The Sun.
London, England, 1842-12-29 00:00:00

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" Who runs may read.'

FO.~i,x;3Gti.

A telegraphic dispatch has been received at Paris
from Vienna announcing that the Porte had consented
to the appointment of a Christian Governor for the
Maronite or Christian population of Syria, and a
Druse Governor for tho Druses.

On Saturday evening their Majesties the King and
Queen of the French received the Duc Decazes, M.
Dupin, Procureur-General at the Court of Cassation,
the Comte D'Haussonville, Baron Thenard, and Ge-
neral Dariule.

" Tt was on Saturday given out as certain," says the
Constitutionnel, " that the session would be opened
without any speech from the Throne; but that the
Ministry, in o der to bring on a political discussion,
will immediately preaern the Bill for the grant of
secret service money. On the other hand, it was
asserted that this point is not yet positively decided
upon, but is to be finally determined at a Council to
be held on Jan. 4."

Private letters from Paris of Monday announce
that the King of Sardinia had conferred on M. de
Lesseps, the French Consul, and M. Gatier, com-
manding the French naval station off Barcelona, the
Cross of St. Maurice, for their exertions on behalf of
Sardinian subjects during the bombardment.
The celebrated Vidocq, formerly chief of the secret
police, will in a few days be brought to trial on several
charges—one for having assisted a fraudulent. bank-
rupt in secreting the preiierty of his creditors, and
again for having been connected with the fraud com-
mitted by Madame Benard, the housekeeper of Count
Deraidotr.
The Chamber of Commerce of Havre met on the
23d to hear the Report of the Committee on the Sugar
question. After the document had been discussed, a
letter to the Minister was drawn up, in which the
Chamber strongly recommends the entire suppres-
sion of the home-made manufacture on paying an in-
demnity.
The Mimiteur publishes a return or the imports of I
France during the month of November last, froni
which it will be seen that, notwithstanding the recent
elevation in the tariff duties, the introduction of fo-
reign threads into Franc• was still very considerable.
The quantity imported in that month amounted to
659,432 kilogrammes ; :that of linens to 236,555;
coals to 130,417,685, &c.
Espartero left Sarria on the 22d for Madrid, with-
out having entered Barcelona..

The E;ipectador informs us that the Supreme Tri-
bunal of War, which had been ordered to investigate
the charge of brutality and ill treatment brought by
M. Lerobvre against Zurbano, is about to give in its
report, and that it is generally believed to be favour-
able to the General.

The belief in the dissolution of the Cortes was very
current in Madrid.

The Patriota announces that the Duchess of Vic-
tory's soiree, on the 18th was numerously attended,
and nearly all the foreign diplomatists in Madrid were
present.

pvitzic OPINION.
The Times, after pointing out a variety of absurd
anomalies in our Ecclesiastical Courts, adds :—" Nor
is it easier to comprehend the principle which has de-
fined the limits of that peculiarly ecclesiastical juris-
diction which is exercised pro salute aniintz, not for
the redress of wrong, but for the reformation of the
offender. Defamation, incontinence, swearing, and
one or two other vices, seem to be separated off from
the great :nass of human delinquency, and consigned
to the care of the spiritual authority, as arbitrarily
and unreasonably us the 20/ note from the Leicester-
shire freehold, as if the robber or murderer were less
in need of emendation, or his practices less inconsis-
tent with ecclesiastical morality, than slander or loose
living. That the Christian Church should undertake,
as in a certain sense, and by certain means, it does, to
contain all Christian men, or at least its own mem-
bers, within the limits of the Christian law, is no more
than its necessary duty ; the question being v ith
what weapons she is commissioned to perform
her task—persuasion, exhortation, nienac., eccle-
siastical censure, deprivation of civil privi-
lege, fine and imprisonment, or fire and sword :
but that the Courts of the Church should
claim a jurisdiction over, and should not ex-
tend that jurisdiction beyond, certain elegant extracts
of vice, of which no separate account can be given
except that they look a little like the leavings of mu-
nicipal law, is a fact somewhat startling to the un-
derstanding of a plain man. Nor is the claim ren-
dered more intelligible by recollecting that the ultimo
ratio of the Ecclesiastical, as of the Civil Courts, is
the temporal penalty of imprisonment, and that its
jurisdiction does not in this, any more than in the
preceding cases, confine itself within the limits of the
English ecclesiastical establishment; How far the
practical inconvenience of all these anomalies is cured

by fictions, limitations, and exceptions—and what will
be e ected in its peculiar department by the late well-
judged Statute of Wills—it is not to our present pur-
pose to examine. We wish only to point attention to
the nature of these anomalies as a prepwation for
probing more closely the nature of this confusion."

