The Sun.
London, England, 1841-05-27 00:00:00

MORNING EDITION

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
Totem THE DAILY PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
CHRONICLE.—The object of Sir Robert Peel's motion,
announced for to-morrow evening, is to deprive the people of
this country of their legitimate control over the management
of their most important interests. It condemns the continu-
ance of Ministers in office, for the assigned reason that they
" do not sufficiently possess the confidence of the House of
Commons, to enable them to carry through that House mea-
sures which they deem of essential importance to the public
welfare." But the confidence of the House may be one thing,
and the confidance of the nation another. Do the millions tell
for nothing on questions affecting the means by which they live,
the markets for their industry, the quantum of employment
and consequent amount of wages, the price of every article of
consumption, bread, meat, fish, sugar, and of many articles
essential to their occupations ? Have the people no
rights, has the nation no voice, on such questions ? In
the present state of the representative body, the only constitu-
tional appeal is to those whom they claim to represent. There
is, at any rate, a strong prima facie case in favour of the
policy which the proposed resolution, by implication, stigma-
tises. Does that deserve no respect from the members of her
Majesty's Government? " No, replies Sir Robert (by the
tenour of his motion), " you should disregard the people alto-
gether; a majority in favour of monopoly should make you
throw up their cause without any further effort ; you should
esign, and hand over to us the powers of the State, that we
may employ them for purposes which you believe alike
ostile to the intelligence and interests of the nation." The
Adoption of such advice would be traitorous to the community.
The occasion demands an expression of the people's prefer-
ence. Unless the old boroughmongering system be an excep-
tion, there has been a larger hody of petitioners against the
Corn-laws than ever before applied to the House of
Commons for the redress of any grievance whatever.
That which forfeits Sir Robert Peel's confidence
secures the nation's confidence. The country has expressed
its opinion by petitions ; it expresses that opinion from day to
day with augmented earnestness ; and yet the Tory leader has
the modesty to ask Ministers to agree with him in depriving
the country of its right to repeat by voting. and so enforce the
opinion it has already manifested by its petitions. He urges
resignation as a duty, because it will deprive public opinion of
its proper efficiency. Thus, the first step on the ladder by
which it is hoped to scale the heights of power, is made upon
the substance of a national right. The intended preface of a
Tory restoration is a gagging resolution. Nor would its cha-
racter be improved were Sir Robert Peel to declare his own
purpose to be a dissolution immediately on his taking office.
He is in this dilemma ; if he will not dissolve, he obstructs the
appropriate expression of the public mind, demanded by the
exigency ; and, if he will dissolve, his attempt to force Mi-
nisters to a resignation previously, is plain intimation of a dis-
honest purpose. It implies the premeditation of unfair and
corrupt practices to secure the results of an election.
TIMES.—Sir Robert Peel has done no more than satisfy
the general expectation of the country by the manly and de-
cided course which he has taken in the present crisis. A con-
stitutional principle of first-rate importance was at stake, and
the effect of a weak or vacillating line of act:on might have
been to establish a precedent of the most pernicious conse..
