The Sun.
London, England, 1835-09-26 00:00:00

SP iltrf OF THE PUBLIC JOUBNALS

,Our ingenious contemporary (the Standard) loves
to grapple with difficulties. Presuming on his skill in
sophistry, and the inability of his readers to detect it, he
has actually entered on the defence of hereditary legig-
htion, as being in itself the most likely to ensure ex-
cellence. We can miderstand why, if the • perfection
of a lel;islaturc consst in one branch locking another,
that this sort of paralysis can. be better obtained by a
licrcd:iary inesponsible body than by any other.i
But we •CriaeSS; we were not prepared for the de-
fence of such a State of things, on the grount!,
taken by our contemi`erarY• " The hereol:ary
Smith, must have .impere
he says, "
p or the licpredit:TY
ceptiblypicked u some sCl•nieiters of his l'ather's
iie
craft at the shopboard, or at the - forge, even hail
imi!seleal business ;
not contemplated succeeding to the
but the mere experimentalist could at !if!:s;; know
nothing but his own ignorance." On the :'.'11)1),3"
sition that all men posses equal aptitude (which
not the case); the son of a tailor who might have
picked up some scantlings of his father's craft at the
shopboard, would, perhaps, have some advantages
over one who had never seen the operation of making, a
pair of breeches or coat. But a man, who venturl
to claim the support of the public as a tailor, on the
strength of having seen his father at work, would not
be likely to gain many customers, in a place where.men
are regularly bred to the craft. Political science, how-
ever, according to our contemporary, " is not a science
to be picked up by apprentice craft, by the study of
ny one book, or in any one school ; fortunate for man-
kind indeed it is, that politics are not reduced to an ap-
prentice cTaft, or a school study ; for if they were, we
should have nothing else but tricks of trade and empty
pretensions. ; of which, as it is, we haYe more than
enough." We do not exactly see how, because poli-
tics is not a science to be picked up by' the study
of any one book or any one school, that there-
fore no means should be tal:en for securing the pub-
lic against being operated on by men who have read
no one book, and attended no one school. Where a
man is a candidate for the favour of a constituency,
there is at least this security, that his ignorance may
be• exposed by competitors or by electors. We grant
that too little care is taken, even in this case, to se-
cure Representatives versed in the business of legis-
lation. It is too much the habit in this country of
presuming that all merit consists in the possession of
an estate. Hence our system of unpaid magistracy !
We still retain the habits of a people ridden by an
Aristocracy. These habits will, however, in time
give way to others. The time, we trust, •is not far
distant, when the public will demand from Legislators
some other test of qualification than the possession
of so many thousands a-year. In general, however,
it'may be said of the House of Commons, that its
• Members are the best of the class to which they be-
long ; but many of the Lords are mere Sybavites, and
so far from being the best of the aristocratical class,
they may be said (with many exceptions no doubt) to
possess hardly sense enough to keep them—to use the
language of Cobbett—from not stumbling into a
quarry.—Morning Chronicle.
Daniel's second exhibition at Glasgow, which we
described yesterday, was at a feed. Its history is cu-
rious. The diners, albeit Radicals, would not join in
the " Trades'" entertainments, because some of the
toasts projected at the latter went rather TOO FAR for
them. We have heard of " honour among thieves ; "
but squeamishness among seditionists is new to us.
Unluckily the brutal state of intoxication prevalent at
the " Trades' " soiree rendered it, as our readers know,
expedient to close the proceedings abruptly before "one
half the toasts appointed to be given had been gone
through ; " so that the real nature of the whole cannot
he known unless the Glasgow papers should be good
enough to furnish a list of them. The dissentient diners
cannot be supposed, as we shall presently see, to have
taken umbrage at the toast of " the Sovereignty of the
People" having been given first, and that of " the
King " second. There must, therefore, have been
something even worse than this in the back ground.
