The Sun.
London, England, 1836-08-19 00:00:00

aims have stripped them of whatever share they may
ever have enjoyed of weight, influence, or authority in
the community. When Lord Melbourne, and Lord
Holland, and the rest of the . crew, make it a matter
of reproach against the House of Lords, that they
had. rejected some of the measures which the House
of Commons had adopted on the recommendation of
Government, they certainly did not sufficiently reflect
on the terrible retort to which they must expose
themselves by this absurd and unconstitutional .ac-
cusation. The imbecile and presumptuous blunderers
forgot, surely, that of all the destroyers of Bills for the
correction of defects or anomalies in our national
institutions they had themselves .been the most reck-
less and unsparing and that the Bills of reform
which they had "burked were Bills which had not
only met with the concurrence of a decided majority
of both branches of the Legislature, but which the v,
the Ministers, had stamped with
,the indelible seal
of their own deliberate and spontaneous approba-
tion. When the reproaches with which Ministers
have presumed to assail the House of Lords, for
he rejection of measures of which their Lordships

could not conscientiously approve, are regarded

conjunction with the abandonment by Minitt-c.ii the7.o
selves of measures which had thP„ •
cA. MO .approba.
-
tion of tho House of Lords%
and of the Execut.i-co Geverwient, what is the neces-
-4 411° Hb'.....se of Commons,
sary con,finglon ?
T.:4; Is that the Ministers of the
r
..,rown are •!,'?) ?ar subjugated by the factions, whose aid
they have invoked, as to have determined to carry on
the Government of the country in implicit obedience
to the least reputable section of the House of Com-
mons, without respect either to their own opinions or
to those of the two Houses of Parliament ; and to
calumniate and revile every individual, be he King,
Peer, or Commoner, who will not aid and abet them in
carrying this virtuous and patriotic determination into
effeet.—Morning Post.

LITERATURE.

