The Sun.
London, England, 1841-01-21 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS

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FROM THE DAILY PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
(From the Morning Chronicle.)
The Tories are as deficient in blushes as in most
other charms, else, instead of voluntc ering daily crite-
cams upon the Repeal agitation, the slightest reference
to that topic would damask their checks. The blush
has been called the color vertutis, which accounts for
its having no place amongst the beauties of Toryism.
The 'Repeal is their ow n especial question : they
al0:11) are responsible for the mooting of it, and for
wieetever interest it has excited in any part of Ire-
ta.nd. If its favourable reception has been anything
but wry cordial, or very gen ril, the merit is not
theirs. Had the Tories been in power, what is now
but a murmur would have long since been a mighty
roar, If th re is a breeze under Lotd Ebrington,
whet a huneean: it %you d have blown had some
'Very viceroy filled his place! What impudence it
h$ in the Tories to taunt the Whigs with an agitation
which has been rendered powerless and hurtless ex-
clusively through the popularlty of a Whig Adini-
nistration, and the respect which it has earned for
the Psritish sceptre ! A Government founded upon
principles of justice and protection despises the shocks
which, under one of an opposite character, would con-
vulse and disjoint the kingdom. Let an administration
'ec me into office upon the principle of treating Irishmen
as the inferiors of Englishmen, and curtailing the feev
rights and liberties that Irishmen enjoy, than indeed
will Repeal be an alarming question, and the voice of
the agitator be echoed by the nation. The Tories,
wit'a Lord Stanley's Bid in their hands, and actually
U'.enaeing Ireland with the manifold proscriptions and
iniquities of that nefarious measure, presume to charge
the Whigs with the Repeal movement. The parallel
for such effrontery is the fugitive pick-pocket, bellow-
ing " Stop thief !" Why, had the Tory chiefs held a
solemn synod to deliberate upon the most effectual mode
of driving the people of Ireland into the adoption of a
course of desperation, could they have struck upon a
better plan than the commencement of an attack upon
the elective franchise, led by the most malignant and
pertinacious enemy of Irish liberty and the Irish name ?
t' The blood will follow, where the knife is driven ;
The flesh will quiver, when the pincers tear."
We do not justify the tactics of opposing Lord Stanley
by raising a cry against the Union ; on the contrary,
the more violent the assailant, the greater the expedi-
ency of conducting the public defence coolly, and com-
bining as much popular strength as possible in resist-
ance to aggression. Mr. O'Connell's prevailing error,
as it appears to us, has been the notion that furious at-
tacks ought to be furiously repelled, and every frantic
Tory demonstration met by one equally frantic on the
part of his outraged countrymen. Now, our notion
is, that the more of demoniac hostility the Tories
exhibit in their Irish policy, the more should so-
briety and discretion characterise the public oppo-
sition. Let the struggle be one of violence and pas-
so3 upon one side, and calm resolution and princi-
ple upon the other, and reason and experience forbid us
to doubt for a moment upon which side will be the
victory. But the question is, which is the party
answerable for this Repeal agitation, the extravagance
of which we thus condemn, and the mischiefs of which
we have so often pointed out? Who, but the authors
of all evils, and all calamities, discords, and distubances,
through the length and breadth of the empire, but es-
pecially in Ireland, the country of their peculiar hate,
the mark of their uncontrollable animosity ? When the
Tories reprobate the Repealers, we reply that the Re-
peal agitation is but an index to the extent of Tory
outrage. That such a question has been agitated at all
is their workmanship, while the fact that, having been
agitated, it has made such little way with the people,is the
praise of the party in power, who are so preposterously and
impudently upbraided with having raised and encouraged
it. But the Tories ace not merely the real authors
and originals of the extravagant designs which they
vainly labour to fasten upon those who not only disap-
prove of them in principle, but have discountenanced
them in practice ; the Tories are the only party in the
country against whom the Repealers could have the
slightest chance of making head. The Liberals have
once already overpowered a Repeal agitation (and one
too, of Lord Stanley's production, his Lordship being
then a Tory statesman in Whig colours and a Whig
Cabinet) ; but we never have read or heard of a Tory
Ministry extinguishing a national flame, except by
throwing into it the object of desire. In doing so they
have violated every principle of policy and honour
without a scruple. In doing so, they have sacrificed,
without hesitation, the vastest and most sacred inter-
ests. Not even the Church itself have they respected,
when its immolation was necessary to suppress
an agitation and maintain a Cabinet. Thus
they put down the Catholic Association ; thus they ex-
tinguished the agitation of the Catholic question ; thus
they subdued Zr. O'Connell, and thus only could they
subdue him again. Is the Act of Union dearer to
them than the Established Chureli ? Yet, holding the
latter to be the holiest interest and the noblest institu-
tion, and holding also its safety to be incompatible with
the emancipation of the Catholics, they nevertheless
conceded that emancipation, and thereby sacrificed
that holiest interest and that noblest institution, prov-
ing by such conduct both their perfidy and their
cowardice, and acknowledging themselves the beaten
slaves of an agitation with which they had neither
the honesty to sympathize nor the courage to grapple.
