The Sun.
London, England, 1835-04-14 00:00:00

There is now no doubt of Lord Melbourne having
been expressly commissioned by his. Majesty to form a
Cabinet, of which his Lordship is to be the Chief—a
fact which comprehends the whole of what' can be
safely affirmed respecting the progress towards matu-
rity of the new Whig Administration. It may be
true, and we have already stated it, that Mr. Daniel.
O'Connell will not hold office under the forthcoming
Cabinet. But what of that ?. The main fact which--
the nation are interested in determining is the extent •
to which, without being personally taken into the
King's service, he may be allowel to pull the wires
and move the puppets who appear more openly on • -
the scene. The nation, English and Protestant
Irish, are deeply, as well as directly, concerned
to know how far, and in what manner, 'the ani-
mus which proposed the late resolution for assuming
and then 'employing- a surplus out cf the abridged
revenues of the Irish Chuich, is to operate through-
out the general course and system or the Melbourne
Govetnnient. Whether Mr. O'Connell be or be not
ostensibly in office, is a question of infinitely less
amount,' than whether the policy with regard to Ireland
is to be conducted in a spirit conservative of the essence
of our institutions in Church and State—redressing at
the same time all real grievances, and conscientiously
and effectually eradicating all abuses ; or whether the
presiding genius is to be that which dictated certain
letters, in the course of last year, bearing the date of
Derrynane-abbey, together with the signature of
Daniel O'Connell, and which grossly reviled and in-
rsulted Lord Duncannon, then Home Secretary,
and chief- organ of the Melbourne Cabinet, in all
that related to Ireland, because neither in his official
appointments nor his measures did the Noble -Lord
consult :kir. O'Connell's appetite for governing
Ireland, with a view to the separation of the- two
countries, and the extirpation of Protestantism froni
the Irish soil. The people, we say, must be satisfied
avitether the constitutuanal feeling under which Lord
Duncannon seemed disposed to act last year, and for
which Mr.. O'Connell then so outrageously abused
him, is to be that which the forthcoming Cabinet will
take for its guidance ; or whether .a more vivid sense of
,weakness and dependence, proportioned to the reduced
number of Whigs now in Parliament as compared with
both Conservatives and Ultra-Radicals, will, on motives
of mere sordid party, plunge them into the vortex of
revolution. It is plain enough, that if the Whigs give
way to the Destructives in this or any other instance,
there can be no cause for it but the mean instinct
of office. The Whigs have no natural love nor
leaning towards the Radicals. Their prejudices are a
thousand times more stubborn, more senseless, more
intolerant in favour of aristocracy. under all its phases,
than those of any other class of men in England, be-
cause, in fact, the Conservative party is far more exten-
sively connected with the people. It is from a bitter
feeling of the hard alternative in which they have •
placed themselves, that the old VibThigs gulp down the
least approach to any real popular reform, the alter
native between indulging their hereditary pride as
against the people, and their hereditary combination
of fear and hatred against a rival party. But what
means or resources are at the disposal of Lord Mel-
bourne to resist the pressure, not from without, but
from within the walls of the House of Commons,
from that large section of the House which, whatever
may be the views of the honest portion of it, tends at
least to destroy the equilibrium of our constitution ?
Lord Melbourne will not accuse us of any personal
disrespect towards him, when .we allege that he has,
and can have, no such defensive power. He and
his Whigs must rest for support on-those who would
preserve the Monarchy, or en those whose principles
lead them to subvert it. We know what would
be the choice of a man of honour, free to act as his
own inclinations would prompt. But we know that
unhappily the man of honour in this case is no more
than the instrument of those for whom, by artificial
and conventional obligations, lie is compelled to sacri-
fice his own discreeter judgment. It is all but physi-
cally impossible that Lord Melbourne's Government
should be able to. regulate the action of its own machi-
nerve or to save itself from being swept away by the
withl of a constantly accumulating force, and a rapidly •
accelerated movement. What are to be the compo- -
'lent parts of the new Melbourne Cabinet we need not
be at the trouble of guessing, when two or three days
will suffice, we appreliend, to make them known. .The
old, though secondary, members of the party, will, we
suppose, occupy their accustomed places. We have
reason to believe, that hOwever the Irish and English
Radicals may exclaim against Lord Grey as an unfit
member of " a Movement" Cabinet, the *Whig elders,
who most unquestionubly form the basis of that
Cabinet, have dfferent notions about Lord Grey.
