The Sun.
London, England, 1837-10-14 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

An evening Tory Contemporary utters a pathetic
wail over the hopeless state of the Irish Election Pe-
tition Fund. The lament is prefaced with an affecta-
tion of triumph that only the more clearly exhibits the
grief and desperation of the writer. After a vain
boast that all Britain is stirring in this holy cause,
ensues a plaintive appeal to almost all the important
places in the country, thus showing and acknow-
ledging that the better part of Britain has had the
honesty and the good sense to treat the subscription
and its advocates with the contempt due to a pro-
ject so impertinent, mixed with the reprobation pro-
perly excited by the infamous arts employed to fur-
ther it. " 'What are the Conservatives of Exeter
doing, and of Devonshire generally ? What is
Suffolk about, and the zealous Protestants in Ips-
wich ? Why is Gloucester backward, or Worcester,
and, especially, why Southampton ? Canterbury, and
Dover, Portsmouth, Ramsgate, and Hastings, all lie
open to the same question." Such is the lamenta-
tion of the Standard, in an article designed to inspire
its readers with the liveliest hopes for the success of
the " sacred fund."
6. Oh, how near allied to sorrow
Are our transports most sincere
Even delight is forced to borrow
F'eeling's rich expressive tear."
Now, we shall briefly inform our Contemporary why
there prevails amongst the inhabitants of all these, and
a hundred more places of the first consequence in Eng-
land and Scotland, such extreme indisposition to con-
tribute their hard-earned money to the fund that has
been set on foot to oust the Irish Liberal Members
from their lawful seats in Parliament. It is because a
more transparentlyflagitious scheme was never broached
even by the Conservative party ; and because, so far
from having made out a case to justify a proceeding so
palpably unconstitutional, the advocates of it have been
clearly and fully convicted of having resorted to the
vilest arts of calumny and ,falsehood to induce the
credulous and giddy portion of the public to give
it their support. The inhabitants of Ipswich,
Gloucester, Worcester, Southampton, Dover, Can-
terbury, Portsmouth, and the rest of the long
list of places where the whining of the
Standard announces the failure of the subscription,
were told that a set of needy, profligate, despe-
rate. and even sanguinary adventurers had, by in-
timidation the most systematic and ruthless, and
by every foul and nefarious means, thrust themselves
into the House of Commons against the laws of the
land, and against the real sense of the constituency ;
and now the people of these same places, as well as
the people of the empire generally, have learned that
the very genius of falsehood could not have forged a
statement more diametric-ally at variance with the truth
—it having been shown in this journal, by a plain ana-
lysis of the list of twenty-one Members petitioned
against, that seventeen of the number are Protestants,
and that every single individual in the list is a man of
ren‘Aerable fertnne. and moving in the highest station
of society. The Tory jeurnals have over-rated consi-
rably the folly and immorality of their party. They
letve reckoned unduly upon the extent to which indif-
feience to truth and recklessness of decency have taken
pcssession of the minds of their readers. Whatever
readiness there might have been to adopt a step, in it-
se!f indefensible, for the purpose of purging the House
of Commons of a gang of beggars and traitors, there
could exist no such disposition to eject hum Parliament
a ,te of men equal in birth, raiik, wealth, end all that
eenstitutes real or imaginary respectability, to any
equal number of the English or Scotch Members. For
these reasons the Petition Fund has not answered the
hopes of its daring ateliers. Whatever chance the
project might have had, if any measures had been kept
truth, common sense, and decency in first recom-
'meldina it to the public, its advocates destroyed alto-
gether by the monstrous fictions and calumnies with
which they endeavoured to sustain it. To catch the
subscriptions .of a few bed-ridden old women, they
amazed the nation with fabrications which would have
damasked the cheek of Pinto or Munchausen. The
boldest writer of romances never ventured so far into
the regions of pure imagination as did the Standard
in its advocacy of this nefarious proposal. While the
Times contented itself with a dashing picture of the
Irish Liberal majority, as " the refuse" of their coun-
try, and " journeymen agitators of Mr. O'Connell,"
