The Sun.
London, England, 1841-06-23 00:00:00

MORNING EDITION.

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

rrost THE DAILY PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
CHRONICLE.—The House df Commons which has
ieclared itself in favour of new taxes and monopoly will
This day be prorogued by her Majesty, in order forth-
with to be sent about its business ; and to the hands of
the constituent bodies will be confided the cause of the
Queen and the people. No friend of his country can
look unconcernedly, or without anxious feelings, upon so
momentous a conflict. It is not the truth or falsehood
of anti-monopoly principles that is at issue ; or the
prevalence of those principles wherever popular intel-
ligence exists. Being true, they must eventually
prevail, and their connection with national pros-
perity is a fact which no voting can falsify. But
their timely application to our own country, is at stake.
In no other way can the already commencing decline
of our commercial prosperity be arrested. And yet that
application is contested by men who can neither deny
the truth of the principles, nor the urgency of the oc-
casion. In London, we have Mr. Alderman Pirie, a
candidate for the opportunity of voting against the
policy for the adoption of which he lately petitioned ;
tad his co-petitioner, Mr. Horsley Palmer, actively
upporting him in a similar spirit of antagonism to-
Intrds his own avowed convictions. Such is the politi-
.7el morality for which we are indebted to Tory partisan-
ship. The faction preserves its skulking tactics to the
last, and goes to the poll only as an universal negation,
nopin,g thereby to catch the support of all sorts of ob-
jectors, however incompatible the grounds of their hos-
tility to the Ministerial policy, or of their discontent
-with Ministers. In this negative character consists its
' strength. It reckons both upon those who object to the
persons now in office, though approving their measures ;
and those whose hostility is only to their measures and
not to their persons • and it cultivates with unceasing
diligence the wide field of misrepresentation which is
left open by this systematic indefiniteness. But the
electors must be reminded that they cannot restrict the
effect of their votes to the simple negation of what they
deem objectionable. There is no such thing, for in-
stance, as a vote which shall only tell against the New
Tour-law. The elector who hates it ever so much, if he
poll on that exclusive principle, may be polling in favour
of bread-tax, of ruined manufactures, of military coer-
cion. Every voter should sufficiently mitigate the fer-
roar of his objectiveness to ask himself what he is r:estes
to vote for. The positive results are much ino.ze im-
portant than the negative.
TIMES.—On more occasions than one we have assured
the country that the Whigs, though resorting to a clisso-
lation as their last deseerate appeal to the wheel of for-
tune, entertain, -eeverthele'ss, a sere presentiment of their
own defeat. ',if this fact we have furnished, very re-
cently, several decisive proofs. When, for instance, they
pettishly f.ang up the Alain istration of Justice Bill, sim-
ply because the House of Coin:nous refused to allow its
provisions to come into operation till the month of Octo-
ber, we clearly demonstrated, that as such a postpone-
ment had no other effect than to prevent the Whigs from
immediately securing a high legal appointment for Sir
John Campbell, their sudden abandonment of that measure
afforded indisputable evidence that they did not expect to
be in a condition, four months hence-to confer upon Sir
John the professional promotion which they had reason-
ably promised him. Subsequent occurrences, as we
shall now show, place this fact beyond the possibility of
a doubt. The Learned Attorney-General having neither
succeeded in obtaining his expected preferment, nor
taken the usual steps for securing his re-election at
Edinburgh, found himself in that very embarrassing
' predicament which the Scotch humorously desig-
nate " between the Deil and the deep sea." Half
. endowed with the Stratheden Peerage, barren in
every thing except a hopeful succession, and yet pos-
sessing neither the permanent means of supporting
it, nor even the certainty of preserving his Parlia-
mentary position as an indispensable ladder to better
prospects, Sir John is understood to have discovered
that the question between himself and the Deil had be-
come a very serious one. Words ran high. Here was
a laborious servant of the Whigs who, for the last
five years, had fagged for them night and day. His
right of advancement had been repeatedly foregone
by him at their own earnest entreaty. Extraordi-
nary bad luck had at length overtaken them. For-
saken by all their more respectable friends, one after
another—forsaken by the public press—forsaken by
their own hack Parliament—forsaken, indeed, by
nearly the whole kingdom—nay, forsaken by every
influential patty that could afford their old de-
pendents the slightest change of a retiring compe-
tence—what, in the name of mischief, was to be done ?
The expected appointment under the Administration of
Justice Bill, which had prevented Sir John from solicit-
ing his re-election for Auld Reekie (the Deil's peculiar
domain), having provokingly failed, a wistful eye was
turned from Edinburgh to Dublin, and a dead set was
made at the great seal of Ireland, now dangling from
the fob, of Lord Plunket's slippered pantaloons. The
election in the north was at hand. Not a moment's delay
could be brooked. The necessary badgering was prac-
tised upon Lord Melbourne forthwith. A refusal could
not be thought of. Off went an official letter to Lord
Plunket demanding his immediate resignation in the
civilest possible way,
POST.—Whatever may be suspected of jobbing or of
trickery in the. other changes, all the rest sink into in-
significance in comparison with the gigantic job of
forcing •.;ne Lord Chancellor of Ireland out of office in
order to make an opportunity for giving to Sir John
C•empbell a'legal right to a pension of 4,0001. a year for
Ike remainder of his life. All the accounts from Ireland,
the newspapers of all shades of Liberalism and of all
