The Sun.
London, England, 1837-09-07 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The hish people have been sometimes reproached
by their- calumniators for the preference they are said
to give at elections to candidates of an inferior class
and station in society. The choice they have recently
made of representatives is not liable, even in the opi-
nion of their most reckless traducers, to such an ob-
jection ; but. on the contrary, they are charged with a
conspiracy to impose upon the British public by going
out of their way for Members of high birth and qua-
lifications. Until they agree to bestow their confidence
upon Orang,!men—and in that case they need not fear
censure for descending too low in the scale of social
respectability—it will not be easy for them to select
representatives of a degree that would exactly please
these fastidious critics. But once let the votes of the
I\lembers for Ireland be agreeable to the Tory party,
and their mere personnel will break no squares.
Though the whole hundred were composed of men as
low in rank as Mr. Emerson Tennent, and as equivocal
in other and more material respects, it would excite no
apprehension nor provoke any depreciating observa-
tions. But it is neither just nor true to allege
that the predilections of the Irish electors are
in favour of plebian candidates. If anything they are
too partial to the pretensions of birth and station, even
to-the disregard of distinguished abilities and proved
integrity. And it is wonderful how they retain that
prejudice in the face of numerous and glaring breaches
of faith on the part of persons in whose derivative ho-
nout they had relied. There is Lord Donoughmore,
for example, who professed the most liberal opinions,
and gave the. most unflinching votes on the popular
side. When he was Member for Tipperary he pro-
posed the following resolution in praise of the man
whose support. he now affects to consider a scandal and
reproach to any, Government which accepts it :
" Proposed by John Hely Hutchinson, Esq., M.P., se-
conded by Thomas Wyse, Esq., M.P.
" Resolved, That Dsniel O'Connell, Esq., M.P., pos-
sesses our entire confidence and esteem,aad that we hereby
tender him our warmest acknowledgments for his able sup-
port of the great question of Reform, and for his unceasing
exertions for the welfare and happiness of his native land."
Mr. Hutchinson continued to maintain these
sentiments while he was Mr. Hutchinson and the favour
of. the people was necessary tdo keep him in Parlia-
ment. But as soon as he became a Lord and Legis-
lator by descent, and immediately after a Whig Go-
vernment had Made him Lieutenant of the County he
had represented, he hauled down his sham colours of
Reform and showed the Orange flag. We turn next
to his Noble Friend and Compeer, the Earl of Glen-
gall, one of the earliest champions of constitutional
agitation in Tipperary. He obtained the representa-
tion of that county many years ago by bidding higher
for the support of the democratic party than any Lord
or Commoner had ever dared to bid before. He wore
the mask, indeed, somewhat longer than the deliverer
of Lavalette ; but nobody was surprised at his defec-
tion when it came ; for even at the zenith of his pa-
triotism the world never gave him credit for sincerity or
political integrity. Another Peer who has lately taken
a conspicuous part against the people is the Lord
Downes. His political career has been obscure ;
but, in a small way, no person has afforded a more
striking example of the danger of putting confidence
in great men than this Lord. His conduct with re-
spect to the Catholic question out-Dawsoned Dawson;
for he changed twice upon it, and each time in obe-
dience to the word of command. Whilst, as Sir Ulys-
ses Burgh, he sat for Carlow county, he always voted
for emancipation. This lasted as long as he required
the support of an Irish constituency. But having be-
come an Irish Peer and the representative of an English
nomination borough, he voted directly against the mea-
sure and in contradiction to his Irish vote of the pre-
ceding session. He had served under the Duke of
Wellington in the field, and now followed his fortunes
and his orders with the same implicit alacrity in the
Senate. While the Duke opposed emancipation, Lord
Dowries opposed it, and when the Duke judged it pru-
dent to surrender, Lord Dowries was one of the glo-
rious majority that carried the question. Jim Crow
could hardly wheel about more nimbly. His Lord-
ship is now a representative Peer, and should the Duke
be " mad " enough to seize the helm once more, and
decree the repeal of the Emancipation Act, as his re-
spectable friend, Mr. Oastler, has intimated, without
doubt the Noble Lord would be found as pliable as
before. Why should we name the Lords Ossory and
Oxmantown, who, without being tried, were trusted
out of confidence in their high station, and who were
untrue to the professions they had made, and the party
which relied on them ? These and many other in-
stances prove that the weak point of the Irish people
is too great a deference to titles and dignities, and too
implicit a reliance on professions which proceed from
such 'quarters.—Morning Chronicle.
