The Sun.
London, England, 1844-05-21 00:00:00

Paffrid 1 . *nit

LONDON, TUESDAY, MAY 21, 1844.

In answer to a question from the Marquis of LON-
DONDERRY, the Earl Of HADDINGTON said the Go-
vernment had altered their determination, expressed
last session, and intended to take a vote for improv-
ing still further the harbours of Port Patrick and
Donaghadee.
The Marquis of CLANRICARDE gave notice that
he would this day move that the Chester and Holy-
head Railway Bill be referred to a Select Committee.
Lord WIIARNCLIFYE moved the second reading of
the Factories' Bill, and briefly stated the principal
clauses ; Lord NORMANDY entered his protest against
the Bill ; and, after a few remarks from Lord
33BouGium, the Earl of WINCIIILSEA, and some other
Lords, it was read a second time and ordered to be
committed on the 31st inst.
_ _ _

In the Commons a new writ wai moved for the
borough of Buckingham, in consequence of Sir
THOMAS FREMANTLE having been appointed Secre-
tary at War.
The third reading of the Sheffield, Ashton-under-

Lyne, and Manchester Railway Bill was postponed
for a fortnight, in order to make an inquiry into an
arbitration clause introduced into the Bill.
The third reading of the Ashton and Staleybridge
Railway Bill was also postponed for a fortnight.
On the motion of Mr. GLADSTONE, the Standing
Order No. 33 was ordered to be rescinded. It had
an important bearing on railway transactions, and
was at variance with resolutions adopted by the
House of Lords relative to deposits on shares. These
resolutions had been carefully considered by the
Lords, and he thought entitled to the serious attention
of the House.
Sir R. PEEL said the carrying of the motion would
materially facilitate the construction of the Dublin and
Cashel Railway, and he hoped before the close of
the session that the Royal assent would be given to a
Bill for that purpose.
Mr. Husia wished to know if the Right Hon.
Baronet would have any objection to lay before the
House the correspondence which had taken place
between England and Texas relative to putting down
slavery in that district ? Sir R. PEEL said the Go-
vernment was not disposed to follow the example of
another Government, and he must refuse the appli-
cation.
The House went into Committee on the Bank
Charter, when Sir ROBERT PEEL, at considerable
length, entered into the currency question, and gave
some farther explanations of the main points con-
tained in the resolutions he proposed on moving a
renewal of the Charter. The measure, he said,
evinced a liberal treatment of existing interests, and
he trusted would tend to prevent those shocks upon
the commerce and agriculture of the country, which
had often proved so ruinous. Mr. CHARLES WOOD
expressed his approbation of the Bill generally. By
the Act passed in 1819, a return was made to a
metallic currency, and he hoped it would continue-.
None of the metals was so unchangeable as gold, and
that was one reason why he preferred that standard to
any other. The system of free trade in banking was
dangerous to any State ; it had produced the most
calamitous disasters in the United States ; and the
almost unlimited circulation of paper in this country,
too, had brought monetary affairs to such a state in
1839 that the Bank of England was compelled to
apply for foreign credit.
Some other members afterwards addressed the Com-
mittee, and the resolutions were agreed to.
The consideration of the report on the Customs,
Duties Bill was postponed till this day ; and after the
,ransaction of some other business the House Ad-
ourned at Half-past One o'Clock.

