The Sun.
London, England, 1839-12-24 00:00:00

vernment. Plague, earthquake, famine, any of these
things, or all of them together, were a less curse
to the British nation than the continued ascendancy of
Romanist influence in the Government. This is the
thing to be assailed—this is the thing to be rooted out—
this is the thing which Englishmen must overthrow.
This is a matter of a thousand times deeper importance,
of a thousand times wicicr extent, than any mere party
chancre (independently of this consideration) could be.
Proud as the people of England may well be of those
who head the National or Conservative party, still it is
not with reference to them, or their views of party
management, that the assault upon the Romanism of
the Government should be made. The nation ought to
be, and is, glad to have them ; but, even though it had
them not, still the great duty would be the same, to op-
pose, root out, destroy the Romanist ascendancy which
pollutes the Government, and endangers our greatness
as a nation, and our liberties as a people. To put down
political Romanism in Great Britain should be the
national object ; treating with the utter scorn which its
merits the threatened enmity of the Romanist multitude
in Ireland.

The Ministerial Papers continue to pour forth abuse
of Sir Robert Peel with a furiousness of acrimony that
seems little short of insanity. The fact is, we suppose,
that dependents on Ministers are very nearly mad with
fear of what is likely to happen ere a month passes

over their heads. Had they not lost all discretion as
well as decency they would rafrain from these displays
of terror and of spite. Nothing is more likely to con-
vince the British public that the Government feels it-
self already beaten than the excessive soreness and
abusiveness of the Government organs. If things were
going well with them they would be in a far less irritable
humour. But, while it is easy to account for the frantic
and foolish vituperation of the Ministerial prints, it is
not easy, nor, if it were, would it be rational, to ex-
cuse it. Whig-Radicals have a sort of customary
right to be weak, foolish, and ignorant in matters
where energy, sagacity, and knowledge are emi-
nently necessary : but that, along with the quali-
ties which render them contemptible, they should
join calumnious clamour and personal vituperation, is
rather more than can be borne without some notice and
rebuke. We defy anything to exceed in absurdity the
personal attacks which are made upon Sir Robert Peel,
but, then, they are as dastardly as they are absurd.
With reference to his career as a Parliamentary leader
" shuffler," " coward," and so
he is called '° renegade,"
forth, though at. the very moment these epithets of
abuse are put forth, the utterers of them are palpably
in an agony of fear—and well-founded fear too—lest
Sir Robert Peel, at the head of that powerful party to
which he has belonged from the outset of his public
life, shall turn them out of the offices of British Go-
vernment which they dishonour. This is sufficiently
absurd. If Sir Robert be what they say he is, why be
so much afraid of him ? Renegade indeed! To what
party does Sir Robert Peel belong now ? Has he
ever belonged to any other ? Did lie ever serve under
Lorl Liverpool and the Duke of Wellington, opposing
and even scoffing at measures of Reform whenever they
were brought forward, and then, for the sake of continu-
ing in place, join the opponents of these Ministers, and
take a part in the wildest measures of reckless innova-
tion ? No : Sir Robert Peel did not do this, but the
Viscount Melbourne and the Viscount Palmerston have
done this, and for nine years have been in the enjoy-
ment of place and power, and emolument, if enjoyment
it be, through this base accommodation of themselves to
opposite principles and views. And yet the fawning
parasites of these men have the insolence and the
folly to accuse Sir Robert Peel of being a renegade and
a scruffier ! It is true that Sir Robert Peel consented
to the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, and to
the emancipation of Papists, after having been the sap-
porter of one and the opponent of th other. But
it is also tree that the principle of action was the same
throughout, and that principle was a highly honour.
able one, namely, the promoting of the peace and
security of the established religion of the country. With
regard to the repeal of the Test Act in 1827, and
the enactment of Romanist emancipation in 1829, it
did appear to Sir Robert Peel and the colleagues with
whom he acted, as well as to large majorities of the
Protestant Members of both Houses of Parliament,
that the time had come when the legal exclusion of
Protestant and Romanist Dissenters from civil offices
was no longer a security, but the contrary. Allow
that judgment to be erroneous, as very many un-
doubtedly consider that it was, still in acting upon
it there was no departure from a fixed principle of
devotedness to the established religion of the country.
Bat is it possible without a violation of truth to
say as much for the present leading Ministers of
the Crown, whose wretched hacks now dare to
vituperate Sir Robert Peel? When they acted
with the Tory party it is certain that they professed
great friendship far the established religion of the
country, and voted as if that friendship were sincere.
Lit now, when they hefonc; to the party which was
then and is still opposed to the Tories, they openly ad-
vocate heavy blows and great discouragements to the
established religion of the country ; and they persist
with a policy in which they are supported by the Ro-
man:las. although large majorities of the Protestant
Members of both Houses of Parliament vote against
that policy. Who, then, are the real " renegades"—
Lords Melbourne and Palmerston, who have changed
their party and their policy, and hare retained place
and pay ; or Sir Pv)b,rt Peel, who changed his policy
without changing his principle—who still belongs to the
party he always !,'longed to, and who adandoned place
and pay rather then make such a change as Lords Mel-
bourne and Palmerston have made ? Ae to Sir
Robert Peel's supposed error of judgment in ,
consenting to the repeal of the Test Act, and
to the enactment of the Emancipation Bill, let it
be remembered that the failure of these measures, if
they have failed, has arisen altogether from the perfidy
of those who profited by them. If Sir Robert Peel
erred, it was from having too much confidence in those
who row reproach him. It was because he supposed
they would, from shame if not from principle, have
been faithful to their premises and oaths. Is it because,
when now they join insolence to perjury, and when those
who did befriend them are filled with a just resentment,
is it, therefore, that their friends shall dare to brand as
"renegade" the man whom they have so basely
and so ungratefully disappointed ? We think we
have new sufficiently demonstrated the absurdity
and injustice of the calumnious epithets with which
the parasites of the Melbourne Government assail
Sir Robert Peel. We have a few words yet to
say upon the peculiarly ita•English and dastardly
character of these attacks. The miserable hirelings
who skulk behind the broad sheet while applying these
abusive personal epithets to Sir Robert Peel durst not
for their very lives attempt any such thing openly.
They take their fill of abuse now when they can abuse
anonymously ; but 'et us see who will dare to come face

