The Sun.
London, England, 1827-12-29 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Gazelle of last night Contains some diplo-
matic appointments, of which the chief are, that of
Sir William A'Court from Portugal to St. Peters-
burgh, and that of Sir Frederick Lamb, with a step
in rank, from Spain to Portugal. Whatever may
be the direction sought to be given or impressed on
foreign affairs here in England, it will, we presume,
be acknowledged by all, that more powerful and pru-
dent persons could not have been selected for con-
ducting tly,t designs of their Government to a happy
issue. Of their personal qualities we of course
know only, or chiefly, by report; but we know also,
thrAt affability of manners, and a kind disposition, are
powerful instruments in the management of public
business, and that the gentlemen whose promotion
we now announce, in addition to their more solid
accomplishments, are reputed to be eminently dis-
tinguished by all the ami.obl,t qualities which adorn
high stations. The sagacity and vigour with which
Sir Frederick Lamb has detected and frustrated all
the plotS of the Apostolic party at Madrid have ren-
dered him, exclusive of his general talents, a most
appropriate person tOr the Embassy to Lisbon. Sir
Wm. A'Court's experience and practised ability
have made him equal to the most difficult diplo-
matic station, and such may that to Russia prove.
—Mmes.

Our city article contains the essence of the etni-
cable arrangement between the Russians and Per-
sians,—an arrangement peculiarly 'favourable to the
efficacy of our propositions to ?I'urkey, if her Go-
vernment will either listen to reason or bend to
circumstances. The same article states, that the
Austrians were endeavouring to preectire a medifica-
eion in the treaty of July, with a view to procure
further indulgence for the Turks. The fact is, that
time has already operated a modification of that
treaty; and yet what does it threaten, even in the
freshness of its originality, to the Turks ? Only.
that in case they will not accept our mediation," the
high contracting Powers will continue to prosecute
the work of pacification on the basin agreed upon
between them ;" that is, "bx preventing all colli-
sion between the contending parties." The state of
the case between the Turk and the Allied Powers
is simply this at the present moment, We have
prevented him from destroying the Greeks, we
shall continue to prevent him from destroying the
Greeks, restraining, at the same time, the Greeks
from annoying him. If he will not bear this inter-
vention, he must declare war against us : the war in
' that case will be aggressive and offensive on his part,
and we shall not then rest satisfied with merely
stopping his attacks upon Greece. With respect to
the situation of affairs at Constantinople itself, it is
only certain that the embargo has been reimposed,
and that the Ambassadors have declared that they
would quit the place, with or without passports, if
the deliberations of the next Divan did not termi-
nate in submission to the terms proposed by the
Allied Powers.—lbid.
Our readers will find hi our Union-Hall report, a
curious expose. A gentleman, who is the or of
several houses in Beresford-street, stated to Mr.
Swabey, that gangs of burglars infested that neigh-
bourhood ; that scarcely a night passed in which
houses were not broken into and robbed; that the
robbers were so daring, that if they were driven
away one night from a house, they returned again
the next ; that his tenants suffered so much from
this state of things, that they were determined to
leave the place, and had given him notice to quit;
and he applied to Mr. Swabey to give directions to
some of his officers to endeavonr to discover and
break up the gangs. Mr. Swabey very frankly in-
formed the gentleman, that he could render him no
assistance; that he would repeat to him what he
had already said to a gentleman who made a similar
application to him---apply to the Secretary of State.
There was, he added, a population of 300,000 in
the Union-Hall division, and there were only twelve
officers attached to the office to perform the various
duties; and it could not be expected that these
twelve men could be employed every night by all
who might require their aid. Magistrates and offi-
cers have a multiplicity of duties to discharge.
Some of these duties are pleasant and profitable to
themselves and some beneficial only to the public.
