The Sun.
London, England, 1841-07-12 00:00:00

EVENING SUN

nose to be more disfiguring. The man, weary of such a
nose, cut it off in disgust, and all then agreed that, ill as
he looked with his nose, he was a hundred times worse
without it. Like this is the case of the Tory party with
Sir Robert Peel for its leader ; it looks marvellously ill-
favoured, but to lop off the peccant feature would not
improve its case, for bad as it is with it, it would be in-
comparably worsewithout it. This much for the conso-
lation of our opponents, whose case, in the very moment
of triumph, with the drawback of a leader odious to
them, is one for compassion. They cannot themselves
be raised to power without raising the man of their dis-
like and distrust ; and they compel the Crown to give
its confidence to one who has not their own.
If Sir Robert Peel, feeling himself both the life and
the hate of his party, begin to be somewhat arrogant in
his language, it is surely not surprising. 1E; ":acent
boast that he laid the foundation of the.
r.,onservative
party is a humble imitation of Canni!..g's vaunt that he
had called the nrw world i Rio existence to redress the
balance of the 'Ad. irilat Sir Robert Peel calls the new
Conservative ?aset.y-", is the old Tory party with the addi-
tion of a few '.at,s. What he describes so pompously as
widening for.ndations, has been no more than makinr,
room for apostacy. Vain boasts of the kind we allude
to cat) only make the opponents of Sir Robert smile,
but they produce a very different impression on his
',arty, who, impatiently brooking his leadership, can
hardly relish his claim to the creation of their political
world. The Americans, in ridicule of the habit of at-
tributing everything to General Jackson during his
Presidency, say, that at an infant school examination,
a child, in answer to the question, " Who killed Abel ?"
promptly replied, " General Jackson." Sir Robert Peel,
in the infant school of Tamworth, is endeavouring to
teach a belief in his exploits in creation, which have as
little foundation in truth as the opinion that General
Jackson was the greatest of generals and the first of
manslayers. The fact is, however, pretty notorious,
that Sir Robert Peel did not invent Toryism, whatever
part he may have had in making it so ashamed of its
name as to take the alias of Conservatism.

TORY CONCORD.
(From the Examiner.)
The Times denies that there is any disunion in the
Tory party, and quotes Sir Robert Peel's assertion—
" That all the rumours which have been circulated
about differences of. opinion and jealousies are abso-
lutely without 'foundation ; that the party which acts
upon his advice and counsels is a united and compact
party, in which no difference of principle prevails-, as
the course which we ought to pursue."
Let us test the truth of this assertion by applying it
in the very words of the speaker to several great
questions.
Upon the Privilege question did no difference of
opinion prevail in the Tory party as to the course which
they ought to pursue ?
Upon the Canada Bill did no difference of -opinion
prevail in the Tory party as to the course which they
ought to pursue, the Tories in the douse of Commons,
with Sir Robert Peel at their head, having almost una-
nimously supported the Bill, and the Tory Lords, under
the Duke of Wellington, having almost unanimously re-
probated it ?
Upon the China question was there no difference of
opinion in the Tory party as to the course which they
ought to pursue, the Tories in the Lower House having
proposed a vote of censure on the conduct of the Go-
vernment, and the Tory chiefs in the Upper House
having opposed a motion to the same effect proposed b:e
Lord Stanhope ?
Upon the New Poor-law does no difference of o;Pinion
prevail in the Tory party as to the course which they
ought to pursue, half the party condetrinires the measure
as the greatest cruelty and injustice, eshiclithe other half
claim credit for having assisted in pyssing ?
And to come to the great question which now divides
the country, upon the Corn-laws, does no difference of
opinion prevail in the Tory party as to the course
which they ought to pursue, Sir Robert Peel pledging
himself to adhere to the sliding scale, and his followers,
Sir G. Murray, Mr. G. Dawson, and some others, declar-
ing for a fixed duty ? Why, the difference between Sir
Robert Peel and Sir G. -Murray is precisely as wide as
that between him and Lord J. Russell on the Corn-law
question.
As to the confessed difficulty of Sir Robert Peel, the
Government of Ireland, are we to believe that Sir. R.
Peel and Lord Roden have the same views, and that
there is no difference of principle between them ? Has
Sir Robert relapsed to the yellow fever, or have the
Orangemen cast their skins?
One of the first motions in the New Parliament will be
Sir Robert Inglis's proposal of a large grant for Church
Extension. Is Sir Robert Peel in agreement with this
worthy as to the fitness of imposing new burdens on the
Diesenters ?
