The Sun.
London, England, 1835-11-30 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The vacant garter will we understand, be given to
Lord Lansdowne. The public, from the bestowal of
this mark of the Royal favour on his Lordship, will
naturally infer that notwithstanding the prodigious
activity of the Tories during the past fortnight, not-
withstanding all their riding and running, they cannot
dispossess the present Ministry. Poor Burdett allowed
himself to he fooled by some of these intriguers into the
idea that he was of importance enough to set the sup-
porters of Ministers by the ears, and that by publish-
ing a letter to Brookes's Club against O'Connell, he
would break up the Ministry. Sir Francis, like some
other old gentleinen, is apt to forget that the power
does not always correspond to the will. The only
sensation produced by his epistle was that of wonder
that time had wrought such a lamentable change both
in the principles and the intellect of the Hon. Baro-
net. The epistle is so complete a failure, that notwith-
standing the constitutional irritability of Mr. O'Con-
nell, we question whether he will think it worth while to
notice it. Ministers know that their only safe reliance
is on the people. They know that if the Tories could
succeed in entrapping them into measures unacceptable
to the nation, their tenure of office would be brief in-
deed. But so long as they are strong in the national
support, they may set all the intrigues of their oppo-
nents at defiance. Thank God, the Government can-
not be carried on without the support of the House of
Commons ; and while Ministers are true to the nation,
the Tories never can command a majority in that House.
Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington are not
so besotted as to play once more the foolish game of
last year; and without them no Ministry can be formed
by the Tories. The people will look with anxiety to
the disposal of the three Lieutenancies. Power must
now be confided exclusively to hands that will wield it
for the benefit of the people. A house divided against
itself cannot stand. Ministers cannot afford to deprive
themselves of any legitimate support. To give a Lieu-
tenancy to either a Tory or a neutral in these times, is
to weaken themselves and strengthen their opponents.
—Morning Chronicle.
Some of our contemporaries appear to have fallen
into a strange error as to the motive and meaning of
the vote of the Royal Society by which Mr. ex-Sheriff
Raphael was, very properly as we think, excluded
from that body. "The Royal Society is certainly not
what it once was. It has placed the Duke of Sussex
in the chair of Sir Isaac Newton, a symptom and con-
fession of decay which is calculated to excite pity
rather than any other feeling. Yet we believe it would
be incorrect to ascribe this preposterous election of
their President to the political feelings of the members
of the Society. It arose, rather, we apprehend, from the
senile and feminine ambition of being (as they expected),
in habitual intercourse with Royalty, and the boun-
teous promises held out, and not, we understand, very
diligently fulfilled, of the frequent honour and recrea-
tion of coffee, conversation, and muffins, to be enjoyed
at Kensington Palace. It is too monstrous to be be-
lieved, however, notwithstanding the serious miscalcu-
lation above mentioned, that the members of the Royal
Society black-balled Mr. Raphael as a punishment for
having exposed the conduct and incurred the displea-
sure of Mr. O'Connell. We know, indeed, that many
fellows of the Society are most anxious to disclaim
any such motive. They loudly protest that they did
not intend to manifest any sympathy with Mr.
O'Connell, or any disapprobation of that part of the
conduct of Mr. Raphael by which he has incurred the
displeasure of that gentleman, and we fully believe
them. They assert that they were impressed with the
opinion (and in that opinion we beg to say we entirely
concur) that Mr. Raphael had disqualified himself
fir admission into any society of English gentlemen ;
not by his exposure of the traffic between Mr. O'Con-
nell and himself, but by engaging in that discreditable
traffic. It was, we are assured, not as the accuser and
the enemy of the Irish demagogue and seat-seller that
this mast unfortunate of all candidates lost his election
at Somerset House ; but as the customer of the seat-
seller, as the man who had paid a sum of money for
the privilege of entering the House of Commons in a
character so base and low as that of a protege and re-
tainer of the demagogue. In judging thus, we repeat,
the Fellows of the Royal Society pronounced an award
in which a great majority of the Gentlemen of Great
Britain will heartily concur. Why should the Royal
Society admit a member fresh from the contamination
of such an alliance as that of O'Connell ? Why,
if the corrupt vendor of a seat in Parliament is an ob-
ject of odium or censure, should the purchaser be re-
ceived with open arras ? If it were a crime in Mr.
