The Sun.
London, England, 1836-10-04 00:00:00

ti E IV S

theo-ry one ay, and call for it to be put into practice the
next, They adopt changes slowly, not from the love of
change, but frOm the thorough conviction of their neces-
sity: If thelords create a general idea as to the neces-
".sittof a ebange—you know whether they are doing it or
~int-Vlpend upon it that change will come.
M cannot have a stronger engine at work for she
alteration of the peerage (you see what it has already
done) than the unchecked exercise of the will of the Peers.
" Yes, you may say ; but in the meantime, three or four
years are passed, and nothing done. Not so, according to
your wishes and views, a great cleat is being done ; for you
are effecting that very Reform, by the most effectual means,
that you are contending for. You are forcing, day by day
and hour by hour, the sense of its necessity on the public
mind. What great measure was ever carried by less sa-
crifice ?
" The House of Lords has stood, unchanged, many
centuries. Cannot you devote to its alteratin a few years ?
"In the meantime, it is not improbable, if we were to
make a stano, that that stand would, in all policy, be made
on no new question, attacking the presumed rights of
another branch of the Legislature. But, on the old ques-
tions, which we have already carried, and which we may
support by the exercise of rights vested, anciently and con-
stitutionally in us.
" On Peerage Reform, if we brought it forward to-mor-
row, we should be in a minority ; but if we were in a ma-
jority, we should be little advanced. Would the Lords,
who are refusing every other measure, consent to that ?
" But we have powers, if we mean to engage with the
Lords, which are as completely in the hands of the Com-
mons as the measures we have before spoken of may be
considered in the hands of the Government. We have
powers which a majority of one will enable us effectually
to use.

The Lords, to avert the exercise of such extreme
powers, have rarely used their own powers in any extreme
way. They now choose to do so. They choose to refuse
their sanction to all laws coming from the Commons, and
they say they have a right thus to act. There is, by-the-
bye, a beautiful saying of Lord Bolingbroke, in respect to
rights and powers, which I would wish to call to their Lord-
ships' attention.
" ' Even the infinite power of God Almighty,' says Lord
Bolingbroke, is limited by his infinite wisdom.'
" So I say of all human power ; it should be limited by
its wise and discreet use, without which it has no divine
sanction, and can have no long duration.
" The Lords, however, choose to use their rights vio-
lently and indiscreetly—we have rights and powers of va-
rious descriptions, which we, as disregardless of them as
they are of us, may use, if we are so minded.
" They may think proper to maintain a species of go-
vernment in Ireland that can only be upheld by the sword.
This is their right. But what is ours? Why we, if we
choose, can put the sword into the scabbard.
" If they will not sanction those laws which serve to
establish good government in Ireland, we may refuse that
army which can alone support a government of wrong.
" With the measures that are to procure permanent
tranquillity, we may couple the appropriation of that part
of our revenue which is now employed in maintaining the
temporary dominion of force.
" Here we infringe no rights of the Constitution, no
rights of the Lords. We stand upon our own rights—
handed down to us by our forefathers. Nay, we use
against the Barons the very weapon which they, the
Barons, formerly used against the Monarch. Neither
would any shock be given to credit. The only thing
stopped would be the payment of a military force for main-
taining bad government in Ireland. We should only in
fact be reducing our Army Estimates. Ido not say that
this is a thing to be done without the utmost caution on
the one hand, and the utmost provocation on the other.
It should not in justice be attempted, unless every hope of
compromise with the Lords were gone ; it should not in
prudence be attempted, unless a majority in this, and a
greater majority in the next House of Commons were
likely to be in favour of it. But here is a step which ccn
be taken by our majority of the Commons alone, and might
consistently be in support of the measures which • that
majority have voted. Yet let me not be misunderstood.
" I merely instance, if matters came to a struggle of
prerogative, one of those prerogatives which the Consti-
tution has given for such extreme cases to the national
representatives—they have others also—as the history of
our Constitution shows, not idle nor unimptirtant.
" These prerogatives, doubtless, cannot be exercised by
the Commons, as long as the Ministers of the Commons
are in office.

