The Sun.
London, England, 1852-04-01 00:00:00

RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE.
(From the Spectator.)
The actual position of the leaders of pardes is full of
valuable instruction. It is a position of disappointment
and trouble. Taking Lord Derby, Lord J. Russell. Lord
Aberdeen, or the Duke of Newcastle, and Mr. Cobdeu, as
chiefs of the parties into which the country is divided, not
one of the four can be either satisfied with the present or
hopeful as regards the future. On the contrary, every
one of them is in a mess, and without any clear prospect
of getting out of it. And, what is of more importance,
because it contains the moral of the lesson, each case is
one of retributive justice; the discomfort endured being
in the nature of a punishment justly incurred by the suf-
ferer's wilful misconduct.
Lord Derby has to swallow free trade. That is ine-
vitable. He cannot do it at a gulp, as nauseous doses
are taken with the least inconvenience, but must needs
sip, and suck, and taste to the uttermost the gall
and wormwood which the nature of things has pre-
scribed for him. And why? why cannot he embrace
free trade, like so many before him, without this pain-
ful loathing and sloes torture? Because of his own
behaviour in 1846, and down to the time when the
Queen sent for him the other day, at Lord John
Russell's suggestion. He was the author and has been
the stay of the Protectionist party. If he is not a
Protectionist, he is nothing. Hi a rash quarrel with
Sir Robert Peel, his leadership in the persecution of
that true statesman, his delusive promises to landlords
and farmers and shipowners, his professions of
confidence in the triumph of a lost cause, his mis•
leading eloquence—all these things now rise up against
him, it not to torment his conscience, at least to sting his
pride, by making his recantation itself shameful, and
so compelling him to recant in a doublefaced, shameful
manner. In lending an Opposition for fun or spite, he
could pretend what be liked with impunity; but
the responsibilites of power at once unmask the impostor,
and without relieving him from the necessity of going
on with the detected sham. Our first simile is not quite
exact: he has not merely to swallow bitterness sip by
sip, but to swallow it and bring it up over and over again
till truth shall be fully avenged. No wonder that Lord
Derby should have avoided office as long as possible.
Ho might have avoided it altogether but for Lord
John Russell's parting advice to the Queen. That ad-
vice was unconstitutional and imnrere.-, tee-ens. bi,ee
after constitutionei eesnensibility had ceased. But
another responsibility attaches to Lord John Russell
in this matter. He is still responsible to his party;
and he appears to have done theca a great disser-
vice. lie probably imagined that Lord Derby
would not swallow free trade, and would therefore
have to repeat last year's process of in and out again;
the Whig chiefs getting back to office, "as you were,"
with the advantage of having this time seriously fright-
ened the least thoroughgoing of their supporters. It
was a sad miscalculation. Lord Derby, really aban-
doning Protection with whatever wry faces, may
keep the government for a long while. Any
change would be endurable atter Russell-Grey
rule for six years; and the actual change, as it pro-
mises the benefit of useful Whig labours in opposition,
has merits independent of the mere novelty. Lord
John, accordingly, is now reproached by many of his
party with having betrayed them by his awkwardness,
or perhaps through the singular jealously of his dis-
position. They task why, if ho took on himself to pro-
pose his successor, he did not name somebody who
might perhaps have restored the Liberal party to the
position, which his Government never held, of being
supported by a majority of its own in the House of
Commons. And this question suggests a well-merited
reproach. For years the ex-Premier was urged to
strengthen the Liberal party—to obtain for it the con-
fidence of the country and a majority of its own in
the Commons—by getting rid of the most inefficient
and unpopular of his colleagues, and calling to his
assistance such Whigs as Lord Clarendon, and such
former colleagues of Sir Robert Peel as the Duke of
Newcastle, Mr. Gladstone, and Sir James Graham.
But no; his inordinate but feeble self-sufficiency,
combind with his belief in the indefeasible right of
certaia Whig families to govern, could not stomach the
proposition that his Ministry needed improvement. So
he went on, depending on the frail support of being
squeezed between two Oppositions, till the general in-
capacity of his Government became too manifest for
longer toleration. Deserted by his adherents, turned
out of office by himself, and disregarded by
the country, he is provoked by the consequences
of his blunder in proposing Lord Derby as his
successor into making a plunge or two in Opposition;
but having been justly reproved for quarrelling with
Lord Derby's Government because, like his own for
six years, its party is a minority in the Commons,
for threatening to stop the supplies, and for
otherwise seeking to embarrass the Government
of which he is the principal author, he is now
pretty quiet and seems to be conscious that he has
" made a mull of it." If his party know their own in-
terest, they will keep him as inactive in Opposition as be
was in power. As intending to be again Prime Minister
of England, he is a heavier encumbrance to them than
their own errors and neglects in having allowed him to
make a Tory Government for some years to come far
from improbable.
The colleagues of Sir Robert Peel cannot be much
better pleased with themselves than Lord John Russell
and Lord Derby. Their great chief has been gone
nearly two years, and they have not yet even chosen
a leader, They have seen the Russell Government
slowly dying out for want of a policy, and have
themselves neglected to promulgate, it may be
oven to construct, a policy of their own. They
must know that wbat the country at largo has needed
and desired for a long while is statesmanlike purpose in
the leaders of parties; of any party, it may be said; for the
old party distinctions and associations have been almost
extinguished by the struggle about free trade, and a large
preponderance of public favour would be given either to
Lord Derby, or to Lord John Russell, or to any of the
Peelites (they have no leader to be named), or to Mr.
Cobden, if he would declare a sufficient policy of
Conservative reform, and give evidence Of possessing
the will to carry it into effect. The Peelites have had
ample opportunity of satisfying the country in this
respect, and they have almost entirely neglected
it. They had a great prestige to work upon, and
many other advantages; but nave neither done, nor
even said, anything of consequence. Self-imposed
obscurity is the defect of their position. If Sir
James Graham, the only one of thorn who has not
appeared asleep since 1846, had lately taken a more
distinct line of his own, a course more independent
of the Russell-Grey Whigs—still more, ifmen of
the ability and patriotism which private . circles attri-
bute to the Duke of Newcastle and Mr. Gladstone,
acting in concert with the respected Lord Aberdeen,
had formed a clear view of the public exigencies, and had
made it known by actively sharing in the business of Par-
liament, the Queen, it is very likely, would not have taken
Lord John Russell's ad vice about sending for Lord Derby.
In the politics of a free country inaction is a personal
dis-
ability. And the Peelites cannot say that they were not
warned long ago of the consequences of their torpor. If
they regret a general election upon all sorts of false
issues, and the prospect of a new Parliament without
fixed ideas, led by a Government of pretenders without
a policy, they must feel guilty of having
vv neglected op-
portunities of action by h the mischief might have
been 'wetted.
The Manchester gentlemen are out of court. Though
a
they have not been deficient in
bustling kind. of acti-
vity, their views of national policy consist vague
generalities suited only to the platform. They may
enjoy a triumph in seeing Lord Derby swallow free
trade ; but when that spectacle shall be over, they
will have no function or distinctive character.
In-
deed, they greatly resemble the Protectionist party in
having bat one idaa, and one which is on the point of
disappearing from our politics; so that, in two or three
months, they will probably break up through differences
of opinion on other subjects. There would have been
just the same prospect for the Derbyites if any of our
parties were now capable of supplying the country with
an acceptable policy, and the Queen with a man qualified
to carry it into effect.

