The Sun.
London, England, 1841-07-10 00:00:00

MORN IleiG SUN.

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

nine( THE DAILY PAPERS OF THURSDAY.
CHRONICLE. --The anger of the Times at the "perverse
peeition assured by the Conservative nun-intrus.onists at
Aberdeeen and elsewhere, shows pretty plainly how the wind
blows. The triumphant elections of the Lord Advocate and
of Mr. Fox Meule are the cause of this ebullition of disap-
pointment ; and the expected defeat of the Tory candidate,
who opposes Mr. Bannerman in Aberdeen, has made the bile
of our contemporary overflow. Th 3 virulent attack on Mr.
Bannerman, spread over a goodly column and a half of a leader,
in the Times to-day, will be best answered by the poll, which
will show a majority in Mr. Bannermen's favour of nearly two
to one against his antagonist. The whole article is a tissue of
falsehoods and misconceptions, too well known in the northern
city to change a single vote of the constituency. We shall
give one example only of these blunders, leaving our readers
to apply the maxim, ex uno disce omnes. The Time.,
in its elaborate list of Mr. Bivanerman's enor-
mities, says that the Conservatives well remember
"his memorable malversation in attempting to misapply cer-
tain academical funds to the erection or repair of some bridge
or another." The truth is as diametrically the reverse of this
as it is possible for fact and falsehood to be. The measure
thus ignorantly alluded to by the Times was a Bill brought
into Parliament by the Corporation of the City of Aberdeen,
for applying a portion of a large accumulated fund, arising
out of an annual amount, originally bequeathed in the reign
of Robert the Bruce, for the support and maintenance of the
famous " Brig o' Balgonie," on the Don, to the erection of
schools within the City of Aberdeen. Thus, instead of apply-
• ing academic funds to build bridges, Mr. Bannerman merely
proposed to apply surplus funds-left for supporting a particular
bridge, to academic purposes ; the very converse of the charge
brought against him. The measure was taken up as a party
question by the Conservatives, and ultimately defeated by the
votes of two or three Tories, brought down by the whip to
vote against a Bill, with the merits of which they were
totally unacquainted.
TIMES.—The language of the democratic party at the
present crisis is admirably characteristic of their natural pro-
pensities and real motives. They hail their approaching mi-
gration to the benches of the Opposition with a sort of frantic
boast, that it will give them more opportunities of mischief,
and a field for bolder enterprise, than they had when the Go-
vernment of the nation was in their hands. If, indeed, the
cause of these Liberal politicians is to be strengthened in Oppo-
sition by all the measures they neglected to carry, and all the
pledges they failed to fulfil, when they were in office,
their points of attack will be as numerous as the points
of the compass. But it will not be forgotten by the
nation, that these abuses (if such they be) were quite as
open to correction when the power of correcting them was
in the hands of the very men who are now impatient to
exercise . their acutenenss in detecting and their eloquence
in denouncing them. It appears to be a law in Whig
optics, that the imperfections of our constitution, and the
breaches which time has made in the structure of the common-
wealth, become visible as the spectator recedes from close
proximity to the object. - It has already been discovered (such
as the distance which already intervenes between the Ministers
• and the centre of administration) that the whole trading and
manufacturing interests of the country are on the verge of
ruin : and the schemes of these mighty architects for propping
up the ancient fabric increase in boldness in proportion as they
acquire a conviction that they will not be called upon to exe-
cute their projects, and that they may therefore indulge in
suggesting experiments which will only bring down the roof
on the heads of their opponents. The language of Liberal
candidates on the hustings and of the Liberal organs of the
press, which are so overloaded with explosive matter that they
miss their aim and recoil on the desperadoes who discharge
them, amounts in tact to an admission, that as a
Government the Melbourne Cabinet have failed to perform all
those duties which they now declare to be essential to the pub-
lic welfare. But having so failed when they had a majority in
the House of Commons, having likewise tailed with a mino-
rity in that House, they proceed to assure their supporters that
in Opposition they will be quite irresistible. That they will
be formidable no one doubts; for men are always formidable when
they throw off all restraint. As long as they were in office,
the nature of their Ministerial functions, and the necessity of
propitiating that honourable and patriotic. Opposition which
lent its support to the Government in various emergencies,
forced them to keep up some reserve. The heads 'of -the party
filling several of the higheit offices of state, were not disposed
to risk their characters or their fortunes in order to gratify all
the passions of their democratic tools. But in Opposition, the
more cautious members of the present Cabinet will instantly
be distanced and contumeliously disavowed by their late ad-
herents.
