The Sun.
London, England, 1834-10-22 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

We have abridged from the Dundee Chronicle a
report of the dinner given to Sir George Murray at
Perth. Sir George is a distinguished man, and it
will be naturally expected that we should take some
• notice of his exhibition on this occasion. Sir George
is entitled to the distinction of having violated a
clear and distinct pledge, in a more barefaced man-
ner than was ever before done in Parliament. On
the 28th of April, in an election speech, at Perth,
he expressly declared that free admission into the
English Universities ought to be given to all sects ;
and he had hardly well taken his seat in Parlia-
ment, when he voted against the second reading of a
Bill allowing all his Majesty's subjects to enter and
matriculate in the Universities of England. The
shock to decency was so glaring, that men of his own
party were ashamed of him. Politically as we are
opposed to the Right Honourable Gentleman, we
could not help regretting that he had afforded us this
triumph. It is a melancholy spectacle to see a man
of Sir George's talents (to say nothing of his well-
earned military reputation) exhibiting in so reckless a
manner his disregard of reputation, and, for the sake
of a paltry advantage, giving countenance, by his ex-
ample, to the most shameless breach of public faith. In
his speech at the Perth dinner he only makes matters
worse, by a paltry equivocation. " The non-admission
of Dissenters," he says, " to the Universities has been
represented as i great injustice to Scotland. I cannot
see the question in this light ; for let us observe the
real amount of the grievance in reference to Scotland.
How many individuals in the county of Perth have been
deprived of admission into either Oxford or Cambridge?
Is there 50 ? 20 ? 10 ? 5 ? 2 ? or even 1 ? No ; there
is not even one connected with the county who suffers
in this respect." This is evading the question. Sir
George did not pledge himself to procure admission for
the inhabitants of the county of Perth into the
English Universities, but to vote for the admission of
the English Dissenters into the English Universities.
The Scotch Dissenters are admitted into the Scotch
Universities ; and the question of their admission into
the English Universities is too remote to be of any in-
terest to them. But, as British subjects, the inde-
pendent portion of the Perth electors could not be in-
different to a question involving the great cause of
religious liberty—namely, the removal of a humiliating
degradation to which their English brethren were sub-
jected by law. The inhabitants of Perth, like the inha-
bitants of Middlesex, have their local concerns, which
are interesting only to themselves. But it is the proud
distinction of this country, that we are not a mere ag-
gregate of unconnected cantons, but we are a nation
possessed of public spirit, and keenly alive to all public
questions. The reform of a single borough—East
Retford, Liverpool, or Warwick—is a national
question. The removal of the disabilities of the
Catholics is a national question. The admission
of Dissenters to the English Universities is a
national question. If the Perth electors were to take
no interest in the fate of the English Dissenters, they
must be the most besotted fools ; and if an English
Dissenter were not to resist the slightest encroachment
on the privileges of the Scotch Presbyterian, he would
disgrace the name of Englishman. But Sir George
has the British public to deal with as well as the in-
habitants of Perth ; and as a public man we have no
hesitation in saying that he has ruined himself beyond
redemption. We never knew a case of more deli-
berate insult to public decency. The rest of Sir
George's speech may be easily disposed of. He steps
forward as a champion of the House of Lords, and
tells us that there is no such superiority in the Com-
mons, judging from the debates, as to throw the
Lordsinto the shade. The objection to the Lords is
not that they cannot muster up speakers for a debate ;
but that they do not vote in the interest of the nation,
but to serve some separate interests of their own.
The best debates in the House of Commons were
when perhaps not more than a dozen Members
took part in them. We have quite enough of debate
in the House of Commons now ; but that is not the
question. The House of Commons is responsible to
the nation, and identified with it. The House of
Lords is not only not responsible to the nation, but
has the power of paralysing the House of Commons,
so that the nation is deprived of all the advantages it
might otherwise derive from Reform. One of the
great arguments of the Lords, however, against the
