The Sun.
London, England, 1841-01-13 00:00:00

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LONDON:
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, IF4I.

The Reform Act, the necessity of which the
Times has not yet denied, by abolishing a number
of boroughs before held by the aristocracy, places
the Ministers of this country, let them be who they
will, in a state of dependence on the upper and
middle classes. That Act, incomplete as it was,
and little as it has answered the expectations of the
public, and extended, as it must be, to embrace
the great mass of the disfranchised, in order to re-
store public contentment, was the consequence of
previous concessions to the people. It was granted
to their demands, arising from a conviction that the
then existing system was no longer tenable. The
successive increase of the democratic, and the
successive decay of the aristocratic power, which '
compelled the several successive concessions al-
luded to, and will yet compel the still further con-
cessions now demanded by Reformers, leads to the
conclusion that the progress which they indicate is
natural and necessary.
Sir ROBERT PEEL was one of the foremost
Ministers to do homage to this necessity. His
Jury law, his ameliorations of the criminal code, his
very reluctant repeal of the Test Act, his still
more reluctant repeal of the Catholic Penal law,
were forced from him by public opinion. He and
his party resisted them as long as possible. They
were not able to have their own way as Ministers)

they were compelled against their will to yield
to the public sentiment ; -and yet they
remained in office, they took on themselves the re-
sponsibility of passing those measures. though -they
disapproved of them, and continued for months and
years to gather the sweets of office, though de-
nied, according to the Tory interpretation of the
phrase, the power of governing. They were not
allowed to coerce the governed, the governed co-
erced them. Catholic Emancipation was actuallY
kicked out of them by Mr. O'CONNELL and the
Catholic Association, as Lord Jourr RussELL
and the Dissenters kicked out of them the repeal of
the Test Act. Yet those doughty, blustering heroes,
those divine-right men, those angels, as they fancy
themselves, appointed to govern and keep in
order, by the help of their endowed priesthood, this
puissant nation, condescended to continue to hold
office till they were kicked out by an ultra rump of
Tories, which they afterwards made their head,
going with the Whigs. So greedy of office, how-
ever, were they while they were denied power, that
it is understood that they would have carried some
modified Reform Bill when Lord GREY resigned
in 1832, had the nation been willing to allow the
blustering cowards again to assume, with patronage
and pay, the nominal management of affairs.

