The Sun.
London, England, 1837-11-23 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

• Although we are disposed to give credit to those
Radicals who have had the independence to oppose
the Government, because the Government prudently
resolved to give their revolutionary projects no coun-
tenance, we think it necessary to point out that it is
their independence merely, and by no means their po-
litical judgment, to which any praise can be awarded
by us. Some apology is perhaps due to our readers
for taking notice of such political declaimers as Mr.
Leader and Mr. C. Buller ; but there was so much
in their speeches of Tuesday evening of a nature to
exhibit the arrogant erroneousness of these pretenders
to superior wisdom in political affairs, that we trust we
may be excused for wasting some words upon them.
It is undoubtedly some merit in these men that they
are not so slavishly subservient as others are to those
who hare at present the power of distributing official
honours and emoluments ; but this merit is combined
with as palpable folly, and as gross misapprehension
(or the affectation of it), as we ever remember to have
witnessed in any persons suffered to go at large,
and to take the charge of their own affairs. Mr.
Leader is so far from looking with distrust upon the
popular clamours for political change—so far from
thinking that an ignorant impatience of regulated Go-
vernment is a popular vice—that he gives us the pre-
cisely opposite rule as the true one. He says that the
people never desire change for the mere sake of
change. We say that this is a proposition contra-
dicted by all experience and all history. From the
most instructive of all histories—that of the children
of Israel, given to us in Holy Writ—down to the histo-
ries of modern times, the lesson is still the same,
namely, that fickleness is a vice which belongs to the
popular nature—that the people ever have desired
change for the mere sake of change—and that chiefly
from hence arises the necessity of settled Govern-
ment. It belongs to the folly of such men as Mr.
Leader, that—while they seek every opportunity
of flattering the temporary judgment of the people
upon matters surrounded by passion and preju-
dice—they neglect, or oppose, those judgments
of experience, which the people have adopted
as proverbs. The fickleness of the popular
mind—or as it is sometimes less respectfully called,
the fickleness of the mob—has from the earliest times
been proverbial. When Virgil seeks to illustrate the
fickleness even of the winds, now raging in fearful
tempests, and now lulled into gentle calm, he finds
his apt similitude in the behaviour of the popular
crowd
Ac veluti =gnu in populo cum strpc coorta est
Seditio, saevitque animis ignobile vulgus ;
Jamque faces et saxa volant, furor arma ministrat :
Tume pictate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quern
Conspexere, silent, arrectisque auribus adstant ;
Iste regit dictis animos, et pectora mulcet.

But it is not necessary to inquire into the history of
crowds, or even to go out of ourselves to find the direct
contradiction of that proposition which seems to be the
rule of Mr. Leader's politics. Every man who is
patient and humble enough to become acquainted with
his own moral nature, by looking within himself, will
find that the desire of change for the mere sake of change
is an infirmity of fallen humanity, for the correction of
which he must call in the aid of self-government, or be at
once wretched and contemptible. It is only by a stern
sense of duty, and by obedience to duty, that this
wretchedness of our nature is overcome. 'Who is there
of thought and feeling that has not experienced what
the poet so beautifully describes P--
" Me this unchartered freedom tires,
I feel the weight of chance desires ;
My hopes no more must change their name,
I long for a repose that ever is the same."

Who does not know (if he has ever given himself
up to serious thought upon the nature of his moral
being), that in a principle of duty and obedience this
repose is alone to be found—that principle alone it is
which—

" From vain temptations does set free,
And calms the weary strife of frail humanity ?"
. _ _ _

So much for Mr. Leader's grand rule, which must
lead every one who follows it into error, because it is a
rule of unrule—a settled adherence to what is ever
changeable. If the fact of the people asking for
change in the Government be a good reason for
making that change, there would never be any
such thing as settled Government to the end of
time. Mr. Leader gives the popular wilfulness as
a rule of right in political matters—Mr. Buller, on
the other hand, supplies us with a rule of wrong.
Whenever the sentiments delivered in the House of
Commons by a Member of one party are applauded
by the Members of the opposite party, the sapient
Mr. Buller lays it down as a rule that something
wrong has been uttered. Nothing can, in our opi-
nion, be more indicative of a poor, narrow, and fac-
tious mind than the enunciation of such a rule as
this. We cannot tell, indeed, whether the Hon.
Gentleman who favoured the House with it was se-
rious or not, for we believe he often intends to be
jocular without succeeding in making his intentions
evident to those who listen to him. But as we do
not find the usual note of jocularity in the report
we have read—to wit, a parenthetical advertisement
of laughter—we have a right to suppose that
he intended to be as serious as so witty a Gen-
tleman ever can be. His opinion is, then, that
when a man utters an observation of such a na-
ture as not only to meet general assent but gene-
ral applause in the House of Commons, he has,
in all probability, said something erroneous or
foolish. A wise man would have remarked just the
opposite of this. Disagreeable as truth often is to
each man individually, and little sympathy as a
candid avowal, or a sentiment of universal generosity,
will frequently find, when men are expected to act
upon that sympathy, there is yet an impulse in
human nature which responds to what is just and
acknowledges what is generous. Commend us to
the sentiments, and the mode of expressing them,
which draw forth unpremeditated and unprompted
cheers from both sides of the House. There is hardly
a villain so heartless as not to have approbation
snatched from him when something honourable to
the nature which he abuses is suddenly submitted
to his view, and the rather if he have his fellow-
men around him, to whom he wishes not to seem so
base as he is. No doubt there are Members of Par-
liament (Mr. C. Buller may, perhaps, have known
such a one, ever since he was returned to the
House of Commons), who can never hope for
approbation save from the little party or school
of politicians to which they belong ; but the
really honest politician—the man of enlarged mind,
of comprehensive intelligence, of generous sym-
pathy with freedom, and manliness, and goodness
wherever they may appear—that man, without in-
trigue, and without base submission of any kind,
will win the spontaneous approbation of both sides of
the House. But enough—and, perhaps, too much—
of these Radical sages. They are, after all, much to
be preferred to such audacious practisers of mendacity
in public matters as Mr. O'Connell, who will flatter
such errors as theirs out of doors, to get applause from
the mob, and vote against them within doors, to get
something more substantial than applause from the
Minister. We hope the disgusting treachery of Mr.
O'Connell to the Radicalism he professes at " Working
Men's Associations" will not be without its good effect
in proving to the English working people that Mr.
O'Connell is a political knave. At Stockport he won
the applause of the working people by telling them that
the Government did not deserve to stand if it did not
support the plan of voting by Ballot. The very day
week from that on which he made the statement, he
voted against the amendment of Mr. Wakley, for in-
forming her Majesty that the House of Commons
deemed the mode of voting by Ballot to be a necessary-
reform I Whenever anything politically dishonest is
to be done, Mr. O'Connell is sure to lend a helping,
hand. It is extremely dishonest in any man holding
the political opinions which Mr. O'Connell professes
to hold, to support the present Government, after the
declaration which, on behalf of the Government, Lord
John Russell has found it prudent to make.—illorning
Post.

The " second Magna Charta," as the whig-radical
writers used to call the whig Reform Act, appears to
stand a very poor chance of attaining the venerable age
of " Magna Charta the first," which weathered more
than five centuries without losing much of its vitality or
good name. Little more than five years has the " bill,
the whole bill, and nothing but the bill," existed, and