Things, however, will, ere long, be brought to a crisis."
'We entreat, with Bulwer, all Reformers to guard
sedulously against divisions. We ask of those who
have any influence with the Radicals throughout the
country to avoid the practice of dwelling more on the
faults of their allies, the Whigs, than on the wicked
schemes of the enemies of all reform, the Tories. Let
forbearance be exercised by the two sections of Re-
formers towards each other. A bad spirit has, we
know, been generated in Cornwall, which it will re-
qn:re some skill to allay ; and the danger to be. appre-
hended is, lest One difference between Sir John Rash-
leigh and Sir W. Molesworth he visited on the Whigs
elsewhere by the Radicals. We arc not altogether
satisfied, for instance, with the propo,ition of the Ra-
dicals of Edinbugh to give a dinner to Lord Brougham.
"We shall never, we trust, forget the great services
of that Noble and Learned Lord, his exertions for
the diffUsion of education, and his able advocacy of the
cause of the people in times when reform was not in
the ascendant. But in attempting to play off his
Lordship against the present Ministers, do the Edin-
burgh Radicals forget what took place at the dinner to
Lord Grey, when Lord Durham produced such a
powerful effect by the manly and straightforward re-
proof he administered to his Lordship ? We wish not
to dwell on the faults of the Noble and Learned Lord,
and we are far from wishing that his services should
not be held in recollection by the Edinburgh Radicals ;
but they should also remember that it was the Noble
and Learned Lord who declared, when last in Scot-
land, that Reform was going on too rapidly, and that
the Lords were a useful check on the Commons. We
beseech Reformers at Edinburgh and elsewhere not to
allow themselves to be led by arts or intrigues from
what is useful to the common cause. Let them bear
in mind that division among Reformers is the triumph
of Toryism. Mutual forbearance ought 4o be the
motto of Reformers.—Morning Chronicle.
Bad as we think, and always have thought of the
Tories, their conduct is occasionally worthy of imita-
tion, and it is not to be denied that Reformers have
now and then profited by hints which have been given
them by their mortal enemies. A year or two since
the Tories took it into their heads that a still greater
union among each other than had previously existed,
was desirable. They consequently formed themselves
into Conservative Associations. The Reformers, like
prudent men, immediately adopted the hint, and went
and did likewise. The union which now exists among
Reformers, thus brought indirectly about through the
instrumentality of the Tories, is greater than at any
former period—they are therefore at this time better
prepared to act in concert, should, as there is every
reason to believe there soon will be, any great crisis
arise, than they ever were at any former time. We
thank the Tories for this. But this is not the
only recent instance in which the people of Eng-
land owe a debt of gratitude to the Conservatives,
for services unintentionally rendered them. Some six
or seven weeks ago, while the Reformers were as in-
active as if they had been wrapt in sleep, the Tories
concluded that it would be useful to the Conservative
'cause if public dinners were got up by them in diffe-
rent parts of the country. To work, therefore,
they forthwith went, and for three or four weeks the
poor provincial editors had nothing to do but report
their gastronomic achievements. The faction had al-
ways been proverbial for their love of the good things
of this life, and hence they flocked to the country
dinners. From the specimen they afforded of their
gormandising capabilities, compared with the attention
they paid to the rhapsodies of their oratorically-inclined
friends, it was clear to demonstration, the dinners in
question were fully as much an affair of the stomach as
of pure immaterial Conservatism. The nonsense spouted
at the Tory provincial dinners did serious damage to the
cause; and has, of necessity, proved a corresponding ad-
vantage to the interests of Liberalism. Those dinners have
been of use to the Reform cause in another and more di-
rect way. The Reformers, imitating as before mentioned,
a good example, even when set them by their bitterest foes,
have got up or are getting up Reform dinners and
public meetings, in all parts of the country. Every
provincial journal now teems with accounts of the
proceedings at those dinners and meetings. The bold
and healthy, in other words the truly English tone
adopted on these occasions will be of infinite service
to the Liberal cause. It is worthy of observation that
the leading topic dwelt on is, the necessity that exists
for a thorough reform of the House of Lords. This
looks well ; it shows that the desire for such reform
pervades the breast of every liberal throughout the
country ; and it is equally clear, from the energy with

which that desire is expressed, that it must be forth-
with gratified. Our columns yesterday .contained a
report of a Reform Dinner at Halifax, at which a
great many Members of Parliament were present.
