The Sun.
London, England, 1837-11-04 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Tories seem about to change their tone ; they
have bawled themselves hoarse with ridiculous accusa-
tions against Ministers for submitting to the authority
of Mr. O'Connell ; they have shouted till they could
shout no longer on the subject of what they called
" the Lichfield-house conspiracy," and " the Lich-
field-house compact," and finding at last that they
were only heard and not heeded, it now looks as if
• they were going to take up the matter in a different
way. Hear the Morning Post of yesterday :—" Mr-
O'Connell, acting by the advice of her Majesty's
Ministers, tre., has made a show of dissolving the
rebel ?Association in Dublin." What I " Mr.
O'Connell acting by the advice of her 'Majesty's Mi-
nisters"? Has he condescended to take " advice"
from the Queen's Government ? We thought, until
now, according to the Tories, that the Queen's Go-
vernment had acted, not, indeed, by his advice—that
would be too moderate an exptession—but by his dic-
tation and command. Is, then, the position or dispo-
sition of the respective parties so completely altered,
that he, who less than a week ago imposed his own
terms, who settled everything, by his " absolute
shall," and ruled in Dublin Castle with a rod
of iron now submits to take advice from the
vety persons who formerly trembled at his nod ? This
is strange, but if we may trust our fashionable contem-
porary, not so strange as true ; for " Mr. O'Connell,
acting by the advice of her Majesty's Ministers, or in-
fluenced, we ought rather to say, by the more valuable
considerations which it is in their power to supply,
has made a show of dissolving the rebel Association in
Dublin." In this sentence we find to be sure, an al-
ternative, but it is much like the alternative known by
the proverbial phrase " Hobson's choice," a sort of
Irish alternative with but one side to it ; if Mr.
O'Connell were not in a situation to be longer able to
resist " the advice of her Majesty's Ministers," he
was most 'probably influenced by considerations which
'' they had it in their power to supply," and which con-
siderations were indeed" valuable," if they had the ef-
fect of reduclog such an unruly monster not only to
tractableness, but to absolute onedicnce and submis-
s:on. Henry VIII. said that as all Ireland could not
rule the Earl of Kildare, the Earl of Kildare should
rile all Ireland, and therefore made him Lord De-
puty- ; but if vt e may believe such great authorities as
the Post, Times, and Standard, Mr. O'Connell has
Lithelto ruled all Ireland, not because all Ireland
merely could not rule him, but because be was not to
he ruled all England, Scotland, and Ireland put
toether. We are heartily rejoiced, therefore, to hear
of,the weal chatwe that has taken place, and we eon-
,erattdate the Queen's Govern:rent, and the Queen's
Lord-Lieutenant in particular, upon their liberation
from the intolerable bondage under which they have
for some time been suffering. The Morning Post
speaks the voice of the Tories, though not quite in so
loud and imposinli a key as some others, and from it
we learn that Air. O'C:nicil has acted '' by the advice
of her Majesty's Nroi,t?rs.- The fact, however, is,
that the Tories and their or, ails are utterly' reckless as
to the assertions they tn:&, provided they answer
the temporary purpoe. To-day it is " advice,"
because it suits the present argument—and to-
it may be " dictation" again, if any-
thing is to he gained by it. How true, how-
ever, either the one cr the other is, we rtt!ter think
we may safely leave to the judgment of our
re,,tkrs. liet:oiletling that the :ilor:?ig Post is an
Odposition Journal, and is iikely so to continue, it is
astonishing to observe how much it knows of the in-
nermost secrets of the Cabinet. Wc learn upon this
indisputable evidence sev;r:ll facts of which ‘re had
he fore no knowledge, and ,we are parenthetically as-
surcd t..viec over that they are not for a moment to be
doubted. Thus, "Elie Lichfield-house compact" is
at an end, althongh we, poOr ignorant: never knew
that it had a be;zinning " a new compact diff,ring
essentially from that of Lichfield-house" has been
agreed to, and the whole policy of Ministers with re-
gard to Ireland is to be turned topsy-turvy : " of this
fact there is no doubt whatever," quoth the Morning
Post ; and in the same strain it preeeeds with oracular
dogmatism, which we cannot pretend to resist, to point
out other " facts" of equal importance, and no doubt of
(-qua! certainty. It affects to draw inf,rences from the re-
cent "dissolution of the rebel Parliament in Dublin ;"
hilt it is quite evident that the Post is in the councils of
the Queen's Government, and, as it seems to us, rather
Prematurely makes its disclosures. We own that we
'fell rather sore upon the subject ; for having all along
supported Ministers in their measures for the improve-
ment of our national institutions, and for the ameliora-
tion of the condition of the people, we think it a little
hard that the Morning Post should have been sud-
denly taken into their confidence, while we are left to
pick up and circulate intelligence at second-hand. One
thing is quite evident—that our Tory contemporaries
are, and will be, vastly under obligation to Mr. O'Con-
nell for this act of dissolution, as well as for the speech
by which it was accompanied. It affords them a theme
which will probably last until the meeting of Parliament.
