The Sun. — 1824-12-09 (London, England)

BRITISH PRESS.j In the Madrid Gazettes received yesterday, we have'an otfiuial report of the crimes said to have been committed by, Vigo, the Constitutional ,Governor itt Corunna, in July, 1823. 'Where judicial proceedings are conducted arbitrarily and in secret,• little reliance can be had on their correctness. The character of the Judges, too, is material. It is unhappily notorious, that in all these respects the administration of justice in Spain isdissentitled to public confidence. The overthrow of established political institutions is generally accompanied with enormities shocking to humanity. 'No revolution was ever more calm or bloodless than the Spanish. .The Constittitionalists were reproached rather With pusillanimity than.ferocity. They seemed more afraid to punish the .adherents, of the absolute -Monarchy than to put them to death causelessly. If,, however, the charges against the men condemned at Carolina be true, it would seem that the exasperation of party feeling was producing the re-enactment of the ntrocities.of the French revolution. What, then, may -we expect should another popular- movement take place .in that wretched and ruined country'! Even now assessinations are daily perpetrated, sometimes by the Constitutionalists in revenge for previous outrages 'on them, but most '.frequently by the Royalist Volunteers, who are Composed of the basest rabble, and allowed to' rob and murder, ithout form or colour of law, whomsoever they suspect of liberalism. The Spanish Tribunals are now filled with furious, ignorant, and sail-guinary bigots, raised from the lowest. stations of society, without possessing any qualification for , their office, to which they have been. preferred solely because they are untainted with • any participation in the administration of the Constitutional system. The per Sons of rank who are nominally at the head of the public departments, have really-no share in guiding public affairs. The King gives his con. Cadence only, 'to such men us the Trappist, the Curate Merino,'and the ruffian Bessieres. They actually tonttitute. the Spanish ministry, though: they have not 'the' honthirs •and emoluments of office. We .therefore disbelieve the story of the noyattes of Corunna. There appears to be no sufficient reason'for the crime.' It is, we' think, most likely 'that the Royalist sufferers perished in an attempt to, capture the` veSsel in which they were confined. 'A t the time the French army was It the plate, such a moment would-hardly 'have' been selected for the perpetration' of 'so' unprovoked and horrible a massacre. The .Cotistitutionalists heard their condemnation with indifference, and' died with fortitude. We fear that lite days of blood are .only beginning ; the invasion .of the French will.yet cause torrents 'to be shed.- Spain iS pidly relapsing into the 'wildest barbarism and inextricable -confusion ;the elementi Of order and security have been scattered 'to the winds, and the work of pretended "pacification" haS ended in the uprooting of the foundations of 'attires society. , • ' • '  [Tut To dEs.l in the Paris Papers which arrived yesterday, up to the latest customary period, are various debates, assertions, and contradictions, on the subject of the evacuation, of the Peninsula, by the Army of Occupation. The news that the French were to retire is 44 too good to be true." They may be dimished—perhaps only changed. Yet the time for their removal must come ; and then, if' Ferdinand be allowed to' reign in despotic dignity--so let Win. The people and their Sovereign will be worthy of each other.— A monstrous tale is fabricated in a Madrid Paper against the unhappy men who have been recently executed at • Cortinna by the Government. They are represented as having, during the .existence of the Constitution in 1823, carried out to sea and drowned, with circumstances of peculiar' cruelty, between forty and fifty persons whose only crime was attachment to the unlimited Monarchy, the (ice. The details of the transaction savour strongly of romance ; we do not believe' ai`word of them; but that no pitrticle of deubt'may eiist in any mind, we 'call Uiport Quiroga and Vigo, who are now in Londun, tO contradict the report. The affair of the• pro• jected or rumoured indemnities to the emigrants seems to agitate the interior of France. It is very true that a ,difference is-made. at Pales, be. tweet' a' property of unliroken descent,'" Un bier patrintoniai,'► and one acquired by the revolution. And we are net 'sorry. that -the possessors of the latter should be a little sensible of the weakness of their title. This- may serve as' a lesson to future revolutionists, and even reformers, at least to leave property inviolate, however they may tamper with the political institutions of their country..