And this is the party which would snatch the reins
of Government out of Whig hands—to resist Mr.
O'Connell and Repeal ! They resist Mr. O'Connell
and Repeal'. Probably as they resisted Mr. O'Connell
and emancipation. No, no ! we want other, better,
and stouter defenders both of the Church and the
Union. A just Government is the only one that can
successfully resist improper demands. Judging by
analogy, the Tories would be as easily frightened out
of the Repeal of the Union as they were out of the
Repeal of the Penal Laws. Tyranny is ever cowardly ;
and, besides, we know that the official Tories would
not only repeal the union between England and Ireland,
but the union between heaven and earth to keep them-
selves an hour longer in place and pay.
(From the Morning Post.)
We understand that preparations are making in
many populous places—the town of Leeds being the
most active in the work—for carrying on a general and
systematised " agitation," with the avowed
.object of
altering the present Constitution of Parliament. The
first point to be striven for is the extension of the elec-
tive franchise. What we have to apprehend in this
matter is a kind of Chartism engrafted upon O'Con-
nellism—the principles of democracy, but without the
open and undisguised declaration of them which English
democrats have hitherto preferred. Revolution is to be
sought for by a continual process of torment and dis-
quiet—by a persevering system of disturbance within
the verge of the law. We are of opinion that this at.
tempt will fail, because it is opposed to the tas:e and
habits of the English nation. We will not patiently
elbmit in England to this Irish plan of perpetual irritating
disturbance, so opposite to the sense of peace and
security which is congenial to England. A good
deal may be done, perhaps, to annoy us through the
agency of the large amount of Irish population now set-
tled in our manufacturing towns, but, so far as the as-
sistance of English sentiment is necessary to the scheme
it will not prosper. The national habit of English Pro-
testants is to state boldly what they want, to strike
boldly for it when the desire arises to a thorough cor.-
viction that they ought to have it, and so to settle the
question one way or the other. They cannot bear a
smouldering conspiracy which lasts for year after year,
until it grows into a national habit of half violence, half
treachery. This is the Irish Romanist method—an
odious and detestable method of political action, which
may Heaven avert from the public proceedings of Eng-
lishmen ! It were not well, however, that statesmen
should shut their eyes to the fact that among large bo-
dies of the English working people there exists a feeling
of strong discontent with the present distribution of
the elective franchise. Nine years ago the late
Mr. Coleridge foresaw this, as the probable effect
of the changes contemplated by the Reform Bill
I am afraid," he said, " that the Conservative party
see but one half of the truth. The mere extension of
the franchise is not the evil ; I should be glad to see it
greatly extended—there is no harm in that per se ; the
mischief is that the franchise is nominally extended,
but to such classes and in such a manner, that a prac-
tical disfranchisement of all above, and discontending
of all below, a favoured class arc the unavoidable re-
sults." This prophecy has been fulfilled by the event
in almost every place where the Reform Act has had
any practical effect at all. We actually find a far
greater degree of discontent among the masses, on
account of the state of the representation, since the
grand " reform" was enacted, than was ever known
to exist before. They thought that " reform" was
to do something for them, and they shouted for it
accordingly. But they now perceive that they were
duped, and that they helped to make a revolution,
from the real or supposed benefits of which they
have been excluded. We think they have been wronged
—thitt they have been misled and cheated ; but we
wish they would bear in mind who they are who have 1
misled and cheated them. Surely it is their part, as
rational men, to recollect that the Conservatives had
no shire in this delusion. If the Conservatives have
not been " liberal " iu extending the franchise, they
have at all events been honest. They have practised
no trickery upon the working people. They have not
flattered crowds into the belief that the common multi-
tude ought to influence or control the Government of
the country, and then taken advantage of the assistance
of these crowds to make a revolution which gave every
thing to themselves, and nothing to the multitude. This
was the conduct of the Whig-Radical managers and
tricksters—of those persons who are now Ministers, or
supporters of Ministers, and who still maintain their po-
sition by other jobs, and manceuvres, and dexterities, of
which honest English statesmen would be ashamed.