Slight as is the impression which the essays of the
Ministerial journalists are likely to make upon the
public mind, it probably may not yet be quite forgot-
ten that during the last and the present week they have
been employing themselves in soliciting public atten-
tion to a pamphlet, entitled " Domestic Prospects of
the Country under the New Parliament," and an-
nounced and puffed by them as being official. It was,
without exception, the most barefaced piece of pure
Whiggery ever attempted. We say of pure Whiggery,
because the essence and characteristic of the really
pure Whig principle is, that everything is unimportant
—peace or war, economy or extravagance, the Con-
stitution or Republic, Protestantism or Popery, reli-
gion or infidelity, all is immaterial, provided the Whig
party but remain in office. That is the one thing
needful. Their acts had ever proved their steady
consistent attachment to this theory ; and words were
hardly wanting to confirm that proof. But when ttae
pamphlet called " Domestic Prospects" came forth to
say, in direct terms;
What oft was thoaght, butoe'er so well express'd,"
it found an instant echo in the breast of every Whig.
It inculcated, in round, s:nooth paragraphs, the great
maxims, that Ireland, with her seven past centuries of
wrongs, might be left without a single new enact-
ment for a century to come, provided she could
" but maintain there such a Viceroy as Lord
Mulgrave, such a Chief Secretary as Lord Morpeth,
such an Attorney-General as Woulfe :"—that as to
the demands of the English Radicals, their Church-
rates, and their ballot, and their extension of suffrage,
and their other topics of agitation—all these are " se-
condary to the great object of maintaining Lord Mel-
bourne's Cabinet free from every species of embarrass-
ment." The reader who has not seen the pamphlet
may imagine that we are rhodomontadin,, but we as- •
sure him that we are quite serious, and we have no
doubt the pamphleteer is so to. We have stuck to
tile dull truth, and quoted the words literatim as
they are. The practical inference from these en-
lightened opinions was, of course, that the Minis-
ters would throw overboard all their projects of re-
form, and would, by favour of the Radicals, he
permitted to escape collision with the Conserva-
tives. " Don't force them to bring forward appropria-
tion clauses, and municipal enfranchisements, and
church-rate abolition," said die pamphlet, " because, if
you do, those nefarious Conservatives will beat them, and
then they must either keep their words by going out,
or swallow their words to stay in." No matter that you
get nothing done by the Whigs ; no matter that from
the Conservatives there might be something obtained :
still the great point is carried of keeping the Whigs in
office, and beyond that what can any reasonable man
desire ? Incredible as it may seem, these reasonings
have not obtained with the English people an accep-
tatam at all proportioned to their ingenuity and bold-
lICSS7` or to the great importance of the object for which
they were devised. At first, the public doubted whe-
ther the I%•riter were in earnest—whether the pamphlet
were not the woik of a wag, disposed to raise a bitter
joke at the expanse of the official fraternity. But
that suspicion was dispelled by the grave assurances
of the newspapers in the interest of Government, that
the performance proceeded from authority. Upon this
declaration a burst of contemptuous indignation broke
forth from the public, tempered only in the cases of a
few mirth-loving frequenters of the clubs, by a sardonic
horse-latieh. The feeler had failed. 'There was no
time to I.)e lost by the Ministers, and it was at once
resolved to turn round upon the Poor pamphleteer and
disclaim him. The Ministerial journalists of yester-
slay have taken upon themselves this truculent task,
nna put him out of the way of embarrassing great men
any more. "On further inquiry," says one, "we find