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

PINE AWNS.

The excavations making in Paris for the fortresses
have, as it was expected, brought many things to light.
Where the Seine and Marne conjoin, Roman military
ornaments without number have been found, with human
skeletons as if on a battle-field.

Rose-culture is carried to great height at Provins,
in Champagne. M. Opoix, a great name there in this
line, was the first who formed the famous conserve from
them, and recommended the tinting of bonbons with the
rich colour which the flower yields.

TORY CONCORD.
•-,fkifil the Examiner.)
' The Times denies that there is any disunion in the
Tory party, and quotes Sir Robert Peel's assertion—
. " That all the rumours which have been circulated
about differences of opinion and jealousies are abso-
lutely without :foundation ; that the party which acts
upon his advice and counsels is ii thilted.and compact
party, in which no difference of principle prevails, as
to the course which we ought to pursue."
Let us test the truth of this assertion by arplyhit it
in the very words of the speaker to several great
questions.
Upon the Privilege question did no difference of
opinion prevail in the Tory party as to the. Arse which
they ought to pursue ?
Upon the Canada Bill did no difference of opinion
prevail in the Tory party as to the course which they
ought to pursue, the Tories in the ;Rouse of Commons,
with Sir Robert Peel at their head, having almost una-
nimously supported the Bill, and the Tory Lords, under
the Duke of Wellington, having almost unanimously re-
probated it ?

Upon the China question was there no difference of
opinion in the Tory party as to the course which they
ought to pursue, the Tories in the Lower House having
proposed a vote of censure on the conduct of the Go-
vernment, and the Tory chiefs in the Upper House
having opposed a. motion to the same effect proposed by
Lord Stanhope ?
Upon the New Poor-law does no difference of opinion
prevail in the Tory party as to the course which they
ought to pursue, half the party condemning the measure
as the greatest cruelty and injustice, which the other half
claim credit for having assisted in passing ?
'And to come t' the great question which now divides
the country, upon the Corn-laws, does no difference of
opinion prevail in the Tory party as to the course
which they ought to pursue, Sir Robert Peel pledging
himself to adhere to the sliding scale, and his followers,
Sir G. Murray, Mr. G. Dawson, and some others, declar-
ing for a fixed duty ? Why, the difference between Sir
Robert Peel and Sir G. Murray is precisely as wide as
that between him and Lord J. Russell on the Corn-law
question.
As to the confessed difficulty of Sir Robert Peel, the
Government of Ireland, are we to believe that Sir. R.
Peel and Lord Roclen have the same views, and that
there is no difference of principle between them ? Has
Sir Robert relapsed to the yellow fever, or have the
Orangemen cast their skins?
One of the first motions in the New Parliament will be
Sir Robert Inglis's proposal of a large grant for Church
Extension. Is Sir Robert Peel in agreement with this
worthy as to the fitness of imposing new burdens on the
l)iesenters ?

Upon the question of educktion is there no difference
of principle between Sir Robert Peel and some of his
party—the majority we believe we might say ? Did
not the Times . lend its columns to a writer who charged
Sir Robert Teel with irreligious doctrines—With pre-
ferring- heathen 'philosophy to revealed truths—and
classed him with the disciples of a school not accepting
Christian principles.
Sir Robert Peel, so often sneered at for having lacked
a grandfather on earth, was not to be allowed to have a
Father in Heaven, because ho had hazarded the liberal
proposition that people were the better for any sort of
knowledge. There was surely some difference of prin-
ciple in the case when the great Tory organ was lending
itself to the publication of arguments to prove that Sir
Robert Peel's doctrines were of infidel origin and ten-
dency.

Indeed, when the Times so coolly denies the existence
of al?.y disunion in the Tory party, we have only to
ask it what, then, has been the justice of the censures
and reproaches it has from time to time addressed to
Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington? Its attacks
were upon no trivial occasions, they were on great ques-
tions, and they either proceeded on wide differences of
principle, or they were very unjustand wanton. The Times,
in pouring out its reproaches, knew what it was about ;
it knew that it uttered the sentiments of a large section
of the party .to which it has devoted itself.
When Mungo, in the farce, is asked by his master,
whether he knows of anything amiss going on in the
house, he answers, " A d— deal, Massa, how you beat
me every night !" Sir Robert Peel, if he had the frank-
ness of Mungo, would, instead of denying the discords
in the Tory house, refer to the beatings which he has
had in the Times for every liberal principle that he en-
tertains.

