The Sun.
London, England, 1838-08-02 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

The writers of the Ministerial Press have for some

time past been engaged in a rancorous and vindictive
attempt to run down Lord Brougham. The renegade
"Liberals," the quondam colleagues of that eccentric
and highly-gifted performer, because they have aban-
doned the principles in virtue of which they entered
the Cabinet, would fain persuade the public that Loid
Brougham has abandoned them ; and that he is actu-
ated in his unsparing exposure of their tergiversation
and apostacy by motives originating in personal disap-
pointment and paltry pique. Lord Brougham is a
Radical, and, moreover, the very King of the Radi
cats ; and it is, therefore, not impossible that his hyper-
" Liberal" Lordship may occasionally he impelled by
the petty malevolence, " the envy, hatred, malice, and
all uncharitableness," on which the philosophy
of Liberalism is founded. But the assumption
that he is actuated by such poor and petty
spite in his brilliant and effective onslaughts
on his old accomplices is altogether gratuitous
and inadmissible ; because his conduct may be ex-
plained on grounds at once obvious and unanswer-
able—the shameless inconsistency of his former con-
federates and present victims. With this satisfactory
solution of the phenomenon before us, it would be
unphilosophical, as well as uncharitable, arbitrarily
and unnecessarily to adopt another, for the mere
purpose of blackening the reputation and blunting
the weapons of apolitical adversary. Lord Brougham
is assuredly no favourite of ours ; but, did he possess
but a tithe of the intellect, the energy, the eloquence,
and the intrepidity, of which he has given some
salutary and many mischievous proofs, we should
still think him degraded by a comparison with
the brightest and boldest of his Right Honour-
able and Honourable Cabinet opponents. Were
the aforesaid respectable individuals to club all
the talent and all the honesty of which their Ca-
binet or their faction can boast, the aggregate of
their contributions would be but dust in the ba-
lance when weighed against those of their calum-
niated friend and corrector. An uncomfortable
consciousness of this mortifying fact may be one
motive, among many, for the systematic hostility to
the Ministerial tormentor exhibited in the columns of
the Chronicle. Our quasi official Contemporary, in
his Number of yesterday, emitted an article involving
at once a most spiteful attack on Lord Brougham,
and a most " lame and impotent" defence of Lord
Durham. This piece of dirty work, at once offensive
and defensive, must have sorely taxed the logic and
the modesty of the Downing-street Gazette. If the
paper had any,. the very faintest, sense of shame, it
must have blushed a beet-root red when it became the
innocent instrument of giving publicity to the article
alluded to. In reference to the dictator-like doings of
Lord Durham, and his domestic " helps" in Canada,
and to Lord Brougham's indignant animadversions
thereon in the House of Lords, it is authoritatively
stated, that—
" As the Hon. and Learned Lord, however, in the view
which he took of the Ordinances suppressed some facts and
mistatcd others, we will endeavour to supply the necessary
corrections.
Lord Brougham said, that if the banished rebels
who returned to the province of Lower Canada without
permission were executed without trial, Lord Durham
would commit ' a capital felony—he would be guilty of
murder.' Now the ordinance does not say that the rebels
who return without permission from banishment will be
banged without trial. What it says is, that the return will
be evidence against them ; that they shall be deemed and
taken of high treason, and shall, on conviction of being
found at large, or coming within the said province without
such permission as aforesaid, suffer death accordingly. The
supposition that those who return from punishment without
permission, will be hanged without a trial, is a fancy
of Lord Brougham's ; it is not an ordinance of Lord
Durham's."
Since our long departed academic days, when the
construction of syllogisms and the splitting of hairs
were the order of the day, we have never encountered
so edifying an illustration of a distinction without a dif-
ference as this. It may do honour to our Contempo-
rary's ingenuity in the estimation of his official em-
ployers and patrons ; but he can hardly suppose that so
transparent a fallacy will impose on any man not pre-
determined to be convinced. In reference to the legality
of Lord Durham's ordinance, or to the substantial cor-
rectness of Lord Brougham's assertion, the point made
by the Chronicle proves precisely nothing, neither more
nor less. Lord Brougham maintained thatLordDurham
would be guilty of murder in hanging a returned rebel.
without trial. And how does the Chronicle impugn the
correctness of this assertion ? By quoting the lan-
guage of the ordinance itself, to prove that the returned
rebel, on being found at large within the said pro-
vince, and on conviction of the same, is to be deemed
guilty of high treason, and to be hanged accordingly.
Thus the corpus delicti—the high treason, is to be
taken for granted or disregarded, and the patient is to
be hanged on conviction of being found at large in
the said province without permission. But how does
this invalidate the inference of Lord Brougham—
how justify the ordinance of Lord Durham—or bear
out the apologetic conclusion of the Chronicle ? The
returned rebel is hanged on proof of having disobeyed the
behests of the Dictator for returning without permis-
sion. Is this less " a murder" than hanging tire same
individual for high treason would have been? But, cries
the Chronicle, the patient is tried before he is hanged.
Tried I—and for what ? Why, forsooth, for having
offended the majesty of Dictator Durham by returning
without permission. If that amiable and " liberal"
p rsonage should, in the plenitude of his Whig-lta-
dicalism, think fit to disregard what the Chronicle
calls the "fanny," and what we call the sound law,
of Lord Brougham, and indulge in a murder after the

