The Sun.
London, England, 1829-07-13 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

No clear account has yet been given of the
progress, either of Turks or Russians, after the
battle of the 11th ult. That the successes of
Count Diebitsch terminated with that day there
seems, among other reasons for believing, this,—
namely, the complete silence of all the Russian
authorities and their partisans, as to any subse-
quent disaster befalling the army of Redschid
Pacha. In the mean time it is averred,—and,
besides having every motive for wishing it to he
true, some opinions are stated in well-informed
quarters which would operate in favour of its
credibility,—that the Russian General has sent
a message of an amicable nature to the Grand
Vizier, proposing either an armistice for a defi-
nite time, or more directly making overtures for
negotiation. There is, as we have hinted, good
reason to apprehend that Russia feels disposed
for peace, and on conditions by no means ex-
orbitant or alarming. It would be humane and
just, both in the Imperial Government and in
those of all its European Allies, to promote, by
every means short of dishonour, a consumma-
tion so infinitely to be desired. Russia would
act wisely by adopting such a course, even
with regard to immediate consequences ; for it
seems next to impossible that in the progress of
a war which affects the commercial interests,
as well as political feelings, of many other States
besides the belligerents themselves, transactions
should not take place, however innocently on
the part of the latter, through which the rights
of neutrals must be more or less infringed upon,
and their policy receive a bias directly adverse
to the original wishes and resolutions of their
Governments. An inconsiderate objection, we
find, has been raised to the probability of such
pacific demonstrations on the side of Russia,
because of her recent advantage in the field.
But it is precisely at the moment of victory
that a sagacious sovereign would be most anxi-
ous to display his readiness for an adjustment of
differences which turned more on points of
honour than of profit, since no one could, in
that case, ascribe to him any motives but such as
were creditable to his character—consistent with
his dignity—generous towards his foe—and re-
spectful towards the sentiments of surrounding
nations. If an equitable peace can be brought
about by efforts to enforce a sense of its blessings
upon the Turkish Sultan and his Ministers, we
are sure that neither England nor France will be
negligent in the discharge of a duty so solemn
and so grateful in the eyes of all mankind.—
Times.

Our acute correspondent, Daniel Hardcastle,
has favoured us with an elaborate and able exa-
mination of the Savings' Bank Act, passed in
the session of 1828. To say the truth, although
we agree with our friend Daniel, that powers of
a novel character, and to a large amount, have
been acquired by Ministers under this dexter-
ously-framed Act of Parliament, it does not strike
us so very clear that such powers are of a benefi-
cial tendency. There are two things in law-
making to be gravely deprecated. 1. The ren-
dering complex transactions which are naturally
simple. 2. The professing one purpose—and
under cover of it diverging to another. S. The
employing circuitous and disguised manoeuvres
for effecting objects, which, if beneficial to the
public, ought to be avowed, but if questionable,
ought not to be prosecuted or attempted, at least
in a crooked manner. Here we have, according
to the recital of the several clauses referred to in
this so called savings-banks act," a whole heap
of adventitious and heterogeneous provisions in-
grafted on it, conveying enormous discretionary
powers to the executive government, and in no
degree bearing upon the original subject of the
act, or connected with its title. The Commis-
sioners, when called upon to repay to individuals
who have lodged money with the trustees of the
savings' banks, the amount of their several depo-
sits, ought, as we conceive, to have recourse to
no other method of performing so very plain
and direct a duty, than by merely selling out so
much stock as might be required for the pur-
pose. But the machinery devised by the new
Act of Parliament is quite astounding from its
complexity, and most suspicious we are bound
to say, from the ends to which it may be directed.
With the money of the depositors the official
functionaries are permitted to purchase up un-
funded debt (Exchequer-bills) ; with these Ex-
chequer-bills they are permitted to purchase
funded debt, by having a corresponding portion
of three per cent. stock credited to them in the
books of the Bank of England. Why not buy
the stock at once ? And let it be remembered
that this stock is not so much three per cents.
taken out of the general market, but stock created
which did not exist before. Next comes a
power to re-purchase Exchequer-bills with the
very same new stock which the former purchase
of Exchequer-bills had produced : with the last
batch of such bills the act does not state at all
explicitly what is to be done by the Commis-
sioners. The 55th section, as it seems to us,
conveys to the King's Ministers a frightful
power, inasmuch as, instead of compelling them
to pay the money standing in the names of the
Commissioners to the depositors, as it may be
demanded, they are hereby enabled to issue Ex-
chequer-bills to the amount, on -which bills the
Bank of England is to make advances of money !
The bills so created may be extinguished :—llow ?
By money lodged with the trustees by the svork-
ing classes of England. But the hocus-pocus ends
in this—that to the full extent of the whole
savings banks' fund lodged on public faith in the
bands of public officers, these officers have the
power conveyed to them of borrowing money in
one shape or other without the cognizance of any
one but the King's Ministers and the Bank of
England, and thus of increasing, to a formidable
pitch, the amount of the public debt, while the
operations through which the whole scheme may
be managed—between the alternate employment
of the money of the Bank, of that of the depo-
sitors, and of the several denominations of public
debt,—are such as to make a search into the
several proceedings adopted by the Commissioners
one of great labour and uncertainty. We repeat
our dislike of these involutions and envelope,
molts, in the financial system of the country,
which ought to invite ex.amination, and to faci-
litate, instead of endeavouring to baffle it ; and
we do hope, that in the next session of Parlia-
ment, this whole novelty which we hays been
touching upon may become a topic of diligent
We do not feel at all inclined to fall in with
the opinions of those who profess either on the
one hand to entertain alarm, or on the other to
throw an air of ridicule over the fact of a military
person being placed at the head of the new sys-
tem of police. If there is any danger or incon-
venience likely to result from it (of which we
see none) whom have we to thank for bringing
it upon us but the tribe of civilians who have,
for a number of years, been trying their hands
at the same subject, and whose admitted failure
is the main, if not the only cause, of the Go-

