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

Ult.

LONDON:
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1841.

The late Ministers appeared to have com-
pletely given up the public cause the instant
they were removed from office. In no one case
did they attempt to impede the re-election of
the members of Sir ROBERT PEEL'S Ministry,
though they might, and they ought, in several
places, with a view of keeping up the spirits of
their friends, to have made, at least, a show of
opposition. No sooner was the Parliament at
an end, or even before, than they all dispersed
and disbanded, leaving their party without
leaders, guides, or counsel. There was no
longer any head-quarters, no place to go to for
orders, and no commander ; but the whole army
of Opposition was left to act, each man for himself,
to fight, to retreat, or to j iin the enemy, as he
thought best. We believe that the members
of the great party which his heretofore defeated
the whole united power of the Tories when they
were in the full vigour of manhood, and mean
again to defeat them, but with a more signal
destruction, now that they are in the d:crepi-
Ode of age, and are obliged to hide their wolf-
like propensities under the sheepish guise of
Conservatism,—we believe that the members of
that great Liberal party felt no inconsiderable
displeasure at the desertion, and began, in de-
tached and broken squadrons, to look out for new
leaders. After being lost, however, for nearly
three months, some of the Whig leaders have
again appeared in the field, and seek, we pre-
snug", to collect their scattered forces.
Lord Jolls RUSSELL was the first to inform us
of his existence and of his determination to take
tip a position in opposition to the monopolists.
which
in a reply to- the inhabitants of Plymouth,
4•B published more than a week ago, and which
has excited many angry comments in the Tory
Journals, Lord JOIIN went much further in his
Panguage than ever lie went in his deeds, and
probably wrote the following passages rather
from contemplating the future than troubling.
.
himself accurately to recollect the past

The late Administration endeavoured to relieve the
country from those taxes which are paid to the land-
owners, to the West India planters, and other favoured
classes, at the expense of the community at large. They
attempted, above all, to subject the admission of foreign
ewn at a known and moderate duty, in place of a scale so
curiously adjusted, that it, baulks the farmer at one mo-
ment and starves the people at another, while it defrauds
the revenue at all times.

The whole strength of monopoly, however, joined
with the compact forces of an adverse party, defeated our
*eons, and have placed a new Ministry in power. _
Still, if the people are united, prohibitions and prohi-
bitory duties will .stare the fate of civil disabilities on
religious grounds, thu slavery of our negro fellow-sub-
jects, and other works of darkness. Nor is it necessary
fur this purpose that the late Ministry should be restored
to power ; the men who surrendered what they deemed
the essential bulwarks of the Church and the Constitu-
tion to the menaces of the Roman Catholic Association
of Ireland, will be sure to yield the fortress of commer•
cial restriction when they shall be summoned to do so by
the peaceful but powerful voice of the people of England
and Scotland.
The late Administration proposed a very li-
mited modification of the taxes paid to the land-
owners and Alrc st India planters, and, in pro-
posing the modification, actually recognised the
justice of the principle of taxing the community
t ) enrich the landowners and West India planters,
strengthening their opponents, and ensuring
their own defeat. If we are to understand that
Lord JOHN RUSSELL and his friends now adopt
the principle, that it is right " to relieve the coun-
try from those taxes which are paid to the land-
owners and the West India planters;" that what
he proposed as Minister he will not adhere to in
opposition; that he means, on the subject of corn,

sugar, and timber, to act on those principles of
honesty and justice by which, in the case of the
Dissenters and the Negroes, his party achieved
their noblest triumphs, we can assure him very
extensive support, and complete success at no
distant day. The people do not understand
paltering with the subject; the Bread-tax
is looked on as a moral question, and
is regarded with a religious feeling, on which
no half measures will satisfy them, and no half
measures will they support. To defeat the mo-
nopolists the peaceful and powerful voice of the
people of England and Scotland must not be
raised for a fixed duty on corn to protect the land-
lords, nor fora large discriminating duty on sugar,
because both those duties give a solemn sanction
to those principles of dishonesty and injustice
which the religious and honest people of Eng-
land and Scotland are determined to exclude
from our legislation. They will again take Lord J.
RUSSELL for their leader, if he emblazon these
principles on his flag; and if he do not, they will
look out for another.
But we hope well of the Whigs after their rus-
tication. Lord PALMERSTON has also again ap-
peared in the field, and the Noble Lord who has
long been distinguished for his fearless advocacy
of free trade principles, thus boldly avows his
present sentiments, in his answer to the address
from the borough of Bridgnorth :
It has always been the study of the late Government
to carry into practical application those principles of
civil and religious liberty which are founded upon
natural justice, and which are eminently conducive to tlit
happiness and well-being of mankind, and we trust that
our endeavours in this respect have not been freltless.
We attempted to apply to the commercial legjsiation of
the country those principles of trade, the soundness and
truth of which have long been demonstrated in reasoning,
and which all enlightened men have for many years ac-
knowledged as the only sure foundation for the permanent
prosperity of nations. But a combination of monopolists
prevailed, and private interests triumphed over public
good. The victory so achieved will, however, be short-
lived. Reason will, in the end, prove stronger than pre-
judice, and the great interests of the community must
finally overrule the resistance of the few. Even the mo.
nopolists will find that they delude themselves as to the
advantages which they fancy they derive from the pre-
sent system of commercial restriction ; for no class of
men can build up permanent prosperity for themselves
upon a system which is ruinous to the nation of which
they form a part.
All this is good, and we find no fault with the
Noble Lord, while he avows a deference to
natural justice, that his application of the prin-
ciple, when he was obliged in office to defer to
so many selfish interests, did not agree exactly
with our own. He places the combination of
monopolists in opposition to certain principles—.
we conclude, those of free trade ; he asserts that
the public good was sacrificed to private inte-
rests; and he looks to reason proving in the end
stronger than prejudice. We have no doubt
whatever that the great interests of the com-
munity must finally overrule the resistance of
the few; and it is of great public advantage to
have it clearly stated by a leading politician
that the public interest has been, and is now,
sacrificed by that combination of monopolists
who have, for a short period, got hold of the
Government. Under that banner, England and
Scotland will rally and eject the Tories.

