The Sun.
London, England, 1832-05-30 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

For many years, whilst Catholic emancipation
was before Parliament, and before the Duke o 4
Wellington and Sir R. Peel had degenerated
into supporters of religious freedom, it was a
custom for the more prominent enemies of that
great principle to attend an annual dinner, to
which the name of " Pitt Dinner" was affixed.
That the country, which still rung with the
eloquence of Mr. Pitt, displayed by that orator
in numberless speeches in favour of Catholic
emancipation, should be amazed at the audacity
of such a monstrous nick-name, so misapplied,
was nothing, because the dinner-eaters, being a
numerous body, kept each other in countenance,
and were not ashamed of any thing. That the
country should be indignant and disgusted was
nothing, for the dinner-eaters had a body of
boroughmongers at their back, and were not
afraid of anything. So the anti-Catholic Pitt-
dinners flourished for a while, until the moral
force of public feeling and opinion began
to sap the foundations of a political influ-
ence, at best usurped and unhallowed. Re-
ligious liberty grew into fashion, the Pitt-
dinner hypocrisy fell gradually into disrepute,
the annual guests were at length confined to old
Eldon and other fragments of former times.
The Duke of Wellington could not hold his
office of Prime Minister but at the sacrifice of
his Pitt-dinner pledges. Like a wise man,
therefore, hg chose the lesser evil—he gave up
the principle, and kept the Ministerial power.
Mr. Pitt, besides being a magnificent supporter
of Catholic rights and privileges, was also by far
the most distinguished and eminent Parliamen-
tary Reformer that the last century had produced.
Upon this branch of his history we insert some
passages, letters of the right Hon. Gentleman,
and extracts from his speeces, which will for-
mally prove, what the world was before con-
vinced of—viz., that if there be one class of
politicians to which Mr. Pitt belongs more
distinctly, completely, and emphatically, than
another, it is the class of friends to Par-
liamentary Reform. Read his letter to Mr.
Wyvill, of November, 1782, wherein he declares
his sentiments in favour of Reform to be " inva-
riable." Read the quotation from his speech of
the 7th of May, 1783, upon the motion for re-
form in Parliament, made by himself, wherein he
ascribes the ruin and humiliation of England at
that day, brought on as they were "by slow de-
grees," to something " radically wrong in the
Constitution," and speaks with contempt of the
House of Commons, for being "base enough to
feed the influence which enslaved its members,"
and thus being " at one time the parent and off-
spring of corruption." The impudent Con-
servatives of the present day have for months
past been taunting their countrymen with the
novelty of this cry for Reform,—that it has been
instigated by the " base" press,—that it has been
" inflamed by the recent revolution in France,"
that it is not natural,—that it is not English, but
forced, exotic, and destiuctive of all our institu-
tions. Come we, then, once more to Mr. Pitt.
On the Bth of November, 1783, he wrote to tile
Chairman of the Reform Association of York.
shire (that county so little indicative of British
principles or opinions !), that no exertion or per-
severance on his part should be wanting in sup-
port of the principles on which his propositions
of the preceding year were founded, and that he
would anxiously wait for a seasonable moment of
renewing them whenever a just prospect offered
of doing it with effect: On the 18th of April,
1785, Mr. Pitt fulfilled his promise, enforcing
his motion for reform by an eloquent, powerful,
and brilliant speech, in one passage of which he
effectually anticipated the stupid gibberish of our
modern Conservatives, who ask, " what practical
benefit can the country derive from Reform ?"
If there had always been a House of Com-
mons who were the faithful stewards of the in-
terests of their country, the diligent checks on
the administration of the finances, the constitu-
tional advisers of the executive branch of the
legislature, the steady and uninfluenced friends
of the people,—would" (says Mr. Pitt) " the
burdens which the constituents of' that House
were now doomed to endure have been incur-
red ?" Would the people of England have suf-
fered the calamities to which they had lately
been made subject ? Here, then, we have it
laid down in terms the most decided, by the first
Tory statesman, that there does exist a direct
and indissoluble connexion between good go-
vernment and liberal institutions, and that the
boroughmonger system of the days of Pitt, un

improved,nai, further depraved in-those of Wel-
lington, has been the main cause of insupport-
able burdens, and of overwhelming calamities.
Yet this Duke of Wellington,—with the
speeches, the writings, and Parliamentary history
of Mr. Pitt before him—first gets up in the
House of Lords to cram their Lordships and
the people of England with the nonsensical as-
surance that the same borough Parliament,
blasted and withered by Mr. Pitt's indignation,
is a specimen "of political excellence, too per-
fect for the wit of man to equal ;"—and then,
with this matchless buffoonery upon his lips, in-
sults the empire by sitting down as Chairman

of a public entertainment, advertised in con-
tempt and defiance of Reform principles, which
be brands by the long-ago disgraced appellation
of a " Pitt Dinner !!" If all decency be not
humbug, if all public honour or virtue be not,
like county meetings, " a farce,"—are such pro-

ceedings to be endured amongan intelligent people.
Why, the very waiters at the tavern must run

away and hide themselves, rather than share the

acorn that awaits their guests! And on what
pretence is it, or in what character that the Duke

Of 'Wellington thus drags the name of Mr.
Pitt, through the kennel? Mr. Pitt, an eman-
cipator of the Catholics, was often represented
at your " Pitt Dinners" by Bathursts, Eldons,
&c., the sworn foes of emancipation. Mr.
Pitt, the Parliamentary Reformer, is now to be

personated by the Duke of Wel-lington, who
doggedly insists, to the disgust even of his own
party, that all Reform "is revolution." But the
Noble Duke has changed sides mayhap. ‘Ve
know that when Mr. Pitt found the borough
patrons stronger than the people, and that his
election lay between the boroughmongers with
office and the people without it, he abandoned
the people and Reform in Parliament, and, fatally
for his own reputation and for his country, be-
came an abandoned traitor to the interests of

both. So, when the Duke of Wellington found
the other day that the tables were turned since
the days of Pitt, that the nation had become

powerful, and the boroughmongers feeble, and
therefore that to retain office even for an hour he

must affect to be, what he was not, a Parliament-
ary Reformer, he also deserted his original post.
He cried, "My dear schedule-A boys, I disclaim
you ; let every man take care of himself: none
but a fool will stand out against Reform when
there is nothing to be got by it. If the King
chooses me for his Minister, 1 will be as stanch a
Reformer as the best of them. Such was the

Noble Duke's wisdom, if cunning which a child