The Sun.
London, England, 1842-01-15 00:00:00

41-1141/

LONDON: quiaa
SATURDAY, JANUARY 15:";1841:

The case of the American vessel lately carried
into Nassau by the slaves embarked on board her,
about which the Times of yesterday wrote a war
and defiance-breathing article, seems to us a
clear case which cannot possibly cause any dis-
turbance between the two Governments of Eng-
land and the United States. In it there is no
principle at issue which is assented to by one
party and denied by the other. All parties and
all Powers are agreed that every individual So-
vereign State may make what laws seem reason-
able within its own dominions, without, be they
what they may, justifying the interference .of
another State. America does not, and cannot,
contest our right to declare that the soil of our
dominions cannot bear a slave, and that by tread-
ing on that a man is, ipso facto, a free man. The
Times, in filet, quotes Judge STORY, an American
Judge, to prove that the doctrines of absolute
sovereignty withih its own territories is the
right of every nation. Neither State contends
that it has a right to protect critninals or
resist the demand of the other State to give them
up. The only questions which can possibly be
involved in the Nassau case between the two
Governments are questionS,bf detail, such as whe-
ther the whole of the criminals havebeen given up,
and whether some of them may not have been
protected as innocent men. Details of that de-
scription must be the subject of investigation in
the spot by the proper authorities, or by a Spe-
cial Commission, and, when the facts are ascer-
tained, there can he no doubt whatever that
both Povernments, agreeing as they do on the
PrinciPleA, will soon arrange this trifling subject.
The eise will bp easily settled by the principles
knoWn on 4 ireeogn ise *I by both parties.
In its 'remarks on this subject, the Times has

supplied an ample justification of the resistance
given by the United States to our claim to search
their vessels, which that Journal has been loud,
and even bullying, in condemning. Even yes-
terday it sneered at the United States "claim-
ing a surly and novel independence, destructive
of all maritime security ;" which sneer has the
demerit of being unjust, for the concession would
put an end to security. At the same time,
it is asserted as a general principle that "we
claim most distinctly the right to pronounce
for ourselves, finally and irresponsibly, where
concessions to the comity of nations' shall end.
The very meaning of independence is the power
of so doing. There is an end of national inde-
pendence if we are not to say for ourselves, and
nobody else for us, exactly how far a man who
stands on English ground shall be governed by
English law."

A ship is, all the world over, and at all times,
according to international law, a part of the ter-
ritory of the nation to which that ship belong..
It is, therefore, for the American Government,
not for the English Government, to determine all
points concerning American ships. That all the
powers of Ch ristendom have agreed to declare the
slave trade piracy makes no difference whatever
in the rights of the Americans, since " every
State is to pronounce for itself finally and irre-
sponsibly where concessions to the comity of
nations shall end." Though all the other sove-
reign powers of Europe should declare a new
maritime code, they cannot, united, without a
breach of duty, compel the Americans to submit
to it, for the "very meaning of independence is
the power in a sovereign State of determining
what concessions it will make to the comity of
nations." America refute to concede the right
of search. She does that for herself, "finally
and irresponsibly," and England hastily and
arbitrarily trenches on the right of sovereignty in
the United States, when she persists, in spite
of the refusal of the United States, to visit and
search American ships.

