The Sun.
London, England, 1834-11-17 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1834

inconsistent with all probability, and supported by
no appearance of evidence, we venture to express
our distinct conviction that these statements will
be found to be utterly, destitute of foundation.
" The King," says the Times, " has taken the
opportunity of Lord Spencer's death ,to turn out
the Ministry ; and there is every reason to believe
that the Duke of Wellington has been sent for.
The Queen has done it all." " His Majesty," says
the Morning Chronicle, " expressed no dissatisfac-
tion with Lord Melbourne's Administration ; but he
let it be understood that he considered it at an end
with the death of the late Earl Spencer, and the con-
sequent removal of the present Earl to the House of
Lords." " His Majesty," says the Courier, "on
learning Earl Spencer's death, is understood to hate
sent for the Duke of Wellington, with the intention,
as is supposed, of intrusting his Grace with the impor-
tant task of constructing a new Government." " The
Ministers," says the Globe, " do not resign. The King
has been, unhappily for the country, and for himself,
advised to dismiss them." Similar assertions are made by
the weekly papers, in which the principles either of
the Broughams or the Durhams have been supported ;
and insinuations are carefully interspersed of Court
intrigues and Tory machinations, of military vio-
lence and female supremacy. The object of all this
is to be convey an impression that the Melbourne
Ministry, labouring under no difficulties, divided by
no dissentions, perfectly prepared to serve the King,
perfectly able to govern the country, has been, in
consequence of the interference of the Queen and the
plots of the Tories dismissed by the Sovereign. We
repeat that we do not yet pretend to speakfronz autho-
rity; but we venture nevertheless to assert that the
impression thus conveyed will be found to be wholly
groundless. The Queen has not interfered ; the To-
ries have not plotted ; the Melbourne Ministry has
not been, in the sense in which our Contem-
n poraries apply the words dismissed, by the Sove-
, reign. When the time shall come for an au-
thorized account of the transactions which have

produced this unexpected result we believe it will be
found that Lord Melboutne waited upon his Royal
Master on Friday, not with any clear proposal for
a reconstruction of the Cabinet, not with any dis-
tinct development of its intended policy, but with
a lugubrious account of difficulties and perplexities, of
differences and disputes. Perhaps it will appear that,
instead of advising any specific arrangement upon his
own responsibility, his Lordship suggested several,
each for various reasons objectionable, for his Sove-
reign's selection ;—that instead of promising a future
unanimity in the Councils of his Majesty, his Lord-
ship predicted serious .discrepancies .between his col-
leagues on most momentous subjects ; that, instead of
readily proffering the continuance of his services, his
Lordship announced that the discord which the re-
turn of Lord Althorp to the lead of the House of
Commons had for a time stilled, had been revived by
his removal to the House of Lords ; and that hence-
forth the task which his loyalty did not allow him
to decline, would be an embarrassing and painful
one. If such was the communication made by
Lord Melbourne to the King, is it wonderful that
the King should perceive that he could no longer
expect firm and stable government from the coun-
sels of his present advisers ;—that he should at once,
with the assent of Lord Melbourne himself, determine
to place the maintenance of his people's interests in
other hands ? And can we see anything in the com-
munication of Lord Melbourne but the act of a loyal
and high-minded man,—anything in the procedure of
the King but the decision of a resolute and sagacious
Monarch ? Let the judgment of our readers be sus-
pended until the facts are known. If our hypothesis
is incorrect of course the inferences we found upon it
fall to the ground. If it be based on truth, what

As Home Secretary, what was his conduct when ap- '
prised by the local authorities of the excited state of
the populace, and the expected riots in Bristol ? Did
he take those steps which a man of sound judgment
would have taken, acting upon the wise and humane
maxim that prevention is better than punishment ?,
Every body knows what were the consequences of the
week and vacillating policy which Government pur-
sued on that occasion, of the blame of which weak
and vacillating policy the Home Secretary must bear
his share. But if he were chargeable with strange
remissness in regard to the expected riots in Bristol,
he went to the opposite extreme in relation to the Cal-
thorpe-street affair. Here there was an over-rigour
miscalled for and misapplied—in such a bungling
manner was the campaign of the day arranged, that,
instead of steps of quiet precaution on the side of tile
civil power, there were acts of violent provocation—the
new police, already sufficiently unpopular, were brought,
unnecessarily, into increased odium with the people—
more than one verdict of a Jury expressed what public
opinion thought of the rash and unconstitutional man-
ner in which that force had been employed. A Go-
vernment that often gathered such laurels would at
length be entombed under the weight of its own tro-
phies. In these matters we do not mean to say that
Lord Melbourne incurs higher blame than what at-
taches to ignorance of affairs and want of judgment
but this is enough to prove his incapacity for the high
and difficult station of First Minister of the Crown..
