The Sun.
London, England, 1835-11-23 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

Two or three days ago we asserted that a revulsion
. of sentiment was beginning to show itself every-
'6 here on the question between the Ministers and the
Conservatives of Great Britain. So long as the Ca-
binet of Lord Melbourne was supposed to be, and af-
fected to be, a Cabinet of mere Whigs, aiming at no
further innovations in our government than such as might
come within the range of a bona
*fide reform of abuses,
and in conformity with those principles on which the
old Whigs of England hadalways professed to act, by
upholding and defending the staple institutions of the
oountry—King, Lords, Commons, and Church—so
long. we say, as that delusion lasted, the Melbourne
Ministry continued to receive a fair degree of support
from its accustomed friends and well-wishers, the old
habitues of Whiggism, who had known and served
tinder it in its better days. There was from the first,
indeed, visible amongst Whigs of all descriptions " out
of doors," and within, a sort of undefined uneasiness,
at the alliance into which the fag. end Cabinet
was forced by the harsh alternative of sharing power
• with O'Connell and the Popish functionaries of
Ireland, or with Sir Robert Peel and the Con-
servatives. The first was a sacrifice of honour
only ; the second would be a mortification to party
jealousy, spite, and hatred. The spite, however, was
Indulged ; what was to become of " honour" was a
question left for the chapter of accidents to settle, and
settled it has been, unfortunately, fatally for the Whigs.
Two or three facts have occurred very recently, and
arc detailed or noticed in this day's Times, illustrative
'of the rapid evanescence of the still existing Cabinet,
and to which we shall turn presently. But with re-
gard to the progress of public feeling, it was given
out originally, that the course of policy to be pursued
by Lord Melbourne, &c., would obtain the support of
O'Connell and his:myrmidons purely on the same foot-
ing as that on which the English Liberals would afford
their assistance to the Melbourne Government, viz.—
that of a general confidence that measures of a decided
and vigorous tendency towards promoting the cause of
"eonstitutionalreform" would be more practicable under
a feeble Whig_ than under a strong Conservative Ad-
minstration. To us and many others the opposite pro-
spect was far more likely to be realized, and events prove
that we were right, but that is not the present question.
The cloven foot was not long concealed. Every step
taken in the government of Ireland, and not only that,
but the spirit which pervaded every act of the Govern-
ment, great or small,—the language with which it
was accompanied, and the manifest though tacit encou-
ragement given to the outbreak of factious black •
guardism in both countries, much of which we deem
it an honour to have bad directed against ourselves,—
the all but exclusive patronage beStowed on Irishmen,
avho had long been notorious for their abhorrence of
our Protestant institutions, and of the British name,—
the threats thundered forth against the House of Lords,
for its daring to sustain the part of an independent
House of Legislature, assigned to it by the unwritten
and the written law of England—threats first issued'
by the King's Prime Minister from his place in Parlia-
ment, next re-echoed by the King's Attornies-General
in both countries, in their addresses from the hustings,
to a population well enough inclined to plead in excuse
for any treasonable offences the recorded . license of
the law officers of the Crown,—and, .finally, the ag-
gravation and frightful significancy, superadded- to
all the foregoing announcements of exterminating war-
fare against the Constitution, delivered by O'Connell
(that precious Whig gentleman !) on his mission
through the North—menaces which did no more, how-
ever, than give a complete form and development to that
outline of destruction previously indicated by the offi-
cial tools and creatures of the agitator ;—these insignia
of meditated revolution, followed up by the disclosures
to which the Times has been instumental, of the acts
perpetrated, the wickedness exhibited, the atrocious and
abominable despotism established over the Roman Ca-
tholic multitude in Ireland by their aspiring though
brutal priesthood—all taken together, all framed and
destined to one disastrous end—the overthrow of the
State and utter dissolution of the empire—were
