The Sun.
London, England, 1838-12-01 00:00:00

Pitt affected to support the abolition, but took care to be left
upon that question, and upon that alone, in a tniitority
The Whigs came into office for a few transitory months in
1806, and during that period they immortalised their adminis-
tration by the total abolition of the British slave trade, and the
British flag could no longer cover a cargo of slaves.
The Tories were in office from 1806 to 1830, and during
that period they did not take one step to give the slaves liberty.
Since the Whigs came into office, in 1830, the slaves—eight
hundred thousand slaves—have been liberated, and now are
free ! Sacred Heaven have you justice, have you humanity,
when you place the Tories upon a level with the Whigs, and
yet behold the glorious emancipation of human beings ?
Chicanery may distort, and purblind party spirit may over-
look this mighty transition from slavery to freedom—but still
this fact, this magnificent fact, will ever stand forward as a
monument of eternal glory to that party by whose means it
was ultimately consummated.
The Whigs have their faults, and have committed their
crimes—no men are more ready to admit and to deplore it
than we are ; but let any honest man contrast their conduct
with respect to slavery and the slave trade with that of the
Tories, and then say, if he dare, that both parties ought to be
held in equal estimation by the public ?
In the last place, contrast the conduct of the Whigs with
that of the Tories respecting Ireland. It is quite true that
they commenced their career during the Administration of
Lord Grey and Lord Brougham, by the base and bloody
Coercion Act—a cruelty which we can never forget, because
it somewhat resembled the constant conduct of the Tories
towards our unhappy country. It is true they were sup-
ported by all the parties at that time in the House—for the
Radicals were not at that time strong enough, even out of the
House, and certainly not in the House, to be called a party.
Yet, since the return of Lord Melbourne to power, the
Whigs have done much, nay, almost all they could do for Ire-
land. They have put down, as much as they can, the spirit
of anti-Irish partizanship. They have excluded from office
multitudes of fiery partizans, the ready instruments of every
' oppression. They have, for the first time, totally abandoned
the long-established Tory practice of packing juries on all
crown prosecutions. They have purified the administration of
justice by the introduction of several learned and impartial
judges. They have taken some steps to purify the magistracy.
For the first time in English history a fair and impartial exer-
cise of the executive authority has been witnessed amongst us ;
and, above all, they stand as a constant barrier to the resuml,-
tion of Tory power, and the exercise of all the base and in-
famous oppressions which Orange Toryism has inflicted and
would again inflict upon this wretched country.
The dread and horror of the restoration of the Tories to
power, which are felt by the people of Ireland, are the result
of our thorough knowledge of the miseries which Ireland
would endure from such an infliction.
We bitterly regret to perceive that you show no sympathy
for our sufferings, and that you mingle in one common oppo-
sition our friends and our enemies. To qualify you to obtain
the attention of the Irish people you should have shown an
attachment to those who serve us well, and a hostility to
our malignant foes. You seem to us to have done directly
the reverse, and to patronise our enemies, and then to expect
co-operation from us, whose interest you so grievously neglect
or oppose.
We need not remind you of the long-continued and hideous
tyranny of the Tories—of the hideous waste of blood and
treasure which that faction exhibited in their nefarious attempt
to crush the rising liberties of the American people—the
equally abominable waste of blood and British treasure ex-
pended, first to foment the revolutionary mania in France, and
afterwards to prevent its settling down into peace and consti-
tutional freedom.
It ought not to be necessary for us to remind you of the
Pittite and Tory conspiracy of the year 1794 to drag to the
scaffold and shed the blood of numbers of honest and patriotic
men, forhaving advocated Parliamentary Reform, though in a
more mitigated shape than that in which it had been thereto-
fore put forward by Mr. Pitt himself.
We need not remind you of the rebellion of 1798, fomented
and fostered by the Tory Government until it exploded in a
driftless insurrection, prostrating the friends of freedom, and
giving unbounded power and strength to our Tory enemies,
until, by unparalleled intimidation, corruption, and bloodshed,
they were able to suppress our national independence, and in-
flict upon us the Union.
We surely need not remind you of the countless years in
which, in Great Britain as well as in Ireland, the Tories sus-
pended the Habeas Corpus Act, and thus rendered life and
liberty totally insecure.
We need not remind you of the Tory individual murders in
Scotland, nor of the more recent and equally atrocious mas-
sacre of English men, English women, and English children,
in the streets of Manchester—a massacre which has remained
totally unatoned for, and its Tory perpetrators totally un-
punished.
In short, the crimes of the Tories against public liberty and
constitutional right cannot be exceeded in enormity or length
of continuance ; and the Tories are as ready to commence
them again as if they had never sinned against mankind. In
fine, the dark and ensanguined history of Toryism is not illu-
minated with one single ray of light, of grace, or of goodness.
Toryism is a monster not redeemed from its vices by one single
service in the cause of liberty or humanity.
We are not the eulogists of the Whigs, and we freely ad-
mit that they have unjustly and absurdly halted in their career
of public utility, especially upon the all-important question
of the Ballot ; but, at the same time, we hold in utter scorn
those public men who will not do them justice when they
are put in contrast with the Tories. We do not pretend
that the Whigs are effulgent lights of liberty, but we do
insist that they are as superior to the Tories as the moon,
on a clear night, is more brilliant than the lesser stars,
though fated to fade into obscurity in the presence of the
rising sun.
The injustice which you do the Whigs demonstrates your
want of sympathy with Ireland, and would alone be sufficient
to justify our refusal to co-operate with you; but we are com-
pelled by the same sense of justice and love of truth to repro-
bate, in the strongest terms, the mode in which many of your
public meetings are conducted.
We entirely disapprove of the language of intimidation and
violence--the incitements to arms—the aspirations for revolu-
tion—the total contempt for the legal and constitutional
bounds within which political agitation should be restrained—
the sanguinary ferocity of your Oastlers, O'Connors, and
Stephenses—shouted and responded to by the dupes of a
useless and insane declamation.
Whilst such conduct is pursued at your meetings, you can-
not expect countenance and co-operation from us. We not
only abhor the illegal and criminal nature of such proceed-
ings, but we are disgusted with their folly and fatuity.
For what, after all, can be more foolish than your miserable
threats of armed violence and bloodshed ? Unorganised
masses may commit outrages and murders in particular loca
lities, but the disciplined force of the State would soon scatter
them to the winds, aided, as that force would be, by
all the property, and by all the wise and good men in the
nation—nay, Ireland alone would furnish a sufficient force to
crush for ever any attempt at a violent revolution.
We ask you earnestly why do you not disclaim and disown
the men who thus wickedly and foolishly injure the cause of
Reform ? They justly alarm all men of property, and throw
them into the ranks of the opponents of Reform. They also
range against you the sagacious multitude of persons who
have learned from history and experience the enormous mis-
chiefs which result from tumultuous or sanguinary changes in
the political state.
Again, we denounce not only the wickedness but the
extreme folly of the conduct of your leaders. That folly is
exhibited in their not knowing that there is no country on
the face of the earth in which it is so impossible to effect
a change in the Government by a civil war as in Eng-
land. The social state there is too complicated—man is
too dependent on his fellow man. The operative and his
family are too dependent for food and raiment on the
wages of his employer to render it possible for a rebellious
outbreak to subsist in England. Consider for one moment the
number of operatives in Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds,
Sheffield, and in half a dozen other great manufacturing
towns—reflect that there are from two to three millions of
human beings dependant for their subsistence in these tow►,s
upon the payment of weekly wages. If in all these towns the
factories were closed, and the workshops and manufactories all
shut up for the space of three or four weeks—if there were no
wages longer paid or earned for these three or four weeks,
how could the myriads of operatives and their wives and fami-
lies subsist? They might, perhaps, live one week upon the
plunder of their wealthier neighbours, and thereby reduce
them to the same state of misery with themselves; but, after
that week, famine would lift its head on every side, all re
sources for subsistence would be cut off, and the countless mul

