The Sun.
London, England, 1836-12-17 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNAU

We certainly cannot participate in the gratification
with which certain of our Tory Contemporaries have
hailed the intelligence of the disaster which has be-
fallen the French army on the expedition to Consten-
tina. The establishment of a French colony in Africa
has, we know, been objected to by our Government ;
but we have always thought that the objections would
be removed by the very causes that create them. The
." vaulting ambition" of our neighbours for extensive
conquest in that quarter will probably " o'erleap it-
self ;" and, this being our conviction, we cannot but
regret the lamentable disaster that has befallen the ex-
pedition of Clausel. We had hoped to see the evil
cured by a remedy less severe, though not less effec-
tive. It is needless to observe that we are not very
ardent admirers either of M. Mole, or the princi-
ples of foreign policy upon which he • came into
power ; but unfeignedly we say that the overthrow
of any Ministry, however hostile we might deem it,
would • be to us but a poor compensation for any
national calamity that might fall upon France.
We too had our hopes that the first Deputy who
mounted the tribune would have called the Govern.
ment to severe account ; but far indeed were we
from hoping that any chance would have fur-
nished him with such an argument, however crush-
ing it may and ought to prove, as the disaster
before Constantina. Three of the seven thousand
men who accompanied Clausel have miserably pe-
rished in an expedition of at least questionable
justice. How much better might they have been
employed, Monsieur Mole, in the service for
which they were originally intended ? Your Mi-
nister at the Court of Madrid, Bois le Compte,
promised to the Queen the aid of at least 10,000
men. You allowed her Majesty's Government to
incur great expense, and undergo great inconve-
nience, to arrange the plan of their military operations,
all under the deluSion that this promise was made in
sincerity and good faith. At the moment that the aid
of your Auxiliary Legion is most required, and can be
of the greatest service, it is withdrawn, upon a vain
and frivolous pretence, proved by suusequent events
to be without a shadow of foundation. The reverse
which immediately took place in the fortunes of the
Queen sufficiently attest the consequence of this pro-
ceeding. The men whose presence on the frontier
would have saved Bilboa from the necessity of defend-
ing itself from a destructive siege are sent to Algiers.
You have lost your credit and your honour, and en-
dangered -what is mare valuable than either—the peace
of France—and' injured the cause of a faithful and
confiding ally, by your conduct in Spain. Depend on
it, there are no laurels to be reaped in Africa which
will prove an equivalent.- Mornzng Chronicle.
There is but one difficulty imposed upon Conserva-
tive Statesmen or political writers ()Tithe present day.
It is not to convey knowledge or to dtnnonstrate truth,
for the only knowledge requisite to save the country at
this moment is sufficiently ilread among the people,
and the practical truths 'which now most concern us as
a cation are palpal').:e to every eye; hut the real diffi..
culty is to malT:e men act upon their convictions. It is
Mere, 'ilot in the understanding or the senses, that the
inerlitv is most powerful. The people of Eng-
land—all among them who observe or think—are
quite as well aware as any one of the Whig Minis-
ters, that Lord Melbourne and his colleagues, on
coming into office in 1835, professed principles and
introduced measures, both of which they flatly rejec-
ted in the year 1834. The people of England are
perfectly sensible that the motive for this change was a
mercenary motive, viz., to buy that Parliamentary sup-
port without which it was manifest to all the world
that they could not retain their Ministerial offices
for an hour—the support of O'Connell and
the Irish Papist party. Again, the people of England
well know that Mr. Daniel O'Connell is among the
men connected with public affairs and questions who
have figured within that period beyond which memory
doth not run, the most selfish, unprincipled and wicked,
the most reckless of such evil consequences as do not
affect his own personal interests—the greediest of every
advantage which begins, and centres, and terminates in
' himself. Well, then, what is the next article in the
category of our national convictions ? It is, that when
a Ministry so necessitous are at the mercy of a tyrant
so rapacious, the tribute which he exacts as the price
of his protection will be limited by nothing but his
own estimate of what he may be able to extort from
them. And what does Mr. Daniel O'Connell receive
