The Sun.
London, England, 1841-10-02 00:00:00

PUBL/C OPINION.

The Morning Chronicle thus comments on a remark
let fall by the Duke of Wellington in the House of
Lords :—" The Duke of Wellington made this monstrous
assertion last night in the House of Lords:—' That dis-
tress prevailed in some parts of the country was a fact
which he deeply lamented, but there certainly was no dis-
tress arising from want of food Would the Duke of
Wellington be a little more explicit, and inform us re-
specting the nature of the distress that does exist ? If it
be not from the want of food, what want causes it ?
Must we come to the plundering of bakers' shops and
butchers' stalls before the Duke will admit that the
people are distressed by the want of food ? Ah
if he had ever been in the condition of one
of the many adventurers who have come up to
London without a penny in their pockets, and have
wandered in its streets wearied and hungry, he would
have understood the meaning of starving in the midst
of plenty, and might have been enabled to comprehend
that even in a country where millions of quarters of
wheat are pouring into the markets, there may be thou-
sands literally distressed from want of food, and as
badly off as if a grim famine desolated the land. No
wonder that after such a declaration we find the
Duke stating that he quite willingly takes his
share of the responsibility of advising her Ma-
jesty to prorogue Parliament. With his cam-
paigning notions he cannot conceive of a deficiencY
of food unless Mark-lane be closed, Smithfield barri-
cadoed, Covent-garden burned down, and people in thou-
' sands parading the streets shouting Bread ! bread !' "
The Duke's bluff; decided remark that there is no dis-
tress arising from want of food, reminds us of his equally
dogmatic assertion in 1830, that the people did not want
the Reform Bill, but were quite satisfied with the re-
presentation as it then existed. If the people be not
distressed for want of food, what is it that they are dis-
tressed for ? Not for luxuries, surely, fur these are
things unknown to the vast bulk.of the labouring classes;
and which, therefore, having never possessed, they can-
not miss. Alas, it is hunger—hunger in its severest
form—that distresses them, and which will ere long en-
gender a fierce desperation that will make the Tories
rue the hour they ever treated their sufferings with in-
difference.

The Advertiser, in discussing the question of Tory re-
action, makes the following remarks :—" It was the
gradual approximation of Whirr policy to the Tory prin-
ciples of action, that brought Lord Melbourne's Govern-
ment into public disfavour, and ultimately drove them
from office. In this fact there is little for the Tories to
triumph in. Had there been any re-action in the public
mind in favour of Toryism, or, as the phrase now goes,
in favour of Conservatism, the Whig tenure of office
had become secure enough, seeing that the Whig Govern-
ment bad been gradually assimilating itself in its course
of action to the maxims of Conservative policy.
For some considerable time the Whig Cabinet had
been, to all intents and purposes, a Conservative
Cabinet. We speak not now of the bubble-budget,
because that came too late to rescue them from their
perilous position—and the very fact of such a Cabinet
being broken up, by the-almost universal judgment of
the public, affords demonstrative "evidence that Con-
-1 servative principles had been making no progress in
public favour. One of the great evils resulting from
this course. of events is, as already intimated, to be found
in the apparent complacency with which the Tory party
is just now almost universally regarded."—lt is not with
" complacency" that the. Tory party are now regarded
by the people; but a lingering hope—which, by-the-lye,
is dailing becoming fainter—has been for some weeks
entertained that, profiting by past experience, they would
avoid many of the errors into which, as Tories, they
used to be constantly falling, and_ evince a disposition
for vigorous and beneficent legislation. But the hope is
idle ; Tories they are still, and Tories they will remain,
to the end of the chapter.
The Herald observes as follows on the recent news
from America :—" The discussion in the House of As-
sembly is doubtless favourable to the contibuance of peace
—but the refusal of Mr. Webster to join his colleagues in
resigning office under President Tyler is still more fa-
vourable to that desirable object. Mr. Webster remains
in power solely, for the purpose of maintaining that
view of the relations between this country and the United
States, which he so well expressed in his instructions
to Mr. Crittenden, the late Attorney-General. He
could give no higher proof of his patriotism than
by so doing, for the conduct of Mr. Tyler to his late
Administration in reference to the Bank Bill amply pro-
voked the resignation of the entire Cabinet. While,
then, there seems no probability that the British Crown
will be exempted from the indignity of being arraigned
for felony in the person of its subject before a Court and
Jury of the State of New York, we may feel secure that,
whatever be the result of that trial, Mr. MiLeod will be
handed over to the British authorities uninjured in per-
son, except by long and unjust incarceration in an Ame-
rican prison.
The Post puts forth the following observations on the
subject of the political influence of the daily press :
" Half a dozen of the newspapers in London have more
effect upon the public mind, in regard to the most im-
portant matters, than all the reviews in the world ; and
even the speeches of public men make their impression
rather through the criticisms of the daily journalists
upon them than by their own direct influence. In
this busy age the mere circumstance of their length,
in comparison with the more ' swift and senten-
tious' notices of the journalists, causes even very im-
portant speeches to be less attended to than the • lead-
ing articles' at which the Quarterly writer so idly
sneers. This we say without being at all so proud of
newspapers, or so convinced of their great utility as some
persons seem to be. It may be that the world
would get on quite as well if newspapers did not indulge
in constant criticism, and, consequently, in frequent
misrepresentation, concerning public men and public
r measures. Perhaps, if they merely told the news, as of
old, and left political criticism to occasional pamphlets
and to monthly or quarterly miscellanies, the public
might be more at peace, and be more accustomed to deli-
berate thoughtfulness upon political subjects. But that
cannot be. Daily criticism upon public affairs has be-
come by habit a necessary of life, and no set of men
existing have so much to do with forming and furnishing
the thoughts of ether men—and, so far as temporal in-
terests are concerned, upon the most important subjects
too—as the writers in the daily Journals."

