The Sun.
London, England, 1838-04-16 00:00:00

blame Ministers for the offences of others. This is the
grand secret why no whisper of reproach is raised by the
people against Lord Melbourne and his colleagues, not-
withstanding the deplorably backward state in which the
public business now is. And thus the Conservatives may
rest'assured matters will continue to the end. So long as
they pursue their present factious course, so long will
Ministers be absolved from all blame. Nay, more : the
nation will hold the Tories themselves responsible for the
non-transaction of the public business, and for all the con-
sequences which may ensue. They may, if they please,
interpose obstacle after obstacle to the most beneficial and
necessary measures which Ministers may bring forwrrd, and
they may have the miserable satisfaction for a time of think-
ing that they have been successful ; but their joy will be
of temporary duration : their factious success will eventu-
ally be converted, through the indignant expression of
public opinion, into one of the most signal defeats which,
as a party, they ever sustained.—Morning Advertiser.
The chief purpose which the Coronation, shorn of its ac-
customed splendours, seems intended toserve, is the creation
of a large number of mushroom Peers, to strengthen the in-
fluence of Ministers in the Upper House, if not to break
down its independence altogether. We need not say from
what a quantity of iniquitous and blundering legislation the
country has been saved of late years by the independent
and vigilant control which the Lords have exercised over
the Legislative measures of an accommodating majority in
the Lower House. We do not want the authority of Lord
Brougham for the fact that, " If it were not for the intel-
ligent supervision exercised by the Lords over the Bills
brought up to them from the other House, the Commons
would cover themselves with endless blundering and absur-
dities ;" still Lord Brougham did volunteer such an opi-
nion, and, though his opinions upon any given subject ate in
general worth very little, yet in this instance his testimony
to the superior judgment and intelligence of the Patrician
branch of the Legislature may be worth somethir'e for two
reasons—one, that the House of Lords has made him look
much smaller in the eyes of the public than the House of
•Commons ever did—the other, that we have not heard of
his having retracted that declaration, like hundreds of opi-
nions which he has from time to time adopted and abandoned.
There was one instance, indeed, in which it would have
been well for the character of the House of Lords, and the
interests of the country, if that superior judgment and
vigilance had been exercised with the same determination
as in many other cases. We allude to Lord Brougham's
bastile law, which has built up an appalling system of white
slavery upon a gross violation of the Constitution. But
let that pass at present. England and the Whigs, and that
portion of the Tories who exhibit a " wonderful unanimity"
with Whigs and Radicals in the oppression of the poor,
shall yet hear enough of it. The c msequences are only
beginning to be seen in the growing discontent of the
labouring classes, and the alienation of the respect and
affections of the poor from the rich, whose property there-
by loses its chief security. We do not pretend to know
what number of Peers the Ministers, who hold office by
Conservative suffrance, intend. to make. An evening Con-
temporary says there will be 26 English and Irish, and under-
takes to give the names of several of them, among whom figures
that proound and most successful financier Mr. Spring
Rice. Well his elevation to the Peerage may be considered as
a deliverance to the Exchequer, though, we dare say, the
sagacity of the Whig Ministers will not fail to discover
talents to fill his place equally capable of lopping the too-
abundant tree of " national prosperity," and bringing down
the revenue by millions. On this subject, too, the for-
bearance of the Conservatives of the House of Commons
is truly great. They see the whole system of public finance
tumbling into ruin, and they look upon the matter with
the most stoical indifference. Perhaps when the ruin is
completed they will step in to prevent it. In that case
they will clearly be entitled to inscribe their names, as those
of the saviours of their country, on a monument of bras.
Among the names given we observe the rejected of %Vest
Norfolk, the rejected of North Wiltshire, the rejected of
Westminster, and Several others who are to be consoled
for popular rejection by aristocratic adoption. The House
of Lords will duly appreciate the compliment. Its cha-
racter will be greatly elevated by an influx of so many
authors of " rejected addresses." But what is truly comi-
cal is, that the men who seek the honours of the aristocracy
are almost all men who have been as prone to rail at the House
of Lords as Sir J. Campbell was before, as Mr. Godson said,
he " bartered for a petticoat peerage his professional right
to preferment". The men who were ready, two or three
I years ago, to assist O'Connell in pulling down the House
of Lords, are now as eager to be thrust by the Ministerial
" pitchfork" into a seat in that House, as if they had im-
bibed aristocratic sentiments with the milk of their infancy.
It has been said that it is easier to make Peers than gen-
tlemen ; whether thatabe so or not, it is certainly easier to
distribute coronets than to confer the dignity which will
make them be respected. If O'Connell could spare his
" tail" fr m the Lower House, we suppose it would also
undergo the process of aril! ocratie manufacture. In that
case we should have indeed a peerless batch of Peers I In
the meantime the splendours of the monarchy are curtailed.