The Herald Omer-yes, in an article on the question
of the Sugar Duties :—" There is, however, no ap-
prehension in the We,t Indies that the present Minis-
ters, in proposing a reduction of the duty on foreign
sugar, will bring forward so monstrous and one-sided
a project as that of the Whig Administration, so
signally and righteously rejected by the House of
Commons. The colonists entertain the most con-
fident expectation that any reduction of duty on the
foreign will be accompanied by a modification of the
colonial tax. And all the protection they appear to
seek is such as will give them the opportunity of ulti-
mately demonstrating that free labour is in the tropics
cheaper than slave labour. That a prohibitory duty
such as the present is indispensable for this purpose,
the present state of our sugar colonies alone disproves;
for that duty has not, owing to particular circum •
stances, done aught to destroy the profit of the slave
trade, whilst it has, in conjunction with the circum-
stances referred to, checked the consumption of sugar
in England and impoverished the Imperial exchequer.
There can be but one objection to a diminution of the
duty on colonial sugar, and it is that the revenue may
suffer therefrom • but surely the duties on the colonial
and foreign article may be so judiciously proportioned
that the present amount o revenue may he maintained
without diminishing the consumption of the sugar of
British posse-ssions at home ?"
The Post, reverting to the question of free trade,
says :—" We are reminded by a correspondent that
it was Mr. Alexander Baring, now Lord Ashburton,
who presented to the House of Commons, the petition
of the merchants of London in favour of free trade,
to which the Anti-Corn- law League' refers in its
advertisements, as containing imperishable princi-
ples.' Our belief is that such maxims' as those re-
commended in the old London petition are very perish-
able. We believe that the most acute minds which,
two and twenty years ago, acceded to their truth, are
now convinced of their unsoundness, and very reason-
ably so, because they have been taught by experience
that these free trade maxims ought not to be relied
upon in the policy of a State whose interests are cir-
cumstanced as the interests of Great Britain undouht-
,ly are. Beyond question the most acute-minded, as
well as the most eminent of all those who joined la
the London petition, was Lord Ashburton. Have the
free-traders still the advantage of his support? The
Government to which the Noble Lord has done such
essential service in the United States of America has
done much since its accession to power to promote
the maxims of free-trade, and to give them great
weight and currency in these islands. Does Lord
Ashburton approve of all the proceedings of Govern-
ment in that regard ? We believe that experience
has satisfied the mind of Lord Ashburton, that the
views expressed in the London petition of 1820 were
to a very considerable extent fallacious, and to his i
praise be it said, he is not so bigoted to theories as to
refuse to be tangle by the lessons of experience, nor
so wanting in candour as to refrain from supporting
the modified views to which experience has given rise."
The Chronicle says :—" To Sir Robert Peel mud
be attributed the want of employment for labourers,
of which we have such distressing accounts from
nearly all the agricultural districts. We have not so
mean an opinion of his understanding, as to suppose
that he was the dupe of his own arguments in favour
of the sliding scale, and we do not, therefore, think
that we are chargeable with any want of charity
toward the Right Honourable Baronet, in assuming
that he took up the sliding scale merely as a means of
driving his political opponents from power. But
though we accuse the Premier of dishonesty in pro-
posing the sliding scale against his better judgment,
we will not go so far as to impute to him that he
anticipated all the mischievous consequences which
have flowed from it. He could not believe that his
sliding scale would be a permanent settlement of the
corn question ; but he might not be aware, that so
long as the farmers entertain the belief that a change
must take place, they cannot in prudence take leases,
or enter on any of those improvements by which
employment may be afforded to the multitudes of
labourers now idle in every parish. The farmers ar
now as hostile to the sliding scale as the manufacturers
They have found, from experience, that it affords them
no protection, and that no calculations can he safely
made under it. The language of almost every paper
circulated in the agricultural districts is, away with the
sliding scale, and let us have a permanent law."