On Saturday, if we are not mistaken, a letter was
addresSed to the -Noble Earl from five of those who -
were then expecting to have places assigned to them
in the new: Government, urging and entreating in the
most earnest manner, and adjuring Lord Grey- by his
sympathy for the difficulties which they had to contend
against, and through which they could scarcely dis-
cover an outlet, to accept an office with them. Air
answer, detailing the reasons for his Lordship's posi-
tive refusal of this application, was, we are told, re-
turned on the same evening ; -nor to this hour, says our
information, has the Noble Earl done more than pro-
mise his Parliamentary support to the Government,
and that upon the understanding that a certain class of
measures shall not be adopted, nor a certain class of
persons (it is easy to imagine them) employed. As
for the continuance of harmony between a Cabinet
and its supporters, when Lord Grey is on one side of
it, and Messrs-O'Connell, Hume, &c. &e., on the
other, he must be a drive-Her who expects it. The
same Mr. Hume, it seems, will not -have the good
fortune to " estimate" himself into a place, nor will
Lord Brougham, another ereat performer, be, if report
say true, in any better predicament.—Times.

It is our fate to retrograde rather than to advance
in our successive accounts of the progress made by
Lord Melbourne towards the formation of a new Mi-
nistry. We yesterday stated that the new Ministry
was formed, and diffused among our readers some light.
as to the nature of the negotiations which had been
carried on and concluded for the purpose of facilitating
its formation. What we yesterday stated of the cha-
racter of those negotiations was, we now assert, sub-
stentially true ; but it was not substantially tract
nevertheless, that the Ministry was formed, or that
any secure progress had been made towards its forma-
tion. The falsehood, however—for falsehood there was
—vas none of ours. We gave, as it was our duty to give,
what some of the chief persons concerned in the credit-
able traffic between the Russell and O'Connell fac-
tions diffused with much industry aniong their respective
adherents. We gave this with much confidence in its
truth, notwithstanding the quarter from which it pro-
ceeded, for we could not understand why Gentlemen
engaged in such a negotiation should propagate what
is untrue for no higher purpose than that of keeping
up, for four-and-twenty hours, the drooping spirits of
their partisans. The Radical Whig leaders, we own,
fairly, cheated us in this instance, as they cheatedmany
of their own adherents ; and they cheated us because
we were not, until now, fully aware to . what shabby
expedients men-Whig-Radicals we mean—when in
desperate circumstances will have recourse. The Lon-
don public, who are already acquainted with what took
place yesterday in Parliament, need not now be told
that the new Administration is not formed. In the
House of Lords, Viscount Melbourne, and the Mar-
quis of Lansdowne, if present, as they might have been
had it so pleased them, were dumb. In the House of
Commons, Lord J. Rtissell and Mr. O'Connell, if they
were present, as they might have been had it so pleased
them, were judiciously silent. The duty of announcing
that arrangements are in progress, but not yet com-
pleted, for the formation of -a new Government, and
of moving the adjournment of the House until Thurs-
day next, devolved -accordingly upon Sir Robert Peel.
The motion was agreed to without remark from any
quarter, and the public are, notwithstanding yester-
day's meeting of Parliament, rather more in the dark
than they were yesterday morning, as to the constitu-
tion of the new Government, and as to the question,
indeed, whether any new Government can be formed 7
There is evidently a hitch.. We believe' the gentle--
men Whigs resolutely stand -out against the treasona-
ble treaty with O'Connell, thinking very justly that it