The Sun.
London, England, 1837-10-26 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

The speech of Lord Durham, to which we adverted
in our paper of Tuesday, is one of too much import-
ance to be passed over in the way in which such
speeches usually are. In many of the sentiments to
which his Lordship cave utterance we cordially con-
cur ; from others we entirely differ. The declaration of
his continued attachment to the great principles of
triennial Parliaments, household suffrage, and the vote
by ballet, affords to us, as we are sure it must do to
the country at large, the highest satisfaction. These
are principles for which we have always most Fut-
nuoustv contended, and which we shall ever uphold to
to the utmost of our power, as indispensable to good
and cheap Government. Uniil they are conceded the
people will never have any effective controul over their
representatives, and consequently can never enjoy the
blessings of a full and fair representation in Parlia-
ment. We wish that the Noble Earl had concluded
his speech--if that speech be correctly reported—when
be proclaimed his attachment to the three great prin-
ciples in question. His own character, as a consistent
politician, would have been a gainer by the circumstance,
while the Reformers would have been spared the pain
and regret which the after parts of his address have so
generally occasioned. The first startling position laid
clown by his Lordship is, that while he professes to
hold a certain class of opinions, he does not feel him-
sell called on to press those opinions on the country.
We maintain, on the contrary, that if a man enter-
tains a certain set of principles, whose adoption be
conceives, as Lord Durham in the supposed case must
necessarily do, essential to the ends of just and bene-
ficial Government, he is bound to avail himself of
every legitimate means to bring those principles before
the public with the greatest possible prominency. If
every man were to act in the same way as Lord Dur-
ham, and to confine his opinions to his own breast,
by what means, or in what way, let us ask his Lord-
ship, are any particular class of principles to be pro-
pagated ? Why, in the supposed case, there would
be no such thing as public opinion at all. Were Lord
Durham a member of her Majesty's Government, that
might be some reason for not pressing his individual
opinions on the country ; but he has no connection
whatever with the Government. He is a free and in-
dependent man in the strictest sense of the terms. He
can compromise no one by any prominency which he
gives to his own views ; he cannot even compromise
his own pecuniary interests : for he is a man whose
circums.ances cannot be affected by any political
course which he can adopt. The assumption of his
Lordship that the country is not prepared to adopt
the great principles to which we have referred, is alto-
gether gratuitous. It is at direct variance with facts
which stare us everywhere and at all times in the face.
What the country complains of is, not that principles
or measures are sought to be thrust down their throats,
but that neither Lord Durham, nor other professed
friends of the people, will introduce into Parliament
sufficiently liberal measures. The masses of the people
are in advance, not in the rear of Lord Durham, on all
great political questions. But even were it otherwise,
that would not affect our argument ; for if all other
politicians were, in the supposed case, to act on the
principle of not bringing forward particular measures
until the country was ripe for them, the necessary con-
sequence would be that we should soon have no mea-
sures of political amelioration at all. No great measure
was ever yet carried, no important principle was ever
yet adopted by the nation generally, which had not be-
fore been pressed on the "public attention. What, on
Lord Durham's hypothesis, would have become of the
Test and Corporation Acts? They would have remained
till this hour unrepealed, had not the propriety and
justice of that repeal been strenuously and perseveringly
forced on the public mind by bringing forward mea-
sures on that subject in Parliament. The same may
be said of Catholic Emancipation—aye, and of a still
more important and more recent measure—even Par-
liamentary Reform itself. And here let us fasten on
his Lordship the charge of gross inconsistency. When
he was Mr. Lambton, he was in the habit of annually
bringing forward a measure for Parliamentary Reform
in the House of Commons, when not only nineteen-
twentieths of that House were opposed to Reform, but
when there was at the same time a corresponding ma-
jority hostile to it out of doors. Was not this pressing
or forcing his opinions on the country ? He will him-
self hardly deny that it was. Why, then, not do the
same now ? Let his Lordship escape out of this di-
lemma if he can. But we need not go so far back as
the period when his Lordship was plain Mr. Lambton,
to prove that he then held different doctrines, and
adopted a different course from what he does now. If
he has forgotten the Edinburgh dinner, but three short
years ago, the people of England and Scotland have not.
On that occasion, after indulging in a strain of the bit-
terest ridicule of an unfortunate expression which, in an
unguarded moment, had escaped Lord Brougham a few
months previously, to the effect that less woud be done
in the Session of 1835 than had been done in the
Session of 1834, Lord Durham declared, in the hear-
ing of the assembled thousands, that he was for the
immediate uprooting of all proved abuses, and that,
were he in power, he would not be twenty-four hours on
the floor of the House of Lords without taking some
decided measures for carrying his views into effect.
What has come over the spirit of the Noble Earl's
dream since then ? Why so averse to the " forcing"
system, as he himself calls it, now ? Has his resi-
dence of two years at the Court of St. Petersburg,
since that time, operated the change upon him ? This
is a point to which we shall more particularly refer to-
morrow. And here let us observe, that Lord Brougham
has great reason to complain of the unjust treatment
he received at the hands of Lord Durham at the Edin-
burgh dinner. Availing himself of the thoughtless
expression of Lord Brougham's to which we have re-
ferred, and which his whole conduct before, as well as
since, must have convinced every one that it was un-
guarded, the Noble Earl did everything in his
power to create an unjustifiable prejudice against Lord
Brougham, and thus ungenerously sought to raise his
own reputation with the country on the ruins of the
Noble Lord's, There arc other points in the Noble
Earl's speech which equally call for animadversion, but
the consideration of these we must defer till to-mor
row.—illorning Advertiser.

Nothing can be so hopeful as the Tory cause.
Every body and every thing is in favour of tote restora-
tion of the party to power ; the Queen is with them,
and the people are with them ; the elections have ter-
minated so as to give them a decided majority ; and an
enormous fund has been raised which will turn every
Member out of the House of Commons who is not
friendly to the status ante the Reform Bill, if not the
Roman Catholic Relief Bill. With all this wonderful
accumulation of advantages, what can the Tories wish
for more:? All they have now to do seems to be just
to get possession of Downing-street and the Treasury.
Walk in, gentlemen, and take your places by all
means. It would be " a thousand shames" to exclude
longer such a worthy set of pure, patriotic, and
disin-
terested public servants. Yet is it not " strange,
passing strange"—is it not " pitiful, wondrous piti-
ful," when the friends of Toryism are so countless,
and its power so boundless, to see the Times making
such desperate and deplorable efforts to gain even
the smallest addition of strength to its party, and, if
possible, to increase the weakness of its adversaries ?
Let the reader mark how it congratulated itself
yesterday on the remote chance which it fancied
it established of some disagreement, sooner or
later, between the Earl of Durham and Lord Mel-
bourne, founding its conjecture upon a passage in the
recently-delivered speech of the former nobleman, in
which he said that " he should be very much diap-
pointed if he did not see in the ensuing session of
Parliament a course pursued by Government which
would gain for it the respect, esteem, and confidence
of all classes of Reformers." To ordinary ears this
passage seems to present no ground for imagining
that Lord Durham was disposed to think that he
should have reason before long to differ from the
Queen's Ministers ; but the Times has not ordinary
ears ; it has an astonishing faculty of discovering what
nobody else can find out, even when the matter is
elaborately explained. It has a vast desire to see
Lord Durham and the Cabinet at variance ; and un-
der the presumption that his Lordship will necessarily
be " much disappointed" by the measures of Mini-
tcrs, it proceeds to argue at length that a breach is I
inevitable. The editor of the Times no doubt sees