The Sun.
London, England, 1829-04-30 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE :LONDON JOURNALS.

Whoever has•,-.tak.,n. the trouble. to read atten-
tively. the observations made from time to time in
this Journal on the state of Ireland, will recollect,
that when the Disfranchisement Bill was first named
to Ptudiament, we predicted the necessity of pro-
viding for that change which the measure would
produce, or rather accelerate, in the relations between
landlord and tenant, throughout the island, by some
plan of relief and protection to the poor. Immense
numbers of poor peasants were invited to settle on
landed properties in every part of Ireland, in the
character of forty-shilling voters. Esta.es were
minced up in the smallest portions, for this one po-
litical . object. The young men so made into free-
holders invariably took wives, as a necessary appen-
dage to the freehold residence; and this subdivision
of the land was speedily followed by an enormous
increase of population. The object for which such a
mass of people was created and located no longer
ex sts,and the wretched peasantry will be banished as
rapidly as the law will enable the landlords to oust
them from their henceforth useless holdings. Nor will
it be at all requisite that the landlord should put off
the fulfilment of this purpose until the regular ex-
piration of the several leases; the poor• Irish tenant
is always at his landlord's mercy, because his rent is
at all times in arrear. Then let us ask what be-
comes of these myriads of destitute people ? Can
any human heart contemplate the miseries of their
condition without shuddering ? We are sure that
the Duke of Wellington cannot : we are sure that
he who spoke with such manly abhorrence: of civil'
war cannot look with indifference at the destruction
of more then half a million of helpless wretches,
doomed to die of cold and hunger,—the worst cala-
mities attendant on that very state of war which he
deprecates. We have no doubt that the King's
Government will feel it to be its duty to take upon
itself the suegestion, or the execution (if it be sug-
gested by others), of some scheme for averting or
alleviating the disastrous consequences of the• Di-
s Till, which was the measure—and,
upon the whole, a wise and statesman-like mea-
sure—of that Government. Among the pro-
jects which are alluded to by our Dublin corre-
spondent, is-one at which we on a former occa-
sion hinted ourselves, viz., the introduction of a
system of poor laws into Ireland—we do not say
the modern English system. We do not mean to
allege quite positively how much of that system, as
at present operating, ought to be rejected,—how
much of the original law of Elizabeth ought to be
Adopted, or of that which restrained the erection of
cot:ages for the unprovided poor. The law of Scot-
land, we are assured, works well in Scotland, and
at far loss comparative expense than the system
which now prevails throughout this country. In
Scotland it is said that few or no questions arise, or
at least proceed so far as to be litigated with regard
to settlement—a branch of the subject which,- with
st,,, is so prolific of law-suits and of barbarity to-
wards the poor themselves. But in Ireland we are
thoroughly convinced that something must be done,
and done without procrastination, for saving the
peasants---disfranchised and expelled as they are
shout to be—from absolute destruction to them-
selves and children by fa,nine. That there will bea
violent resistance to all such proposals, we are well
aware; and so, we doubt not, are his Majesty's Mi-
nisters. But little need the Duke of Wellington, if
once satisfied of the rectitude of his osn policy,—
little need he dread the opposition of selfish, sordid,
and unfeeling men—to an act in which all the en-
lightened and generous of the upper class in both
countries, and all the lower, without exception, can-
not fail to lend him the most cordial and grateful
support. The second expedient mentioned by our
Dublin letter is colonization; but that is a large
subject, on which we have not time nor space now
to enter. Other and more obvious and less ex-
pensive expedients should first be tried : certain at
least we are, that colonization, except on a very
serge and therefore costly scale, is good for nothing.

