The Sun.
London, England, 1841-08-25 00:00:00

think that the Government was justified in saying that there
was a distinct prospect of that war being brought to a satisfac-
tory conclusion. He thought they might look to that, among
other points, to ascertain how far Ministers were able to bring
the affair of that country to a satisfactory conclusion. And,
whilst on this subject, he would venture to express his asto-
nishment that there was not a syllable mentioned about cur
affairs in another quarter of the globe, which it was impossible
to deny at the present moment wore a somewhat threatening
aspect. He did not suppose that the house cr the country
would expect any explicit information from the Noble Lord on
that subject. But where there was a subj ect of foreign policy
which excited more attention, it was strange that neither in
the Address nor in her Majesty's Spec al was there a syllable
about the relations of this country with The United States.
He had no reason to believe that in our relations with that
country the national honour would be compromised. /Ss
no change was made in the circumstances which presented
that threatening aspect. We hail no reason, as it
appeared to him, to congratulate ours' elves on the foreign rela-
tions of the country; and if they 'turned their view home-
ward they would see a general stagr.ation of trade, from what-
ever cause it may have arisen, whirl was so disheartening, and
which the Noble Lord the Secretary for the Colonies, in ad-
dressing his constituents at. London, told them justified
the Government in agitating the country for the purpose of
carrying those great questions.—(" No, no," from Lord John
Russell.) If the Noble I aird referred to one of the earliest
speeches which he pronoun ced on the occasion of the late elec-
tion, he would see that he said that he (Lord John Russell)
had been accused of agitlecing on the subject of the Corn-laws,
but in some questions ag ttation was justified—that the Habeas
Corpus Act was obtaine d by agitation, and that for the same
reason ha was justifie d in the course he had adopted.
—Cries of " Hear, he ar," from the Ministerial benches )
Here, then, they had :a Cabinet Minister giving the weight of
his authority to agitatic :n—(Hear, hear)—and the Government
itself was in close Bihar ce with those who, in one breath, sullied
the name of Sovereign with the grossest and most fawning
adulation, and in the next breath gloated over the prospect of
foreign war, in the hopes of receiving armed assistance from
our enemies.—( Loud cheering.) He thought he bad said
enough to show, that before discussing any of the great ques-
tions affecting the interest:3 of the country, they ought to de-
cide if a Government lying under all these imputations was fit
to be trusted with the ad'iustment of any of these questions.—
( Cheers. ) He felt con.vinced otherwise.--(Cheers.) The
late returns showed than her Majesty's Ministers did not re-
ceive that support from the country which for some years past
they had enjoyed. The: result of those returns had been, ac-
cording to the confession of the Noble Lord himself, to show
that the Government was in a minority in that House, and
therefore it was their duty to assure her Majesty, in unison
with the opinion of their constituents, and in accordance with
theresponsibility imposed upon them by the fact of their being
returned to that House, that neither the House nor the country
had any confidence in her Majesty's Government.—( Loud
Opposition cheers.) Their constituents had sent them there
to express those opinions.—(Cheers.)The country expected,
to use the words of the Right Hon. Baronet, that a new phy-
sician
would be called in.—(Hear, hear.) The Ministers, by
the course they had pursued, had forfeited the confidence of
the nation, and they must give way to those whose senti-
ments and position were more in unison with the sense of the
majority of the country.---(Cheers.). On these grounds, he
called upon the House te adopt a different course from that
which had been recommended by the Hon. Gentleman who
had preceded him, and to return such an answer to her Majes y's
Speech as would be consistent with their responsibilities to
those who had sent them there, and to record on their Journals
that they had come to a decision in unison with the opinions
of those from whom they derived those powers.—( Loud cheers. )
The Hon. Gentleman concluded by moving, as an amendment,
" To leave out all the words after last Parliament, and to insert
words to the following effect:—We beg humbly to represent to
her Majesty that we have observed with great concern that the
public expenditure has of late, for several successive years, ex-
ceeded the annual income, and that we are deeply impressed
with the necessity of adopting measures for remedying those
evils ; that we are deeply sensible of the importance of all
measures affecting the revenue and commerce of the country,
and of deciding on the course to be pursued which should be
most in accordance with the interest and welfare of all classes
of her Majesty's subjects, but that we consider it essential to
the satisfactory result of those deliberations, that her Majesty's
Government should possess the confidence of the House and
the country, and that we respectfully submit to her Majesty
that that confidence is not reposed in the present advisers of
her Majesty—(Cheers)—that we join in the expression of
deep sympathy expressed by her Majesty with those of her
subjects who are now suffeing from distress and want of em-
ployment, and that, in the expression of that sympathy we re-
cognize an additional proof of the tenderness with which her
Majesty regards all classes of her subjects, and that we join
her Majesty in an earnest prayer that our deliberations may he
guided by wisdom, and may conduce to the happiness of her
Majesty's beloved people.—(Loud cheers.)