Reform Bill, affords a curious commentary on Sir
George's tribute to the talents of the Lords for debate.
" What shall we do," said they, " if, before entering
this House, we have not served an apprenticeship in
the Commons, from which we shall hereafter be ex-
cluded, in consequence of the loss of our boroughs and
the greater independence of counties ? All of us who
cut any figure in this House owe this advantage
to our haying been trained in the Commons." Sir
George cavils at the allusion made by Earl Grey to
the spirit of the age :
" Every Government (he says) ought to regard the spi-
rit of the age ; but then when men profess to govern by the
spirit of the age, it implies a capacity to guide that spirit.—
(Applause.) What would you think of that pilot who
would leave the helm, and trust the safety of the vessel to
the wind and waves ?—(Cheers)---or to take a more homely
comparison, what would you think of the coachman who
told you that he would just allow the horses to take their
own way, without his interference or guidance ? For my
part, I would be disposed to place very little reliance on
him. But what is this same spirit of the age of which
there is so much talk ? Did it leave the Cabinet with
Mr. Stanley, or remain with Earl Grey ? or did it go out
with Earl Grey and Lord Althorp, and return to office with
the latter Hon. Gentleman ?—(Laughter.) Was it the
companion of Lord Brougham at Inverness, or did it meet
his Lordship again at Dundee ? Did it hang on the lips
of the Lord Chancellor or Lord Durham at the Edinburgh
festival ? . Did it travel with Lord Durham from Camper-
down to Dundee ? or did it sit on the lips of Bailie Christie
on that occasion ? If the Ministry professed to rule us
by that principle, it is but right that they should explain
what it really is. There is another reason why I place
little reliance on the present Government. Ido not like
their mode of moving about, more like itinerant agitators
than great statesmen—giving an account of their steward-
ship to promiscuous assemblies, instead of resorting to the
proper place for such explanations—the Parliament of the
United Kingdom. It would seem that their explanations
might be liable to misconstruction there ; and they are, ac-
cordingly, aiming at raising a host of friends out of doors su-
perior in power to both Houses of Parliament."
Sir George has asked us what the spirit of the age
is ? We can tell him what it 'is not. It is not up-
holding the boroughmongering system, which enabled
the community to pillage the rest—it is not opposing
the reform of all ecclesiastical abuses—it is not sup-
porting municipal corporations in their perversion of
their powers to the oppression and ruin of the commu-
nities over which they are placed—it is not resisting
all attempts to settle the question of Irish tithes in
such a manner as shall remove a source of perpetual
irritation that wastes energies which, if well directed,
might render the country happy and prosperous, in per-
petual strife and feuds—it is not outraging the English
Dissenters, by excluding them from national institutions
for education, forcing them to contribute to the support of
churches to which they do not belong, and connecting
acts without which society could not exist, with reli-
gious rites in which they cannot conscientiously par-
take. We have told Sir George what the spirit of
the age is not ; and we may observe that his leader,
the Duke of Wellington, had once a demonstration of
what it is, when he declared that he conceded Catholic
Emancipation, not because he was satisfied of the jus-
tice of the claims, but because it was no longer pos-
sible for him to resist them. The Duke did not y•uit
the helm, to borrow his illustration, but he was obliged
to change his course. His Grace had, also, a glimpse
of the spirit of the age, a little before he outraged it,
when he declared at Manchester that it was impossi-
ble for any man to govern the country without having
with him the opinion of the intelligent middle class ;
and it was because he set aside the opinion of the in-
telligent middle class that he was hurled from power,
and doomed, with his associates, to remain for ever
strangers to office.—Morning Chronicle.
Another peal on the tocsin of Irish agitation startles
the elumbers of Lord Duncannon, and gives new im-
pulse to the Agitator's " rent." As the collection-day
of the tribute-money approaches, the patriotism of
Mr. O'Connell burns more fiercely. The flame, which
scarcely two months ago was fanned very gently, at the
moderate degree of " Whig and Ministerialist" tem-
perature, became hotter as the time drew near for soft-
ening the Irish heart into the melting mood of gene-

