The Sun.
London, England, 1836-11-21 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Spectator of yesterday has the following para-
graph :
e (rloam A KNOWN AND VALUED CORRESPONDENT.)
" Mr. , who is a Whig, but a man of talents and
great shrewdness, has been travelling about for the last
month, having visited -Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow,
Edinburgh, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Leeds, and Birmin.oam :
lie goes by mail and coach, frequents news-roTtns and
rnercial inns, knows somebody in most 9P.:cts of ti'.e country,
and talks to every body wherever lir goes ; having, besides,
II peculiar knack of drawing out people's opinions. He says
that he never missed an rjprortunity of conversing about
the Whig Ministry. PAe•is a Whig; but he declares that
throughout the
,jour-~,y he did not meet with a single
person who even apologised for the supineness of Minis-
ters. Many ahused them ; many rejoiced at Lyndhurst's
triumph over them ; many were quite indifferent about
them ; but not one spoke of them in terms either of re-
gard or admiration. He has been urged to write all this
to Lord Melbourne, with whom he occasionally corres-
ponds. You may fully rely upon the accuracy of this re-
port, which conies from with many sighs. I can
confirm it from pretty extensive observation. Putting
aside the Tories, who are crowing everywhere, the pre-
valent feeling towards Ministers in Scotland and the North
of England is indifference—a notion that, as they seem
incapable of helping themselves, they are not worth help-
ing. In all these parts a general election now—that is,
before Lord Melbourne shall, as you say, have done
something' to recover his popularity, would go against Mi-
nisters. The Radicals and Tories would both gain—and
the Radicals more a great deal than the Tories, if the Ra-
dical leaders had formed an independent party. As it is,
perhaps the gain of Tories and Radicals would be about
equal. The mere Whigs, to speak plainly, are despised."
With all due submission to the Spectator, we do
not place the most implicit reliance on this account
from its " known and valued correspondent." 'What-
ever differenees may exist between Whigs and Radicals,
were there a general election now, we have no doubt
that it would go greatly in favour of Ministers. Per-
haps our Contemporary is throwing out a bait for
Tory credulity ; but however anxious the party may be
to delude others into belief of re-action in their fa-
vour, we can hardly believe that even the assurance of
the Spectator will persuade them that they may safely
act on the belief. Whenever any honest Radical
comes to ask himself—what have the Whigs done ?
he must admit that though they may not have done
all that he could wish, they have still done a great
deal. The people of England owe to the Whigs
that great measure which has placed in their own
hands the power of compelling all possible improve-
ments in our institutions—the Reform Act. Before
1832 the people were under the drorninion of the Oli-
garchy. By the Reform Act ','ne most important of
the two Houses has been -emancipated ; and though
the oligarchical power en.teavours to entrench itself in
the Hereditary House, it must ere long surrender on
terms, or another fa to will await it. The people owe
to the Whigs the reform of the Municipal Corpora-
tions of England and Scotland. They owe to the
Whigs that great measure which every preceding Mi-
nistry for the better part of a quarter of a century looked
upon as most desirable, while they dreaded to encounter
its difficulty—the Poor-law Amendment. The abuses
under the old Poor-law had become of an appalling
magnitude—the labourer was placed in a state of
hopeless slavery, and in many places the burden
-threatened to absorb the whole property. Already the
emancipated labourer is benefitting by his inde-
pendence both himself and his employer, who now
expends on productive industry what before was spent
on the idle and the profligate. The people owe to
the Whigs the first attempt to administer the laws
in Ireland in a spirit of justice and impartiality,
Hitherto Ireland has been a drain on the resources
of the people of England. A fraction of the people
has been bribed by a monopoly of power and in-
fluence to keep the great body of the people in a
state of discontent, and the expense of all this injus-
tice has been borne by the English nation. The
importance of what the Whigs have done may be in-
ferred from the energetic appeal to English feeling,
made by Mr. O'Connell in a late speech :
"No man can be a real friend to Ireland who is indif-
ferent to the continuance of its present Administration, and
use it as the touchstone of men's sincerity in their regard,
for this country. You may, I say, be perfectly right ev.,
concerns England as to the continuance of this AdminAstra-
tion, and yet perfectly wrong as respects Irelan.'a. Let
them leave us but this Administration for one tv;clvvemonth
mire—lot the people become accustomed to, have justice
honestly administered—to see office attaine'a only by merit
—and even-handed impartiality condue`c with dignity the
. operations of Government. Give us i'int one twelvemonth
more of the present Administration, and in Ireland we get
out the Tories for ever. I therefore turn to th© Liberal
Press in England with these fasts, and say to them, it is
useless to cant about your lc,ce for. Ireland if you feel in-
different towards us upon this point."
