The Sun.
London, England, 1841-09-13 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

NRO3I TPE DAILY PAPERS OF SATURDAY
GLOBE.—The Times takes twenty years as the pro-
bable duration of the Conservative Ministry, while we
should be sorry to give much more than twenty weeks'
purchase to the present holders of office for the whole of
their prospective salaries. We are greatly puzzled to know
the data upon which our Contemporary has come to the
result he has announced; for if he had only fairly followed
the rules of Cocker —if he had taken the new Cabinet as
a given number—if he had divided it, as it is doomed
to be divided, by Ireland and the Corn-laws--if
he had multiplied by other embarrassments, added
universal distrust, and subtracted national confidence—
if he had remembered that while some twenty or thirty
.go into place, there are necessarily about eight or nine
times that number remaining over—he would, we
think, by adopting all these arithmetical rules, come
to the general result that twenty weeks is much more
likely than twenty years to be the extent of existence
enjoyed by the Conservative Government. But though,
like the witch in the fairy tale, we utter a fated
prediction over the birth of the Tory Cabinet, we
will atone for our malice by foretelling to the newly-
born Opposition a career of speedy success and perma-
nent prosperity. It is amusing to observe the perti-
nacity with which the would-be-ministerial and hope-
to-be-official organs of the press are proclaiming
the perfect unanimity of the Tory party, which is said
to be in as compact a condition as any " bundle of
sticks" within the dominions of her Majesty. We
do not think it necessary to revert to the incipient
differences that have already begun to show them-
selves in Conservative quarters. We do not mean to
pat on the back either of the litigant parties, in whom
we are happy to observe the commencement of a
large developement of the organ of combativeness,
which we trust, for the good of the nation, will ulti-
mately lead to the same extraordinary result as that
which attended the quarrel of the two Kilkenny cats,
where the devouring of one by the other is said to have
been quite reciprocal. The Irish disagreement among
the Tories is only the beginning of the end—it is the
first jarring note of the discord that is about to ensue,
and we shall watch its progress with but trifling interest,
because we foresee the result almost with certainty.
STANDARD.—AIbeit not much accustomed to any
community of feeling with the Whig-Radical party, we
must at the moment sympathise with the resentment pro-
voked by Sir Robert Peel's taciturnity as to his proposed
financial arrangements. It would be the most convenient
thing in the world for us, who raust•write upon some topic
six days of the week, to have questions of so much interest
as the arrangement necessarily involves to pull to pieces
or to recompose
.according to fancy, and to anticipate
their fate in Parliament. As it is, the Whig-Radical
journals have a decided advintage over us : they have a
Ministry to abuse. For us, our game has been run down—
the slain vermin affords no more sport. "Execution has
been done upon Cawdor," and " we war not with the
dead." Doubtless we have before us those two pro-
mising topics, the Corn-laws and the wrongs of the
O'Connellites—topics that seem to be now as little
capable of exhaustion as they were 25 years ago,
when Mr. Moore pleasantly and prophetically sung of
" Eternal Corn and Catholics ;" thus proving his double
title to the name of Yates. But the themes that never
end are not always the " themes that never tire." We
and our readers are threatened with enough of " Corn
and Catholics" for the rest of our lives, and we may all
like a little rest from them for the remaining five days
of the recess. We say that " Corn and Catholics" are
to haunt us for the rest of our lives, and we say it
upon the evidence of experience. Twelve years ago " the
Catholic question" was, we were told, set at rest for
ever, and here we have it at the end of the twelve
years as fresh and green as in its infancy at the end
of the last century. Mr. O'Connell would have a trope
upon the last epithet. We invite his attention to it.
If, then, the Catholic question has for twelve years sur-
vived the time when, if it had been a decent and reason-
able sort of Catholic question, it ought to have " parted
in peace," why may not the Corn question manifestla
like perverse vivaciousness ? Analogy tells us that if the
Corn-laws were absolutely repealed in 1841, we must still
expect "it Corn question " in 1853 : it may be in the
shape of a proposed penalty upon the growth of wheat, or
a bounty upon the import of foreign grain, or perhaps
a disfranchisement of the agricultural classes, for
which, indeed, their condition of universal pauperism,
after 12 years, or much less, of a free corn trade, will
afford a very sufficient reason. The corn question and
the Catholic question come of a family too long-lived for
any of the existing generation to hope to survive them—
they are the children of perverse rapacity and factious
discontent ; the parents are all but immortal, and it is to
be feared that such will prove the progeny.
COURlER.—Numerous and vast were the difficulties
which the overheated imagination of faction had con-
jured up, as the unavoidable accompaniments of Sir
Robert Peel's accession to power ; but of all, the
chief and greatest was Ireland. " What can
Sir Robert Peel do with Ireland" was the ques-
tion with which Whig-Radicals of every class de-
lighted to puzzle, if not affright their opponents.
" Displace the Whigs—rob Ireland of so precious a trea-
sure as she esteems the Whig Government to be, and
you will first agonise her with grief and then
convulse her with rebellion." Beware of Ireland, was
their constant cry; she requires a strictly impartial
Government, as the condition of her allegiance to the
British Crown—and that you, surrounded as you are
with red hot Orangemen, cannot offer or guarantee her.
Well, like all the other vast difficulties, that presented
by Ireland is no sooner approached than it is found to
have dwindled down into the merest insignificance ; Ire-
land presents to a Conservative Administration no
peculiar danger or difficulty whatever. Well, Ireland
shares the fate of the rest of the empire. Thursday last
saw the final extinction of her darling Whig Govern-
ment ; and yet as we learn from our Irish Contempora-
ries, she continues as geen and as gay and her people
as blithesome, and loyal as ever. The procession which con-
ducted Earl Fortescue to the grave of his Vice-regal autho-
rity is described to us as a most melancholy one in every
sense of the term ; the mourners were lamentably few,
the mere hangers-on about Dublin Castle, but their
grief was unaffectedly profound. No more job-appoint-
ments—no more showering of places of emolument and
trust on hungry Whig Barristers, to the exclusion of the
worth and eminence of the profession—no more lip-
denunciation of repeal and soothing rewards for re-
peelers. Was not this sufficient to convulse Ireland
from the Giant's Causeway to Cape Clear ? and yet
despite all these incentives to grief and avenge-
ment she seems wonderfully placid and tranquil. One
thing we may, therefore, safely predicate—there will be
no rebellion in Ireland this time. A heavy blow and great
discouragement that to the prophets of the Whig press,
as to the leaders of the threatened opposition. Ireland,
it now appears certain, as far as the opponents of his
Government are concerned, has ceased to be a formidable
difficulty in Sir Robert Peel's path ; nay, their tone
has recently been greatly modified ; they no longer
speak of his Government in the furious accents of de-
fiance—and such are his Irish appointments, that even
Mr. O'Connell himself, with all his ingenuity and all
his unscrupulousness, can scarcely find cause to quarrel
with them. The moment we were assured of Earl de
Grey's appointment to the Viceroyship, and of Lord
Eliot's to the Secretaryship, the confidence we before
felt, that a Conservative Government had nothing to fear
as regarded Ireland, was strengthened into conviction.