rous donation. Now it rages at an intense heat,
which promises glorious combustion at no very distant
time, and ensures a large collection on the 26th
instant, when the pence is to be gathered in from
the gaping " seven millions," who stand aghast
at the wondrous performances of the Katerfelto
of the scene, in whose presence all other jugglers
and showmen with their hocus pocus tricks—their
wheedling, diverting ways—their balancing poles—
their antics, and their fireworks, sink into insig-
nificance. When the repeal-agitator commenced his
series of epistles to Lord Duncannon, the latter was
every thing that was amiable and great—not only a
public officer of unblemished political character, but a
Minister and Statesman of the very first order. Alas,
before the revolution of two moons what a change has
taken place. ! This virgin purity of character is sullied
beyond redemption—this reputation for exalted wis-
dom and Statesmanship is gone for ever. But what
has Lord Duncannon done to work a forfeiture of that
certificate of character which Mr. O'Connell so ge-
nerously gave him—a passport to the affection of the
seven millions, who, to the prophetic eye of the Trea-
sury Evening Journal, were about to be placed in
hormonious connection with the new Whig Minis-
try ? Let it not be told in Gath. The Secretary
for the Home Department had the audacity to de-
cline to register the decrees of Daniel, the Dictator,
touching the new law appointments in Ireland. Was it
o be tolerated that a Minister of the British King
should refuse to become servant of all-work to the
Kerry autocrat, who holds the hearts of seven- millions
in his hand, and who only asks the British Ministry to
assist him in the work of extirpating the Irish Church,
and dismembering the British Empire ? Lord Dun-
cannon has broken his fealty to the Agitator : prompt
punishment has followed the " glaring crime." Mr.
O'Connell, in himself a compendious representative of
justice, performs the part of prosecutor, judge, witness,
and executioner. The sentence of political extermi-
nation has gone forth against Lord Duncannon ; no
hope or mercy is left to the delinquent ; his character
is " gone for ever I " Thus does Mr. O'Connell
take up the characters of public men to admire, to
fondle, and to caress, like a child with its toys,
and then dashes them to pieces with a child's im-
pulse, and tramples the fragments under foot. His ad-
miration was once as great of the virtues and talents
of Lord Plunket, of the Marquis of Anglesey, of
Marquis Wellesley, of Baron Smith, as that which
he lately expressed, touching the almost matchless ex-
cellencies of Lord Duncannon's character and mind.
The change in all those instances, and many others,
was as sudden and capricious from the most fawning
adulation and fulsome panegyric to hatred, contempt,
and bitter defamation. They committed in turn the
unforgiveable sin against Mr. O'Connell's vanity, by
choosing to preserve, as far, at least, as he was concern-
ed, their own independence. The " liberal" who will
not be Mr. O'Connell's slave will always find him
ready to treat him as an enemy, and in proportion to
the affected warmth of his former admiration in the
bitterness of his hostility. Thus Baron Smith was "It
Judge endowed with superhuman talents and virtues,"
until he deprecated the agitation of the repeal of the
Union; and then no language of contempt could satisfy
his notion of the demerits of the functionary whom he
dragged as a delinquent on the floor of Parliament.
After the disgraceful consummation of the intrigue by
which Lord Grey was got rid of from his Majesty's
Councils, so long as the objects of Mr. O'Connell's
epistolary agitation were only the demolition of the
Irish Church—the defamation of the Irish Protest-
ants—the repeal of the Union, and consequent dis-
memberment of the British empire, his letters were
not only gently criticised, but actually puffed and
praised by the Government Press. It was even dis-
covered that he was a superior statesman to Lord'
Grey, in a quarter where Lord Grey in office was
the object of unbounded panegyric. But it was dis-
covered that Lord Grey had shown a lamentabla want
of wisdom and capacity in not having so formed his
Cabinet and framed his measures as to deserve and ob-
tain Mr. O'Connell's patronage. But when the Agi-
tator, to secure an ample supply of the rent, attacked
the Whig Minister, and spared not the dignity of the
Woolsack, it was found by the Government Press that
the Ethiopian had not changed his skin nor the leopard
his spots, and that the friendship of Mr. O'Connell
was more pernicious than his avowed hostility. Now
the Agitator threatens Lord Durham with his especial
patronage. Let Lord Durham be fore-warned by Lord
Brougham's fate, who had scarcely swallowed his own
words on the Coercion Act, and essentially altered the
provisions of that Act to please him, when he suddenly
saluted him with a copious stream of that abuse which
he has always at command. If Lord Durham be not

