The Sun.
London, England, 1841-10-15 00:00:00

Cbt ;A14114

LONDON:
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1841.

Some of our Irish Contemporaries, and even
some of our metropolitan brethren, are unex-
pectedly indignant at the appointment of a Mr.
BREWSTER, a red-hot Orangeman, according to
their representations, to be legal adviser to
the Irish Secretary; and the filling up of the
office of Mr. CAHILL, Crown Solicitor for Tip-
perary, whose state of health had compelled
him to try the climate of Lisbon, with a Tory.
They advert, also, with severity to Chief Justice
}RIME having retained his place, after he had
ceased adequately to perform its duties, in order
to bequeath it to none but a Tory successor.
These writers must have been betrayed by their
own hopes, if they expected anything different,
for all those acts are consistent.with Tory prin-
ciples, and worthy of Tory praise.
Our Contemporaries ought to remember that
the Government of this country is wholly con-
stituted and appointed for the l'enefit of a party,
and for party purposes. It is intended to main-
tain, in dominion and splendour, an exclusive,
irreligious, and anti-Christian Church; to pre-
serve in opulence and power—and this has been
avowed both by Lord GREY and Sir 8.. PEEL---
the landed aristocracy ; to exalt and: enrich 0-
or two classes, and to impoverish all th-
wt d in
the
an
rest;
and it has been almost uniformly co-
..stluceetl
conformity to these intentions. F h
in office (such is
Whigs werewhich the G- influence of the
principles on Jvernmeut is founded,
over the mind), all t Liberal Journals ex-
claimed incessantly ts
isfai list the impolixy ofappoint-
ing to any office, kowe ver menial or however lordly,
any person wiLio was not a th:orough-paced Whig
or Liberal. We cannot, therefore, feel any in-
dignati'Jn at the conduct of the Tories in Ireland.
It ccfrtainly does not surpass what we expected.
It is only the necessary consequence of the prin-
ciple on which the Government is constituted;
and to blame it, is something like blaming a
steam-rzngine, which we have constructed and set
to work, for the motion of the vessel, which it
Produces.

The great object and intention of Government,
so far as Ireland is concerned, is to preserve that
monstrous nuisance, the Irish Church. For this
object the people have been impoverished, de-
?graded, and oppressed f;r ages. If that Church
were useful or agreeable to the people, like
Potatoes or cloth, they would freely support it,
as they cultivate the ground and raise and im-
prove manufactures ; but because that Church is
both mischievous and disagreeable, the Govern-
ment has for one of its main objects to support
it by coercion. But how can the Government
effect that, unless it be administeredin all its de-
partments by men who think the political nuisance
ought to be maintained ? The Whig Govern-
ment, which cut off ten Bishoprics and. em-
ployed those who regarded the Church as a nui-
sance, wa4 preparing the way
for extirpating it ;

and the Tory Government—far truer, we will t
admit, to the principle of its birth—is doing, and
will do, all in its power to nourish the Church.
Accordingly it appoints Mr. BREWSTER, an
Orangeman, and dismisses Mr. CAHILL, a Ca-
tholic. Chief Justice BVsnE, a limb of 'the` Go-
vernment, shares the opinion that the Church
ought to be upheld at the expense of the people,
who, for all his party, constitute a very subordi-
nate consideration, and he accordingly retained
his place till he could see a friend of the Church
appointed in his stead. The appointments, then,
we repeat, of which our Contemporaries com-
plain, are the natural consequences of the system,
and to quarrel with them is like quarrelling with
potatoes for growing after they have been planted.
Passing from the indignation of our Contem-
poraries at these appointments, which is unjustifi-
able as long as they approve of the system, we
must advert to the resignation of Chief Justice
BusHE, to illustrate a very different question.
His case and that of the Lord President HOPE
are two examples of men in high station who
have been for some time anxious to retire, but
have held on from an expectation that the
Tories would be reinstated in office. Many
other persons nourished the same expectation.
In fact, Sir R. PEEL'S advent to office was fore-
seen and foretold for several months. It was
not theresult, therefore, ofcaprice, favouritism, or
Court intrigue, and it has about it something of
the characteristics of a general fact or
natural law. To us this is full of consolation
and hope, for it shows that even the
accession of a Minister to office is regulated by
principles, which, by observation, we may all
come to understand, and turn to profit ; as the
knowledge of the laws of gravity, after it was ac-
quired, was turned to the profit of the navigator
and the improvement of navigation.

