The Sun.
London, England, 1849-06-29 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

FROM TUX MORNING PAPERS OF THIS DAY.
TIM ES.—ln Sir Robert Peel's deeply affecting speech
at the Mansion-house, there occur two masterly sketches,
which, though a contrast was the last thing Sir Robert
intended, a reader will naturally compare. The subjects
of both aro heroic; but the first is an achievement of
war, the second of peace. The accidents of the occasion
had brought them together; when Sir Robert looked
round at the men with whom he had been invited, and
when he had also been reminded by his host of his ear-
liest triumphs of legislation, he could not fail to think
of the absent chief who, at the time Sir Robert himself
fint entered public life, was standing at bay on the
shores of the Atlantic against the conqueror of the Eu-
ropean continent. Oa the other hand the place and the
entertainment suggested with not lets force the noble
deeds of a wealthy
and generous corporation towards a
distant province, which still appeals, as it did centuries
ago, to the better fortunes and genius of this island. If
we now compare what Sir. Robert did not intend to com-
pare, it is not for the purpose of disparaging either the
necessity or the glory of war. We are aware that the
fruits of just and honourable war do not pass away with
its monuments, its captains, its final treaties and awards.
Its chief fruit is that supremacy of justice and truth
which is the foundation not only of peace, but of human
society. Its chief benefits are those which a world may
enjoy without knowing the benefactor. The fortunes of
ages may be cast in the dia of one hostile collision.
Yet there are features on the peaceful side of the
parallel which possess a peculiar force in a country hap-
pily at peace, among men of peaceful pursuits, and in
the midst of that wealth which war may defend, but

peace alone can create.
" I entered public life," said Sir Robert, " when
Spain was occupied by the French armies—
by not less than 360,000 French soldiers ; when after
the battle of Talavera, the Duke of Wellington retired
from Spain, and when he withdrew about 30,000 of the
British forces within the lines of Torres Vedras. There
was great dejection—great depression. There were
prophecies that the British army must evacuate the
Peninsula; there'was a public proclamation from Bona-
parte that he himself would take the command in Spain,
and that his crossing the Pyrenees would be the signal
for the British leopard rushing into the sea, or retiring
to escape disgrace and death. Naval preparations were
made for the withdrawal of that army from Torres
Vedras, in case it should be necessary; but there was
one who never saw that necessity, and who determined
to maintain his position—(Cheers)—who did this by
such gallant confederates as my Noble Friend the Mar-
quis of Londonderry and the immortal warriors of that
time.—(Cheers.) He at length advanced from those
lines, and the leopard never paused in its career until
the British standard was floating over Paris, and the in-
dependence of nations was secured by the glorious exer-
tions and inspiriting example of the Duke of Wellington.
—(Loud cheers.) He is still spared to us, and I think
I am but echoing the universal sentiment—the universal
prayer—that he may long be spared to us to enjoy the
full reward of his fame, and that his country may wit-
ness the lustre of his declining years—(Cheers)—which
will not be eclipsed even by the meridian splendour of
his early days.—(Loud cheers)."
Nothing ever was more splendid than the aohievement
here related—nothing more necessary to the welfare of
Europe, and possibly to the interests of universal huma-
nity. It is, then, with no invidious or unthankful pen
that we point out the sequel, after the lapse of one single
generation, as far as human eye can trace it. The Pe-
ninsula, liberated by Wellington, has effaced, if it ever
recorded, that fact. The last thing it wishes to believe
is that it owes anything to British arms. A public
and most disinterested service, accomplished at a
vast sacrifice of blood and of treasure, and which has
tied an everlasting millstone round the neck of British
industry, has been repaid with political insult, fiscal
prohibition, and commercial repudiation. In that capital
to which the Duke marched from Torres Vedras, and
where " the independence of " nations was secured,"
there is now installed the heir of the dethroned Na
poleon—a man, indeed, of honour and of peace, but ill
qualified to resist the destinies of his family and of
France. At his almost unconscious bidding the legions
of Gaul are once more at Rome. Revolution has long
s•nce severed the bulwark which the allies vainly thought
to raise against France, by the union of Catholic Bel-
gium with Protestant Holland. The vast and compli-
cated machine of Austria is all out of gear. The corn-
. .