prepared to pioneer with mattock and pickaxe the work
of destruction, first on the Protestant Church and
next upon British connexion, he will not be at a loss
for language as expressive of his scorn and derision as
in the case of Lord Brougham, or Lord Anglesey, or
any other of the distinguished persons whom he has
exalted as political idols one day to dash them to the
ground the next.—Morning Herald.

Mr. O'Connell, in a fourth letter to Lord Dun-
cannon, takes leave of his Lordship with a broadside
of abuse, and announces his intention of confiding the
fate of his country to a more candid and energetic
Nobleman, and of placing the destinies of the " Green
Island" at the disposal of the " yellow Earl." The
eulogies which Mr. O'Connell bestows upon Lord
Durham are most righteously deserved, and there can
be no doubt that the agitator will find his Lordship fit
and apt for his purpose unless any Cabinet could be
formed willing to admit his Lordship to participate in
the administration of public affairs. We have fre-
quently noticed the mischiefs arising from the accession
to office of a party for years in Opposition. During
a long and irresponsible career men go on pledging
and professing, in order to exhibit theoretically their
infinite superiority over their Ministerial antao-
nists, reckless of consequences, and, perhaps, in-
credulous as to ever being called upon to realize

their own extravagant propositions. In order to
obtain a character for consistency, and to redeem those
pledges, it became necessary for such a party to alter
and subvert (according to their irresponsible promises)
all the institutions the control of which falls to their
lot upon accession to power. Very soon, however,
these persons find it absolutely necessary to alter this
ultra-liberal system ; and this necessity is made evident

to them by their own feelings, by a knowledge of cir-
cumstances, by a just apprehension of results ; and,
under the influence of a responsibility of which, before
they had incurred it, they had no adequate notion, they
are compelled to adopt the principles which they had
previously denounced, and disappoint the expectations
of those who believed their professions sincere and their
theories practicable. 'While Lord Duncannon was an
irresponsible Minister of the• Crown, his advocacy of
O'Connell was notorious. He used all his efforts to in-

duce Lord Grey to give him a high legal office in Ire-
land, and literally besieged the door of the Cabinet in
order to carry his point. Whether this solicitude
arore from personal regard for the agitator or from the
belief that buying him was a wise measure it matters
not. The fact is as we state it, and whether his Lord-
ship's efforts were stimulated by partiality or policy
signifies little. The moment Lord Duncannon, by one
of those extraordinary jumps which have latterly been
somewhat less extraordinary than in other days, be-
came Secretary of State for the Home Department and
at the head of Irish affairs, Mr. O'Connell was in his
glory. The friend of Ireland—that is, of himself—was
where he ought to be, and liberality and O'Connellism
were to be the order of the day. No time was to be
lost in levelling and calumniating everybody who
had preceded Lord Duncannon, upon whom all
Ireland relied with hope and confidence. The
scene, however, was changed. Lord Duncan-
non, no longer on the outside of the door, feels
all at once the " responsibility" of a Cabinet Mi-
nister. In his hands are the appointments of which
Mr. O'Connell, upon the strength of his Lordship's
former support, directs the disposal. Nay, in plain
terms, and in a published letter, he distinctly points
out how Lord Duncannon may soothe him, and,
through him, soothe Ireland. The attempt fails--Lord
Duncannon finds that when it becomes his duty to dis-
pense instead of recommend honours and rewards, it is

incompatible
i with his duty to adopt the system or put
into execution the measures which he so urgently
pressed upon his predecessors. There can be no doubt