The Brighton Herald states, in reference to Lord
Shrewsbury's pamphlet on the Corn•laws--" We do not
and cannot grow food enough for our own consumption.
A portion of it must be brought from abroad, or our
people must perish. To lay a tax, therefore, on this food
is cruel and most unjust. A wise Government, like that
of Rome, always endeavoured to make food cheap—to
keep filled, at all risks, the bellies of the people ; for of
all rebellions, as Lord Bacon said, that of the belly is the
worst ; but the object of the isolated and haughty Bri-
tish Aristocracy is to make food dear, but for which, in
the end, they will have to pay."
The Dublin Evening Post says :—" The demand for
new taxes, whilst the manufacturers of Great Britain are
vainly struggling againt foreign competition, and a
commercial system founded upon monopoly, is, after all,
the only intelligible mode of appealing to the Tory and
Lord-loving people of England. As observed by Lord
Palmerston, in his masterly exposition of the past and
present conduct of the Tories, on Monday night, the elec-
' tors who had borne them triumphantly into office will
now begin to discover that they have paid much too
dearly for their whistle."
The Best Briton comments as follows on Sir Robert
Peel's demand for time:—" lie must have time,—time to
render himself strong enough to turn round upon the
Richmonds, the Buckingbams, the Knatchbulls, whose
support he has been compelled to court,—time to enable
him to throw them aside, which he is well aware he must
do before he can enter with any hope of succcess upon
the revision of our commercial system,—time to enable
him to form a Government united in principle, instead
of the present heterogenous materials with which he is
surrounded."
The Leicester Mercury makes the following remark
on the present distresses of the people :—" The ' repre-
sentatives of the people '—oh I bitter irony I—are to
spend their days in partridge-shooting, and their nights
in revelry ; while thousands of those for whose good
they are professedly elected, are wandering from sun-
rise to sun-set, vainly seeking food ; and lying down in
their miserable huts, to sleep, if they can sleep with
empty stomachs, and mind filled only with despair.
Like the moving deserts, which gradually cover the
fertile land in their vicinityruin and desolation are
overwhelming our commerce ; and where industry
flourishes, the silence of death reigns."