Whatever, then, the working classes may have to com-
plain of, they should remember that the Conservatives
are guiltless towards them, in comparison with the pre-
sent Government party, who, for its own advantage, did
most certainly cheat them in a very base fashion. But
the Conservatives oppose the present claims of the

working people—the people without any fixed property
—to such an extension of the elective franchise as will
reach them. They do, but they are prepared to show
that, having regard to justice and a reasonable distribu-
tion of power among the various classes of the State, they
cannot do otherwise. If the working people would but
reflect upon the circumstances of their condition—upon
their limited opportunities of political knowledge—
upon the occupation of their time on the daily tasks
of procuring subsistence—upon the complicated and
important interests which exist separate from them, they
must surely come to the conclusion that they ought not
to have a preponderating and overwhelming amount of
political power in the country. They cannot but per-
ceive that they are not equal to such responsibility.
And yet, looking to the numerical amount of their
class, it is certain that the extension of the elective
franchise to them would give them this overwhelming
power—that it would be, as Mr. Coleridge says, a
practical disfranchisement of all above them. e
think we are not paying them too great a compliment
in supposing that this injustice cannot be their ob-
ject. They cannot deliberately wish to engross every-
thing, and to make themselves the exclusive managers
over interests which they cannot ualyibly. under-
stand. It may be urged that, thougro give them
this preponderance would be unjust, still they have a
right to some share in the distribi:tion of the fran-
chise. We certainly should agree to this if it could be
shown that the possession of the franchise in a due pro-
portion to their class would do them any good. But
they have never made any such modified claim to the
franchise as could be granted without up,etting alto-
gether the balance of power imong different orders
of society. When they do dify their claims the
argument with respect to the must assume a dif-
ferent shape, and lead, perhaps, to a different con-
clusion. But no claim founded upon the abstract
assumption that the elective franchise is a valu-
able possession can be evidently a just one. To
some the franchise would undoubtedly be a mis-
chief. They, therefore, who would have their claims
listened to as just and reasonable should try
to show what good to themselves and to the country
would be likely to arise from the possession of the pri-
vilege to vote for Members of Parliament. Let us do
the working people the justice to say that in respect of
moral and intellectual qualification we certainly regard
them as far better entitled to votes for Members of
Parliament than the " ten pound rent" class in our
large cities and towns. These, taking them as a class,
are the worst set of Englishmen in existence—the
least honest, the least generous, the most sordid, the
most self-indulgent, the most irreligious. It is not
among the working people that we find the base and
sordid cry for foreign bread at foreign prices. The
working people would rather pay a little more for their
loaves than see thousands of their countrymen who
work upon the land of England turned adrift because
corn could be got cheaper from Poland or Hungary.
No, it is the grasping, greedy creatures who pick up
money here and there by a sort of half-labour, half-
gambling—who care not a doit for anything on earth
but their own gain, and the grossness in which it will
enable them to indulge—these are the creatures who
run after Corn-law repeal agitators, and who long to
spend Ices money upon bread, that they may spend
more money upon gin. Happily the influence of this
class is but of limited extent. To whatever extent it
goes, however, it is mischievous and degrading.
( From the Morning Advertiser.)

" Nothing is settled," so saith the Times, and, in most
audacious defiance of facts, proceeds to support its as-
sertion by the following process :—" Nothing is settled.
Instead of a little war's having already produced
great results,' the great opium war against China has
produced no results at all—not a shilling of indemnity—
not an approach to a treaty—not even a promise to ne-
gotiate worth the least reliance. And what have we
really and definitely accomplished in the east of Europe?
What is the actual state of affairs between Mehemet
Ali and the Sultan? Whore is still the army of Ibra-
him Pacha ? How far has he proceeded on his march
towards Egypt ? Has the Turkish fleet arrived at
Constantinople, or is it at Alexandria still ? Has the
prolongation of the contest there—for in Syria the fight-
ing is not yet over—not yet:produced anu change of pos-
rule, or return to ill humour in the french Govern-
ment ? Admiral Duperre has at this moment in Tou-
lon 18 sail of the line, well manned, which our ships (as
is complained of by scores of British officers in the
Mediterranean) are not, nor in a safe condition for
conflict with a skilful European enemy. Is our quar-
rel with the United States made up, or the slightest
approximation towards it? Ask Mr. Van Buren, who
hopes, as every American President has hoped, and
every British Minister, for so many years ; but not a
single point is yet decided, nor a single atom of Ameri-
can tenacity relaxed, nor a single ground of hope esta-
blished (though many of apprehension) which did not
exist ten years ago. Then, in fact, there is nothing
settled anywhere ; east, west, north, south, there is
nothing settled. Yet out of such nothingness a Queen's
speech must be vamped up, and everything like an
amendment sneered at ! Will the Speech allude to the
state of Ireland, and the repeal agitation too ? We
guess not." We are altogether at a loss to decide whe-
ther astonishment should be excited more by the shame-
less audacity of these assertions, or by the shrewd in-
genuity whereby such a number of fallacies are im.