We recur to those events which form part of the his-
tory of the Whig Administration, to justify our opinion
that the loss of Lord Melbourne as Prime Minister is
not a loss which the nation has any reason to deplore.
Now, let us just glance at a few of the colleagues of
Lord Melbourne, and see what grounds of confi-
dence the country ought to have in their wisdom
and public virtue. The most eminent beyond all
comparison is Lord Brougham, both for talent 1
and political distinction. Have the public any
longer confidence in him ? We make no account
of the splenetic and personal attacks of Lord Dur-
ham upon his quondam friend. We believe per-
sonal motive and ambitious rivalry have more to
do with those attacks than any very disinterested
concern for the public good. We do not estimate very
highly the disinterested patriotism of the man who as-
sists to keep up the price coals while he calls out for a
free trade in corn ; great must be the love of the poor
and the working classes in the man who, to swell his
already enormous income, enhances the price of such
a necessary of life I We view the character of Lord
Brougham, not through the distorting medium of Lord
• Durham's angry speeches—we look to his own actions.
'• During the last two years the keeper of the King's
conscience has done little more than "blow hot and
cold" upon all manner of important questions. Upon
•. subjects in relation to which his opinions ought to have
been fixed long ago, he has only displayed the fickle-
' ness of his faith and the versatility of his talents.
• Among them we may enumerate the tithe-question—
national education—the criminal law—the comparative
merits and utility of the Houses of Lords and Coin-
' mons—and even reform itself. But we will take from
a journal which, though Ministerial, is not servilely so,
▪ its opinion of the conduct of the Lord Chancellor.
• Here it is :
, "It is needless to speculate about the causes which have
led to this threatening state of things. We have been well
satisfied for some considerable time that the Ministry, as at

present constituted, could not goon. The Chancellor has
been, perhaps unconsciously, the grand ally of the Duke of
Wellington. His uncalled-for declaration against granting a
public stipend to the Catholic priests, and his shallow and in-
temperate abuse of a compulsory provision for the poor, show-
ed
that he was totally ignorant of, and opposed to, the mea-
sures most essential to the prosperity of Ireland. His state-
ment that if little were done last session less would be done
the next, roused the indignation of all ardent and sincere re-
formers ; and his intrigues and mountebankism' procured for
him the dislike of his Majesty. There oould not, indeed, be
a more revolting spectacle, than for the highest law-officer of
the empire to be travelling like a quack doctor through the
provinces, puffing himself and his little nostrums, and com-
mitting and degrading the Government of which he had the
honour to be a member. His Majesty could not but be in-
dignant at such conduct. Asd it is a fact, notwithstanding
all the fulsome adulation heaped on his gracious master' at
Inverness, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and elsewhere, that the pe-
ripatetic keeper of the King's conscience has not once been
admitted, since his return from his travels, to the honour of
an interview with Royalty, either at Windsor or Brighton."