The Whigs have se;ctled the question of tithes. In
some counties there will, no doubt, be some difficulty
in reconciling tliLe landowners to a permanent rent-
charge equal to, the amount of burden which accidental
circumstances may have thrown on them ; but upon
the whole the measure will, we have no doubt, be a
great blessing to the country. The Whigs have placed
the law of marriage on a footing more worthy of a ci-
vilized country than that which before existed ; their
registration of births, marriages, and deaths, will be
found a most material improvement in our institutions.
The Dissenters have yet to complain of the injustice
of Church-rates ; but they are bestirring themselves,
and the injustice must be remedied. We will not now
go into a detail of the various measures of improvement
which the country owes to the Whigs. But we will say
this, that there will not he found in the whole course of
our history six years of such ininterrupted prosperity
as have been enjoyed under Whig Administration since
1830. The Whigs, it is said, ought to have done
more. And why have they not done it before ?
Because the Tories in the House of Lords have been
able to resist them with success. The Tories refused
justice to Ireland. The Tories refuse to the people of
England the benefit of Local Courts. The Tories
have on all occasions (the single Poor-law Amendment
excepted) opposed themselves to the removal of recog-
nised abuses, and sought to prevent amelioration in our
institutions. It would be strange, indeed, if the deter-
mination of the Tories to prevent, whenever they can,
they Whigs from doing good should induce the people
of England to give a preference to the former. This
would prove the Radicals to be absolutely irrational.
But the charge is not true. Those who are most dis-
satisfied with Whigs are so because they will not
go far enough against the Tories. In a general election
'ibe indifference towards the Whies would soon merge
in hatred towards the Tories. With respect to Scot-
land, the Scotsman says—
" If the burgh representation here bore the same propor-
tion to the county as in the south; Scotland, 'which returns
two Reformers for one Tory, would mo`:;t certainly return
four. As to the political sentiments of the urban popula-
tion of Scotland, a single fact supersedes discussion, and ba-
nishes every shadow of doubt. 7ihe Scotch burghs return
br.re 22 are Reformers ; and
23 Members ; of these Mem.
the only Tory returned got m by a majority of one Tote in
a constituency of 700 ! In 'most of the Scotch counties a
majority of the genuine ecristituency are decidedly Liberal
and hence the Tories fee's the necessity of swamping them
by creating a horde fictitious voters. In this species of
political swindling, Pir it is nothing else, the Lord-Lieute-
nants arc often rive most active parties—witness the Duke
of Buccleugh rAr.d the Earl of Hopetoun, who are deluginc-
the three Lothians, Selkirkshire, and Roxburghshire wits
sham elee.:cors

Th:e House of Lords is justly viewed by the Re-
foriT.Jers as the great obstacle to all ameliorations and
improvements. When Ministers, in answer to the
question why they did not do more, refer to the House
of Lords, they surely ought not to blame the people
for considering In what way the obstacle is to be
overcome. In the same manner the people cannot
understa,:ia why those who complain of intimidation
should refuse even to entertain the question, how is that
intimidation to be best remedied ? Ministers will give
great offence to the people if they refuse to make Peer-
age Reform and the Ballot open questions ; and though
(Ten in case of refusal, the people at a general elec-
tion would not certainly commit the
.felo de se of re-
turning Tories (which would be what the proverb calls
cutting off the nose to be revenged of the face), yet
they would most assuredly return no man in any office
of high trust under the Government. Ministers must
either make these questions open, or they will find it
no easy matter to enter the House of Commons.—
Morning Chronicle.