Those duties which are pleasant and profitable to
themselves, will, always be discharged in preference
to those which are beneficial only to the public. We
never yet heard of a Magistrate who could not find
time to job in public-house licenses, to shut up
rights of way, to dispose of contracts, or to do any
one of the many things which procure money or
money's worth to relations or friends, or extend in-
terest with powerful connections. In like manner, an
officer will always find time to hang about saloons
:tad oyster-rooms and coffee-rooms, to perform the
important duty of tasting what the gentlemen and
ladies choose to drink in such places. But watch-
ing for burglars in a damp, cold, Or wet night, is by
no means so very pleasant an occupation ; and a sen-
sible police-officer is not such a fool, any more than
his betters, as to prefer a hungry out-of-doors night
job for the more pleasant one of tasting wine and
liquors in a warm and comfortable room, with the
privilege of being insolent into the bargain. It is an
understood matter in this country, that the business
of a police is .not to prevent or detect crime; and
Mr. Swabey very properly refers the sufferers to the
Secretary of State. The Secretary of State svill in
return send to Mr. Sivahev a return of all the
complaints of sufferers at the other offices, so that
he may be able to communicate to the complainants
at Union Hall, that they are not worse off than their
neighbours. The business of Government in Eng-
land has hitherto been to raise as much money as
possible from the people arid to spend it in a way
as little profiteble for them as possible. Whether
Lord Lansdowne will be able to depart from this
system, and introduce some effective improvements
in the Law and Police of the country, remains to be
seen. The great objection to our Police System is
that there is no responsibilitv,—that no one is an-
swerable for anything. Neither' vanity, nor ambi-
tion, nor the love of money, is.enlisted in behalf of
the public interest. It is impossible that, under
the present system of anarchy of Magistrates, and
interest of Officers in the prevalence of crime in-
stead of its diminution, any natural improvement
can take place.—Morning Chronicle.
Although the public expectation has been wound
up to the highest state of excitement relative to the
result of the unfortunate victory of Navarin, still,
we regret to say, nothing of a decisive character has
yet transpired from any official or trust-worthy au-
thority. An attempt has been made, and is still
daily making, to justify our aggression upon an an-
cient Ally—and perhaps had the Allied Powers
dealt by Greece as they have dealt by Turkey,
there might be found some persons who would he-
sitate before they pronounced upon the wantonness
of our attack. But we cannot regard this matter
merely as applicable to the Turks—their name is
odious throughout Europe, and is, even in liberal
England to this very day, used to signify something
unworthy of consideration, in the nicest sense of
the term. It is the nursery phrase to frighten child-
ren—it it is the common household phrase to denote
barbarism--the absence of all manliness and feel-
ing—and to say of any man that he ought to be
treated like a Turk, is to treat him worse than
the beast of the field, and consider him before-
hand as only worthy of the fate of the murderer
or assassin. Whether this mode of considering the
subject he just or unjust, there can be little diffi-
culty in determining, and that a prevailing belief
in the former has stimulated some of our contem-
poraries in the course they have pursued, cannot,
we think, be questioned. Day after day they have
been exciting every possible prejudice against the
Ottoman Porte—they decry the Turks—the infidel
Turks---as if all principle were to be lost sight of
in the clamour, and as if all sense of justice was to
be violated in oar dealings with the Turks. How
far such conduct can square with the principles of
sound pol.cy or genuine Christianity, the public have
to decide, as well as to pass judgment on those who,
to promote the cause of
inva4e, the very
national ri bt
sanctuary of ce' -Ai lice have
• •

-

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often had occasion to state, so we reiterate it, that we
can have no possible partiality for the Government
of the Porte, as it either has been or is now consti-
tuted. If it could be altered without prejudice to
our essential interests, we should be heartily glad
to promote such a measure;—but let us not, be-
cause we cannot accomplish so desirable an object,
be guilty of a wanton breach of faith, and commit
a foul and worse than Turkish aggression upon an
Ally; we say--=let our interference be tried upon
principle; Russia has discontented subjects—Aus-
tria has discontented subjects—France, aye, and
England too, can find she is not without them ;
well, but Turkey is the Ally of each and every of
them,—and suppose the discontented of either ap-
plied to her Government for assistance, or which is
the case exactly in point here, that the Turkish Go-
vernment interfered and said, if you persecute your
dependent subjects, we shall make you answerable,
