The Sun.
London, England, 1834-12-26 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

We yesterday drew out, for the edification of our
readers, a complete muster-roll of the Tory Regiment,
that they might see the men in whom they must con-
fide for measures, as " measures, not men," is no lon-
ger the rallying cry of Ministers. Sir Robert Peel
has told us that no " cold approbation of measures,
after previous scrutiny, will avail for the support of a
Government, without reference to the heads which
conceive and the hands which are to execute those
measures ;" and fortunately the men are not of doubt-
ful character. With a slight alloy of apostates, they
are genuine back-bone Tories—the Newcastles, the
Rodens, the Somersets, the Mansfields, the Knatch-
bulls, the Herrieses, the Goulburns--a genuine crew
of incurables, who are and ever will be strangers to
" the spirit of the age.'.' Blood has already begun to
flow copiously in Ireland. The Duke of Wellington
significantly hinted that " there was a way to make the
people quiet ;" and we knew that day does not follow
night with more certainty, than that the appear-
ance of Goulburn—the bigot Goulburn—at the head
of the Magistracy of the United Kingdom, would, in
Ireland, be the signal for bloodshed. " The appoint-
ment of Goulburn (said Mr. O'Connell) is to me a
proof, strong as human proof can be, that the new
Administration design to rule with a rod of iron, and
by military force." The signal has been quickly
obeyed. " Twelve men (says the Dublin Evening
Post of Tuesday last), twelve men were killed at
Rathcormac—wives have been made widows, children
orphans, and parents childless, that the parsons should
live a jolly life, and the sinecure Church—sinecure
certainly as we shall show in Rathcormac-
-should have her own." Is this the way to keep the
people quiet? " I went up to inspect the haggart
where the carnage occurred (says a correspondent
of the same journal), and so awful a spectacle I
never witnessed ; the straw all saturated with human
gore, so that blood oozed through the straw on
the pressure of the foot, and, shocking to re-
late, the widow Collins was seen to kiss the blood of
her sons, imprecating God's vengeance on the mur-
derers of her children. Another man have I seen
stamping his foot on the blood of his brother, and say-
ing, The man that shed this my brother's blood shall
drink his own blood if I live." The whole union of
Rathcormac contains 2,900 Catholics and 41 Protest-
ants, including the Rev. Mr. Ryder's family of 13
persons. It is proposed that a plot of ground be
purchased on the Kingstown side of Dublin, to be
named Martyr-field, in which the bodies of those
slain in this campaign may be buried. It was in an-
ticipation of scenes like that at Ttathcormac, that the
opposition to the Tithes Amendment Bill was orga-
nized ; and the sanguinary speeches at the meeting at
which Lords Roden and Winchilsea figured away at
Dublin, betrayed the disappointment of the Orange
monsters at being deprived of the expected prey.
This is the beginning of the tranquillity we are to en-
joy under the Cabinet organized by the Duke of
Wellington, into which Peel has been dragged.
The Reform Bill is no longer to be our security
for the men, but our men for the integrity of the
Reform Bill. The Tinzes, now that " measures not
men" has been repudiated, fairly owns that the groove
into which Ministers were to be forced to run, after all,
means only that their own characters must force them
to run in the groove, though our contemporary makes
a lame attempt to show that the distinction between it
and Sir Robert Peel is, after all, a distinction with-
out a difference. " Why the difference is in sound,
not in meaning (observes our contemporary). Sir
Robert Peel's distrust of men, is 'f men from
whom he cannot expect good measures. Our in-
difference of the men, provided we are secure of
measures, still supposes that the Ministers must
be such as will grant, whether from necessity
or inclination, the measures to which we do at-
tach importance. Now, we are conscientiously of
opinion, that given the capacity of the Reform Bill to
enforce a system of popular legislation upon every
English Government—a point for which we have
always contended, and which we never shall be
inclined to yield, but on sad, and what appears
to us impossible, experience—the existing Ministry, as
a whole, is more expert and efficient in the business of
the State—is more capable of applying a recognized
principle, by practical and smoothly-working details
than their predecessors ever showed themselves."
