The Sun.
London, England, 1852-07-31 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PITGLIC JOURNALS.
TlMES.—Protection must be dead indeed when
Blackwood's Magazine has not a word to say for it. In
thin :leery mausoleum of deed fallacies we bed supposed
that a doctrine banished from the senate, the hustings,
and the newspaper might still have found advocates and
admirers. The herd might fly from the stricken eeer,
but there was 31111 one bosom on which it could rest.
epic
however, has it turned out. In the wondrous
so,
in which our northern contemporary describes the
glorious triumph of Lord Derby over the powers of hell
and night arrayed against him, there is not a word
,of
the tutelary goddess whose champion he has been,.ef
the fair Siren whose colours he has worn. We thought
we were to have been enchanted with the gorgeous
picture in which Protection should arm her Derby for
the fight, and, with tearful coefieenee, send firth her
devoted champion to conquer or die in her cause ;
and we supposed, after the success which our contem-
porary was sure to eltim for his hero, he would re•
turn to lay its trophies at her feet. We imagined to
ourselves the lofty scorn with which the base suggestion
by a hostile press, that Lord Derby contemplated the
abandonment of Protection, would he ertcouniered, end
the sublimated and ardent zeal with which the cause of
monopely would he c:ung to, because it eves untenithte,
and hoped in because it was hopeless. We remembered
bow the ghosts of religious persecution, of electorel cur-
:uphill, :led of every other evil which the liberality ef
Late years hits effaced, gibbered and shrieked in the pages
of our contemporary long after these things had ceased
to be realities, and we augured that Protection would
find a like resting-place to break the Abruptness of its
descent irom overthrow to oblivion. Not so, however.
It appears that the Earl of Derby, tot without much
c
trepidation to our monthly contemporary, deliberately
gave battle to the powers of evil on the Ist of this month.
Utterly unconnected with the cause of Protection,
neither owing his party leadership nor having com-
posed his Ministry with the slightest reference to a
tax upon corn, this great man was calm and quick.
sighted enough to see that the real battle was against
Democracy and Popery, and he was also sagacious
enough to find out " that cunning and desperate attempts
would be made to shift the scene of the contest to a dis-
advantageous and deceptive locality; in fact, to persuade
the millions that their bread was in danger, before the
false colours could dissolve away, and the wise and bene-
volent statesman could appear in his true figures and
colours." How wonderful it is that so good and simple
a man as Lord Derby—one conscious tu the inmost re-
esssea of his honest heart of never having wished to tax
the bread of the people, never having held out any lure
of the kind to the discontented agriculturists, should
yet blend se much of the serpent with the dove as to
foresee that there would arise men wicked and cruel
enough to tax him with a leaning to so foolish a policy
and so heartless an injustice! Well may Blackwood feel
indignant that such a thing was attempted, and great
grounds has he to exult that it ham, as he assures us,
entirely failed. But, alas for Protection f no.longer a
watchword, a principle, and a policy, it has sunk into a
mockery, a delusion, and a snare; and to tax a statesman
with Protective leanings, instead of the highest of com-
pliments, has become the grossest of slanders. The
Constitution and No Popery is the watchword, not Pro-
tectiou, and to say otherwise is a fraudulent device of
the enemy. Having thus arranged his battle-ground to
his heart's content, Lord Derby, like Homer's berces,
indulges his antagonists with a colloquy before fighting,
and thus does the modern Achilles commence the dia-
logue, in terms to which to our irreverent mind suggest
the notion of a waiter carrying a hot dish which he is
anxious to set down:—" By your leave, gentlemen, for
a moment; by your leave, what is the meaning of all
this feverish fidget; what are you afraid of ?" Thus
adjured, his antagonists answer that they are afraid of
a return to the bread-tax. Lord Derby a,sures them
that they have no occasion to be alarmed, for that
though he would like to " foster and stimulate the ener-
gies of producers, and provide a quick-paying, safe
market for them, by taxing corn, yet this acute and
honest nation is against hire on the point, and there-
fore he is content to take power in order to maintain
our national independence, the connexion between
Cuurch and State, the Protestant character of our insti-
tutions, and to prevent the Queen's crown from quiver-
ing on her sacred brow. He sees before him the crim-
son darkness of anarchy, and through it, the said crim-
son darkness, the fabric of a republic crumbling under a
military
deersrgitismf Well may the amazed interlocu-
tors the qeestion,—"Well, but, my Lord,
After thisim p
imparted how is this?"s b
and greatly relieved must they have felt
at the dignified dismissal, " Good morning, my friends,
etxecditinbyg dia-
logue,tbeavvay toa
ud t
the constituencies." tit
additionalue D eies.'
mettle
harangue of a certain " lean, flippant fellow,
with his
arms akimbo," the passions of the reader are doubtless
fully aroused, end he is prepared to see the adverse par-
ties go to work poll mell—theone in the cause of Popery
and Democracy, the other in that of Protestantism and
Royalty. But here our author introduces a digres-
sion, and, much as we are inclined to defer to
his judgment, we cannot but think the com-
mencement of a battle royal was a bad place
for the introduction of a parody on the parable
of the Sower. However, our readers shall judge for
themselves. " Now, came the tug of war—now was to
be seen the fruit of those seeds which all parties had
been sowing during the interval to propitiate the people."
To diversity the duties of a general action by the in-
spection of seeds sown to propitiate the people is a new
employment of tho heroic mind. But let that pass.
