The Sun.
London, England, 1834-11-12 00:00:00

it was too late. So much weakness on the part of Ad-
ministration gave new life to the Tiers-Parti, even

maimed and beaten as it had been. Circumstances

save it new force ; it showed signs of life ; began to
agitate and become once more menacing. It had
another leader, a respectable- character, one who had
shown himself most wary and most independent. Upon
him a wily and fascinating look was cast. He was
summoned, flattered, told to assume the first place,
which in his party he could not pretend to. But then
he was to be a Colossus, supported on the two parties,
and awing both. M. Mole fell into the trap, and from
that moment another name was lost to the would-be
Opposition. Here let us break off the chronicle for
the time, although Heaven knows how it might be am-
plified and continued. Let this suffice as a sample of
the, perhaps, too crafty spirit that presides over the af-
fairs of France. It is Mazarin again—the political
though not the social Mazarin—a Mazarin honnete
homme, and with him we see the Fronde again agita,':ina
the streets and salons of Paris.—Morning Chroilide.°

The Scotsman of Saturday last contains an admi-
rable article, having the title " A ;CV/ more words on
the Brougham and Durham Controversy." "We can
perfectly understand," obs,erves our Northern contem-
porary, " why the Conservative journals should seize
every opportunity Co depreciate the Lord Chancellor ;
but the rancour,with which he is pursued by a portion
of what is called the Whig press, fills us with surprise
and disgust. Frail would be a statesman's reputation,
if it depended on the consistency and judgment of those
who profess to be the organs of the public voice ; and
popularity would indeed be precarious, and worthless
beyond measure, if it were in the power of such parties
to give or withhold it. Happily, however, there is an
inborn sense of justice ameng mankind, which though
it may be occasionally bewildered by sophistry or pre-
judice, seldom fails to assert its supremacy in the long
run, and to indemnify those who have been the victims,
for a time, of malice or misrepresentation." The
attacks which have been so incessently directed
against Lord Brougham, have injured him in the esti-
mation of no persons respecting whose good opinion
be need be anxious. His services during the last
twenty-five years are not to be blotted from the public
recollection by a series of rancorous paragraphs. Lord
Brougham can only destroy the reputation of Lord
Brougham. But is there one sober-minded person
throughout the country, who seriously believes that
Lord Brougham has any other object in view than
the improvement of our laws and institutions—the re-
medying of every recognized abuse ? We have a very
favourable opinion of several members of the Cabinet.
We do not believe their is one member of it more dis-
interested than Lord Brougham ; we are sure that
there is not- one of them who has rendered half so
much service to his country ; and we will add, that we
do not believe there is one of them who is so much in-
spired by the wish to do good to the country
as his Lordship. He may have failings which
some of them arc without ; these are connected
with the ardent temperament which belongs to
him ; but, •on the other hand, the balance
of positive excellency is certainly in his favour.
We wish neither to flatter Lord Brougham nor to libel
his colleagues, but to speak what we deem the truth.
His colleagues are well aware that the labours of a long
life are not obliterated from the public recollection in
a day ; and we are sure there is not one of them who
does not (whatever may be insinuated to the contrary)
feel that the loss of his Lordship to the Cabinet would
be irreparable. Of all the attempts made to lower him,
that of the Times, on account of the Central Criminal
Court Bill, is the most ridiculous. When was it ever
before made a charge against a Minister, that the
scheme which he proposed and persuaded Parliament
to adopt was not his own ? The history of the au-
thorship of the measure is not worth a moment's no-
tice. If all that the TiMes states were true (which
it is not), what does it signify ? The merit lies
in the adoption of the measure. A hundred per-
sons might frame such a Bill. But there is a ma-
terial difference between conceiving a scheme, and
obtaining the benefit of it for the country.
We wish that our limits would allow us to in-
sert the whole of the excellent article from the
Scotsman. We must content ourselves, for the pre-
