The Sun.
London, England, 1841-05-28 00:00:00

• 1111 P, SUN, LONDON, F' R/ MI A

PIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

FROM THE DAILY PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.

CHRONICLE.—The motion of Sir Robert Peel, to be
proposed this evening, is distinguished by the peculiarity of
assuming the facts ors which it professes to be founded. Those
facts are yet in futurity. Of the " measures which tney deem
of essential importance to the public welfare," and which, it
is affirmed, they " do not sufficiently possess the confidence of the
House of Commons to enable them to carry through that House,"
only one has yet been the subject of debate and division. That
one is by no means the most important. It was also one
which involved an extraneous principle, which took the decision
out of the common course. Whether introduced fairly or un -
fairly, honourably or factiously, sincerely or hypocritically.
the anti-slavery principle still was introduced into the deba.e
on the sugar duties, and brought to bear upon the division.
A defeat of this kind has never, of itself, been held to
warrant a Miniaterial resignation. Not for an instant
can it be paralleled with the refusal of the income tax to the
Castlereagh Administration ; or with the defeat of Sir Robert
Peel on the election of the Speaker in 1835. In fact, it is
reverse over which the ground has already closed. Ministers
acquiesced for the time. Instead of resigning they called fur
the annual renewal of the existing sugar duties; and they
' were ostentatiously supported, in so doing, by Sir Robert Peel.
In seconding the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he asked
for those duties, the Opposition leader cut off his own means
' of retreat ispon the ground which he nos endeavours to oc-
' copy. He cannot after that plead the previous division for hi
present purpose. He has barred himself out of the sugar
shop. And what remains? Why, that he thinks Ministers
will be beaten on the timber duties -he thinks they wi 1
be beaten on the amended tariff—and he thinks they
will be beaten on the revision of the Corn-laws.
Such prognostications may be correct, in whole or in part ;
but as yet they are only prognostications. Not even the prog-
nostications of Sir Robert Peel are entitled to be taken as
facts, and to be made the basis of legislative censure and go-
vernmental changes. Decency required that he should wait
the event. At least, let the facts happen first. Let the minis-
terial measures be actually rejected by the House, and not re-
jected merely in Tory anticipation. The secret of this preci-
pitancy is not hard to discover. The confederated Monopolists
dread discussion. We may be told that they know they can
outvote their opponents ; plainly they also know that they can-
not outargue their opponents. The exposure must, if possible,
be averted. And a violent dread of it must be that which re-
sorts to so extraordinary a process ss that of proposine to re-
solve that Ministers have been defeated upon measures which
they have not yet proposed.
TIM E S.—Among the falsehoods and misrepresentations with
which the Government prints attempt to disguise the wicked-
ness of the coup d'etat which Ministers are endeavouring to
perpetrate, none is more barefaced than the assertion that they
are acting in a manner warranted by constitutional precedents.
The period of history to which they have the boldness to appeal
is the year 1783 ; and the person in whose steps the disciples
of Fox and Erskine now pretend to be treading is William
Pitt. We might pause, if we were so disposed, to admire the
singularity of this very novel situation • we might quote
from the speeches of the great oracle of the Whig party,
delivered during the progress of that remarkable strug-
gle to which reference is made. expressions far trans-
cending in severity any censure to which we have
given utterance against Lord Melbourne's conduct. Mr. Fox
denounced the course then pursued by Mr. Pitt as subversive
of liberty, as rash, desperate, and dangerous ; and even went
so far as openly to threaten him with impeachment. If, there-
fore, the present Ministers were really following the ex-
ample of their illustrious 'fory predecessor, they would be
doing what their party have never hesitated to condemn in
others, and what upon their own principles it would be impos-
' sible to defend. But we waive all ad hominy)+, arguments ;we
are as little disposed under existing circumstances, to press the
point of inconsistency or mere poli.isal dishonour against Lord
John Russell and his colleagues, as we should be to urge a
charge of petty larceny against a convicted murderer. We
are contented to give them the full benefit of Mr. Pitt's
precedents, as much as if they had never protested against
them ; we are perfectly prepared to acquit them of doing
violence to the Constitution now, if they can prove
that the events of 1783 furnish any parallel to their
conduct. In 1783, upon the defeat of Mr. Fox's India Bill
in the House of Lords, the King dismissed the Coalition Mi-
nistry of fur. Fox and Lord North, and called Mr. Pitt to
his councils. The House of Commons then sitting, which sup-
ported the coalition by a decisive majority, had been elected in
1780, while Lord North was Minister, and from the first de-
clared against Mr. Pitt, without giving him a trial, or having
had any experience of his policy. Here, then, is at the out-
set a broad distinction between the two eases. The pretent
House of Commons was called together by Lord Melbourne's
own Government, and after supporting him for the space of
four years, has at length been moved by the accumulated mis•
deeds of his Administration to pronounce it unworthy of any
flu ther confidence. Mr. Pitt came into office tinder cir-
cumstances which made a dissolution of the Parliament,
known to be unfriendly to him, an absolute sine qua
non; and accordingly he dissolved it, calculating upon a
decisive majority in his favour in the new House of Commons,
and having no object in view except to carry on the King's
Government conformably to the principles of the Constitution.
