The Sun.
London, England, 1830-01-01 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC! JOURNALS.

We have received a quantity of correspond-
ence on the subject of the Bishop of London's
having dismissed all the Whitehall preachers,
and put the chapel, no doubt, under a new
regime. Our correspondent of yesterday also,
who signs himself " Clericus Londinenses," and
who evidently belongs to that class of religionists
called Evangelical, has put those who suppose
themselves more orthodox into a terrible rage by
approving of the act. We know nothing of the
circumstances ; but this may, perhaps, be the first
step of the rumoured reformation of the church ;
and if so, as Sterne says by the document headed
" Par le Itoi ," in the Sentimental Journey,
"itis a pithy prolegomenon." The reason as-
signed by his Lordship we understand to be,
the inconvenience arising from the variety of
preachers, there being twelve in the year from
either University, resident Fellows." The ques-
tion appears to us to be, has the institution al-
tered from its first commencement ? If so, his
Lordship is right in recalling it to its original
state : if not, it would be a singular and laugh-
able phenomenon in the church, for one Bishop
to endow and appoint a variety of preachers ex-
pressly as a great convenience, and another to
demolish and annihilate the institution of his

predecessor, the variety being inconvenient.
However, what do the Fellows mean to do ?
Their best way of refuting our correspondent's
charge, that " they are men of recluse and con-
tracted habit;," totally incapable of taking a part
in the affairs of the world, is to look about them,
and see whether the order for disbanding them
be legal, and if not, to defend themselves. If
they have no chance this way, silence,—silence
will become thcon best. The names of the White-
lhal preachers, now at the time of the present
dissolution, are—

FROM OXFORD.
I'. Wintle, B.D. St. John's

FROM CAMBRIDGE.
T. Musgrave, M.A. Trinity
F. Shelford, B.D. Corpus

J. Watts,M:A.Univerbity,

E. Griffith, M.A. Merton-
T. V. Short, M.A. Christ

Christi
G. A. Browne, M. A.

Church
C. T. Longley, M.A. Christ

Trinity
J. Graham, B.D. Christ's
S. Tilbrook, B.D. Peter

Church - -
B. P. Symons, B.D. Wad-

ham
C. A. Ogilvie, M.A. Braze-

House
J. Griffith, B.D. Emanuel
H. Robinson, M.A. St.

nose
W. Jackson, M.A. Queen's
C. Rose, B.D. Lincoln Col-,
lege
T. T. Churton, Brazenose
J. L. Richards, M. A. Exeter
J. H. Newman, M.A. Oriel
Reading Chaplains— J. H,
Owen, M.A.— Times.

John's
H. 11. 13yam, M.A. King's
G. Skinner, M.A. Jesus
T. Dicke, M.A. Jesus
H. Kirby, M.A. Clare Hall
T. Crick, M.A. St. John's

Howlett, 111,A. and 'William

lhe account, which will be found in our
Paper of this day, of the execution of the male-
factors at the Old Bailey, induces us to renew
our remonstrances against the practice of suffer-
ing men, whom it is determined to punish for
their crimes by death, to linger out so long an
existence between conviction and their execu-

The men who suffered yesterday were
convicted at the last September Sessions: and
how has this interval been passed ? In com-
municating with criminals out of doors,—in
plans of escape,—in attempts at suicide,—and
even in projects that might have occasioned the
death of numbers of unsuspecting and unoffend-
ing Christian people. Ought this to be suf-
fered? We really can see no reason for it either
in policy or humanity. In the first place, no-
thing would so effectually appal offenders at
large as the apprehension of a speedy execution
when death was determined on : and in the next
place, the time which passes between these two
awful epochs is but a time of torture, which the
more it is shortened the better for the sufferer.
Neither do we speak without regard to the duty
of repentance ; but allowing time for repentance
is allowing time for sinfulness also, in thought
and conception, and by mental participation and
misprison. If the criminal be really sensible of
his guilt, he will not wait for human conviction
before he endeavours to make his peace with his
offended Maker. He has the time between his
commitment and his trial ; and the effect pro-
duced upon his mind by the sentence of the law
should not be seized and kept up with increas-
ing force till the moment of his execution, which
for that purpose ought always to be near. But,
according to the present reprehensible system,
the man mingles with the world again in every
thing but action, the effect of his sentence dies
away, or recurs only at intervals ; and he
usually has the work of religious preparation to
begin, when it is announced to him that his
death-warrant is signed.—lbid.
The calamitous year of 1829 has at length
come to a close, and its events, as well as the
characters of those who have figured in it, are
now matters of history. We give God thanks
that it has ended, silently and miserably, like a
disturbing dream : and that, having witnessed
the perjuries, the follies, and the crimes of public
men, it did not also witness their punishment, or
the convulsions which such men and such mea-
sures were calculated to bring down, like the
wrath of Heaven, upon a nation. It has passed
away into the tomb loaded with the offences of
degenerate statesmen—tainted with the revolting
apostacy of needy courtiers and unprincipled
placemen—and desecrated by more calamity and
more unrighteous persecution than has marked
any year since the accession of the house of
Brunswick. When we look back on the transactions
of the last twelve months we are at a loss to de-
cide whether we should express our surprise at
what has occurred, or more execration of the
men whose deeds do
" Blur the grace and blush of modesty,
Call virtue hypocrite"—

1011.