sent, with the following extract :—" We are almost
ashamed to dwell on charges like these, which, in the
eye of common sense, amount to nothing. That pub-
lic man must, indeed, be tolerably pure against whom
graver delinquencies cannot be produced ; but if any
such can be alleged against the Chancellor, we pray
his Whig accusers to enlighten our ignorance ; for we
are unable to discover them. We can understand the
Times. It acts under the impulse of mortified pride,
and is blessed with a happy exemption from those feel-
ings which restrain the indulgence of malignant pas-
sions in others. We can understand the Radical
journals, too, when they talk of the Chancellor's base-
ness,- falsehood, duplicity, treachery, and so forth—
words which merely import in their mouth that he is
on bad terms -with their hero, Lord Durham. All that
passed between the two Peers we set aside. The
Chancellor's conduct was not Prudent ; but, whether
as regards private honour, or official confidence, we
hold that Lord Durham is by much the greatest
offender of the two. Let it be, however, that
both are in the wrong. Even adopting the re-
presentations of their respective enemies, neither Isar,
done more than men of pretty warm feelings have
done, and always will do, when they have a quarrel.
Lord BroughTsm's friends may regret some words he
used, but it is pure factiousness in those who vindi-
cate Lord Durham, to pretend that the Chancellor's
character is injured by anything he I.as said or done
in the controversy. If every tangible charge made
against Lord Brougham were nese (for obscure insi-
nuations of. treachery and in.rrigue' go for nothing
in such cases), it would scaocely affect the character
of a public man of the most ordinary stamp. What is
it, then, when weighed against the incessant, varied,
and gigantic services of Henry Brougham for the last
five and twenty years ! Passing over his early labours
in the Edinburgh Review, he may be said to have
entered upon life in 1808, when he made his cele-
brated speech at the bar of the House of Commons
against the Orders in Council. He was returned a Mem-
ber in 1810, and, with the exception of one short inter-
val, has been in Parliament ever since. His energy, his
courage, his talents, soon placed him at the head of the
liberal party both in the House and at the Bar. For nearly
'a quarter of a century, he has been in the front rank of every
battle fought on English ground, in the cause ofliberty and
mankind. In the ten dismal years which preceded the
death of Castlereagh, when Insurrection Bills, Gagging
Bills, Disarming Bills, Habeas Corpus uspension
Bills, tyranny at home, and leagues with tyrants
abroad, were the order of the day, the nervous elo-
quence of Henry Brougham was the main stay of
the people's cause, cheering the friends of liberty,
paralysing their enemies, and stifling many bad mea-
sures in their birth. What was said of an illustrious
Frenchman might be applied to him in those dark
times—that his genius was a power in Europe.'
We have seen one great lawyer after another, Gibbs,
Copley, Best, Scarlett, Plunkett, desert the popular
side for office and emolument ; and now, forsooth,
Henry Brougham, who has stood all trials for thirty
years, and was a reformer in the worst times, is
accused of abandoning his principles on the paltry
grounds we have alluded to ! And all his vast labours
in behalf of freedom, civil, political, and religious,
of education, law reform, the abolition of slavery, and
a thousand other objects of . deep interest to mankind,
are forgotten ! It is not too much to say that his
services in some one month of his career, outweigh all
that Lord Durham has done, or can do, in the course
of his life."—Morning Chronicle.
The death of Earl Spencer, who expired in the af-
ternoon of last Monday, will make necessary a
change in the interior (at least) of the Administration.
As the Chancellor of the Exchequer must be a mem-
ber of the Lower House, Lord Althorp (now Earl
Spencer) will of course retire from that prominent and
active office. The most obvious consequence of this
move is the loss to Government of a decidedly favourite
leader of the House of Commons, and apart from all
consideration of his Lordship's qualities as a states-
man, a financier, and a man of business, we can well
understand how his impassible temper, together with a
personal tearing conspicuously mild, courteous, and
agreeable, should have gained the Noble Lord a vast
number of suffrages in an assembly of English gentle-