The Sun.
London, England, 1837-09-11 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1837.

being isroLn and crushed by the oppressive weight of
the unnatural and monstrous coalition between the
Protestant Government and the Popish agitators, ap-
pears to be roused into more energetic exertion by the
efforts made to press it to the earth. The following
announcement in the Dublin Evening Mail conveys
very gratifying intelligence, as showing that the Irish
Protestants of the present day inherit the bold and
dauntless hearts of their heroic forefathers„ who, by
their successful resistance to the popish faction in the
reign of James 11., when England was struggling for
its liberties, saved Ireland to the British Crown. The
Dublin Mail says—" There is not a parish in Dublin
that is not organized in preparation for the next elec-
tion, and for the rectification of the last. A truly Pro-
testant spirit has been roused, and its zeal is testified in
the arduous personal exertious the citizens are content
to encounter, and the liberal sacrifices of money they are
anxious to make. A similar spirit is pervading the
provinces. We have already announced generous sub-
scriptions from several parts of the country." Such
conduct indeed evinces " a truly Protestant spirit."
Such a spirit, with a good cause at its back, is sure to
prosper. Neither the bullying of O'Connell, nor the
undue influence of his vice-regal vassal,Lord Mulgrave,
nor the anathemas of the Popish priests, nor the fran-
tic violence of their ferocious rabble, will be able to
subdue the Protestant spirit of Ireland, now really
awakened by the sense of impending danger, to the
defence of the altars which Popish intolerance labours
to overthrow, and the liberties upon which Popish des-
potism would trample. At a time when Protestant
electors, proceeding peaceably to exercise their elective
franchise, are way-laid and deliberately murdered with
circumstances of cold-blooded brutality that would dis-
grace the rudest savages of the wilderness, it is surely
not too soon for the whole Protestant community to
unite, and, by a common defence, repel the common
danger. Nor ought the Protestants of England be
slow to assist in whatever way they legally can the
cause of their Protestant brethren, for it is their own
cause. The empire is now in a political sense divided
into two great categories—the Conservatives and De-
structives. All shades of political opinion are merged
in these two ; and to the latter the Irish Roman Ca-
tholics generally belong, their anxiety to destroy the
Protestant Church being stronger than any other mo-
tive of action. To resist the designs of the Popish
agitators is the first great duty of the Conservatives,
and they best perform that duty by assisting and sup-
porting their Protestant bruthren in the arduous
itruggle in which they are 110 W engaged for the defence
of the altar and the Constitution.—Morning Herald.

went carrying the destreict:ee le..!:asures it has hitherto
advocated, in the face of such an Opposition as it has
now to encounter in the House of Commons. Even
if the Government were not in a hopeless minority in
the Lords it could not venture to attempt the appropria-
tion clause, or the Church-rates Confiscation Bill, or
anything like "organic change" in the present House of
Commons. It must either pare down its measures so as
to suit Conservative views, or -be beaten, or contrive
to suspend party measures altogether. It is per-
fectly ridiculous for its stupid advocates to bluster as
if it were resolved to be boldly Radical in the Minis-
terial propositions to Parliament. The Ministry has
not the strength for that. It durst not attempt any
such thing, and every one possessed of even the
smallest powers of common sense, and the smallest
stock of information, must see this. We go upon the
supposition (which we think we may very safely go
upon) that Ministers neither intend to resign, nor
willingly to place themselves in such a situation that,
if they do not resign, they must be dismissed. We
know that some of them are still so drunk with vanity
as to think that if they were driven out, and free to
use their own abilities and eloquence on the side of po-
pular excitement and revolutionary change, they would
soon be able to get back to power on the shoulders of
the mob ; but who is there that thinks that besides
themselves ? No one. We do not make light of
the democratic tendencies at work in this country,
nor do we expect that anything short of an almost
miraculous change in the moral feeling of the na-
tion can counteract them ; but we know that none
of the present Ministers have either the talent, or
the self-denial, or the integrity, to struggle for the de-
mocracy, and win for it. They would try to use it
in order to win for themselves, but they would soon
be found out, and crushed. This would be the re-
sult if the democracy were really powerful ; and if it
were not, then they who depended upon it could not
succeed. We would have the speculators in revolu-
tion to remember that a rabble is not a democracy,
more than an aristocracy is an oligarchy. It might be
well for them also to bear in mind that many of those
who profess themselves ardent democrats are only so
while in pursuit of things utterly inconsistent with de-
mocracy. These are men who, as soon as the first
practical effects of a democratic system began to be
felt, would drop it with quite as much precipitancy
as the Ministerialists have dropped the Ministerial
pamphlet which, for five whole days, was the theme of
their ardent admiration.—Morning Post.