titudes would inevitably perish—the deluded victims of crimi-
nal incitement of men who ought to have known better.
Abandon, then, we conjure you, your absurd as well as
criminal menaces. You have a strong—nay an irresis-
tible—case for the extension of the Suffrage, and,
above all, for the Vote by Ballot, if you will al-
low that cause to be conducted within the bounds
of law, order, and common sense. The best of the Refor-
mers of Birmingham have already set you the example.
Scholfield and Thomas Attwood, Muntz, and Edmonds, and
Salt, and Douglas, and Hadley, and other excellent Radicals,
have set you a brilliant example. They have expressly, and in
the strongest manner, condemned all excitations to physical
force, for the purpose of procuring Universal Suffrage. They
have with equal emphasis condemned all proceedings calcu-
lated to produce any breach of peace, law, or order ; and
they have in the loudest manner anathematised all encourage-
ment to civil war.

The patriot hand of Thomas Attwood has inscribed on
the Birmingham banner, "PEACE, LAW, and ORDER." Under
that banner we are ready to contend for the greatest possible
extension of the Suffrage that can practicably be obtained—
' for the shortening of Parliaments—for the Vote by Ballot.
Our wise policy is to make the most of existing means, and
i to do the best which present circumstances allow. It is upon
this account that we cordially support the Whig Ministry,
tis,ough munch dissatisfied with its backwardness in some points:
and w: cordially support them rather than suffer the incalcula-
ble evil ot%'_dmitting the Tories to power through a breach in
the ranks of the Reformers.
We confidently truss that the good sense of the great majo-
rity of the working classes yfill prevail over the harsher and
more violent counsels of the unwisb and the unwary. Com-
mon sense has an almost magical power i: Politics, and as com-
mon sense points out the paths of " law, peace, and order" as
the only route that leads fo security and success, w,.. confidently
all foolish
anticipate the abandonment of and wicked courses,
perseverance in Mile aldontehewhieh shall have the sanction
, an
of
firm.support and. ardent co- A
emissaries of violence, civil
ers o liberty m the United Kingdom. 1
operation of a
oafndthae
wise a
Continue to countenance
jd rec •
will merit
and you
war, and bloodshed, _
itf..
opposition.
repro-
bation and unequivocal
lnlds itnllcee rge73 17
and wicked men—dismiss ti; O'Con -
Abandon the foolish
.`l4tors Stephenses, and their ism,. ,
the Oastlers, and the -%,
nors,