LETTERS of I?UNNYIii EDE. London, llfacrone.
We have heard it predicted that England would
produce a second Milton sooner than she would a
second Junius. The prediction was false. England
Nas produced a second Junius. His letters, which
have appeared in the columns of our Contemporary
the Times are before us ; and we have the miter's alp(
thoritv for assuring all who have read them--that
one person in every twenty-thousand of the people of
England, and no person at all in either Scotland ot,
Ireland—that he, the said second Junius, will never
he known to a single soul of them. It is all nonsensa
to think of discovering who he is ; and though we Iva
confident that none of- them ever troubled ;neir h4ads
about him or his letters, and, what is more, that they
never intend it, yet it may be !"--st as well to let them
know that Junius 11. isii'st as invisible as Jitnius L
Hear his own, %ftte-.neti't of the fact in one of his
epistles tg Stanley:—
ssaa Is" o" Who,. some days back, in my letter to Sir Robert Ptal
-ter, let me observe in passing, written by one 'whose
..ame, in spite of the audacious license of frantic eon:lecture,
has never yet been even intimated, can never be sliscovered,
and will never be revealed."
The " frantic conjecture" may lead• our readers to
suppose that hundreds of weak-headed 'people had gone
mad in their efforts to identify Run•aymede. We have
much pleasure in being able to quiet their fears on this
had. It is true that two wersons did call at Printing.. house Square, and threaten to horse-whip the editor, if
the name of the writer of the letter to Peel, signed
" Runnyknede," were not given up to them ; but we
happen to know that the persons who were guilty of
this " audacious license" were sent by the writer him-
self, in the vain expectation that the affair would form
the subject of a leading paragraph.
So much for Benjamin D'lsraeli the younger's self-
denial. We now come to his letters, from which we
are about to make copious extracts—and first of the
present state of public opinion :--
" The public mind of late has been cleared of avast amount
of error in constitutional learning. Scarcely a hired writer
would have the front at this day to pretend that a difference of
opinion between the two Houses of Parliament is a collision
between the Peers and the People. That phrase s she
People,' is a little better comprehended now than it used to be :
it will not serve for the stalking-horse of faction, as it did.
We know very well that the House of Commons is not the
House of ' the People ;' we know very well, that the
People' is a body not intelligible in a political sense ; we know
very well that the Lords and the Commons are both sections;
of the Nation, and both alike and equally representative of
that great community."
This is all the effect of Runnvuiede's letters and the
apostasy of the Times. Of cease we include the one
volume letter to Lord Lyndhurst about the Constitu-
tion, of which twenty copies have not been 'yet sold.
Astonishing effect of the Runnymede letters upo
the House of Peers :
" These six months have not been uneventful in results.
If they have not ivitnessed any leeis'Ative enactment eminently
tending to our social welfare, t):?ey have developed much po-
litical ersroluct for which our posterity may be grateful ; for
this asssion, Sir, has at Ipast been memorable for one great
event—an event not ieSerior, in my estimation, in its benefi-
cial influence on the fortunes of the country than Magna
Charm itself—l mean the rally of the English Constitution;
I might uPa a stronger phrase—l might say its triumph."
We need not point out the logical acuteness of this
passage. Everybody must know that the rally
of the English Constitution is not less important
than the Constitution itself—that the rejection of
the Irish Church Bill is as important as Magna
Charta to the people of England. Let us see. It is,
if we remember rightly, about five months since Lord
Lyndhurst, in a private conversation with Benjamin
D'lsraeli the younger, pronounced the British Consti-
tution to be in a most hopeless condition. His Lord-
ship on that occasion, among other remedies, hinted
that were the Old Lady supplied with a daily potation
of ass' milk, with a due proportion of slops, there
might be a possibility of her recovery. Ben saw his
Lordship's drift in an instant. He seized his hat and
cane, hurried home, and scrawled an octavo volume,
to which he gave the unpretending title of a letter de-
tailing all the symptoms of the Old Lady's malady.
This was not exactly what the ex-Chancellor desired,
and he told Ben as much the first time he afterwards
met with him. This was enough. Ben snatched up
the quill a second time, and every day brought us a
supply of slops, labelled " Runnymede. Things now
took quite a different turn. The Constitution shewed
signs of returning convalescence ; the Peers looked as
smiling and as sunny as milk-maids ; and Ben the
younger, seeing the world preserved on its axis by the
force of his genius—that he had discovered the standing
place which Archimedes so vainly sought after--erowed
and wriggled about with the undisguised delight of
a dandled babe. But we are losing sight. of the Letters
in our admiration of their results.
A sample of the Runnymedian. sublime
n But while I watch lon in your ludicrous councils, an aw.
ful shade rises from behind the chair of my Lord President.
Slaves it is your master ; it is Eblis with Captain Rock's
bloody cap shadowing his atrocious countenance. In one hand
he waves a torch, and in the other clutches a skull. He gazes
on his victims with a leer of fiendish triumph. Contemptible
as yfra are, it is this dark connexion that involves your fate
ss'.th even an epic dignity, and makes the impending story of
your retributive fortunes assume almost a Dantesque sublimity."
Another :
" Towering above all, and resting ma lurid shrine bedewed
with blood, and encircled with flame, with distended jaws and
colossal tail, is the grim figure of the O'Connell crocodile."
A specimen of the Runnymedian terrible :
" You are summoned now, like the knight of Rhode., in
Schiller's heroic ballad. as the only hope of a suffering island.
The mighty dragon is again abroad, depopulating our fields,
wasting our pleasant places, poisoning our fountains, menacing
our civilization. To-day he gorges on Liverpool, to-morrow
he riots at Birmingham : as he advances nearer the metropo-
lis, terror and disgust proportionately increase. Already we
hear his bellow, more awful than hyatuas ; already our atmos-
otiose is tainted with the venomous expirations of his malignant
lungs; yet a little while and his incendiary crest will flame on.
our horizon, and we shall mark the horrors of his insatiable
jaws, and the scaly volume of his atrocious tail!"
A Runnymedian fact :
" In a Peel, a Stanley, a Wellington, and a Lyndhurst,
the people of England recognise their fitting leaders."
Another Runnvinedian tact for the consideration of
the Reformers of England and Scotland, and the
Members of the Irish Association :
" There is hot a man in Britain who at the bottom of his
heart is nni proud of our empire, and who does not despise
itaheettfz maysiocorrupt r racecor who menaceitsioee
ntrigrity. However
of
England will
never long submit to s Milesian master."
t and dare
machinate,t o
the
pe
Runnyinecle's fourth description of O'Connell :
" Who is this man whose name is ever on your lips ?—who is
this O'Connell ? He is the feed advocate of the Irish priest-
hood; he is the hired instrument of the Papacy. That is his
precise position. Your enemies, that wretched anti-national
faction who wish to retain povror, or creep into place, by
clinging to th,e. skirts of this foreign rebel, taunt those who
would expose cos destructive arts, and unmask the purpose of
his desperate principles, with the wretched scoff, that pwe may
make hint of importance by our notice. He cannot be of
more importance than lie is. Demoralised in character, dess
perate in fortunes, infinitely over-estimated in talents, he is
the most powerful individual in the world, because he'is en-
trusted with the delegated In •►-fl
uence of the greatest power in
existence.
"fhis man, O'Connell, is the hired instrument of the Pa.
pacy ; as such, his mission is to destroy your Protssstant So-
ciety, and, as such, he is a more terrible enemy to Enand
than Napoleon, with all his inspiration. Yoisr empire land
your liberties are in more danger at this moment, than when.
the army of invasion was encamped at Boulogne.
" The hired writers would persuade you that he is a great
man. He has not a single quality of a great man.
"Heis as little a great orator as a great gen. He has not
a single quality of a great orator, except a good voloo• defy his creatures to produce a single passage from any speech
he ever delivered illumined by a single flash of genius, or
tinctured with the slightest evidence of taste, or thought, or
study. Learning, he has none ; little reading. His style in.
speaking, as in writing, is ragged, bald, halting, disjointed.,
He has no wit.
o Of his moral character it %might be enough to say, that he
is a systematic liar and a br_lgarly cheat, a swindler, and a
Poltroon. But of O'Conr.ell you can even say more. His
public and his private life are equally profligate; he has tom-
mitted every crime that does not require courage : the man
who plunder the peasant can also starve his child.
" With what enthusiastic cheers did they not greet the
"winged words with which you assailed the anti-national enemy,
when you rose in the House like a young eagle, and dashed
back his treason in the baffled countenancvs-of ht e priestlyde-
legate 1"
Thus O'Connell is first " an awful shade," rising-
behind the chair of the Lord President. Then from a
shade he becomes Eblis. Next he
is a crocodile
t, towering above all, and resting on a lurid shrine;!"
the said shrine being bedewed wrth blood, and encir-
cled with flame I Odd *le
position for a crococh .
Again, he appears as.a dragon, inflaming the lic.riaon
with his horrid crest ; gobbling up cities, an d doing a
world of other mischief besides. 'At last the. erudite
Ben discovers that the " awful shade," Eblis," the
" towering crocodile," and the " mightlr dragon," is