Given the capacity of the Reform Bill to enforce a
system of popular Legislation, the existing Ministry
have a capacity to be enforced. Sir Robert Peel tells
us that the past character of himself and associates
must be our guarantee for their future conduct, and
that we must look to that character for the honest
adherence to the Reform Bill. The Times infers from
their character that they will adhere to the Reform
Bill only so long as it can enforce their adherence.
After all, the distinction is one without a difference ;
for the first inspection of the Ministerial list must
satisfy every man that there is not a provision in the
Reform Bill to which the whole squad are not with
heart and soul opposed. From their known characters,
the anti-Reformers have the most thorough confidence
in their determined hostility to all reforms of real and
substantial grievances, while the People of England
are equally confident, that so long as they are in
power, the end for which they obtained the Re-
form Bill as a means—namely, the blessings of
good government never will be attained. The trea-
cherous Times knows well that the only hope the
Ministers have, consists in their actually proving that
the Reform Bill is not all the people thought it, by
throwing into the House a majority of Tories. Thank
God ! the hope is visionary : but they must have a
majority of Tories, or be driven from their places ; and
were they to have a majority of Tories, i. e. of men
hostile to the principles of the Reform Bill (an impos-
sibility we know) the security derived from their cha-
racter would merely amount to this—whether their
hatred of the Reform Bill, or their fear of the people,
would most weigh with them. The Duke of Welling-
ton, the real head of the present Government, whose
spirit has presided over the various appointments—for
Peel having been forced into the groove, must run in it,
whether lie will nor not, and is entirely at the mercy
of the backbone Tories—avowed himself the most un-
qualified enemy di all reform before the passing of the
Bill ; and after the stiuggle was over, after the con-
sciences of the Lords had been enlightened by the at-
titude of the people, and a majority of nine on the se-
' cond reading gave the victory to the Reformers—the
Duke of Wellington, like Satan, displayed—
" the unconquerable will
And study of revenge, immortal hate
And courage never to submit or yield."
The memorable protest against the second reading, to
which 72 other Peers adhered—the Cumberlands, the
Newcastles, the Mansfields, the Winchilseas, the
Lonsdales, and the rest of the backbone Tories—lays
down principles which proclaim him a deadly and un-
compromising foe of Reform. "We feel it, therefore
(says his Grace), to be the duty of Parliament, more
especially of this House, to refuse to consign the
country to so vast an untried change as is embodied in
the present Bill—a change of which it has been justly
said, by one of the most distinguished advocates for
the second reading of the Bill, that it is in truth a
new form of Government,' of which no one has ever
pronounced that it would be practicable, and which, if
practicable would be pernicious." He who runs surely
may read this. The form of Government under the
Reform Bill, ?practicable, must be pernicious ! Has
this man ever said that he was mistaken—that he had
seen his error ? No ;to the last moment he opposed
every attempt to conduct the Government in the spirit
of the Reform Bill. To him the Reform Bill is " the
accursed thing."
Again, " Because by this Bill that scrupulous regard to the
soundness of chartered rights and vested interests which has
always hitherto been deemed part of the essential policy of
the British Constitution, and a fundamental principle of Bri-
tish justice, is now, for the first time, utterly abandoned—
the moat ancient charters and the most valued interests are
treated with reckless indifference, which (whilst it is unne-
cessary to the attainment of the proposed objects of the Bill,
the correction of abuses and the improvement of the existing
system) shocks every feeling of justice, and cannot fail to be
made a precedent for still more fatal violations of those prin-
ciples in future.
" Because, on contemplating the violence done by this
Bill to the great principle of prescription, we cannot disguise
from ourselves the dangers which must arise to the most ve-
nerable of oar institutions, which mainly rest on that prin-
ciple; above all, to the highest of all—to that one on which
all others depend.