_ .
to face with Sir Robert Peel and tell him that he has
been a renegade, or that his policy has been shuffling or
cowardly ? No ; the wretches who use such langu.-ge I
know right well that when their masters meet Sir Ro-
b:rt Peel in Parliament they must treat him with respect
—the respect which his character and his talents, and
his position as the foremost man in the British House
of Commons, have a right to command, and do eom-
rriand. We call upon all Englishmen who love what is
honest and fair and manly to mark with disgust, and to
remember with indignation, these foul anonymous Mi-
nisterial attacks. "We trust," say these wretches,
that he will be daily taunted when Parliament meets."
They know well that not one of their party dare at-
tempt any such enterprise. Sir R. Peel, they say, should
be " pressed to declare his views." Perhaps he may
declare them somewhat sooner and more decidedly
than they wish, but at all events they would as 3000
dare to press their hands into a lion's mouth as to press
Sir Robert Peel. No, no ; the Ministerialists
may fling out their foul calumnies in the newspa-
pers ; but when they meet Sir Robert Peel in Par-
liament they will be deferential enough, and woo his
forbearance, as they have so often done before. We
hope they will not be successful. We deeply respect
Sir Robert Peel, but we have frequently avowed', and
we avow again that in our judgment he has not ex-
pressed to a sufficient extent the indignation of the
country at the truckling, dishonourable, dangerous. cha-
racter of the Government. He has been but too gentle
with it, and far too ready to say flattering things of
Ministerial men, who are worthy of anything but com-
pliment in the estimation of the Conservative public.
We hope all that is at an end, and that the rational in-
dignation of the country will be allowed to take its
course in the House of Commons. If it be, down go
the dastardly Romanist Whims, amid the execration of
all honest and intelligent well-wishers of the public weal
of England.

~.-----
FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
(From the Globe.)
Opposition makes a curious figure between its flints
and dzuzgs at this moment. The flints, among whom
we count such champions as those who throughout
the recess, have been bellowing for the repeal of the
Act of Popish Emancipation, and denouncing
the violation of the Coronation Oath in appoint-
ing Papists—after having been
suffered to try how
far they could act the steam up by Ultra-Protestant
perorations, rending our ears asunder—with gun, drum,
trumpet, blunderbuss, and thunder-.tee now admo-
nished somewhat uncc
done their remoniously to pack
up their
wind-instruments, having Party all the
service that is to be had out of them.
" The repeal
of the Relief Act," says the Times of this morning
" would now he as hopeless in practice as it
would be useless in principle ; and this is so. well known
to public men of all denominations, that it would not
b.: easy to find in either House of Parliament even
so much as one couple of enthustas
• ts to propose
and second the attempt. There may be, here and there,
a provincial skirmisher or two who fancy that such
a revolution would be of service ; but the great mass
of the Conservative party, including the whole of its
1 intelligence, would as soon propose the enactment of
Mr. Owen's ' social system.' " The same journal asks,
with a naivete which is perfectly irresistible—" If there
had been a design among the Protestants to repeal the
Relict:Dill, why should they have deferred that object
till their restoration to government ?" Why, the pre-

cise scrape into which those whom the Times calls •
for distinction the Protestants have been bringing
themselves, is that they have not deferred their
announcements of that object, but have keen
making those announcements most lavishly at 'heir
drinking bouts up and down the country. The principles
of Opposition which have been put forth throughout
the recess, not at one, but almost at all of these Con-
servative gatherings—have included, either explicitly, or
by close inference, the virtual or actual repeal of Irish
Emancipation, and indeed have contained little or
nothing else than harpings on that string. Now, how-
ever, that the Session approaches, the "provincial skir-
nzisher or two"—that is to say, the whole band of Tory
speakers, and applausive hearers in the provinces, are
told that there are not in Parliament two such fools
as to do their bidding, and that " the whole of the in-
telligence" of the party views them with utter contempt.

