The Sun.
London, England, 1839-05-13 00:00:00

METROPOLITAN POLITICAL

SUMMARY.

The Morning Herald of this day, speculating on the course
of policy likely to be pursued by the Melbourne Ministry,
says :—" The only policy available to Lord Melbourne, if
he shall be weak enough to enter once more on the active
business of office, is precisely the policy which he has acted
on for years past—the do-nothing policy—the existence-
en-sufferance policy. How lona that policy might avail,
ia the present state of public affairs, is a problem to be
solved by those skilled in the doctrine of infinitesimals 1
Weeks, days, hours, must exhaust its remaining efficacy.
Lords Durham and Normanby may each be supposed
anxious to attempt the formation of a Cabinet, for each
of these Noble Lords stands in a position not altogether
free from peril. If Lord Durham has not betrayed his duty
to his Sovereign by his mal-administration of Canadian
affsairs, and by the desertion, in the hour of danger, of his
post in Canada, still he must, on his own evidence, be ad-
judged to have betrayed his duty, by the failure
to disclose to Parliament those portentous proofs of Minis-
terial misconduct in regard to Canada, by the promised
revelation of which he caused the ears of his Devonport
admirers to tingle. The course of Lord Normanby again,
for four years past, has been one long conspiracy against
the continuance of the Queen's supremacy in Ireland. To
Lord Normanby, therefore, as well as to Lord Durham,
elevation to the office of Prime Minister might be welcome
as partaking more or less of the character of an act of in-
demnity, not to dwell on the other advantages which
high office might secure to the morbid vanity of the one
Noble Lord in question, and to the necessities of the other.
Neither a Durham nor a Normanby Administration could,
however, endure for a month."
The Morning Post, not knowing what to say on the
subject of Sir Robert Peel's resignation, yet exceedingly
anxious to say something to attract notice, broadly inti-
mates that the Right Hon. Bart. has been tricked out of
his Premiership by the Whigs. "As yet," says our Con-
temporary, " these various events wear the appearance of
the different stages of a most discreditable trick, in which
the Queen of these realms was made, of course uncon-
sciously, the chief maneouverer. Some of the lower orders
of the Whigs seem to think that a successful trick has been
performed--that the Whig Ministers resume office in a
better position than they were before, and with an excite-
ment in their favour, owing to what has happened.
This was no doubt the exacta intention of the trick,
but, in our opinion, it has failed. The Whigs are
—if that be possible—in a worse position than they
were before. Their incompetency to manage the affairs
of the country, which all but themselves had proclaimed
long ago, has been within the last week acknowledged by
themselves. They gave up the Government last Tuesday,
simply because they had not, according to their own de-
claration, sufficient influence in either House of Parlia-
ment to carry it on. And in what respect are they stronger
now? In nothing but in an additional demonstration that
certain women at the Royal Palace, doubtless for very co-
gent reasons, desire their continuance in office. as much as
they dread the coming into office of the Conservative
party." This attempt of the Post to make it appear that
Sir Robert Peel's resignation was the result of trickery on
the part of the Whigs, when it was clearly the consequence
of his own dictatorial conduct, deserves the praise of ex-
treme impudence, if not of ingenuity.
The Times comments in the following passionate strain,
on the late resignation of Sir Robert Peel, in the course
of which our Contemporary seems to make it a matter of
considerable merit that he can " keep" his " temper." Sir
Anthony Absolute, in Sheridan's play of the Rivals, when
boiling with rage, indulged, it may be remembered, in a
similar boast :—" It is false that the Right Hon. Baronet
ever whispered a syllable about dismissing all the Queen's
household. The only sweeping and peremptory declara-
tion that was uttered on either side proceeded from the
Sovereign herself, who, in answer to Sir Robert Peel's
remark, that it would be unbecoming, embarrassing, and
extremely injurious, if some of the ladies whose position
was such as gave them a political rattier than a domestic
character, should remain in the household, after the extinc-
tion of the Ministry which, for political reasons, had
placed them there, declared that she would not
part with one of them! that she had made up
her mind to keep the whole ! The question was not.
as represented by the profligate Ministerial ne-cspa-
pers, whether her Majesty should be compelled to give up
all the Ladies of her household No such question was
ever stirred, or provoked, or invited by Sir Robert Peel,
But the question was whether, in defiance of the entreaties
of her responsible Ministers, and to the grave detriment and
danger of the public service, she should execute the threat
of retaining them all, the point on which her Majesty in-
sisted 1 There is a marvellously wide contrast here. Let
us keep our temper while we examine the amount of such
a requisition on the part of her Most Gracious Majesty,
suggested to her, it is quite evident, by some intriguing
and depraved adviser. The Melbourne household was
originally constructed, not as a Court ought to be, for the
personal comfort, the moral dignity, and the social purity
of a youthful female Sovereign, thrown upon the hands
of a hardened old man of the world, in a condition as
helpless as that of childhood in the arms of its nurse, but
merely and exclusively for the sake of promoting his own
selfish, factious, and ignoble ambition. The appointments
were one and all made out in such a manner that the
Queen should see nothing, and hear nothing, have access to
no intelligence, observation, complaint, or warning—that
she should receive no impressions of any kind with regard
to persons, priticiples,lcharacter s, or facts, save only through
such channels as were at the devotion of the Ministe-.
.‘ Not so much as a Conservative cat shall mew about
the Palace," is an announcement ascribed to him who