quence, and to break up the understanding which from 1688 to
1841 has settled the mutual relations of the legislative and exe-
cutive powers in Great Britain. What Ministers have been
attempting for the list month is in truth nothing less than a
coup d'etat—an endeavour to carry on the Government upon
the strength of Court favour alone, in the face of an adverse
majority in both Houses of Parliament. Not only have they
brought forward a financial scheme of a novel character, after
the rejection of a Bill upon a most important subject, intro-
duced by themselves and supported by all their influence, but
after that financial scheme has been repudiated by the
House of Commons, they still persevere in the reso-
lution openly avowed by one of their Journalists, of
" neither resigning nor dissolving*, but carrying on the
Government of the country." They imagine that the
House of Commons will tamely concede to them, under
these circumstances, the privileges which, by prescrip-
tive usage, belong to the Ministers of the Crown ; will sub-
mit to arrangements of their making ; will suffer them to bring
forward measure after measure from the Treasury benches,
after it has declared against their continuance in office by a
greater majority than ever mustered in their favour. If those
upon whom the Constitution has thrown the duty of resisting
this bold experiment, had failed in its performance—if Sir Ro-
bert Peel had not given notice of a want-of-confidence resolu-
tion, to be moved with the smallest possible delay—if he had
not determined, upon the success of that motion, in the event
et Ministers attempting to meet Parliament again without an-
nouncing their resignations, to propose an address to the
Crown for their immediate removal, and, in the event of a de-
nial or a dilatory answer to that address from the Crown, to take
the conduct of the public business in the House of Com-
mons entirely out of their hands—a severer blow would have
been inflicted upon the British Constitution than it has ever
suffered since the times of the Stuart dynasty. All parties,
and all persons, of all shades of politics, who are capable of
taking thought for the future, must rejoice that such a pre-
cedent has not been allowed to become established. Whigs
would have deplored their own short-sighted infatuation
hereafter, when they saw their own example followed by
Tories. A Minister of some future Charles 11. might have
maintained himself in office without a Parliamentary ma-
jority, under the sole shelter of prerogative, and would have
pointed to Lord Melbourne and Lord John Russell as those
who first taught him the way ; and a revolution (for the stop-
page of supplies is a revolution) must have been resorted to,
as the only remedy, as often as the judgment of the House
of Commons came into collision with the personal inclinations
of the Sovereign.
ADVERTIsiER.—Like all the measures of the Peel-Tory
policy, the proposed motion for a vote of want of confidence is
an evasion—an evasion of the greater difficulty in which the
Tories would be paced by a full, fair, and thorough discussion
upon the Corn-laws. That it is a mere evasion is palpable,
from its being thrust forward on Thursday, the day before the
House brg eking up for the Whitsuntide holidays, when it can-
not be discussed fully, and must therefore be adjourned. And
yet, with all this laborious cunning, will the party really
succeed in their object? They may postpone the formal
discussion of the Corn-laws, but still the odious doctrines of
free trade, and all that constitute the policy of the Government,
and makes it worthy of the confidence—if not of the House,—
of the country, will b-eak forth. " But," says tke wary
politician, " the truths which you would by such a
discussion disclose will be swamped by the ollapodrida of
talk on every sort of thing besides, which we shall take
care to introduce ; and thus the public will be confounded
and in the mystification we shall escape." Not so, worthy tac-
ticians ; the debate will possibly last ten days or a fortnight ;
the young and active energies on the Liberal side will apply
themselves to unravel your exquisitely wrought fallacies and
clap-traps, so that your latter day will be worse than the first.
The public will judge between you and them—on that which
is emphatically (if ever cause was) their own cause. The more
we think of it, the more we relish the idea of this want-of-con-
fidence debate. Many things which could not come out in a
mere Corn-law debate, will find vent ; and besides, let us add,
there will still remain behind, if we mistake not, the oppor-
tunity for the Corn-law debate too. It is, in short, the very
best thing for the Ministerial party ' • and if we were not up
to the tricks of the Tories, or at least of their leader, we
should say, the very worst for them. But, no doubt, he has
his own personal objects in it. Let this be as it may, the
motion is to be met, and met it will be, in a gallant spirit by
the Liberals, who are chirping with delight at the idea of
another good round battle with the enemies of public li-
berty. Fortunately, in the present case, Sir Robert Peel
will take the lead. He must make out his case at the outset.
There will be no drawing back to await the chances of the de-
bate. He must make out his case, ar be nonsuited, as the
lawyers say. What will be his case ? We apprehend, three-
fold; past, present, and to come—that the Whigs have done
much good, are doing much good, and will do, if they are per-
mitted, a great deal more—that, with all the opposition which
the Tories have been able to offer, this good has been done ;
but that now, the Tories being too much for them, it is quite
unconstitutional to attempt to do more, and that they ought,
therefore, to leave the field to the Tories, to do as much mis-
chief, or prevent as much good, as they can—that it was never
heard of, in the times when the public liberties were bought
and sold by the boroughmongers in the unreformed Parliament,
that the Government held out after the transfer had been ra-
tified by an Opposition, however factious—that the people are
to be held of no account in such matters, still less appealed to.
This is the upshot of the nonsense which the Tories are hold-
ing forth ; but they do not believe that the Ministers are such
geese as to act upon it.
