The Sun.
London, England, 1852-09-22 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
FROM TUF. lORNIIIG PAPERS OF THIS DAY.
TIME S.—We said the other day, and we :quid it
to the credit of this country,that it was irnpossibe to
enumerate or comprehendhe various acts and kinds
to
of homage renderedthe Duke of Wellington
Perhaps
throughout his long career.we might now
say the same of the honours that have been already
offered to his memory. All parties, all schools of
opinion, men the most different, aiardtijeus:urnals the most
antagonistic, have agreed to touch with the gentlest
possibly hand their old grudges with the Duke, and
to swell one great acclamation to his patriotic virtues
and colossal powers. The Duke a thorough
aristocrat, and though he gave his advice, his vote,
and his influence for the people, yet he
evidently re-
garded them as a human mass to be
o respectedbe spared
for
their power and feared for their violence, to
domestic ills, and saved from a foreign foe.
un-
derstood them as he understood an army or a e
neral
that he had to deal with ; but he had little !nog-
pathy with them than a careful shepherd might 813;E:3
for his silly flock. He was not one of them. The
natural result is that he has always been more re-
spected than loved by the extreme Liberal party.
In truth, though it was ;highly convenient to have
a man in the country who could mediate so ex-
peditiously and so effectually between the people
and the privileged classes, it was not compliment-
ary to the former to be described to the latter as an
animal that must be appeased and tamed. Yet, as
our readers would see by a very able article inserted
in our columns yesterday from a weekly cotempo-
rary, the extreme section of the Liberals shows a
noble anxiety to do every possible justice to this great
champion of monarchies and aristocracies. These
writers generally brush away from the question a heap
of little prejudices and sore recollections, and confess
to an honourable pride in the Duke's genuine English
qualities, in his entire loyalty and submission to the
laws, in his continual sense of duty, in his calm cou-
rage and unwearied perseverance, in his uniform good
sense, in his unwearied industry, in his readiness to
make any sacrifice, to dare any danger, or brave any
obloquy; in a word, for that rare union of qualities
whicti rendered him for half a century the mainstay
and glory of this realm. After a searching analysis
of the Duke's character, and a careful comparison
with the more dazzling qualities of his great antago-
nist, our Radical contemporary awards the preference
to his own countryman, and that in a splendid, though
discriminating, eulogy. Nay, the very anticipations
of extreme Liberalism are made to contribute a new
grandeur to the Duke's memory. He is described as
the last of a procession of great old names, as the
Northmen'e ideal of death enveloping in the dark
folds of his robe the whole pageant of
antiquity, of which we have now seen the last.
An equally honourable example of candour and
good sense has been shown in another unexpected
quarter, and it appeared side by side with the English
our yesterday's columns. The Assemblee
essay in
Nationale, the only member of the French press that
now professes to be free, has ventured to tell the plain
truth about Wellington and Napoleon, and told it so
plainly as to incur the_ formal reproof of the Govern-
ment. The facts of the Duke's life are so patent, so
consecutive, and crowned with such a practical con-
clusion, that it requires great ingenuity to explain
them away.