The main element of the accession was the de-
sire of a large body of the nobility, clergy, and
gentry to place the Tories in office, because they
profess principles in accordance with the objects
and intentions of Government as we have de-
scribed it. The possessors of exclusive privi-
leges—the few favoured classes—the members
of the State Church, are all conscious that the
security of their privileges cannot be trusted to
the honesty of the acquisition or their utility
to others; that if preserved at all, it must be by
maintaining the great instrument which is
created to preserve them ; and their desire to pre-
serve them, linking numerous individuals in the
resolute attainment of one common object,
carried Sir ROBERT PEEL into office. He ga-
thered around him all who were alarmed lest
the character of the Government, as we have
described it, should be altered. He continually
and artfully nourished their alarm ; he fanned
their zeal, and at length they succeeded in
placing again in power a man who is pledged to
maintain the Government as an instrument for
aggrandizing the few at the expense of the many.
Another element of the change is to be found
in the minds of the many. The bulk of them
are accustomed, without reflection, to defer to
the desires, wishes, and opinions, of the privi-
leged classes. There is amongst them a fund of
idolatry of wealth and grandeur, the super-
stitious heritage from a former condition of
slavery, as irrational as Fetiche, or Medicine-
bag worship, which makes the many anxious to
please the few, dud promote their grandeur at
the expense of their own happiness. The idols,
wiser than worshipped stones, are sensible of
the power which this disposition of the bulk of
the people gives them, and they cultivate it assi-
duously by the help of a hired and bribed press,
and an allied priesthood. Incessantly, by all
the means in their power, have the bulk of the
privileged classes, as one man, pursued their ob-
ject of placing the Government in congenial
hands ; and, working on minds willing to aid
them, their perseverance was, in the long run,
crowned with success. The return of Sir RO-
BERT PEEL to power, then, is no accidental cir-
cumstance, but the combined result of the fears
of the privileged classes, and of the deference of
the many.

We cannot hope to abate the desire of the few
to preserve their privileges, though, as they see
the instrument they have constructed for their
purpose in what they call proper hands, their
alarms will subside, and their zeal will relax;
but we may expect, by continually setting before
the many the vast injury which is inflicted on
them by the classes they worship, to lessen their
unwise deference, and so bring about another
change in the Administration. When we reflect
on the outrages which the exclusive system in-
flicts on all Catholics and Dissenters, andall non-
electors, when we see the vast injury done to the
millions to gratify the rapacity of a few, we can
but conclude that a Government which is founded
on such principles, and which must in the long
run array against it all the excluded or unprivi-
leged masses—we must conclude that a simi-
lar great law to that which has temporarily placed
the Tories in office will hurl them from it, and at
no distant day be fatal to the whole system of
our Government.

The Ministerial Journals will do their masters
and the country great injury if they should suc-
ceed in generating the opinion that the present
agitation on the subject of the Corn-laws is
wholly factitious and will soon blow over. The
National Operative Anti-Bread-tax Association,
which held a meeting at Manchesteron Monday,
is a distinct body from the Anti-Corn-law League,
but it will work the same end. Col. THOMPSON,
who was present, made a most judicious speech,
and recommended the operatives to demand com-
pensation from the landlords for the many years'
sufferings they have inflicted on them; and the
idea was adopted by the meeting, which voted
by acclamation the following resolution :
" That this meeting not only considers the total repeal
of the Corn-laws to be a measure both reasonable and
just, and especially beneficial to the working classes, but
also considers that the landowning aristocracy ought to
compensate the working classes for years of robbery b'-
refunding the whole of the unholy gains wrung from dile
people by those wicked imposts."

From a small protecting fixed duty
the people
have gone on to total abolition
sessions. Lord RADNOR
.on of the landed
,d now they I
an
come to demand compensat-
aristocracy for wicked opo-
told the Peers some , -
wicked oppressior.a
were provoking the multitude
iew
days
ago,
that these
to ask curious •
owners to'" .questions about the titles of the land
did -
shear estates, and those curious questions
n'
,t receive answers which were satisfactory
fr., the inquirers. The agitation, then, which the
Tory Journals pretend to despise, is ;:sitense,
and goes to the very heart of politkal society.
The landlords who have provoked it know best,
we presume, how they can resist it, and can rely
with safety on the justice of their cause. For
our parts we cannot ce,nceive the possibility of
holding the great multitude in subjection against
their will; and once they come generally to the
conclusions solemnly recorded at Manchester,
and babbled out without preparation •at Nor-
wich, snowing they came from an intense and
cherished conviction, the power of the land-
owners will disappear like snow on the return of

spring.