It was our duty some days since to animadvert upon
the deliberate jobbers of Lord John Russell in dis-

tributinc, the law patronage of the Home office. The
Recorderships of Coventry and Feversham were given
successively as familiar proofs of the disinterested and
unsullied patriotism which that abridgment of all Whig
pretension and hypocrisy has exhibited in the several
provisions made by him for the upright administration
of justice
th`' highest offices of the local ma,i'
throughout this realm. From the 10.:,•est to
...,:racy this horrible
practice of swamping the 'demi' with men whose sole
claim or qualifiation is the thorough-going violence of
their Whig-Radical partisanship forms a novel feature
in the political and magisterial system of Great Britain.
One main vice of the Russell selection of persons who
are to act as Justices of the Peace, is the preference
afforded to men of low degree, sordid porsnitt, and
narrow attainments, over gentlemen of ilidependent for-
tune and distinguished station and character, because
the latter, as a class, are acknowledged by Lord Mel-
bourne, and known, indeed, by all the world, to be in-
censed at the gross trafficking nature, dishonest pro-
fessions, and destructive schemes of the Whig-rump
Ministry, and therefore to be, with few exceptions,
stanch to the principles of Conservatism and of the
Constitution. But to return to that branch of abuse
of patronage with which we set out--the perverse or
corrupt nomination of Recorders—we have to remark,
that by the Municipal " Reform" Act as it (was)
passed. (by the majority of) the Whig-Radical House
of Commons, all existing recorders were superseded,
and new appointments were to be made. The House
of Lords, with its usual sagacity in the detection, and,
as far as possible, the frustration, of Whig knavery,
rejected this clause, continuing all actual recorders, but,
unfortunately and unaccountably, omitting to provide
for the continuance in office of barristers performing
the same sort of duties as recorders, though under
another name, such as " steward," &c. The Radi-
cal majority in the Commons struck out the clause,
but the House of Lords replaced it, and their wis-
dom in that wholesome exercise of right is proved by
the shameful disposition of the Home-office evinced
in the cases of Coventry and Feversham. By
this system, as a whole, a double mischief is at-
tempted, and therefore a two-fold object of the Whig
Ministers. So far as in them lies, the tribunals of jus-
tice are corrupted, and a direct attack is made on the
independence of the bar. "What a scene would have
displayed itself throughout England had the House of
Lords acquiesced in the villainous proposition of the
rump of Whiggery, and left all the recorderships of the
country in the hands of this jobbing Home Secretary of
State ! Hastings furnishes another instance of the op-
pressive and revolting spirit towards all but its own un-
scrupulous partisans, which is indulged by the Home-
office, or rather by the Whig. Lord John Russell, in the
application of his power over the municipal bodies of
the kingdom. The town-council of Hastings is Con-
servative, and has had for its " steward" (equivalent to
recorder, or nearly so) Mr. Hollist, a gentleman who
had faithfully discharged the duties of his office, and
who is a man of moderate (that is, not of John
Russell) politics. The otherwise unoffending, and in
every sense meritorious, gentleman, is superseded by
my Lord John Russell, and in his room is nominated
Mr. Austin—.an advocate of well-known ability, it
is true, but an individual than whom no other in
England, if he be not foully calumniated, would go fur-
ther in pushing Radical projects to extremity, or in
sweeping away our' national institutions. Whether
Mr. Austin, a barrister in full practice, made love to
this mark of Lord John Russell's favour, we have no
means of ascertaining. It could not manifestly have
been forced upon the Learned Gentleman ; but sure it
is that the Home Secretary could not have devised a
more palpable or coarse expedient for placarding his
spleen against the Conservative Town Council of
Hastings, because it is Conservative, and for no
other imaginable reason, than by this intrusion of
the Ultra-Radical, Mr. Austin, upon the unanimous
repugnance of an entire community. Yet this Lord
John Russell is the very political impostor who
forced his Municipal Reform Bill upon the nation,
because, under the ancient corporate law, the voice of
the people was seldom listened to, but was most fre-
qraently postponed to that of a faction, in the choice of
officers who were to carry on the public service, to
exercise. the judicial or other authority, and to be re-
munerated from the funds of the corporation 1 Such
is the singleness of purpose, the love of truth, and the
political purity we have to count upon from a Govern-
ment of Whig jobbers and intriguers ! Parliament,
however, must take these things in hand : an inquiry,
if it be an open one, must throw light upon the paths
of falsehood and selfishness. The bar of England
will, we are sure, be foremost in its demand for a full
exposure of the system.—Times.