We look back, with Lord JOHN RUSSELL, to the
defeats Which the Tories have formerly sustained;
we see them conquered when their power was un-
scathed; we now see them feeble, disjointed, quar-
relling amongst themselves—the Church, their
great prop, crumbling into repelling particles ;
we see them again, as before, taking the side of
wrong against right, of prejudice against reason,
and we look forward to their certain defeat. But
their next defeat will be more disastrous than
any they ever suffered. Peers and Commoners,
Clergy and Laity, Land-lords and Money-lords,
have all united to form one overwhelming
Parliamentary majority in support of mono-
poly and barefaced injustice. They unite to
resist the laws of nature, and in opposition to
their own desires. They are greedy of wealth,
greedy of a large revenue, and they unite to up-
hold a monopoly which is cutting asunder the
sinews of the national greatness. They must
fail, and will exhibit to the world a large Parlia-
mentary majority defeated by a principle. The
Tories fancy they are securing a monopoly, but
they are in truth destroying the Government,
and substituting another power for the power of
a Parliamentary majority.

The spirit which prevails among the clergy of
almost every denomination in this country, forms
a striking and alarming feature of the age.
While the people of Spain and Portugal, for-
merly the most bigoted and most submissive to
the will of the priesthood, have thrown off the
yoke, and in most other States the influence of
the Church is on the decline, here the reverse is
the case. The Catholic priests in Ireland, if we
take Mr. O'CONNELL as authority, are furious
against ESPARTERO, and friendly to the cause of
the RX-QUEEN REGENT, simply because the for-
mer has stript the clergy of their usurped power
and enormous wealth, while the latter would
bring back the glorious days of ignorance, super-
stition, and slavery. In England the rage
for the doctrines of Popery is spreading among
the clergy of the Established Church to a fright-
ful extent; the Bible, and the Prayer-book are
looked upon as old almanacs, and the traditions
and fictions of the men who paved the way for
the dominion of the Romish hierarchy, and the
thraldom of the dark ages, are, in their eyes, the
only sure guides. In Scotland a system of
priestly dominion, unequalled during the worst
period of the, Inquisition, already prevails. Under
the pretence of giving the people the free
choice of their clergymen, and of honouring- the
ALMIGHTY by the most scrupulous observance of
the Jewish Sabbath, the Non-Intrusionist clergy
have committed acts of oppression, which, if
perpetrated by the civil power, would
have raised a rebellion. In the course of
a few days in the month of May last they
deposed ten clergymen, and threaten to
punish in a similar way some two hundred
more, because their tyrannical edicts are not im-
plicitly obeyed ; they are interfering incessantly
with the rights of private property, endeavour-
ing to shut up railroads on Sunday, imprisoning
respectable shopkeepers for refusing to observe
the Jewish Sabbath, and withholding the rites of
the Church from others whom they cannot
bring within the grasp of some obsolete or local
Act. The scene which occurred at Arbroath the
other day, reported at length in The Sun, exhi-
bits these arch-hypocrites in a light which can-
not be mistaken. A farm labourer, long a member
of the Established Church, had buried his child on
a Sunday, a practice hitherto common in Scotland,
and, for:performing this sacred work of necessity,
he was excommunicated by the clergyman, stig-
matised as a criminal, and forced to appeal to the
Presbytery for redress. This body contained a
majority of spiritual tyrants of the same stamp';
they of course sympathised with the oppressor,
attempted to exclude the public from the Guild-
hall where they met, and finding the people dis-
obedient, one of the fathers of the Inquisition
held up the terrors of the Church, and threatened
to deal with them for resisting his spiritual au-
thority. All attempts, however, were vain, the
audience kept their seats, and laughed him to
scorn, and the Presbytery having finished the sit-
ting
by prayer (in the true style of the Spanish In-
quisition),
marched off in a bo4y to a
secrethotel
where
another
prayer was said,vev ander,Tdn eecmlinoecak
eineveeesiatifea.tionTlisl'aes
petitioner,
r, aboutetiti e
nteo commence
ho
their authority, and appealedtthoroaohis one
rCourt.
In thisdisgraceful transaction
circum-
stance which affords matter for heiaislt. T
yscoinlgerpactouphito-
lation. It was all the work of the pre
unanimously took part we have h
theiritlie doubt oepprtesisveildl
fellow-parishioner, and we
lurTiiiclaeytioin)egisintestaild re-
moved byer htihme
C h untilu r ethh ed
eesxecrot
en
dm.
only more power for the clergy,
see that that the cry for Non-Intthrautsizoten
fma tel enrs
of a family would be allowed to vote who buried
e
iedar
relative on a Sunday, or travelled by railroad,
tasted spirits,' or sold " lollipop," or refused in
any way to obey the command of a spiritual
ty rant, and that the only way to save
them-
selves from this frightful thraldom is to read