The more closely and the more carefully O'Con-
neli'a letter to the '' people of Ireland" is considered,
the more selfish, sordid, and ireacherous will the cha-
racter of the writer appear—the more manifest will
become the nature of the league and covenant which
lie and our Whig Ministers have certainly entered
into, although they, with a degree of impudence
and falsehood which lie could hardly surpass, deny
the existence of any compact between them. That
O'Connell resolved to acquire the means of sub-
sistence for himself and Ins family by some dis-
graceful and dishonest course was apparent from the
naoment in which he abandoned the profession to
which he was bred, and took to leading the beggar's
life he still pursues, and by which he thrives so
well. It will he remembered that until the Lichfield-
house compact was struck between those most high-
minded persons and most constitutional politicians, the
Whigs, on the one hand—and the Irish Rebels and
the British Radicals'and Republicans on the other—
O'Connell was in the constant habit of urging the
immediate introduction and speedy progress of certain
measures relative to Ireland—sometimes with tears
and prayers, but oftener with bullying and threats—
invariably declaring that the next Session would he
too late—that the " wrongs of Ireland" had become
intolerable—that the redress lie craved and demanded
by turns must be applied without delay. It will be
recollected, too, that on one memorable occasion he
pretended that his patience, and the patience of " all
Ireland," were exhausted, and that he actually moved
for the repeal of the Union, or what was equivalent
thereto. Yet immediately after the Lichfield•house
compact, this big bully and beggarman aggravated
his voice, and roared as gently as any sucking dove :
his tone became lower and lower month by month :
and when at last he was admitted by the Whigs
to a participation in the profits of office, the won-
drous change that his last letter confesses came
over him. He sends round the begging-box still, be-
cause the " tint" is too good a thing to give up : he
still talks of the " wrongs of Ireland,' because that is
necessary for the extortion of the penny from the
ragged, and the halfpenny from the s tarving, of his
" beloved countrymen :" and as he can no more live
• without somebody to vilify and slander than a bear can
get through the day without a poll to climb, he bur-
nishes up the old blackguardism he used to vent upon
the Whigs, and bestows it at second hand upon the
Conservatives. But though he tall-s of the " wrongs
of Ireland," and pockets all that the priests can wring
for him from the most needy peasantry in the world,
though he exhibits a programme of what he calls " Jus-
tice to Ireland," and threatens " repeal" ultimately—
yet he is content to leave these " intolerable wrongs"
precisely where they are, and to postpone all justice to
Ireland sine die, so long as the Whigs—" the bloody
and brutal Whigs," as he but lately called them—re-
main in office, and he, by sharing in the patronage of
a Government which is daily increasing its pa-
tronage, is enabled to place or pension his adherents,
and the friends and relatives of all who have the
means of giving him in an equivalent, either by pro-
curing subscriptions to the " tint," or furnishing
election funds, or otherwise,—in meal or in malt,—
for Dan is no more scrupulous than the rest
of the firm in which he has been admitted a part-
ner. " The Ministers," he says, " will not be able,
perhaps, to achieve all they desire for Ireland, or may
be totally prevented by the House of Lords from
doing us ANY justice; yet as there can be no doubt
that they will do all they possibly can to serve Ire-
land, we must not blame them for any failure which
may be caused by the power of their enemies as well
as ours." Never did an unprincipled demagogue act
a more treacherous part towards his wretched dupes,
than O'Connell is acting towards " the people of Ire-
land," whom he sells as he slavers them with the
slime of panegyric fulsome enough to turn the stomach
of a Chinese sycophant ; never was a baser or a
meaner wretch than O'Connell gibbetted in the an-
nals of political profligacy. It is impossible for the
dullest, or the most charitable of mankind, to doubt
any longer that O'Connell . has agitated for his
