The Sun.
London, England, 1852-07-14 00:00:00

1852.

• began to admit a doubt of his omniscience. We have
also to regret the absence of Mr. Roundel' Palmer,
whose scholarship and inchistry would certaiuly seem to
have deserved a more grateful recollection from a con-
stituency which might have been proud of such a Lem-
ber. Lord Duncan, too, is a loss to the House; he was
a most active and useful representative. and his success-
ful battle for untaxed light should have availed him with
the eh ctors of Bath. It is some consolation, however,
to think that Mr. Macaulay has been recalled by the
spontaneous act of the electors of Edinburgh, and that
the flaw bigotry of Oxford has received a check from
the saner portion of the University. The names of Mr.
Macaulay and Mr. Gladstone will help to redeem the
future House of Commons from the charge of being en-
tirely a " Parliamentum Indoctum."
HERALD.—There is no time when editorial warnings
are less likely to be regarded than that of a general elec-
tion. Men are too busy, too anxious, or too excited, to read
at leisure, and to reason calmly. Action has taken the
place of speculation; and no comment on what is pa sing
can excite the same interest as the events themsFlves.
Yet even at this moment is may not be amiss.britfiy to
consider what are the main principles involred iu the
existing contest, and who are the parties by whom this
contest is to be decided. The late Parliament, from its

commencement to its close, presented a right unusual in
our history: Instead of the two traditional divisions of
Whig and Tory, or their modern I.nbstitutes "Liberal"
and "Conservative," four distinct sections, each distin-
guished by sonia peculiar tenets of its own, and each
obstinately refusing to allow its identity to be merged in
that of any other, divided and embarrassed the national
councils. These sections have been so admirably de-
fined by a late anonymous writer, that we maka no
apology for inserting his description et length:—
There are four kinds of political associations; there are
parties, factions, connexions, and cliques.
" Party, in the words of Burke, is a body of men united
for promoting, by their joint endeavours, the national inte-
rest upon some particular principle in which they are all
agreed.' _