A D VERTlSER.—Whatever may be the result of the elec-
tions yet remaining to be decided, it is neer evident that in the
next House of Commons parties must be so equally balanced
as to render it impossible for any Administration to carry on
the affairs of the country with efficiency and satisfaction for
any length of time, and, therefore, to make it highly probable
tthh
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o f the
British empire be again appealed to for their decision on the
conduct of their Representatives. It is, in fact, now all but cer-
tain that, ere long, we shall have another general election. Let
, the constituencies, therefore, at once prepare to redeem their
representation from the false and faithless hands to which,
in too many instances, they have lately confided it,
Let every man qualified for the suffrage lose no time in seeing
votes in counties must be made before the 20th instant, and in
boroughs all poor.r:tes and assessed taxes must be paid before
the same day. Register, Reformers ! Register, as you value
your freedom and all that is dear to you as citizens. No time
as to be lost. If your names be not on the registries, and your
taxes paid hefore the 20th instant, you shall be, for the ensuing
twelve months no better than slaves, without the slightest
means of giving legislative expression to any opinion on the in-
stitutions established for your government, or upon the
changes, good or bad, which may be proposed in them. Re-
gister, therefore, as you value, not only your political
rights, but as you value your daily bread. Taken by
surprise, unprepared for the good which was offered
an their acceptance, and uncertain of the firmness
end good faith of those proposing it, the borough constitu-
encies, in many instances, allowed their representation to be
thrested from them by factious monopolists with most apa-
coetic indifference. But little excuse can be offered for such
?induct under any circumstances ; but if, after having expe-
,eneed such infliction, they suffer the opportunity to pass
without preparing for its removal, they deserve their fate, and
e unworthy of the fostering care which, whatever may have
been its conduct in other respects, the present Ministry has
evinced for their interests in the proposed modifications of the
prohibitory duties.
POST.—The most violent, nay, truculent and rabid, of all
the electioneering agents in Ireland, are the Romish ecclesias-
tics. What would be said in this kingdom if a Bishop of the
Church were, in virtue of his ecclesiastical authority, to sum-
mon his clergy around him for the purpose of taking measures
against the return of a Whig or a Radical candidate ? What
would be said in this kingdom if the parochial clergy exhibited
themselves in every place of political meeting, stamping with
passion, and roaring to the ci owd, with violent vociferation of
' inflammatory language which no gentleman would use under
any circumstances, and which even the excitement of election.
times could scarcely excuse among the coarsest of the people ?
Is it net certain that such behavior would be assailed with the
must earnest reproaches by every Ministerialist, and yet this
is actually the daily conduct pursued at this very time by 1
the Ministerial adherents in Ireland. It is to such cone
duct they will be indebted for lowering the majority
which the English returns present against the Ministers.
Without the aids derived from such proceedings in Ireland,
the Whig-Radical party would be utterly powerless and insig-
nificant in Parliamentary divisions. These are truths—plain,
practical truths—which we take leave to .submit to the good
sense and calm consideration of the public. We ask whether
any reasonable man can consider it just or fair, or likely to
lead to good, that representatives who owe their returns to
the means we have described, exercised upon a wild, ignorant,
and semi-savage population. should be relied upon by the
leaders of a party in the Imperial House of Commons, as equi-
valent to the support of English county representatives?