for his services—openly receive ? First, for himself,
to keep his own partisans together, as tools for the
working out of his ulterior purposes, he wrings from
'the junta which nominally constitutes the Govern-
ment, the whole patronage of Ireland, the absolute
appointment to public offices, high and low, in every
department of the State. He next has dragooned
the same junta of so-called Ministers into a complete
abandonment of their own original scruples about,
robbing and sweep:ng away the Protestant Established
Church, as also into a measure which, though flitter-
ing in name, is entirely identified with the forraer one
in its objects—to wit, the substituting an establish-,
ment of Popish, priest-ridden, corporate bodies, to
monopolise all municipal power, and disturb the peace
of the community by a legalized but incessant agita-
tion, in lieu of the ancient Protestant corporators,
whom; because of their monopoly, the Conservatives
of both islands have declared their willingness to extin-
guish. These things are known to every Englishman
and every Irishman in the kingdom No human being
can shut eye or ear to the notorious fact, that the
Ministers have melted. down the whole mass of Irish
Protestantism, besides mating over the whole mass of
Irish patronage, including the constabulary force of the
realm, as the price of those 35 Papist votes by which
and by no other imaginable means have. the Whig-
Radical clique sarcastically called " Ministers" con-
trived to keep themselves in office. Then let us ask,
why is there not a general movement of the British
nation against this base perversion of the resources
and the ends of civil government ? Why is not the
confederacy of Radical Papists and their Ministerial
tools broken up at once by a simultaneous and unani-
mous announcement of the public will ? We are
compelled to say that we cannot entirely explain the
holding back of even those who have long suppoieved
the Government, except by reference to their co.esar..
dice of spirit or weakness of understanding.
have never seen a better reproof of this moral Fefirmity
than in the letter of our correspondent " 8.," which
is published in this day's Times. B." we
ask those tender-nerved Constitutionalists who have
'been bullied by faction into a mistake of men for
measures, and of persons for principles, what is it that
now deters them from avowing, as Lord Stanley did,
their abhorrence of their leaders, when they see them
prepared to destroy what before they zealously trader-
took to improve and preserve ? Was there sib; years
ago, or even three years, any particle of understanding
or suspicion among Constitutional Reforinera that even
Whiggery would ever demand from its partisans the
entire overthrow of the Irish Protestant Church ? or
the abomination of the sneaking hypocritical ballot ?
or a further enlargement of the elective franchise ?
or an undefined curtaPAnent of the duration of Parlia-
ment 7 or an abol.;:cion of the fundamental principle of
a House of Lords—the creation of its members by
the Sovereign—in favour of a House of Lords to be
ellosen by household suffrage or by ballot ? Was it
dreamed cf only three years ago by any sane members
of the Whig party,,that the whole government of Ire-
land was to be deposited in the hands of Mr. Daniel
O'Connell, at that time (as lie is now) the detestation
of all Englishmen—Radical as well as Whig—
but
not, as he is now, the master of a British Cabinet and
the arbiter of its existence ? Why then, if none of these
things were—if they formed no item and no atom of the
compact which the constitutional supporters of the Mi-
nistry in 1831 subscribed to as the bond of their political
union, what sort of obi igation can at this hour be supposed
to influence the honour of any rational Reformer with
one particle of manly independence about him, against
the paramount nam'l duty of announcing that when
lie beeamQ a Reformer, he did not pledge himself to
bovione a suborner of rebellion in Ireland, or of re-
publicanism here ? Upon these points we have often
enough declared our own sentiments. All sorts of
silly nicknames have been flung at us, like cabbage-
stalks at a Covent-garden hustings, though consi-
derably more innoxious than those vegetable missiles
—apostates, renegadoes, deserters, 4e; What party

have we ever deserted ? None—for to none barely°
ever swoin allegiance. What principle, or measure,
or great system of national policy once espoused by
the Times, has the Ti;n ever even for one day
abandoned ? Let any abusive and lying blockheralt
hired to rail nt his betters answer that. Whot
public principle once proclaimed by the Times ha 4.
this paper afterwards, at any period, qt. 11M10; 119 V
circumstances, flinched from Rtrenunusly enforc.ino ?