that Lord Duncannon has now acted judiciously, and
if there were any the censure heaped upon him by Mr.
O'Connell would now dissipate it. Lord Durham will
now be his favourite for a time, and we have no hesi-
tation in saying that if their friendship is only to be
broken by that Noble Earl's accession to responsibility,
we trust it may continue for the length of both their
natural lives.—Morning Post.
It is a day or two since We mentioned that a new
epistle of Mr. Daniel O'Connell to Lord Duncannon
(he calls it the fourth) had been transmitted to us, and
that if we had time we would notice it. But the truth
is, that our attention has been called away by the an•
tits of another and more diverting performer than
O'Connell, which compelled us, much against our in-
clinations, to send poor Daniel to the wall. The for-
mer printed exhibitions of this worthy were all fraught
in one respect with the same spirit as the present ;
they all said in plain, though not the most civil or
modest, language—l, O'Connell, am " the people of
Ireland ;" and if you don't put the Government of the
country into the hands of the " people of Ireland,"
you shall be d— everlastingly. In the same sense,
though with some slight variety of form, does the fourth
letter to Lord Duncannon come on, to strut its hour.
The late legal appointments are the burden of the agita-
tor's 4th communication. He abuses them for no intel-
ligible reason but that the functionaries named are not
of the repeal clique. To that Moloch he would sa-
crifice not merely all the freedom and discretionary
power of the King's advisers in their present and fu-
ture nominations to office ; but, to multiply the vic-
tims of his ferocious idol, he would, without the sha-
dow of equity, decency, or apology, dismiss from
his situation every man who has not been bap-
tized in the waters of bitterness and hatred against
the existing Constitution, and against the connection
of Ireland with Great Britain : for that object he
would outrageously discard from their trust the present
Crown lawyers—against whom no taint of offence or
malpractice can be asserted—upon the lofty allegation
that he forsooth, the noun of multitude—O'Connell--
does not think fit to like them ; and on the same plea
he would depopulate the bench of magistrates through-
out Ireland, without so much as affecting to charge
them with delinquency, beyond that of not being Re-
pealers. Having thus given the scope of his tirade
against Lord Duncannon and the Government, it may
snot be worth while to do more than touch upon two or
three examples of the manner in which he executes it.
He who looks for any attempt at sober or intelligible
reasoning in the unprincipled effusions of this bad man,
had better at once turn to some less unprofitable em-
ployment. Deep mortification, barely skinned over by
the festerings of rage and rancour, characterizes the
whole body of the work. Even the commonplace com-
mand of abusive epithets fails him. The slop-bucket
of Irish oratory had been already drained to the bot-
tom, and one wretched note of mixed menace and re-
proach recurs in every paragraph ; as thus--No. 1,
" You never enn deceive us again." No. 2, " You

are gone for ever." No. 3, -"
You never can, my
Lord, redeem your first false step." No. 4, " Alas,
alas ! what wretched impolicy is yours !" Nothing
but the iteration of the one parrot note—and for what
is all this? Because Mr. Blackburne has not been
dismissed from the office of Attorney-General, without
even the imputation of a crime, and because Mr. Cramp-
ton, who was Solicitor-General, has been made a

Judge. We can say nothing of these gentlemen, but
that we have heard Mr. Blackburne is a most able
lawyer and a most estimable man, with the reputation of
being in his opinion what is termed a moderate Tory ;
but who has ever accused Mr. Blackburne of betray-
ing his official trust for the sake of his speculative po-
litics As for Mr. Crampton, he is' a liberal Whig.
Such, then, is the mighty grievance which_is to enlist