fashion aforesaid, in his own ordinance announced, and
in the columns of the Chronicle defended—all we shall
say is, that we should strenuously recommend him to
make his residence, if not his dictatorship, in Canada
perpetual, inasmuch as his return to England after
such an exploit would insure him the death of a felon.
Whether the Chronicle would share his well-earned
elevation is a point for the learned in the law to de-
cide. if Lord Durham's Radical sympathies with the
traitor friends and correspondents of Mr. Joseph
Hume, 1\ lember of the " Tail" and for Kilkenny,
had not determined him to spare their forfeit lives,
by way of preserving the breed, his course was plain
—military law was the °Mer of the day—the rlng-
leaders of the rebellion, Nelson and the rest nho were
in custody, should have been tried by a Court-Martial
and hanged incontinently. But that would have been
" a heavy blow and a great discouragement" to
rebels and to—Radicals. We take na credit to our-
selves for having predicted, months ago, ti,at the ap-
pointment of Lord Durham would ensure the im-
punity of the Canadian rebels. The condign punish-
ment which these practical Radicals had incurred
might have been legally inflicted. The majesty of the
Crown, and the authority of the law, might have been
vindicated ; and the murderous and incendiary march
of Radicalism, i. e. treason, have been effectually
checked. But it squared better with the inclination
and the interests of a Whig- Radical Dictator to do
violence to the law, and spare the traitors.—Morning
Post.

The misappropriation by the London Committee of
a large portion of the funds collected last year for the
relief of the suffering Highlanders of Scotland, begins
to excite a deep and general interest in the public
mind ; and no wonder, for a more flagrant breach of
confidence with the benevolent individuals who sub-
scribed their money to save from actual death, through
want, the wretched inhabitants of the Highlands andt'
Islands of the northern part of the kingdom, was never
committed. An appeal is made to the benevolence
of the British public—the sufferings arising from the
utter destitution of the parties on whose behalf the
appeal is made are depicted in.the most forcible terms,
and proclaimed aloud through the width and breadth
of the land ; deputations come to the metropolis to plead
in person the cause of the famishing myriads, and to
stir up those who have hearts to feel for the sufferings
of their fellow-creatures, to stretch out their hand to
rescue them from the horrors of dying of want ; and
with what success are all these efforts made in one of
the most urgent cases of humanity which were ever
,
brought before a` British public ? With a measure
of success worthy of the character for humanity and
benevolence which this country has so long en-
joyed, and which is its highest glory. Not only
(lid the hearts of Englishmen bleed while their ears