But that ingenuity has long been verna-
cular in France. It is by this time bred into the
race, and is now, as it appears, a matter of political
necessity. The theory that Wellington stumbled
into triumph by a long succession of blunders,
that from one unmerited victory he boggled
into another, that next to a fortune always
above his deserts his chief means of success
was the excessive stupidity of the British soldier,
who never knew when he was beaten, and that after
Wellington had committed the egregious error of
straying into France, he received a final thrashing at
Waterloo, and was only rescued from annihilation by
the accidental arrival of another army in the field—
all this is believed as much, perhaps, as anything else
is believed, by our philosophical and credulous
neighbours. The journal we have mentioned takes
the safest estimate of the Duke of Wellington's cha-
racter, and ventures to point out what really cannot
be denied—his practical qualities—" a solid judg-
ment, a cool reason, a wonderful justness of percep-
tion, both on the field of battle and in the Cabinet, the
most penetrating good sense, amounting to a power
which became genius, a perseverance which nothing
Could tiro or turn aside, and the most unshakeable firm-
ness in great dangers." Our Parisian contemporary
points out the perfect harmony between the qualities of
the man and their actual results both in the field and
the Cabinet. if his military success was the result of
a miraculous succession of lucky accidents, how are
we to account for the splendid position attained by
the Duke in this country, and enjoyed, with continued
augmentation, to the very end of his career, so that
one of the latest public acts of his life was to render
personal assistance to the Qaeen in weighing the
balance of parties ? In the case of Napoleon Bona-
parte the writer is so bold as to admit that in spite of
his prodigious powers he overreached himself and'
failed; so that if the commencement of his career looks
very brilliant by the side of Wellington's, the conclu-
sion is all the other way. Lastly, our contemporary,
after alluding to the splendid destiny which re-
warded this life of labour and self-denial, does jus-
tice to the universal regrets with which England
follows her great commander and statesman to his
tomb. Here, then, are two weighty testimonies, ex-
pressed with great force and even eloquence, and
coming from quarters where political or national an•
tipathy are usually allowed to reign supreme. And
now for another testimony still more weighty, inas-
much as it is offered in spite of a combination of po-
litical and national antipathies. This wreath, not of
bays, but of prickly holly, is offered by two amiable
contemporaries breathing the mild air of the Atlantic
in the classic city of Galway. They freely acknow-
ledge the "mighty genius of the departed hero." They
chide the cold tone and scant measure of our praise.
" Wellington," as they express it, was " one of the
eyes of England." Ho was " the greatest comman-
der that ever led the British armies to victory."
We may well weep over his coffin, for now he is
gone we may soon want one like him. But the
climax of the eulogy—which, however, these
writers express in the language of complaint—is
that Wellington was thoroughly, deliberately, and
consistently loyal to the Sovereign whom he served.
Perverse, cold, stupid, mistaken man that he was, he
would not rebel. He commanded the British armies
against all sorts of foreign foes, with a certain cold-
blooded, calculating, commercial sort of courage, and
so enabled England to maintain her ascendancy at
home. In doing this he was a traitor to Ireland.
" May Erin never rear such another son to turn his
mighty genius to the service of her tyrant !" But
Wellington, it seems, had no soul for agitation or
rebellion. " There was not an atom of chivalry about
the Duke.—There was no heart in his fighting. He
served a commercial people steadily, rigidly, soberly,
regularly, just as a commercial people likes to be
served.—He was no boiling enthusiast he was cold,
rigid, and calculating—in a word, the Iron Duke.
He devoted himself to the English service." Yes.
There is the one unpardonable sin in Galway, for
which there is neither political indulgence nor priestly
absolution. The Duke was loyal. He was provokingly,
stupidly, obstinately loyal. With one spark of true
heroism how different his career would have been ! At
the head of the United Irishmen he might have achieved
the independence of his country—and then woe to
England ! Under him the Irish Brigade would once
more have followed the standard of France. Ireland
would still shout, as of old, Faugh-a-ballagh—what-
ever that may happen to mean—under the bright em,.
blazonry of the silken banner of every country that
hates England. What would have been the conse-
quence ? The field of Waterloo might have been
another Fontenoy. This delighful daydream' these
pathetic regrets, we give in the very words of our
Galway contemporary. Such is the last touch that
was required to the portrait of this great man.
He lacked but one thing—the generous enthusiasm
that prompted a certain nameless personage to ex-
claim,
" Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven."
Under the tuition of Dr. API-lale, the probable writer
of the article we quote, he would have learnt to es-
timate at its proper value the service of his Sovereign,
and he could have realised the romance of 9. Arthurdo-
minion.eltic
'W What might Ireland,lsli what might
Wesley, what might D
Pale have become under
such auspices ? We have only to turn everything
upside down and substitute the tail for the head, and
then you have the reply.
CHRONICLE.—It is not surprising that, in the
discussions on the income-tax, the case of short an-
nuitants should have been put forward more promi-
nently than even the alleged grievance sustained by
professional men and traders. The great majority of
holders of property are in fact life annuitants ; and
the original intention of those ho devised the form
of security more commonly known by the name of
Government Annuities, was to facilitate the operation
of sinking capital for the purpose of increasing the
available income of individuals. In the ordinary
tenure of a terminable annuity, there is no peculiarity
to distin this species of income from any other
revenue
kind of revenue fairly liable to taxation. The
jointurer or life ineumbrancer on land pays the ins-
post as long as his interest continues ; and the pur-