The Sun.
London, England, 1838-09-29 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

Lord Howick has reason to thank his stars for having so
shaped his political manoeuvres that henceforth the wits
and dandies of St. Giles's will have their lips as familiar
with his Lordship's name and noble qualities, as with gin
and bitters, or copperas froth. The Church-hating Vis-
count has been taken under the especial protection of a
morning print which circulates among readers knowing
nought of Protestantism but through its rancorous co-
lumns, which, however, extends its eulogies in common
with the sweet-tempered Viscount to every other conspi-
rator against the Church and State—to every criminal
scheme of the most prcfligate agitator—to every disloyal
and blaspheming priest in Ireland—to every robber, incen-
diary, and cut-throat, released by the Viceroy's favour from
gaol, or through the terrors of absconding IN itacEst:3 enables!
to defraud the gallows—to Constantine, Marquis of Nor-
manby, and to a coadjutor worthy of him, John M‘Hale.
Proud, therefore, as well as grateful, Lord Howick ought to
be for this public admission to the honours of such a
society. Exult he may lawfully in the solemn record of an
authority so discriminating as yesterday morning's print—
that his Lordship has actually now arrived at such a pitch
of penetration and foresight as to be en a par with the
great mass of intelligent persons who flourished in Ireland
about the year 1738, that is just a century ago, and every
one of which vast body was, according to the Popish Ga-
zette of yesterday, alive to the enormity of an Established
Church, which did not suit the priest-ridden and super-
stitious savages constituting the numerical majority of
native Irish, any more than it suits them at the present
hour ? How flattering to the wisdom of the Whig-Radical
War Secretary, that in the year 1838 he sees quite as far
into causes, consequences, and future prospects, as did the
bulk of educated people in Ireland an hundred years before
him I But mark the botherpatedness of this Roman Catho-
lic scold. He says there was not an intelligent man in Ire-
land who did not at that distant period hold the Protest sr.t
Established Church in the same abhorrence that he, the
writer, or Lord Hossielk himself, does now. We presume,
therefore, that, according to this conscientious historiogre-
pher, there were no intelligent Protestants in Ireland dur-
ing the 18th century ; that all the education and " intelli-
gence" of the country being co-extensive with all the hos•
tility to Protestantism which existed there, must have been
confined to Papists !—a relative condition of the Members
professing those two creeds, which, in spite of that all
history tells us, may by some unknown possibility have at
that time been their true con lit.on ; in which case we can
only say, that the intellectual and moral qualities of Pro-
testant and Papist must have been marvellously transposed
since the year 1738, inasmuch as the Irish Protestants of the
present day are on a par with the foremost communities of
the civilized world for intelligence, no less thin for those
other high attributes by which sound intellectual attain-
ment is for the most part accompanied, while, if we seek
for an exact personification of whatever is most ignorant,
superstitious, demoralized, barbarous, treachercus, bruta-
lized, and inhuman on earth, it is in Irish Popery that we
shall find, at the first glance, the most conspicuous and
frightful examples. But as to Lord Howick. This Lord,
we understand, has for some years been launching through-
out private society his peevish sarcasms and peremptory
denunciations against the Protestant Church in Ireland.
He has said, not in confidence, but openly, as we are in-
formed, even so far back as at the accession of the present
Ministry, he being a member of that Ministry, that the Irish
Protestant Church ought not to he supported: Very well :
with what face could he, and on what grounds did he, pro-
mote and urge through Parliament those piecemeal attacks
upon the Protestant Church of Ireland which formed the
grand, or at least the ostentihle, topic of difference between
the Conservative party and the Radical Whigs ? Lord
Howick and his colleagues enforced the necessity of making
one concession after another to the Papists, on the express
and unequivocal assurance that such concessions would
reconcile the " People of Ireland" to the Establishment,
and tend to the stability of the Protestant Church l Ay,
these Ministers were not ashamed to adopt the pet phrases
of the tyrant whose livery they wore, and to bar, as he did
by implication, the tight of the brave and loyal Protestants
of Ireland to be considered as any portion of the " Irish
People." Lord Howick and his colleagues were hypo-
crites enough to preach up the usefulness and efficiency
of their measures for rendering the Protestant Church
" more stable," not merely in speeches from their
places on the Treasury Bench, but in speeches framed by
them, to be delivered by the Sovereign to the assembled
Legislature. They put into King William's mouth a
speech recommending their Tithe Bills to Parliament for
the sake of giving the Protestant Church increased "secu-
rity and stability?' They put into Queen Victoria's
mouth, in her very last speech, a passage containing hopes
that the Bill just passed would secure the rights and serve
the interests of the Church—that very Bill of which Lord
Howick implied such absolute and emphatic contempt as to
declare, while addressing the House on one of its stages,
that the real question upon the tithe subject was, whether
the Church should exist at all? Was ever duplicity so flagi-
tious as this betrayed by any public man ? Was ever any
cant more despicable than that of Lord Howick and
his brethren of the Cabinet, when they pretended to
believe that the concessions proposed by them would
pacify the Roman Catholics, and politically reconcile them
to the Church, while the priests were every hour declaring
that no such paltry sacrifices would pacify them, or the
people whom they governed—that they would take nothing
but the entire downhill of the Church as a satisfaction to
the " people of Ireland I" Nay, what impudence was
there in the hypocrisy of these Ministers attempting to
palm their instalment nostrums upon the Protestants of
both countries as sovereign and effectual cures for the tur-
bulence of Popish sedition, when O'Connell himself, in
daily letters published throughout the kingdom, in nightly
speeches spokan to the very beard of Lord John Russell,
told them .nat neither he nor the Roman Catholics of
Ireland would be quieted by such petty concessions—
that it was as instalments only that he would accept
their bills—that he would have his 20s. in the pound,
viz., the entire overthrow of the Protestant Establish-
ment ! It is pretty clear, therefore, from these in-
disputable facts, that Lord Howick and his colleagues were
playing off a succession of tricks upon the people of Eng-
land, when they represented the measures which they pro-
posed, as tending in the slightest degree to the tranquillity
of Ireland. They had proofs of the contrary before their
eyes and ears every day they entered the House of Com-
mons, or read an Irish newspaper. O'Connell charged
them openly with " children's play." Lord Howick's last
Parliamentary exhibition was an oblique acknowledgment
that the system of legislation proposed by himself and his
colleagues to Parliament, had been brought forward on
false pretences. They tell us we must go onwards—to
what P we inquire. They confess to the abolition of the
Protestant Establishment. Then we answer, "It is time
to stop." And, if we are not greatly deceived, the via in-
ertias, though but tardily resorted to, will prove somewhat
stronger than the " movement."—Times.
His Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex has, in a long
letter to the members of the Royal Society, announced
his intention of retiring from the Chair of that institution,
and has, we regret to see, imputed this step to the scanti-
ness of his pecuniary means. His Royal Highness's in-
come being, we believe, 20,0001. per annum, with apart-
ments in Kensington Palace, besides the handsome jointure
which the lady, generally esteemed to be his wife, derives
from her late husband, Sir George Buggin. There is no
degradation so mortifying or uncalled for as that which a
man voluntarily inflicts upon himself; and unless his Royal
Highness's letter is put forth as a feeler, we think it
is in every respect ill-advised and unnecessary. There
is, apparently, no possible way in which the office of
President of the Royal Society can impose upon its
possessor an outlay of more than 500/. a-year. It is essen-
tial that he should be a person possessing a house large
enough to receive large evening psrties,to provide whom with
tea, coffee, cakes, andthe other et ceteras of a supperless rout,
the sum we have mentioned will go a great way, and this
to a gentleman with 20,000/. per annum cannot be a very
mighty affair. If the object of the letter be, as we have
hinted, a feeler to induce the Government or the conntry
to come forward for the purpose of alleviating the Royal
Duke's necessities, however excusable it may be in a gene-
ral point of view, it is evidently misplaced : it partakes
very much of the " a propos des bottes, parlons des raves."
To us it does not seem at an necessary that in retiring from
the chair of the Royal Society the Duke need have ad-
verted to his pecuniary affairs ; but if the Duke's income
be insufficient to enable him to maintain his rank in the
State—a point upon which we are not competent to offer
any opinion--what do his friends, the Whig Ministers, say
to it? Though we admire nothing about the Duke of Sus-
sex's politics but their consistency, that very quality should
give them every value intheir. eyes ; and the more so, if we
believe, in truth we may, that, to a
consider, which, we
they who, with a lavish
certain degree at least, his
Yetißoal Highness has been a
martyr to those opinions.
for the Queen's mother, when
hand, could provide so largely
them, not only met
the Duke's situation was pressed upon
Mr. Gillon'a motion with coldnesebut th
, g .e
ratitu most
eadnedtercmoninseisd.
opposition. This, indeed, is Whi g
tency—this their return to the only one of the Royal family
who has been wrong enough to think them right. Re-
gretting as we do the manner in which the subject has been
brought before the country, we are not the less desirous that
i
it should have a fair and dile consideration n the proper
PrEty.stelaAel,7lsr we believe there is no feeling mored g
he country than adesire that no son or augihter
r+i4F7l,.. eo Georfre„`. . should have any reasonable want unsupp Led.
St; 1.,-,..., -'--moviitg, add.
,-044 ; _ mie efeer4v question will be the great question during
(
.......<AO4-04-i-tesso',aiein The agitat:on for Univers d Suffrage, on
"d ee*see—p,hWstl- 4 ifeowners how count as a means of frightening
\eltse ths, -0124 - '
sea, will soon subside, and the people will
wiso
c see tliii.;'. eom of uniting for the redress of a grievance