The appointment of the Due de Laval Montmo-
rency to the •Portfolio of Foreign Affairs is. in itself,
perhaps, a matter of minor importance, but it is of
extreme interest, as affording some insight into the
state of parties in France. The character and ta-
lents of the new Minister are admitted by all parties
to be of the class significantly designated as respect-
able; and the whole course of his public life shows
that his politics are, as might be expected, firm, but
moderate. It was precisely this exemption from
the d4xzling, but dangerous, eminence of superior
ability, that recommended the new Minister to the
choice of the Sovereign, and at the same time con-
ciliated the discordant interests which the nomina-
tion of M. tie Chateaubriand had placed in a posi-
tion of outrageous hostility. The late Minister, De
Villele, whose secret influence is felt, but not acknow-
ledged, had avowed his decided hostility to M. de
Chateaubriand ; and, from causes already known to our
readers, it was found dangerous to provoke, and im.
possible to reconcile, the Ex-Minister to his appint-
merit ; while similar feeling, but in oppo ite quar-
ters, presented insuperable obstacles to the Prince
de Polignac, whom his Sovereign would willingly
have selected for the long-vacant Portfolio. Under
these:peculiar circumstances, a Nobleman of high
birth, of known moderation, of respectable ability,
and of spotless character, was selected ;" not as being
the man in every possible respect more eligible, but
as a sort of me= !ermine, which would disarm the
asperity of faction, and afford no decisive triumph to
the Ultras of any description, It yet remains to be
seen whether the Duc de Laval will exchange the
olium cum dignitale of a high diplomatic station for
the more brilliant, but infinitely more precarious and
turbulent, position of an active Member of the exist-
ing Administration. It may be worth remarking,
that most of our contemporaries, in their observa-
tions on the recent appointment of the Duc de La-
val Montmorency, confound him with his cousin,
the Duc Matthieu de Montmorency, who has been
dead some years.—Morning Chronicle.
It is time that the Duke of Welliagton were told,
if he has not been already, that no small proportion
of the community begin to look with apprehension
on the course which he is pursuing. It is one
thing to pull down a house, but quite another to
repair it. Indeed there have been such things
known as houses being pulled down where the
astonished owner found he had not materials to re-
build it with, and became for many years a houseless
outcast. Oa the same principle, there is in political
matters a wide difference between reform ar,d inno-
vation, but of which latter character some of his
Grace's measures, and more with which the coun-
try is threatened, seem to partake. One " break-
ing in upon the Constitution" the country has
already witnessed. How many more " b eakings
in" are in store for it, it has yet to learn. But though
there is an apparent passive indifference which
partakes but little of true public spirit, we cannot
persuade ourselves that this latter quality is extinct
in the country, or will be found wanting if an ur-
gent occasion should arise for its exercise. The
absence of any thing like a constitutional or effective
opposition in Parliament is a new and awkward
tlilemma for the country. The Whigs excuse them-
olves by saying, " What is there left for us to op-
po,e, now that the Duke has adopted our advice
and oor principles ?" These gentlemen must ex-
cuse us fi,T not being aware of this. It is true that
the Duke has taken them by the hand as far as Ca-
tholic emancipation is concerned; but we thought,
first, that even Catholic emancipation had been but
a bastard stock of genuine Whigery; and that the
Duke's evident tendency to make his OWII profession
uppermost in all the civil concerns of the State was
what even the Whigs of so late a day. . as
those of Fox, of Mackintosh, of Brougham,
and of Burdett, would have startled: at with dis-
may. We suspeCt, therefore,- that the Duke
has found some other mode of silencing the Parlia-
mentary Whigs than by merely adopting °a stray opi-
nion or two which they themselves' were not agreed
about. His Grace, we think, understands the power
and the art of political coquetry and ogling. He
knows the power, we presume,. of that all-attractive