vernment being compelled to resort to new
means of providing for the_ public safety ? We
look with as much jealousy as any can do at any
approaches towards a military Government, in
itself so hostile to the free spirit of the Consti-
tution ; but, as applied to police, the idea of a
civil force organised upon military principles, is
neither very new nor alarming. the " Trained
Bands," " the Lumber Troop, and even the
man in armour," with his satellites, are all many
proofs that our ancestors in the city of London
did not look either to the constable's staff, or the
vigilance and wisdom of the Dogberries or their
days, alone for protection. In later times great
effOrts have been made, and much expence in-
curred, in endeavouring to improve the police by
means of a new and better description of Magis-
trates ; and, as far as the fair in-door business of
a Magistrate is concerned, there is no question
but that much improvement has taken place.—
But in exteriors, and prevention, very little ad-
vance has been made. Those precious speci-
mens of honesty and wisdom, parochial Boards
and Select Vestries, have kindly eased
the Magistrates of the main pact of what
ought to have been their labours, while
unaccustomed to see beyond the walls within
which the mere letter of their duties con-
fines them, they have silently suffered nurseries
of crime to thrive and grow up under their very
noses, nurtured and watered, in some instances,
by the very hands which ought to have been em-
ployed in rooting out and extirpating such
noxious weeds. At length the evil becomes in-
tolerable, and a new method of endeavouring to
remedy it is hit upon. And can it be wondered
that those who are making this attempt should
confide its execution to a new description of Head ?
But, because the Prime Minister happens to be
a soldier, we cannot, forsooth, see a soldier
appointed to any office, but up starts somebody
and tells us, " beware of a Military Govern-
ment." What the people want, on this subject
of Police, however, is, protection. This they
have never yet had, either from Magistrates,
from Constables, or any description of civil force;
for, be it remembered that, with all these ima-
ginary fears of a Military Government, we hardly
hear of so much as a house being on fire but the
military are called out to protect the inhabitants
in their lives and property. Away, then, with
all this cant and parade about a Military Go-
vernment. A civil force, organised upon mili-
tary principles, but without the civil abstraction
which belongs to the character of a mere soldier,
is the best that can be obtained. Of course,
such a force can only be properly organised un-
der a military man, who is quite as likely, we
should imag►ne, to feel a due interest in the pre-
servation of the laws and liberties of his country
as they can do, whose main labour it sometimes
appears to he to mystify the former for their own
ad van tage.—Morning Herald.
The Courier of Saturday observes—