The opinions expressed, and the principles avowed on
that occasion, deserve the serious consideration of the
adverse party.—Morning Advertiser.

Mr. Daniel O'Connell has written another letter.
A letter from him, because of his position with regard
to certain other parties, is always a peg whereon to
hang some political discussion. The present is a long
peg, and withal too slender to bear a voluminous argu-
ment. The real drift of this letter is easy enough to
find out. It is merely to keep up at boiling heat
the fermentation of which O'Connell has experienced
the profitable influence upon his own fortunes in time
past, and which he feels to be necessary to his future
projects. He throws into a sort of parenthesis the obli-
gation upon every Papist—and Papist-bitten dupe of
other creeds—to contribute with all his might to the
funds of the " General Association," under the nick-
name of " Justice Rent." It is not a fortnight since
he reprobated with earnest (if not with honest)
indignation, the proposal of some eccentric simple-
ton, that the account should be rendered of the
expenditure of the fund, which it is now manifest
to all the world that this barefaced impostor means
to have regarded as a secret service fund, to be
employed as he shall dictate, or shall covertly ap-
propriate, for the return by corrupt means of him-
self, his family, and the greatest possible num-
ber of abject instruments and vassals, for Irish
seats in the Imperial House of Commons, that
he may thereby have the means of forcing upon the
prostrate Whigs as many preliminary measures as pos-
sible, tending towards the extortion of property and li-
berty out of Protestant hands ; which measures he
avows his settled purpose of converting afterwards
into levers, for wresting away all that England may
still have in her keeping. The " justice rent" re-
quired by O'Connell, therefore, is no more than an
election fund, to be spent on objects and in schemes
confessedly hostile to the Monarchy and Constitution
of Great Britain. Amidst the apparent rambling and
unworkmanlike looseness of this letter, there. is, as we

have before observed, one main purpose never once los
sight of—viz., the supply of fuel to that devouring fire
with which he tortures his poor countrymen out of
their natural and healthful repose ; and there is one
favourite lesson inculcated upon them—namely, that as
he himself never will be contented, so ought not the
Irish Papists. Sober but half-reflecting men may call
this imprudence in Mr. Daniel O'Connell. It is impru-
dence only so far as, in the long run, all selfish cunning
and hardened wickedness are fatally imprudent ; but
for the immediate aim at which he drives, his methods
of delusion indicate extreme dexterity. He wants to
insure a long course of agitation, and to lay up a
magazine of prepared and inexhaustible disaffection
among the Papists of Ireland, and he goes adroitly to
his point. The man is a ruthless, at the same time
that he is a subtle, tyrant. He has no mercy on the
Ministers whom he has degraded ; nor even does his
avowal of what lie means yet further to wring from
them, at their country's cost, induce their taskmaster
to abate one particle of bitterness in his indications of
contempt for their unutterable meanness. He begins
by alleging broadly, that the support he gave Lord
Melbourne and his colleagues was " unstained by any
compromise or compact upon either part." What,
then, was the noisy boast at Ashburnham-house a
mere " rhetorical flourish," a downright falsehood ?
What says Mr. Sheil to this? But indeed that learned
rhetorician well knows, what is a secret to few persons
on either side the House, that O'Connell mortally de-
tests the name of Sheil, and will ruin him at the first
opportunity. No man can have forgotten that the argu-
ment—the single thing in the shape of argument—offer-
ed by the Lords J. Russell and Morpeth, in defence of
the clause for taking away from the Irish clergy an in-
come which has a real existence, under the mask of a
surplus which never will exist at all, was, that it would
satisfy the Irish Roman Catholics, and would restore
peace to the country. Now mark the words of Mr.