abundant, and more than abundant, evidences, that the
,Melbourne Cabinet had at its formation hung-out false
colours, that O'Connell and the Popish hierarchy, and
he English revolutionists, were not subsidiary ,to the
so called " Melbourne" Ministry, but that Lord Mel-
bourne and his colleagues were tributary to them,—that
not only has the cause of Protestantism been sold to
.ripaeions Popery, and that of freedom to priestly per-
secution, but that ancient English Whiggism itself has
been. broken up and sold piecemeal to the demon of
anarchy and civil discord. The Rump-Whig faction
has rebelled against its ancestors, and become a par-
ricide before. it was a traitor. It was time then (was
it: not ?) that the old friends of Whig principles
and of freedom, as their forefathers understood the
term " freedom," should pause and gaze round, and
ascertain whither it was, and in what direction, those
-ideklesS Ministers who had usurped the helm of the
State were on the point of steering. When the pilot
is the most drunken man on board, it is, we say, time
for the best disciplined crew to look about theni. We
begin to see everywhere symptoms of this, however
tardy, circumspection. A stupid attempt has been
made to connect the letter of Sir Francis Burdett to
Brookees Club with.a supposed change in the political
feelings of that Hon. Baronet. We. have already
stated what is evident on the face of the letter—that
the. Writer of it was most studious and anxious to divest
his propositiOn for inflicting a condign punishment on
O'Connell of all political bearing and character what-
soever. The address was to the feelings of gentlemen,
notef Whigs, and will yet be found of more impor-
tance than some of those who sneer at it have courage
to admit of. But it is not with Sir Francis that our
present subject connects us. There are other Whigs,
and stanch ones too, who feel it essential to .their own
character, and to the public safety, to appeal, as
Rorke set them the bright example of doing, from
the " new Whigs to the old." In Northampton-
shire, Sir G. Robinson, formerly a member and sup-
porter ofthe Whig party, who proposed the present
Lord for the county in the year 1832,
has now given Mr. Hanbury a flat refusal to vote for
him,—and why ? Because, on O'Connell's declara-
tion at Newcastle that "the Whigs now are not the
" Whigs they were five years ago," and on his (Sir
(George's) own opinion, that the " present Whig
Ministers have the violence, without the honesty, of
professed Radicals," (which is luminously just and
true), that they are about to sacrifice the Church of
England and Ireland to appease the insatiate appetite
of Irish Priests and English Dissenters, that their
organ and Lord Mulgrave's patron, O'Connell, has
declared war against the House of Lords, and that
Mr. Hanbury, the Whig candidate in opposition to
Mr. Maunsell, is still.a supporter of that same repro-
bated Ministry. He, Sir George Robinson, so far
from giving Mr. Hanbury his vote and interest, wishes
11eartily.that he may be defeated.- This from a ge-
nuine ! Again, read the addreSs of the Hon.
awl:Rev. Littleton Powis, another stanch Whig, to
his- tenants and parishioners, at Titchmarsh, in the
sane county of Northampton, in further testimony of
a revolution already begun—a revolution in political
feeling—an abandonment of dishonest men by the ho-
nest ; and then answer, whether there be not yet hope
for England, or whether there still remains a spark of
it for the forsaken of their principles and their country,
the unhappy vassals of those arch enemies of Great
Britain—" Popery, slavery, and arbitrary power.".._
_Times.

We insert in another column a letter from Mr.
Cleary, so well known for the share he formerly took
at Westminster meetings, on the subject of Sir Fran-
cis's Burdett's foolish letter. We could easily add to

the instances given by Mr. Cleary of Sir Francis
Burdett's skill in the vulgar tongue ; but really it
would be giving too much importance, to the
matter to ttreat it in any other way than as
tltilstupid effusion of an old man in his do-
lab.,who has forgotten both his principles and the
pant :he himself: acted on the public stage, but who
seortig 'to sniffer annoyance because now that Reform is
crfritthe'only: question on which he could speak to
fr•
iNrppe„:k;Abr Sir, Francis was never able to
utter +-- on any other) he is no

O'Connell occupies a
as the champion of
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