affects to call himself the bend of a " Liberal"
Administration. The household has been rigorously and
emphatically, not ceremonial, but political—not an appen-
dage to the Palace, but to the Treasury—not to the
Queen's person, but to the Ministers—a plastic image of
the Cabinet; not a Court, but a busy and suspicious
" cabal." The Minister who, from hatred towards his
political opponents, fills the Palace with his own factious
partizans, and who, because he thinks it strengthens him
individually, is the first to act upon that short-sighted
scheme, lays down a rule which his successor has no alter-
native left him but to follow, or to place at the disposal of
his enemies the acknowledged means of undermining his
own policy, and subverting the whole edifice of his official
power."
The Morning Chronicle, alluding to the reinstatement
of the Melbourne Ministry in office, says :—" It is believed,
in well-informed circles, that antagonism towards the
cause of progressive Reform need not be apprehended
from them; and that, if not actively aiding, they will not
be found impeding the endeavour to obtain for the people
their just rights and reasonable desires. If this disposi-
tion be rendered apparent, they will insure our hearty con-
fidence and support ; and 'if not, not.' In so saying, we
believe we speak the thought of the great mass of Re-
formers throughout the country. The circumstances of
this reinstatement of Ministers furnish of themselves
a strong presumption of the hope we have expressed.
Those circumstances cannot but act strongly upon every
mind capable of reflection. Much more must have been
done in the last few days than simply performing the mili-
tary evolution—' as you were.' Things cannot be as they
were : the blindest can distinguish between the re-assump-
tion of power and the re-assumption of weakness. Her
Majesty has commanded Ministers to enter the field again,
but she has not commanded them to be beaten again.
Now, the difficulty which occasioned the recent resigna-
tions was something more than an untoward accident : it
may occur again within a month—in all probability it
must occur again before the end of the Session, if no
means of prevention be adopted. We cannot con-
ceive that this danger has not been discussed;
that the emergency has not been provided for; nor
that the direction of the machinery of Government has not
been reassumed for some better purpose than just to re-
peat the exhibition of a break-down. In fact, the resump-
tion is of itself a pledge and promise to the country.
If anything could strengthen the reasons that were pre-
viously apparent for united and determined resistance to
the Tories, it would be the disposition evinced by Sir Ro-
bert Peel in his late communications with her Majesty.
We pass over all that concerns the gentlemanliness and
chivalry of the transaction. Everybody knows that
to imagine any virtue, even in a Baronetcy, to convey the
knightly spirit, is as unlikely as for ' the soul of So-
crates to inhabit the body of a stocking-weaver.' But
the people will not fail to remark the unrelenting and
insatiate grasp at all the possible means of absolute power.
The aim of Toryism is not common-place restoration. It
aspires at having Sovereign and people alike helpless in its
iron grip. It would plant spies in palaces as it once
planted them in hovels. It would allow as little freedom to
the Sovereign in the choice of her companions, as to the
people in the choice of their representatives. It would
block out the light of truth from the Court, as it once
taxed out the light of heaven from the cottage. The
hypocrisy of its boasted loyalty has been laid as bare as ,
the hypocrisy of its boasted religion. It would defile the
palace by intrusion, as it desecrates the Church by faction."
The Morning Advertiser contains the following obser-
vations in a leading article on the subject of Sir R.
Peel's resignation :—" Thank God! there is hope for us
in future The young Queen, who could with so much
spirit fight single-handed the veteran statesman who has
so long and so skilfully duped the House of Commons by
his plausibilities, is not likely to fail her people hereafter,
when mock pretenders of loyalty shall again presume, un-
der a hypocritical regard for the person and prerogatives
of the Sovereign. to assail the rights of the people. It has
been a favourite theory of our constitutional writers that if
any one of the branches of the Legislature exceeds its
bounds it may be controlled by the other two. There is
now some chance that with the united aid of the Sove-
reign and the House of Commons we may reduce the
Peers to order, and put an end to that nearly balanced
state of parties which has led to and encouraged the anar-
chical proceedings of the more violent of the Chartists."

MR. URQUHART'S " SPIRIT OF THE EAST."

—A new edition of this work, we observe, has just ap-
peared ; a fact that sufficiently marks the public estimation
of its interest and importance. Mr. Urquhart was for ten
years unremittingly employed in the acquisition of the
necessary information for judging of the countries and
people which he has described ; during which period,
unoccupied by any other pursuit,
his time was wholly de-
voted to investigation in detail, or to general studies colla-
terally bearing on the laws, history, commerce, political
and diplomatic position of the East, and more particularly
of Turkey, so that although his inquiries were extended
over fields wide and diversified, they were systematically
directed to the elucidation of one question—that which
most nearly touches the interests and perhaps the political
existence of Great Britain.

Dr. Spangcnberg, the celebrated Hanoverian
Physician, who has been for some time in attendance upon
the Crown Prince, has given it as his opinion that his
Royal Highness's eyesight has improved. Baron Graeff
does not, however, incline to the same way of thinking,
and being uncertain whether it would be safe to attempt an
operation this year, has ordered the seabaths of Nordeney,
whither the Prince will proceed at the usual season.
The Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress have in-
vited a distinguished and numerous party to dinner, on
Friday next, at the Mansion-house to meet the Arch-
bishops and Bishops.