loadstone which- patronage furnishes him with, and
that the Whigs, hungry es they have always been as
politicians, cannot resist those numerous temptations
to silence and good behaviour which his Grace holds
out to them. But the more they see public men
deserting their duty for these or any other reasons,
the more it behoves the people to be true to them-
selves. There are certain political land-marks which
cannot be approached, much less passed, without
danger; and if his Grace, or any other Minister, ap-
proaches or attempts to pass t hero, 'we trust there
will always be a public voice, loud enough to make
itself be heard and respected, to say to that Mini-
ster, " Thus far you may go, but no farther."—
Morning Herald.
The proceedings of the Gentlemen who frequent
the Stock Exchange, furnish assuredly no test by
-which to form an opinion of the state of trade and
business -throughout tl►e country; but of late they
have been so thoroughly uninteresting—the market
so depressed—speculation so completely done up—
and business of every sort so totally at a stand,
that we cannot_ but consider the present state of
the Money Market as identified in every respect
with the deplorable state of the country. To ac-
count for the pressure now so universally felt
in the sale of goods, and the transaction of mat-
ters involving payments, every. possible cause is
sought for, and every possible expedient resorted
to by the advocates of a golden currency and the
opponents of a cheap currency. The natural course
of trade, they say,.has been interrupted by the dis-
turbances in South America, and the more obnoxi-
ous stoppage caused by the war in the East ; but
while we willingly concede that much mischief has
been caused in both ways, we re-assert, and with-
out the contradiction of any one who has giv=en the
slightest attention to the subject, and in spite even
of the agreement in opinion - with us, of the Bone-
collector and Indian corn man (whose produce of an
acre and a half on Barn Elms farm, about three-
quarters of a mile from town, was to provide plenty
for the whole starving population of the country
we say, that in spite even of this most unfavourable
and prejudicial agreement in opinion with us, the
contraction of the small note currency is the prin-
cipal cause. And why ? The country bankers have
been compelled to contract the amount of their dis-
counts, or credits to their customers; and this con-
traction has again operated on those with whom the
customers of these banks had dealings, and produced
on the one head a want of money for carrying on
commercial and mat►ufecturing enterprises; and on
the other a want of means to purchase, which have
been wholly unknown since the spring of 1826.
The truth o' this satement will, we doubt not, be-
come by and bye more and more notorious to every
one, and is indeed notorious to every one who re-
flects that the country is not only now called upon to
pay in gold what it only contracted to pay in paper,
but that it is called upon by the Government to pay at
the same time three times the amount of the taxes !
At the time that paper money was substituted for
gold, the whole taxesof the country only amounted to
about eighteen millions; now they are upwards of
fifty ; and reckoning the difference of value be-
tween a paper and gold currency, the taxation of
he present year is much more onerous than the
highest amount of taxation tiuring that awful period
when the country had to struggle with almost every
power in Europe. We put it, therefore, in the first
place, to every rational person, whether the present
distressed state of trade is not satisfactorily accounted
for by the facts we have mentioned, and, in the se-
cond, whether the Legislature ought not to revise
the Act of 1826 for the suppression of the small
note currency ? The depression of trade is noto-
rious, anti the cause, as we have already stated, is
equally allowed ; and when such is the case, why
ought not the cause to be removed.—Morning Ad-
vertiser.

POLICE INTELLIGENCE.

GUILDHALL.

A middle-aged couple, who gave their names Catherine
Aaron and William Maxwell, were brought before Mr.
Alderman ANSLEY yesterdAy-, for final examination, on
suspicion of being common utterers of base coin.

Sir. Field, the Mint Inspector, recognised both indivi-
duals as having been in custody before.
The evidence against the prisoners was, that on Satur-
day evening the female prisoner tendered a bad shilling at
the Acorn public-house, in Thames-street, but this being
detected, it was bent and given back to her, and she paid
for her glass of porter with a half-crown. She bit one of
the shihings given to her in change, and then give it back
as a bad one ; or rather, as the lad suspected who served
her, she changed one of his good shillings for a bad one
she had previously concealed in her mouth. The lad gave
her a gcod shilling in exchange; but not satisfied with her
success, she returned to the house a few minutes after she
had quitted it, and insisted that the right amount of
change had not been given to her, and laid clown, as the
money which had been given to her, the bent bad shil-
ling she had tendered at first, and a few halfpence. Mr.
Smith, the landlord, sent for an officer, an old• man, who
asked leave to search her ; but her medesty would not al-
low this, and after running round the kitchen like a mad
creature, she fell into a Pretended 'fir, and the landlord,
who had left her and the old man to themselves, reentered
the room. She was taken to the Compter, where she
was searched by a female, and a little empty bag was
found fastened to her stays; but she had no bad money.
Upon searching the kitchen at the public•house, a paper
containing 10 bad shillings was found thrown into a corner.
The male prisoner was detained on suspicion, because he
cime into the public-house twice for half pints of beer
while the woman was there, and a bad shilling was found
upon him. He bad also been observed in conversation
with the woman before sheentered the house. All the bad
shillings produced were of the same date-1816. The
Mint Inspector thought the evidence was insufficient to
warrant a Mint prosecution,- and Mr. Alderman Ansley
therefore admonished and discharged them.