“ The Dublin Evening Port of Tuesday calls for
Proclamations headed by the name of Northumber-
land, and signed by all the Privy Councillors ? Does
it wish to create alarm and dissension ? Lord L.
Gower acted more wisely in calling upon the Magi-
strates, by letter, to use their best exertions in pre-
serving the public tranquillity. And we have no
doubt they will be able to preserve it ; and those
who wish that they may be, should avoid all irri-
tating language, all allusions which may revive
former differences. It was with disgust we read in
the Morning Chronicle of to-day, such observations
as these, that every addition of wretchedness on
the part of the peasantry is a cause of additional
rent to the landlords.' Is this so—can it be so—
can there be a greater absurdity than to assert, that
the poorer and wretcheder a man is, the more pro-
fitable he is to his landlord, and the better able to
pay his rent ? Is it certain, as the Morning
Chronicle also mentions, that the landlords of Ire-
land will oppose any measure at all equal to the
wants of the population ?' Why are the landlords
thus held out as objects of hatred to their tenants ?
What measures have they opposed that were cal-
culated to benefit the population ? Are they such
fools to their own interests and safety ? And is
this the Whig prescription for pacifying Ireland ?”
If our contemporary had paid a little atten-
•tion to the evidence before the Committee on
Emigration, or the Evidence taken by the Com-
mittees appointed to inquire into the condition
of Ireland, he would have been able to under-
stand our observations. In stating that every
addition of wretchedness on the part of the pea-
santry i 3 a cause of additional rent to the land-
lord, we said nothing more than has been again
and again said by witnesses the best acquainted
with Ireland. The great misfortune of that
country is the excessive competition for land,
caused by a superabundant population, to which
land is necessary as a means of existence. Hear
what the well-informed Protestant Bishop of
Limerick says on this subject :
" As far back as I can trace, I find the quantity
of land which was to be let out in small portions
not sufficient to meet the demands for it.

The proprietors of land had it in their power to
require a rent not measured by the intrinsic value of
the ground, but by the excessive demand for it,
occasioned by a superabundant agricultural popula-
tion. • • . . . The peasantry

have no property—their landlords will not permit
them to have any. Like the frog in the fable, let
them swell until they burst, and still they will be
found not to have dilated beyond their rents—these
rents are a kind of magical circle—a kind of prison—
the tenants are so many confined insolvent debtors,
and if some unlocked for combination of circum-
stances should seem to set a poor wretch free, and
he is ready to escape from pauperism, even then he
may find some old standing arrear coming against
him as it were a gaoler's fee, and remanding him to
his confinement, Ido not keep my sheep for
shew,' said a gentleman to me a few days since,
my principle is, that those are the best cattle that
pay best for their feeding,' and I need not say that
few Irish landlords keep their tenants for shew—
their principle is with men as with cattle—those are
most to be encouraged, who from a given spot of
ground return most rent, and they would think it
just as unnatural to let a tenant save and hoard, as
they would to leave their sheep for years unshorn.
. . . . Compering the rents of the
present day (I mean the rents reduced' as they have
been, in consequence of the depreciation in the
money price pr agricultural produce) with Mr.
Young's account or the rents in 1788, we find that
they have rather more than doubled ; and
yet, if we take an average price for the last
three years, we shall find that (except in the articles
of poultry and butter, and one or two unimportant
matters besides) the prices are the same as those
stated by Mr. Young. This as -ertion, the truth of
which can be easily verified, must appear somewhat
strange. In 1778, the people were complaining of
•the eieorlritancy of their rents; and in 1824 the
rents are double; the prices the same, and the mode
of farming verylittie improved. The consequences •
of this severity must be felt somewhere. Either
then tlia landlord's claim is resisted, pr the priya-
tions of the pear must be considerably increased.--
Both of these misfortunes have happened. In Mr,
Young's time the food of the Irish poor was so
plentiful, that he was anxious to introdirce something
resembling their habits of living among the English
labourers. I mean no more than that he was
anxious to cultivate the potatoe, and give every
English labourer a potatoe-garden and a cow, after
•
the fashion then prevailing in Ireland. If he tra
veiled among us now, lie would retrench one ar-