The Sun.
London, England, 1852-10-01 00:00:00

k,
trierana

LONDON, FRIDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1852.

After all, then, Mr. DANIEL WESSTEZ—to use a
very common idiomatic expression—is " singing
small" in the matter of the Lobos Islands, as he had
already been compelled to do in the matter of the Bri-
tish North American Fisheries. It is the way of all
braggarts—whether in questions of domestic policy, or
of international government. Your true blusterer,
generally, in the end, concedes. Braggadocios are, in
the majority of instances, followed up by apologies
not always dignified, or by endeavours, anything but
well considered, rather it should be said precipitate,
and it may be, now and then, even weak and perhaps
grovelling, to effect something approaching the re-
semblance of a reconciliation. So far, at any rate,
the loud-spoken Parollea of Administration are con •
'Went in their inconsistency. They bow to the rule
of their " order." If they are in the outset systema-
tically violent, they are ultimately no less systemati-
cally obsequious. Instead of beginning with mode-
ration and rising to a grand and solemn crescendo of
official indignation—they commence with an affected
burst of passion and dwindle down, rapidly and ludi-
crously, to the verieet diminueado of political peni-
tence. In this manner, it must be confessed, they
play upon their expediency almost as wondrously as
ever did PAGANINI upon his violin--jumping as
abruptly from the mood in which

- nobly now he smote the exulting strings,
And bade them march before his stately will"
to another in which he seemed to crowd every tone
with " whinings thin" and " palsied nods"—the
tokens of the most debilitated and degenerated senility.
In testimony of all this, it is only necessary to glance
for a moment at the document penned on the 16th of
June, 1852, and at the other penned on the 21st of
August, 102—both emanating from Mr. DANIEL
WUBSTBR in his capacity as Secretary of State at
Washington. Never were two papers upon the same
subject, from the same hand, within the same year, so
glaring in their contradiction. In the first Mr.
WIZISTER Was eating fire as the JACK PUDDINO
of Dr. Joicvni&—in the second be is simply
eating his own words—the former, of the two,
decidedly the pleasanter
operation ! If we were to
have believed the Order of
the 16th of June, the
guano of the Lobos Islands Would have been thence-
forth "quite at the service" of the United States'
agriculturists under the protection of the banners
of the United States' Republic the banner all
" stars" for the white men, and (will Mrs. GRUNDY,
and, if not Mrs. GRUNDY, will Mrs. STOWE allow us
to add ?) all " stripes" for the niggers l
cover of the stripes and the stars—[non sic, non Under
tic {tut'
ad astra f]—Uncle Sax was to have fattened his
fields with the guano purloined from the Peruvians—
and to have done this to any amount and for any
length of time with impunity. Such, at least, was
really intimated, if anything at all was intimated, by
the notorious paper signed on the 16th of June
by the Secretary of State at Washington. A week
passed, and then a month, and then a quarter—and
lo 1 that abominable mountain of the Roman poet
which (the mountain, not the poet) appears to be
everlastingly parturient in some quarter of the globe
or another, gave birth on the 25th of August to the
little mouse of a document addressed to J. C.
JEWETT, Esquire, the originator of the projected
expedition I Hereupon it turns out that the "sound
and fury" of the summer "signifies nothing" in the
autumn. nil, moreover, on the strength of Mr.
DANIEL WEBSTER'A own declaration. Virtually his
letter of the 25th of August acknowledges that he was
"in the wrong" in his previous communication, but very
adroitly, we cannot say very magnanimously, he
throws the blame of all this, by implication, upon
the shoulders of the unfortunate Mr. JEWETT.
Briefly, it is confessed by Mr. WEReTER, that since
the, occasion of his, last letter " information % has
reached his department, setting forth, on behalf of the
Peruvian Government, its claims of jurisdiction over
the Lobos Islands, and stating that in 1842 it "issued

two decrees prohibiting any foreign vessels, upon the
penalty of confiscation, from removing guano from
any of the islands near the coast of Peru without a
licence from that Government !" Mr. WEBSTER, We
repeat, confesses in his letter
of the 25th of
August that " information" to this
the Cabinet at Washingtoneffect has reached
since
the 16th) of his former the date (June
communication. Surely a
somewhat strange acknowledgment from the prin-
cipal administrator in the ranks of the United States
Government/ It
simply comes to this—that the
Secretary of State at Washington talks very largely
and very rashly in ignorance of public documents, of
the existence of which he acknowledges three months