Upon the question of educs.tion is there no difference
of principle between Sir Robert Peel and some of his
party—the majority we believe we might say ? Did
not the Times !er' its columns to a writer who charged
Sir Robert Peel with irreligious doctrines—with pre-
ferring heathen philosophy to revealed truths—and
classed him with the disciples of a school not accepting
Christian principles.
Sir Robert Peel, so often sneered at for having lacked
a grandfather on earth, was not to be allowed to have a
Father in Heaven, because he had hazarded the liberal
proposition that people were the better for any sort of
knowledge. There was surely some difference of prin-
ciple in the case when the great Tory organ was lending
itself to the publication of arguments to prove that Sir
Robert Peel's doctrines were of infidel origin and ten-
dency.
Indeed, when the Times so coolly denies the existence
of any disunion in the Tory party, we have only to
ask it what, then, has been the justice of the censures
and reproaches it has from time to time addressed to
Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington? Its attacks
were upon no trivial occasions, they were on great ques-
tions, and they either proceeded on wide differences of
principle, or they were very unjust andwanton. The Times,
in pouring out its reproaches, knew what it was about ;
it knew that it uttered the sentiments of a largesection
of the party to which it has devoted itself.
When Mango, in the farce, is asked by his master,
whether he knows of anything amiss going on in the
house, he answers, " A d— deal, Massa, how you beat
me every night !" Sir Robert Peel, if he had the frank-
ness of "flung°, would, instead of denying the discords
in the Tory house, refer to the beatings which he has
had in the Times for every liberal principle that he en-
tertains.
The Morning Chronicle has helped us to another evi-
dence of Tory concord from the pages of the British
Critic, the High-Church organ of the Oxford theolo-
gians, in which publication Sir Robert Peel's character
is thus handled :
"And, as we have said, the man who offers these con-
solations is one whose life, and breath, and health, and
wealth, and very being is the success of his party ; the
least abstract, the least theoretical, the least doctrinary
of all the statesmen of his,day ; one whose pulse beats
with the divisions of the House of Commons, and who
knows by heart the relative numbers on every tussle of
faction for the last quarter, or, perhaps, half a century.
He is a man, who, amiable and respectable as lie is,
plays his part in the great arena with no more largeness
and comprehensiveness of view, no more grandeur and
sacredness of principle, than the most ordinary partisan
in the most local squabble on the most ephemeral in-
terests. Nay, greatness of mind has nothir.g to do with
geographical extent or historical durae.on. A man
may be great on a paving and lighthig dispute, or a
watch and ward committee ; he may he great with his
servants or by himself ; but Sir Robert is small with
nations, petty with a censtitution of ages, and
(we say it sadly and serissesly) unfaithful to the
everlasting Catholic Church. He wishes to know no-
thing beyond the House of Commons. Its resolutions,
passed in heat and speed, under royal or popular domi-
nation, in days of corruption or violence, its chance ma-
orities of ten, two, or one, are his inviolable canons of
legislation, beyond which he dreams not of a principle,
That House of Commons, which the whole Church of
England now, with a unanimity unprecedented in the
history of public opinion, declares that Sir Robert
has himself desecrated, and (what, of course, he thinks
much worse) which he himself believes others have
since immeasurably vulgarised,—that profane and vulgar
House of Commons is his only reality. Every other
thing, or thought to him, is form and shadow. To the
House of Commons he is thormighly harmonised, soul
and body, mind and manner. In vain might we search
through his speeches for splendid theories, large induc-
tions, universal sentiments, great maxims, solemn sanc-
tions, profound arguments, and immutable principles ; or
if one does find them here and there, they are so brought
in as to be the exceptions that prove the rule. From be-
ginning to end his career is one of shifts and expedients.
Neither he, nor any man on earth, can venture to say
what he will do next ; nor can any say what he has
done already, in terms implying intention and con-
sistency. We firmly believe that no half-cunning tool of
a local faction, no jobbing attorney, no town meddler or
corporation factotum, could more degrade civic economy
by his way of administering it, or, in the hour of • rei
verse, when called to account by the adverse party could
.!
more degrade the cause by his mode of Speakine.,.