O'e.',J2nnell to dupe the unfortunate ex-Sheriff, had not
another and a greater offence been likewise perpetrated
in which M. O'Connell and his dupe bore an equal
share, the offence of attempting to injure and betray
the nation at large by corrupting and degrading the re-
presentation of the people in the House of Commons ?
In exposing Mr. O'Connell, Mr. Raphael had also
exposed himself. He pointed out a great public delin-
quent, but in doing so he had shown a hand that was
not clean. He had, in a word, touched pitch, and
was defiled. We maintain, therefore, that the Royal
Society did themselves honour by his rejection.--
Morning Post.
When Parliament was assembled in February, the
analysis of the votes on the Speakership and Address
plainly showed that England had declared in favour
of Sir R. Peel's Government. This there could be no
mistake about ; for, strike off the support which Lord
John Russell received from Scotch and Irish Mem-
•bers, and you have his Lordship and his colleagues
exactly where they should have been—in a decided mi-
nority. Now, to our thinking, the fact we have just
mentioned is a highly instructive one, as illustrating
the mean and despicable truckling resorted to by our
present Whig-Radical Ministers, for the purpose of
keeping sure that small Parliamentary preponderance
in their favour, which, having been indignantly denied
them by England, was indispensable to their continu-
ance in power. With gentlemen of true English feel-
ings and of sensitive political honour, the declared veto
put upon them by this part of the United Fingdoins,
and the distinct support thereby given to his Majesty in
that exercise of his prerogative which their mortification
and pique had disposed them to thwart—this hostile
position of England, we say, if not sufficiently humbling
to their pretensions to deter them from usurping powers
and pensions contrary to the proclaimed voice of the
largest portion of the empire, should at least, in common
policy, have prevented them from adding any new
elements of irritation to that cordial English hating
which their lust of office' had deservedly excited. For
our own part, being enemies to the repeal of the
Union of the three kingdoms, we are utterly opposed
to whatever is calculated to sow dissension or create
jealousies among the sectional divisions of the national
confederacy ; and it is simply on this account that we
now feel bound to expose the perfidious, un-English,
and insulting superiority which the Cabinet faction,
while affecting to maintain inviolate the integrity of
the political trio juneta in uno, have yielded to Ire-
' land and Scotland, at the expense of England, in
casting the characters of their political entertainment,
and in supporting their subordinate officials. Finding
that no effective support could be reckoned on from
the more intelligent and numerous Sassenahs in Par-
liament, their party instincts, clinging to the Treasury
with a tenacious gripe, impelled them to purchase sena-
torial aid from the Northern and Hibernian Celts, in
whom alone they live, and move, and have their being,.
And on what terms has the purchase been made ?
Why, not only by acting the part of puppets to their
Scotch and Irish string-drawers, and by dancing just
as they - chose to pipe, but by dispensing among them
by far the larger proportion of State offices, to the
almost entire exclusion of England from any share in
the executive of these realms. Let us look at this, as
regards their Irish backers. Between the Scylla of
forfeiting' 'Popish support, and the danger of being
wrecked on the Charybdis of Protestant indignation,
there was a narrow strait which needed to be Davi-
'' gated very cleverly. Not daring, therefore, either to
• risk the immediate elevation of Irish Catholics to the
'Treas9r, bureaus on this side of the Channel, or to
incur' their hostility by withholding their bargained
.pay, they hit upon- the happy tertiuni quid of giving,
'the sops of Downing-street to as many of their Protes-
iemilrish as a due provision for Scotland would admit '
of; while to their Popish allies and expectants a sur-
render was made of the patronage of Ireland generally,