- I afterwards that he has recently received " informa-
tion." Let it be remembered, too, that these same
documents are not old crumbling parchments, dating
back to the times of CORTES and PIZARRO, but " two
decrees" issued in 1842 by the Peruvian Government,
Yet of the circumstance of their publication eleven
years ago Mr. WEBSTER recently required to be " in-
formed!" Upon a careful reconsideration of all these
agreeable little incidents, it must be allowed that
nothing could by possibility have been " worse timed "
for the interests of DANIEL WEBSTER—occuring 38
they have done simultaneously with the selection of
some eminent citizen to the American Presidency !
Eminent, even amongst the most eminent of those
citizens is unquestionably, in many respects, the very
matt who has been revealing of late such melancholy
incapacity as an administrator. Conspicuous amongst
the ranks of the great orators now living, WEBSTER
occupies in America, as a rhetorician, the posi-
tion occupied in England by BROUGHAM, in Hun-
gary by KOSSUTH, in Italy by GIOBERTI, in France
by LAMARTINE. His reputation in this respect, at
least, is world-wide, and as such is regarded with the
interest always attached to genius when it creates for
itself a more than ordinary influence among the
masses of the population. Until very recently, in-
deed, we cannot but think that the generality of the
enlightened spectators in Europe would have observed
with emotions of pleasurable sympathy the elevation
of DANIEL WEBSTER to the position of chief magis-
trate at Washington. During the present year,
however, he has betrayed so much precipitation, so
little adroitness, and such very unseemly want of
temper in reference to the Lobos Islands
and to the British North American Fish-
eries, that the sentiments of many on
this side of the Atlantic have been distressingly, be-
cause abruptly and unexpectedly, changed in his re-
gard. Time may yet show whether the undoubted
genius, and what we are fain still to regard as the ra-
tional patriotism of DANIEL WEBSTER can redeem him
to the re-assertion of the dignity of his somewhat
deteriorated reputation. It were but a sorry consi-

deration for the future BANCROFT of America to re-
member that, as with Quiricr ADAMS, the last public
acts of DANIEL WEBSTER were those expressive of
angry and unstatesraanlike vituperation. History
should have nobler facts to record as the crowning
incidents of lives calculated by the promise of their
early days and their maturity, to prove throughout
uninterruptedly illustrious. Not thus gloomily should
the annalist commemorate to after generations the
existence of those who were admitted by their con-
temporaries to be undisputed chiefs among the Patres
Conscripti of the young American Republic.