Is it not monstrous that an Administration should
have so long subsisted, although distrusted by a large
majority of Englisa representatives, and by a yet
larger majority of the Upper House of Parliament,
merely upon the strength of the support of those
whom the horridly irreligious violence of the Ro-
manist ecclesiastics of Ireland had sent into the House of
Commons? And is it not even more monstrous, and more
offensive, that when Great Britain still more decidedly con-
demns the Whig-Radical Administration, so as to render its
continu.nce in office impossible, the party which Great Britain
prefers as more honest and more capable, is to be threatened
(ley after day by renewals of this violence, which is the opprc-
brium of the United Kingdom ? We appeal to the reasonable
portion of the public, and entreat them to be no longer im-
posed upon by the rant and nonsense of these. Irish demago-
gues, but to look at their mode of proceeding calmly and con-
siderately. If, after such fair examination they can continue
to bear the dictatorial influence from Ireland, and refrain from
taking decisive steps for its overthrow, we have mistaken the
nature of the British mind.
HEte ALD.— Ihe perversity of the great agricultural con-
stituencies of the country is quite remarkable ! We cannot im
gine what the oracular authorities who do the o corn"
phi a-
loso-
, phy in the Morning Chronicle, and the Globe, will say to such
marked and all but universal contempt for their theories, and
doctrines, and spin-text disquisitions on the subject. We have
this day to record—following up the list we communicated pester-
day to the public-17 additional triumphs for the cause of those
Conservative principles which hold that the repeal of the
Corn-laws, to the extent of removing the present system of
protective duties, would be fraught with immediate ruin to
our landed interest, and would ultimately peril the existence
of this empire as a leading State among the paramount
i
powers of Europe, by rendering her dependent, n times of
scarcity or political misunderstandings, on foreign countries for
the supplies required by her consumption Not Acland, the.
leaguer-man; nor Sidney (Smith), the secretary or delegate
of the " anti"-association ; nor Mr. Commissioner Place—(we
are afraid our memory does not do justice to their respective
titles of official dignity), but this can be of no consequence
beyond the walls of the several provincial theatres of their
elocution ( !)--not any of these could have toiled more
indefatigably, by day and by night. or delivered them-
selves of more solemnly concocted philippics against
the landed gentry, and the prime aristocracy. of Great
Britain—(saving, only, the cases of a few individuals
among that class who amuse themselves by coun-
tenancing their visionary notions),—than the Globe and the
Chronicle have done ever since the first Ministerial defeats of
last session. In their columns the vituperative personalities,
—the dogmatic tone,—the calm assumption to themselves of
all the concentrated knowledge to he acquired on the " corn',
and the " sugar" questions,—and against their opponents of
ignorance in these matters the most absolute and profound :
which formed at once the most amusing and yet the most im-
pertinent features in the strolling exhibitions of the itinerant
mountebanks ;—have lost nothing of their coarseness, but the
whole of their fun. Day after day, for months past, the public
have been bored by the imeetuous blundering of the morn-
ing sage, or the flippant perpetrations of the evening lee-
turer. And yet—to see how men may labour in vain !
To mark how wastefully good indignation may be thrown
away, and the tnost sublime denunciations of statistical phi •
loeophy be thundered. unregarded—en a worthless, besotted,
benighted, irreclaimable landed gentry, whom all the artillery
played twice every day at intervals at ten hours, from these
batteries of exclusive enlightenment, cannot arouse from
their doomed slumbers! It is really provoking for the Globe ! ,
It is really disheartening for the Chronicle ! Nevertheless, we I
must leave them to settle their quarrel with the impracticable
objects of their never-sleeping solicitude. Our duty on the
present occasion is, merely, to demonstrate that the county
constituencies persist in repudiating their doctrines, declining I
their advice, laughing at their lucubrations, and returning
"monopolists," as the Anti-Corn-law abolition men are termed
—with a steady undisturbed perseverance absolutely insulting
to both of our Contemporaries
G LOBE—We have not space to-day to dissect Lord Stan-
ley's speech, and expose its sophisms. The Noble Lord
has formed himself quite on the Tamworth model, as
regards the Corn-law question. We can only, at present,
point out the pervading self-contradiction of his speech,
whic'a will be found to run through all the attacks of
;.N E‘N ~ 14r4_, tanlssy's party on the present Ministers.
and
yjEtle Lord proceeds alternately on the contrary
in insistent assumptions, that their measures
4:, are to louver prices greatly, and: that they are not to
411 ~ e ; ,_
.. :owes these
'greatly. He attempts to accumulate all the
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,oiris_both these results on their heads—to terrify
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