POST.—There is a just and happy appreciation of the Eng-
lish character in the course which the distinguished leader of
the Opposition has resolved upon. To combine boldness
with prudence—resolution with reasonableness—is the charac-
teristic of the English nation. Therefore we may fairly cha-
racterise the brief resolution of which Sir Robert Peel has
given notice as a national appeal. We are confident that it will
be a successful one. He appeals not merely to the House of
Commons, but also to the common sense and manly feeling of
Use nation. He says it is not constitutional that beaten
men should meanly cling to the administration of public
affairs, and the sense and spirit of the country will respond
that neither is it reasonable or consistent with the public safety
and the national honour. For ourselves, that which we ad-
mire most in thezesolution of which the Right Hon. Baronet
has given notice is, as we have already said, its frankness, fair-
ness, and bold straightforward spirit. In a word, its utter op-
position, and absolute contradiction, to the character and habits
of Whig-Radical policy. It asserts the plain truth with dignity
and distinctness. It is honest without rudeness, and earnest
without extravagance. But they who care less about these par-
ticularly English characteristics of the resolution will perhaps
be better disposed to dwell upon the constitutional and popular
principles which it plainly asserts. Here are Ministers who
presome to retain office in defiance of the strongly-expressed
disapprobation of Parliament. They hare brought forward
measures which they themselves confess, and all must acknow-
ledge, to be of a d: eply important character, and fraught with
deeply-important practical consequences. They have been
beaten upon the first of these measures in the House of Corn-
s loons, and they do not pretend to expect any better fate for
those which are to follow. And yet they cling to office with-
out affording one word of explanation or apology for conduct
PO much at variance with the practice of the Constitution.
They have not told the House that they mean to advise ,
ad vise her
?Majesty to dissolve it. We believe they are afraid .o do an.
They are afraid to dissolve the Parliament, being well aware
that the feeling of the country is against them, as well as the ma-
jorities of the Houses of Lords and Commons, but still they
cling to office, relying on the partiality of the Court, and
despising the constitutional rights of the people. This is the
charge which the people have against these Ministers ; and the
bold, prudent, honest step upon which the leader of the Op-
position has resolved is simply the first step in the assertion of
the publie liberties of the people of England. These liberties
are in danger from the carelessly impudent course which a
merely courtier Ministry has adopted, and they are not the less
so because attacked in an undermining way. There is too
much courage—too much manly spirit—in the British people
ever to allow their constitutional liberties to be taken from
them by open assault. The danger to these liberties lies in
the possibility of their being sapped by treachery—by the
selfish machinations of those who have the words of freeedom
in their mouths, while their acts are in defiance of those bul-
warks of freedom which the practicelof the Constitution has set
up. Sir Robert Peel's resolution asserts the right of the House
of Commons to exercise a veto upon the continuance of any
Government in England. This tight it is which the present
Min sters practically contest.
HERALD.—Her Majesty's Ministers are now in a critical
position. In real pity we trust that Sir Robert Peel is not
revenging himself for his disappointment in 1835, He has been
chided, laughed at, as wanting courage. What has he done ?
There is not on the records of Parliamentary history such a
decided step as he has taken. May we tell Lord John Russell
the immense difference between him and Sir Robert Peel ?
Lord John is a conceited Whig. For years has he been trying
agitation, and Sir Robert has not. There is no comparison
between the men's talents. Sir Robert has proved him-
self equal to the occasion. The Globe tells us last night
that Sir Robert has taken a false step. A false step ?
Let the Globe call it so. It is the positive ruin of
the Whig Ministry. Sir Robert Peel has fairly come out to
deelare the Conservative principle, and this" decisive step" will
finish the business. But what a nice constitutional set these
Whige are. Here are the words of the Globe. It is fairly
k itttf vilhat leferraed House of Commons that the continuance
"'s s SA* t!Aich circumstances, is at variance with the
Pt „h.X4rikaitution; and the Globe says, "We will as.
4 . aittii,•:,
- Wing out that a "tn*rity of one or two" ,
stPY*at it Peel's boldand constitutional ro
tan, And... P
t .be saying, a mat iehenticipates the defeat on Thursday,
111=liciltiag the' flank • an address to her Majesty, coin-
tit% to which he; faithful Commons
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