own personal advantage alone ; that the ardent love
lie professes for his country, and the deep sense of
the wrongs of his fellow-countrymen which he affects,
are mere blarney ; that the bloody murders, the savage
outrages, the burnings, the laying waste, the discords
and the dangers with which Ireland has so long been
disgraced and' cursed, are attributable, not to public
wrongs, whether real or imaginary, but to the detes-
table avarice and the fiendlike disposition of an indi-
vidual traitor. But let this unprincipled imposter take
heed. We know him to be as vain as he is vicious,
but we warn him that lie is far less clever than he flat-
ters himself he is. He has declared too much of his
game,—so much of it, that there is not the remotest
possibility of his being able to play it out successfully.
The game he has declared is this :—While the Whigs
remain in, he means to continue the profitable trea-
chery he is now practising ; but when they are kicked
out, and his pickings share the fate of theirs, he
proposes to return to his old turbulent courses,
and raise a hullabaloo louder than before about
justice to Ireland." Yes, he has not calculated
upon what he will nevertheless find to be the fact—
namely, the Parliament and the country will meet him
only with shouts of scorn and derision, when he comes
forward to demand of the Conservatives the passage of
those measures which lie is content to put in abeyance,
not only now, but for as much longer as the Whigs
keep in office and pay him for keeping quiet. Hs has
shown the cloven foot, and a fig for his tail—were it
twice as long as it is. Ireland can go on very well
without any such measures, by O'Connell's own con-
fession—only they are to be clamoured for, if he is
unbribed, while a Ministry that gives him hush-money
is not to be blamed for not, passing them ! The hum-
bug of " justice to Ireland" is at an end. Lord Erin
mar shift his peas from thimble to thimble, and gull
the Irish still as he has gulled them heretofore ; but
in England there can
.no longer be any doubt either as
to his character or his game. He can deceive us no ,

Our readers are aware that within the last ten days
an attempt has been made by the Ministerial press to
sound the public as to their disposition to bear with
the present Administration for its own sake, and with-
out requiring, from it any active aid towards the de-
struction of British institutions in Church and State.
The experiment has been made, and the result has
been, like the elections, which preceded it, unfavour-
able to the hopes of the Administration. It it no-
torious that, though the Whig-Radical party retureed
to the House of Commons in 1835 was able, by its
infamous coalition with Mr. O'Connell and his subor-
dinates, to obstruct the cour,e of Sir Robert Peel's
Administration, and to cause its resignation, it was not
able to do anything more than take possession of the
executive. The Melbourne Administration never was
able to carry the most important measures which it in-
troduced, and even that upon the implied necessity of
which it regained office, in 18:35, instead of prospering
in its hands, grew grathially more hopeless, and in the
last session was all but abandoned. Both in
Parliament and out of it the weakness of the Govern-
ment—meaning thereby its inability to carry the mea-
sures which it considered, or pretended to consider,
necessary to the welfare of the country—was some-
times expressed, and always understood. This was no
doub:, mortifying to the Administration, but the grati-
fication of office was more seductive than the mortifi-
cation of defeat was disgusting. Moreover, they had
the excuse that their Parliament had been dissolved
by the advice of Sir R. Peel, and an intractable one
re-elected under his Administration. During the life-
thne of the late King Lord Melbourne did not dare to
ask for a new Parliament, partly because he had some
reason to fear a refusal from the King, and partly be-
cause he had no reason to be confident that a new Par-
liament would give him any additional strength. But
when, upon the death of his late Majesty, a new
Sovereign ascended the Throne, whose name and
authority the Ministers felt they might use in the
elections, and which no sense of political decency or
honourable delicacy prevented them from using, it
is unquestionable that they indulged in the highest
