7 JANUARY 1837, Page 18

A TRAIT OF TORYISM.

THE Opposition leaders have so far profited by the experience of the last few years, that, in reference to domestic politics, they ab- stain from giving open vent to their heartfelt hatred of Liberal in- stitutions. They affect reverence for the Reform Bill since it be- came the law of the land, and are rarely betrayed into any ex- pression of disrespect for the privileges of Englishmen. But the cloven foot always peeps out in their foreign policy. They admire the Czar, and adulate Don Missives and Don CARLOS. The tyranny of the Russian barbarian, the calculating cruelty of the perjured Portuguese, and the deeply-dyed bigotry of the Papist Pretender in Spain, are all sanctified in their eyes by their conjunction with Ultra-Tory principles. Even in little Malta they do their best to prop the oppressor and plunder the public. The Morning Post, the English organ of the Maltese jobocracy, is constantly vilifying the few patriots in that misgoverned island, whose often-urged re pre sentations have at length compelled the Colonial Office to institute an inquiry, which it is to be hoped will not be converted into an expe- dient for shielding monopolists and jobbers. That there is cause for alarm to the plunderers, is a fair inference from the anger with which the Post anticipates the possibility that a free press may be established in Malta. With a free press there must be exposure; and hence the dread of the ruling faction in Malta. Of course these persons are too sly to admit that they have any cause to fear the fullest exposure, but they are anxious for the continuance of tyranny in Italy.

" The island of Aloha," says the Tory journalist, " is only valuable to Great Britain as a military post, contributing to the defence and augmenting the power of the British empire. It would obviously be the very climax of ab- surdity and wickedness to convert such a possession—or, which is the same thing, to permit it to be converted—into the focus of wanton and unprovoked attack upon the institutions of friendly states. * " * Sonic indication of the uses to which a free press in the island of Malta would be applied, may be found in the fact, that a journal is clandestinely printed, and gratuitously cir- culated there already, which has for its avowed object to promote the regenera- tion of Italy. We hope the Liberal Ministers of Great Britain will condescend to mingle so much of justice and common sense with their Liberalism as to recollect, that, if this nation chooses, by their means, to destroy its own insti- tutions, its property. and itself; it does not thereby acquire any right whatever to set fire to the dwellings of its neighbours."

It seems never to strike these Tories, that the British nation would rejoice at the " regeneration of Italy ;" or that a Govern- ment which is endangered by a newspaper published by a few exiles in Malta, must, in the eyes of Englishmen, be detestable, and unfit to exist. They reveal their real hatred of English insti- tutions, when they denounce as a crime the attempt to extend the benefits of similar institutions to the enslaved peop!e of other countries.