" 0 such a deed,
As from the body of contraction plucks
The very soul, and sweet religion makes
A rhapsody of words."

It is difficult to determine whether the inju-
ries these men have inflicted, or the apathy
with which their injuries have been suffered by
the nation, are most to be detested or lamented.
Yet sure we are the guilt has carried with it its
own punishment. Sure we are that our indiffer-
ence to our own interests, our indifference where
the public morals were concerned, our indiffer-
ence where the ascendancy of the reformed reli-
gion was at stake, has been visited upon the
nation in terrible judgment, to such a degree
that a state of profound peace has been scourged
with all the manifold terrors and privations
of a state of war. We could not be a poorer,
a more divided, a more oppressed, or a
more unhappy people, if we actually were
an invaded and conquered country. We
could not suffer the pangs of hunger more
acutely, nor could crimes be more numerous,
nor could discontent be more general, if the war-
horses of France trampled over our corn-fields,
and every city and town in the united kincidom
were garrisoned by foreign soldiers. We are
humbled even in our own eyes by our own mea-
sures—we are reduced to helpless penury by our
own speculations—our foreign policy is the
laughing-stock of all Europe—at home the hum-
blest artisan ridicules the specifics of the Minis-

t; r, and the destitute veteran, as he exhibits
his rags, thinks of Waterloo with a sigh, and de-
plores the ruin which its hero has inflicted on

his country. Twelve months ago the nation in-
dulged the sanguine belief that the Duke of
Wellington would correct the policy and the
errors of his predecessors. During the Ad-
ministrations of Mr. Canning and Lord Gode-
rich, his Grace was the leader of the opposition
phalanx in the House of Lords. He opposed
Mr. Canning's Corn Bill on grounds which he
abandoned when he became Minister. He re-
sisted, when he recorded his ideas of. political
madness, that very measure which he al;proved
when his notions of madness were exploded, and
when he was raised to a situation for which he
candidly avowed himself disqualified. He re-
sisted Mr. Carming's Emancipation Bill, and
carried it afterwards in the force of his own
protestations and opinions. Lord Lyndhurst
did the same. The Chancellor, on a moment's
notice, forgot the sentiments of the Master of
the Rolls. Mr. Peel became a different man
after his second birth in Westbury. His uni-
versity sentiments were thawed by the congenial
refraction from the obscure furnace of a Jew
jobber. Honour became an obsolete and inde-
finable term. The consciences of public
men were bought and sold like stale rab-
bits in an overstocked market. Con-
sistency was bartered for a song. Pride
was melted in the crucible of self inte-
rest, and character deemed as worthless
as the commodities in Rag-fair. Thus, fron:
the noblest position, the Minister, in one evil
hour, sunk to one of the deepest obloquy and
shame—fiom a station of honour to one of re-
proach—from a point of dignity and reverence
to one of execration and contumely. But, not-
withstanding all this, when the Duke of Wel-
lington was placed by his Sovereign in that
high place which he has desecrated and disho-
noured—when he was raised to that station
which it was thought he would fill with honour
to himself and advantage to the country—all
eyes looked up to him with hope—all hearts
were flushed with expectations. He was sup-
ported generally by the Press. The Times
alone, now his greatest slave, censured the ap-
pointment, and libelled him in the grossest man-
ner. The mass of the people were satisfied, and
anxiously looked forward to his introduction of
some measures of amelioration—to some correc-

Lion of the fallacious and pernicious system that
prevailed—to some cure for the million evils in-
flicted upon us by Mr. Huskisson, the
economists, and the liberals. That the
Duke of Wellington has disappointed the
hopes of the nation it would be a mere
waste of words and time to labour to de-
monstrate. Look at his position then, and look at
what it is now. Look how low he has fallen,
not in the estimation of his King only, but in
the estimation of the nation at large. Look at