WHY DON'T YOU CRY, YOU FOOL!
The trial at the Salisbury Assizes, lately, of an
unlucky wight, who had been helping himself to his
neighbour's goods, gave rise to a piece of ingenuity on
the part of a well-known lawyer, which to us, who
chanced to witness it, was somewhat amusing. The
prisoner had been defended by counsel, and every thing
that could be said on his behalf had been said, but
the case against
,him was too palpable to admit of a
shadow of doubt, and a verdict of guilty was pronounced.
The Judge seemed to look upon the culprit, who was a
rough-looking lellow, destitute alike of friends and cha-
racter, with some degree of pity, and previous to passing
the sentence of the law upon him, commenced giving him
a few words of advice. The benevolence of his Lord-
ship's tone was not thrown away upon the lawyer, who
seemed to feel that so long as there was a chance of
helping his client ho was bound to do his utmost. Unob.
served, therefore, ho at once whipt behind the ock, andto
putting his hands to the sides of his mouth, whispered
the prisoner as loud as prudence would permit--i, Why
don't you cry, you fool! Be quick—you'll save a month ct
least!" The culprit, who before this was standing as un-
moved as a statue, immediately took the hint, rubbeclbis
eyes with his knuckles, and for a moment
seemed over-
come by a sense of the degraded situation in which he
stood. The dodge answered.
W"fethrust (said hfieseLl
willord-
Lord-
ship) that the sense of shame h
prevent you from appearina. again in syuocuh naoslrtuation in
a court of justice, and in that hope I am induced to pass
upon you a much lighter sentence than I should other-
wise do, which is that you be imprisoned is the House
of Correction, in this Minty,
for the space of one ca-
lendar month''
' The fellow, we were afterwards in-
formed,is a most hardened rascal.—Devizes Gazette.

THE COST OF PUBLIC BUILDINGS.
According to Mr. BraYleY, in " Britton's Public
Buildings of London," which contains a plan sad five
views of the structure, full half a million of money was
ultimately expended upon Somerset House, and it was
then left- unfinished. The whole of the accounts, we
may mention, have recently turned up, and will probably
afford matter for publication. That Chambers was not
correct in his m judgment as to the probable cost of
the work c
ork than some architects of modern days, is proved
by the circumstance that, in a report presented by him
to the House of Commons; he said he thought, though
there were difficulties which prevented accurate computa-
tion, that the cost certainly would not exceed 250,0004
What do we now care whether it cost a quarter of a
million or half a million ; and how mach do( a the
question affect the opinion we form of the building and
its designer? Nothing. Nor will any ask a century
hence, when contemplating some of the buildings " r in
up" ill cur limn (it they last, so long.), wn3t h,ese
cost, or find in the small outlay, if they should ask, t t y
reason for withboleiug condemnation. Prudence and
circumstances must, of course, regulate expenditure. If
we must have a building for a particular purpose, and
hun only a cortoiu otuu of money, the builduig mast 1