" Becapia, even if the principles of the Bill were consistent

with the stability of the Monarchy, and with the safety of
our most valued institutions, yet the provisions by which it
seeks to carry those principles into effect are, for the most
part, unjnst in themselves, partial in their operation, and ano-
malous in their character—ill adapted to their avowed purpose,
and still more to the extensive and complicated interests of
this mighty empire."

Let us pause here for a m mnent. According to the
views of his Grace, the existence of the Monarchy
and the existence of the Reform Bill are incompatible
with each other. But all our institutions depend on
the highest, the Monarchy ; and can we then believe
that this man seeks office with any other view than
to impair the efficiency of that which he believes to
be not " consistent with the stability of the Monarchy,
and with the safety of our most valuable institutions?"
We will not follow him through his eulogy of the rot-
ten borough system, for opening the doors of the House
of Commons to the vast moneyed and colonial interests,
and his objection to the conferring a preponderating
influence in the House of Commons upon the lowest
class of inhabitants in towns, but proceed to the last
paragraph, which contains the sum of his objection to
the Bill :
" Because the exorbitant increase of the democratic element
of the British constitution, designed by this Bill, must give ad-
ditional strength and impetus to a principle which, while duly
restrained and tempered by the checks provided in the existing
constitution of Parliament, is the source of that genuine spirit
of disciplined and enlightened freedom, which is the proudest
distinction of our national character, but which, without those
checks or other equivalent restraints, could not fail to advance
with augmented and accelerated force, till, all other powers
being drawn within its vortex, the Government would become
a mere democracy : or, if the name and form of a monarchy
were preserved, all that could give independence to the Sove-
reign or protection to the subject would be really excluded."
Now this, be it remembered, is not language used
in the heat of argument, but the calm and deliberate
opinion of a measure pronounced after it was carried.
Can this man be safely entrusted with the powers
of Government, under a Constitutional charter
which he I.oks upon as fraught with danger
to the monarchy ? Is it to the measure it-
self that the Duke of Wellington is irrecon-
cilably opposed. How can he have any other wish
but to destroy, the very first safe opportunity, what he
views as from its very nature a curse to the country, as
having a necessary tendency " to advance with aug-
mented and accelerated force, till, all other powers
being drawn within its vortex, the Government would
become a mere democracy ?" The Duke of Wellington,
if not the basest of hypocrites, must be a deadly enemy
to the Reform Bill. And could we have a better proof
of his bitter hostility being the same now that it was,
than in the vile crew comprising the rank and file of
the Ministry ? But, say the Tories, if the men who
opposed the Reform Bill are to be for ever excluded
from office, that would give to their opponents a mono-
poly of power. Why, the object of the Reform Bill
was to exclude for ever from power all men whose
principles were opposed to the principle conse-
crated by the Reform Bill. Their principles were
for ever anathematized by a measure fouuded on
the principle that Government should no longer
be conducted for the benefit of the few, but for the
benefit of the many—that the representatives of the
people should be returned by a constituency identified
in interest with the interests of the community. The
principle of the Tories was that the people should have
a nominal or virtual, not a real, representation—that
the Lords, in their character of borough proprietors,
should command majorities in the House of Commons
—and that Government should be conducted for the
benefit of the few, at the expense of the many. No
men with these principles ought to have power under
the charter of Reform. But for all sinners there is
repentance. To all Tories who see the errors of
their ways—who abandon their old obnoxious
principles—who make public utility the standard
by which they are guided in leeislating for the
country—who seek fairly to make the Church
efficient for its purposes, and to relieve the Dis-
senters from the odious and oppressive distinctions
of which they complain—who wish to enforce the
principle, that the reward of all public servants in
Church and State should be determined by the actual
value of their services—to all former Tories honestly
converted to these opinions, the way to office ought of
course to be open. But till they make their recanta-
tion, they ought to be proscribed. It is an insult to
the nation, to say that men entertaining anti-national
opinions ought to have the conduct of its affairs,
after Representative government was established by
the Reform Hill. To trust Tories in their old unre-
generate state, would be a tenirting of Providence.