-4' A faction is a band of persons leagued together for pro-
moting, not the national, but their own interest, or for grati-
fying their own passions.
" A connexion is formed by the ties of family, friendship,
tradition, and• habit. It is exclusive, and consequently small.
It has maxims rather than principles, phases rather than
opinions, and historical recollections rather than present ac-
tivity. The strength of a connexion seems generally to be
derived entirely from the adhesiveness of its parts.
" A clique is a petty agglomeration of pedantry, intole-
rance, arrogance, and self-conceit.
" Each of these forms of association is to be found repre-
sented in the present House of Commons. We have a Con-
servative party, a Manchester faction, a Whig connexion, and
a Peelite clique. The first, the only party in the House,
strong in numbers, but stronger in character, encouraging
and supporting an Adminiitration, whose task, naturally dif-
ficult, is rendered much more so by the insidious attacks of an
unprincipled Opposition; the three last divisions, faction,
connexion, and clique, hating, despising, and suspecting each
the other, but, nevertheless, acting under the impulse of the
only motives that they have, or ever can have, in' common—
ambition and spite; each hoping to be able to scramble into
power over the shoulder of its detested allies, and then to
kick them down into the ' void profound of unessential
night.' "
Let tea proceed to examine the position of these bodies
respectively. The Whigs, if only
on account of theirhis-
i toric importance, are naturally entitled to precedence.
Who, let us ask, are leaders? who their supporters?
and what their it
On the first head our
u principles in this year 1852?
horse answer is obvious. Bating
Lord John Russell, "'
age and health render it, to
say, the least, impossible that he
Commons,
should again aspire to
ha they
the leadership of the House of
all deference to one statesman among them whose name have no
hs the smallest
chance of being remembered fifty years
toLhorisd
Lansdowne, in whom (we say it in
long and distinguished career) personal character and
connexion went far to eupply the plaCe of eminent
ability, has already withdrawn from the field. Lord
Carlisle, never a vigorous politician, has, of late, devoted
himself' wholly to philanthropic pursuits. The ancient
demagogue and litterateur, once the friend of Burdett
and Byron—at a later period ruler of India, and self-
avowed author of the Affgban war—has subsided, as
Lord Broughton, into silence and a peerage. Sir George
Grey, even if returned for Northumberland, is, from
physical infirmity, unlikely to take much part in the
active work of opposition. Sir C. Wood, Mr. Labouchere,
and the rest, may safely be counted upon as being
no more 'dangerous in attack than they used to be
efficient in administration. Only Lord Grey re-
mains; and he is removed, by the accident of his posi-
tion as a hereditary legislator, from the sphere where
his energetic animosity might have rendered useful as-
sistance to his party. Nor is this manifest weakness of the
Whig section confined to their chiefs. They have
clearly lost the power which once belonged to them in
au eminent degree, of drawing recruits into their ranks.
What with their oligarchical traditions and their belief
in the exclusive vested right of half-a-dozen families to
govern England, the influence which of late they have
exercised over rising talents has been one, not of attrac-
tion, but repulsion. There is, at this moment, we verily
believe, no such thing in rerum natura as a young
Whig. Lord Ebrington was, for a while, the solitary
representative of his party among the rising gene-
ration, and he, too, has wisely dissolved the
connexion, and left himself free to form a more
promising alliance. In truth, the decease of Whig-
gery had, for years past, become inevitable, even apart
from the personal unpopularity of its principal profes-
sors. The movement has ceased from the sheer want of
an object. The Reform Bill of 1832 was at once the
accomplishment and the term of its mission. In every
act subsequent to that great social change, Whig leaders
have been the followers, not the leaders—the tools, not
the agents. Their part is now limited to the repetition
in either House of Parliament, with due senatorial dig-
nity of phrase, of the watchwords and party cries which
originate out of doors among a widely different class.
Manchester has quietly assumed the influence in their
councils which was once possessed by Woburn Abbey
or Devonshire House. Whether the change be for the
better or the worse it is not ours to judge; but that it has
taken place no man can look on England at the present
day and doubt. It is, we think, not a speculation, but a
certainty, that on the opening of the new Parliament of
1852 the pure Whig party will have disappeared alto-
gether and for ever. New ideas, new men will have
superseded the obsolete opinions of a respectable, but
antiquated oligarchy. a The cause for which Hampden
died in the field, and Sydney on the scaffold," ir, in the
middle of the nineteenth century, a matter of history,
not of politics; a tradition rather than a sentiment,
r . It is under
ve-
nerable in its place as a part of the past, but ridiculous
and unmeaning if applied to the present.
other banner& than their own, and other principles than
fight, if they aspire
sels and the Greys must henceforth
Party'
those which they have hitherto advocated,.that the Rus-
We believe
be made, and
once more to head a great popular PasZi
that, cost what it may, the sacrifice
historic, but now ex-
ithe new democratic
that on the grave of an ancient,
ploded party will be inaugurate
alliance of 1853.
.1 from the United States
DAILY NEWS.—The mai •
clay is dead. Long ere
brings the news that Henry . ,
this the impressive funeral g in the w ld—
imposing, if not the most a
serviecne—tatpievrens,apfsolltohweemd obsyt
free,cti°The coffin ohras been
a
The President
been performed in the Capita.
borne into the House of Beres .
of the._ Representatives
cthhacirS.PeTakbeerreesident has sat before
the whole Executive and Legislature.
hofavt eh the
occupied Senate
the
the coffin, and the Members of the Congress each with
the crape round his arm, have listened to the voice of re-
ligion, telling them how the quiet sleep of death must
succeed to the most vehement political conflicts—how the
silence of death must drown the Most animating and
the moat persuasive of the voices that have ever rung
through those echoing halls. The lesson could never
be more impressive than when the coffin of Henry Clay
was the text of exhortation. No mind that ever uttered
itself there was more certain to animate to enterprise;
no voice more irresistibly persuasive ever won the sen-
sibilities of friend and foe. Less was known of him as
an orator, and even as a statesman, in foreign coun-
tries, than of other orators and statesmen of the last
half century, because his attributes were such as
could not be conveyed in portraits-.
and news-
papers. Incessant attempts to take his portrait all
failed to produce one which could be recognised by those
who knew him much or little. Calhoun's singular
and countenance painfully full of
life,
and vreh head,
ster's
massive brow and cavernous eyes could
be made familiar
throughout Europe; while Henry Clay's portraits could
neither be recognised by those who
knew him, nor re-
membered for five minutes by thosewho did not. It is
eun
the same with their oratory. Calh '
beginning in ingenuity and ending in monomania
singular theories,
never be supposed to be uttered by any omtohn can
e,
and
the same may be said of Webeter's best r man;
p rr ormances_
his close constitutional
arguments, such as they were in
his best
of the ne •
neutrality of which he ever boasted in the Corn-,
promises which were the principle of his
statesmanship. It needed to see the moistened
eye, the quivering lip, the tremulous bands, plaYi'lol
with the spectacles and the movementsderful
the tall lithe figure; it needed to hear the wonderful
variety of his tones, and to have thrilled to the
site pathos of his voice, to understand the power which
who listened
he exercised over the whole mind of those.
could never be
to him in a silence which seemed as it
sit It is he
broken. The silence has changedsid now.
is busy in discus-
who is mute, while every ()these voice The
powers and the
sing his powers and his deeds- which, for its ien-
deeds of Henry Clay area I
en other countries than his
portance, may be discussedan
of the present century
own; for no Americr
hisat
position for objects so largely
used his faculty anis
0-
. e the world. He had become
affecting the
influence bad waned as a policy of COM-
old; and hisknu7efore the positive needs of the
promise receded
s
if be had lived to the extremest term
age; and tau.
stance,' and had died at last
in his tens-
'of human 'no would not have d
~' torial chair,
effect on the co • pro need, probably,
r soy additions . _ . ming destinies of nations,
Tee classes, but his days ot effective statesman-
or e old not therefore
ship oho , be allowed to pass into obli-
eaeo, nor the phase of public life which he presented be
lost because it has, for some years, slid back among the
things which were, and which cannot be again. It it is
true in any case that nothing but good should be spoken
of the dead, it can never be true of statesmen. No
true statesman could desire it; and the weakest aspirant
who enters into political life must be aware that in
choosing hie career he waives his claim to the privilege
—if privilege it be—of partial appreciation after death.
In the present case, the truth must be spoken, for the
sake of those whom it affects; and if there be pain in
it, there is the least pain to those who spoke it openly
while the man was yet alive and able to prove by his
acts whether the judgment was harsh or just. Henry
Clay avowed through his whole political course
that Washington was his model, and he claimed
for his policy of Compromise the praise accorded by
the world to Washington's principle, temper, and
career of moderation. It will never be forgotten by
those who heard him how gloriously he eulogised, while
loOkiag up to the great melee portrait in the Senate.