(From the Courier.)
To judge by the very contortions and ill-disguised
panic of their organs, the Ministry would seem little
more at ease as the session of Parliament nears, than
some of their former hapless confederates now in Mon-
mouth, as the fatal moment approaches for reopening
the adjourned Special Commission and effecting a gaol
delivery. In the one, as in the other case, it is the
closer prospect of doomsday which naturally inspires
dread and inflames conscious delinquency into despera-
tion. Thus each are loud and loathsome in abuse of
the prosecutors by whom they are about to be brought
to public justice ; but the Chartist sufferers may plead
in their excuse at least the monstrons aggravation
of the pangs of expected condemnation through
the active agency, if not by the evidence of ancient
sworn associates, now turned Queen's evidence, or as
of the Queen's Council strenuously labouring for con-
vfction and the sentence. Nor, although abuse enough
there may be, and of the coarsest kind, in the Press of
the Chartists, is it steeped, as that of the Ministry,
their old allies, in the same stew of forgeries, falsehoods,
and foulest slanders, day by day dished up and served
out. Thus writhing in the prospect of the advent of
Conservatism to power, Sir Robert Peel, its great
leader, is variously challenged with compassing the
death of her Majesty ; with the treasonable intent of
deposing her from the Throne by means of an army of
Hanoverians, led on by-the King of Hanover in person,
or by Lord Stuart de Rothsay, a peace-loving diploma-
tist ; with the resolve to abrogate the Reform Bill ; with
the foredoomed abolition of the Roman Catholic Relief
Act ; with the dire determination to let slip the dogs of
war among seven millions of Irish Papists and extermi.,
nate them to a man ; and finally, after a catalogue rai-
sonne of these and other contemplated high crimes and
misdemeanours, Sir Robert is pathetically appealed to—
as if not already prejudiced and condemned by this
banded clique of moral Thugs—about what really may
be his views, and what the course he means to steer ?
That is, after Jack the Giant Maker and Killer is
swallowed and all but masticated, he affectingly demands
from the Ogre an explanation of his real intentions.
(From the Standard.)
We have it upon authority, which we are no
longer at liberty to question, how incredible soever
the fact asserted, that Minsters arc at this moment
soliciting the Irish Chief Baron Woulfe to make
room on the Judicial Bench for M. Daniel
O'Connell.' While the statement that such en
outrage upon decency was contemplated rested upon
Mr. O'Connell's unsupported assertion, we gave to it
no more credit than to any other of the gratis dicta
of that habitual " postponer of truth to the purpose
of the moment " [we use the euphonism of his
friend the Examiner] ; but now we hear the story
from so many and such well informed sources that
we can doubt no longer. The circumstances
of the time, indeed, render less incredible what would
generally seem impossible, and what, under any cir-
cumstances, is monstrous. The Romanist slave capita-
tion tax, " the rent," has wholly faired ; the best exer-
tions of the Romanist party at the Irish registries have
not less signally tailed ; an old age of pauper-
ism stares the Mendicant in the face, and
it is even doubtful whether he will be able
to find a refuge from obscurity and from
some of the most distressing consequences cf
pauperism by the possession of a seat in Parliament.
In the city which he now misrepresents he will
certainly he defeated by a majority of more than
1,000 ; and it is by no means extravagant to suppose
that he who lately gave away, or rather sold 40 seats,
may be unable to shelter himself from a gaol in a
borough, however mean ; such has been the effect of
the noiseless exertion of the Irish Conserva-
tives in their registration courts. The Whig-Radical
Administration, too, from which Mr. O'Connell might
expect same harbour of rest while it should main-
tain itself, is confessedly about to fall, and he may
be imagined desirous to avail himself of its subser-
viency, while it still retains the power to make a
provision for him. Certain it is that he has applied
for the office of Chief Baron in Ireland, anti no less
certain that Lard Ebrington's Government has so far •
accceded to his wishes, as to promise the appointment
and to negociate earnestly with Chief B iron \V wife to
obtain that gentleman's resignation. The Irish Chief
Baron has been for some time in a delicate state of
health, but he has recovered sufficient strength for
the discharge of his duties ; and as he is a firm
and high-spirited man, some difficulty is found in
prevailing upon him to declare himself inca-
pable, and to quarter himself upon the public
as an unprofitable servant ; but high bribes have
been offered, and higher still will be added ;
so that it must depend upon tlis gentl,!=n's sense
of duty and honour whether the meditated outrage
shall not be attempted, and attempted with success, if
the loyal people of both islands do not exert themselves
to obviate such a calamity and such a di'grace.