—we shall send a fleet to Brest, or to Portsmouth,
or Trieste, or Odessa, or Archangel,—and upon our
refusal to meet her terms she encounters our fleet,—
that fleet suppose again destroyed,—what in such a
case, we ask, would be the feelings of the insulted
and debased Government and people who would
submit to such bitter humiliation ? The answer is in
the heart of every civilized being in Europe ;—it
would not be endured ; it would be resented,—
and the last drop of a freeman's blood would
be shed in vindicating his degraded honour and
that of his country. This is the fair way to
state the matter,—this is the test by which to try
the principle; and if such unfounded interference
would be treated by European nations, as we
firmly believe it would, why should we expect that
men in Turkey will either think, or feel, or act
otherwise than either of the Allied Powers would
have done ? The truth however seems to be, that
in the total absence of all justification for the attack,
" Turk, Turk," is gratingly sounded in every ear—
ns if forsooth a wise or Christian Government
should have been actuated with a hope that such an
outcry could sanction the infraction of international
law and the violation of universal justice !—When
the Spaniards first visited South America, they
openly stated that the natives were unworthy of be-
ing treated as men or Christians, and they brutally
treated them accordingly :—the falsehood was wisely
propagated ; but thank God there is a retributive
and just Providence, who has now-a-days taught
the Spaniards a very different lesson. If the cru-
saders of old had undertaken such a Quixotic mis-
sion as the Allied Powers have nowdone, we should
not have been much astonished at it, for at that pe-
riod a mistaken sense of religion led to the most
diabolical proceedings; but that in this " age of in-
tellect" such things should have come to pass, does
we own excite ' our special wonder."—ilforning
Post.

We gave some curious extracts yesterday from
• Chinese Papers, of the 24th and 27th of January.
From these it appears that the Tartar rebels had
excited no small anxiety in the mind of his Imperial
Majesty, and that he had been obliged to send to
' the borders of Tartary two of his greatest Generals,
Chang-sing and Yang-yu-chun, in order to oppose
that nation, which, in 1614, conquered China, and
placed a Prince of their own on the Chinese throne.
We are not informed of the cause of the rebellion, or
the means or intentions of the rebels, but it is not
at all improbable that they wish to repeat the inroad
which was made in the 17th century; and if they
once pass the grand boundary, and attack the
enervated natives of the South, we should not be
surprised at their ultimate success. The seat of war is
at present fully 1,500 miles from Pekin, the capital;
and the expense consequently, of sending troops and
supplies to such a distance, must be felt severely by
a Government so little accustomed to war. Ac-
cording to their own accounts, the resources of
the Chinese are enormous—they have a population
of more than 300,000,000 of souls, an annual
revenue of 70,000,0001., and an army of 1,000,000
infantry and 800,000 cavalry. If numbers were
every thing, the Chinese army would, of course,
he the most powerful in the world ; but all
history shows that numerous armies, without
experience or bravery, have no chance with even
a handful of determined opponents who have
been accustomed from their youth to the fatigues
of marching and all the hardships of war. Such, in
fact, is the character of the Tartars. Many of the
tribes live entirely on plunder, and are almost con-
;tautly engaged in war with their neighbours. They
are addicted to ardent spirits, live chiefly in tents,
Ind remove from one encampment to another
with all the facility and regularity of disciplined
troops. Independent of these advantages, the na-
ture of their climate, which lies chiefly between the
40th and 55th degree of north latitude, must give
them a great superiority over the natives of the
South. We need not wonder, then, that the Em-
peror had taken alarm, and shed tears of joy on learn-
ing that Cashgar had been taken, and in one en-
gagement 3,000 of the " rebel thieves had been
washed clean from the face of the earth." We are
'not told, however, by the Chinese, what loss they
had sustained, though it appears, by their own ad-
mission, tbat the rebels, on one point, dispersed the
Emperor's troops. The Gazette Extraordinary of
the Tartars, however—if they publish such a Go-
vernment paper—would, most probably, put th 9
present state of affairs in a very different light. It
is amusing to reflect how little interest the commo-
tions of such a vast empire, and the great slaugh-
ter which must ensue, excites among Euro-
peans. But self-interest gives impulse to most
of the feelings of the great body of man-
kind. We are apt to think that the disturbances
in that country cannot affect as—and that, though a
body of Tartars were to make their way to Pekin,
there would be only a change of dynasty—some
thousands slain—and that the three hundred millions
of Chinese would go on in the monotonous course
which they have pursued from time immemorial.