Lord BRUCE, in seconding the amendment, said it was
with extreme reluctance that he trespassed upon the House,
and that nothing but his duty to his constituents, as the repre-
sentative of a large and increasing commercial town, could have
overcome that reluctance, and he could assure the Hon. Mover
of that amendment, that however wide might be the differences
in the local connections, interests, and position of his (Lord
Bruce's) constituents and those of .the Hon. Gentleman, yet
they all cordially concurred in the' sentiments of the amend-
ment.—( Cheers.) Another reason for his trespassing on the
House was, that as the amendment expressed the sympathy
between the present and the late House of Commons, and was,
in fact, an expressionof a concurrence, in a resolution which
had passed that House, it was unbecoming in him, as a new
Member, to second it—( Cheers)—and he thought that, in the
present peculiar posture of public affairs, it would be
inconsistent , with the dignity of the House, if they were to
discuss any specific propositions whatever until they had ascer-
tained what had been the effect of the late dissolution.—
( Cheers.) He felt that the Government had already given
sufficient reasons for a vote of want of confidence in the Go-
vernment; and, if he wanted any additional reasons, he found
them in the address of the Noble Lord to his constituents. From
the style of that document,—from the manner in which it had
been given to the world, and from the manner in which it had
been received by the supporters of the Government, it was
evident that that document was intended to be no ephemeral
production • and in that address he found a full admission that
by the dissolution of Parliament they had failed in obtaining a
verdict for the Government.—(Cheers.) In ordinary ca;es,
success was no criterion of merit; but if ever there was a
case in which failure might be considered to argue incapacity
and recklessness, it was one in ;which a Minister of the Crown
having lost the confidence of one- House of Commons, should
advise a dissolution, and find the verdict of the House con-
firmed by the country.—(Renewed cheering.) It was to
presume that they had tendered that advice, in the pro-
spect of getting the verdict of the House reversed by the
country ; but when the result of that advice had been an utter
failure, then the tendering such advice must be considered an
additional proof of incapacity.—(Hear, hear.) He was free
to admit that, until the Noble Lord had issued that address, he
had a fair right to say that he had had no means of constitu-
tionally knowing. the opinion of the new House of Commons ;
but the Noble 'Lord had disdained that subterfuge, and with
the courage and manliness for which he (Lord 13ruce) gave
him credit, boldly avowed that the majority was against the
Government. But after that admission he was surprised to
learn that the end of Government influence had not been
shortened, and the stream of honours, dignities, and emolu-
ments rolling forth from the Treasury, had continued as co-
piously as ever.—(Cheers.) Did the Noble Lord say he had
repented of the advice which he had tendered ? Did he say
that he regretted having stirred up society to its foundations,
and raised a conflict of class interest ? Did he say he regretted
that the sufferings of the poor operatives of Holton should
have been aggravated by the general stagnation of trade conse-
quent upon the continued discussion of these abortive mea-
sures?—(Cheers ) Did he resign his trust into the hands of
his Sovereign, and advise her to give it into the hands of those
who possessed the confidence and support of the Hou-e of
Commons? Did he ever, having lost the reality of power, refuse
to retain the semblance of it, and to exercise those functions
of it which are not imperatively required by the necessities of
the State. The Gazette had every day given the lie to such a
supposition.—(Loud cheering.) With a free and undaureed
front the Noble Lord, bearing the censure of one House of
Commons, braved the indignation of a second.—(Cheers. )
Tbere were only one or two points in the amendment to
which he would draw the attention of the House; and first,
with regard to the expenditure. He did not believe that that
increase had been occasioned wholly by foreign expeditions
necessary to defend the honour of the nation. He believed
that by inconsideration and reckless expenditure at home, the
evil had been aggravated; and, as a proof of this, he would
refer to the enormous increase in the miscellaneous estimates.
