The Sun.
London, England, 1827-03-05 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The intercepted despatch from Montealegre to the
Queen Dowager of Portugal (published exclusively in the
Times of Saturday), taken in connexion with private ac-
counts, which state the complicity of numerous indi-
viduals professing allegiance to the Royal Charter, in
schemes devised for its overthrow, furnishes matter of
very grave reflection, and must, in our judgment, force
the British Government to prompt and decisive resolutions.
- In the second paragraph of the secret despatch, the rebel
General declares expressly his deep sense of abligation to
King Ferdinand (" her Majesty's august brother") for
the most signal benefits to himself " and his division,"
while he was organizing the latter within the Spanish
territory. In the third paragraph it is as clearly recorded
by the writer, that on his being admitted to the presence
of the King, and of the Portuguese Princesses (married to
the two Infants of Spain), he, Montealegre was actually
appointed by Ferdinand Commander en second of
the invading army of Portuguese rebels, and Chaves Com-
mander-in-Chief! As this is a remarkable and important
passage, we shall quote the writer's words :—" There I
had likewise the singular honour of kissing his (Ferdi-
nand's) Royal hand, and that of the most Serene Princesses,
the Princess of Beira and the Infanta of Spain, having
been on that occasion required by the first, to take the
command en second, and to consider as General in Chief,
my nephew the Marquis of Chaves—that being the Sove-
reign Will of his Catholic Majesty ; to which I submitted
without any hesitation !"—We have it then pretty safely
established, that the Commander-in-Chief, and second in
command, of the rebel army equipped in Spain for the in-
vasion of our Portuguese ally, were named and commis-
sioned for that service by " the Sovereign will and plea-
sure of Ferdinand the Vllth.!! " Is England then, and
will she suffer the Court of Portugal, to be cajoled any
longer—or bullied, rather—by the cavalier " assurances" of
this unprincipled King and Cabinet, that he disapproves the
conduct of his provincial Governors, in lending aid to that
rebel armament, the Commanders of which were actu-
ally nominated by himself? If England listens to
the subsequent protestations of Ferdinand, and the
odious hypocrites who surround him, she courts, we
must say, her own disgrace. " Longa," forsooth,
" has been recalled, and his successor appointed." It is
a barefaced falsehood—both one and the other of these
assertions : Longa has not received the slightest mark of
real displeasure from Ferdinand; while the creature osten-
sibly appointed, to succeed him has been bedridden for
many months, and can never move a step towards the
frontier. It is time, therefore, for Great Britain to lay
aside the affectation of a credulity, by which she can
no longer pretend to be deceived, and the assumption
of which can only be disgraceful, when it leads to no
practical and benefcial object. The effrontery and
treachery of Ferdinand has mingled insult in the same
cup with wrong. But, on the other hand, according
to private letters, the Portuguese Government itself has
been accused, and, it would seem, not quite unjustly, of
paltering and coquetting with rebellion, instead of em-
ploying any strenuous efforts to extinguish it. From
the last accounts, we are led to suppose that treason
has been working more extensively, and that crimes
against the state have been detected of a more re-
volting nature, considering the individuals thereby im-
plicated, than the public had been at first aware.—
We are compelled to ask, can any thing be more
calculated to rouse an honest Englishman's indigna-
tion, than the open impunity with which rebels of all
ranks have bearded the Government of the Regent ?-
We have read of various noblemen, who had taken more
or less active parts in the rebellion, being suffered, on
the discomfiture of .their troops, to retire unmolested to
their country seats, and thence get ready fresh engines
of attack upon the Constitutional Sovereign. It is true,
that Chaves and the other traitors of his family, with those
of one or two other houses, have not yet been seized, and
cannot, therefore, be punished in their own persons ; but
why should the law be silent in regard to them, or why
should the Ministers of the Regent, with the Houses of
the Legislatnre, be fast asleep ? Months ago we called
upon the Portuguese Constitutional Authorities to confis-
cate by law the estates of these incorrigible rebels, and
to set by proclamation, a price upon their heads. If no
steps of the kind be adopted, it is plain that the Go-
vernment chooses to be a party with the rebels, and
that no greater outrage was ever practised upon a friendly
nation, than the demand made by Portugal from England
of a body of troops, which are retained as spectators of
their own approaching circumvention, where their active
services were professedly required ; retained to be made
the laughing stock of both Portuguese factions, to be
wasted in useless enarehings towards the frontier, and to
have their retreat eventually cut off by the growing
strength of the rebel cause, which is encouraged and re-
cruited for, by the criminal forbearance of the Portuguese
Government to act with becoming resolution against the
most guilty of the enemy. England, we say, has an ob-
vious right, and it has long since been the bounden duty
of her Minister, to exact from Portugal the immediate
adoption of penal measures against the rebels, or at once
to withdraw the British troops from a land where their
safety and honour are thus compromised by the weak or
wicked lenity which the rebel chiefs, with their families
and associates, have experienced from the Power profess-
ing to be an ally of Great Britain._Times.
The Catholic Question comet on to-night in the House
of Cemmons. Hitherto the Question has been/whether
will the conceding of the claims of the Catholics, or the
rejecting, he most conducive to the security of the Empire?
The possibility of an event, the belief of which gives a
new shape to the question, never once occurred to any
Member of the Legislature. No one till now ever sup-
posed that there was any process by which the proportion
between the Catholics and Protestants could be materially
altered. But there is now a party in the House, and a
still larger party out of it, who say, let us alone—only
stave off the settlement of the Catholic Question for a year
or two, and we will answer for it there will be no Catho-
lics to emancipate. If it be doubtful, they say, whether
it would be safer to give or withhold political power to
Catholics, there can be no doubt that it would be the
safest of all to have none but Protestants in the posses-
sion of power from necessity, in consequence of the ex-
tinction of Catholicism. We have heard it stated on good
authority, that the most distinguished member of the
Protestant Church of Ireland, has actually committed him-
s,,lf by the Declaration, that the Reformation now begun
in I:reland, will be terminated in less than seven years by
the complete withdrawal of the Catholics from Popery.—
From the: tone of Mr. Leslie Foster, on Friday night, it
is clear the). he supposes the Catholics are quite ready for
a rush. We isenow nothing personally of Lord Farnham ;
but gentlemen of the North of Ireland assure us that he is
a sober-minded woridly-man, whose general character is
anything rather than a disposition to cut blocks with razors.
For our parts we never attempt to reason as to the effects
of enthusiasm ; and it is clear that the -enthusiasm which
is to work the conversion of a whole Catholic population
to the religion of a people to whom they have never
borne much love, must be of no ordinary strength.—
Enthusiasm alone is equal to the production of so ex-
traordinary a result ; for the buying over two or three of
the wretched outcasts who are without bread, and even
in want of rags, would only make the whole matter ridiculous.
What staggers us very much is, that in England we have
never understood, that in the Manufacturing districts—as
in Lancashire, for instance—where the Catholics form
large bodies, the Methodists, the most successful of all our
converters, have made any impression on the former. At
Preston, and about Blackburn, thc! Catholics keep their
- ground, if they do not gain on their neighbours. The
Catholics form a large part of the population of Britain.
Now, we should think this island is a much fairer field for
conversion than Ireland, and yet no progress is made in
' that work. The Puritans, who once had an ascendancy
in England, and who could boast of such a host of eminent
Divines, some of whom are yet without their equals in the
Church for learning and subtlety—as Richard Baxter for