The Sun.
London, England, 1839-09-30 00:00:00

Zfn

LONDON :
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1839.

Although we very frequently have objections to
make to the Whigs, we are also continually re-
minded that they are not half so bad as the Tories.
At an agricultural dinner at Brill, in North Bucks,
on Friday, the Duke of BUCKINGHAM reproached
Lord MELBOURNE with having done nothing to
put down the Chartists. If the Duke and his
friends4had been in office, they would have let loose
the yeomanry, the infantry, the artillery, and the
police, and re-enacte'a, with a bloodier cast, the
Manchester tragedy. We are singular, of all the
London press, in thinking that the Ministers might
have carried their forbearance somewhat further
with advantage to the public ; but the Tories affirm
that they carried it a great deal to far, and they
would haw., irritated the people into a fever of sedi-
tion, 7vh;ch they would have endeavoured to lay in
Woad.

e7in the same day that the Duke of BUCKING-
-'ri Am was thus proving how great are the disasters
"from_ which the country has been saved by the ar-
.
-"tant tyrannical men not being in possession of
the Ai 0
~ # overnment, whose sentiments that Aristocrat
- sitieetilk_4i:ao).ournal of the faction, discussing the re-
.l,o..vr_taxation, published this paragraph :
tien 04. :et. was the cause of all this prodigal devasta-
-1
1 breaking
tioavrtsonal resources, this reckless though cowardly
The motive ts:litof
accomplices was a 3Z
raj the multitude, the whole eclifice of British finance ?
the part. of Mr. Spring Rice and his
for Zetrucang to the clamorous dictation
sake of a dirty and fugitive popu-
laritr amongst uneducvaeteosuplaendvshort-
I
So, when the sighted men."
groaningd under an
enorwous load of taxation,
1
Parliament in crowds for the petitioned
of the
petitioned the
s
most onerous taxes, it was reckless
ardly in the Whig
er:,
am
.cl Their
and cow-
Ministers t
listen to
their urgent complaints and pray
demands are denominated by the Toriesdictcion ;'' they are describcd,.as the multitude TwOho
Us
are uneducated and short-sighted, and to listen to
them is base truckling. Such is nowthe language used
by the Times, formerly one of the most clamorous
for the reduction of taxation, and such are the sen-
timents which, out of base truckling to the
wretched faction in whose service that otherwise
able journal now is, it is compelled to adopt.
We do not mean to enter into the financial
question, or it could easily be shown that most of
the reductions of temation of which the Times now
so loudly complains, so far from having devas-
tated the national resources, have contributed to
increase the revenue. It is deficient because other
etaiaes, those on timber and corn for example,
'have not been reduced or abolished. Bfit our ob-

I servations shall be directed rather to the political
principles of the Tories than to the effects of the
reduction of taxation on the national resources.
The idea which the Tories have of the
Government is that of an enemy of the peo-
ple. They would administer it only to
keep them in slavery. They would not allow
the people to open their lips even to grumble
against taxation. For them the Government is a
hostile power, which must degrade and oppress the
people, or be destroyed by them. Well may wf,
therefore, desire to keep them out of office, for
should they return to power, there will be no alter
native but to destroy the Government by rebellion,
or submit to be enslaved.
For what, let us ask, were the taxes to be main.
tained ? To keep up the revenue, and allno? of
as great an expenditure as under the Tories
when that model of all financiers, Mr. GOUL-
BURN, annually insisted that he could not do
without grinding the bones and blood of the
people into money for fattening a mass of Tories.
What the Whigs have done wrong, most wrong,
is, not in listening to the demands of the public
for a reduction of taxation, but in following the prac-
tices of the Tories, and wasting the public resources.
By their position, and by their formerly avowed
sentiments, the Whigs are economists andßeformers ;
but unfortunately they could not resist the tempta-
tion of doing as the brutal tyrannical Tories did ;
and they adopted too many of the vices of their
predecessors as to expenditure. Lord ALTIIoRP
and Mr. RICE insisted on keeping up the pension
list ; LORD MELBOURNE made the Civil List a
great deal too large ; in a hundred ways the Whigs,
imitating the Tories, have lavished the public
money on Commissioners' Boards, useless Am-
bassadors, and useless offices of all descriptions,
and have got themselves into a dilemma with
the public finances, because they did not follow
out their own principles, and reduce the ex-
penditure a great deal more as they reduced
taxation. They did right in yielding to the
demands of the people ; they did wrong
in not following out tire Reform principle,
and in gliding into the habits and practices of the
devastating, destructive, ruinous, tyrannical Tories.
We write, however, much less to admonish the
Whigs, for they are beyond our reach, than to
make the people aware, by the examples we have
quoted, that, whatever may be their sufferings,what-
ever may be their distresses, the Tories would neither
give up a tax nor allow them the privilege of com-
plaining of it. If the Whigs scourge us with whips,
the Tories would scourge us with scorpions, and
we should find the mercies and kindnesses of the
latter a greater curse than the punishments and
terrors of the former.