shades of Conservatism, concur in the assertion that
the resignation of the Irish seals by Lord Plunket
was not a voluntary act ; that his Lordship was
literally dragooned and insulted into retirement.
And why was this ? Surely not because his Lord-
ship had suddenly become incapable of holding the seals
during the few weeks that are to elapse before it will be
finally determined whether the present Ministers of the
Crown shall remain in office. No ! Lord Plunket was
goaded into the reluctant act of resignation, because
Ministers knew that this question was already virtually
determined—because they knew that if the resignation
of the Noble Lord were postponed, it would never take
place for their advantage—and because they wished for
an opportunity of giving a legal title to a pension of
4,000 L a year to one of their own partisans. We are
• told by the Morning Chronicle that there is an under-
standing in virtue of which Sir John Campbell is not to
have the pension of 4,0001. a-year on retiring from the
office of Lord Chancellor of Ireland, from which Lord
Plunket is just turned out to make room for him. We
attach very little value to the " understanding" of which
the Chronicle speaks. Will not Sir John Campbell ac-
quire a right to a retiring pension from the moment the
seals are in his hand ? And does our Contemporary
believg that the " understanding" of " plain John Camp-
bell" is of that kind that renderis his relinquishment of
a legal right to 4,0001. a-year in any degree probable'?
The Globe, in announcing. the fact of Lord Plunket's re-
tirement, which it intimates ought to have been a
little earlier, says that " Sir John Campbell, the At-
torney-General, is to lig his Lordship's succes-
sor, and wilt be elevated to the Peerage previous to his
receiving the seals of office," but makes no allusion what-
ever to the relinquishment of the retiring pension. The
Globe is certainly in this instance the better informed, or
the more prudent of the two Ministerial journals. The
job and the cruelty, therefore, stand confessed. Lord
Plunket has been insulted, and coerced to resign, for the
undisguised purpose of putting 4,000/. a year of the
country's money into the pocket of Sit John Campbell
for the remainder of his life.
CHRONICLE.—The Tory Lords hare succeeded in
defeating the Criminal Justice Bill. They have deo
dared plainly enough, that whatever job any one of
them may fix upon as the price of his consent to useful
legislation must be conceded, for that they are reckless
of mischief, and will do all in their power to revenge
the disappointment of any of their creatures whose bribe
has been refused to him. The Criminal Justice Bill was
brought in for the purpose of enabling large towns to
build gaols where they were wanted, and to obviate the
' consequences of that sapient decision of the Court of
Queen's Bench, that a borough which has a gaol of its
own may send its prisoners to be confined in the county
prison, but that a borough which has no gaol may
not. These provisions, which constituted the whole
• Bill as at first framed, gassed both Houses with
very little discussion, showing that there was nothing
in them whiCh was not generally recognised as use-
ful and desirable. In fact the passing ;.of this mea-
sure was looked for with the greatest anxiety in many
very important towns, and the loss of it will be felt with
proportionate disappointment and anger. It occurred,
however, to certain parties who had been recently de-
feated in an attempt to dispute the validity of the char-
ters of incorporation granted to the towns of Manches-
ter, Birmingham, and Bolton, that they might otherwise
attain their ends, if their friends in the Senate would in-
sist upon their claims being recognised as the condition
of this Bill being allowed to pass into a law. The
Attorney-General, who had charge of the Bill, protested
against the addition of these compensation clauses (as
they were galled), which, in fact, might have been tacked
with as muck propriety to any other Bill of the Session.
However, the jobbers at length succeeded in sending
up the Bill to the House of Lords, with the addition
of clauses securing certain annuities to the Coro-
ners of Warwick and Lancashire, and to the clerk of
Peace of Warwick. When these anomalous excres-
cencesevere noticed there, the observation was made that
there were other parties as well entitled to compensation
as those whose cases were there provided for, and Lat
length an arrangement was made that the progress of
this Bill should be suspended, until another opportunity
was given to the House of Commons for reconsidering
those other claims. It is important to observe that
the Lords were very well aware at this stage that
they could not themselves meddle with the compen-
sation clauses, for that such a course, according 'to
the established usages of Parliament, would infallibly oc-
casion the loss of the Bill. Accordingly, another Bill.
was broqght into the Commons for compensating the
Clerk of the Peace for Lancashire, who held a patent
office in reversion before the granting of the Manchester
charter, and in the course of that Bill through the Com-
mons, the clerks to the justices of Birmingham were
• Jaded to the swelling list of annuitants. One only re-
relined unprovided for, the clerk to the justices at
Manchester, and it may be thought that not much
eeuld he said for his claim, since, upon its being
ought forward on this second occasion, Sir Robert
I' see and Lord Stanley were iOund voting with
e Government, that " really this was too bad." Ac-
eel-dangly, the second Bill (known in the House as
e a Lancaster Clerk of the Peace Bill) was sent up
the Lords, omitting the Manchester Justices' clerk.
4,, Wilton, however, was more easily eer4igmedhthauf
isenti46?-tanley or obert and he determined..t at
aone
noCuiotym,mtohnes would' not consent to ve Me
House of Lords shouldgid ri
of benefit of the Criminal Justiceepßi;
s blue e..:. which he first ahem to •
oas the purp9s • P d this
surPose
was
vbegantorey.bs7firjoccurP°Binrzd"' tZier-e-eesa?lutsteltt,rh. wehi7wcre malicious.,elanchesitieer
Irer
This he barely carried
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