" Suppose," said Adam Smith, " that the great
empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants,
was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake—and
let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe,
who had no sort of connection with that part of the
world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence
of this dreadful calamity. He would, I suppose, first
of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the mis-
fortune of that unhappy people—he would make
many reflections upon the precariousness of human
life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which
could thus be annihilated in a moment; and when
all this fine philosophy was over—when all these
humane sentiments had been once fairly uttered—he
would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his
repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tran-
quillity, as if no such accident had happened. The
most frivolous disaster which could befal himself
would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was
to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep
to-night; but provided he never saw them, he will
snore with the most profound security over the ruin
of a hundred millions of his brethren—and the de-
struction of that immense multitude seems, plainly,
less interesting to him than this paltry misfortune of
his own."—Morning Herald.
The great and opulent town of Liverpool is just
now suffering, it would seem, under one of those
severe and vexatious visitations, an over-zealons In-
spector of Taxes, who is making surcharges, almost
without end, upon persons employing occasional
porters, and other servants, in their business, who
have never hitherto been supposed to come within
the fair meaning of the Assessed Tax Acts. This
is, probably, done by orders from head-quarters;
or, at any rate, is, we dure say, done by the
individual from a conscientious .discharge of
what he conceives to be' his duty. On question-
able matters, however, it would be a much wiser
course, we should think, to get the point in ques-
tion decided on one or two separate cases, and should
the decision be in favour of the Crown, make it
known to all whom it may affect. None but those
who have experienced it can conceive the trouble,
expense, and vexation, which the system of sur-
charging and appealing causes, to people in business
especially, many of whom would almost rather sub-
mit to any exaction, however unjust, than be subject

to the harrassing process which universally occurs on
such occasions, and that principally from the whole-
sale way in which such things are generally
. done. To the credit of the Inspectors of Taxes
in the Metropolis, they, we believe, for the
most part at least, adopt a milder course. If
they discover, or think they have discovered,
any error in an individual's return under the As-
sessed Taxes, they send him a civil notification,
pointing out the error; and adding that, if it is ad-
mitted, the single duty alone will be added to the
party's other taxes, and he hears no more of the mat-
ter till the day of payment. This seems a much
more just and politic course than that of poun-
cing upon the teazing people with surcharges,
more especially, as in the Liverpool case,
where the subjects of such surcharges are of
a questionable description. We are far from
saying that all persons should not be made to
bear their fair and equal share of the public burdens.
At the same time, considering how heavy those
burdens are, and with what weight they too often
fall upon those least able to bear them, it should be
the study of those who have this odious task of en-
forcing tnem to render the pill as little unpalatable
as may be. The Government had even better lose a
little than press for doubtful matters in a harsh and
unpopular manner. If, however, it be true that Mr.
Herries has in store a Property Tax as part of his
first Budget, the surest way to make such an impost
endurable would be to sweep away at the same time
these Assessed Taxes, and the whole train of In-
spectors, surcharges, &c. One evil substituted for
another will be far less onerous than a second added
to the first.--Bil.

