The Sun.
London, England, 1841-07-26 00:00:00

THE SCRAMBLE.

It is not so much that gentlemen and noblemen do
not like to be advertised in this way for (Alice, for manyt
of them do like to be advertised in this way, but tha
those who are not advertised in this way are offended to
the last degree at seeing the places upon which they
have set their hearts assigned to those •who are adver-
ised in this way. From fir James Graham down to
Hr. Benjamin D'lsraeli, a feeling of angry disappoint-
ment is excited, each measuring his own excellent claims
against the pretensions of the advertised rival, and find-
ing a most injurious and ungrateful slight in the undue
preference. With reason may Sir Robert Peel depre-
cate announcements of this nature—sufficient for the day
of gazetting them is the evil thereof. He has thirty ap-
pointments to make, and three hundred expectants
to disappoint. At this moment there are walking
about three Chancellors in expectancy, five First
Lords of the Admiralty, four Foreign Secretaries,
;even Home ditto, half-a-dozen Colonial ditto, two
Presidents of the Council, three Speakers of the
House of Commons ; and, as to the secondary appoint-
ments, the Under-Secretaryships are engaged 20 and 30
deep, and the Boards of the Treasury, Admiralty, India,
are filled fifty-times over. When the day arrives for
the bursting of all these bubbles, the judgment and gra-
titude of Sir Robert Peel will not be in very good repute
with his party. He is much to be pitied, poor man !
How many are his cares in prospect ? How to govern
Ireland ; how to govern the Duke of Buckingham ;
what to do with the Duke of Wellington, so as to
satisfy him that he is thought fit for a working office,
though not put into one ; what to do with Lord Lynd-
hurst, so as to content him, without giving umbrage to
Lord Stanley ; how to arrange the appointments of the
Queen's Household, agreeably to the pleasure of all the
Tory ladies, and all their husbands, fathers, brothers,
cousins, &c., and a thousand more such perplexities.
A fig is not more full of seeds than the head of
Sir
Robert Peel of troubles. What cutting his teeth is to
an infant, cutting his colleagues is to a Minister forming
a government, and there is no " soothing syrup" for the
operation.
Not the least obnoxious thing to the Tories, in the
arrangement of places, is the preference which Sir
Robert Peel must give to his pair of rats over faithful
adherents of his party. Lord Stanley and Sir James
Graham are interlopers who take the bread out of the
mouths of better, because truer, men. They are both
undeniably very clever persons, but the Tories could
man their posts without them when they were foremost
in the opposite array, and it seems hard, undoubtedly,-,,
that their apostacy should procure them a preference
over consistency and fidelity.—Examiner.