Daniel O'Connell—" The governing rule of my poli-
tical conduct has been to obtain for Ireland as much
as I possibly could." Not as much as he ought, be
it remembered, but as much as he could. Thus, at
the very outset, might, not right, was to be the mea-
sure of his extortions from this country. He goes
on—" I look for the payment of the tokole (debt to
Ireland), and never will be satisfied until the whole
shall be paid in full ; but in the meantime I will
take any instalment, however small, at any time,
when to get more is out of my power, and then go
on for the balance !" " I realize for Ireland all I
can get, and having got part, I am thus better able
to seek the rest." Attend to this, ye Protestants of
both countries, and be wise while yet you have time.
But let O'Connell proceed, and hang himself and
the Whig Cabinet together in the same cord. After
railing at the folly of those Irish Papists Who would
refuse to take all they could from the British Parlia-
ment as a means of getting more, he subjoins—" For
my part I could not hesitate one moment, and accord-
ing I heartily supported the Ministry of Lord Mel-
bourne in their measure of tithe relief, NOT not as
giving all I wanted, hut as giving us a part, and es-
tablishing an appropriation principle, which would
necessarily produce much more !" " Nothing could
be so absurd as the allegation of its finality"—viz.,
the finality of that Morpeth measure. Very well, here
we take our stand. Lord J. Russell, urged the
House of Commons to accept the Bill, because it would
satisfy the Roman Catholics, and therefore tranquillize
Ireland. Mr. O'Connell declares that he accepted it,
conscious that it would not satisfy the Roman Catholics,
and that it would serve, not as a tranquillizer of Ire-
land, but as a means of facilitating the further and more
successful agitation of that country. Lord J. Russell
recommended it as a final measure with regard to Irish
tithe. Mr. O'Connell declares that nothing could be
so absurd as to allege that it was final. He again de-
clares that he—and by himself he means the Irish
Catholics—will never be satisfied without the entire
abolition of the right of the Protestant Church to
tithe, and that therefore his own proposed deduction of
42/. 10s. per cent. from the clergy was but a " small
instalment" of what was due to Ireland. If this be
not plain speaking, we are at a loss to know what is.
If this be not open, contemptuous defiance of the
Whigs, and giving them the lie in their teeth, what
is ? But if this, with other disclosures, do not be-
come, under Providence, the means.of opening the
eyes of England, and rescuing her from the vile
and atrocious harpies who now prey upon her glory,
her welfare, and her peace, then are our anticipations
false, our hopes blasted, and our own efforts nerveless
in the cause of truth and of our country.—Times..
The Standard had lately some appropriate obser-
vations respecting the liberal donation of one thousand
pounds by the Duke of Portland, towards the volun-
tary fund for building new churches in the metropolis,
in answer to the Bishop of London's timely and ju-
dicious appeal. Let us here remark, that the success
of that appeal, as well as the munificent liberalities
with which the British public came forward to assist
the suffering Irish Clergy, driven to the verge of
starvation by the blockade system of the Popish allieS
of the Whig Ministers, prove, that if Government
be false and treacherous to the interests of the Protes-
tant religion, there is a feeling of attachment and
veneration in the public mind for our Protestant In-
stitutions, which becomes stronger in proportion to the
dangers to which they are exposed. That Christian
and truly patriotic feeling never had greater occasion
to be called into action since the time when the " se-
ven Bishops" of glorious memory rallied the na-
tional energies around the Constitution, which a Popish
the
tyrant threatened to subvert, than at the present day,
when
monster-coalition of Whig
,Ministers and
Popish democrats threatens to repeal the reformation
of teligion in this country, and to bring about a
counter-movement to the revolution of 1688. We
do not say that the intentions of the Whig Ministers
go this length, but we do, with all the reflecting and
enlightened of England, maintain that the im-
becility
arid
peoplecraven
foils
of the Whig policy has an
inevitable tendency to such a consummation. That
policy is, however, fast approaching the end of its ca-
reer. Its fantastic tricks in this country have been
bad enough, but in Ireland they have lately transcended
in mischievous absurdity anything that we could
anticipate of any branch even of the unprincipled

and silly Whig Government. Those who have read
the correspondence between the Rev. Mr. Martin,
and the Rev. Mr. Moore, and Lord Mulgrave's Go-
