The Sun.
London, England, 1834-12-03 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Tories already seem to live again in the good
old times. We may apply to them what wa said of
the Bourbons on the Restoration :—" They have
learned nothing, and forgotten nothing." The Grey
and the Melbourne Administrations are already with
them as if they had never been. The Duke of Wet.
lington's spirit already animates the Tory organs.
" County meetings are farces," said the great Dictator.
" The members of the Common Council of London
are incapable of understanding the Royal answer to
the Address," says the Duke's organ, the Standard.
Well does our crafty contemporary know that nothing
will be more acceptable at head-quarters than abuse
of whatever is liberal and popular. Horace Twiss
will now regret that he recanted his horror of
the middle classes. Two weeks of the Tory Dic-
tatorship have only passed, and already the insolence
of Tory domination seems" to have attained its
maturity. But the Standard only can do justice to
the Standard, and we will therefore; allow our con-
temporary to speak for himself. In this way does he
last night preface the R'byal Answer to the Address of
the Common Council :—" The following is the King's
truly dignified Answer to the impertinent Address of
the Common Council. The animals to whom it is
offered will probably not understand it; but the tem-
per, grace, and calmness of the Reply, compared with
the ill. mannered petulance of the Address, convey the
must cutting rebuke." " The people have nothing to
do with the laws, but to obey them." The members
of the first Corporation in the kingdom are already
insulted by language which no superiority of un-
derstanding entitles one human being to apply to
another. It is a common observation, that the cha-
racter of the master may generally be learned
from the demeanour of the domestics. " Like
master, like man," says the proverb. If the master
be contemptuous and insolent In his bearing, so will the
servant. Our contemporary has already caught all the
insolence of the D'axe. Animals, forsooth I And
this language is applied to tile first Corporation in the
kingdom, the members of which have in all times been
in the foremost rank of the champions of English li-
berty, and occupy a distinguished place in our history.
The representatives deputed by the citizens of London
to their Common Council, are considered by this organ
of an insolent Dictator, as on a level " with the brutes
that perish," as beings who ought not to be reasoned
with. It happens, however, somewhat 'unfortunately
for the Duke, that the middle classes treated with this
contempt, have the power of returning the members of
the House of Commons, and though the Duke be
a bold man, the middle classes will beat him.
He may instruct his organs to term the citizens
of London animals, long or short-eared ;he may
heap abuse on the public bodies of the coun-
try ; but this will only hasten his discomfiture. The
people of England will not suffer themselves to be
turned aside from their purpose either by flattery or
menaces. The Times takes its Tory associate (Fra-
ser's Magazine) to task for writing as if its object
were to swamp the Ministry which is to be, by holding
it up as Conservative, when its true character is rene-
gade. " With good intentions on the part of a Con-
servative writer towards a Statesman, assi:.,med to be
ns
of the same principles, this unconscio,- Magazine
goes as far towards swamping, at its very outset, the
attempt to put the new To ry M;:nistry in motion, as
if it had been conducted h‘s the fiercest Radical in
England. If Fraser co'jld he supposed to speak
ex-cathedra, which is o'at of the question, he would
be already tolling the knell of Sir R. Peel's Cabi-
net, even in its embryo state ; and there needed no
prophet in that case to assure us that the child must
be still-born. It is not many days since we took oc-
casion to conamn the mischievous folly of the so-
called Church Reform sentiments delivered at a certain
Ultra-Tory dinner in the town of Ashford—mis-
chievous, we meant, to the object which they evidently.
aimed at, being the support of those politics and of
that party which were likely to be brought into play
by his Majesty's appeal to the Duke of Wellington as
his adviser." The question is not whether the Jesui-
tical course recommended by the Times, or the open
High-church politics of the Ashford dinner-party, and
Fraser's Magazine, would best forward the views of
the Duke ; but which way the Duke himColf ;neli)les
we an or course know, that Fraser and the Times
are missionaries to different sections of the people,—
that the vocatim of the Times is to seduce a remnant
of the Reformers, while Fraser speaks a language ac-
ceptable to the thick-and-thin High-church Conser-
vatives. But we have something more than the abuse
of the Standard to guide us with respect to the Duke
himself. What does the appointment of Baron Fostei as
Commissioner for holding the Great seal indicate ?