" Roman Catholic"- emancipation—the of Dis•
senters from obnoXioirs tests—Reform of Parliament—.
the correction of ecclesiastical abuses, and the effec-
tual and permanent commutation. of tithe—what Bri-
tish journal outstripped the limes in manly and dau7it-
less entr2v on behalf of each. and all of these grc at
measures ? Nay, we challenge the political world to
answer us, which of those measures (av, which one of
them ?) would have forced its way against the mani-
fold impediments opposed. to it, had the Times been
one of its opponents 2 This is truth—not wanton la-
aance. It is ro
r- wi--";lesome truth ; too hard, no doubt,
for the diges'.:ion of the sickly reptile whose lingering
existence la t6d out by a daily meal of spiteful fake-
hood against this victorious, because thoroughly En,,.
journal ; but it is good for the community to bear
such facts in mind. Every man in Great Britain who,
when he first gave a vote for reform candidates on the
hustings, or for Reform Ministers in the House of
Commons, was not aware that reform, even under a
.Whig Ministry, included Popery, rebellion, and revo-
lution, must now feel himself absolved from all party
ties, and. must, if he be an honest man, transfer his
services from those who would destroy the monarchy
to those whose aim is to preserve it. In the mean time
we recommend our Correspondent's letter.-...Tines.
As the day appointed for the intend.ed Glasgow
dinner to Sir Robert Peel es approach ll* , pu )ic anxiety
increases in intensity to see how tne festival will come
off. Had the Right Hon. Baronet himself been the
only Tory of distinction present, we wollid have felt
disposed to look on the affair as one of those mere
matters of course which scarcely deserve a passiiig
thought. As, however, Sir INheres hated rival, Lord
Lyndhurst, is to partake bi the convivialities of the
scene, we confess we do look forward to the feed with
an interest of no ordir,ory kind. With regard to the
Right Hon. Baror.et's conduct on the occasion, wc are
satisfied that he will, as respects politics generally,
maintain that studied roserve which has always been
one of his most chara;:teristic attributes as a statesman.
We expect to gain r,o information from his speech as to
the prospects or ii:itentions of the Conservative faction.
He will deal as usual in vague unmeaning generalities.
He will be fluent and plausible, as he always is, but his
audience wilt be, on his resuming his seat, to use a favourite
Scotch prayed), "as wise as they were" before he began
his oration. No man can keep his own or his party's
counsel better than the Right Hon. Member for Tam-
worth. But though we do not anticpate any disclo-
s urea as to the future tactics. of the Tories from Sir
Robr.rt's Glasiow harangue—though, in other words,
Wt.: cannot venture even a conje cturc as to anything de-
finite he will say on the occasion--ice are sufficiently
confident of certain things which will form no part of
his speech. He will not, for 'irxample, overlay Lord
Lyndhurst with fulsome adulation ; nor, if we mis-
take not, with any adulation at all. -We are sure he
would much rather that his Lordship were some rea-
sonable distance from the scene of the joviality. We are
certain that not only will the Noble and Learned Lord's
presence be the most unwelcome of that of any party
there, but that of all men in the world he is time man
whose presence the Right Hon. Baronet would- have
been most happy to dispense with. With these feelings
of personal dislike to Lord Lyn,Thurst, Sir Robert is
not the man—otherwise he mus.t, have very much changed_
of late—to fawn on him. He will doubtless treat km
with common civility, which he so well knows how to
show to those whom h.e regards with the most deadly
hate. But as for diering any flattery or paying any
compliments to the leader of the Peers, he has too
high a sense it, honour, and of what is due to himself,
to be capP:ole of either. As respects his Lordship,
again, 13;: is not so much encumbered by such a nice
sense of honour as to prevent his offering the immense
of his adulation to the Right Hon. Baronet. T:le, is a
political adventurer, and the only question with him
will be, what are the most likely means of accomplish-
ing his ends ? He will, there can be no
loubt, do every,
thing he can to cajole the Right Hor,. Baronet. He
will heap his panegyrics on him with an unsparing
hand, or rather with an unsparing tongue, in the hope
that he may deceive and conciVa'te Juin. He will do
this also with the view of hoodwinking the public.
