The Sun.
London, England, 1841-08-05 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS. 1

FROM THE DAILY PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
lintrS.—Sir Robert Peel has pledged the Conserva-
tives who follow his guidance in Parliament to act as
inen " determined to maintain. upon their ancient founda-
tions the institutions of the country in Church and State."
We claim the full benefit of that pledge, for the main-
tenance, and fol. the restoration, so far as they have been
impaired, of thee: fundamental institutions which we
have now been engaged in describing, and which we
verily believe to lie deep at the root of the liberty, the
strength, the prosperity, greatness, and glory of the
Plitish nation. These foundations have been of late
years systematically undermined by the Whigs, and se-
rious breaches have been made in some of them. It is
here, then, that the essential difference between Whigs
and Conservative: ought to be exhibited. If Sir Robert
Peel did not mean so much as this, he has used idle
words, and trifled with the earnest expectations of
his supporters and the people on a vital point. There
has been no vice of Lord Melbourne's Government more
strongly marked, none certainly which has contributed
more towards its fall, than the tendency of their mea-
sures, of late scarcely disavoiVed, to introduce upon the
ruins of our ancient constitution the principles and prac-
tice of an executive despotism. Under the pretence .of
removing abuses, promoting economy, and increasing the
efficiency of institutions, they have been engaged in a
constant endeavour to absorb and concentrate into
their own hands the various and widely-distributed
elements of administrative power. For every board
of Commissioners which they have created, so much
power has been taken out of the hands of the people,
and so much actual liberty, and still more, security
for liberty, has been lose. By the new Poor-law they
have drained off the streams and fountains of a vast
system of self-government which circulated throughout
the nation, into a small number of main dikes and ditches,
terminating in the one everlasting and insatiable reser-
voir—themselves. The Rural Police Act is another
offspring of this un-English and anti-popular spirit ; and
we cannot help referring to the same principle Lord
John Russell's arbitrary attempt to make the self-
assertion of privilege by the House of Commons para-
mount to law, and also the language which the Whigs
have lately begun to hold concerning the prerogative of
- the Crown. But this is a point of too much importa.pce
to. be treated of incidentally at the end of an article, and
we shall reserve the development of it till a future op-
portunity. •
HERALD.—The Whigs seem determined that their
candle shall not be hid under a bushel. Lord John Rus-
sell, in his epistle to the citizens of London, took as
much credit to himself as might satisfy any reasonable
appetite for self-praise ; but the. Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer has proved himself a real glutton in adulating
himself. We did not expect this from him. We had
always attributed to him greater tact and ty better taste
than he evinced in his speech the other day at Winches-
ter. We even went further in our good opinion of him.
We acquitted him of the mean propensity to steal the
laurel from another man's brow. r,ut we must take the
Right Hon. Gentleman's claims on public credulity
seriatim. " Whatever might be their fate," he says,
speaking of the Whig Ministry, " whatever might be
the result of the first few days of the meeting of the
next Parliament, whatever the majority which the people
may have returned against those who at present
hold the reins of power, from the annals of history they
could never erase those great trophies which her _Majesty's
Government had won for the people." What an ungrate-
ful set the people must be to turn out a Ministry who
have won such " great trophies" for them ! If the people
had thought that the Whigs sticking to place was a
" great trophy," the people would have kept them in
place. The people—by which term weldesignate the pro:
perty, intelligence, and industry of the country—are not
to be deceived twice. In every walk of life this charac-
teristic of the Englishman is remarkable. The Irishman
is more zealous, the Scotchman is more calculating—the
Englishman reflects. The sensible Englishman is never
cheated a second time; and in that feature of our national
Character Mr. Baring may read as he runs—the down-
fall of the Whig Ministry. But the " trophies," and we
will take the first that Mr. Baring appropriates. "1)o what
they (the people) might," he says, " the chains of 800,000
fellow-creatures have been struck off." Who struck
' them off ? Not Mr. Baring, for he was then not even in
the Cabinet. Not Lord John Russell, for the question
was too large for his limited intellect. He had not the
moral courage to strike the chains from the slave at a
blow. Not Lord Howick, with his petty fancy of a loan
of 15,000,000/. No : none of these fine holiday gentlemen
knew how to effect the emancipation of the poor negro.
It was left to the more masculine mind of Lord Stanley
to elbow Lord Howick out of his way, and purchase the
negro's liberty out and out. And Mr. Baring claims
this, the best achievement of Lord Stanley, for a
Ministry which Lord Stanley abandoned in disgust !