the condition of the country when-he came into
power, and contrast it with the rags, the misery,
the discontent, and the despair of the present
moment. Look at the situation of the proud
people who trusted him, and who now execrate
him—at the hopes he inspired, and the con-
tempt he has provoked—and the magnanimity
and fame he leant upon, and the hatred and
mistrust he has engendered. Look at the Duke
of Wellington when his character as a states-
man was brighter than his sword, and consider
him now, with the deep and dark stains of per-
-secution upon his reputation—the cries of the
hungry cursing his policy—the clergy of the
Protestant Church lamenting his apostacy—the
ship-owner complaining of broken promises—
the agricultural labourer a pauper, and the weaver
toiling at his loom without the comforts of a fire.
Look at his former opinions and his present libe-
ralism—the Tory of former times herding with
rapacious. Whigs—the idol of Lord Eldon court-
ing the smiles of Lord Rosalyn—the associate of
Lord Liverpool twirling the crirls of Lord
Ellenborough—the supporter of Lord London-
derry dandling Lord Holland—the hero of Wa-
terloo sitting with Sir George Murray—the col-
league of Lord Wallace discussing the rule of
three at the Board of • Trade with Mr. Vesey
Fitzgerald—and the admirer of Sir Charles
Wetherell the employer of Sir James Scarlett,
the importation of a slave-ship, member of the
brigand of reporters, an old hack of the news-
papers by which he earned his bread, and the
supercilious and malignant persecutor of his
former opinions. All this is melancholy as re-
gards the times in which we live—it is disgust-
ing as regards the character and the professions
of the Duke of Wellington. But, distressing as
are these coincidences, the condition of the
country induces much more painful feelings. We
pass by here the Duke's nefarious conduct on the
Catholic question. We pass by his hypocrisy
and deceit. We pass over his sophistry and
inventions. We pass by his mere military tricks
by which he betrayed his friends and alarmed his
Sovereign ; and we come at once to the condi-
tion in which he has, with his eyes open,
and surrounded by all his apostate associates,
plunged this now unhappy country. in
the commencement of 1829, the utmost re-
liance was reposed in his measures. Russia
had been frustrated in her first attempt upon
Turkey. The interference of England to pre..
serve the balance of power in Europe, and pre-
vent further aggrandizement, was expected.--
The struggling interests of the nation required
protection, and the inroads of foreign compe-
titors required investigation and correction,—
The wool•growers called for inquiry and redress.
The silk-weavers were going fast to ruin, and
they relied on the generous interposition of the
Minister. The ship-owners had the year before
been promised the anxious attention of the Pre-
mier. The glovers were reduced to wretched-
ness, and they naturally looked up to the Duke
of Wellington. The lethargic proprietors of
the West Indies, and their still more lethargic
agents, confided their cares to the guardianship
of the Duke of Wellington. The country saw
its cheap currency anathematised by a former
Administration, and they hoped for redress at
the new Premier's hands. The tide of cala-
mity had set in with a strong current, and the
country looked for resistance and relief from the
hero of Waterloo. Their eyes were even then
opened to the visionary and fallaciouspolicy of the
Canning and Goderich Cabinets, and they placed
the utmost dependence upon the wiser measures of
the then favourite of the King. Alas ! how
have they been disappointed ? The first grand
act of the session was a fraud—the first innova-
tion a flagrant insult to the house of Brunswick.
The peace of the country was not only wantonly
endangered, but the tenure by which our Pro-
testant princes hold their right to the throne was
openly, mercilessly, and ieklessly, violated by
the Ministry. All other interests were merged
in the carrying of this one guilty and unconsti-
tional measure. The rights of merchants, and
the interests of agriculturists and manufacturers,
were all overlooked in the exertions made to
precipitate this pemicipus ineows. WI loogan

the year in difficulty—we have terminated it in
despair. We began in fear—we have closed our
books in terror. We saw disaster before us—it
now comes home to our bosoms and our liber-
ties. We dreaded the efforts of military despo-
tism, we now bow before them in the dust. The
Press was then comparatively free—now it is en-
chained and enslaved. Public opinions had
then a fair field—now they are cabined,
cribbed, confined—now they are watched
by a legal censor—now they are manacled as
are the bones and sinews of a captured and trans-
ported African—now they are put under the
surveillance ofan imported Creole, without prin-
ciple, or talent, or any feelings congenial to
those which distinguish the natives of a free
country. The Duke of Wellington, at the com-
mencement of 1829, found the nation in trouble
—but his policy has left it in a more hopeless
condition at the commencement of 1830. The
year dawned upon embarrassment—it has ended
in almost universal insolvency. It began with
difficulties—it has terminated in pauperism. In
short, under the Ministry of the Duke of Wel-
lington, it has been a year which ought to stand
" For aye accursed in the kalendar."
The nation has reaped from it nothing but mis-
fortunes ; and every good and honest man must
feel happy that it has gone to the tomb of all the
Capulets. It has ended, but it never will be for-
gotten. The very worst has been done to damn
it to all history ; and the men who have rendered
it ignominious and immortal still live, but only to
have their names and their misdeeds, their of-
fences and their black apostacy, recorded on the
same tablets which shall perpetuate its infamy
and theirs. But what are we to hope for during
the present year? Only one thing, courteous
reader!—the downfall of the Wellington Ad-
ministration ! There is no hope for us but in
this consummation. We have no chance of
prosperity unless there be an entire change of
inen and measures. We must have a thorough
purgation, and a complete discomfiture of
the present cabal. We must have a new
Parliament and new men. We must have
the satisfaction of hailing the overthrow and
the disgrace of the Wellingtons and Peels,
and all their military and needy subalterns ; and
we confidently hope that 1830 will witness this
desirable event. We look forward to it as a
matter of certainty, and the sooner it takes place
the sooner shall we be relieved from military
thraldom, and the prosperity for which we pray
and languish be restored to the country.—Morn-
ing Journal.