All the fire-eaters of France seem to have taken
great alarm at the plain and honest statements made
by the sailor-son of Lours PHILIPPE. They have
not, however, surprised the rational and thinking men
of France. They have not surprised the merchant
seamen, nor the builders of steam-vessels, nor those
who forge engines for the French steam navy. These
men know the vast resources of this country for any
maritime purpose, " whether with sails, or paddle-
wheels, or Archlmedean screws. They know also
that English sailors, and English engineers, and
English admirals, too, are a subborn and persevering
race, and that if they were by some mischance to
sustain one defeat, the country would only be roused
to more activity, and never rest satisfied till the dis-
grace of a naval defeat was wiped away, and
England asserted, as she has done for no
small number of years, the supremacy of the
seas. The Prince DE JOINVILLE admits the
fact. " I will suppose," says he, " that
which is unexampled I admit—that twenty ships and
fifteen thousand English sailors are brought prisoners
into Toulon by our victorious squadron. Will they be
the more decisive ? Shall we have vanquished an
enemy who suffers himself to be crushed by a first
blow, to whom resources are wanting to retrieve a
defeat, and who, when an outrage is to be avenged,
is accustomed to reckon his sacrifices ? To all
such as know the English people, it is evident
that, in such circumstances, they will see them
animated with an immense desire of avenging a
reverse unknown in their annals—a reverse affecting
their very existence. All the naval resources of
that immense empire, its numerous personnel, its
physical riches, will be united to efface the stain cast
upon the honour of the British navy. In a month,
one, two, three, squadrons, as powerfully equipped
as the one we have captured, will appear before our
ports. What shall we have to oppose to them ? No-
thing but wrecks." And what would follow ? The
remaining French sailors would enlist on board pri-
vateers, and try the more profitable trade of capturing
stray vessels, and gaining a temporary livelihood as
marauders in creeks and channels. The French
fleets, as in former times, would be locked up in their
harbours, and all the commercial advantages which
France now enjoys, and which has increased her re-
venue to an unusual extent, would, in a few months,
be annihilated. For, be it remembered, that even if
sailing squadrons were'to get out of fashion, if one-half
of our numerous and hardy sailors were laid on the
shelf, and if the contest were to be decided by steam,
England has still a greater superiority in that respect
than she even had in the days of JERVIS and NELSON.
We have an abundance of iron and coal and every
material for the construction of steam-vessels; we
have—and the fact is admitted on all hands—the best
mechanics for forging engines, and the best engineers
for managing them ; nay, what is more, we have at
present a larger sea steam navy than all the world
together. Has any other nation but England tried
the experiment ? We have brought steam into prac-
tical use both in war and peace. We have steamers,
fit for every purpose of war, traversing the Atlantic
Ocean, the seas around the countless British islands
in the west, and at the same time keeping at bay the
vast population of China, and the whole of the Asiatic
continent. England gave a striking proof of her
skill in this new engine of war when the British
navy swept the Syrian coast like a hurricane, and a
handful of men penetrated into the heart of the Chi-
nese empire. Has any other nation yet tried war
on the new system? We do not put forth these
facts as matters of boast. We state the simple truth;
no one can refute it, and even the bitter enemies of
England, the writers in the Paris National, who vaunt
so much the power of the French navy, losing confi-
dence in their own resource, look for aid to the Ame-
ricans. The Prince BE JOINVILLE, who may lose some
popularity by his candour, thus admits the fact—
"lt has cost me much, in the course of this brief
article, to subject my country to a painful comparison
with a country which precedes it at so great a dis-
tance in the knowledge of its interests ; it has cost
me much to disclose the secret of our weakness as
contrasted with British power. But I should deem
myself happy if I could, by this sincere avowal of
these melancholy truths, dispel the illusion which so
many sensible persons entertain as to the real state o
the naval forces of France."

Our readers may perhaps remember that some five
or six years ago, Sir ROBERT PEEL being in want of
a clap-trap for the house of Commons—a want, by
the bye, which he seldom experiences—and anxious
to show Parliament and the public low great was
the political influence which he had exercised, even
though " withering in the cold shade" of Opposition
—to use Colonel NAPIER'S expressive phrase—since
the period of the Reform Bill ;—the Premier, we say,
panting for an opportunity to show off, suddenly took
it into his head one night to boast of the great and
increasing Conservative party which he had built up,
amid a world of difficulties, out of the wreck of
Toryism. No man sounds the trumpet of self-
laudation with so much skill and apparent bashful-
ness as Sir ROBERT PEEL, and accordingly, on the
occasion to which we refer, he was listened to
with marked deference, and the most im-
plicit reliance
was placed on his statement.
He had found
the party in question, he told the
House, depressed—diminished —divided—and scat-
tered to the four winds of Heaven ; there was not one
single bond of union remaining among them ; they
were filled with regrets for the past, and with doubts
of the future ; they acknowledged no direct chief;
they proposed no great aim or object, but drifted'
about, like some shattered vessel without a pilot, at
the mercy of the winds and waves. But he—the
Premier—took this weakened and discomfited party
under his own special care, and from that auspicious
moment all was changed.: Having got them duly
baptised as "Conservatives," the Quarterly Review
officiating at the political font, he next proceeded to
infuse courage and :confidence into them by his
own example ; and having succeeded with much
trouble in rallying and uniting theul under