No, we have the power to exclude theni, and we justly
exclude them, because their principles are not in accor-
dance with the true interests of the nation. Even the
Times, the renegade Times, cannot stomach the pre-
sent Tory Ministers, though it seems to console itself
with the idea that the unprincipled prudent will be able
to keep in check the principled mischievous portion.
" Have we not (says our contemporary) from the
first hour, described the abrupt dismissal of the late
Cabinet as in many respects a misfortune to the coun-
try ? and in regarding it as for the present irretrieveable,
have we not discharged the duty of honest (?) men and
lovers of public tranquillity, by pointing out to our
fellow-subjects the main grounds for acquiescence
and confidence which remain to them under the ex-
isting state of things, and the reasons which satisfy
our own minds, that from any Administration, however
ill-disposed (though we are far from attributing bad
dispositions to the chiefs of the new Ministry), the
people, fortified by their newly-acquired rights, have
literally nothing to be alarmed at ?" Sir Robert Peel
may well exclaim, if this be feiendship, save me from
my friends ! No, the people, fortified by their newly
acquired rights, have literally nothing to be alarmed
at ; but the best use they can make of their rights is
to place no trust in a Ministry of which even its friends
cannot even state with certainty whether the ill-dis-
posed or the well-disposed are to have the ascendancy.
—Morning Chronicle.
Our readers, and all the enlightened—the Christian
and right-minded portion of the British community, to
whatever sect or party they belong—cannot fail to be
gratified by the perusal of the " Address of the Pres-
bytery of Glasgow to Lord Stanley," on his recent
elevation to the honourable office of Lord Rector of
the University of Glasgow, which we have copied into
our columns to-day from the Scottish Guardian. The
address is admirable both for the principles which it
upholds, and the tone and temper in which those prin-
ciples are avowed and advocated. We lately published
the able, pious, and eloquent speech of Lord Stanley
to the students on the ceremony of his inauguration.
The Presbytery, after paying a just compliment to the
new Lord Rector on his election to that distinguished
office, and acknowledging their respect for Ins literary
accomplishments, personal worth, and devotedness to
those national institutions which are essential to the
interests of pure and undefiled religion, proceed to ob-
serve upon an important topic in his speech, to which
they allude in the following tems:—" In availing our-
selves, my Lord, of this opportunity for the expression
of these our sentiments of unfeigned admiration and
esteem, although belonging to a church, the ecclesiasti-
cal polity of which differs in several respects from that
us'h which you arc connected, we cannot but advert with
gratitude to those truly Scriptural and Protestant
principles, held in common by the members of both
establishments, and of which your Lordship.has late-
ly proved the enlightened and uncompromising advo-
cate. Whilst, as ministers of the Church of Scot-
land, it is our duty, as far as lieth in us, to live peace-
ably with all men, we feel it incumbent on us to pro-
test against the numerous and systematic attempts
lately made by the enemies of our own and the sister
establishment to undermine and subvert these bulwarks
of our country." Such sentiments as the above are
worthy of persons who fill the high and responsible
station of being guardians of the Christian ark in
their own country, under whatever ecclesiastical regu-
lations, different from those of the Established Church,
they are bound to execute their sacred trust, Rightly
do they judge that those political agitators who, over-
stepping the limits of legitimate reform, would sub-
vert the Protestant establishment of England, would
let in the tide of sacrilegious destruction upon the
Scottish Chuieh. The ambitious Dissenters, who
endeavour to fix the lever of a levelling hostility under
the foundations of our established system of worship
and instruction, is the unconscious instrument to do
the wild work of the Infidel, who, under the
much-abused name of " Reform," stimulates him
to the unrighteous enterprise, anticipating that

the success of his infatuated efforts will be the
triumph of a philosophic fanaticism amid religious
anarchy and political desolation. "In those days,'
