions we have from time
to time intimated of the duplicity that has suggested,
that conducts, and that will attempt to vindicate, these
hostile operations of the fleet and army of France.
As events evolve themselves, we shall become sensible
to all the extent of Sir ROBERT PEEL'S credulity, and
the moral effect of Lord ABERDEEN'S unmeasured
compliances with the craftily-insinuated wishes of the
French Cabinet. The Earl of MINTo has read his
memorable lesson to our own Government on the
enormous disproportion of our naval force to the exi-
gencies of the present juncture just in time to prelude
the bombardment of the walls of Tangiers by a head-
strong young gentleman, of whose good faith and
honourable dispositions towards this country her
MAJESTY'S Government have not hesitated, up to this
moment, to profess their intimate conviction. 'What-
ever was wanting at the time to give effect to our
ci-deviint head of the Admiralty's masterly expose of
the condition of our navy, has been since contributed
by the evidence of significant facts. Among the
vessels of many European nations which witnessed
this holiday display of French aggression, as neutral
sirctators, was one English ship of the line—" the"
Mediterranean "Fleet," probably, to which Lord
MINTO so happily alluded the other day. Flushed
with a pardonable vanity, and in the dangerous ex-
citement of a somewhat equivocal success in his debiit
as a bombardier, the young French Prince, according
to the Spanish papers, is determined to give a series
of these impressive demonstrations, to which the
affair of Tangiers is to serve only as an introduction
—and our flag, we presume, is to have the honour of
giving additional "eclat."
" Tangiers has been bombarded," says the Heraldo,
" and the Prince DE JOINVILLE is preparing to attack
Mogadore and the other forts on the coast of Mo-
rocco lf, ere the Prince again sailed from
Cadiz, he did not receive satisfactory intelligence, he
would proceed to bombard Mogadore, Sallee, and La-
rache, but without effecting a landing or taking pos-
session of any point on the coast." This nautical
Prince is coming out formidably indeed ; and our own
relations with the African ally, whose disgraces and
humiliation we witness in a single man-of-war, as if
we were attending the French Prince as part of his
squadron of honour, must be allowed to be most in-
telligible and edifying. What can it all mean ?
There are two or three preliminary actions in this
strange embroilment which have never been publicly
stated or recognised. In the first place the account
of the grievous injury or insult offered by the Moorish
authorities to the authority and flag of France have
been proclaimed only in such vague and declamatory
terms as leave anything and everything to surmise—
little or nothing sufficiently tangible for discussion.
In the second (as we observe some of the French
journals themselves complain), what the nature of the
ultimatum addressed by the Prince to the Emperor on
the part of France really is, has never yet transpired.
Not even the heads of it have been made known ; and
at this moment the French public are as profoundly
ignorant whether the rejection of the terms which it
may have comprised afford a sufficient justification for
the hostilities which their officers have precipitated, as
we are. Then as to the " brilliant affair" of Tangiers,
of which they speak with so much unction, it would
appear to have been a display involving somewhat less
of personal exposure or peril to the blockading force
than a military sham-fight on a great scale, if we
may judge by the relative casualties generally re-
corded of such exhibitions and of this bombardment.
The largest number reported by the French accounts
of killed and wounded, together, on their part, is but
twenty-five ; the lowest—(and this is given on very
respectable and disinterested authority)—announces
that the destruction of two boys of their fleet was the
whole extent of the French loss.

Leaving this bombardment of Tangiers to make all
the noise it will do, we recur to the conduct of our
Ministers, with respect to the general policy adopted
by the French Government, in their dealings with
Morocco, as a very much more important topic.
When Sir ROBERT PEEL was appealed to, at the close
of the session, he declined any statement of the
views or opinions of her MAJESTY'S Government on
the subject. He treated the questions put to him as
if they were urged in the worst possible taste—were
inopportune, and even offensive. He talked as gin-
gerly of the conduct and objects of France in the
matter as if we had not the shadow of a reason for
impugning, or even suspecting them. In short, both
Sir ROBERT PEEL and Lord ABERDEEN seem still
afflicted with the same fatuity as they, when members
of a former Government, and their successors in
office assuredly were, on the military seizure and
territorial occupation of Algeria. Even the Duke of
WELLINGTON could assign no better vindication for
his political friends and colleagues, who had allowed
themselves to be entrapped into a belief of the assur-
ances of the POLIGNAC Administration that France
would not occupy, than to predict that Algeria would
prove the grave of many French armies if the design
of occupation were once carried out. It was early
in July, 1830, that Algiers surrendered to Marshal
BOURMONT. It was during the close of that session
of our Parliament, and again in the commencement
of the next,- that these abrogations of the French
Cabinet were formally announced by her MAJESTY'S
Cabinet Ministers ; and it was in May, 1834, that the
French Ministers informed the two Chambers that
the French Monarch meant to occupy and retain
permanent possession of these African dominions.
In vain had it, meanwhile, been represented to
our Government by many intelligent and leading
Members of the Houses of Peers and Commons, that
we were suffering France to lay stealthily the
foundations of a Mediterranean influence and force,
which in a few years even our possession of Gibraltar
and of Malta would not countervail. These remon-
strances were entertained with as much apathy and
coldness in 1830 and 1834, as their renewal was
greeted with three weeks ago by Sir ROBERT. His
short speech, on this last occasion, was so inane and
unmeaning, that it is to be hoped he will, in the re-
cess, read up (as is his wont, touching subjects for
the abrupt agitation of which he is not prepared) a
little information on the geographical and political
bearings in which the progress of French "acquisi-
tiveness" on the African shores of the Mediterra-
nean, assumes really some sort of importance.
He may find, too, that it would have been an object
of no little moment for the possessors of Gibraltar to
have made some effort to secure the protection of even
so inconsiderable a town as Tangiers, seeing that from
it, as well as from Tetuan and Larache, we derive
large supplies of bullocks, grain, and other indispen-
sable provision stores. There are such things, too, as
extensive British commercial interests to be secured
against the threatened annihilation of Mogadore—if
larger political considerations cannot move the very
comprehensive mind and independent spirit of our
Premier. As far as we can judge at present, we are
compelled to say that the course which Louis Pm-
turn has adopted in this instance cannot be regarded
by honest men without the severest reprobation. Both
his French MAJESTY and M. GUIZOT, his Minister,
with the largest professions of a love of peace upon
their lips, and the most philosophical appreciation, in
theory, of its infinite blessings, are really playing a
double game, and fomenting and aiding the war-
craving of the reckless masses of the French people.
It is at all times at once a violation of the received
maxims of State policy adopted by every Cabinet in