The Sun.
London, England, 1835-02-23 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Radical papers are stupid or uncandid enough
to persist in misconstruing the declaration of Sir C. M.
Sutton, after their version of it has been expressly and
pointedly denied on the word of the Right Hon. Gen-
tleman himself, who states in language the plainest and
most authoritative, that although he " knew of the ap-
pointments of the Duke of Wellington, the Chancel-
lor, and Sir R. Peel, in common with the public, he
never advised, nor was consulted, nor in any way inter-
ered about them." The treatment of the Right Hon.
Gentleman by the organs of party is of a piece with
that which he experienced from the chiefs of party ;
but it is as nothing. The fate and fortunes, the
character and wrongs, of individuals, however unoffend-
ing 'or meritorious, are less than nothing, when put
alongside of those considerations which force them-
selves upon our minds with reference to the na-
tional interests, and which lead us to the . melan-
choly conviction, that if the course just entered upon
be persevered in by the small majority of the House of
Commons, which, however ill compounded, and ill cal-
culated to legislate wisely or impartially for the nation,
is still, nevertheless, the actual majority of that assem-
bly—that if, we say, those who voted Mr. Abercromby
into the Chair shall move onward in the same spirit,
and make laws with the same sort of patriotism which
has directed their concoction of a Speaker, we have,
indeed, arrived at " the beginning of the end ;" though
not in the sense of the poor " limitary" lordling who
misapplied the expression at a recent assembly. We
defy any man who has head upon his shoulders,
and not a wooden block—we defy any man who has a
living heart within him, and not a pulse impelled only
by the mechanism of miserable faction, to feel other-
wise than dismayed when he contemplates the natural
and fast-approaching consequences of last Thursday's
proceedings. The party-chosen Speaker may, for
aught we know, before three days shall expire, have
to present to his Sovereign a party-amendment to the
Address ; and what, under the actual circumstances
of the Government, the House of Commons, and the
country, can be—nay, what must he—the. character
and object of an amendment originating with such a
party ? Its object avowedly will be to get the Minis-
ters dismissed, or to wring from them their' resignation
of office. Its character, therefore, must be of unusual
violence, and its form must be either-1. That of a
declaration that the present Ministers of the Crown
labour under the distrust of Parliament, and will not
have its support, thereby entailing on his Majesty the
odium of retaining his Ministers in defiance of Parlia-
ment, or upon them the obligation of at once resigning.
2. That of introducing into the Address one or more
clauses declaratory of a will on the part of the House
of Commons to pursue a course of measures so far
beyond any limit of change in the action or in the
frame of our institutions that the existing Government
could conscientiously accede to, as by that means to
extort its resignation. The latter expedient of attempt-
ing to pledge a Ministry to measures obviously at vari-
ance with their known principles of policy, is a fre-
quent practice with even a weak Opposition. It must
he still more tempting to a strong one. But neither
experiment can succeed so as to prevent Ministers from
submitting to Parliament through the King's speech,
and explaining minutely through their own commen-
taries upon it, the whole programme of their political
system, including all those measures of ecclesiastical,
corporate, and civil reform, by which they must expect
to signalize their administration, and through the suf-
ficiency of which to satisfy the intelligence and pro-
perty of their countrymen, and nothing else,
they could, from the first, have hoped to remain
one week in office after the meeting of Parliament. If
the Opposition were capable of sympathising with the
better class of independent Englishmen, it would
approve a reasonable and well-digested scheme of
Reform when proposed by the advisers of the Crown.
But if, as is to be feared, the parties composing the
Opposition, though in their hearts approving moderate
measures, will give support to none but such as shall
promise their own return, this tremendous consequence
will follow—viz., that to force Ministers out of office
an amendment must be proposed, so sweeping -in its
Reform pledges, as when those pledges come to be
fulfilled must go much further than any but the most
furious Members of the combined Opposition would
in their secret mind wish to have adopted, yet such as
in virtue of such formal pledges cannot remain unac-
complished without ruin to the party which has ten-
dered them. It would seem, therefore, that the
simplest, and in the eyes of party, the most seducing,
because the most deCidedly hostile, mode of operating
against Ministers on the address will be resorted
to—that is to say, an amendment importing want of
confidence, and praying his Majesty to dismiss them.
It will no doubt be a daring, reckless, and desperate
course. It will prove the Opposition to have no com-
punction ; perhaps in the sequel it may prove them to
be equally wanting, as would the former class of amend-
ment, in common discretion and sagacity. For in what
a light will such a transaction exhibit the Whig Ra-
dicals to the independent men in Parliament ? and
should they be bitten by too close a contact with the
former, how will the country look upon the whole
mass ? The contrast between a Ministry prepared to
introduce and execute extensive measures of general
reform, but vainly calling upon the representatives
of the people to accept them, and an opposition
shutting their ears at once to every thing but
own restoration to a power which it has already
demonstrated its glaring incapacity to administer for
the public good, or to the respect and satisfaction of
the people, would afford an opportunity too tempting
to be lost for making a last and solemn appeal to the
constituency of the empire to save the State from ruin.
Nor to the electors of England at least do we ap•
prehend that such an appeal would be made in vain.
If, without the least reference to persons, we take the
division of Thursday last as an index of the spirit
predominating throughout the English representation,
as contradistinguished from the Scotch arid Irish, we
find by a contemporary that 247 English Members
voted for Sir C. M. Sutton, and for Mr. Abercromby
224: thus yielding a majority for the former of 23,
while the Scotch Representatives were as 32 to 17 in
favour of their countryman, still leaving S:r Charles a
decided majority upon the whole British representa-
tion. The question, therefore, was determined by
O'Connell and his regiment, against the united voice
of Great Britain. He brought 60 votes against 42
who voted for the former Speaker. Were we wrong,
therefore, in long since since declaring that this revo-
lutionist would be all powerful with a Whig-Radical
Ministry ? Did we deceive our readers in stating that
the policy of a Whig-Radical Cabinet would bear
the unerring impress of his anti-union politics ? Or
that, if it came to be a question with the Whigs
whether Ireland should be divorced from the. empire,
or they from office, did we err in pronouncing what the
answer would be ?—Times.

The first great struggle is over—Sutton is turned
out, as he deserved to be, both in point of principle
and in point of conduct—and Abereromby is seated in
the Chair of the House of Commons, not simply as a
tribute to his individual merit, but as a proof that the
present Administration is detested, and that the country
has no confidence in it. The question of the Speaker-
ship was one of the worst on which the Liberal party
could have tried its strength with the Tories and the
Conservatives of all abuses in Church and State.
There were many who voted for Sir Charles Manners
Sutton, as a gentleman, and a private individual, in
every respect estimable, who detest him and his party to
an extent which we will not undertake to mention ; and
there are many men who kept in the back-ground, in so
far as he was concerned, who will come forward to-
morrow to declare that they have no confidence in men
who opposed the Reform Bill in all its stages, and who,
if they be honest and consistent, must be opposed to
its fruits. This is as it should be. In the nineteenth
century, we trust it is not to be told to the people of
England, that they are-L-what is almost a contradic-
tion in terms—to have good measures—honest mea-
sures—from bad and dishonest men. England has
hitherto Been the polar star of morality as well as of
freedom—and is her light to be quenched in darkness
by the fraction of a faction ? The only question which
is now to be solved, after the vote of Thursday last,
is—when wiill the Tories resign ? Their defeat upon
the Speakership—a question most favourable to them,
and most unfavourable to the Liberals, inasmuch
as many well-meaning men voted for Sir Charles