On this day week we published an account of
an important. meeting of the woollen manufac-
turers at Bath, which amply confirmed the de-
plorable accounts we have from time to time
published of the falling off of the woollen manu-
facture in Yorkshire. We shall not, we pre-
sume, be accused of exaggerating the import-
ance of this manufacture, when we content our-
selves with borrowing the following notice of it
from the Devizes Gazette, a Tory paper :
The woollen manufacture of England must, indeed,
be a subject of deep anxiety, not merely to those en-
gaged in it, but to every one who feels an interest in
the happiness and greatness of his country. For a long
series of centuries it has contributed to that greatness
and that happiness. Its raw material is the produce of
our own fields, and of the labour of our own rural popu-
lation, and the conversion of that material into clothing
first raised our hamlets into villages, and our villages
into thriving towns. As it grew and flourished, and
gave greater and greater employment to capital and in-
dustry, it enabled England to extend her supply beyond
her own limits ; while the supply of our own growing.
population still continued to be its great and principal
object. The population employed in the woollen manu-
facture has always been intimately connected with the
population employed in the production of wool ; a bond
of union between them has been formed 13q• palpable
community of interest, and the strong sense of reciprocal
dependence.
Whatever may be the case of the cotton manu-
facture, then, with the prosperity of the woollen
manufacture the prosperity of the agriculturists is
deeply and firmly entwined. To them, therefore,
it must be of great, though sorrowful interest, to
learn, from the circular of a respectable firm of
wool-brokers in Liverpool, dated the Bth instant,
that a contract for the deliveryofupwardsofloo,ooo
pieces of woollen goods for the East India market
has been taken by a continental house on terms
far below any English manufacturer's tenders.
Perhaps our agriculturists will think themselves
compensated for this, by selling the bulk of their
wool abroad, which will probably come to pass.
The circular says:--
The exports of wool to France, Belgium, and,America,
have risen from 1,690 cwt. in 1840, to 7,210 cwt: froni
Liverpool alonev and including 5,856 cwt. from the port..
of London, the exports of wool. to our rivals'in nuitinfitc-tures amount, in 1841, to .18,066 cwt. 'exclastvd
exports of combing wool direct from the port of'DuMlit,
which are regular and very considerable. When we.
state besides, that the prices paid for these wools are such
as to be quite out of the reach of the English manufac-
turer, we cannot look upon our position, as essentially 'a
manufacturing country, without apprehension and alarm.
The prices of wool, then, are now higher abroad
than at home, and the flockmasters may be
certain that as long as we continue to export
wool, such will be the case. The price abroad,
in fact, will, in a great measure, rule the price at
home ; for, if a higher price could be got from
English manufacturers, the wool would not be
sent abroad.- Here, then, we find one large
and important product of agriculture already
reduced in price below the continental level;
while its cost of production, owing to landlords'
taxes, is much above the cost of production on
the Continent. Wool helps to pay rent as we

as wheat. By checking the prosperity of the
woollen manufactures, the price of the farmer's
wool falls below the price on the Continent;
while, by keeping up the Corn-laws, all the
farmer's out-goings are determined by the higher
scale of English expenditure. That will tend to
impoverish all the farmers who keep sheep.
There is another and a very numerous class of
our countrymen, for whose welfare great concern
is professed, deeply interested in the question.
The circular says :

The present consumption of wool, both British and Fo-
reign, is much reduced, and from various causes. The
revolution in the stuff trade of Yorkshire, produced by
the disuse of hogg warps, and the substitution of the
cheaper cotton warps to a vast extent, has rendered
hogg wool nearly unsaleable,,and barely equal in value to
wethers of similar fineness,. Failures to a large amount,
amongst the consumers of fine yarns, in Scotland and
elsewhere, have fur the present, depressed the value and
checked the consumption of all super English and
Colonial combing wools. But. the increase of foreign ma-
nufacturing.establishments, supported in many instances
by. liri;isls s capital, ,superintended by British workmen,
consumin.g;Brillsb woo), out-bidding
,British buyers in
the,
,§oanisb, and almost every other foreign
wool marker, and. supplanting British manufactures in
alniost.e.vezi7.inarket abroad, becomes every year more
felt; and":_earaitiod, pa-be a main cause of the present de-
pression or British manufactures.. ,

At the Cape of Good Hope, in New South

. _
Wales, in Australia, and in Van Diemen's Land,
the colonists have for years past devoted their

attention chiefly to cultivating- sheep, so that

wool has -become one of their staple exports,
Much of the prosperity of those colonies tam

depend on the market they find for their wool,

and they will suffer even more than the English
farmers from the decline of the woollen mann..
facture. If they should find, as they will to
some extent, a market on the Continent for their
wool, they must of necessity take the manufac-
tured goods of the Continent in exchange. Those'

" vast and expanding markets," therefore, which

are to be extended at the cost of our people, by
the Government promoting a systematic scheme

of emigration, while it persists in destroying our

inanufa-ctures by accursed Corn-laws, will be, as

the United States, another ancient colony of

ours is fast becoming, vast markets for the manu-
facturing industry of the Continent, and we shall

plant our colonies in vain. Both the colonies

and the mother country, both the manufacturers
and Me farmers, will be deeply and permanently
injured by that decay of our woollen manufac-
tures which is now unhappily in progress.