It is not necessary to inform our readers that we
differ with the Courier in its opinions upon many sub-
jects, more especially as to the question of. Ireland, but
in the above extract there are two opinions in which we
entirely concur with that journal ;—one is, that the
Melbourne Ministry, as lately constituted, could not
go on ; the other, that Lord Brougham, in his late
itinerant career of political and erratic spouting,
brought discredit upon the exalted judicial station
whose grave and solemn duties he had to administer,
and at the same time did irreparable damage to the
Melbourne Cabinet. But we ask why it was, if Lord
Melbourne disapproved of the "fantastic tricks" played
by the Learned occupant of the Woolsack, he did not
take the obvious and convincing mode of disclaiming
them, by recommending to his Majesty another Lord
Chancellor ? While Lord Brougham remained a
member of the Cabinet, and remained in it unreproved,
we must take it that his public conduct was not disa-
greeable to the Prime Minister. The Globe—the
most servile of the Ministerial journals—the unceasing
panegyrist of the Malthusian Bill to grind the faces of
the poor, and to drive the victims of licentious
men to child-dropping and infanticide—the Globe,
we say, puts on its weepers to mourn the downfall of
the Melbourne Ministry. It wrings its hands in the
wildest sorrow, and pours forth the burstings of its
anguish between rows of " double leads." Alas I
what is all this for ? Cannot the Journal of which
Wellington was the idol until the Whia°s came into
office, make him its idol once more ? But it asks,
among other things, whether the bill for Negro eman-
cipation is to be worked by the supporters of slavery,
and whether the reformers of the criminal law are to be
worked by the advocates of cruel punishments ? It
may be asked in return, who are they who have been
lately flogging to death, and shooting refractory negroes
in our West Indian colonies ? It may be asked who
was he that stopped in the House of Lords the bills
passed for the further amelioration of the criminal law
by the House of Commons last Session ? As to the
latter question, every person who recollects the history of
the last Session can answer that it was Lord Brougham.
With the Melbourne Ministry the country loses
also the services of Lord Palmerston, as Secretary
for Foreign Affairs, and perhaps his prospective ser-
vices as Governor-General of India. What a loss I
How can the country ever get over it ? If he were
only allowed to stay in office until he had settled the
Belgic question by his protocols, he might have had a
perpetuity of the place, and every day would England
find that her interests and her commercial relations
were more and more sacrificed to Russian ascendancy
in the east of Europe, and to French intrigue in the
west. As to Mr. Spring Rice, we consider him an
industrious official, of small mind, and, like every red-
tapist, wholly unfit to fill any first-rate station in
conducting the affairs of a great nation. As to Mr.
Littleton, who, it now appears, was to have been the
new Chancellor of the Exchequer, we refer for his
character to Mr. O'Connell, who was enabled, dur-
ing that " confidential" intercourse which drove
Lord Grey from office, to take a pretty fair measure-
ment of his principles and his intellect. As to Lord
Duncannon and Sir J. Hobhouse, for their own cre-
dit, too little cannot be said about them. The job
now going on at the Parliament Houses shows what
cause the country had to place confidence in the " ra-
dical" Chief Commissioner of the Woods and Forests.
It is a consolation to know that, whatever Ministry
may follow, it can hardly be worse than the one that
has gone. Of one thing we are certain, and that is,
whatever Cabinet may be formed, and whether the Duke
of Wellington, or Sir C. Manners Sutton, or anybody
else, may be at the head of it, all necessary reforms
must go on. The abuses of our institutions must be
removed, without disturbing the institutions themselves.