What wasßaron Foster before his elevation to the Bench?
A thick-and-thin Orangeman. . 'Why was Mr. Leslie
Foster elevated to the Bench ? Was it for his success as a
lawyer ? So far from it, his being made a Judge
was the subject of 'universal astonishment, as few
men had ever heard his voice in a court of law or
equity. But he belonged to the Ascendancy, and
that was enough when he was appointed. And this
is ti:e man to whom the Duke of Wellington entrusts
the Great Seal, at a time when it is for his interest to
proceed with caution. If he dares to insult the people
of Ireland in this fashion now, what may we not ex-
pect when he is more firmly seated ? No ;of the two,
Fraser is much nearer the mark than the Times. The
Duke may himself value principles only as lie can turn
them to account. But he knows that he was ele-
vated to power not to further Reform, but to defeat it.
It was not because the Melbourne Ministry were
backward in reforming, but because they carried Re-
form too far, that they were dismissed. He is the
hope of the Tories, not because he will tread in
the steps of the Whigs, but because he will retro-
grade. He is bound up with High-churchmen and
Tories and Orange Ascendency men ; and he cannot
escape from their clutches if he would. They are
watching him with jealousy.
" The Duke of Wellington (says Fraser) vras induced,
contrary, as we now know, to his own judgmwc, to make a
great concession in 1829. This was his firu error. Soon
becoming sensible of it in 1830, he detertrined to concede
nothing more. This was his second errrJr. * *
The concession made was one of prine-Ipie, whereas a princi-
ple, as matters of right and wrong chr.nge not, can never safely
be conceded. The concession refused was one of practical
detail merely, and when proK,rly examined and guarded, no
danger can arise from gran :tag such a point. * *
We have at this instant both false friends and open enemies
conspiring to urge the Duke of Wellington to repeat this very
same career of fat':.ity. We find in every journal we take up,
both endeayour:e to incite him to refuse all reasonable and prac-
tical amel'Arations, and also arguments to induce him to
ruinous, and fatal concessions of principle.",
_Though the Duke may not care much about prin-
ciples himself, he has already learned to his cost that
many High-Churchmen and Tories are ill good ear,
nest about principles. What has befallen the Times
too, cannot be lost on him. That journal has turned
and turned ; but its last evolution has been anything
but successful. It is seen running in one direction,
and its former readers in another. It has made a salto
nzortale—a mortal leap. The Duke has his troops to
move, and he knows, from experience, how difficult it
is to drive English troops from their ground.—Morn-
ing C/tronicle.

While one part of the Press is endeavouring to
rouse the public sympathy in favour of the Whigs,
another is nr:t less sedulously, and, as we conceive,
mistakfniiy, employed in endeavouring to persuade us
tl.',at a Conservative (which, in their sense of the word,
means a high Tory anti-reform) Administration is the
general wish of the country. As far as we have it in
our power to estimate the state of public opinion, we
should say that its preponderance leans neither to the
one nor the other of these extremes. If Conservatism
be taken in its true sense, we believe that the mass of
the community are Conservatives. That true sense
we believe to be a wish to see the various institutions
of the country preserved, and restored, as far as pos-
sible, to their original purity, and that by ;neaps of a
rigid and searching reform of the abuses and defects
which time and neglect, as well as other causes, hare
inflicted upon them. It is because the late Adminis-
tration promised this and have not effected it, that their
fall is looked upon either with satisfaction or indiffer-
ence ; it is because Conservatism in its limited sense
would still withhold these 'wished-for reforms, that only
a very small P°Pl::n of the community indeed can.
wish t". see it again installed in power. But we cannot
think so ill either of the Duke of Wellington or Sir
I Robert Peel as to suppose that either the progress of