plied and compressed within so small a compass.
" Nothing it settled !" " Rome was not built in a
day ;" and had the Times existed during the progress
and establishment of Rome's mighty empire, it tnight
at any time have exclaimed, " nothing is settled,"
with a disregard to facts as shameless as that with
which it now asserts that in fact, " there is nothing
settled " any where ; east, west, worth, and south,
" there is nothing settled." Perhaps not. The
phraseology is dubious. Mutation is the law of being,
and therefore it may at any time be said that " nothing
is settled ;" and we rejoice in the fact, for in pro-
gression consists improvement, and in the enunciation
of the opinion that " nothing is settled," Toryism or
the conservatism of settled abuses, may recognise the
announcement of its ultimate and inevitable ex-
tinction. So far we exult in the opinion which the
Times promulgates in apprehension ; but on its
insidious and base application of the opinion, we
pronounce an unqualified denial and denunciation. It
is curious and amusing to remark the manner in which
the Times exhibits its own enormous inconsistencies.
In the extract just quoted, for instance, it refers to the
collision with China not as a " little war," but as " the
great opium war," though but a few days since it treated
it as undeserving any public interest, more than might
be excited by a party of policeman in pursuit of some
runaway thieves. It is not " the great opium war,"
however, which it now endeavours to depreciate, but
its results. " The great opium war against China,"
saith the Time:, "has produced no results at all."
This is great news for Sir James Graham. Everything
demanded by Admiral Elliot has been acceded to by the
Celestial Emperor, indemnity promised, inquiry granted
into the conduct of Commissioner Lin, who was the
agent of the outrage on British subjects and property,
and Commissioners appointed to prepare a treaty for
the regulation of future commercial intercourse. Yet
the Times asserts that the " great opium war" of yes-
terday—the thief-catching expedition of last week—
" has had no results at all." Similar opinions arc pro-
nounced upon the affairs of the Sultan stud Mehemet
Ali the inefficiency of the British fleet in the Medi-
terranean'. ! and the mistake committed by Van Buren
in supposing the boundary question in progress of satis-
factory adjustment !!! To all these statements we
shall say to all those, if there be any, not familiar with
the infamous incansistences and fallacies of the Times
—Read and wonder !

(From the Times.)
" Like master," says the proverb, " like man." As
is Mr. O'Connell, such are the Whigs who live by
him. He plays for rent, and they for salary. His in-
terests are most assisted by a cry against the Union ;
theirs by a yell against the honest registration of voters.