THE COUNTY REPRESENTA-
TIVES OF THE TORIES.
(From the Examiner.)
The Tory organs through the length and breadth of
the land are rampant with exultation at the great
triumphs which the English county elections have given
to Conservative principles. We might, perhaps, suc-
cessfully deny that these elections prove anything except
the ignorance, the bigotry, the power, and the tyranny
of the landed interest and of the Church. If the propo-
sition be, that the peer, the squire, the parson, and the
elderly ladies united, can overbear all opposition in the
English counties, we fully. recognise the right of the
parties who propound it to inscribe Q.E.D. at the end of
the demonstration. We marvel, however, greatly at the
moderation of these exulters, for they do not estimate
their triumph at one half of its real amount. When Lord
Camelford threatened to send his black footman to repre-
sent his pocket borough, he indicated the greatest con-
ceivable victory of boroughmongering over a representa-
tion of the people in Parliament. So, in the case of the
counties, it is quite evident that the lower the quality
of the persons sent to represent them, the greater
is the triumph of Conservative principles. There-
fore we say that they under-estimate their triumph, for
they have taken no adequate credit for the marvellously
low quality of the county representatives, What Lord
Camelford only threatened, those who control the county
elections have virtually carried into effect. We do not
deny that Lord Stanley is the keenest debater of the pre-
sent day, nor that Lord Francis Egerton is a highly
accomplished gentleman. We admit that Sir E. Knatch-
bull has been a Cabinet Minister, and we see no reason
why Lord Granville Somerset should not become one.
We do not doubt that Mr. Miles, Mr. Patten, and Sir
Eardley Wilmot transact county business in Parliament
in a manner satisfactory to those who emploY them,
nor that (judging from their style of parliamentary
eloquence, for we do not know the fact) they are chair-
men of Quarter Sessions. We have named seven out of
one hundred and thirty-seven English county Members
who are claimed by the Tories, and we should be glad
to be informed how many grains, even of the slender-
est corn, the most careful winnowing could redeem
from the chaff which remains. Of thirty-four new
county Members it might be unfair to pronounce any
decided opinion, though, in the great majority of their
cases, exhibitions on the hustings have been quite s:ith-
cient to moderate our expectations of any latent statc,i-
manship. Ninety-six tried men remain, and with re-.
spect to eighty of them at least, we will, after having
carefully examined the list, venture to assert, that no
mechanics' institute in England would, out of 137 of its
members, furnish eighty so little marked by talent or in-
formation. The qualifications for an • English county
member are to inscribe Church and Corn-law on his
banner, to be sufficiently " fat in die head," and to be
ready with a tew thousands in case of a contest. None
)f your thinkers or reasoners ; stupidity and igno-
rance are recommendations to his patrons. The
Church requires no clerkship in her lay tools ;
ignorance is the best security for submissive
obedience ; and the cue was kindly given to the
landed interest by the. Duke of Wellington, when
he declared that we ought not to be dependent on
foreigners'for our food. The county constituencies were
thereby admonished not to tolerate any man who car-
ried his reasoning on the Corn-laws beyond that dictum.
It would be difficult to over-estimate the obligation under
which the Duke of Wellington laid the supporters of
the Corn-law by thus offering himself up as the victim
of their cause. Any mere politician would have been
swamped by the utterance 'of so childish an absurdity ;
but the Duke of Wellington's reputation rests On a
firmer basis than the wisdom of his political aphorisms. ,
He is the only man in Great Britain who could afford to '
say in 1830 that the country wanted no reform, and in
1841 that the Corn-laws cught to be maintained because
it would be unwise to depend on foreigners for our food.
Under the agis of the Duke of Wellington, Sir E.
Knatchbull and men of his stamp are emboldened to re-
tail an argument which would have been poh-poh'd in
any society but at the tea-table of a cathedral town, if
it had emanated merely from themselves.
But the whole amount of the county Conservative
triumph is not yet told. About twenty-two Liberal
county Members who sat in the last Parliament have
been defeated at the present election, or having been
forced by the hopelessness of the case to withdraw with-
out venturing, on a contest, have in every instance been
replaced by Tories. Among them we find the names of
Lord Morpeth, Lord Howick, Lord C. Russell, Mr. E.
J. Stanley, Sir 11. Vivian, Sir C. Lemon, and Mr. San-
ford. We limit ourselves to seven, because we have pre-
viously given the elite of 137 Tories amounting to that
number. We challenge comparison between the two
lists. The Conservative triumph might be carried much
further, for we have no hesitation in saying that the list
of twenty-two rejected Liberals contains in it more talent,
more Parliamentary knowledge and industry, than are to
be found among the 137 accepted Tories. If we had not
sufficiently established the shrinking modesty of the Tory
exulters, we might, with great advantage to the Conser-
vative cause, pursue the inquiry by comparing the un-
successful new county candidates with the successful
Tories. Mr. W. Gisborne, for instance, in South Derby-
shire, with Mr. Colville; but "forsan sat grata biberunt."
This State of things, however, opens wide considerations,
to which we may advert on a future occasion.

THE Tong SPEAKER.—A correspondent of
the Standard states that Sir Eardley Wilmot is to be
the Speaker of the Tories. Colonel Sibthorp and Mr.
Peter Borthwick are also talked of, and it is hard to say
whether the Colonel's manners or Peter's diameter
will render the one or the other the more eligible, and
worthy to re resent the dignity of the Tory douse of
ComnuB3.—.zominer.