......
The Morning Chronicle has helped us to another evi-
dence of Tory concord from the pages of the British
Critic, the High-Church organ of the Oxford theolo-
gians, in which publication Sir Robert Peel's character
is•thus handled :
"And, as we have said, the man who offers these con-
solations is one whose life, and breath, and health, and
wealth, and very being is the success of his party ; the
least abstract, the least theoretical, the least doctrinary
of all the statesmen of his day ; one whose pulse beats
with the divisions of the House of Commons, and who
knows by heart the relative numbers on every tussle of
faction for the last quarter, or, perhaps, half a century.
He is a man, who, amiable and respectable as he is,
plays his part in the great arena with no more largeness
and comprehensiveness of view, no more grandeur and
sacredness of principle, than the most ordinary partisan
in the most local squabble on the most ephemeral in-
tere 3ts. Nay, greatness of mind has nothing to do with
geographical extent or historical duration. A man
may be great on a paving and lighting dispute, or a
watch and ward committee ; he may be great with his
servants or by himself ; but Sir Robert is small with
nations, petty with a . constitution of ages, and
(we say it sadly and seriously) unfaithful- to the
everlasting Catholic Church. He wishes to know no-
thing beyond the House of Commons. Its resolutions,
passed in heat and speed, under royal or popular domi-
nation, in days of corruption or violence, its chance ma-
jorities of ten, two, or one, are his inviolable canons of
legislation, beyond which he dreams not of a principle.
That House of Commons, which the whole Church of
England now, with a unanimity unprecedented in the
history of public opinion, declares that Sir Robert
has himself desecrated, and (what, of course, he thinks
much worse) which he himself believes others have
since immeasurably vulgarised,—that profane and vulgar
House of Commons is his only reality. Every other
thing, or thought to him, is form and shadow. To the
House of Commons he is thoroughly harmonised, soul
and body, mind and manner. In vain might we search
through his speeches for splendid theories, large induc-
tions, universal sentiments, great maxims, solemn sane-

tions, profound arguments, and immutable principles ; or
if one does find them here and there, they are so brought
in as to be the exceptions that prove the rule. From be-
ginning to end his career is ono of shifts and expedients.
Neither he, nor any man on earth, can venture to say
what he will do next ; nor can any say what he has
done already, in terms implying intention and con-
sistency. We firmly believe that no half-cunning tool of
a local faction, no jobbing attorney, no town meddler or
corporation factotum, could more degrade civic economy
by his way of administering it, or, in the hour of re-
verse, when called to account by the adverse party, could
more degrade the cause by his mode of speaking about it,
than does the Conservative leader degrade the noble sci-
ence of policy. It is and my party,' throughout ; those
Members who did me the honour to support me ;" when
her Majesty called me to preside in her councils ;' I
thought best to dissolve ;" the first Session of my Par-
liament ;' such were the opinions I then advocated ;'
the long and arduous struggle I hare maintained ;" /
then felt ;' I therefore resolved to abdicate office ;" the
sentiments which influenced me on that occasion ;" the
difficulties of my position ;" the origin of my family ;'
the scenes of my youth ;' and so on, through every
possible variety of egotism. Strike the first person out
of Sir Robert's speech, aye, out of his whole career, and
they become a rope untwisted, a net unknotted, a ship
unnailed and unpinned. We stop, not because we have
not more to say, for we consider Sir Robert Peel's ego-
tism about as copious a subject as one might wish to write
upon, seeing it pervades his every word and deed, but be-
cause it is odious thus to speak of a man for whom we can-
not help wishing well. We believe him to be a kind, an ami-
able, and, to some extent, a disinterested and magnanimous
man. His friends, who have, of course, abundant op-
portunities of knowing it, say that he is ; and what is
even more, his public conduct, through many a year of
harass and mortification, betrays scarcely a particle of
malice, jealousy, or revenge. But, alas for a little mag-
nanimity—for martyrdom to an influential minority—
for ignorance that the whole is greater than a part.
Strip Sir Robert of his inveterate self, and scatter the
three hundred and odd gentlemen who do him the
honour to support him,' to the four winds, and then
perhaps he may become not only a good but a great man.
But as it is, he is just the very last person in the whole
world to advise a society of operatives to relinquish sel-
fish, social, and party questions, and devote themselves
wholly to the pleasures of- science."
This is _forcible writing, and very penetrating criti-
cism. It is the lowest measure ever yet taken of Sir Ro-
bert Peel, and it is also the-truest. There is not a word
relating to Sir Robert Peel's qualities that we can deny,
and though we thought that we understood his character
with all its mediocrities pretty well before we read this
analysis of it, we confess that it has taught us to regard
it with diminished respect. What, then, is the state of
a party whose organs lower their chief in the opinion
of his opponents? Adversaries may fairly be sus-
pected of some prejudice against Sir Robert Peel, of some
disparaging bias ; but such prejudice, if it exist, takes a
lesson of contempt from the instructions of the ablest
writers of his own party. They quarrel with him, it is
true, not for the errors of his policy, but for the points
which reclaim him from bigotry ; but in their quarrel
they tell him home truths as to his qualities, and the cha-
racter of his career, with one foot on sea and one on land.
As the writer in the British Critic says,—" From begin-
ning to end his career is one of shifts and expedients.
Neither he nor any man living can venture to say what
he will do next, nor can any one say what he has done al-
ready, in terms implying intention and consistency."
And this is the man in the lead of the party that boasts
of possessing the wealth and intelligence of the country.
The remark that must occur to every mind is, What must
be the condition of a party to whom this uncertain manof
shifts and expedients and shallow plausibilities is indis-
pensable ? He is at the same time followed and de-
nounced. He leads with lithe cry of " Stop thief" after
him from his own gang.
The British Critic observes upon the egotism of Sir
Robert Peel, and says—" Strike the first person out of
Sir Robert's speech. ay, out of his whole career, and they
become a rope untwisted, a net unkuotted, a ship un-
nailed and unpinned." This is quite true, -but is it not
also true that Sir Robert Peel is the first person, and
that without him the rope would be untwisted, the net
(in which the country is now caught) unknotted, the
ship of Toryism unnailed and unpinned ? His party may
hate, scorn, despise him, but they cannot do without
him ; and the very littleness which they quarrel with, in
him is the littleness which suits their cause ; the shifts
and evasions of which they complain, the shifts and eva-
sions which save it from ruin.
The French have a story of a man with a very ugly
nose. Everybody agreed that it was impossible for a