In the Court of Queen's Bench, Ireland, a
judgment has been pronounced which cannot
fail to astonish and afflict hundreds of highly re-
spectable families in the northern districts of that
kingdom. A Mr. SMITH was convicted at the
last assizes at Armagh of bigamy. His Counsel,
Mr. WitITEsiDE, objected that his first marriage
was not valid, having been celebrated by a Pres-
byterian clergyman between an Episcopalian
Protestant and a Presbyterian. Judge CRAMP..
TON, before whom the case was tried, reserved
the point for the decision of the Irish Judges,
who, on Tuesday last, pronounced their judgment,
in presence of a very crowded court. There were
ten Judges on the Bench, eight of whom decided
that a marriage celebrated between an Episco-
palian Protestant and a Presbyterian, by a Pres-
byterian clergyman, was not valid, and therefore',
that SMITH must be discharged out of custody.
As this judgment will operate retrospectively as
well as prospectively, in a country where some

thousands of families have been so married, and
where the fruits of such marriages arc exceed-
ingly numerous, it is impossible to estimate the
amount of suffering which it may occasion. We
regret it on many accounts, but chiefly because
it will tend to unsettle men's minds as to the va-
lidity and force of the most sacred engagements.
It opens a door to the widest and most heartless
profligacy, as it 'leaves it at the option of any
person so married to desert his family and the
partner of his bed under the hypocritical pretext
of flying from a state of fornication. It is true
the persons so united may be married again by
application to the clergy of the Established
Church; but in the case of old decrepid people,
who have reared up families, and who stand in
the relation of grandsires to their descendants,
what a deal of scandal would not such marriages
cast upon the Church ? Regarding the judgment
in a purely secular sense, it is of the utmost im-
portance as involving endless controversies re-
specting the rights of property.
That this question will be early brought before
Parliament we do not doubt. An Act of the
Legislature is imperatively demanded to supply
whatever is wanting in the validity of all mar-
riages already celebrated, to which the judg-
ment of the Irish Court of Queen's Bench ap-
plies. This Act, if quickly passed, may prevent
separations and actions at law without number.
It is for the Church of Scotland to determine
whether she will consent to admit the invalidity
of any marriage celebrated by her regularly or-
dained ministers, one party to which shall be of
her own communion. For our own part we
think justice and decency demand that in all
mixed marriages it is enough to constitute their
validity that the officiating priest be of the reli-
gious communion of one or the other of time con-
tracting parties. It might lead to abuses were
a Church of England, a Presbyterian, or a Ro-
mnish priest to celebrate a marriage between per-
sons of another religious communion, or of dif-
ferent sects from themselves ; but were one of
the persons about to be married to hold the
tenets of the Established Church, the Presby-
tery, or the See of ROme, we consider the reli-
gious right of one or other of these priests to be
undoubted. To grant a monopoly of mixed

marriages to one class of priests is an outrage
against the liberty of the subject, and a violation
of freedom of conscience. A Roman Catholic,
for example, marrying a Protestant, may not
think a Church of England marriage binding,
whereas the object of his choice may have
scruples as to the validity of a Rornish marriage,
Now, in this case, the monopoly claimed by the
State Church necessarily leads to great domestic
unhappiness. To the parties who contract mixed
marriages it should be left to determine in the
communion of what Church they would prefer
their celebration, all and each being declared
equally valid by the Legislature.
But the most painful impression which this
judgment of the expounders of the laws will
make out of Ireland will be the effect which it

must have in opening the eyes of the people to
the defects which exist in all our social institu-