bination of territories which still calls itself Prussia

just holds together, ready to fly asunder at the slightes
excess of regal or popular domination. Germany is no
longer in any sense one. Absolutism also has com-
mitted her infractions of the European settlement. It
has defrauded Sicily of its just expectations. It ha.;
extinguished the nationality of Poland. We have ap-
parently begun a period of war. Thus the hero of Torres
Vedras and of Waterloo has lived to see all his work
undone, and territories, Governments, and national
rights once more left to be settled by the sword. It is
impossible to say what misery, what degradation we
might have witnessed or even endured but for the
triumph of the allies in 1814 and 1815; but the very
fabric they raised has vanished away. From this glorious
but perishable work we will now turn to the other side
of the contrast :
" It is now nearly 240 years since a Sovereign of this
country, desirous of making a settlement' in Ireland,
sought the assistance of the city of London. He invited
their co-operation in restoring what were then called the
ruinated cities of Londonderry and Coleraine. If there
be any party in this country which has reason to look
back with pride on Ireland and its connexion with Ire-
land, it is the city of London.—(Cheers.) It is the
city of London—which has done more than Parliament
or proprietors to promote the interests of that country
—which has forgotten tho consideration of temporary
gain, which has foregone present interest, which has
sought a compensation for these sacrifices by promoting
the permanent welfare of the district with which it was
connected.—(Loud cheers.) I hope after the lapse of
240 years that the city of London may be enabled again
to promote the welfare of that country.—(Cheers.) It
will act now upon views more liberal—more comprehen-
sive than before. It will nut seek, as it heretofore did,
to expel the natives from the soil. It will seek to ele-
vate their character, to encourage their industry, to find
for them permanent employment, to instil the principles
of order—of respect for the laws—of submission to au-
thority.—(Loud cheers.)"
This was a work of peace. It was done under the aus-
pices of a King whom it has long been the fashion to
contemn as though incapable of a single enlightened
idea, or energetic act. Its humble aims were the repara-
tion of ruined cities, and cultivation of wastes. Though
it did expel the natives from the neighbourhood of those
strongholds which were meant to be the nucleus of the
scheme, it was not really a substitution of races. Mer-
chants, " planters,"
" undertakers," were its chiefs.
Through many difficulties, through several rebellions,
through wars, through famines, through changes of
dynasty, it has endured to this day, and is now the
chief element of prosperity in Ireland. But for Ulster
we should scarcely have hope. The estates belonging
to the city of London are an oasis in that social and
almost physical waste. The cost of that plantation
probably did not exceed the contributions of London
alone to one year's expenses of the revolutionary war.
But the work still endures, flourishes and expands. It
is not written on treaties and maps, but on the people
and the soil. It bids fair to last out the world, so
that to the end of time a cultivated country and a
prosperous people will be a living record of the planta-
tion of Ulster under James I. We would not push the
contrast too far. The captain "through whom the Lord
has given deliverance" to his country leaves his glorious
vestiges on the face of the earth, as well as in the page
of history. All posterity is his debtor. We are only
showing the civilian a rival field of honour, whose visi-
ble trophies are far more enduring than the trophies of
war. There is nothing more worthy of British enter-
prise than the introduction of British wealth, arts, and
industry into Ireland. Nor is this appeal wholly un-
called for. It was only the other day that an Irish peer
was vilifying by anticipation the motives of those men
who might purchase Irish property, with the doublein-
tention of founding an estate and doing good to their
country. He stigmatized it as greediness under the
cloak of philanthropy, and even desired to see it
thwarted by the savage prejudices of the native
population. As if all care for others was not as-
sociated with some degree of care for oneself! As
if it was not the order of Providence, and the very con-
stitution of our natures, to make interest and duty as
much as possible one! All experience warns us against
the freaks of a merely gratuitous philanthropy. Surely
to purchase an estate, depreciated though it be, to banish
oneself to a distant province and an unmanageable
people, to bury one's fortune in a doubtful hope, to seek
no other benefit but that which involves the reclamation
of the soil and the regeneration of the people, is at least
as honourable as to have served under a Strongbow or a
Cromwell, and to receive for one's prowess the estates of
a chieftain or a Church. No gentleman will charge a
great soldier with ambition or cupidity because while he
serves his country he also wins prizes and pay, ranks,
titles, and honours ; nor is it usual to charge Peers with
selfishness because they are jealous for the Constitution
to which they owe their. pre-eminence. By the same
rule let no one venture to impugn the motives of those
who may wish to link the aggrandizement of their fami-
lies with the renovation of Ireland.
CHRONICLE.—The munificent hospitalities of the
Chief Magistrate of the city of London have presented
us this season with a series of tableaux in which every
Englishman may find some gratification for his patriot-
ism, his national pride, his professional sympathies, or
his party attainments. The dignitaries of the Judicial
Bench and the luminaries of the Bar, the prelates of the
Church, the Government of today, and the distinguished
men who formed the Government of yesterday, have
the effect
picture effpassed in succession before the public eye. The various
notabilities of our age and country are here exhibited to
tkheeep viinegw
to us, not as we see them elsewhere, half lost among the
busy crowd that fills the stage of life—but grouped as
history will group them, when time shall have lent to
eet
of
which distance,
embarrassesan dgivingthe
contempo-
raneous spectator by multiplicity of detail. Each com-
partment is calculated to awaken its peculiar sympathies
and to !call up its appropriate associations ; each
'
group has its own set of admirers, and the general
observer may find objects of interest and curiosity in
them all. Viewed in this light, the banquet given to Sir
Robert Peel on Wednesday must be permitted to sur-
pass in artistic effect all similar exhibitions with which
we have been favoured in the course of the present ses-
sion. Here, and here only, the centre figure in the piece
stands forward with a breadth and prominence which
necessarily reduce all the other characters who bear a
part in it to the subordinate position of accessories—a
prominence fairly due to the long and honourable career
which has made him, in the eyes of the European public,
the one great statesman of the age--a prominence ac-
knowledged alike by his enemies and his friends, by the
feeble Government which listens deferentially to his
suggestions, and by. the heterogeneous party
which nurses its enmity to the ex-Minister as a
means of preserving, ils own cohesion, and in