The Throne is shorne of the dignity and lustre which are
associated with proud historical recollections of England's
ancient glory. 1171)e economy cannot afford a Royal ban.
quet to the Sovereign on the day of sealing the great com-
pact with the people in the noble hall, which is almost coeval
with the Monarchy ; while the same Whig econr my pro-
poses to send a mushroom Earl with mock autocratic power
to the snowy deserts of Canada, with more than oriental
pomp and circumstance ! But what, it may be asked,
does the British Monarchy want with those time-honoured
splendours with which it was clothed when the nation was
respected through the world, and the people, as compared
with the days of Whig economy, were comfortable, loyal,
and contented? Have not the Whigs put the Monarchy
almost altogether in commission Y and is it net necessary
that the parsimony of the Queen's coronation should make
some amends for the prodigality of their wasteful patro-
nage ? A coronation on a scale of expence suitable to the
grandeur of the British throne never made the English
people one farthin the poorer: The stimulus given to
the trade of the metropolis by a truly national spectacle of
this sort has always wore than repaid the outlay. Artists,
shopkeepers, tradesmen, and artisens, are empl,oyed in va-
rious ways in fureishing all the requisites of the ceremony.
A large circul ition of mortey is promoted, and the fame of
a truly splendid coronation attracts not only people fro
all parts of the country who can aff,rcl the expense, bu
great numbers of foreigners. And then, when we thin
that it i 3 a maiden Queen whose hereditary claims upo ,
public honours—the freest and the fullest that a generou
nation could bestow—are to be postponed to the Russionise
Lord Durham's pompous pretensions, weconfessit is enoug
to make us think more meanly of our Ministers than ever
The- virgin Queen is to be denied "a champion," and the ac
customed hospitalities of Westminster Hall are to be dis-
carded, in order that the Canadian autocrat may have a
retinue and a table on a scale of eastern extravagance.
Well might Burke exclaim, " The age of chivalry is
past." May we be allowed to suggest an improvement
upon this sort of economy to Ministers ? Would it not
bring something into the Exchequer if a Government that
seems determined to make war on all national feelings, and
to obliterate, if possible, all traces of national glory, were
to employ the pickaxes and mattocks of their vandal archi-
tects to level Westminster Hall, and sell the materials for
what they may bring? Cheap Law Courts can very easily
be had for the administration of the cheap law which is
speedily to be dispensed over the country, when the fifteen
Judges, having nothing to do, may be put upon the reduced
establishment. By getting rid of all old institutions and
monuments of ancestral glory, we shall become at lenth as
new a country as Canada, or even as Van Diemen's Land ;
as to the term " Old England," it will of course fall
to most cosmopolitish discredit and philosophical con-
pt. It was used familiarly by the men who conquered
Cressy and at Agincourt, who achieved the trophies of
lenheirn and of Waterloo, who smote the " invincible
mada," and directed the thunders of victory at the Nile
d Trafalgar ; but these are additional reasons why our
nti-national Ministers should banish a phrase which calls
nd
p awkward recollections.—Horning Herald.
We borrow a paragraph from the Hampshire Telegraph,
he Government paper published at Portsmouth, from
which it appears that the Earl of Durham already, previ-
ous to his embarkation, or that of any individual of his
suite, regards her Majesty's ship of the line which has
been appropriated to his conveyance and that of his enor-
-1 mous train of sycophants and dependents across the
Atlantic, as if she were his own private property, and her
Captain and Officers his hired servants. Lord Durham
has not been at St. Petersburgh for nothing. His Lord-
ship has evidently imbibed in that congenial region, or
strengthened rather, for there is reason enough to believe
that the disposition was implanted by nature, the manners
and feelings of a Bashaw. Who but Lord Durham would
have thought it within his competency to interdict to the
Captain and Officers of one of her Majesty's ships the
ordinary privilege and gratification of showing to their
friends and follow-subjects the interior of the vessel in
which they are about to sail to another quarter of the
globe ? But the indecency of this order in reference to
the gallant officers to whom it must have been addressed,
and whose conduct it restrains and fetters in a manner the
most arbitrary and capricious, is not the point on which
the public is chiefly interested. Why, it must naturally
occur to every man to ask, all this mystery ? Why are the
saloons and state cabins of the Hastings to be veiled from
the inspection of all mortal eyes other than those of persons
in the immediate employment of Government, and ex-
pressly engaged in ministering to the pride and luxury of
the imperious—we had nearly said the Imperial—pas-
senger ? Is it that Lord Durham thinks the decorations
Ivhich this fine vessel has received on his account not
altogether so recherche and magnificent as they ought
to be, considering the superlative dignity of her in-
tended freight ? Or, however inadequate they may be