The Sun.
London, England, 1842-04-23 00:00:00

TH3-1 SUN, LONDON, SATURDAY EVENING, APRIL 23, x 1842.

that increasing the dtit: upon Irish whisky will have
the effect of increasing illicit distillation in that
country. With a duty amounting in all to 150 per
cent. upon Irish whisky, it is not to be ex
pected that the inhabitants of wild mountain-
ous districts will be prevented from carrying
on an illicit traffic from any fear of the vigilance of
revenue officers. The certainty of large profits will
crowd the mountain glens with private stills. A
gambling spirit will be revived among the peasantry,
and for every shilling saved to the Treasury an ounce
of blood will be shed, and a habit of violating the law
confirmed.

The attack of Count DE BOISSY in the French
Chamber of Peers uPon the REGENT of SPAIN, whom
he fouliy and slanderously stigmatized as an inten-
tional regicide, has produced a ferment in Madrid. It
has led to a motion in the Senate, and to speeches
on the part of the Senators,' which will .find a ready
echo out of .doors, and add to the bitterness of
Gallican hatred which prevails throughout Spain.
The speech of Senor linnos, directoi, of the
Royal patrimony, and the mouthpiece of the
Ministry, removes all doubt as to the light
in which ESPAIiTERO regards the insult offered
him. M. Hullos declared that the calumnies of
Count DE •BOISSY were not those of an individual
Peer—they were a part of the system of the
French Government. Such vile insults were the
fashion of the day in France, whose aim it was
to reduce Spain to the condition of a dependency
upon the French throne. He affirmed that Count
MOLE, M. THirats, and M. GUIZOT were following
the line of policy pursued by cl-lATEAUBRIAND in
1823, and that their intentions were precisely the
same. lle did not like asking questions in the Cham-
ber, but he would put it to Ministers whether
the King of the FRENCH had not apprised them
that if he could not have the hand of the
QUEEN for one of his sons, he would prevent
her marrying any but a Prince of the BourmoN line?
The noble Senator referred to the conduct of the
Archbishop of Paris and ,the clergy of France, and
affirmed that the time was come when every true
Spaniard. was called upon to deliver his country from
the yoke of France.. This speech made a profound
impression upon all the Senators present.

The Infante Don FRANCISCO DE PAULO was to
dine with ESPARTERO on the 15th, sitting to the
right of the REGENT, whilst the Infanta CARLOTTA
occupied the seat right of the Duchess of VITTORIA.
ARGUELLES, the Guardian of the QUEEN, GONZALES,
the Prime Minister, the Duke DE BAYLER, HEROS,
CAPAZ, FERRAZ, and Mr. ASTON, were also to be at
the entertainment.

A Madrid letter announces, that the Infante Don
SEBASTIAN had obtained the authorisation of the
REGENT to take up his residence at Seville. The
Infante had pledged himself not to meddle in poli-
tical affairs, and to remain only two days in Madrid
on his way to Seville. Dion SEBASTIAN, it will be
recollected, was nominally Commander-in-Chief of
the armies of his uncle, Don CARLOS, during the
Royal expedition in Madrid in 1837. Ile is the son
of the Princess of BEIRA (Don CARLOS'S second
wife), by her first husband, the Infante PETER, bro-
ther of FERDINAND the SEVENTH, Don CARLOS, and
Don FRANCISCO DE PAULO. Don SEBASTIAN is-mar-
ried to the Princess MARIA AMELIA, daughter of the
deceased FRANCIS 1., King athe Two Sicilies, and who
is therefore the half-sister of Queen CHRISTINA, the
Princess CARLOTTA (Don FRANCISCO'S wife), and the
Duchess of BERRY.