the Standard displayed more creative powers, and out
of the urn of its rich fancy drew forth treasons, plots,
stratagems, and massacres, with all the phantas-
magoria of a visionary rebellion, exceeding all pre-
ceding civil horrors in atrocity. The giant in Rabe-
lais, whose daily food was windmills, could alone have
gorged so vast a fabric as our Contemporary's Ribbon
conspiracy. Lest, however, there might have been
some Wide-nostrils in England to swallow the inven-
tion, we thought it right to expose its utter groundless-
ness by laying before the public the true character and
social position of the noblemen and gentlemen who
figured as Cades and Tylers in the Standard's co-
lumns: We flatter ourselves that the trouble which
we took has not been fruitless. The people of Hast-
ings, Portsmouth, Gloucester, Ipswich, Dover, Wor•
cester, Ramsgate, and Canterbury, who are deaf to the
voice of the charmer, have been probably not a little
influenced by the simple tale which this and other
matter-of-fact journals have told them. We shall
continue to turn the poetic bursts of our Contempo-
raries into humble prose, for we find that their fanciful
flights are apt to have all the effect of wilful false-
hoods.—Morning Chronicle.
To analyse and expose the polluted mass of false-
hood presented by the Tory organs, is like dissecting a
subject in a state of putrefaction—the task is loath-
some, but it is one essential to the ends of justice and
the good of society ; and as such we must brace our-
selves for the unflinching discharge of the duty which
necessity, not choice, imposes on us. In justice to the
• Tories, we must admit that, in the unbashed and un-
restrained recklessness with which they exhibit their
designs, they afford us great facility in laying bare
their malevolence and depravity ; nay, in some in-
stances, their deformity stands self-revealed, without
the necessity of further demonstration ; and in almost
all cases, it is so superficial, that a slight effort only is
necessary to denude its hideousness. Ever since the
passing of the Reform Act, the Tories have found it
expedient, while straining every nerve to defeat the in-
tention of that measure, to profess the most cordial and
sincere desire to carry out its provisions. This dupli-
city, however, imposed upon no one—the deception was
manifest to the most obtuse vision ; and the public,
while they contemned the attempted fraud, laughed at its
impudence. The Tories, however, are not to beso easily
shamed from their purpose. Like knaves baffled in the per-
petration of their schemes,they assume an air of the utmost
indignation at the integrity of their intentions being
even suspected, and their leading journal declares
that it is a " broad, gross, and shameful falsehood" to
assert that they have any desire " to prevent the fur.
ther progress of Reform," or " to repeal or neutralise"
any of the liberal measures passed from the Catholic
Emancipation Act to the present time. Here is im-
pudence unparalleled. Every act of the Tory faction
from the time mentioned has been directed to prevent
the progress of Reform, and neutralise every measure
intended for the redress of public grievances. Is
there a single instance of their policy evincing any
other tendency ? Not one. Their exertions have
been systematically and uniformly directed to resist the
progress of popular rights, and retard or prevent the re-
moval of abuses from our institutions. Yet in the
face of this damning evidence of their implacable hos-
tility to Reform, the Times does not shrink from as-
serting that " Sir Robert Peel and the great Con-
servative body pledged themselves by declarations,
distinct and voluntary, to give the fullest possible
effect to every law which, however originally at
valiance with their judgment, had even in spite of
them become the law of England." How has this
pledge been redeemed? The history of the two last Ses-
sions will furnish the reply. But we are spared the
necessity of referring to the past, the bane is accompa-
nied by its antidote—the falsehood by its refutation—
and in the same article the opposition to Reform, which
is in the first instance denied, is subsequently avowed
and advocated, and rather than consent to the measures
proposed to give practical effect to the Reform and Ca-
tholic Relief Acts, it is declared that " all English po-
:4ll,:,),vltticians, who deserve the name of statesmen, would
i?ettelskiiell/ prefer the revival of the old penal laws.
11,44; we ask, do " Sir Robert Peel and the
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