The second trophy is comprised in the following words,
—" Whatever language they (the people) • might use,
history will write that, since Ireland has been a con-
quered country, during the whole of that period this is
the first Administration to which the Irish people have
looked with confidence." A few years ago Lord Mel-
bourne persuaded the Sovereign to stigmatise O'Connell
as a disturber of the public peace. Not only was the
public peace then thought to be compromised, but the
personal peace and constitutional dignity of the Sove-
reign. 'Chia was no dream of the Conservative party ;
it was then, we believe, the honest conviction of the
Whig Government. Lord Melbourne himself dictated
the Speech ; and now, what will history really tell of a
Government who were mean enough to proscribe a mis-
chievous agitator from the throne, and, in order to keep
in place, hold the self-same man up as the man they look
to with "confidence !" What must be thought of a
party which can encourage disaffection to the Queen by
ripping up all the bad legislation of by-gone centuries,
inflaming the passions of misguided nicii, by taunting
them with the reprtiach that they are a conquered race?
Are they statesmen who, for the mere sake of blaze, can
do this ? No ; they are merely placeinen.
ADVERTISER.—The Tories begin already to dis-
cover the inconvenience attendant upon the necessity of
maintaining a good character—namely, that it requires a
constant outlay for the purpose of keeping it up—an un-
intermitting expenditure of cash as well as conscience
seems indispensable for preserving their reputation in
even tolerable condition ; but it is with the latter alone
that we have for the present to do ; and, leaving the
consideration of pounds, shillings, and pence, for a
future occasion, we must briefly notice a small traffic
in the article of conscience by a veteran huckster, whom
few of our readers will suspect of dealing in that commodity.
Sir James Graham has, we perceive, been following
the example set by Sir Robert reel, and entertaining the
pure electors of Dorchester at a public dinner, instead of
being himself the object of their invitation. Toryism
must beat a tow ebb in the country when, in lieu of those
political banquets which used to be held in its honour
in all parts of the kingdom at a time when its votaries
were in a minority, a gratuitous feast is now necessary
to congregate its helots when their banner is for the mo-
ment triumphant. But this is a consideration which
more concerns its disciples than ourselves, though the
country may derive consolation from the reflection that,
even with its own supporters, Toryism is at such a dis-
count that even its adherents can only be assembled by
the prospect of a gratuitous guzzle. The speech which has
prompted these remarks undoubtedly required some slight
lubrication a la Kitchiner to make it go down even with
the dull denizens of Dorchester ; fhr a more inane piece
of egotistical insipidity it has not been our lot for many
a day to encounter. It far outvies in emptiness
the Tamworth oration, which even the Standard was
obliged to confess "would possibly disappoint thwe who
looked to it for novelty ;" and is the nearest approach in
recent times to the realization of Talleyrand's celebrated
apothegm, that lanpage was given to man for the pur-
pose of enabling him' to •conceal his thoughts. In the
whole of its dreary dulness it would be more difficult to
distinguish a particle of meaning than to find a needle in
a bundle of hay, or a pickle of corn in a cart-load of
chaff. Even the Tory Journals would seem to have-been
ashamed of it, as they have not only allowed it to pass
unnoticed by the slightest mark of editorial comment,
but consigned it in obscurity to the most obscure quarter
of their columns ; and, but for our casual observation, it
would at once have been doomed
" Soon to the mass of dulness to return,
Where things forgot are swept to things unborn."
In the whole mass of senseless verbosity which encum-
bers a column of the Times,it is impossible to distinguish
the slightest extenuation of Tory policy for the past, or
the slightest indication of Tory policy for the future.
The bulky Baronet who accuse the Lincolnshire- farmers
.of heaviness, though he might vie with the densest of
them in more than Bastian stupidity, has contrived to
outvie Sir Robert Peel himself in point of incommunica-
tiveness.
POST.—The morning organ of the beaten Adminis-
tration employs itself in spinning leading articles out of
a pamphlet by Mr. Baptist Noel, Minister of St. John's
Chapel, Bedford-row, on the subject of the Corn-laws. The
Whig-Radical journalist says that the reputation of the
benevolent author, one of the brightest ornaments of the
'Cliiirch of England, who is looked up to as a high autho-
rity by the religious world, will no doubt obtain for the
pamphlet a very extended circulation, and therefore
lattich importance should be attached to its appearance.