On the Madrid Exchange on the 14th, twenty. one
bargains for 14,253,000.rea1s were transacted in Threes
nt 22'1 15-ICths, ; twenty-three, at various dates
In tit., Fives twenty-one bargains for 12,400,000 teals at
29+, 13, for sixty days ; and 201 a for sixty
days, with the three coupons. Exchange upon London
ninety days, 37 to

The French Journals will never have done with
the Right of Search question. They seem to resent
the coolness with which the affair is treated in Eng-
land, as if their vexation was not enough to alarm the
world. In reality they are as angry as they can be,
because when M. GuizoT declined to ratify the
Treaty, no effort was made on the part of the British
Cabinet to change the resolution of the French
Alinistry. The self-love of France is so great, that
she deems it an insult to he told that anything can be
done without her. Ts this the result of conscious
weakness as compared with her world-compelling
pretensions ? The answer seems to us well given in
an article in the last number of the Edinburgh Review,
entitled " France, America, and Britain." " With
respect to France," says the Reviewer, " we hope much
from the Commercial Treaty, of which even the details
have been long arranged—which each Government
has long been anxious to sign—which is demanded
by the Departments—and delayed only in fear of
the Journalists of Paris. Commerce, manufactures,
and the desire for individual advancement, may, in
time, direct to peaceful pursuits the restless ambition
and vanity which now seek to be gratified by parti-
cipating in the glory of the nation. It is with deep
regret that we express our conviction, that until this
change in the habits of thinking and feeling in France
shall have taken place, any durable alliance between
the two countries is impossible. They may not—we
trust they will not—be at war ; but their peace will
not be the peace of friends. If the present hostility
of France to England had arisen merely from the re-
collection of past defeats, it would wear out as those
defeats receded more and more into the obscurity of
history. If it had arisen from our disapproba-
tion of her interference against the liberties of
Spain, or her colonization of Algiers,,or from the
Syrian dispute, the only matters in which, for the
last quarter of a. century, we have opposed her, it
would have subsided as soon as these questions were
disposed of. Her hostility springs from far deeper
sources. Sixty years ago, towards the close of the
American war, France was the most powerful king-
dom in the world. Her population amounted to
twenty-six millions, while that of the British Islands
did not exceed half that number; that'of Austria and
European Russia, about twenty-five each; and that
of Prussia, seven or eight. She had flourishing colo-
nies, a fleet which could cope with that of England,
mid a population superior in wealth and industry to
that of almost every other portion of the continent,
except the Netherlands. On her southern and
south-eastern frontier, she had Spain, Savoy,
and Switzerland, all under her influence ; then
the territories of petty German States; and
then to • the north the Austrian Netherlands, the
weak dependencies of a distant Empire. Now Spain,
Savoy, and Switzerland have thrown off her control ;
Belgium, in close alliance with England, is on her
north, and the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg, Rhe-
nish Prussia, Rhenish Bavaria, and Baden—all con-
nected by the powerful Germanic Confederation—
close her in on her remaining frontier.. Tier military
marine, no longer supported by an extensive com-
merce, has ceased to be formidable. Algiers is the
substitute for almost all her colonies; the wealth and
industry of her people are scarcely equal to those
of the inhabitants of many of the nations
around her ; and while her population has reached
only thirty-four millions, that of the British
Islands amounts to twenty-seven millions, that
of Austria to thirty-seven, that of Prussia to four-
teen, and that of Russia to fifty., France looks at the
change with a mixture of grief and terror. She fears
that if her neighbours putstrip her in the next half
century as much as they. }lave done in the last, she
will sink to a secondary Power."
At the risk of putting the French Press into a
toweringpassion, we must say that there appears to
us a great deal of truth in this. The remedy is, how-
ever, obvious, and pointed out in a friendly spirit by
the Reviewer. She need only recal commerce to her
shores, by modifying her barbarous taeiff—invite the
merchants of the world to carry away her surplus
produce, and fill her warehouoes with necessary
and luxurious articles in exchange—give up the
ridiculous system of fleecing her people to maintain
fleets and armies which serve to no purpose, but the
impoverishing of other States in the maintenance of
rival armaments—and save her millions of men and
money, instead of pouring them annually into the
all-absorbing vortex of Algiers, to regain all the real
power and influence which she has lost. Whatever
may be her own opinion, a war must reduce France to
a worse condition than that in which she is even now.
The French charter and the French dynasty would
be swept from the earth by the first blast of a war hurri-
cane. The Jourmdists who now shout "war" so lustily
would ride the storm no longer than the KING. They, too,
would go the way of all incendiaries. We are not
here supposing for an instant that England would