The Sun.
London, England, 1844-08-05 00:00:00

ebirlY Ebttion

SUN OFFICE, Seven o' Clock.

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF THIS DAY.
GLOBE.—The conduct of the Admiralty in the case
of Lieutenant Gray, tried last week by a Court-martial,
at the instance of the French Government, for boarding
and searching a French slaver, without an Admiralty
warrant for that purpose. has induced considerable sur-
prise, mingled with disapprobation, throughout both
branches of the service. The nature of the charges
which Lieutenant Gray was called upon to answer ; the
evidence adduced in their support ; and the decision of
the Court upon the case—have also been freely can-
vassed in all circles. The general opinion is, that the
proceedings taken against Lieutenant Gray are calcu-
lated to embarrass our officers when employed on
such service as that on which that gallant officer
was engaged at the time when the alleged disobe-
dience of orders was committed. Nor does the Bri-
tish Government appear, by its conduct in the trans-
action, to have sustained the honour and indepen-
dence of the British flag. A truckling to French dic-
tation—a disposition to gratify the incendiary ravings
of the anti-British faction, which is endeavouring to
rouse public feeling in France into a cry for a war with
England—is recognised in this surrender of a British
officer for trial, on such charges as those which were
preferred against Lieutenant Gray. The extraordinary
kind of evidence which was admitted by the Court in
support of the charge against the prisoner, and the judg-
ment—apparently unsupported by the evidence—have also
contributed to excite sympathy for Lieut. Gray, and to
fasten a large portion of condemnation on the Admiralty,
and on Lord Aberdeen, as Foreign Secretary. The first
charge upon which Lieutenant Gray was put upon his
trial was —" For disobedience of orders on the coast of
Africa, on the 4th of July, 1842, in causing the French
vessel Luiz d'Albuquerque to be detained and searched,
she having at the time displayed her proper colours, indi-
cating the nation to which she belonged, and no sufficient
cause having existed for suspecting such colours to be
false." The evidence proved that Lieut. Gray received
special orders to watch for a slaver, the description of
which was furnished to him for his guidance. A
vessel (the Luiz d'Albuquerque) strongly resembling
that alluded to in his orders, hove in sight. He gave
chase. She hoisted French colours. He came up with
her—boarded her ; and, to ascertain her true character,
overhauled her papers. The evidence before the Court-
martial fully showed that there were passengers on
board whose names were not iaserted in the ship's papers.
A further examination of the vessel exhibited food, such
as is invariably used for the sustenance of slaves on their
transit, and scarcely ever used for any other purpose.
The searchers also discovered manacles for fastening the
slaves to each other, and to the deck—the vessel had a
slave-deck; and in other respects showed the kind of
service in which she was engaged. But she hoisted
French colours! And the boarding and searching of
the Luiz d'Albuquerque was, therefore, lan affront to the
French nation—an insult to the French flag! Do not
Brazilian slavers sometimes hoist French colours and
American colours, for the manifest purpose of inducing a
belief that they are protected by those flags in
the vile traffic they are engaged in ? Once on
board, the only mode of satisfying the officer
as to what she was, and to whom she belonged,
was to inspect the vessel, and examine her papers.
Everything on board tended to confirm the belief that the
Albuquerque was a slaver. That she was really a French
vessel could only be ascertained by the search he insti-
tuted. The papers produced, in order to induce a belief
that she was French, were manifestly fabricated. " The
log was written on sheets of raper apparently done that
morning "—[the chase lsssted twenty-four hours.]. Capt.
Foote, who commaried on the station to which Lieut.
Gray belonged, and who was examined on the Court-
martial, was asked by Lieutenant Gray :—" Would
you have been satisfied with my conduct if
I had not examined the papers of the Luiz d'Albu-
querque under the circumstances ?" We beg special
attention to the answer of Captain Foote :—" If I had
received information that Lieutenant Gray had seen a
vessel which hoisted French colours, and had not ascer-
tained her nationality, I should have been very highly
displeased ; because I consider that the mere display of
a French flag may be done by the most arrant Brazilian
and Portuguese slaver, to avoid capture ; and it is very
frequently done on the west coast of Africa,
both with the French and American flags."
Evidence was also given by British officers who
had been engaged in the same service, that it was the
practice, of British commanders to board ves-
sels suspected to be slavers, in order to as-
certain their nationality. In the teeth of evidence such
as that we have epitomized, and notwithstanding the ab-
solutely exculpatory evidence of Captain Foote, the
Court-martial found. that "the first charge was proved !"
On the two others they acquitted the prisoner; and :they
sentenced him to be reprimanded, and enjoined him to be
"' more cautious in future !" To be sure they had one
description of testimony to which we have not speci-
fically alluded—strong enough against the accused, in
all conscience ; but not exactly the kind of evidence
which courts of law,: whether military or civil, have
been in the habit of receiving. The Court-martial
which tried and convicted Lieut. Gray, and sentenced
him to be reprimanded, actually received as evidence a
leading article of La Presse, a French newspaper; which
embodied a statement of Capt. Belle, the master of the
Luiz d'Albuquerque. This statement—which, it must
be admitted, emanated from a source of all others the
most likely to be prejudiced, and was furnished by the