Such being a brief but correct outline of
the conduct of Tories in office—and it ought
not to be forgotten that in 1835, when Sir
ROBERT PEEL'S friends thrust him in once more,
he adopted Whig measures, and attempted 10
gain the support of the Dissenters by guileful
promises—such being the conduct of the Tories se
Ministers, is it seemly in one of their organs to re-
proach the present Ministers with a willing
deference to public opinion, and with a supposed
determination, whenever it may -be strongly pro-
nounced by the constituencies, without the suppud
of which they cannot carry on the Government, 1°
yield to it whether in office or out of office? Our
readers cannot have forgotten the extract of a letter
from a member of the League, which we inserted
in our Journal on Saturday. The Times makes
that letter the subject of the remarks which we have
copied into another part of The Sun, and which 01
first read very formidably. Stripped, however, of the
plumage of rhetoric, the facts which this article states
against Ministers are, first, that they do not nom
as the Tories did, give way to public opinion ; anclP
secondly, that they will give way, as the Tories did'
when that opinion is so strongly pronounced as to
break up, or endanger the breaking up of the Minis.,
try. Their conduct might be justified, if necessari'
by a Tory precedent ; but we maintain that it
strictly according to the principles by which eYerl
Ministry must henceforth be governed. Tbei
have done nothing to satisfy the Reformers, because
they can do nothing. The Reformers are net
united in demanding any one reform, and the
Lords are against all reforms. They hate amend"
ment. But when the Reformers are so united and
so powerful as to give an impulse to public opinion i°
any one direction, the Whig Ministers who acknoW'
ledge the necessity of following public opinionl
unlike the Tories, who deny it in principle, 140.
yield to it in practice—will endeavour, either to
office or out of office, to give effect to it. In ell
that we see nothing but consistency, nothing
an honourable attachment to principle. Let the
Walsall election decide that the whole town poe
lation will have none but Corn-law repeaters to Iv
present them, and the Ministers, who main!). ere
ercise the power of the town population, will, to t.
servants of the public, become Corn-law repealels.as
They will do the bidding of the popular will?
they acknowledge its supremacy, and will not, 11
ke
the Tories, humbly obey it, and at the same tite%
hypocritically pretend to form and-chain it.
The Times should have been taught, by its own
experience, to spare such invidious remarks.
did, with others, bully the Tories out of the relates
which they were compelled to give. With other''
very powerful from wealth, still more powerful frr°
prescription, and more powerful than all from the
daring quackery and hypocrisy, by an alliance Otf
the priesthood, calling to their aid the powers,
darkness—with these the Times has for five long Yeah
bullied the Whigs, and bullied them unsueeeer
fully. Dark as it has painted their conduct, lII°,
have not given up their Lichfield House c°11;
pact, they have not yielded to Lord STAOO,
and the bigots, they have not sacrificed O'C°ed
NELL, and, worst of all, they have not profeesvi,
the least inclination to repeal the New POOr'lli.
115
If the Times had been able, consistently with is,
allegiance to its new masters, to bully the giu
terF, in order to get the repeal of the Corn -la
es
it might have been successful. But it now °lot
that the great popular theory of free trade in bre
bto
is to become a living motive for action ; it sees
the
its own situation, binding it hand and foot 10
Tories, precludes it from taking a wholes°
part in the great movement of the town pop61:10
Lion ; it foresees the certainty of a great success
which it cannot participate, and, true to its prille
t
pies of conduct, it :tries beforehand to bullyhf
Ministers from doing what is right. As it 11:,
failed to bully them into repealing the New F°°
law, so it will fail in bullying them from givil'of
their assent to a repeal or modification
the present Corn-law, whenever the tOllll
dag
population shall take up that great V--ttoa
as it deserves to be, and as, apparently, the 10
population are now resolved it shall be taken 11:
A)ready branded as a recreant and a renege
from a noble cause, it is only requisite to eonvin 0
the town population that the Times ha.s been
unsuccessful bully against it, to place that jour.o,
in the proper position to which its wanton aild
chievous inconsistency must ultimately doom jt•

Our " Bath Correspondent " informs us tirr't,:
a meeting held in that city on Monday, at wirlo
a host of the clergy of the Establishment Os
present, they, and the rest of the gentry who b!,
met to dole out charity to the people, were dis
,1
tiuctly and repeatedly told that the people wavtb-,
justice, not charity. As our Correspondent °.dg
serves, this is a new, and it is a most grafif/11,,,-
feature in the character of the populace. It s"
of
that they have acquired the ennobling sentimol,o
self-respect, and they disdain to receive 1)01%4
alms a small part of the wealth which is extort N
from them by law for the behoof of the Pricsls
hood. They begin to discriminate between eil v
brought on by their own improvidence, inflieou od
the hand of nature, or imposed by institutions; I'd
they see that the mass of their sufferings is eaus4
by those who pretend to be their benefactors, a
claim to be their guides and rulers. While they
thus learn to despise the assumption of an igliertiho
clergy they acquire a deeper reverence for

ALMIGHTY.
We are glad that their feelings and opinions ale
g that turn, for it is impossible that 11);..
should continue in their present miserable el° ,
dition, and not trace that to the hand of the °0
`p
pressor, or to their own folly, without learniffig he
ineffaceable lesson of infidelity and impiety.
clergy rave, at their meetings to promote the Chi' d
tian education of the people, about heathenism
ash
infidelity, but they never ask themselves how inu
these states of the popular mind are promoted by
the contrast between their doctrines and their
W Coen.
if
1Y
duct. e have frequently thought that d
had resolved to make the people atheists, theY
they
follow no better course than to attribute
misery which they, and the social institutions

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