The Sun.
London, England, 1845-09-20 00:00:00

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LONDON, SATURDAY. SEPTEMBER 20, 1841;

The policy of our Foreign Department is certainly the most
ineiplicable problem—and has been, for some few years past
—which the science- of modern Government presents to our
observation: It is 'perfectly impossible to calculate, before-
hand, the point to which the forbearance of Downing-street
may be esV.ended, or the insignificance and tenuity of the
power -which it will allow with impunity to heap insults upon
our flag and outrages on our fellow subjects. It may be the
.
evidence of a very high strain of generosity, but it is not less
the evidence of a very questionable policy—that in propor-
tion to the insignificance of the quarter from whence these
affronts proceed is the degree of indifferences—we had almost
said of favour—which our Government extends to them.
We are great favourers of the general principle of non-inter-
vention, so long as it can be persevered in without the sacri-
fice of the first duties of states, which, as with individuals,
are identified with those of self-defence and self-vindication.
To carry it to any point beyond that at which it can only
be persisted in through such a sacrifice, is like the
attempt to compel respect by manifesting a dignified
indifference, to the ignominy of a blow. To endure such in-
solence witliout chastising it, on the ground that it is offered
by some mushroom offspring of political excitement,_ in
every sense of the word weak and contemptible, is to act
with that sort of discriminating indulgence which would
prompt a passenger by a railway train, mischievously •over-
set, to decline prosecuting the detected culprit, on his proving
to be only an overgrown boy: We make no scruple to as-
sume a determined—attitude with France, or Russia,
or the United States, whenever their demeanour becomes
menacing. To some wretched machine of 'old and worn,
out government, like that of Spain, some mass of incongruous
factions and opinions, institutions and establishments in the
Old World, only cohering together in virtue of the energy
'sat sustains the conflict of one of its elements with another;
to some ephemeral republic in the New World, which, since
its emancipation from the feeble dominion of an exhausted
monarchy, has passed through every stage and fluctuation of
political change, ever storm of revolution, every degree of
moral guilt, every excess of popular anarchy, every sangui-
nary outrage of a remorseless and irresponsible des- I
potism—we show a contrary bearing—we are all
placability, all forgivene.s. There is no falsehood, however
gross, which we do not accept as an apology for the
offences committed, when we complain of them. There
are no promises, however hollow and without guarantee for
their redemption, to which we do not lend a willing and ready
ear, when they are proffered. But of all the petty states at
whose hands we have thus unaccountably and for years
together tolerated unheard-of indignities, to our flag and to
the lives, and fortunes, and liberty of British subjects, the
miserable federation which is represented by the Government
at Buenos Ayres is at once the most flagitious, cruel, and in-
sufferable. The interests of humanity and civilisation hate
appealed for years past, but in vain, to that British protec-
tion which till our time was scarcely ever withheld under such
exigencies as those in which that appeal has been made.
The measure of those offences is now full. The career of
those crimes is now consummated, and we cannot, and will
not, believe that this country will venture any longer to sus-
pend the infliction of a signal and righteous vengeance op the
ruffian chief, Roses, whom-she has too long permitted with
impunity to perpetrate crimes that are a scandal and disgrace
to our common nature, to our age, to our civilisation.
We need hardly recal to the recollection of our
readers the unheard-6f barbarities perpetrated• by the
troops who, under the command of this execrable chief,
in the course of that war which has associated
his name and the name of Buenos Ayres, in company with
the desolation of the wars of the Uruquay and Argentine
Republic to the latest posterity, with reminiscences of revolt-
ing tortures, of slaughters in cold blood, and destruction
undertaken and persisted in for its own detestable gratifica-