The Whigs are coming out again. Prelusive
speechifying has already begun. We shall soon have
another Chesham-place meeting, with the second
Member for London as its chief speaker. Scotland
it is, the university of whose capital had the honour
of educating the leading Whig statesman, which has
afforded to Lord Jose the opportunity of expounding
Whig claims to popular gratitude and confidence.
His Lordship has been honourably distinguished in
several emancipations, and Stirling and Perth bestowed
upon him, therefore, very appropriately the freedom
of their respective boroughs. At Stirling there were
speeches and a banquet, at Perth a dinner and
speeches (a report of which appeared in The Sun of
Monday). At Stirling the honour was all to Lord
JOHN, the presentation of the freedom of the borough.
At Perth he shared it with one of his old colleagues.
The Hon. FOX 11 AvT.F: has, by the death of the late
Lord PANMURE, succeeded to his estate and titles,
and his late constituents determined to celebrate their
lamented loss, and his entrance on the second of the
political heavens (for the third no unroyal blood
may covet) by a public dinner. It was
to be expected that the Perth meeting should be
by far the more jovial and it was so. All were
good tempered. All praised Lord PANMURE and
Lord JOHN, and Lord JOHN and Lord PANMETRE
praised each other and praised their hosts also. In-
deed, everybody was praised but the Earl of DERBY,
and his " Sweet ARIEL," the ARIEL, whose promised
feats of financial magic the official veterans, of course,
treat as they would the promised wonders of some
itinerant katerfelto. Indeed, it must tempt one to
mutter an et to quoque, when we read Lord PAN-
MORE'S smart fling at the DERRY Cabinet—" Judge
them from the past, they are of one colour, judge
them from the present, lo ! they change, judge them
from the future, lo ! they are blank." Recollecting
Irish Appropriation Clauses, professions of retrench-
ment, and certain other peccadilloes, the Whigs
should remember, that if their house of the past
be not exactly a glass one, there is yet enough
glass in it to make them careful how they
throw stones at others' houses. But the " blank
future"—that is what most struck us. Why what a
blank is Lord JOHN'S future! In his electoral ad-
dresses this summer, he had next to nothing to offer.
Custom's reform was the prominent figure in his fu-
ture. We are perfectly sure that Mr. DISRAELI is
prepared to do quite as much in that department as
the late Premier. No ; his future was nothing. To
the question, what are Lord JOHN'S claims to supplant
Lord DERBY, the chief answer appeared to be that be
was Lord JOHN and not Lord DERBY. In respect to
the future, like his opponents, his only reply was an
oratorical version of a sentence we all learned 'at
school, " open your mouth and shut your eyes and
see—.." Quite of the same cast are all
the Scottish speeches. The Stirling people
commended the past of the great statesman, and Lord
Toils gracefully accepted the commendation, praised
religious liberty, and praised the Reform Bill, which
had given as many voters to Messrs. COWAN and
MeoeuEAT as formerly returned all the Scottish
Members—and went off to the Duke. And so at the
greater Whig gathering at Perth, the topic of the
day was the past ; what the Whigs had done ; Re-
form Bill, reduction of taxation, slavery abolition,
municipal reform, and measures for religious liberty ;
and even some things, like the window-tax, which
were rather squeezed out of their incompetent and
reluctant Chancellor of the Exchequer than given
by him, where all set down to the credit of the
Whigs. Well, all this, as parties act, was fair and
natural. Character is worth a great deal ; some-
times, however, it is worth too much in its possessor's
eyes. When one of our domestics begins to flourish
his past services before us, and to assume airs in virtue
of what he has done for us, we begin to fear be will not
be worth quite so much 112 formerly ; and if we soon
find him less thoughtful, in many respects, of our
wishes than formerly, we quite understand that we
bad better part with him as soon as possible. A party
praising its past deeds, is much like a person doing
the same thing, we begin to perceive that their work
is done. Lord JOHN spoke of the late Duke mos

justly as one whose principal excellence, his steady
another and unhesitating duty, was one in which we could all
imitate him ; we commend to Lord Joam's attention
h
equally great moral excellence in the Great
Captain,nter
one which indeed sprung from the other—
namely, that he thought of his greatest deeds and
hardest labours so simply in the light of duty,
that he was the last man to speak of them. We
never remember, not even when that great
man incurred great unpopularity, that he ever
wels to
adverted in the remotest way to any " debt of
i gratitude" which his
I yet could do, was ever with
Country owed him. What hi
him the only reason for
any
retaining or accepting(
Lord PANMUHE we see exhorts htheate Lviebrra
.
be
united. United for what ? that is
the question.
What are we to have more from the
Liberals in
office than from Tories in office ? Lord
JOHN may
dream as he will, ;but this is the question which is
asked throughout the country, by all but mere party
men, and expectants of place. They ask that the
great question of Free -trade versus Protection be
settled as soon as the Funereal duties of the House of ,

Commons are at an end. They believe that it will b;

THE SUN,