The Sun.
London, England, 1856-05-26 00:00:00

TILE CARLTON CLUB.

(From, the Morning Herald.)

We wish to direct attention to the account given
elsewhere of the great meeting at the Carlton Club,
upon the subject of the proposed resolutions of
Lord Ranelagh, relative to the continued " active
presence" of certain individuals in that club, from
the principles of which they had so widely separated
themselves.

It is difficult for any persons whose sensibilities
as gentlemen have not been blunted by the laxity
with which aberrations from principle in political
life have unfortunately been considered of late, and
the criminal forbearance which has been shown to
the most flagrant breaches of the common rules of
political honesty and honour—we say it is difficult
for such to conceive how an intimation such as was
conveyed to those gentlemen on Saturday could
have possibly become necessary.
It is, however, only an additional proof that the
separation which modern philosophy has endea-
voured to establish between personal and political
honour is as impracticable as it is manifestly incon-
sistent with sound ethics. It is utterly hopeless
that the man who considers himself at liberty to
break his plighted word, either to his party or his
constituents in public life, can continue to enter-
tain those nice sentiments of personal honour which
render possible the existence of that confidence
which ought to subsist amongst all men drawn to-
gether by unity of sentiment and reliance upon pro-
fessions of similarity of objects, either in private or
public life.
Forbearance was long exercised towards those
entlemen, grounded principally-on the expectation,
hat, when the one question upon which a difference
was said to exist had been finally decided, their
natural leanings and the recollection of early asso-
ciation would bring them back to the party from
which they had separated upon a question which
they professed to consider one of merely fiscal
policy.
This expectation, however, was not realised, and
it now appears that even during the election of
1852, when the continuance of the party to which
these gentlemen professed to belong was at stake,
they did not scruple to make use of the very house
of the society, the principles of whose foundation
they were attempting to undermine, as a place of
meeting in which to hold discussions for a purpose
hostile to its existence.

The blunted feelings to which we have alluded
must have become very dull indeed when warrant-
ed in concocting electioneering plans, in the carry-
ing out of which Messrs. Edmund O'Flaherty, Sad-
leir, Stonor, and others, since creditably made
known to the country, were the active agents, ab-
solutely under the roof of a Conservative club.
The subject, however, is not one on which a
writer can dwell with pleasure ; and we hope, now
that the opinion of the vast majority of the
members of the club has been unmistakeably ex-
pressed, that the object for which it was founded
was a political one, the gentlemen in question will
see the propriety of refraining from intruding them-
selves upon a society in which their presence has
long produced distrust, and in the minds of whose
members it must now, after what has passed, pro-
duce feelings of the most unmistakeable contempt.
As an instance of the inconvenience, not to say
worse, occasioned by the line of conduct which we
reprehend, we may mention an occurrence which
took place only the other day, when a private con-
versation between two members of the club was made
the subject of a very severe inculpation of the con-
duct of the members generally in the columns of a
morning contemporay. The fact that the assertion
on which this attack was founded was utterly un-
true, namely, that Lord Derby still continued a
member of Brookes'—which he quitted in 1834—0 f
course makes no difference in the fact that a con-
versation, which ought to be considered in a cer-
tain degree conadential, was forthwith communi-
cated to a hostile journal, and made the founda-
tion of censorious commentary.
Once more we repeat that the question at issue is
more one that should be decided by the rules of
that code of honour to which all men in the posi-
tion of gentlemen are expected to conform, than by
the lax code of morality now unhappily widely
tolerated among professional politicians.