The Sun.
London, England, 1842-11-11 00:00:00

SUMMARY OF NEWS

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" Who runs may read.'

FOREIGN.

" The French Ministry," according to La France,
" has twice discussed the question, whether there shall
be a sitting to re-open the session, and a speech from
the throne. The first time the Council unanimously
decided in the affirmative; but since the affair of the
Belgian treaty this first decision has been re-consi-
dered. The Council is divided in its opinion, arid the
arrival of M. Teste is waited for to turn the scale."
A pretty considerable number of Spanish refugees,
especially of the Carlist party, have lately passed
through Bayonne, and are provided with regular
passports, delivered by the Spanish Consuls by virtue
of the decree of amnesty.
The ex-General Dominique Vandersmissen, one of
the persons condemned for conspiracy against the
Belgian Government, has succeeded in escaping from
the prison of the Petits Carmes. The escape was

effected in a manner similar to that of the celebrated

La Vallette.

The session of the Belgian Chamber was opened on
the Bth by a speech from the throne, delivered by. his
Majesty in person. Her Majesty the Queen arrived
at the Palace of Lacken on the 7th.
The contract for the execution of the first portion
of the railroad between Paris and Belgium has been
finally adjudged to an English company of the name
of Sherwood, at 7 per cent under the estimate.
A new cathedral is to be erected in Berlin on the
site of the old Domliirche. It has been designed by
Stuler, after the King's ideas. It is to be a Roman

•
Basilika, with two high towers.
We learn from St. Petersburgh, 29th-ult., that the
Emperor had recovered from the cold which he caught
on his late tour. lie had, since his return, received
the English and Austrian Ambassadors.
The, Augsburg Gazette states from Goritz that tho
Archduke Stephen had just paid a visit to the
Duchess of Angouleme. The Duke of Bordeaux is,
it says, to repair in the beginning of November to
Prague, where he is to pass a few weeks.
"It is said that the postal conventiox between the
Grand Duchy of Baden and Austria has been signed
by the contracting parties. The principal object of
this convention is to render unnecessary the pre-pay-
ment of postage. The negotiations on the same sub-
ject with Prussia offer more difficulties on account of

the high rate postage in that country.
It was confidently stated at Alexandria, according
to the latest accounts, that the Maronites had united
with the Druses in Mount Lebanon and attacked and
defeated the Turkish troops.