To the application of the Ambassadors at Con-
stantinople for passports, the Reis Effendi has, it is
said, returned a direct refusal. This refusal may be
interpreted in two ways. It may either be given by
the Porte because it wishes not, by any direct act, to
become a party to the commencement of hostilities,
of which the departure of the Ambassadors may be
supposed to be a precursor; or it may be received as
a proof of the desire which the Porte feels to pro-
voke hostiliries. Looking to the whole of its con-
duct, the latter interpretation is certainly the fairer.
A passport, in the ordinary acceptation of the term,
is a paper giving permission to the bearer, generally
a stranger, to travel for a certain time, or to pass
through certain places, undisturbed by the resident
authority. If an Englishman were to land at Calais
without a passport, the utmost punishment would be
to return him to Dover. If an Englishman were to
leave Paris for Calais without a passport, the utmost
punishment would be to send him to Dover ender a
guard. The mere fact of not having that necessary
paper would operate only to exclude him from
France. He might, on suspicion of some offence,
be exposed to confinement, and his not possessing
a passport might be taken in proof; but the
non-possession is no offence in itself. A British
resident in Constantinople may have a soldier to at-
tend him while there; he may have an escort when
travelling through the country; or he may have a
firmest, or general letter of introduction to the local
authorities in his route, but any thing in the nature
of an European passport he cannot have, for no such
thing exists. When, therefore, we hear of the
Ambassadors demanding their passports, they, in
reality, desire something of much more importance
—a letter of protection—without which, should
they happen to fall in with a Turkish cruizer, or to
land at a Turkish village, they might be exposed to
very serious risk. It is quite true that they went to
Constantinople without any such protection. Those
who went by sea, were conveyed thither by vessels
of war of their own nation—those who went by
land, were escorted by a Turkish guard of honour,
from the moment of their passing the frontier. In
such cases there was no need of &mans, and none
were asked. They do not return under similar cir-
cumstances. Still, if all the opposition that the
Porte offers to the removal of the Ambassadors
is of that passive kind, which consists merely in
not facilitating it—whatever lack of courtesy there
may be in such a proceedure—there seems no such
ground of complaint, as, in treating with a semi.
barbarous State like Turkey, we might not expect. If.
the Porte, not content with this, should oppose any
obstacle to the Ambassadors removing freely and
openly, such opposition, according to their own in-
variable customs, may be received as a declaration
of war. In fact, they have never made use of any
other than the detention of the Ambassador of the
Power against which they were about to commence
hostilities. This is evidently a very different case
from that contemplated by the Treaty of the 6th of
July, and one which will necessarily call for different
conduct en the part of the Allies. That Treaty provides
most amply for th• case of the Turks refusing to
keep peace with Greece; but it does not eves con-
template the ease of its refusing to keep peace with
the Allies. If, by any act, Turkey shall place itself
in the latter predicament, the Allies will treat Turkey
precisely as they would treat any other Power with
which they might happen to be jointly at war. And
it ought to be observed, that a declaration of war by
the Porte, not only places it in a new position, but
completely absolves the Allies from all those condi-
tions to which they have seen fit to subject themselves.
We think it the more necessary to make these ob-
servations, because it seems to be argued by some of
those who are averse from a war with the Porte, that
the Allies must regulate their conduct by the letter
of the Treaty, however Turkey may see fit to act.