We have already apprised the country, in language
which cannot be mistaken, of the great and accumu-
lating difficulties with which the Ministry of Lord
Melbourne is beset. On the mere circumstance of the
difficult position of that Ministry, it is not, therefore,
necessary that we should again dwell. There is not at
this moment a Reformer in the United Kingdom who
is ignorant of the dangers with which the Melbourne
Government are surrounded. The question, then—
but not one very difficult of solution—comes to be
considered—ln what way his Majesty's Ministers are
to be safely borne through the difficulties in which a
malignant Tory faction on the one hand, and a still
more malignant Court faction, on the other, are endea-
vouring to involve them. It would be worse than folly
_flay, it would be absolute treachery to the cause in
which all true Reformers arc embarked—to conceal
the fact that much exertion, much enthusiasm, and
the same determination that was manifested in the
case of the Reform Bill, will be required to place
the Government in the commanding position which it
ought to occupy, and to avert that ruin with which the
machinations of the Tories are now threatening the
country. There must, first of all, be an unequivocal
demonstration of public opinion in its favour. Se-
condly, there must be a reciprocation on the part of
the Government of that confidence in the people
which the people repose and are manifesting in them.
And last of all, the Ministry must make further ad-
vances to meet the spirit of the age. On the first point,
namely, the necessity of an unequivocal demonstration
of public opinion in favour of the Melbourne Minis-
try, we need not dwell. We have of late so often and
so earnestly enforced the necessity of this, that we can
add nothing more to what we have already urged on
the subject. And we rejoice to know that our ap-
peals to the people on that subject have not been
made in vain. We can clearly see, in the exist-
ing aspect of affairs, the symptoms of a corning ma-
nifestation of public feeling on behalf of Lord Mel-
bourne, which, if his Lordship prove true to him-
self and the people—and who can doubt that he
will ?—will carry him triumphantly through all his
difficulties, great and innumerable though they at pre-
sent be. But, then, before this can be done, the Noble
Lord must identify his Administration yet more closely
with the people. He must throw himself unreservedly
into their arms. He must tell them in plain terms
that all his dependence is on them—that he knows
that through them alone he can carry on the Govern-
ment of the country—that so far from having anything
to look for, as other Governments have had, from "an
influence behind the Throne," he has to encounter the
inveterate hostility of the party who possess that in-
fluence. Let, we say, Lord Melbourne thus throw
himself into the arms of the people of England, and
tbenheeevent will show that his confidence in them has not
misplaced. But, in order to induce the country
to rally round his Lordship's Ministry with greater
promptitude and zeal, he must make further ad-
vances to meet the spirit' of the age. There must
be no more begeinc, of questions with the Tory
party—there must be no more compromises—
there must be no more mangling of good mea-
sures upon the foolish calculation of ffainino. Tory
support
for them. Thenttley must be comprehensive
imeasures to be introduced
in the next session of Parliament must not only
abtelli;osoas
dtiifnacttloier7;elaviesi not only satisfactory, but they, b
must be adhered to. Experience has already proved
that it is as easy for the leopard to change its spots as
for the Tory faction to change its principles from any
other inducements than those of place and power; and
the plain straightforward course in future for his Ma-
jesty s Government, is not to attempt conciliation,
which is now proved to be hopeless, but to march
forward in the path of Reform with improvement on
the one hand, and the love of the people on the other,
as its shield. And this must be done promptly.