PUBLIC OPINION.
The Times, alluding to the Emperor of Russia's
attempt to introduce uniformity in religion through-
out his dominions, observes:—" If there is one kind
of religious intolerance more odious than another, it is
that which lacks the pretext of an earnest conviction
or the blindness of sincere fanaticism, and which per-
petrates the crimes of bigotry with no higher motive
than the fulfilment of a scheme of political oppression.
The rod of persecution was a cruel and unnatural
weapon in the pious hands of Isabella the Catholic ;
but it is degraded to a meaner and more hateful
office when it is used to complete the work of mili-
tary conquest, and when the anathema of religious
intolerance is directed, not only against the tenets, but
the nationality and the ancient religious practices
of a people. The cruelties perpetrated in former
ages in the name of the Church of Christ were at
least regarded by the nations of those times as the
natural consequences of a struggle between eccle-
siastical zeal and obdurate heresy ; but it was re-
served for the present Emperor of Russia to outrage
the feelings of Christendom, by a revival of scenes
which have not been witnessed in Europe since the
edicts of Louis XIV. against the Protestants. It was
reserved for the Emperor NichulaS to exact conformity
to the Church of Russia as a political institution, and
to direct against the sister churches in his dominions
the whole energy of the secular' power, for the sole
purpose of reducing certain classes of his subjects
into more absolute subjection to his own temporal
authority, and more complete uniformity with the in•
stitutions of Russia. When new pro?inces or king-
doms professing a different form of Christian worship
have been annexed to the Crown, and when that form
has been solemnly recognised in the treaties of cession
and the public acts of several reigns, to attempt to
extend the religion of the conquering country by
force, and to extirpate these varieties 'of divine wor-
ship, for the purpose of reducing every portion of a
east and motley empire to one precise standard of
orthodoxy, is to stretch the monstrous principles of
the Inquisition itself. In Russiuthe standard of or-
thodoxy is that the Emperor is the head of the Church.
Provided the clergy inculcate on their flocks a vene-
ration for the Emperor, which is easily confounded in
their simple minds with the adoration due to the
Supreme Being ; provided the portraits of the mem-
bers of the Imperial House are enshrined beside the
sacred elements ; provided the mysteries of the faith
are made to.bear the stamp of Russian authority, and
the persons of sacred history to Wear a sort of Russian
uniform, the exigencies of the Government are satis-
fied, without interfering with the more subtle clisVnc-
tions of doctrinal controversy." '
The following appears in the Post:--" An abusive
and yet a very feeble article appeared in the Morning
Chronicle of yesterday on the subject of the new
appointments of Bankruptcy and Lunacy Commis-
sioners. This lengthy and lame composition, set out
in our Contemporary's most conspicuous type, pur-
ports to come from a retired Judge. It is much more
probable that it is the contribution of a disappointed
barrister ; and truly, if it he so, he furnishes very
good evidence that he ought to btu disappointed if his
expectations pointed to any office which required
some ability and some good temper for its discharge.
The article in question is of the agreeable length of
seven feet and one inch, or eighty-tive inches, of as
pointless trash as we ever saw in a newspaper. Mere
dull, stupid scolding ; plentifully besprinkled with
lies ; and yet the subject chosen is one which from
its very nature afforded abundant opportunity for
sharp remark, if the critic had not been one of the most
tedious dullards that ever held a pen."
The Herald thus speaks of the Income-tax :—" The
Income-tax it ought to be recollected is something
very different from the Assessed-taxes or the Parish-
rates, and yet are the same class and order of persons
employed in its management. It is the mercantile and
trading community who will chiefly experience the
annoyance of these surcharges ; the income of land-
owners is easily ascertained; the fundholder is treated
with sharp but not inquisitorial practice ; while no
one will presume to doubt the accuracy of the return
of the county magnate; but that large and impor-
tant class of persons who live by the conjunction of
energy, enterprise, and knowledge with capital, they
who may really oftentimes have some difficulty
in ascertaining what the profits of the year's
adventures may have been, they to whom credit and
the reputation of well•doing are honestly and fairly
worth more than the capital invested, are the indi-
viduals on whom the severity of the tax will fall, and
these are just they to whom not the least consideration
is paid either by the Act or by its officers. Against
the imposition of this tax so far as income—contra-
distinguished from the produce of dead capital—was
concerned we incessantly protested; we warned Sir
Robert Peel of the odium and detestation which
would be begot by the pertinacity with which he ad-
hered to his original proposition ; but we certainly
did anticipate that the Premier would have the pru-
dence to protect his measure from unnecessary seve-
rity, and that an oppressive tax would not be
vexatiously and unjustly collected. It has proved
otherwise.
N'
The Chronicle says :—" Any person seeptical as to
the extent and variety of the existing distress, and
somewhat ignorant of the condition of the country,
must at least have been struck by one ominous indi-
cation, to which we adverted yesterday, presented by
the London morning newspapers of the preceding
day—that of extracts from the provincial papers,
arranged under the appalling title of Incendiary
Fires.' Till within these few years this horrible
crime, as well as that of the cowardly and
brutal habit of using the knife in casual quarrels,
were held to be quite alien to the character of the
English population, and it was even boasted that we
had to go to a foreign language for a word descrip-
tive of the first. Be this as it may, it would appear,
if we are to trust to the accounts which have been
published, that incendiarism' is naturalised in our
rura ldistricts. Whenever our agricultural population
are feeling the pressure of any extra amount of pri-
vation, they exhibit an inclination to revenge them-
selves, as they imagine, by burning the property of
the farmers ; and so, as the lengthening nights of the
winter, in which we are already involved, are casting
their gloomy shadows over the country, that concen-
tration of amazing ignorance, severe poverty, and
reckless malignity, of which an English agricultural
labourer is but too often a type, displays itself by the
lurid light which it sheds over the security—or
rather the insecurity—of property- in the agricultural
districts of happy England.' "
ELECTIONEERING.
The electors of Bute have been publicly addressed
by Mr. James Stuart Wortley, as a candidate for the
seat vacant by the death of the Lord Advocate.
NAVAL AND MILITATLY.
The half-yearly examination of the officers and
gentlemen cadets at the Royal Military College at
Sandhurst took place on the 3d, 4th, and sth instant.
Sixteen gentlemen cadets were recommended to the
Commander-in-Chief for appointment to ensigncies,
and fifty others were declared to be qualifying them-
selves for commissions.
LAW AND POLICE,
John Cormick, a smith, residing sit Chiswick, was
on Wednesday brought up for final examination at lien-