hopes that the day of their absolute power was at
hand. One or two there may have been—one we
believe there certainly was—in the Administration who
doubted that even the Queen's name and all the Go-
vernment influence they could use along with it, would
give them a more favourable House of Commons than
that with which they had for three Sessions ineffectu-
ally struggled. But the prevailing sentiment was very
different. Even the Government journals were per-
mitted to speak of the Parliamentary weakness of the
Government ; but then it was in allusion to the past,
and by way of contrast to the bright future which was
anticipated. The Globe, with characteristic sapience,
dwelt joyfully upon the new elections; and alluded to
" the few Tory Members who would still continue to
creep into the House l" This dream of power was,
however, utterly dispelled by the elections when they
actually took place. Never was such a struggle made
by a Ministry to acquire a majority by unconstitutional
means, and never did the Conservative body, from the
highest to the lowest, make so spirited an exertion to
meet the insidious enemies of the Constitution at
every point, and to resist the threatened domination
of vulgar conceit, and voracious rapacity. Feeble
as the Government is in all public matters where
a contest is to be openly maintained by open
means, they were not feeble in the use of the worst
sort of influence at the elections. That kind of un-
derhand work is just suited to their abilities, and they
exacted everything from their friends and employed
everything against their adversaries which it was pos-
sible for them to exact or to employ. But, notwith-
standing all this, they were defeated in the battle of
the general election. Instead of obtaining a powerful
majority, as they expected, they found themselves at
its close considerably weaker in numbers than they
were before, and entirely dependent upon the Irish
majority. When they recovered from their first con-
sternation at this unexpected result, the conclusion
which struck them was, that, as parties stood balanced
in the House of Commons, nothing could be done.
Either they must effect a coalition with the Con-
servatives, throw over the Radicals, and proceed
upon new principles altogether, or they must re-
main a mere Executive, more incapable than before
of carrying any of the measures to which they had
found it convenient to pledge themselves in 1835.
The idea of a coalition was almost immediately
abandoned. It certainly was among the things con-
sidered, and we should not be surprised if the events of
last week have brought it under consideration again ;
but we hold it to be utterly impossible, and we feel
very confident that whenever it is considered that will
be the conclusion to which the consideration must
come. The other alternative, of continuing to hold
the Executive although powerless in Parliament, alone
remained, for as to giving up the Government that
is a thing not to be thought of by Whig-Radicals.
But the difficulty then arose attendant upon a
Government continuing Session after Session to try
to carry measures without succeeding. There ap-
peared to be but one way of escape from this diffi-
culty, and that way was, not to try. It wan deter-
mined not only that it was impracticable to carry
the measures to which Government stood pledged,
but that it was unsafe to attempt to do so, and that
nothing remained but for the Government to stand
merely upon its merits as an Executive. Legislation
it was decreed should stand still, at least upon all
party questions, and Legislative improvements must
wait for a more convenient season. This, we have
eood reason to know, was the design of the Govern-
ment, and though they have found it expedient to beat
a somewhat precipitate retreat from the somewhat pre-
cipitate avowal of this policy in die pamphlet " sup-
posed to proceed from high authority" we believe that
up to this hour no other way has been thought upon
of escaping discomfiture and disgrace. Nothing can
be more clear than theimpossibility of the Govern-

niter.' ; 167,- Le !:as co,:ifesspd himscif to he impostor,
and the next time he puts on the "patriot" in the
House of Commons, he ought to be dealt with as the
police deal with those small beggars who endeavour to
cheat humane people out of alms by shamming fits in
the streets.— Times.