We take leave to enter our protest against this puff
direct of Mr. Noel's pamphlet. When such paragraphs
are found in the " back page" of a London journal, they
kre generally well enough understood to be the compost-
fieet, of some person who has an interest in selling the book
' pamphlet thus bepuffed, and who therefore pays for
'the insertion of the eulogy. But it is really unfair toput
such paragraphs into the leading columns of any re-
spectablc newspaper. Without being very presumptuous
we may venture to assume that we know rather better
than any Whig-Radical Journal, whether any particular
gentleman is looked up to as an ornament of the Church
of England, :u:d we do assure the public that Mr. Bap-
tist Noel is not considered by the soundest mem rs of
tint Church to be at all ornamental to it, and still less is
ho considered to be useful. In short, he is not looked
upon us a Church of England man at all, hut a dins' n-
ter ; and if the gentleman had a mind capable of appre-
ciating, or even of distinguishing, what is necessary to
strict propriety, strict integrity, and strict decorum, it
is probable that long ere this he would have formally se-
ceded from the Church of England. We do not at all
mean to charge Mr. Noel with an intentional and con-
scious violation of the integrity of his duty to the Church.
The fault or misfortune, or whatever it should be called,
lies in a deficiency of understanding and judgment. He
is a lamentable instance of presumption and incapacity
combined. To allude to him as a person of authority is
perfectly ridiculous.
CIIRONICLE.—We have to acknowledge the ser-
vice rendered to the public by the Morniny Post, in
bringing_iartobroad and clear light a characteristic pas-
`„l ,gee
analßobert Peel's late oration at Tamworth.
eiLs ardleteisnrelo!atrlncio:llnyr,7)nin,,e,very one's memory. Physni-
ho, in cases of distress, gene-
rously
; the quack never does. By
that unconscious s yonaluer fee the
truth
influences a speaker's
mind, and brings
in spite of himself, Sir
Robert identified hitnself withru tthile quack while labouring
to claim an affinity with the physician. " I see around

me," said he, " some of my attached friends of the medi-
cal profession, and I appeal to them whether they do not
cordially concur with me, that it is not fit that one man
should offer the prescription and another take the fee."—
(Continued laughter and cheering.) The dishonest
State Doctor suppressed the fact that every Member
of Parliament has taken his fee to prescribe for the
nation's health. His former election was Sir Robert's
fee, and so far as he gave any prescription in return it
amounted to spare diet, dear bread, and starvation. But
he says he has another recipe in store that will stop the
disease. Why does he not produce it ? Because he
wants to extort the additional fee of office, influence,
patronage, and emolument. Do the medical men of
Tamworth call this honourable practice ? Professional
people, and unprofessional, elsewhere, cry shame upon it.
There is a general disgust at the antipatriotic, sordid, and
factious character of the avowal. The Morning Post
feels the thing to be so bad that, in despair of vindicating
the principle, it has recourse to the desperate expedient
of denying the fact ; which it does in the following not
very courteous manner :
" The lie we are about to mention is hardly worth contra-
dicting ; but as the Ministerial faction seem to nurse it as if it
were rather a pet lie of theirs, we may as well do so. The
Globe and the Observer, and all the other Ministerial Journals
lie, when they quote a pretended passage from Sir R. Peel's
speech at Tamworth, in which he is made to talk of not giving
his advice until he has received 'the fee.' The lie is neces-
sarily a wilful one ; for our honest Contemporaries have the
speech before them, and there is no such passage in it. But
when the Ministerial Journals daily calumniate the Quern,
how can Sir R. Peel hope to escape their false and slanderous
attacks?"
Now, however much the Morning Post may be
ashamed of Sir Robert Peel, this is not the way to help
him out of the scrape into which he has plunged by his
inherent deficiency of moral taste, and his affinity with
the selfish and the sordid. The passage is not a "pretended
passage." Besides our own report of it, the correctness
of which cannot be impeached, we have direct evidence
that the words above quoted were spoken ; and the
report of the Times bears distinct and complete testi-
mony to the fact. The," Globe and:the Observer, and all
the other Ministerial journals," had these two concurrent
reports before them. Our Contemporary is much too
hasty, therefore, in giving them the " lie," saying it
must be " wilful," and asserting that they had " the
speech before them, and there is no such passage in it."
