The Sun.
London, England, 1865-05-15 00:00:00

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.

As we are on the eve of a general election it may
not be amiss just to review what has been the policy
and actions of the Whigs during the last 70 years ;
and I think, sir, I can prove it has always been that
of imposture, pretence, and delusion. I will go as
far back as the session 1798-99, the latter end of the
last century, when they opposed strenuously Mr.
Pitt's Income-tax, which was then imposed for the
first time. In 1806, when in office, they increased
the tax from £6} per cent. to £lO per cent. It
would be worse than idle to enumerate their blunders
during the old French War. I will therefore go to the
period of the first Administration of the late Sir R.
Peel, in 1835, when Lord John Russell turned him
out on the Irish Tithe Question, yet three years
afterwards, in 1838, passed himself the very iden-
tical measure he had turned. Sir R. Peel out upon.
In 1839 and 1840 both the late Lord Melbourne and
Lord John Russell declared that a man would be mad,
and worse than mad, who talked of a repeal of the
corn laws, yet in 1841 they both avowed themselves
openly convinced in favour of free trade. In
1842 they opposed Sir R. Peel's income tax, yet
in 1848 (following the example of their predeces-
sors, the Whigs—commonly called the broad-bot-
tomed Government of 1806), they proposed an
increase of the income tax to 5 per cent.,
which, as most of us can remember, was
indignantly rejected by an overwhelming ma-
jority. After about a century's affiance with the
Catholic body, they, acting on the principle of that
rule so very cleverly described by Fielding, that it
is a common practice of the devil in one of his many
visits upon earth, when once your friend gets up to
kick his stool away from him, or, in other words,
when you have made your fortune by your friend,
to throw him overboard. And so it was with the
Whigs towards the Catholics ; they made all the use
they could of them towards getting into power by
advocating their rights and exposing their wrongs,
afterwards turning round against them at the
first profitable opportunity, as witness Lord
Russell's memorable letter to the late Bishop
of Durham, wherein, assuredly, the whole
Catholic body was most grossly insulted. Again,
their conduct during the Crimean war was any-
thing rather than what any honest man could ap-
prove; while the disgraceful peace made by them in
1856 with Russia, whereby we were humiliated and
lowered amongst European nations, cannot better
be illustrated than by the old phrase that a
" glorious war is better than a disgraceful
peace." Later still, not six short years have
elapsed since they turned out Lord Derby's Govern-
ment on a very sensible Reform Bill, because, ac-
cording to the Whig argument, it did not go far
enough ; yet since then they have opposed and
resisted Reform in every possible way, until it
has been as completely laid on the shelf as
it was in 1827, towards the close of
the so-called Georgian era, when it was de-
scribed by the late Earl Grey as being in an
utterly worn out and even hopeless condition. It is
not to be denied by even the most strenuous advo-
cate of Reform amongst us that all our best,
wisest, and greatest reforms have been passed
by Tory Governments, and it certainly behoves
the people of England, now that we are on the
eve of a general election, to beware how they
entrust their interests to such an apology for a
Liberal Government as we have been for nearly six
years ruled by.—l remain, Sir,

Your Warm Admirer and Constant Reader
of many years, a Lover of Consistency,
and a Hater of Humbug, but One who is
Favourable to real Liberal Principles.

YANKEE PASSION FOR PIE !—The sallow faces,
the shrunken forms, the sunken eyes, the morose
looks, the tetchy temperament of the Northerners are at-
tributable not half so much to iced-water, candles, tough
beefsteaks, tight-lacing, and tobacco chewing, as to =-
bridled indulgence in Pie. Pie worship is prevalent all
over the North; you have Pie morning, noon, and night,
every day, and all the year round. There is nothing open
and above board in Pie. It can be eaten stealthily and in
secret. A slice of a cut pie is never missed. I have heard
of young ladies who took Pie to bed with them. The
" Confessions of a Pie-Eater" have just been published.
They are heartrending. Through an unconquerable hunger
for Pie, the wretched man who is their subject often in-
curred in infancy the penal visitation of hickory, and
brought the hairs of an aged grandmother with sorrow to
tlie: grave. He wasted in gourmandizing Pie those pre-
cious hours which should have been devoted to study ;
and in the end, not only failed to graduate at West Point
but even to marry a niece of the late Daniel Webster. Pie
darkened his mind, stupified his faculties, paralysed his
energy. Pie forced him to abandon a lucrative and hon-
ourable career for an unsuccessful whaling voyage from
Cape Cod. Pie drove him into exile. Deadened to all the
finer moral feelings by this ungovernable lust for Pie, he
obtained, under false and fraudulent pretences, a through
ticket for California by the Vanderbilt line ; but, detected
in " smouching a tom-cod" from the of the Chinese
temple in San Francisco, he was disgracefully expelled
the Golden State. It was for purloining Pie—a digger's
noontide lunch—that he was subsequently expelled the
territory of Arizona. Beggared, broken in health, he de-
serted his wife and family, draw cheques upon wild-cat
banks, and voted on the Bell and Everett ticket—all in
consequence of Pie. At length, after a course of " shin-
ning round the free lunches" in quest of eleemosynary
Pie, and wolfing the hideous meal with Dead Rabbits,
Plug-Uglies, and other unscrupulous politicians, he was
arrested in Philadelphia for passing bogus notes on the
Hide and Leather Bank, and was sent to States Prison
for ten years. All owing to Pie.—Sala's Diary in America.