The Sun.
London, England, 1835-02-09 00:00:00

:PIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The time fixed for the meeting of Parliament now
draws near. Next Thursday week will decide the
choice of a Speaker, and whichever way that parti-
cular strife may terminate, the old Whit* party may
depend upon it, that their party prospects are far more
perilous than those of their Ministerial adversaries.
It is always a critical experiment for a party to unfurl
broadly to the nation, which has seldom any factious
sympathies, and now, we will venture to say, less
than ever, the standard of mere undisguised, un-
blushing, party. If the enterprise succeeds so far as
to work up a majority on the one specific question, it
at once alarms the people, and puts them on their
guard. They ask themselves what is likely to fol-
low ? And the answer is a succession of votes
in the same spirit of selfish and rapacious faction,
for no end but the overthrow of the existing
Government, and the planting one section, or the
whole, of the victorious majority, on its ruins. Now
we are much disposed to believe that the great bulk
of the property and intelligence of the nation would
by no means relish such a consequence of Whig-
Radical manoeuvres at the present hour. A Govern-
ment compounded of Whigs and Radicals could not,
under any circumstances, be a stable Government. If
the counsels of the latter should predominate, the po-
licy would assume a " destructive" form : a collision
with the 'throne, the House of Lords, and the whole
party of Conservatives, would be the instantaneous ef-
fect of it. Tremendous excitement would be the har-
binger of political confusion, to extricate the country
from which every independent man, with any stake to
lose, would eagerly throw himself into the ranks of the
Conservatives, and the Whigs, with their blind parti-
zans, to escape the gulf prepared for them by their re-
volutionary allies, but palsied by fear, and thinned by
frequent desertions, would join the fag-end of their late
rival party, and would be absorbed by it and lost in it for
ever. This is as clear a certainty_to our mind's eye as
any object of sense is to our visual organ. If the
Whigs attain their immediate purpose, their ruin is
inevitable. Their sole chance of salvation, as a party
not to be swallowed up by one or other of the Conser-
vatives or Destructives, would be to hold, for a season,
the balance between both. But, unhappily, passion
bewilders them. It is our firm persuasion that a ma-
jority in favour of Mr. Abercromby would ensure a
large majority against the opposition on the Address
—so great is the terror throughout this country of af-
fording real hope or strength to those who would des-
troy our institutions.—Tinges.

It pains us to observe the tone of some of our con-
temporaries in speaking of the appointment of Lord
Londonderry to the Court of Russia ; our deep regret
for which exercise of patronage (should it be persisted
in) we have already declared. Unquestionably, the
Noble Duke at the head of the Foreign Department
cannot have authorized the language held in certain
quarters on this occasion. The Noble Duke may pos-
sibly submit to the misfortune of having such a repre-
sentative at a point of Europe in all respects so im•
portant, as a visitation forced upon him by some prac-
tical necessity of party ; but that it should be the
deliberate and, willing choice of his Grace's judgment,
is beyond all credence ; and we should be slow to be-
lieve it, except on the solemn assertion of the Duke
himself. His parasites do not understand him, and
we certainly will not accept their vouchers as evidence.
We presume that the Noble Marquis is to have a trusty
nurse or guardian in attendance, as a fixed member of
the mission.— Times.

It is curious enough to observe the awkward shifts
which the Sunday organ of the High-Church party
has recourse to, to evade committing itself upon the
vital subject of Church reform. When the Ministerial
plan first made its appearance in the Standard, the
paper in question never expressed any doubt of its au-
thenticity, but announced that, in its ensuing number,
it would in effect, blow the whole scheme to atoms.
Well, the next Sunday came, and the threatened de-
molition is postponed, on the ground of total igno-
rance of what the plan really was—an ignorance said
to be shared in common with one of the " two emi-
nent persons" who had been closeted with the Pre-
mier upon the subject. Considering that the eminent
persons in question are Privy Concillors, and, as such,
under the obligation of an oath of no very common na-
ture, we did not think it probable, nor even pos-
sible, that either of them could have been so indiscreet
as to have " declared" either his ignorance or his know-
ledge upon the subject. And such, manifestly, turns
out to have been the case : for in two days after this
avowal, in the very next Gazette, appears the King's
Commission, addressed, among others, to these two
eminent persons, and explaining pretty clearly what
the plan is, and confirming the Standard's previous ac-
curacy upon the subject. And now, thus driven up
into a corner, what is the course taken by our Sunday
Contemporary ? It prints the Gazette notification in
an obscure column, amidst its paragraph news, and con-
tents itself with telling its readers that " it would be, in
the highest degree, indelicate, at this moment, to offer
any remarks upon the modes by which tee hear the
proposed Church reform is to be carried into effect :
we therefore reserve ourselves for the visible movement
of the Learned and Noble body to whom our fate is
intrusted, to submit such observations as we may
from time to time think necessary." Now, whether
more is here meant than meets the ear, is what we
cannot take upon ourselves to decide, however we may
conjecture. But the large proportion of the public
who look up to the Journal in question as a high and
acknowledged authority in all clerical matters have,
we think, some right to complain of its indecision and
ultimate silence upon a subject so peculiarly interesting
to them, and to which the colums of the Paper in
question have been at all times so exclusively devoted.
Were a law or medical Journal thus to evade the con-
sideration of any question of similar interest to either
of those professions, its readers would naturally feel
some surprise and disappointment at such a course ;
nor can such feelings be otherwise than greatly enhariftcd
when the subject is of such general interest and im-
portance as that to which we are alluding. Is there a
hope—a forlorn one it must be—of raising up an op-
position to the proposed plan in high places ? The very
issuing of the Commission in question carries with it a
reply to this.—Morning Herald.
Let every Reformer be at his post on the 19th
instant by twelve o'clock, on pain of forfeiting the con-
fidence of his constituents, and giving the enemies of
their country the chance of ruling it for the next three
months. The fear of the one, and the certainty of
the other, will, we trust, produce the proper effect
where it is required—that is among the English Mem-
bers, among whom only defection is to be anticipated ;
for the Irish and Scotch Members, forming a select
mass of upwards of one hundred, are pledged to a man
to oppose the Tory Government in all and every mea-
sure which it may propose—whether it be a Speaker
who has forfeited the confidence of the Commons by
intriguing for the overthrow of the late Whig Admini-
stration, and for the dissolution of the late Parliament
—or for an address to the Crown embodying professions
of Reform, on which no reliance can be placed, and
which are only put forward to gain time and to de-
ceive. On these doubtful Members, therefore, be they
who they may, their constituents must now open a
well-charged battery—they must tell them in round set
phrase, that their absence on the occasion referred to,
or their votes in favour of the Tory Speaker and
against Mr. Abercromby, will be a perpetual forfeiture
of their confidence—and that should they ever come
before them again, they will reject them with the scorn
and contempt which their deception would so amply
merit. We are not of the opinion of some of
the electors of the United Kingdom, that their re-
presentatives should be tied hand and foot on
every question which may come before them for
consideration ; but there are questions on which
the representative ought simply to be the organ of his
constitutents ; and the question of the Speakership—.
an unimportant one generally, but most important on
the present occasion,—as evidencing the spirit of the
country, and influencing for a greater or lesser period
of time the existence or destruction of an anti-national
Cabinet—is one of them. The borough of Maryle-
bon e has shewn an excellent example, by summoning
one of its representatives from Pa:'s to vote against
the election of Sir Charles Manners,Sutton as
Speaker; and it is greatly to he desired that elerY
other constituency should follow it. That which does