The speech was before them ; the Times report was be-
fore them ; and there is that passage in it. Our Con-
temporary may have falsified his own report, and altered
the unfortunate passage ; but making a lie is not proving
a lie. It is rather too much that the Post should first
belie Sir Robert Peel, and then belie the " Ministerial
journals" for quoting him truly.
GLOBE.—The Conservative journals are filling up the
the time, until the meeting of Parliament, in placing
daily bandages over the public eye, to keep it still in the
dark as to the intended movements of the Tory Govern-
ment. Their present art is literally their mystery,
and he whe can say the least in the longest space
shows himself the most useful partisan of the ex-
pectant Minisary. The allegation that the pro-
per use of words is to conceal ideas, seems to
be no longer a bon mot, but a truth, which is being
daily realised in the columns of the Tory newspapers.
The Times and the Herald of this morning have run
almost a dead heat in the race of unmeaning ver-
bosity—though the latter wins by a length, 11 aV;::ig
turned the column in advance of its antagOn;_::L. The
article in the Herald is a drowsy ampli6:oation of two
words—Experientia docet—a trangl-hition of which it
ingeniously fills nearly half a. :Lie in furnishing. The
Times opens well with
_a elution of two or three of the
most elementary sentences of Blackstone in a stream
of pompous worthiness, and takes up considerable space
in drawing out the intelligence that this country was for-
merly kivided into counties, hamlets, and parishes. Our
Contemporary has, however, got somewhat into a mess
towards the close of his article, for he claims from Sir
Robert Peel the undoing of those things which
he himself helped to do ; while in another part
of the paper he is called upon to carry into execu-
tion the very measures to which he has been the
chief impediment. Thus Sir Robert Peel is to oppose the
Poor-law Bill, which he helped to carry, and has pro-
mised to maintain ; he is to attack the establishment of
rural police, founded entirely on a model of his own; and
he is to repudiate the principles of Parliamentary pri-
vilege, which a short time since he, in conjunction with
Lord John Russell, so stoutly contended for. In an-
other part of the Times the Hon. Baronet is invoked to
promote free trade, his opposition to which caused the
overthrow of the Liberal Government ; and, indeed, it is
clear, from the inconsistencies demanded of him, that
his party rely much more on his flexibility than his
principle. He may have succeeded in rendering him-
self the point of union between the contending interests
of which the Tory body is composed ; he may have
given an arm to one on each side, and he may have
offered to bind himself hand and foot to opposite sec-
tions, for the sake of inducing them to lean temporarily
towards him; but what will be his fate when these con-
flicting interests all strive to lure him in their own di-
rection, and the trunks of long Tory growth, which he
has bent, not broken, rebound into the stubborn attitude
from which he has allured them into momentary flexibi-
lity?
.STANDARD.—The newspaper supporters of the

" deficit Ministry" appear to be agonised by conflicting
doubts of what Sir Robert Peel's policy will be
when called upon to succeed Lord Melbourne in the
administration of the affairs of the country. They are.
indignant beyond measure that he has not afforded them
the opportunity of objecting to it on any more
tangible ground than a general reference to his :tl-
- recorded opinions. They are naturally anxious
to be made acquainted with the particular measures
which the majority of the House of Commons may be
invited to support, in order that they and their
patrons may shape their course accordingly. Lord
Melbourne has already shown, on numerous occasions,
that he is not aboVe being taught by his opponents ;
and could Sir RObert Peel but have been provoked to
deviate from the delicate and dignified course of re-
fusing to prescribe remedies for the patient until he is
" regularly called in," his Lordship would no doubt
adopt just so much of his " treatment" as would afford
plausible materials for a Speech from the 'Throne
calculated to meet the emergency of the moment.
His Lordship's newspaper advocates are evidently di-
vided in opinion as to what they are to expect from the
Right Hon. Baronet, and are accordingly prepared for any
alternative. If he should continue to advocate the measures
of temperate Reform, which have hitherto characterised
his policy, he is to be liable to the charge of plagiarising
the views of her Majesty's present Ministers ; and
should he refuse altogether " to grapple with the great
question of fiscal reform," he will render himself even
more obnoxious to their censure. Whatever be Sir R.
