The Sun.
London, England, 1827-06-01 00:00:00

We continue regularly the publication of our
ample and curious Lisbon correspondence.--
What a picture, how monstrous and how true a
picture, has been delineated throughout our last
extracts, and the present, of a people wallow-
ing in the mire of beastly superstition, and tram-
pled under the bloated feet of its vicious and
despicable Ministers! The corsespoiselaice which
we inserted a day or two agb furnished some
illustrations of the degese to which the national
intellect of Portugal nas been perverted—if not
annihilated—b; its habitual subjection to the
priesthood .; and in this day's letter we perceive
a descrilition of the infernal machinery by which
that overthrow of the mind of a whole people
b7ss been from age to age prolonged. Such are
the consequences, such the characteristics, of a
perennial despotism in church and civil govern-
ment, .where each tyrant clings for
support
to
its guilty colleague, force arming her officers to
repress all inde_pentient itctior, and fraud pre-
paring her disciPlea to slisandon the privilege of
thought.—Now let *A man of clear understanding
just meditate for a moment on the obvious
fact, that 'whatever may have been the motives
of Don Pedro for granting a constitutional
Charter to his countrymen--and there is no sha-
cloW of :eason to believe that he acted under any
but the worthiest motives,—the effect of that
Charter must inevitably be, to crush the power of
the priesthood, to show the people that they have
rights which they may venture, without risk of
punishment, or shame, to exercise for their own
advantage,—that there exist against them no
means of coercion or intimidation, lint those
equal laws whose primary end is the protection
of person, liberty, and prepeTty, and of which
restraint or penalty are l'iut the unavoidable and
unwilling agents. Tie Charter is for law and
freedom—for the revival of a people who
once rose to celebrity among the nations
of the earth by manly enterprise and en-
thusiastic courage, froth the base and slavish
ruin into which they had been plunged by
that ;syetem of whose fangs the Charter, if ex-
ecuted, at once releases them ; and into which
same bottomless gulf Of spiritual and civil bond-
'age it is the undisguised endeavour of the old
Queen of Portugal, with her partisans, of Don
Miguel, and of the Spanish House of Bourbon,
to cast the nation again and irrevocably. This,
then, is the real question at issue—the reel prob-
lem to be solved by the councils of Don Pedro.
Shall he, in permitting the Government of the
kingdom to be administered by hands which are
already clinched for its destruction, be a consent-
iiag, or rather a co-oierating party to she subver-
sion of his Charter, t re degradation of bis charac-
ter, and the eventual subjection of Portugal by a
neighbouring despot, -who for his own security
would render her the most helpless and mi-
serable region of the inhabited world ? The mere
statement of the principle, therefore, decides the
policy of Don Pedro. It is affirmed in a post-
script to the letter of our correspondent, that his
Majesty has formed two resolutions-Ist, to come
toEurope himself; and 2d, to compel his brother
to repair to South America. Loud alarms hare
been expressed in some quarters respecting the
consequence orrealizing the first resolution. It
is assumed that Don Pedro's arrival at Lisbon
must be followed by a war with Spain. What ?
Is it a thing of course, that an event which gives
tranquillity and safety to Portugal must give um-
brage to the Court of Madrid ? Is it to be un-
derstood that Etainand will not tolerate the
composure of troubles in a neighbouring king-
dom, or tier relief from the distraction and con-
fusion into which an army of insurgent renaga-
does have thrown her ? If so, it is at least a
useful and seasonable admission. If peace can-
not be preserved with Spain but on the condi-
tion of cherishing a civil war in Portugal, and
endangering every hour the existence of the con-
stitutional Government, then such a peace, we
have have no hesitation in saying, is manifestly
bought too dear. If Ferdinand is to threaten
our ally with war, because her Sovereign, for the
benefit of his kingdom, adopts a measure of in-
ternal policy, which it is the undoubted right
and duty of every man who governs a nation to
execute when the public interest requires it, then
Spain is not urged to war, or restrained from it,
by any consideration of conscience or honour,
but by that of power alone. In that case, there
is no act, ever so innocent or lawful, which Pedro
must not condescend to ask permission for,
from this big whispering apostolical Camarilla.
So the British troops, which were called in to the
defence of Portugal, are to quit the country, for-
sooth, while a Spanish army still remains embodied
o the frontier ! And why ? because an English
Peer—a peerless one he is—had, a few nights ago,
the folly or malignity to declare, in a place which.
shall be nameless, that the continuance of the BO-
tish force at Lisbon gave a " justifiable cause of
war" to Spain and other Powers of Europe ! Such
is the disgraceful rancour of faction, such the unut7
terable baseness of spirit, by which some men can be
moved ! No; we say to Mr. Canning, keep your
troops where they are, until your point be gained,
though -not a moment longer—until there is no dm-
•er of a Bourbon attack upon the dominions of the
ouse of Braganza. That is the substance of the
ent crisis, and nothing else. If Ferdinand seeks
..,
a war with Portugal from frivolous or unjust
-es, then he can neither quarrel with Don
Po for coming, nor with the British forces far
remaining. If he wages battle because Portugal is
free,And his own wretched country in bondage, then
the arrival of Pedro or the continuance of the Bri-
tish troops in Portugal forms no part of the question
at issue : the question in that case, and the only
questicin, is, whether the Charter shall be sacrified
or not, because this Ferdinand desires it ? At the
same time, if the voyage of Don Pedro be con-
demned, on the probability that some violence or
ndiscretion on his part would be likely to afford a
justification (not a mere pretext) of hostilities from
the Court of Madrid, it is enough to say that in
such a case the peril must be his own, since Eng-
land is no abettor of injustice.—Times.
Our journal of yesterday presented the pro-
ceedings in the Mouse of Lords on the second.
reading of the Bill for' the nullification of the
alleged marriage of Gibbon Wakefield with the
child whom lie kidnapped, and carried off to,
Gretna-green. We should think that this
Gretna-green marriage may sicken some of our
Free-thinkers, who will have marriage to be no-
thing but a civil contract. Gibbon's union.
was a civil contract : at least there certainly
was no religion in it. With respect to Wake-
field, a great curiosity was excited by his ap-
pearance before the House of Lords, and with
some reason : Nature does not often produce
such a monster ; society has but rarely cast forth
such a scoundrel into the abodes of guilt. He
tried to taint the innocent whom he had carried
off, by imputing to her sudden love and affection
for him ; and next by intimating that he had
forced upon her the contamination of his person,
though he had previously stated that he had treated
her as a sister. The term daughter would have
been more appropriate to their respective ages. He
pretended he had not his witnesses ready, though
he had nothing to prove.—. Mid.