The Sun.
London, England, 1842-06-29 00:00:00

puni.xc OPINION.

We take the following from the Chronicle:—" Scarcely a
debate passes in which Sir Robert Peel does not receive some
castigation or reproach from his friends, for having betrayed
or deceived their expectations. Sir Richard Vyvian has just
denounced him to the whole Tory party for having deceived
them upon all points; and on Friday night, during the debate
on the Poor-laws, the lash was laid on him by the dirty but
sturdy hands of Mr. Ferrand, who accused him point blank of
having made use of the Anti-Poor-law cry to come into power,
and then of throwing it aside, with his other declarations, whets
it had served his purpose. Sir Robert winced, and then
retaliated, by throwing back in Mr. Ferrand's face
the filth of his misconduct in the Keighiley Union,
where this noisy friend of the poor has, under
his own eye, and in his office as Chairman of the
Board of Guardians, allowed the poor to be treatea as no gentle-
man would suffer his bailiff to treat his pigs. :sir Robert Peel
not only accused him, but proved by the Report of Sir John
Walsham, that he had suffered the poor in this Union to be
crammed into holes, rather than rooms, so thickly, +hat they
were barely a foot asunder; that they were huddled hick cri-
minately together—n.en, womee-,-and children, married and un-
married, two and three in a bed, the sick, the healthy, the just
delivered women, the dying and the dead ; and that for their
education there was provided the establishment of an old
woman on a dung-hill in the yard. But these are the philan-
thropies of Mr. Ferratid, whom the '1 ones beg..n their Ses-
sion by crying up, but whom Sir Robert Peel now llantly tells
he would do better by performing his duty as a Peor-law
Guardian, in protecting the miserably oppressed poor of
his 'own particular union,than by making declamations (which
Judas of old did) in favour of the poor in gmersl."
The Herald says, speaking of the traitor Francis, now lying
under sentence of death—" Each succeeding post delivery
brings us a pile of letters on the subject of the execution of
the traitor Francis, now under sentence of death ; in none is
the' extreme penalty of the law advocated. There seems, in-
deed, to be an almost universal expectation entertained that the
life of the treasonable ruffian will be spared ; and that for the
remainder of his days he will be subject to some such exem-
plary punishment as will effectually deter others from the com-
mittal of the brutal offence of which he his been convicted. It
is because we fully participate in this anticipation that we have
hitherto preserved silence on the subject; and in perfect con-
fidence that no legal strangling of the convict will take place
to demoralise the public mind, we refrain from reiterating
those general arguments against the punishment of death, the
soundness of which we have still no reason to doubt, however
disinclined the Legislature may be to edopt them as the basis
of the entire abolition of hanging."
The Times has the following remarks on the foreign policy
of Lord Palmerston :—" We have learned from the sluggish
character of the war in China, that the operations in which
we are there engaged are no curious or easy exploit of arms,
but a struggle of extraordinary difficulty, from the total dis-
similarity of the combatants, and the distance which divides
them from each other. The horrible catastrophe of the army
in Affghanistan has given the stamp of reality to the fore-
bodings of those who were best fitted to judge of the probable
issue of that campaign. The course of events in the Levant
and in Europe is gradually corroborating the opinions we
have frequently expressed as to the policy and effects of the
treaty of July, 1840. But the question we would ask is,
whether it is necessary to wait for a wholesale massacre or
a general war to enable the Parliament of this country to
call the authors of these events to an account? The present
Government are indeed compelled, from a proper regard to the
public weal, to throw a veil over the errors which it is their
arduous task to correct ; but we trust they will not allow
themselves, from a mistaken tenderness to their political anta-
gonists, to withhold those investigations into the policy of their
predecessors which the character of the public service peremp-
torily requires. It may be asserted, without the slightest
exaggeration, that the policy of Lord Palmerston, espe-
cially during the last three years, at a period which he and his
colleagues still designate as a time of peace, has cost the coun-
try twenty millions of money, and caused the destruction of at
least 50,000 human beings. The finances of India reduced to
great extremity, the finances of England encumbered, a vast
armament maintained in the Mediterranean, and a still greater
armament required in Asia, show at what cost the power and
resources of this country have been misapplied. Bat the evils
which have arisen in the course of these operations are incon-
siderable when compared with the future evils attending their
fulfilment. For the sake of the treaty of July, 1840, we have
all iwed a state of bad feeling to spring up be. ween this cone-
try and France, which must, there is too much reason to fear,
lead in the end to a frightful explosion. Having combined
with the three other Powers to relieve Syria from the oppres-
sion of Mehemet Ali, we have, in fact, been accessory to the
removal of the Christian Princes of Lebanon, who had
hitherto governed the mountain, and we have virtually con-
signed the Christian subjects of the Porte in Syria t• a
state of anarchy which can only be terminated by the triumph
of the most merciless Mussulman despotism. It is clear
that no European Power will assist the Divan in maintaining
by force the odious system and the obnoxious Ministers who
have been re-instated in Syria. Turkey herself, even with
the help of Albanian sol.iiers, is too weak to resist the tribes
whom we so lately armed. Mehemet Ali can alone furnish the
Sultan with the necessary force ; but he refuses to re-enter
the field, unless he he paid for restoring that state of things to
which the Treaty of 1840 was intended to put an end. It
may, therefore, be anticipated that before many months have
elapsed the Egyptian forces will be brought back to the posi-
tions from which they were driven in 1540. The status quo
may be restored in Syria, though not without fresh horrors and
a fresh conquest of those nuhappy provinces; but who will
restore the state of things in Europe ? Who will lay the bad
spirit and the bloody passions which were raised by that treaty
of July ? Who will make compensation to the world—we
speak not of wasted treasure and wasted lives, but for the re-
appearance of such dissensions, for the interruption of hopeful
relations of amity, 'for the indefinite but gloomy aspect of the
future ?

ECCLESIASTICAL
On Saturday a meeting of noblemen and gentlemen con-
nected with the Principality, was held at the Thatched House
Tavern, for the purpose of considering hnw an Episcopal
Welsh Church might be best established in the English metro-
polis. Subscriptions to the amount of nearly 2,2fi1. have
been accumulated, and it has been proposed to take a temporary
building for present purposes.
The Bishops of Edinburgh and Glasgow, more particularly
the latter, are now encouraging their clergy, in the tame man-
ner as that adopted by the Bishop of Oxford, to strive for the
restoration 'of the purity of the primitive church times; for
some time there has been a disposition on the part of the Scot-
tish Episcopalians to conform rigidly to the rubrical directions
of the Book of Common Prayer, and the strict canons of the
Church.

LAW AND POLICE.
In the Arches Court on Monday, the suit of Purgess v. Bur-
gess was brought to a conclusion. It was a suit for divorce by
the wile against the husband for adultery, and not being op-
posed, the Court signed the sentence of divorce.
In the suit Street v. Street, a similar case, the same course
was pursued, and the Court pronounced for the divorce.
Sir H. J. Fust then pronounced the judgment of the Court
on the Rev. W. H. Langley, Perpetual Curate of WheatlY,
Oxfordshire, charged with brawling in the church on Sunday,
the 9th of May, 1641. The Court directed that Mr. Langley
be suspended for eight calendar months, from the day when
the suspension was proclaimed in the parish, and condemned
him in all the costs of the proceedings.
Benjamin Eastham, a" dog-fancier was on Monday charged