his own banner, he led them forth to battle
against the Whigs, and, after a long struggle, suc-
ceeded in displacing them. There was much truth
in this statement of Sir ROBERT PEEL, though it was
not true to the extent he would have the world be-
lieve. He certainly did succeed in rallying the scat-
tered Conservatives, and increasing both their nu-
merical and political strength; he certainly did build
up a powerful party out of the mutilated fragments—
the " disjecta membra"—of Toryism ; but this was
owing infinitely more to circumstances than to the
force and influence of his own individual character.
He was not elected by the Conservatives as their chief,
of their own free will—from their own strong, innate
conviction of his intellectual and moral fitness for the
post; but he was elected by them as a matter of neces-
sity—because, in fact, they could not help themselves.
It was Honson's choice with them. They must
either place themselves under the guidance of Sir
ROBERT PEEL, or else consent to be wholly extin-
guished as a political authority. This, of course, was
not to be thought of, and accordingly ith apparent
good will, but much real reluctance, the surrendered
up what little conscience they had left, uncondition-
ally, into the Premier's keeping. From that day to
the present they have not dared to uphold one
single principle but such as he approved of.
Wherever he has led—no matter what might be the
direction—there they have followed. He has dragged
them through the dirt without the slightest ceremony
—indeed he even seems to take a malicious pleasure
in covering them with shame and confusion ; he has
made them recant their most cherished doctrines ;
falsify their most sacred pledges ; think only as he
thinks; and act only as he acts. He is the substance
and they are the shadow They have no life but in
him. From a party of desperate but honest and con-
sistent bigots he has converted them into a party of
mere expediency-mongers, who, lost to prin-
ciple and character, are ready to take any
colour, and adopt any change that may suit the
caprice of the times, or the interests of the Premier.
Oh, what a fall—what a degradation for the once
proud, consistent, dominant, Tory fraternity ! Are
these cringing, cowardly, Conservative slaves, who,
like spaniels fawn upon the very hand that lashes
them, the same men who for so many years swayed
the destinies of England just according to their own
sovereign will and pleasure ? In their present cha-
racter we can scarcely recognise a single trait that
belonged to the Tories ; and still less can we recog-
nise in them a trace of what they once were, when we
find them acting without a murmur as the ready, sup-
ple tools of a man whom at heart they distrust and
hate, as much as they fear him—a man who first helped
to break up their unity and weaken their strength;
and then, when he had rendered them sufficiently de-
fenceless and tractable for his purpose, made them
the veriest slaves of his will, heaped upon them shame
upon shame, humiliation on humiliation, and finally
succeeded in stamping on their pliant, ductile nature,
the ineffaceable impress of his own individual
will. By their pitiful conduct on the Factories
Bill, the Conservatives have for ever sunk themselves
in the estimation of the country. This is the " damn-
ing spot " on their fame, which no after-penitence
will ever wipe away. Justly—most justly observes
the Times of this morning, in reference to their un-
blushing tergiversation on this question, " it is re-
solved by all Englishmen, nem. con., that the Con-
servatives have betrayed the people, and utterly done
for themselves. Their most devoted friends are
speechless. Their ordinary adherents and allies
give way to angry or sorrowful reclamations. Their
foes are derisive. Some of the deepest and most
bitter, having cautiously compressed the lip of scorn
till the deed was done, and even helped to seduce the
Conservatives to their doom, now break out into every
species of contumely, at the unquestionable motives
of their conduct." It is a sad—a humiliating thing
for England, that she should be governed by the
votes of such an abject, sycophantic, PEEL-ridden
party., But we have confidence in the old French
proverb—" Le bon temps viendra !"

Madrid papers of the 10th and 11th inst. have been
received, but as usual they are very barren of intelli-

gence. The QUEEN and the rest of the Royal
Family on the 20th were to set out for Barcelona, on
her way to the baths of Caldas, where she would re-
main for a. considerable part of the summer. The
Cortes of course would not be convoked till her re-
turn. Great preparations were made at Barcelona for
her reception. " This morning," says a Barcelona
paper of the 12th, " an extraordinary courier arrived
from Madrid, when the news immediately spread that
their Majesties will arrive in this capital at the end
of the month. We learn that the City of Madrid
steamer has been ordered to Valencia, where two
other steamers are to be on the 19th. 'We daily ex-
pect in this port two English line-of-battle ships and
a frigate, as well as some French ships of war."

On the 10th Queen CHRISTINA reviewed the regi-
ment of which she is Colonel, and conferred several
orders on both soldiers and officers.
The Funds have fallen still lower. On the 11th
the Three per Cents. were done at 27/ for cash, and
274 at 60 days ; the Five per Cents. at 21 at 60
days, with premium.

