The Sun. — 1824-03-25 (London, England)

THI TIMES.]  The Alien Act is a disgrace to the law of England, and is supported in the House of Commons by arguments as unworthy of an enlightened assembly as the measure itself is of a free people. What is the professed intention of Ministers, as declared by Mr. Peel in his speech recommending the Bill ? "To protect foreign c:crdaoilt in adu flel-1 i lg w -subject : " G overomoots from clasturbance by their SU 1)-• " jests, living under the laws of England." O this pretence, if a foreigenn Agemarhieass -psoulbitiecat of iris own privatepolitical r Sovereign, should call upon O the Home Secretary to him from. Eugland, the latter must comply with the tyrannical demand, and a British Minister be made the agent of a foreign 1 t.espotistn in the exercise of its odious persecutions.!`.l3ut when is it that refugees from Continental tyranny are most numerous, and plots for its overthrow most likely to be undertaken ? Precisely When the foreign Government is most guilty of those barbarous acts which drive its subjects into exile, and which authorize —nay, enjoin as a sacred duty—their combined endeavours to /i"dicate their wrongs. In this broad view of the question, therefore, the natural operation of the Alien Act is--to be more severe against the sufferer as bissuffering becomes more intense, and most useful to the tyrant when his oppression becomes most intolerable. What can such a system. be called, but a shameful league between the British Parliament and the Holy Alliance, for destroying, by y hand of English law, every scattered remnant of that resistance to oppression, which, in its more collected and formal sta te,the con tinental members of the same confederacy have broken by armed violence! It is, we repeat, shameful that this country should be so debased ; for never before in English history had the slaves of foreign despots an acknowledged right of dictating to a British Sovereign how, and in what cases, he should enforce the law of England against individuals breathing British air, and reposing on British soil. " But," says Mr. Peel, " the law has never been put in action at " the request of any foreign Government : in ten " years no application for the removal of a fo" reigner from England has ever been officially " made !" What, then, becomes of the sole pretence on which the Alien Bill has been defended by Ministers ? A law for the protection of foreign States, and never once appealed to on their behalf since the hour when it was first enacted ! Why, the effrontery of such arguments, coupled with such admissions, wore befits a state paper of Buonaparte than the speech of an English gentleman. If the law be thus useless to the end it professes, it casts an odium, at once gratuitous and absurd, upon the Legislature which enacts it. On the other hand, we are told that the deportations under this law, originating with the Ministers themselves, have been but few in number. We say more—that few ns they were, the old law of England was fully sufficient to deal with the parties, unassisted by such foreign inventions. Count Bettera, for instance, was sent off, and justly ; hut was the Alien Act necessary to protect Prince Esterhazy against a desperado of that characters lie alight have been imprisoned, in default of bail, for his threats against the Prince's safety ; he might have been transported as a felon for his actual attempts to murder him. The Alien Act was, indeed, the power resorted to by Mr. Peel ; but it Wail-employed, to supersede the law of England—not required to fill up its defects. In all cases, however, it must he observed, that the discovery of a machination against foreign persons or Governments constitutes the ground of complaint and banishment under this act : yet, the moment in which the discovery is made, the danger of the conspiracy vanishes.