An Evening Contemporary of yesterday goes even
farther. It. says, " there is in fact at present no
warfare in Greece, if we except the offensive opera-
tions on the part of the Greeks." And it adds, " if
those were put down, there would remain nothing
for the Allies to do." Now, if all that the Allies
proposed to themselves was merely to reduce the
combatants in the Morea to a state of inactivity,
leaving three-fourths of it in the possession of the
Turks, and leaving it, of course, in their power, as
soon as the Allies had withdrawn, to complete
their conquest by the subjugation of the remain-
der—if this were the peace which the Allies were
to establish, and if all their preparations were to
conclude in so lame and impotent a way, then cer-
tainly a more silly Treaty never was formed than that
of the 6th July. So far from such a state of things
being that which the Allies have engaged them-
selves to establish, they expressly declare, not that
the armies of Turkey shall depart from the plains
and her navies from the ports of Greece, but that
every Turkish inhabitant shall remove. " To pre-
vent the collisions which are the inevitable conse-
quence of so long a struggle," says the Treaty,
" the Greeks shall enter upon possession of the
Turkish property, situated either on the Continent,
or in the Isles of Greece. We conceive, therefore,
that as long—not as Ibrahim and Redschid remain
in Greece with their forces, but were they or their
men withdrawn or destroyed—as long as a single
Turk remains on the Continent, or in the Isles, so
long does the Porte deny that settlement of the
affairs of the Levant which it is the object of the
Allies to procure. The manner of the allied inter-
ference seems to be as much the subject of misin-
terpretation as the object of it. It is true that the
contracting Powers declare that their endeavours
to bring about the armistice, which is the ob-
ject of the Treaty, shall not interfere with the
hostilities between the contending parties, but
this expression, in the nature of things, can only
apply to preliminary measures, for if the Allies are
merely to look on while the Greeks and Turks
continue to fight, to what purpose did they seek to
interfere ? And how could they complain of the
evils of a warfare of six years, while, by their con-
duct, they gave to it every chance of continuing for
sixty ? That the refraining from mingling in the
hostilities of the parties, was, indeed, a preliminary
only to more energetic measures for restoring peace
to the Levant, is obvious from the mere words of the
Treaty, the third private article of which' expressly
provides, that if those measures—namely, the
measures of advice and exhortation, unbacked by
active interference—do not suffice to induce the Porte
to accede to the propositions of the Allies, in such
case the representatives of the latter in London,
shall determine the ulterior measures to which it

may be necessary to resort ; so that the ulterior
!measures are not determined by the Treaty of July,
and therefore ought not to be judged by it. The Al-
lies are placed in the predicament of a sober,
honest, broad-shouldered yeoman, who happens to
reside between two noisy, riotous, and ricketty tai-
lors, who destroy his rest, threaten his property, and
expose him. to. perpetual danger by their inveterate
bickerings. The man, in such a case, if good na-
tured withal, we may suppose to address the frae-
tions in terms of neighbourly admonition; %to repre-
sent to them the absurdity of their perpetual quar-
rels, the ruinous effects to themselves, and the
troublesome consequences to him. If they heard
him with ready ears, and shook hands, and each
betook himself to his dwelling, the task of our ar-
biter would be at an end; bat if they would not
listen to him, what resource had he but to give them
a hearty shake, by way of a specimen of
his powers, and bind over their hands to
their good behaviour ? If the neighbours, ad-
mitting all the while that the honest man had a
right to sleep in quiet, and seeing that his admoni-
tions were given to no purpose, should yet blame
him for having recourse to a more vigorous mode of
reducing the combatants to their senses, he might,we
think, justly tell them that they
.were a set of very
unreasonable personages. That, according to every
principle of the law of nature and nations, the Allies
had a right to interfere as they have done, has been
proved until demonstration was wearied. The cuckoo
opposers of Ministers continue, however, to sing over
their dornal note as if not a word had ever been said
on the subject. Among the questions which have been
asked about five hundred times, and in five hundred
shapes, is the following : —" How would the English
behave were the Russians and French, and any third
Power, to enter Portsmouth as the Allied fleets en-
tered Navarin ?" This is evidently put as a clincher,
and we doubt not that the small logician who first
hit upon it imagined that he had got the defendants
of Admiral Codrington in a pretty cleft stick. We
give him his answer in plain English. If any such
an attempt were made by Pagan, Turk, Jew, or
Christian, we hope there will never cease to be the
will, any more than the power, in Englishmen, to
sink them to the bottom for their insolence. To
the reasoners who think they can build an argument
on such an admission, we grant most cheerfully all
the advantage of it, as well as of the utter contempt
to which those are entitled who dare to institute a
parallel so insulting to Old England between cases
so utterly different.—New Tinzes.