DEATH OF A SINGULAR CHARACTER.—
Yesterday afternoon an inquest was held before Mr.
Wakley, at Chelsea, on the body of Miss Sarah Sheard,
aged 60, a lady of independent property, who wee found
dead in her bed. She was very reserved, and would not
allow any person to enter her apartments. She was
eccentric in her manner, and to prevent her being robbed
had had the locks taken off the doors of her rooms, and
others to her own fancy put on. Her daily fire gene-
rally consisted of a penny loaf and two eggs, or a small
'mutton chop. She had latterly been very poorly, but
would not have medical treatment, as she was frightened
at men, end at the approach of one would shrink hack.
On Tuesday afternoon Mr. Turner, her landlord, not
having heard or seen her seen the previous Saturday,
and thinking something had happened to her, called in
a neighbour, and forcing open her bedroom door, found
her in bed dead. She had money in the funds. In her
apartments were found a quantity of plate, furniture, and
other valuable property, but no will had been discovered.
She had no relative. Mr. Waklcy remarked that the
body of the deceased was in a most attenuated state,
and certainly presented every appearance of a person
who had died from starvation. No such fact, however,
had been established. Verdict—" Natural death."
FIELD ACCIDENT.—Last week while Mr. Fel-
lows, Mr. Vincent Eyre, Colonel Keightley, and Mr.
Burrowes, were shooting in the woods of the Hon. R.
Wilson, at A4iwellthrep Hall, in Norfolk, Mr. Bur-
rowes (brother of the county Member) accidentally shot
Mr. Eyre in the lug, who has since been confined to
his bed. It is hoped amputation will be avoided.
Every exertion is making both at the Post-office
and the Treasury to bring the plan of penny postage
into immediate operation. It is thought it will be
commenced within about a month or five weeks.

The insurrection at Newport, and the continued
absence from work of the disaffected, will have a serious
effect upon the poor this winter in enhancing the price
of coals. It is said that there are now a hundred
vessels lying at Newport waiting for freight, and the
supply of Welsh fuel being diminished, the prig -of
that from the Forest of Dean is necessarily advanced
and is already 235. per ton.—Canibrian.
The distillers of Dublin have subscribed the sum
of 100 guineas to the O'Connell Fund.

DISSENTERS EXEMPT FROM TOLL.--At
Hereford last week the Magistrates decided that a Wes-
leyan minister, going to perform chapel duty, was
exempt from toll.
SEVEN WIVES.-Sir Gcrvase Clifton, a gentle-
man, of Yorkshire, near Leeds, was " blessed with
seven wives "—so the epilogue of his own writing says.
Tne first three, who were maidens, he calls honourable.
The second three, who were widows, he calls worship-
ful ; and the seventh, who was a servant-maid, born
under his own roof, he calls his well-beloved. Each of
the six agreed to the marriage of the next, before her
death, and at that awful period were attended by their
successors. Sir Gervase had several children by his
last wife, some of whose descendants now enjoy the fa-
mily estate. He lies buried at the head of his wives.
The executors to the will of the late Duke of
Bedford are Lord William Russell (the only surviving
brother of his Grace) and the present Duke. It is un-
derstood Woburn Abbey will not be the permanent resi-
dence of the Duke and Duchess, both of whom are
attached to Oakley-house, no great distance from
Woburn, where they have continued to rusticate, when
absent from London, nearly ever since they were
married.
Lord and Lady Clarendon have just arrived in
Paris, on their way to England. and arc at the Hotel
Bristol.—Galignani.
FAILURES IN LANCASHIRE.--A very strong
sensation has been produced in this and the neighbour-
ing towns during the present week by the stoppage of
a large worsted yarn manufacturing house of long stand-
ing, and which has hitherto had a high reputation.
The firm has also an extensive establishment at Doh
phinholme, in the neighbourhood of Lancaster, and the
amount of their engagements are variously stated at
from 150,000/. to 200,0001. This much-to-be-lamented
failure is attributed to recent heavy losses in trade.
The Leeds mills belonging to this firm are still at work
though on short time, and we fervently hope that ar-
rangements wilt be made to keep them in operation, as
the immediate effect of their stoppage would be to ag-
gravate the prevailing distress by throwing seven or
eight hundred work people out of employment in Leeds,
and about the same number at Dolphinholme.—Leeds
Mercury of Saturday.