which is felt by all. Under the present system all the in-
dustrious classes are sacrificed to the landlords. The far-
mers
have the same interest in a free trade that the rest of
the community have. When the trade in Corn in England
was free, which it was substantially till a comparatively
recent period, the English farnrr could rid himself in years
of plenty of what the home consumption did not demand,
by exportation. By keeping the prices in an artificial state
here, the English farmer is deprived of this resource. A
great deal of nonsense is talked in some papers about Hol-
land and Genoa and sonic other States having gone to
decay because they imported corn. Their rise or decay
had nothing to do with corn. A small community may,
from circumstances, be elevated into an undue decree
of importance, and may he led to engage in wars, the ex-
pense of which may strike at the foundation of their
prosperity. Al cou.itic., v.-I:cher great or Etri.ll, rniv
ruin themselves by extravagance. A small country like
Holland is of course coorviir mined than a great country like

......
Britain. But the question of a free trade in corn is quite
distinct from considerations like these. If a country is
highly taxed, all classes should bear their fair share. But
the Corn-laws exempt a particular class from their share,
and make the rest of the community bear an addition to
their fair proportion of the burdens which ought to be
borne by the landowners. It is notorious that the English
manufacturers must sell their manufactures abroad at what
they can obtain in a competition with foreigners ; and that
the price abroad determines the price at home. While,
therefore, the English manufacturer cannot obtain more for
his goods than the foreign manufacturer, the landowner
compels him to pay twica as much for food. If this is
not robbery we know not the meaning of the term.—
Morning Chronicle.