The event proved the accuracy of his calculation ; and the
people by an immense majcrity of their representatives ratified
the choice of the. Crown. Lord Mslbourne, like Mr. Pitt, is
placed in a position in which it is necessary for him either to
resign or to dissolve ; but if he di solvs, it will not be fur the
purpose of enabling him to carry on the Government of the
country, or with the slightest expectation of such a result, but
with a design of unpara:leled audacity and wickedness—that of
embarrassing his successors, and converting the Queen's pre-
rogative into an instrument of opposition to her Government.
There is not a man in England who sloes not know that a ge-
neral election will diminish, instead of increasing, the num-
ber of the supporters of the present Ministers in Parliament.
POST.—The Ministerialists seem to be fairly beaten out of
the assumption that the House of Commons places confidence
in the present Government. They boasted of it long enough
after the division which showed that, inclusive of the O'Con-
nell Members, there was a majority of twenty again t a decla-
ration of want of confidence. That division, which took place
sixteen months ago, and not four months, (as a Government
newspaper has the effrontery to affirm), was for a long time
the theme of their self-gratulation. It served their purpose
for the time. But it is now discovered that the House of Com-
mons has had enough of additional experience to make it alter
its opinion of these Ministers. The O'Connell Members will
indeed vote as they did, their political stomachs not being very
nice, so long as the hope of patronage remains But the Bri-
tish majority which always existed against the present Mi-
nistry in the House of Commons, as well as the House of
Lords, is now understood to be so much increased that it
will exceed the combined force of British Whig-
Radicalism and Irish Radical Romanism. The Ali-
Disterialists have lost all hope of obtaining, either
negatively or positively, a declaration of confidence from the
present House of Commons. For this reason they modestly
affirm that such a vote is of no manner of consequence. Much
as they thought of it when they could get it, they are now so
philosophical as to think it of no value, because they cannot get
it. They have the coolness to affirm that Ministers may con-
tinue in office all the same though they have not the confidence
of either House of Parliament! This is the " constitutional
Whiggery" of 1841. This is the doctrine of constitutional law
and policy at which Whig-Radicals have arrived, in the tenth
year of a representative system invented and carried into effect
by themselves! The confidence of the House, they say, may be
one thing, and that of the nation atother ; because it may he,
they assume that it is. Because they are beaten in both
Houses of Parliaments they take it for grsnted that they may
remain in office upon the assumption that the nation is in their
favour. This is a strange sort olconstitutional doctrine.