Peel's intentions, therefore, it is perfectly clear that they
will be equally obnoxious to the criticism of a large
class of the supporters of Ministers. The country has no
need to apprehend, that Sir Robert will plagiarise the
policy of his predecessors, but there can be no substantial
reason why he should refuse to persevere in his own
course of moderate and temperate reform, because he has
refused his assent to those extravagant measures of
fiscal reform which were proposed by a Cabinet in ex-
tremis, to save it from the consequences of long years of
previous misgovernment. The anticipatory charge of
plagiarism against Sir R. Peel comes with an ill grace
from the supporters of a Ministry which is indebted to
him for its ability to carry the only beneficial measures it
has hitherto attempted. It was not only the gross assault
projected by the Government on the great interests of the
country that deprived it of its confidence, but the fact,
proved by the repeated majorities of Parliament against it,
that it had long lost the power of legislating on any im-
portant measure without the assistance of its Conserva-
tive opponents. The Whig Budget was certainly the
last drop to the already brimming cup of the country's
endurance, but it is equally notorious that it was a far
larger one than was necessary to occasion its overflow.
The alternative of a second dissolution of Parliament is
one to which even the O'Connell Administration, selfish
and profligate as they have proved themselves to be, dare
not advise her Majesty to resort: but if they should, she
has, we are satisfied, too intimate an acquaintance with
the constitutional rights of Englishmen to dream for one
moment of adopting it. The struggles of the faction
are fierce in proportion to the hopelessness of their con-
dition, and it would therefore be as unwise as ungene-
rous in their opponents to visit too harshly the grotesque
contortions by which they seek to brazen out their
defeat.
COLTRIER.—We have, on former occasions, adverted
to the primary causes of manufactyring depression ;
they may, indeed, summarily be condensed under the
two heads of overtrading. an overbanking at home and
manyaoady.
years
she prosperous snd uninterrupted career for
e manufacturingierttory
ing industry,accumulation Lancashireol ' e p
in
for example, 01r an led to '
tals and a boundless expansion of credit. Had
these.
real capitals only been •
wisely restricted to invest-
ment in cotton mills and power looms, the gra-
dual extension of manufacturing power could not
~
not have shot far ah,:iof v
the capacity for cton-
sumption. sumption. Unfortunately, however,
a far other and 'less legitimate direction
speculation
th e Man-
chester people must needs embark in the coinage of
money as well as in the manufacture of calicoes ;
banks of issue, discount, and deposit numberless
started into existence on all sides, the concoctions of
brainless projectors, or something worse, and the crea-
tions of a year. The promise of open credit accounts
attracted shareholders with funds, and more without,
and the unlimited as facile fabricatim of .! flimsy" sti-
mulated the fury for the construction of more factories
and the over-production of more fustians. Nor was
the rage for bank-making limited to the locality
where it was first originated. In the laboratory of the
cotton and woollen districts of Lancashire and Yorl=-
shire, in fact, banks wete compounled for all England
and Ireland, literally from Manchester to the Land's-end,
and for all Ireland. It was not difficult for a sober
looker-on to foretell the issue. Railways, with a thou-
sand other speculations and schemes less
laudable in their
object, came to crown the banking mania, from which
arising-, and by the money credit facilities of which sup-
plied to repletion. Shall we wonder that the explo-
sion came at length ; ought we not rather to admire
that the combustible materials smouldered so long ?
without bursting forth into consuming flame The
enumeration of joint-stock banking follies authenticated
beyond dispute were an endless task. The failure of
two manufacturing concerns some two or three years
ago, developed the extraordinary fact of one bank being
the chief creditor for cash advances for some two or
three hundred thousand pounds in each case, with no
security but bare walls and machinery worth not much
more than a tithe of the amount ; and of such enormous
instances of overbanking mismanagement the history of
almost every Manchester joint-stock bank affords preg-
nant evidence. Trading convulsions in the United States
and elsewhere came to consummate the ravages of over-
producing and overbanking at home, and with markets
which they had overstocked everywhere on the face
of the globe, and banking credits woefully curtailed at
home, Lancashire spinners and manufacturers find them-
selves
inevitably compelled at the eleventh hour to relax
the steam pressure, to work short time and lessen pro-

duction, until in the regular action of trade a healthy
balance shall once more be struck with consumption.
This is a true and faithful, though brief, narration of the
causes of trading depression in Lancashire at this mo-
ment. That many large and once wealthy estqblish-
ments, innocent themselves, perhaps, of pat ticipation in
the popular frenzy, with a minor host of traders, should
be felled by the consequence of such a wild hurricane of
speculation, however much to be deplored, ought scarcely
to excite surprise.