says the Presbytery, "of adventurous innovation,
when the perilous experiment is proposed to dissolve
all connection between Church and State, to appro-
priate with sacriligious avidity the revenues of both es-
tablishments to secular purposes, we hailed your Lord-
ship's magnanimons sacrifice of public office to public
principle as an auspicious token to our country and
our country's Zion. The luminous and comprehen-
sive arguments which were employed by your Lord-
ship in relation to the Irish church involve the recog-
nition of principles alike honourable to your talents as
a Statesmen, and to your knowledge of that Divine
Word, which declares that righteousness exalteth a
nation." The promptitude and decision with which
Lord Stanley acted in throwing up office in the ardent
time of youthful aspiration, when he found that he
could only retain it by the sacrifice of conscientious
principles, and by sanctioning the example of sacrile-
gious pillage and subversion, afforded strong and
honourable testimony to the personal disinterestedness
of his views and the purity of his ambition. If the
Whig Ministers had succeeded in that object—forced
upon them by the " destructive pressure from without,"
which they wanted firmness to resist—and for dis-
gracefully yielding to which he abandoned their Cabinet
—the ark of Christianity itself would soon have been
in the hands of the Philistines.—Morning Herald.
Some of our ex-Ministerial contemporaries deny
that a crisis.of difficulty and danger had arisen in the
affairs of the State anterior to the dismissal of the late
Ministry ; but it appears to us that this denial only
amounts to a proof that those who hazard it have a
very confident, we think also a very mistaken, reliance
upon the forgetfulness of their readers. Had not Lord
Stanley and Sir James Graham, had not the Earl of
Ripon and the Duke of Richmond been forced out of
the King's Cabinet, simply and solely because, zealous
and sincere Reformers as they were, they were also
statesmen of moderation and prudence, and thus pre-
sented the salient points of the Cabinet, and were ex-
posed earlier than their unresisting colleagues to the
" pressure from without ?" Had not Earl Grey him-
self, been also compelled to withdraw by an intrigue
in which Mr. O'Connell, Mr. Littleton, and Lord
Althorp were the principal actors—an intrigue for
which no other motive can be assigned than " the
pressure from without"—an intrigue which unques-
tionably, whatever might have been its motives,
diminished both the disposition and the ability of
the late Cabinet to withstand that pressure ? Had
not an accidental vacancy in the post of Ministe-
rial leader of the House of Commons exhibited the
King's Government in a position in which it had no
choice of a successor to that important function in the
State, but in obedience to " the pressure from with-
out ?" 'Was it not manifest to the most inexperienced
eve that a large proportion of the Cabinet Council of
the King were in tacit if not avowed alliance with
the pressure from without," and that the next Session
of Parliament must afford them early and ample op-
portunities of invoking its aid, to complete their ascen-
dancy, as they had successfully invoked it befere to
augment their power ? \Vas it not plain to the dullest
apprehension in the approaching series of shocks and
collisions the statesmen who were thus prepared to
employ the " pressure from without" as an instrument
for the acquisition of power, must instantly have become
its slaves, and speedily its victims, that in their turn
they would have been crushed by politicians still more
reckless and unprincipled than themselves, more obe-
dient to the " pressure from without," and therefore
better entitled to its support ? The reflecting and intel-
ligent portion of the community must be aware that to
these questions one answer and one only can be given
with any regard to truth ; and must feel, therefore, that
their understandings are insulted, when they are told
that anterior to the dismissal of the late Ministry no
crisis had arisen in the affairs of Great Britain which
required such an interposition of the Royal Preroga-
tive. Had his Majesty been a careless or inattentive
observer of the transactions passing around him, and
in which his duty and his interests were deeply in-
volved—had he been an indolent and selfish man,
anxious only to avoid personal inconvenience and an-
noyance—had he been capable of enjoying the exter-
nal magnificence and the ostensible dignity of the