rr,r_ to bt*nilre TIJe man.i weary•of such a
nose, cut it off in diTtis4, and all tilt ,4g44;eitt.,tiiiitt, ill as
he looked with his nose, he was a hundred times:rse
without it. Like this is the'case of the Tory party with
Sir TZebert Peel for its leader ; it looks marvellously ill-
favoured, but to lop off the peccant feature would not
improve.its case, for, bad as it. is,,with it, it would be in-
neinparibly worsewithoit it. Tlll4 tiiiieh kir the conso-
lation of our opponents, whose case, in the very moment
of triumph, with the drawback of a leader odious to
them; is out, for conapasSiom They cannot themselves
be raised to p6W'ef n>i lii it igisl.ttt; the, manof their dis-
like and distrust ; and they compel the Cro to give.
its confidence to one who has not their own. • .
If Sir Robert Peel, feeling himself both the life and
the hate of his party, begin to be somewhat arrogant in
his language, it is stOely not sttrprising. His recent
boast that he laid the foundation of the Conserittive
party is a humble imitation of Canning's vaunt that he
had called the new world into existence to redress the
balance of the old. Whet Sir Robert Peel calls the new
Conservative party, is the old Tory party with the addi-
tion of a few rats. What he describes so pompously as
widening foundations, has been no more than making
room for apostasy. Vain boasts of the kind we allude
to can only make the opponents of Sir Robert smile,
but they produce a very different impression on his
party, who, impatiently brooking his leadership, can
hardly relish his claim to`the creation of their political
world. The Americans, in ridicule of the habit of at-
tributing everything to General Jackson during his
Presidency, say, that at at Infant school examination.
a child, in answer to the question, " Who killed Abel ?"
promptly replied, " General Jackson." Sir Robert Peel,
in the infant school of Tamworth, is endeavouring to
teach a belief in his exploits in creation, which have as
little foundation in truth as the opinion that General
Jackson was the greatest of generals and the first of
manslayers. The fact is) however,
_pretty notorious,
that Sir Robert Peel did not invent Toryism, whatever
part he may have had in making it so ashamed of its
name as to take the alias of Conservatism.