individual most interested in giving an exaggerated, if
not absolutely false, account of the transaction—was
actually put in by the Admiralty, as a part of the proof
in support of a charge against a British officer ; and it
was admitted as evidence by the Court! The statement
contained in the French paper is false upon the face
of it. It is declared to be so by the untainted declara-
tion of the gallant officer whose conduct was the sub-
ject of inquiry. It is worth nothing—except indeed that
it affords another proof of the length to which the war
faction in Paris will proceed, in endeavouring to foment
a hostile feeling between the two countries ; and of the
pusillanimity of Lord Aberdeen. In this, as in the
Otaheite affair, a show of resistance made by him to the
claims, or even a disregard of the clamours, of the war
party, would have intimated, in a way that would have
been understood, that however much their bullyings
might work upon the fears of their own government,
they were treated as they deserved by that of England.
STANDARD.—We understand that in consequence
of the remonstrance of our Government, with reference
to the violence offered to the (late) British Consul at
Otaheite, in March last, by the French autho-
rities, a letter has been brought under the no-
tice of the British Ambassador at Paris, written
by Mr. Pritchard upon the ith of November, 1843.
This letter, we have been informed, consists of two
paragraphs, one of which contains his resignation of
the consulship ; the other is a protest, in his own
name, against the deposition of Queen Pomare. We
learn too that Mr. Pritchard, after the cessation of his
consulship, followed up his protest by several acts tend-
ing to inculcate the belief that the Government of Great
Britain would send a flee in aid of the Otaheiteans,
so that upon the appearance of her Majesty's
steam-ship the Cormorant, the greatest excitement
was occasioned from the expectation that she was one
of the coming fleet ; in consequence of this the
captain was invited to withdraw, and Mr. Pritchard,
who was arrested while on his way to the vessel, was
subsequently put en board of her, upon the condition
that he should not be landed on any one of the Society
Islands. We learn further that the dispatch of Captain
Brunt of the 13th of March, describing and justifying
the expulsion of Mr. Pritchard, appeals to the very
different conduct pursued with regard to Mr. Orsmond, the
reverend colleague of Mr. Pritchard, who, if we may
credit Captain Brunt, not only did not join his brother
missionary, but endeavoured to dissuade him from the
course he was pursuing. Upon Mr. Orsmond the highest
•logium is pronounced in this dispatch. Such is the
tenour of the important information we have received.
This new view of the affair will be seen considerably to alter
its character. The original wrong committed by Admiral
Dupetit Thouars, in usurping the absolute sovereignty
of the island, a wrong frankly and handsomely acknow-
ledged by the French Government, and, as far as time
and distance would permit, repaired—this original wrong
remains unaltered, but the consequences flowing from
that wrong may be greatly coloured by circumstances.
It is obvious that if some proportion is not ob-
served between the first provocation and the means
of retaliation resorted to, there can be scarcely
any extravagance of outrage which may not be justified,
or which it will be lawful to punish. Our own quarrel
with China affords an example in point. We were, we
think, clearly the wrong-doers in the first instance, but the
-Chinese retaliated so enormously beyond the just propor-
tion as to leave a heavy balance of injury in our favour,
and we took care to exact it. Now, it is possible to
believe that something of the kind may have arisen
at Otaheite, even without giving credit to all the ex-
aggregations of the Sleek. And passing by this hypo-
-thesis of disproportional retaliation, we can imagine an-
other, which would relieve the Government of this
country from all responsibility in this matter. After
the complaint of the Queen and the British inhabit-
ants had been remitted in form to Europe, it is
.plain that they were bound to rest there, as far
as regarded their relations with this country.
It was undoubtedly open to them to get rid of the
usurped authority of their oppressors, if they
could, and we should blame neither native Otaheitan nor
naturalised Englishmen for making the attempt, could it
be made with any prospect of success ; but though they
were clearly entitled to vindicate their liberty by them-
-selves, having applied and, as it turned out, applied in
every sense successfully for the mediation of Great
Britain, they had no right to shift their ground, and
call for the support of Great Britain in a civil war
against the de facto government, either organised or
• actually waged without her knowledge or consent. It
is possible that Mr. Pritchard, having formally divested
himself of the character of a British Consul, may have
identified himself with the people among whom he had
so long enjoyed hospitality and kindness ; and, adopting
their feelings, may have gone further than, as a
British subject, he ought to do in hostility to the de
facto, though usurping, government. In this he would
do no more than any honourable, warm-hearted
man might be expected to do, though more, certainly,
than any regular Government of our age could support
him in doing. There seems to be something a
=bus in allowing to a defacto Government, founded no
in
wrong, any rights ; but still experience has shown,
in the manifold evils of private war, that it is,
. on the whole, conducive to the safety and
happiness of the human race to allow to even
a merely de facto Government such a pre-
.sumption of right as shall protect it from being
irregularly attacked by other Governments, and to
prevent other Governments throwing their shield
(mar those who irregularly attack it. We carry