If this were not the case, indeed, the Reform Act must
he a nullity, and the Whigs, even in that measure,
have practised a gross imposition on the people. If
the will of the nation be heard in Parliament throuoh
the Reform Act, it is impossible that any Ministers
can oppose the rational and enlightened will of the
country, and long remain in power. What the public
wants is a Government that will care more for the im-
provement of the condition of the mass of the people
than enriching its own sycophants and followers by all

shall be said of the abominable meanness of those
Ministers who, loaded as they have been with favours
and honours by their gracious Master, have pro-
mulgated these disloyal and mendacious representa-
tion of the causes of their retirement from his ser-
vice ? Thus far conjecture ;—conjecture, however,
not founded on light grounds, nor thrown out with-
out some warrant. What follows we state with more
certainty. His Majesty, upon coming to the conclu-
sion that a total change in his Councils was at length
unavoidable, determined to apply without delay to the
Duke of Wellington. His Majesty's commands for
the attendance of his Grace were conveyed to -London
on Friday by Lord Melbourne himself, and for-
warded immediately to Stratfieldsaye. His Grace had
an interview with his Majesty yesterday, and the ar-
rangements which the present position of the country
makes desirable were discussed and concluded. We
have room for but few remarks upon the awful crisis at
which we have now arrived. It is a crisis which ought
to awaken to serious reflections all those honest and
honourable men who have hitherto deemed it their duty
to temporise, to conciliate, to concede. Let them
well consider the ground which they have already
traversed, and that which yet remains to be trodden.
They have been led—step by step—far beyond
the limits which they originally assigned to
their advance. The Ministers upon whom they
relied for moderation and prudence have been removed,
one by one, and their support has been at last extended
to a Cabinet denuded of all that had rendered it in
their eyes respectable. They had determined to con-
fide in Earl Grey, in the Duke of Richmond, in Sir
James Graham, in Mr. Stanley. They have found
themselves reposing a fearful faith in Sir John Hob-
house, in Mr. Littleton, in Mr. Ellice. Are they pre‘
pared for a yet further progress ? For they may be
assured that the Cabinet which was dissolved on Fri-
day will never—can never—be re-constructed. The
Opposition which is to be marshalled against the Con-
servative Cabinet will be an Opposition composed of
all that is ruthless and reckless—of all that is unprin-
cipled. and unscrupulous. The Ministry which will be
formed out of that Opposition--if that Opposition
shall ever supply a Ministry—will be headed by Lord
Durham, who is magnificently feasted at Glasgow, and
guided by Mr. Ellice, who is " unfavourably known
in the city." The question which is now to be decided
is one of obvious and speedy arbitrament. Henceforth
we shall.see marshalled in two camps those who are for
the maintenance and those who are for the abolition of
our Church—those who are for the preservation and
those who are for the extinction -of our Monarchy.—
Morning Post.
The Melbourne Ministry, itself the offspring of an
intrigue of which Lord Grey was the victim, has not
long survived its own inglorious triumph, signalised as
it was by the political extinction of the father of reform.
At the time when the result of that intrigue, unsur-
passed for its baseness in the records •of political
treachery, became known, we expressed an opinion of
it and the secret actors in the plot, whoever they were,
which we have had no reason to chancre. As long as
truth and honour are held in any estimation among
men—as long as ingratitude and circumvention for
benefits received are not tolerated even by the relaxed
morality of public life, so long will the " familiar"
treachery by which Lord Grey was struck be held
in abhorrence, and the sudden downfall of the Ministry
that rose upon the ruin of their former and betrayed
Chief be regarded as something like a stroke of retri-
butive justice. Even though the Melbourne Ministry
had not been dismissed by the King, it was mo-
rally impossible that it could have continued
for any length of time to hold together
against the general opinion of its want of prin-
ciple
and capacity. As' we said of that fantastic pro-
duction of Louis Philip's intriguing genius, which
started into transitory existence in France the other
day, the Melbourne Administration had the seal of
condemnation stamped upon it from its birth. The
disreputable intrigues in which it had its origin were
not redeemed in any way by the talents which some-
times throw a dazzling lustre over an unscrupulous
ambition. Its chief, an aristocrat of indolent habits
and mediocre intellect, was raised to the proud position
of Prime Minister of England, without ever having
achieved any political distinction. If the vessel of the
State, instead of struggling with the raging elements
in leaky condition upon a lee-shore, were sailing in gay
and gallant trim with favouring breeze upon a summer
sea, even then, such a Palinurus as Lord Melbourne
at the helm ought not to be trusted. What the broad-
sides of combined enemies could never effect, an
unskilful pilot might accomplish, and send the
Queen of the Ocean to the bottom of the deep.