The comparison which we published in our Even-
ing Edition on Saturday, of the establishments of the
old and new Exchequer, must have satisfied our
readers that the calumnies of the Times on that
subject are pure fiction. It is right, however, to
discriminate between the two transactions—the
alteration of the Exchequer, including the subse-
quent appointment of Sir JOHN NEWPORT to
the office of Comptroller of the Exchequer in
1834, and the recent appointment of Lord
MONTEAGLE to the same office, Sir JOHN
NEWPORT, retiring, as is said, with a pension
of 1,0001. a year. Now we wish it to be distinctly
understood, that of this latter transaction we do
not say a word, because we are ignorant of the
facts. 'We do not know that Sir JOHN NEWPORT
is to have the pension of 1,0001. We have heard
that report positively contradicted. We do not
know whether Lord MONTEAGLE is entitled
to a pension according to law—he is not ac-
cording to justice ; but we have been assured that
he is ; in which case the appointing him to the
office of Comptroller of the Exchequer, instead
' of being an injurious job, so far as the public is
concerned, is a beneficial irangement. We, how-
ever, have not the slightest wish to defend Lord
MONTEAGLE. We never loved him in office, and
care nothing for him in retirement. We would,
however, give the Devil his due, though he be the
least erect of all the spirits that fell from
Heaven, and shall be ready to publish anything we
may learn that will set Lord MONTEAGLE'S ap-
pointment to the Comptrollership of the Exchequer
in a correct light.
With Sir JOHN NEWPORT'S original appoint-
ment, and the alteration in the Exchequer, the
case is very different. From his long services,
and from the public benefits of that measure, we
are ready to defend both. Sir JOHN NEWPORT
for many years fought sturdily for his country in
the ranks of opposition. He provoked a consider-
able number of inquiries into abuses in Ireland, and
succeeded, in spite of the Tories, in remedying
some of them. After Mr. O'CONNELL we know
no Irish gentleman who has merited more at the
hands of his country ; and if ever the Whigs de-
served office, Sir JOHN NEWPORT richly deserved
to share their power, and their emoluments. The
post he received was not more than he merited.
But whatever might be the job in his original
appointment, it was perpretrated five years ago ; it
was perpetrated, too, not by Lord MELBOURNE and
Mr. RICE, but by Lords GREY and ALTHORP,
Lord STANLEY and SIR JAMES GRAHAM being
partners in the guilt. It was perpetrated before
Lord MELBOURNE was Prime Minister,
and while the Times was on the side
of the Whigs. If the appointment displacing
Mr. ELLIS, and requiring 2,0001. a year for doing
duties which Mr. ELLIS performed for 1,4001., as
is falsely said, were a job, why has the indignation
of the Times, and why has the virtuous wrath of the
Spectator, following in the wake of the Tory Times,
and persisting in the course after the rocks against
which the Times had shipwrecked its character
had been indicated, slept till now ? Every part of
the transaction, except the recent retirement
of Sir JOHN NEWPORT and the recent
appointment of Lord MONTEAGLE, was as
open to censure any day these five years as ,
on last Wednesday. Five years ago censure might ;
have had this advantage, that it would have fallen
on those who deserved it, while to censure the pre-
sent Ministers is as unjust as it would be to praise
the Tories for reforming the Exchequer. To cen-
sure the present Ministers for what was done by
Lord ALTHORP and Earl GREY, is adding a
grievous blunder to the direct falsehoods of which
we have convicted the Times.

Since that Journal has become so much scanda

lized at 1,4001. a-year having been wasted for five
N ears in a pension to Mr. ELLIS when he might
have done Sir J. NEWPORT'S duties, why did it
not carry back its investigation, and condemn the
Tories, who for six years, when they were in
office, must, on to iVlr. HUME'S statement, have
wasted annually 30,400/. by not reforming the
Exchequer agreeably to the recommendation of the
Commissioners If to have wasted, according to
the false statements of the Times, 1,4001. a
year for five years be a great crime, how
much greater must be the crime of wasting
30,4001. for six years ? However, we are glad
to have the hypocritical, tyrannical Tories
pleading in favour of care and economy, though
we know that whenever they return to office they
will take up again with their old vices. To keep
them on the right side they must be kept in oppo-
sition.

Mr. O'CONNELL has published, in the shape
of an answer to an address of a Society, called the
National Trades' Political Union, his long ex-
pected manifesto on the subject of repeal. It is a
document of great length, nor is this prolixity re-
deemed by any of the merits which generally cha-
racterise the compositions of the author. It is ill-
reasoned and not well written, seeming rather like
a task forced upon a man in the redemption of a
pledge given in a heedless moment, than the effu-
sion of an ardent and vigorous mind, acting from
the deep conviction of the importance of the prin-
ciples which it has embraced, and which it consi-
ders a duty to inculcate upon others. Even as
a piece of special pleading it cannot claim a very
high rank, and will certainly add nothing to Mr.
O'CONNELL'S fame as a logician, for, although
weak arguments in abundance are pressed into the
service, and invested with undue importance, there
is little dexterity—not to say ingenuity—displayed
in the manner in which this is done.
For example ; one of the main reasons urged in
tfainvgourridofofththe Protestant the Repeal of the Union, is time get-
Mr. O'CosiNEoLc.
wu' Church Establishment.
ple of Ireland of t
" A principle
,hue,rm:ion and indentification, says
s po
iuml dr t do ifs
ae mcb ahrur
racs
hNtvhhei
cphe o
is-
not that of the
smajorityof the Irish people. There
,issilnloob utiaaninlfivroiimig
o absurd
daPa
as
to expect that Ireland
lament the benefit
principle. of this salutary and necessary p
Here,