His aim will he so to conduct himself, and so to shape
his speech, as that the delusion, that the best feeling
exists between himself and the Right Hon. Baronet,
may be spread all over the country. Sir Robert,
howe-yer, is not the man to be caught with the wily
ap'ostate's chaff; neither, we will venture to say, will
the public be, for an instant, deceived as to the real
state of matters between the rival Tory chiefs, by any-
thing which may be said or done at the Glasgow feed.
—Morning Advertiser.

We observe that whenever it suits the purpose of Coe
Whig-Radical party to make an appearance of weighty
opposition to the Established Church, they do 'not
scruple to assume that the whole body of British
senters not only differ from, but are opposed to Ode Es-
tablishment. Whoever is misled into amdieseence
with this misrepresentation does a great inji-
AS ICC to the
Dissenters. They are not, as a body
of knowledge, or of charity, as to oppr
eltiver so destitute
an institution whose doctrines they se themselves to
whose literature they admire, tiv,o,j,h upon some points
of discipline and forms of w
dissent. We are not st2.o%,,,,,.subscribe to, and
ors-hip ihev conscientiously
little manual, which
ge-
neral grounds of belief- We have now before us a
this upon vague or
United Church o
Churchmen an =t• re lately received, intituled " The
Q -England and Ireland defended by
Dissenters ;" and to which we would
refer any inrl,-(1i-,'er who desires direct proof that not
Churchmen alone, but Dissenters also, bear their
fervent .cP:stimony to the purity and truth of the
doctr'Ares of the Church—to the unrivalled ma-
iestl., propriety, and comprehensiveness of its liturgy,
r.n?_, to the usefulness of its establishment •by the State.
171:his little publication consists entirely of extracts, ap-
plicable to the several divisions of its subject, from the
writings of Churchmen and Dissenters. Among the
latter are the most illustrious names of those who have
figured in Dissenting pulpits—of men a thousand fold
superior in learning, in piety, and in zeal, to the hot-
headed political disturbers, who, seeming to love per-
sonal notoriety much more than the advancement of
religious truth and Christian feeling, have led the way
in angry complaints against the Church. We believe
that, if the subject were well inquired into, it would
be
ound (hat the virulent hostility to a church esta-
blishment in Great Britain is almost confined to two,
classes—namely, the Roman Catholics and the Soci-
nians or Unitarians. These opposite extremes of super-
stition and unbelief combine their forces against an
Establishment; but certainly from very different mo-
tives. The Romanists would subvert our Establish-
ment that they might build up their own in its room ;
and, perhaps, their main object for appearing so os-
tentatiously as they do among the assailants of the
Church of' England is to divert attention from their
proceedings to establish the Church of Rome. There
can be little doubt that the Romish Clergy in Ire-
land, while professing Ultra-Radicalism, and advo-
cating the voluntary system, are looking to a period
when they will find it not convenient to do either the
one or the °they ; and in England, when we look at.
the rapid increase of Roman Catholic chapels, and;
find an Irish Roman Catholic population so largeiiy
occupying our manufacturing and commercial towns,
we may easily giiess to what the advocacy of popular
power by the Roman Catholic party is intended to lead.
As for the Socinians, so exceedingly wise in their own
conceit, so stubborn and stiff-necked, we must regard
them more as a political faction than a religious sec;;.
Their own philosophy is to them all in all, and, as
they have no principle of reverence for any thing hu-
man, and apparently very little- for any thing Oivine,
they set themselves against all authority, wir2ther of
Church, or King, or aristocracy. Busy, discontented,
and clever in small things, they go about sowing the
seeds of a rebellious spirit, and labouring in the causes
not only of false doctrine and of heresy, 'out also of
schism. They are politicians in their cLurches, ant',
Socinians in the House of Commons. Their theoloflr
is a dry and withering logic—their sermons badly writ-
ten essays in moral philosophy—their seal lies it the