recruits every where for the repeal of the Union, and
to kill the Melbourne Administration stone dead, not-
withstanding, be it observed, that Mr. O'Loghlin, a
Roman Catholic, and a hearty Liberal, has succeeded
as Solicitor-General to the vacancy left by Mr. Cramp-
ton. Now; is it possible that any man, nay, that any
mob, but one of credulous and infatuated Irish peasants,
should not see the drift of all this artificial turbu-
lence ? Can any man be blind to the fact, that as
O'Connell's consequence hangs upon the excitement of
the people, so his prime grievance must ever be a state
of national repose. Among the many fortunate
chances which the Irish agitator pretends to have been
heaped upon Lord Duncannon and the Melbourne
Ministry, and thrown away by them, we shall bring
forward one only, because it is in itself a curiosity, and
because it has been got up by O'Connell to furnishhim with an opportunity of vending his bile against
this journal. He says to Lord Duncannon—
" You had acquired much additional force in England.
The bigotry of the Peers, the sordid hate exhibited towards
the Dissenters, gave you strength and security ami▪ dst that
active and most intelligent class of men. Even Lord
Brougham, who had fallen into some contempt, and no
small disrepute, by reason of his passion for making foolish
and contradictory speeches, was raised into renewed popu-
larity by the ruffianism of the manner in which he was as-
sailed by the mean and mercenary myrmidons in the pay of
old Walter of the Times. The reaction in the public mind,
by the public sense of the vileness of the motives
and the baseness of the disposition of the literary mi▪
screants
who conduct the Times, have not only made Lord Brougham
share once again the public sympathy, but have consoli-
dated the support of the entire Ministry, by many and many
of the most decided friends to the thorough reforming of all
existing abuses—a class more numerous in England than is
generally known, and most valuable for the energy of their
political honesty."
We need not waste a word on the vulgar impudence
of this personal tirade ; we need not repeat the dis-
claimer which we have often published, that the gen-
tleman whose name is used in a manner disgraceful
only to him who so uses it, has no connection with the
direction of this journal. We need not, we suppose,
assert that we are not people likely to be influenced
by anybody's pay to do what our sense of honour
and duty should point out to be wrong. We wave,
therefore, all remark upon this passage, in reference to
its ruffianly and calumnious spirit, and address our-
selves merely to the argument. How does that
stand ? Even thus. The exposures inflicted on Lord
Chancellor Brougham by the Times have wrought
favourably for the reputation of that Learned Lord, by
virtue of the notoriety thus affixed to what the agitator
terms his " foolish and contradictory speeches," but
what we make bold to designate as his unbecoming
and not creditable deeds. This is a counterpart of the
Learned Lord's own hallucination in the Edinburgh
Review, when he charges the representatives of the
people of England with having corruptly voted for the
Poor Law Bill, which in their hearts they condemned,
out of spite to a Newspaper which had too fiercely
censured it. So it appears from O'Connell that the
learned procreator of the Poor Bill is now as much in-
debted to our supposed hostility as his offspring was
last summer; and that to produce a reaction with
Englishmen in any politician's favour, no more is ne-
cessary than to prove how little he deserves it ! Does
this most flatter the people of England generally, or
that portion of the Press to which such singular effects
have been ascribed ? If we are the objects of such
universal enmity, one might presume the fact to be
capable of a less contradictory demonstration. The way
to defeat us would be not to read us. Has Lord
Brougham yet advanced many steps towards that desir-
able end ; or would O'Connell, had such evidence of
our unpopularity existed, have been goaded---ay, tor-
tured, frenzied into the respectable exhibition which he
has made of himself in the phraseology of the above
paragraph ? Behold his logic, in allusion to our re-
peated and argumentative, and yet unanswered, because
they are unanswerable, detection of his juggler's tricks,
in the treatment of the wretched dupes whom he lives
but to plunder, and without whose plunder he would
to-morrow have no alternative but a return to that daily
industry which he has long abjured, or starvation.
." You are a set of vile mercenary myrmidons, basely
disposed ruffians, literary miscreants," &c. Does the
robber of the poor conceive that abuse like this will
serve him for a mask to screen his selfishness, or for an
ally to his mock policy of repeal ? But let him beware
of the issue of the dangerous enterprise he is engaged
in. Let him dread the evil passions of that multitude
which lie is eternally stimulating. Let him know his
own nature, which will surely fling him into the very
front, not of the battle, but the flight, from the mo-
ment in which the war of words shall ripen into a more
manly conflict.— Times.