HERALD.—The Ministerial press have been labouring
heavily during the present crisis to persuade the country that
the Whig Government are fighting the battle of the public at
large against class interests. There is something very ludi-
crous in this. Every whole must be made up of its constituent
parts; and, when every clas', with the exception of one or
two, cry out against a Government scheme, their cry ought
surely to be recognised as a decisive preponderance of public
opinion. With the exception of the manufacturing capitalists
and the Brazilian traffickers at Liverpool, every branch of the
community is alarmed and indignant. Of the latter class, we
may observe, en passant, that they have recorded their own
condemnation in the evidence which they supplied to the im-
port duties committee. They have there stated that they have
cargoes of Brazil sugar at Liverpool in bond actually spoiling
because they cannot introduce it into the market at a profit. It
is no wonder that the Government scheme has agitated and ani-
mated them. The proposed reduction of duty upon Brazil sugar
would instanter put 275. into their pockets for every hundred
weight of their present unsaleable stock. And this accounts
for the repeated meetings at Liverpool. Mammon, all the
world over, is an indefatigable " agitator." But let us consi-
der for a moment the extent and importance of the manufac-
turing capitalists and Brazilian merchants. How is the wel-
fare of the people bound up, with them ? It is not only their
boast, but their practice, that their capital owes no allegiance
to their father-land. They have, by acting upon this selfish
principle, created an almost incalculable amount of human mi-
sery. We are told daily, as an argument is favour of the
Whig commercial Reform, of the dreadful distress amongst
our manufacturing population. " The Lancashire weavers,"
says one of the Whig apologists last night, " being divided
into different classes, the wages obtained by those in employ-
ment vary from 6s. to 12s. per week for.firteen hours' labour
a day. They are compelled to huddle together, two
or three families in a wretched garret, or a dark
and comfortless cellar. They are nearly destitute of fuel
and clothes ; their bedding consists of sacks filled
with straw or shavings; their food is at once deficient in quan-
tity, and consists of the coarest and least nutritive kind." A
Catholic priest at Manchester, the other day (Mr. Hearne),
gave a still more appalling account. He stated that his flock
amounted to twenty thousand, and that more than one -half of
those to whom he administered extreme unction died of star-
vation. " Talk of the ravages of war l" exclaiiiied this pious
gentleman, " it would be better to die by the sword than by
famine." But what has caused this periodical infliction of
human wretchedness ? Mammon. While the foreign markets
give a profit, our manufacturing capitalists seduce the working
classes into their districts, and the moment that the foreign
markets are discovered to be so glutted by their too eager
speculation, they leave the working classes to starve. With a
cold, calculating policy, they suspend the working of a fellow-
creature as they do that of an insensate machine.
GLOBE.—The Times takes the very unnecessary
trouble of trying to prove that the parallel which we
drew 'between the measures of Pitt's government for
the defeat of the Fox and North Coalition, and those
now expected--does not run on all fours. The fact
is, no such strong and questionable course is contem-
plated as that of the Tory King of those days, and
the Tory Saint, or idol, of his choice. No such dag-
gers are as yet drawn between the Crown and the
faithful Commons. It is now no question of turning
out Ministers in whom the House of Commons had
confidence for a young and untried Minister in whom
it had none. It is no question of bringing the
will of the Monarch (rather extra-constitutionally)
to bear, in the Lords, on measures which had
been passed by the Commons. The question is,
whether Ministers in whom the House had confidence
last year,—in whom the House opened the present
session with very sufficient confidence, and very sutli-
cieat reasons for it, in the results of their policy in the
interim--the question is, whether those Minister
have not . that confideuce—and if not, ley not -
Tho votes on the Irish Bills afforded no demon-
strati( rt of d, transfer of the confidence of the Howie
of Common. ,ninon the Whig to the Tory party ;
and the result was Klber a drawn battle between par-
ties than anything else. Whig; voted in Tory ranks, and
Tories assented to Whig speeches: 11(.4er is the San-
don vote a sufficient reason for resignation. TILT?
too, the Tories were enabled to borrow a strength which
was not their own,. Ministers have a right to place the
ensemble of their mea544,9,1 before Parliament, and to
make it clear whether it is for onvi pi for all of them,
, that they are said to have lost the confiden44:
f the House
of Corung.us, The Sovereign also has a right 'to 4.4,-pr
the grounds pg. ythich that confidence is withdrawn—
if withdrawn it has bobs- because that knowledge must
guide the choice of fiituFe cm.mtelllors. Finally, the
Crown has a right to exercise its procugoly9
of appeal
to the country by a dissolution, if the " want accAA-
fidence " of the House of Commons is founded on rea-
sons of the justice of which the Royal mind may not be
satisfied without a constitutional reference to the sense