—(" Hear, hear," from Col. Sibthorp, and a laugh.) He
could not consent to the deficiency in the revenue being
made a stepping-stone for important changes in our commer-
cial system, unless he were convinced of the merit
of those changes.—( Hear, hear.) The object of the
Government in proposing them seemed to be to pre-
vent criticism on their own misconduct by representing
all those who criticised these measures as opponents of free
trade. Many persons at the last election had voted against the
Government because they did not believe they were sincere in
bringing forward these measures; and others, most intelligent
men, had opposed them because they did not believe that the
measures of the Government and those of the free trade policy
were convertible terms, whether they regarded free trade as it
had been regarded by Mr. Huskisson, or by those whom he
might denominate the ultra free traders. For himself he did not
consider that he was at all compromising his free trade opi-
nions by seconding the amendment, and he had always been an
advocate for free trade, based on reciprocity and a due regard
to existing interests, according to the doctrine of Mr. Huskis
son.—( Hear, hear.) A great deal had been said of the benefits
which landlords and capitalists would derive from a repeal of
the Corn-laws, but he wanted to know how the labouring classes
would be benefitted ; and unless it could be shown what was to
become of that section of the labouring classes who would be
deprived of their ordinary and habitual employment by such
an alteration, he for one would never consent to it. It was
quite true hat the landlord might derive' some wivan-
tage from the increased value of his property from the factory
mills that could be erected upon it ; it was equally true the
capitalist might withdraw his capital from a milling concern
and employ it elsewhere ; but the only capital of the labourer
was his skill in his own branch of industry, and it was a
mockery and a fallacy to tell him when you had deprived him
of the resource, that he could find satisfactory compensa-
tion ; and this led him to say that he sympathised, from the
bottom of his heart, with another expression in this amend-
ment, in which he coincided with the Address, namely, that
in the gracious expressicn of her Majesty's sympathy with the
sufferings of those who are in want of employment, they re •
cognised an additional proof of her Majesty s tender regard
for her subjects. He believed that a just regard for the
interests of the labouring classes was the paramount, the most
weighty reason which could be adduced for proceeding warily
in the applicatipn of the doctrines promulgated ; and as he
was upon this subject, he could not help alluding to the
very harsh', to the very severe, to the very unjust terms in
which it had been the fashion to designate those who on
these questions had taken opposite views from those of her
Majesty's Government In a day in which monopolies were
denounced he must be permitted to say that of all mono-
polies the most intolerable and the most odious was, the pre-
tention to a monopoly of public virtue.—(Loud cries of
" Hear, hear," from the Opposition be ) Never to
his mind was that pretension urged with a worse grace than
when it was advanced by those who but an hour ago, but
a little moment ago, might with propriety have been classed
amongst those whose pretensions to monopoly and whose
selfish, and unreasonable, and ungenerous considerations were
now the objects of their reproach. He had, he feared, already
trespassed at too great length ; and as this was his first
appearance, lie could only return his grateful thanks to the
House fur the kind manner in which they had
listened to him ; but there was one subject to which lie begged
permission to refer for two or three minutes.—( Hear, ar. )
He had observed, in the general tenor of the observations which
had been made by the Ministerial portion of the press, and by
the supporters of the Government generally throughout the
country, especially since the result of the elections had been
known—he had observed an attempt at a studied and elaborate
recapitulation of all the possible difficulties and dangers which
the Right Hon. Baronet the Member for Tamworth would
have to encounter, should he, in the present posture of affairs,
be called to administer the destinies of this nation. When he
had read over these statements, containing as they did refe.•
rences to the disordered state of our finances, to dangers
which beset us both at home and abroad, it had always struck
him that the authors of these paragraphs and their abettors
might, indeed, have contemplated most of these circum-
stances with feelings of the deepest and most poignant
self-reproach, and that there were none at le as