ano.l-out i
ble sci-
than does the Conservative leader degrade't,' t,
ence of policy. It is I and my party,' thrc.;,lghout ;thost
Members who did me the honour to ;rapport me ;'" whets
her Majesty called me to presiO.e in her councils ;' c I
thought best to dissolve '-" thrs. first Session of my Par-
liament ;" such were the opinions 1 then advocated ;'
the long and arduous struggle I have maintained ;" /
-then felt ;" I therefore resolved to abdicate odice the
sentiments which influenced me on that occasion ;." the
difficulties of my position ;" the origin of my family ; '
t the scenes of my youth ;' and so on, through every
'possible variety of egotism. Strike the first person out
of Sir Robert's speech, aye, out of his whole career, and
they become a rope untwisted, a net unknotted
nnnailed and unpinned. We stop, not because wea havehp
mot more to say, for we consider Sir Robert f'eel's eg °-
ttism about as copious a subject as one might wish to' -
Itipon, seeing it pervades his every word and deed, butl rblete-
cause it is odious thus to speak of a man for whom we can-
not help wishing well. We believe him to be akind, an art' i
-
able, and, to some extent, a disinterested and maemani
man. His friends, who have, of course,abundant
o°ll3
portunities of knowing it, say that he is ; and What -L-
-even more, his public conduct, through many a Year of
harass and mortification, betrays searceli- a particle of
malice, jealousy, or revenge. But, alas or a ma
nanimity—for martyrdom to an influential
for ignorance that the whole is greater than a part.
Strip Sir Robert' of his inveterate self, and scatter the
three hundred and odd gentlemen who do him the
honour to support hint; to the four winds, and then
perhaps he may become not os.
But as it is, he is just the - ...ty a good but a great man.
word to advise a sod s ver y last perso. nin the whole
fish, social, and p- Ay of operatives to relinquish sel-
wholly to the questions, and devote themselves
This is f „el ensures of science.
cism. T' .ercible writing, and very penetrating criti-
bert is the lowest measure ever yet taken of Sir Ro-
r - s'eel and it is also the truest. There is not a word
stating to Sir Robert Peel's qualities that we can deny,
stud though we thought that we understood his character
!with all its mediocrities pretty well before we read this
esnalysis of it, we confess that it has taught us to regard
"tt With diminished respect. What, then, is the state of
..party whose organs lower their chief in the opinion
'or his . opponents? Adversaries may fairly be sus-
pected of some prejudice against ;Sir Robert Peel, of some
Disparaging bias ; but such prejudice, if it exist, takes a
lesson of contempt from the instructions of the ..ablest
;writers of his own party. They' quarrel with him, it is
?true, not for the errors of his policy, but for the points
- which reclaim him from bigotry e but in their quarrel
-they tell him home truths as to his qualities, and the cha-
racter of his career, with one foot on sea and one on land.
As the writer in the British Critic says,—" From begin-
ning to end his career is one of shins and expedients.
fs'tetiher ire nor any man living can venture to say what
lie will de nest, nor can al sy one say wl,.at he has done al-
ready, in terms implying intention and consistency."
And this is the man in th .e lead of the party that boasts
of russe33ing; the wealth and' intelligenc aof the country.
The rsinark that nutit occur to every mind is, 'What must
be the condition of a party to -whom this uncertain manor
a':ifis and expedients and shallow plausibilities is indis-
p2usable ? He is at the sam time followed and de-
nounced. He leads with the cry of" stop thief" after
him from his own gang/.
The British Critic observes • upon the egotism of Sir
Robert Peel, and says—" Sti lite the first person out of
Sir Robert's speech, ay, out of. his whole career, and they
---
become a rope untwisted, ane unknotted, a ship un- EXTRAODINARY FEAT IN PLOUGHING.--
nailed and unpinned." This is quite true, but is it not A match against time, originating in a bet cf 20/., between
also true that Sir Robert Peel is the first
person, and two farmers in I
be untwisted, the in:* Lincolnsh
lt ire, took place last week on the Cliff
that without him the rope wou
Farm of Mr. Charles Popplewell, 'of Canwick, Mr. Popple-
(in which the country
ship of Toryism usi,is now caught) unknotted, the w having undertaken to find a man who should, with one
scorn,
.es iailed. and unr.nned ? His
bate,h ;
andc the very
him, but they cannot do without
-e"
0; horses and a
hingee-fuwed he,ploh tarn up two acres
party may pair'
of fa,. Q.
timid. wit ght hours, to satisfaction of two
littleness which impartial him is the littleuw , •
morning, anu
pulps. The plough was started at six o'clock in the
.eomplain, the shifts and eva -
and
evasions
of suits the- cause ; the shiftns
.eafftethrneoojund,gbeesi.,ithe two acres were completed before one in the
which they
dons which save it from
y agrseteodryof
ruin. vithin seven hours, to the perfect satisfaction
being furrows fnr.rOws averaged a depth of seven inches,
Tb French have a
man with a very
Ei-c.::rybodand a half inches- bread on
s
and the share measurer
only 'ix *
that ar.
#ol)c.ssible th"ine,'• Th' Ploughira.a-"x's name was William Prercott.—
a 404 ripivertiser,