the principle even lower than the case of Govern-
ments ; we carry it down to individuals. Suppose
a ship attacked in the Channel by another bearing,
say the flag of France. The owner of the ship
attacked carries his complaint to Downing-street,
whence it is duly remitted to Paris, and a
just reparation is made. But suppose the owner of the
injured ship "to take," as we say, " the law into his
own hands," and upon the next opportunity to get foul
of his late assailant, and again to get the worst of it,
the British Government would certainly give him
no help in the quarrel now of his own seeking.
If the case of Mr. Pritchard's conduct at Otaheite
has been similar to the case last supposed, we
do not see why it must not be governed by the
same principle ? We do not pretend to say that Mr.
Pritchard has been moving a private war against the de
facto Government at Otaheite; but, if he has been doing
so, much as we may admire his generosity and courage,
we cannot honour his prudence, or give him great credit
for a care for the interests of his native country. We
must say one word, too, for the members of the de
facto Government in the Society Islands. In March
that Government must have believed that they were
exercising legitimately an authority derived from their
Sovereign ; they are, therefore, scarcely to be blamed,
if they vindicated that authority without any unnecessary
violence or cruelty ; and if they found Mr. Pritchard,
who was no longer a consul, exciting a bad feeling
against their government, it was their right, as well as
their duty, to deport him. The original wrong-doer
in such cases is commonly the only wrong-doer,
for they who derive from him a de facto authority which
they are taught to believe also an authority de jure,
must, to the best of their judgment, act upon that au-
thority. We say this much in justice to all parties, for
as to the affair itself, we think it cannot possibly end in
anything serious. Such misunderstandings must be ex-
pected to be constantly arising, but it is only when they
occur between ill-disposed or extremely silly persons,
that there can be any difficulty in accommodating them
satisfactorily.

IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.
(THIS EVENING.)

HOUSE OF LORDS.
Their Lordships met at Five o'Clock.
Several Bills brought up from the Commons were read
a first time.