vernment, touching the late astounding attacks of
the Popish party upon the religious liberty of Pro-
testants, will need no further evidence to convince them
that such a Government is rapidly accelerating the
fate to which the national indignation will eventually
consign it. But, to return to the point at which we
began—the subscription for new metropolitan churches
and the observations of the Standard, in reference to
the Duke of Portland's donation. We feel that those
observations are so full of truth and point, they will
well bear to be reprinted. Our Contemporary says,
" We rejoice to see among the more recent subscrip-
tions, answering the Bishop of London's appeal, the
name of the Duke of Portland, prefixed to a donation
of 1,0001. This liberal contribution is graceful and
natural, but it is no more than might have been ex-
pected, from the Noble donor's character, and his po-
sition as a considerable proprietor in the neighbourhood
of the metropolis. Such a handsome testimony to
this Noble man's sense of his high responsibility na-
turally forces our thoughts to the conduct of other
Noblemen as extensive proprietors in the neigh-
bourhood of London, as the Duke 15f Portland,
and some of them possessing more metropolitan
property than his Grace. There is the Duke of
Bedford—the super-liberal subscriber to the O'Con-
nell rent—the father of the official organ of
the 'Voluntaries,' and the gorged Leviathan of Church
property, how far has his liberality carried him in this
matter ? To what extent does his Grace embrace this
opportunity of applying the voluntary principle ?
What quit rent from his mass of Church plunder is
he willing to render to the altar of God, from which
his whole mountain of wealth was torn ? Next comes
the Marquis of Westminster, beyond all comparison
the most extensive proprietor of houses and lands in
the metropolitan county. What has his Lordship con-
tributed ? To these Noblemen the Duke of Port-
land's subscription reads a lesson by which we hope
they will profit so far as to render our future reference
to the point unnecessary." Perhaps it was too much
to ask those Behemoth Whig proprietors to build up
the Church with one hand while assisting to pull it
down with the other. One of them threw 1001. into
the wallet of the mendicant Agitator of Ireland, but
we do not see that either he or any other great Whig
landlord has svbscribed 100 farthings to the relief of
the deplorable wretchedness of O'Connell's naked and
starving countrymen. The mendicity fund in Dublin
has become bankrupt that the wallet may be filled.
Such is Whig " justice to Ireland."—Morn Herald.
The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, as our readers will
see on perusing his address to the Lord Mayor of
Dublin, has been doing all that he can, which is not
much, to extol the merits of the Ministerial scheme
for rendering the corporations of Ireland exclusively
Roman Catholic and Radical. Lord Mulgrave is not
a nobleman from whom in any circumstances we should
expect much light to be thrown upon a disputed ques-
tion of any kind. But, when speaking at Dublin
Castle, under the immediate eye of the Dictator of
the Government which employs him, and especially
when labouring to give the best reply in his power to
so able and judicious a speaker as the Recorder of
Dublin, it can excite no surprise that his Lord-
ship should sink under the weight of the task he
had gratuitously undertaken. We say gratuitously,
because the immediate representative of Majesty in
Ireland, however his opinions and those of the
Government which has sent him there may differ
from the opinions which are entertained by the Re-
corder of Dublin and the Corporation whose senti-
ments he expresses, it is not incumbent upon the
Viceroy to engage in controversial warfare with the
officer of the Corporation ; and it is his especial bu-
siness to avoid such warfare, when, as in the present
case, lie is sure to have the worst in the contest.
Who but Lord Mulgrave himself could ever have ex-
pected his Lordship, with all the aid even which pre-
vious conferences with Lord Morpeth could afford him,
to he an equal match for Mr. Shaw ? His Lordship
should have stood upon his dignity. There he would
have been safe, as Lords Lieutenant should always
try to be. But, when such a Lord Lieutenant of Ire-
land as Lord Mulgrave is, attempts to cope with such
a law officer as the Corporation of Dublin has the
good fortune to possess in Mr. Shaw, the odds are
fearful—so fearful, indeed, that all the world, aides-
de-camp and gentlemen ushers included, instinctively
tremble for the Lord Lieutenant ; nor is this general
trepidation in any degree allayed by the circum-
stance that the form of proceeding is such as to give
the Lord Lieutenant the advantage of the last word.