Crown, casting aside the cares and anxieties which
honour and religion alike forbid to be separated from
its possession, then, indeed, although the crisis would
not have been less real or less dangerous, he might for
perhaps a few short weeks have avoided its difficulties
and embarrassments. But fortunately it was impossi-
ble that William IV. could•so judge and act. It was
a moral necessity of his nature to show, and nobly in-
deed has he shown, that he is a King worthy of his
ancestors, and of his people. The King has done all
that depended upon him to avert from the nation the
calamities by which it was imminently threatened. It
remains for the people to do the rest. An opportunity
has been offered them to stem the torrent of destructive
revolution. A body of honourable and enlightened
Ministers have been placed at their head, who declare
their firm and unanimous resolution to proceed in the
work of accomplishing all necessary reforms with as
much celerity as can be reconciled to caution and deli-
beration ; but who proclaim at the same time—and
this is the great and important distinction which sepa-
rates them from their predecessors—that they share
that dread which has influenced the wise and the good
of every country and of every age of organical changes
in the structure of Government, when urged with vi-
hence, and adopted with precipitation.—Morning Post.
If there be one section or description of the people
of England, exposed at this moment to more imminent
peril than another, it is beyond all question that which
used to be termed the Whig party. By the Whig
party, we mean that party of politicians, of whom Lord
Grey for more than 20 years preceding 1830, was in
Parliament the acknowledged chief, with Lords Hol-
land and Lansdowne, the Russels, Caxendishes, Stan-
leys, and• their large circle of friends and adherents,
for supporters in both houses. It appears to us, as
we have said, that the Whig party, inconveniently so
named, and thus vaguely and imperfectly described,
forming as it did, the bulk, or rather
.nucleus, of the
late administration, is now in immediate danger of ship-
wreck, as to character, power, nay, independent. exist-
ence, and that from a very common piece of indiscre-
tion—more excusable, however, in individuals than in

public bodies—viz., the failifig to look an inch before
it. A watchword has been raised within the last few
weeks, which is among the most ruinous for the coun-

try that ever were propagated, and one of the most in-
sidious traps that ever were laid for the short-sighted
gullibility of men under the influence of political
soreness. We have heard it repeated a thousand times,
and most loudly by those whom it has been expressly
calculated to extinguish, that Union ought to be the
war-cry of all classes of "Reformers ;" signifying by
the word " Reformers," all shades of the 'King's sub-
jects who have already served the cause of reform,
combined with all those who aim at the accomplish-
ment of such political changes as would not leave two
particles of the Monarchy together. Many friends of
septennial Parliaments (though we are not of them)
have supported the principle of reform--many friends
of measures for the domestic relief of the Dissenters,
in relation to birth, marriage, and death—many friends
of corporate reform, and of law reform, and of a com-
mutation of tithe, and a better distribution of church
property, but one and all of whom are earnest in their
anxiety to maintain the connexion of Church and
State, together with the substances
whichofall those
institutions, as well as those usage
toge-
ther form the body, and feed and animate the
spirit, of our constitutional Monarchy. But in
addition to these, and most unjustly, no less than
perniciously, placed beside them, and huddled up
with them un4er the common cloak of Reformers, as

if there was between then} any common bond or prin-
ciple of action, are these wii,9 d iye Pqwarfls to an-
--,ta—to universal Plienp
nual —4O the yptg
" the' POgrap----to thg
by ballot—to the extinction -
utter subversion of the temporal church, substitu,...,,
for it the " voluntary principle"—and, finally, to the
breaking up of the empire, by a surrender of the su-
preme power of the Colonies, and a repeal of the in-
corporating Union with Ireland ! We ask, therefore,
any reasonable man whether these several branches and
orders of revolutionists are fit co-partners with the
upright friends of that species and degree of "reform,"