The Sun.
London, England, 1863-01-19 00:00:00

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LONDON, MONDAY, JANUARY 19, 1863.

While the Quarterly flings down the gauntlet,
with an air of defiance, in the name, and on behalf
of the Conservative Opposition—the " Reform"
Administration (save the mark I) gives signifi-
cant token to the world that it is prepared (in
the chapter of political accidents) for some just
possible discomfiture.
Several bran new Peers are now announced as
likely to follow hard upon the heels of those half dozen
baronets whose names have already been indicated
as chosen from among the Whig mediocrities.
While the bloody hand is about to be affixed to the
escocheon of Mr. HENRY Rica, of Richmond—a
coronet is preparing to encircle the brow of Sir
CHARLES WOOD, of Halifax. "Sore such a pair"
—et cetera ! The ejaculation is nothing less than
inevitable—Mr. HENRY Rim and Sir CHARLES
WOOD having, together, throughout the last
quarter of a century, enjoyed an unenvi-
able pre. eminence among the recognised bores of
the House of Commons, a pre-eminence namely
among that fearful race—(the dread, it may be re-
membered, far away in Rhineland, of Messrs.
BROWN, JONES, and ROBINSON)—as Members whose
prolixity constituted of itself a full and perfect jus-
tification of the well known motion of that virtual
Forerunner of the Early Closing Movement, the
late Mr. BROTHERTON.

It seems at any rate in one particular appro-
priate that while the American PRESIDENT is ren-
dering his partial emancipation of the negroes :n a
manner penal in its character, the English PREMIER
is associating the idea of failure, of distinct and
positive failure, with these his latest promotions
to the peerage and the baronetage. Who, for ex-
ample, could possibly have the hardihood to pre-
tend for one moment that the career of Mr. RICH,
in Parliament, or out of it, has been in any way a
success 11 Again the notion of ennobling Sir
GEORGE GREYat this moment seems almost worthy
in its facetiounsess of being no more than an on dit
excerpted from the "London Claarivari." Can
it be—can it possibly be in recognition (this
ermine robe and baronial coronet, for the brow
and shoulders of the Right Hon. the Home
Secretary) in grateful and admiring recognition
of his recent suavity (as Secretary of State)
to those adventurous gentlemen the Garotters?
Again, the selection of that other right hon. already
mentioned, to wit Sir CHARLES WOOD—minis-
terially speaking already pretty well "My Lord
High Everything," Secretary of State in turns for
this, that, and the other, as well as, time and
again, Chancellor of Her MAJESTY'S Exchequer,
to the muddling of the national accounts during his
tenure of office, and the simultaneous bewilder-
ment of all the permanent officials at the Treasury—
this most ingenious selection of Sir CHARLES WOOD
is, it will be observed, so charmingly malapropos,
li so exquisitely inapropriate ! It comes to the right
hon. baronet, we presume, in reward for his recent
and very flagrant display of a want of all sagacity
in regard to the administration of affairs in Hindo-
stan—as a recompense, we will suppose, for his
reiterated wounding of the feelings, and
his most perverse interference with the
policy of Mr. LAING, his repudiated India
financier. Altogether a master stroke of adroit-
ness, surely, this nomination to the peerage of Sir
CHARLES WOOD and Sir GEORGE GREY! By the
way—about the latter—Zadkiel, in one of his last
"Almanacks" but one, Was not so very far wrong
after all! Namely, when predicting a year or so
back (he was only "out" in his twelvemonth) that
—" about this time Sir GEORGE GREY will have a
prospect of realising his ambition." People laughed
atthe wonderful intimation at the li;ne, but ZADKIEL
TAO TzE, had he only been lucky enough to put the
words down for Jan., 1863, instead of for whatever
date it was the sage selected, would have had rea-
son to hope for another magisterial recognition of
his accuracy as a prophet by that honest, simple-
minded civic gobemouche Mr. Alderman HUMPHREY.

As it is—the other Peers that are to be, we have
all this while left waiting, as it were, upon the