tions. Here is the denunciation of a grave, civil,
and ecclesiastical error, which has existed for
centuries in Ireland, unknown to all who took
part in it before the Court of Queen's Bench
pronounced its judgment on Tuesday. Men and
women mouldering in their graves, after a life of
what they died in the belief was the perfection
of Christian connubial happiness, are by this
sentence denounced to their descendants as
having' lived and died in a state of fornication.
But what was the State Church doing all this
time ? Wherefore did she not lift up a warning
voice? But it is ever so. The Church is the
last to find her tongue when her pecuniary in-
terests are left untouched. Give her the tithe
pig, and letit be the fattest of the litter, and S,►TA N
may, if he chooses, carry off the swine-herd
without molestation.

The Paseyites, alarmed at the flame which

they have kindled in the University of Oxford,
by putting forwar&Mr. WILLIAMS for the Pro-
fessorship of Poetry, are now anxious to with-
draw their candidate, and are using every
means to induce the Garbettites to come

to an amicable arrangement on the subject.
A requisition to this effect has been drawn up and
signed by 244 non-residents, among whom are
five Bishops out of the seven who are members
of Convocation; but Lord ASHLEY, the Chairman,
and Mr. GREGSON, the Secretary of Mr. GAR-
BETT'S Committee, properly turn a deaf ear
to the insidious scheme, and will admit no impu-
tation on the religious principles of their can-
didate.

"Let the galled jade wince ; our withers are unwrang.',
The excitement now existing, has arisen
from circumstances over which they had,
and can exercise no control, and should
they withdraw their candidate, they have
no security against the recurrence of similar
difficulties. They, in fact, treat their opponents
as rank Jesuits, whb have some sinister purpose
in view, but which they dare not reveal.
What a triumph to sincere Roman Catholics,
who, when " railed at" by these men,
" railed not again," to find them distrusting
one another, like the treacherous leaders of bar-
barous armies. The watch-word of the Gar-
bettites is "No surrender;" and a contest,

therefore, must take place. The names of
.the
five Bishops are—R. OXFORD, H. EXETER,
C. T. RIPON, E. SARUM, and T. V. SUDOR and
MAN.

With the French Journals we have re-
ceived a report of the proceedings, up to post
hour on Wednesday, in the Chamber of Peers,
on the Address in answer to the Speech from the
Throne, of which an interesting summary will be
found in another part of The Sun. These pro-
ceedings are remarkable, as showing that
not a single Peer raised his voice against .the
domestic tyranny of the Government. On the
contrary, all parties seemed to agree that the
Press could not be too much restrained ; that
public opinion could not be too tightly restricted;
that the dungeon and the guillotine could not be
too often called :into requisition to crush the
murmurs of the discontented ; and that the
Government had nothing to fear, so long
as it sacrificed the poor to the interests
of . men of property. As compared with
the Peers generally, M. GUIZOT and his col-
leagues are 'pattern's of -moderation. Not a
Peer. asceikdedthe tribune who did not appear
eager toconvinceTrance, that, if in office, his
little finger would be thicker than the loins of
the GUIZOT 'Cabinet—that if the Ministers chas-
tised freedom of opinion with whips, he was
prelifftrdto 'punish still lesser delinquencies with
sCoriiiUUS,.:,„-;
."1 We have received this -evening, at six o'clock," says
the Choriegri,:" a Sammons to appear before the Court
of Assize on the 15th- of this . month. Thus only three
days_ are allowed us to Rrepare our defence. It is true
that the Bar thinks,. with reason, that it must be ex-
tremely easy.
However, we have many documents to collect, for
we must show to the Jury all the manifestations of the
opinion of France, and of the European press, on the
subject of the requisition of M. Habert. We are already
engaged in collecting these materials, and we shall appear
if our defence is ready. We shall not ask for an ad-
journment, unless the short time allowed us should not
have been sufficient."
The Committee on the Address asked the Government
to communicate the treaty on the right of search. This
communication (says the Constitutionneo has been re-
fused.—Commerce.
BOURSE--PAsts, WEDNES D AY, JAL 12.

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