But let us proceed to notice the feed. One Captain
Speirs (mark well, a captain in the army) was in the
chair ; a Professor Mylne said grace ; and an indivi-
dual called the Rev. Dr. Brewster, of Paisley, re-
turned • thanks. The croupier, an official used in
England only in gambling-houses, and in Scotland only-
at dinners, was a Sir James Maxwell. Our Glasgow
correspondent tells us, that with these, " 200 most
respectable gentlemen sat down to a sumptuous dinner
at the Tontine Hotel." Using a well known Scottish
- phrase, vie say, "we quory thefac mon." We deny,
utterly and entirely deny, the respectability of these
200: we deny that they were gentlemen. But let us
go gently. Not having been at the dinner, we can of
course know nothing of it, or of the animals who de-
voured it, from personal observation. We must, there-
fore, support and justify our denial by evidence, or it
goes for nothing. As the proof of the pudding. is in the
eating, so the test of men's respectability, and of their
claims to gentility, is their conduct. We have the
conduct of these men : let us thereby test their respecta-
bility—their title to be called gentlemen. Daniel
O'Connell, among other foully false and brutally black-
guard attacks on the House of Lords, was red by liquor
or licentiousness, or both, into the following reckless
ruffianism, which we-confess we are almost ashamed to
quote :—" Electors may vote, but their Lordships
don't care a straw about that. They are, from father
to son—(a langh)—someihinglike the race established
in Ireland, where the pigs are turned out with their
ears cut of and tail soaped, to become the prize of the
first person that can hold them—(a laugh)—there
. they are the soaped pigs of society—(laughter)--e-the
• real swinish multitude—(renewed laughter)—as ob-
stinate, as ignorant, and as mulish as their prototypes.
Like the pigs bought at Naas, there was no hope of
their reaching Dublin but by driving them in an oppo
site direction. OfF went Londonderry, grunting and
snorting—Winelli!sca gave a pious groan, ivith
more sanctity than ever pig evinced belbre,—New-
castle in congenial sounds recorded it,—Wellin,gton of
Waterloo became the swine-herd general: they hav'e
flung themselves literally into the mud ; and the people
of this country, who will not consent to defilement,
will insist that the twofooted pigs shall no longer
occupy their present position, but that human beings
shall be placed in the robes of the constitution, and
common sense hate command, while all swinish pro-
pensities are banished for ever from the Legislature.—
(Cheers and laughter.) The business of Reform, then,
I say, is only half done. Scotland, I know, is a very
pretty nation for finishing the job it begins ; and there-
fore I have come to make my appeal to you. Will you
• leave time work half done ?—the weft in the loom half
woven ?—the piece half finished ? Will you leave the
picture half a man and hay a hog, as at present
(Cheers and laughter.) * * The necessity
is obvious ; down with the oligarchy,—down with -;
• the Apsley-house coterie,—down with the swinish
multitude.----(Cheers, and laughter.)
Take the entire 170, putting aside the
Duke of Wellinoston as a piece of ornament to stare
at, what are all the rest of them ? They are name-
less—we only know their nicknames ; in nine in-
stances out of ten we forget their real ones. What
advance in science—what discoveries in arts—what
ornaments of literature—what moral virtues do they
pussesswbat physical force belongs to them ? A
good sturdy wench with a broom would beat the entire
of them.—(Loud laughter.) And yet, sacred HeaVen,
. these are the masters of our destinies, our lives,
efortunes, and interests ; the advance in political sci-
ence of the mighty British nation depends all on those
170 whipped scholars of the kitchen-maid with her'
broom." Now we will be judged by a jury of charity
boys, selected from any part of the King's dominions,
. whether the Glasgow 200 who could laugh,—laugh
loudly, renew their laughter, and cheer,-...that is, a-p-
-.plau —such senseless and indecent can have
the remotest claim to respectabz747—wherher it is not
the grossest prostitution of laniguage, to apply the
word
,071.ilenzen to such a coarse and ill-bred herd of
Scotch cattle ? For individual illustrations, take the
bell-wether the leader the chairman Captain
Speirs. He holds King's commission, and is, or
ought to be; as he is called a •captain--a soldier. Tie
heard the Duke of Wellington sneered at by a cowardly
Papist as " Wellington of Waterloo," as " a piece of
ornament to stare at ; and instead of catching the cur
by the nape of his neck, and shaking an apology out