d,

The first article in Blackwood's Magazine
for January is a long essay on Education, in
which the advantages pro and con. are stated in
a manner which can only serve to puzzle those
who want to arrive at something like certainty,
whether the education of the lower orders is cal-
culated to make them better subjects ; that is, is
calculated to add to their affection for rotten bo-
roughs, licensing, game and corn laws, an over-
grown church establishment, oppression, tax-
ation, &c. The article is in the very best man-
ner of the Coleridge School, and certainly con-
tains a great many nostrums for the management
of the will, often a most refractory part of the
animal man. The conclusion at which the
writer arrives is the encouragement of educa-
tion, although he candidly allows that " many
of the reasons and doctrines of religion—many
of the reasons of morality (?),—many of the
reasons of political obedience, are unfathomable
to the human intellect, at least such as it is at
present with the great majority of the cultivated or-
ders of the most enlightened nations. There are dif-
ficulties in the philosophy of the world, to the
height of which it has not yet attained. Now
the human mind, confident in its own sufficiency,
will not, cannot, believe what it cannot under-
stand. It refuses political obedience, because it
has conceived but one reason for obedience,
namely, the interest of the individual in the
welfare of the whole ; and yet it finds institutions
challenging obedience, some of which have sprung
up in imagination, some in passion, some out
of the subsiding conflict of the blindest forces,"
&c. This is a very transcendental way of stating
that a man who labours sixteen hours out of the
twenty-four for a subsistence of oatmeal, or
potatoes and water, finds it very difficult, by his
unaided reason, to understand why he should
thus be forced to toil and starve, in order that a
number of people should live in idleness and
luxury. We really, notwithstanding the confi-
dence of this metaphysician, have some doubts
whether the excellencies of the Constitution under
which we live will be so well appreciated by an in-
tellectual as by an ignorant population. This
may be a mistake on our parts ; but we really think
that knowledge is not quiescent ; and that if
the pleasure is as great " in being cheated as to
cheat," is is only when people do not know they
are cheated. The worst of the mystical writers
of the Coleridge school is, that they only serve,
by their ingenious reasonings, to reconcile those
to the existing order of things, who would
always be quite satisfied without any reasoning;
while they are quite incomprehensible to the
class who have such a strong tendency to be
dissatisfied. There is no part of the happy
system under which we live which is more ad-
mired by those who profit by it, than the inge-
nious way in which money is taken out of the
pockets of the many for the benefit of the few.
In all countries, Statesmen have felt an irre-
sistible love for this part of our policy. .reffer-
son tells us, that on his return from France he
found the Statesmen of his own country
lost in admiration of British corruption. He
had been named Secretary of State by Gene-
ral Washington, and having invited his
brother Ministers, the Attorney-General, &c.
to dinner, after the cloth was removed, he
says, " and one question agreed and dis-
missed, conversation began on other matters, and
by some circumstance was led to the British
Constitution ; on which Mr. Adams observed,
Purge that Constitution of its corruption, and
give to its popular branch equality of representa-
tion, and it would be the most perfect Constitu-
tion ever devised by the mind of man.' Hamil-
ton paused, and said, Purge it of its cor-
ruption, and give to its popular branch equality
of representation, and it would become an i 714-
practicable Government as it stands at pre-
sent, with all its supposed defects, it is the most
perfect Government which ever existed.' And
this was, assuredly, the exact line which se-
parated the political creeds of these two gentle-
men. The one was for two hereditary branches
and an honest elective one; the other for an
hereditary King, with a House of Lords and Com-
mons corrupted to his will, and standing between
him and the people. Hamilton was indeed a
singular character. Of acute understanding, dis-
interested, honest, and honourable in all private
transactions, amiable in society, and duly valuing
virtue in private life ; yet so bewitched and per-
verted by the British example, as to be under
thorough conviction that corruption was essential
to the government of a nation." These States •