The Recorder of Dublin had justly eulogised the
services which in past times the Corporation of Dub-
lin had rendered to the common weal, in pursuance
of the objects for which it had been chartered—the
maintenance of loyalty to the British Crown and the
support of British connection. How does the sapient
Lord Lieutenant answer this ? " I would wish,"
says the intellectual Viceroy, " that the substance and
the essential usefulness of that ancient institution
should be preserved, and I think anyone who marks
the progress of opinions in their day must see that if
an adaptation of the institutions to the altered circum-
stances of the times were once admitted to be desir-
able, it must rather be procured by the extension than
by the extinction of popular privileges !" Admirable
logician The Irish Corporations were instituted for
the purpose of maintaining and upholding the connec-
tion with Great Britain ; this was " the substance and
the essential usefulness of those bodies ;" and, accord-
ing to our wise Viceroy, these are to be preserved by plac-
ing the Irish Corporations exclusively in the hands of the
undisguised enemies of British connection. Does
Lord kulgraye dispute either of these propositions--
that the proposed reform of the Irish corporations
would place them absolutely in the hands of the
Priest or O'Connell faction, or that this faction are
the enemies of British connection ? His Lordship,
wisely for his own purposes, overlooks these impor-
tant questions, which, in truth, admit of but one answer,
and that unfortunately not the answer that suits his'
purpose. What is it to such a reasoner as his Lordship
for what purposes these institutions were established
in Ireland ? What is it to him that, if remodelled, as
he would remodel them, they must, of necessity, mili-
tate against the objects for the promotion of which they
were established ? " Popular privileges" are the es-
tablished pretext under favour of which he and those
who act with him would convert the popular institu-
tions of his country into the strong-holds of Popery,
despotism, and persecution, the rallying point, the
field of re-union, to all the enemies of the in-
stitutions of Great Britain. The Noble Lord at-
tempted to show that it would be good and liberal
policy to give to Mr. O'Connell and the Roman
Catholic Priests all the Corporations of Ireland— Cor-
porations established expressly for the maintenance of
Protestantism, and which never have done any good,
and never were intended to do any, otherwise than by
means of their Protestant character—and can our
readers imagine by what kind of proof ? By the ex-
' ample of Numa Pompilius. This comes of being a
man of letters, and an author. Who but the pur-
veyor to circulating libraries would ever have thought
of Numa Pompilius when the subject under discussion
was, whether the Corporations of Ireland, now and
heretofore Protestant, should, by an act of the British
Legislature, be rendered exclusively Popish ? Good
Numa and the goddess with whom, if we rightly
remember, he was in the habit of consulting in a cave
—and Lord Mulgrave surely will not boast any
celestial inspiration—had no religious contentions
tocompose, no religious animosities to overcome.
Numa
might be an excellent Legislator for infant
Rome, yet Lord Melbourne, Lord John Rus-
selol,L andor d Mulgrave, and Lord Morpeth, may be
very indifferent legislators for Roman Catholic Ire-
land. This Lord Mulgrave does not perceive, which
is to be lamented ; we must leave him, therefore, in un-
4isputed possession of the authority of Numa Pompi-
iiiis, with which his Lordship will be abundantly con-
tent, implying, as his Lordship will probably imagine
it does, the privilege of seeking inspiration from such
divinities as are to be met with in the caves of Dublin.
From a Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, lecturing upon a
question of grave national importance, something more
and better might have been expected than a schoolboy
allusion to the early and uncertain history of Rome.
But the Noble Lord was not in the wrong. It would
have been dif4cultsto find any solid or statesmanlike

reasons for the policy which the Noble Lord and his
friends have adopted on the Corporation question ; and
although his Lordship is notby any means strong in
classical allusion or poetical simile, these were perhaps
the best resources to which, in his incapacity for rea-
soning and in the inapplicability of reasoning to his
subject, it was impossible for him to resort.--Morning
Post.