" A large portion of' the seed consisted of the distrust of
Lord Derby, which was expected to grow up flexible and
ehamelion-hued." Under this beautiful allegory we
fancy we distir„e&,sh a withering allusion to Sir James
3raham. Lord John Russell " sows a little seed to all
purposes, and expected not to alarm any one prema-
turely, but is rally jsstled by surly impudent fellows,
who throw down crimsoned-coloured seed, sure to bear a
baleful slid glaring crop" OS poppies, we suppose). " But
last of all there came a burly sower in scarlet, with seed
destined to produce a forest with all manner cf obscene
" birds in its branchea"—produced, we nupposee from
the same seed as the tree on which they sit. Here our
writer informs us he is going to drop metaphor, and
sue sly be does wisely, for the trumpets have long been
sounding a charge, and these preliminary antics are
scarcely tolerated even at a less interesting moment.
But, unfortunately, the interest of the narrative drops
with the metaphor, and the account of the eleotion is
so unspeakably dull that we have not the heart to inflict
it on our readers. Stan eit to say that the result has
been a complete triumph to Lord Derby. Almost every-
body is with him, and nobody against him; we ourselves
have been utterly taken in, because we must have meant,
though we did not say so, that Lord Derby would be in
a minority. Mr. Disraeli has said—and who doubts
Anythieg that Mr. Disraeli says?—that Government will
have a majority. This being so, there is nothing left
but to rejoice that we have got an " able, united, Pro-
testant Conservative Goveremeut;" and, if any one
doubts the fact, we can call Lord Malmesbury to vouch
for its ability, Mr. Christopher for its union,
Lord John Manners for its Protestantism, and the
ex-Ratlical Premier and Chancellor of the Ex.
chequer for its Conservatism. Its mission is
to act where its predecessors could only talk, to
consolidate and strengthen where they could only dis-

insert
instead tv
curb and unsettle, and to terminate the wretched stele
oplacileaysy, s
It
ty
would
ejuldsth,
acvaeuthioeuelsi,nfio
rpmrroadn d c nmp reh e comprehensive
to
of these words the declaration of the 37
Honourable Mem-
' in another c lumn.
her for Verbosity, which we publish
His • • e
principles were these—concurrently with the ge-
neral revision of some; h.
possible readjustment ing, speaking generally, and a
. of . ' '
toned more particularly."soros„hilig else, not to be men-
earnest, and the playful* Can jest come so near
closely rescuable eirony of a political satirist so
rind thin partisan? high.w.rwrought enthusiasm of a thick
Member for Verbosity
incline to think the Ho-
nourabletwo; for " revision" and ~
readjustment"
more explicit of the
lug, while policy, qualified by atutatment " have a mean-
" cautious," and " comprehensive," epithets as .‘ firmp
Derby has much to answer for. nheasha none. Lord
person greatly lowered the standard of s pin hislic own
rdlity, and, by constantly using the language publics ho
caption and evasion, has inoculated his supporters ofwithdo-
caption
the same miserable arts, so that we find a magazine in
which we were always able hitherto to admire the
chivalrous advocacy of a losing cause, and the prefer-
ence of justice to expediency, stooping to the poorest
artifices and the most transparent substitution of sound
for meaning in order to mask a gross desertion of
principle, sad to invest a party held together by the
very lowest considerations with the semblance of a policy
and the counterfeit of a cause. •
HERALD.—Our readers will have observed that in
our last calculationof the general results of the late
eleotiot, we excluded
Ireland, for the moment, from our
view. We did so for several reasons. First, it was
worth remark
c
kingdoms of hat on a general appeal to the three
Great Britain and Ireland, Great Britain,
taken apart from Ireland, had given a decided and un-
questionable verdict i
condly , as to what lin-eltavour of the Government. Se-
easy to make out, and had done, it was not very
in that country had seeing that more than a dozen elections
force, and that to beencall such
decided by the merest brute
constituencies seemed usuch elections the voice of the
there was one feature in a absurdity. But, thirdly,
unusual and startling a thekind
there Irish elections of so
ful and proper that they silo
u l 2_d, on that one (mount,
to make it quite need-
standquite alone, and b©
considered
portion of the public response to this as a distinct
tiontd appeal. The feature to whichgreat censtitu-
the extraordinary manner in which the we
allude was
of Ireland flung themselves into the Romish prieststrife, and took
the conduct of the whole matter into theirs own hands.
This is, to us, in England, a new thing. W
rule of exclusion by which, in England have no
Scotland, a
clergyman is forbidden to appear upon the b
is nothing else than a natural sense of Prepurstitngs. It
keeps them away. Probably, if we examinedle tyh "pie!'
pro-
ceedings of all the eleciions in England, which sente 5r0(1-
Members into the House of Commons, we might detect)
as one, two, or even three clerg) men
as many who have
t
acted es proposers; and these, we doubt not, would be
found is uncontested elctions, where the appearance of
the rector of the parish was held to b 3 ornamental, and
complimentary to the elected Members. Imo scenes of
actual strife tha clergy neva venture. Evmn those most
nromineut—such as Dr. M`Netle and Mr. Stowell—
content themselves with the publication of a letter, or
the
delivery of a speech, not at the election, but at a st -
Rarate meetiog of Prot( scants, wh, re strife and wrang-
nog are not likely to be taund. In Scotland the same rule
Prevails. We do nor, believe that one clergyman, of any
, appeared on the hustings as a Ei,eaker, at any one
of th ''
e late 6eoich
elections; nor
transgressed b We have not
Y Protestants in Ireland.
observed the
ef Ireland, name oi' a single clergyman of the Church
in all the rrec,rn of
more than two Pi esby terian ministers,
Protestant chat
elections in Ireland. Throughout the-
amidst many thitra the sane feeling seems to prevail,
and vehement cunt,
cuces on other pointa—that the bitter
scenes in Which a tions of a popular election were not
or with agfety, clergymanE,, could mix with propriety
"140 Y different, however, gain been