" Backed by public opinion," said Sir James Graham,
before he was a renegade, "the landowners are almost
omnipotent. In violation of public opinion they cannot
long retain an exclusive advantage. The contest is faar-
ful ; for on what ground will it be decided ? On the
very topic which inflames to madness, that hunger
which breaks through stone walls will be arrayed against
them ; reason will be no longer heard ; the barriers of
society will be broken down ; and estates, distinctions,
and honours, swept away in one resistless torrent. LET
THOSE WHO SEEK HIGH PRICES at all risks, remember
the words of Tacitus—" Vulgus ad rnagnitudinem bene-
ficiorum aderat stultissimus quisque pecuniis naercebatur;
apud sapientes cassa habebantur, quie neque dari neque
accipi, salva republics, poterant."_

At all the meetings which have been held, all
factious-, or mere Whig and Tory motives, have
been disclaimed. The agitation is no hollow
party move. It is based, as a Correspondent from
Birmingham says, on empty workshops, empty
cupboards, empty pockets, and empty stomachs.
It is an honest agitation. It has no leader. It
is neither an O'CONNELL nor an O'CoNNon. move.
It serves no individual ambition; it is not got up
for any individual purpose. It may therefore be
slow in its progress, incomplete in its organiza-

tion, and disobedient to command; but its
results will be the more lasting and more
important. With the eNclusion of the pri-
vileged classes, it is national. It is no longer
confined to Corn-laws it attacks all privileges,
and seems more like one of those moral revo-
lutions which prostrate systems of Government,
and of faith, than those evanescent hubbubs which
statesmen may despise and editors mock at.

We have received the whole of the French
journals of Tuesday, but they add little to the
intelligence previously received from Spain. We
have given in another column from them the
proclamations of the Spanish insurgents, with
the latest news from the French frontier. M.
FRANK CANE, the Procureur-General, has been
promoted to a Judgeship at Rouen. His succes-
sor is M. HEBERT, a disciple of M. PERSIL, and
everyway qualified to bend most obsequiously to
the wishes of the Cabinet.

" The accounts from Burgundy," says the Alsace of
Strasburg, " represent the vintages of Beaune, Pommard,
and Volnay, to be very satisfactory, and that wines of
the whole of the Cote d'Or will be equal in quality
to those of the most celebrated years; but the quantity
Is generally estimated at about one-half of last year's
growth. In the Champagne country the vintage has
commenced, but opinions are divided as to the pro-
bable quality of the wine. Those of Ay are expected to
be inferior to the produce of last year, but those of
Epernay, and Pierry, Cramant, and Montholon, are better
thought of. The hills of Rheims will render only a small
quantity of wine, but it will be good in quality. As to
the Southern wines, they write from Perpignan that, the
temperature of the weather and the heavy rains have
been very unfavourable to the gathering, and the pro-
duce is expected to be low both in quantity and good-
ness. In Roussillon, in consequence of the grapes having
begun to perish, the vintage, which is generally delayed
till the beginning of October, was commenced and finished
by the large growers, and particularly at Rivesaltes, in
the course of September."
A correspondent writes from the Hague that on the
10th inst. the Second Chamber of the States General
adopted, by 29 to 22, the budget of the Minister of War,
amounting to 12 millions of florins (30 millions of
francs). A chapter, with 500,000 florins for unforeseen
expenses, remained to be voted. The fifth chapter of
the budget of the Minister of the Interior had been
voted by a majority of 32 to 21. The Minister of the
Interior, M. Van Schimmelpenninck, had previously de-
clared that ho would retire from office it• the chapter
should be rejected.
A Vienna letter says :—" We have seldom had so
many members of the Imperial family assembled here as
at the present moment. There are twenty-three Arch-
dukes and Archduchesses now at Court, and their Im-
perial Majesties have just been joined by the Prince of
Salerno."

The Illanheim Gazette, on the authority of letters
from Vienna, speaks of some political arrests in that
city connected with a new conspiracy of the " Sclavic
Democrats" said to have been discovered in Galicia,
and in which several important personages are reported
to be compromised. It is supposed that there is a
secret understanding between the conspirators and the
"Sclavic or Russian aristocrats."

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