He has had his repeal gatherings among the wild men
of the mountain and bog ; they have assembled their
Dublin audience in the Hawkins-street Theatre, to
damn Lord Stanley and his fair play, and pledge aro
other benefit to " her Majesty's servants." Through
box, pit, and gallery, the general cry was, " Silence
that dreadful Bill." It has already defeated the Minis-
ters, disunited their friends, and endangered the very te-
nure of office. Since last July it has lain asleep ; but in a
few days more it wakes from its own slumber to chase
away theirs. By whatever means, fair or foul, by what-
ever agency, Irish or English, it must be crushed. So
vowed and roared the Reformers who filled the Dublin
playhouse on Friday last. The requisition for Oar
meeting is described as bearing the signatures of a great
many Noblemen ; but the only one who could be in-
duced to make his personal appearance was the Earl
of Charlemont, the Chairman. The leading resolution,
condemnatory of Lord Stanley's measure, is worded in
a strain well contrived to raise among ignorant people
the notion, that the Noble Lord has been proposing
and still meditates, some horrible enormity, such
as,
flogging for rent in arrear : for these Reformers are
not content to signify disapprobation—that would be
far too feeble. No ; they say, " We do hereby express
our deep abhorrence of the measure proposed in the
last Session of Parliament by Lord Stanley." They
vote the lic.form Bill a failure as to the wants of Ire-
land, they desire an extension of franchise, and they
call upon English and Irish to join for protecting the
elector, " in the legitimate exercise of his rights, from
the attacks of those who now scok to destroy it." We
will shortly remind our readers what is that " exercise
of right" which Lord Stanley is seeking to destroy, and
what is that measure of his which these sensitive people
so " deeply abhor." At present, an Irish voter, once
registered, stands upon the register not merely, as in
England, for one year, but for eight. In the counties a
very large proportion of the voters claim the franchise
in respect of a holding for lives. Many of these lives, of
course, must drop between one octennial registration
and
another ; and whenever the freehold has there-
by expired, common justice would seem to demand that
the right of voting should cease with it. In like man-
ner we should humbly presume that the death of the
voter himself ought to discontinue the operation of his
franchise, since it is difficult for common understandings

to apprehend on what principle the family of a free- 1
holder who has died in the first year of his registration
should be permitted to leave his certificate of registry
in operation for seven other years, available at every
election occurring during that period through the
agency of some stranger suborned to personate the
deceased. To Lord Stanley and the Conservatives it
appeared that the exercise of the freeholder's tight of
voting after the freehold interests had expired, and the
exercise of the living man's right of voting by his perso-
nator after his death, were proceedings savouring very
strongly of fraud. But to the Reformers, who take a
liberal view of morals as well as of politics, all these
things seemed quite just and reasonable ; and when
Lord Stanley proposed to prevent such practices by
requiring the Irishman to be registered annually, as the
Englishman is, they came to the deliberate conclusion
that the culpable party was not the voter who committed
the fraud, but Lord Stanley, who attempted to prevent
it. But there was, and still is, another fruitful source
of injustice. If a voter, seeking to be registered, be
improperly rejected he is allowed to appeal ; and the
question, where it is one of fact, is settled by a
Jury, or where it is one of law, by a Judge of As-
s:zo. But if a hundred, or a thousand voters, be im-
properly admitted, be it by mistake, or be it by the
political partialities of the registering barrister, there
is no appeal either on the fact or on the law ; so that
the genuine constituency may be swamped, and the
rightful candidate defrauded of his return without the
possibility of redress. To Lord Stanley and the Con-
servatives it appeared that what was fair on the one
side was fair on the other ; and that if the ascer-
tainment of the parties justly entitled to vote was
the real object of the registration, the appeal
against the admission of bad votes was as ne-
cessary as the appeal against the rejection of good
ones. But the Reformers, on the contrary, thought
that justice should be not only blind but lopsided ; and
they adjudged that the Bill of Lord Stanley, which
proposed to give " the appeal both ways," was a wicked
infraction of the undoubted right of sham voters to be
retained as real ones. In these two enactments, of an-
nual registration and of reciprocal appeal, consisted
the whole principle of Lord Stanley's Bill.
(From the Globe.)

In consistency with our invariable rule, to afford all
parties who conceive themselves injured by any state-
ment which has appeared in our columns, an opportunity
of explaining or denyinc, the whole, or any part, of such
statement, we insert a letter from Lord Strangford's so-
licitors on the article which appeared in the columns of
the Globe on Friday last, with the copy of an opinion
of his Lordship's Counsel on the decision of the Court.
In support of our remarks on the republication of
the Times' article, and our allusion to the criminal
proceedings instituted unsuccessfully by Lord Strang-
ford against another journal for some severe comments
on the case, we are bound to state that the letter and
opinion of counsel leave the matter just where it was
before. The Court requires those who seek the pro-
tection of its extraordinary powers included in a crimi-
nal information for libel, to deny upon affidavit the
imputations upon their reputation of which they
complain. is the " technical rule " with
which Lord Strangford failed to comply. There was
no shrinking from responsibility on the part of the
defendant ; no pretence that the publication did not
impute falsehood to Lord Strangford. This was
unequivocally and boldly avowed. Lord Strangford
could not, as his counsel states, " frame any affidavit
which should operate as a denial of every charge con-
tained in the limes' article ;" and the Court left his
Lordship to the ordinary remedies, either by indictment,
or action for scan. snag., of both of which the Noble
Lord declined to avail himself. If Lord Strangford or
his solicitors should be of opinion that the publication
of the observations of the Court on dismissing the rule
will at all benefit his Lordship's reputation, we will
readily give them a place in our columns. We abstain
from doing so until such request be made, because we
do not think that any such benefit to his Lordship
would accrue from their publication.