It will be almost as great a god-send to them in general
as the article in the Quarterly Review has been to the
Times in particular. The Morning Post of yesterday
calculated that we had devoted three feet and some inches
of our columns to Mr. Lechmere Charlton : we should
like to know how many yards of the Times have been
lately tilled by quotations from the remarks of the
Quarterly upon the speech of Lord Juhn Russell at
Stroud. Day after day the Times has been stuffed
with praises of that " masterly, wonderful, brilliant,
convincing, unanswerable, &c., production," and to
these have regularly succeeded columns upon columns
of extracts. The Times has not yet informed us how
it happens that, from the time when Lord J. Russell
delivered his speech, up to the date of the publication
of the Quarterly, it was so dull, so blind, and so
blunt as not to have been able itself to discover, ad-
vance, or enforce a single point made by the reviewer.
If every thing said in the Quarterly be so excellent
end so true, how can our Contemporary account for
having been so long dumb upon those various topics ?
The better the Review is, the worse the Times has
been ; and the more shame it ought to take to itself for
its neglect or incompetence.—Morning Chronicle.
A night or two ago our esteemed Contemporary the
Standard, when noticing the speculations of a weekly
Radical respecting the anticipated tactics of the Con-
servatives in the beginning of the new Parliament,
advanced a variety of views which, if we could be
sure that. they will be read with as nice a discrimina-
tion as they are penned with, might safely be left to
work out their useful purpose without any interference
of ours. Viewed in the abstract, the article we allude
to is in all respects unexceptionable. The Standard's
vindication of the constitutional party from every im-
putation of factiousness in motive or in movement is
both seasonable and complete. The defensive and
temperate policy which it confidently ascribes to the
Conservatives is every way worthy of our Contempo-
rary's sagacity. But in as far as the notion that no
serious collision of parties is likely to occur in the com-
mencement of the Session may possibly be miscon-
strued, so as to occasion a thin and tardy attendance of
Conservative Members, we feel assured that our able
coadjutor (though his observations, we admit, are
sufficiently guarded), will concur with us in endea-
vouring to avert a contingency the calamitous conse-
quences of which it migt be difficult, if not imprac-
, ticable, to repair. That some Hon. Gentlemen, find-
ing it inconvenient to conic to town before Christmas,
may be too easily imposed upon by a plausible plea
for absenting themselves, is, we fear, just as certain as
that a loose and cursory perusal of our Contemporary's
remarks, joined with a deserved deference to hie autho-
rity, may be the means of generating such a plea,
even in grafters where a sense of public duty is para-
mount. We therefore feel hound to show by a few
plain reasons, that a prompt and punctual attendance
on the first (lay qf the Session is imperative upon
every Conservetlve Member. First of all, we have a
Ministry nominal!), ill power, on the fairness or
straiabldfor.vardness of a hoee inev,anents, as sub-
ject to Papist' dictation, no reliance can Lc placed.
tie hat revolutionary orders Mr. O'Connell and
Lord Concurry may cmicoct for them at the Dublin
meeting, " between the of October and the
6th or November ;" or by what sudden surprise an
attempt may he made to send these orders op to the
Queen, with the apparent weight of Parliamentary
sanction, it is beyoLd the reach of ordinary foresight

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