tion. It is unnecessary to dwell upon the infamies com-
mitted on the unfortunate Argentine prisoners, who
were captured during the investment and siege of Monte Video,
or the sport made with the heads and. skulls of the
massacred Monte Videan soldiery; or the sufferings to which
the English residents in that city were, and still are exposed,
together with the enormous losses of property sustained by
them during these long-continued operations against
it. The more recent sufferings of our countrymen
in Buenos • Ayres itself; the avowed hostility of
ROSAS for foreigners of all kinds, but for the English
in particular; the plunder, pillage, and assassination to
which the latter have been long exposed, without one bond fide
effort on the part of Roses to prevent or to punish such enor-
mities; and all the extravagances of his pretensions to mono-
polise for Buenos Ayres the whole trade of the River Plate,
after accomplishing as a preliminary the ruin of Monte
Video (which is so much nearer to its mouth than Buenos
Ayres) ; his refusal to allow the merchant ships
of France and England to discharge their cargoes,
or even to break bulk at Buenos Ayres, on the preposterous
ground of offence assumed " that they bad taken in pilots
at Monte -Video" (and without them they could not hope to
reach Buenos Ayres in safety)—these are matters which
being, as it were, but of yesterday, must be still more
freshly within the public remembrance. But, accustomed as
we have too long been to details of horror, to deeds r,f'sssoa
and violence in all one accounts we receive _from Buenos
Aviarmesitttheedininere:pss:, of murders and assassin:4lons, some of them
cu en day, on the persons of foreign residents,
and too P:oliably of foreign prisoners, also in that city, has
now become absolutely hideous. - The worst and darkest
emxcoaestdfriinghtthfiedirexeesses
oepo'i:jahse oFfreuthech"
rßeeignvolu°ftiotne,rrcloor,"ntehte
being exhibited under the detestable
blood-
guiltiness and atrocity, those which,
auspices
aicessmuafllßerussrs.le,Waree
spfceuatrfchulfanmarirlyttuivfeusineof
murder,publisherdapaed,
aayudopritnnagsaeiagcuomomn
Aperrsoemn,ss,uinpprebrossaindgd,ahyo,
of the details as too
7t-btefdtohdne.saet
wienvert,hseumi mense la e vicinity.
revolt-
ing for our pages. To-day we give insertion to a singularly
interesting document--touching and pathetic by its very
simplicity. and the absence of all effort to be the one or
the other—which has, we fear, but too close a bearing on the
story of the atrocious career of ROSA& We allude to the
account by General O'BRIEN, formerly a distinguished
servant and minister of the Bolivian Republic, of his capti-
vity and sufferings under the direction of Roans, by whom he
was perfidiously kidnapped, although at that time in execu-
tion of an important• mission on behalf of an independent
state. Of the pusillanimous and inconsistent conduct of our own
Minister, the Hon. Mr. MANDEVILLE, we have long since re-
corded an opinion which this paper too
document fatallylumecnotnifitsrmelfs.renTdhere
ample details, however, given
i
farther comment unnecessary. "aTrheedebaysesthbeellaib,'s'ualsatthee
Times
observes, "has been already prepared
1.4 direct
vriliolpatitoinon of ofototurrttrraedaetilvs itwhitthhethAartgsetanttien Republic,

tr... 1 was a
cording to the latest ac,,,vunts the Qu
Madrid journals of the 11,11 itisi. Live been received.
l
atcked, ny banditti about four leagues from that
Letters from Barc:eloba state that the Madriddiligleancceesowma:
'ittoAnc-s.
s
',nett by court-martial. Four men were
sentence
Etita?...vs previous, and that several of them had been
arrested :_
adrrpetoddeaanthd,
and one woman to the galleys for life. On the day after the
trlai three of the mtn wore shot in their native -village. The
fourth was respited in consequence of information which he
gave to the authoritiespersons.
, and which led to the arrest of forty
DESCIIENES The French squadron under Admiral PARSEVAL
celona on the consisting of seven ships of the line, passed -
11th, sailing towards the Balearic Islands.ar
B
No business was,
done on the Madrid Bourse.

We find little in the Paris papeis that
English reader. The Government can interest the
pape t Journal
Debates, has an artrcle on the high
cha.rr, geh e for postage d
oes
f
letters in France, and expresses a coavictio4 that the clueetk,g.