The pamphlet of the Prince DE JOINTILLE, on the
state of the French navy, has caused much excite-
ment in Paris, and furnishes subjects of remark in
nearly all the papers. Some of them had published
it at length. According to the Constitutionnel, it has
created in the political world, and particularly
amongst the officers of the French navy, the utmost
sensation; and the Journal des Debats says it will
raise very grave questions in the forthcoming discus-
sions on the navy estimates. It is believed that a
considerable increase of the estimates for the navy
will be proposed by the Minister of Marine. A sup-
plementary vote of credit is also required for Algiers.
It will be seen from the following extract, taken from
the Moniteur Algerine, that the Duke D'AumALE is
carrying on operations in that country with consider-
able activity : _ _

• " The last :accounts of the military operations of his Royal
Highness the Duke d'Aumale are of the 3d inst. The Prince
having learned that a great meeting was taking place in
the Aures, with a view to an attack upon our camp, and the
Ouled-Sultan tribe having disappeared, his Royal highnessproceeded with great rapidity towards that point with all his
cavalry. This rapid march produced the desired effect, for
the tribes dispersed, and most of them are said to be desirous
of treating for their submission. In an engagement which
took place on the 24th ult., with the Kabailes, the thick fog,
that prevailed having caused a panic amongst the goum, who
marched at the flank of the column, the Kabailo cavalry
throwing themselves upon the Arab convoy, caused some dis-
order, but they were repulsed with considerable loss. On
our side we have to regret the loss of twenty-one killed,
amongst whom was one officer, the brave commandant
Gaines."

It is stated, says the National, that the Deputies
of all shades of opinion in the Chamber have decided
that the proposition made last year by M. DE
LAROCIIEJACQUELIN, that no members interested in
any line of railroad, either as shareholders or as
directors, shall take any part in the votes of the dif-
ferent lines to be granted, is to be again brought for-
ward in a few days, and that all Deputies having any
personal interest in railroads will be invited to sign a
declaration to this effect.

The Funds remained firm. On the 17th the Three
per Cents. closed at 84f. 60c., and the Fives at 122 f.
30c.

THE BOURSE--FniDAY, MAY 17.

First Highest Lowest Last
Price. Price. Price. Price.
French Five per Cents 122 15 .. 122 16 .. 122 10 .• 122 10
Three per Cents....• 84 GO .. 84 60 .. 84 45 84 46
Bank of France.• .• • • • • • .• • 3115 ..3115 .•3110 ..3110
Lailitte Bank, I,ooof. Sharesll67 50 —1167 50 • • 1167 50 —1167 50
5,000 f. Sharessl62 50 —5162 50 • • 5162 50 ..5162 50
Belgian Bank..• • • • • • ..
Belgian Fives, 1840 .• •. •• •
1842 •••• • • • • 108/ • • 1081 • • 1081 1081
Spanish Passive 6i . • 61 • • 6 • • 6
Threes •••••• • • • • • • 36 • • 36/ • • 36 • • 36f
Portuguese Five per Ccnts.• 461 • . 461 • • 461 • • 461
Neapolitan..... ••••• • • • • • 102 25 .. 102 40 • • 102 25 102 40
Boman, ex div. 104 .• 1041 .. 104 .. 1041

RAILWAY SHARES.
Versailles,R.B.....•••• •••• 377 50 .. 377 50 •• 377 50 .. 377 50
L.B.•••••• ....•• 257 50 .. 257 50 .. 247 50 •. 247 50
Rouen ..................•• 991 25 ..1000 .. 990 ..1000
Rouen to Havre.

Orleans..•

Strasburg to Bale
Avignon to Marseilles.. 762 50 .. 765 . 762 50 .. 765
RAILWAY SHARES, FOR THE ACCOUNT.

Veriales,R.B.• • ...• •• • • 375 .. 375 .. 375 .. 375
L. 8.• ••• • • ••• • • • 257 50 • • 257 60 .. 247 50 .. 247 60
Rouen • • .• • • • • • • 950 •.1000 .. 990 . 1000

Rouen to Hone . 750

• . 755

.. 750

.. 75

Orleans ..•.

.. 998 75 ..101i

Strasburg to Bale ...... • ... 275
Avignon to Marseilles. • • • .. 760

- 275
•• 765

.. 268 75 .. 271 25
.. 760 .. 765

MINISTERIAL ARRANGEMENTS.

Lord Talbot is to have the Garter vacant by the
death of the late Earl of Lonsdale.
Lord Granville Somerset has a seat in the Cabinet,
retaining his present appointment of Chancellor of the
Duchy of Lancaster.
Sir Thomas Fremantle succeeds Sir Henry Har-
dinge as Secretary at War, without A seat in the
Cabinet.
John Young, Esq., M.P. for the county of Cavan,
and one of the Lords of the Treasury, succeeds Sir
Thomas Fremantle as Secretary to the Treasury.—
Herald of yesterday.