The Sun.
London, England, 1835-05-08 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

• The nomination for the West Riding of Yorkshire
on Tuesday last produced, as is customary, speeches
from the respective candidates. But to assert that any
new argument was exhibited for or against the preten-
sions of either party, would be a misrepresentation.
For what indeed approaching to novelty can be now
expected upon a question in itself so simple, and al-
ready discussed with such repeated and persevering
eagerness ? The question is simple both in form and
substance, being nothing more than this—whether
the United Kingdom shall be governed with a view to
perpetuate the incorporation of Great Britain and Ire-
land, or to their total separation at no distant day?
Whatever now tends to place augmented power in
the hands of a Roman Catholic party, bound together
by common hatred of the Protestant Government, and
of the bulk of our Protestant institutions, as well as by
an appetite for all the plunder that can be wrested from
the Protestant Church, whetted as that appetite must
be by revenge, and encouraged by many recent po-
litical successes,—whatever, we say, tends to increase
the power already lodged in that hostile priesthood,
and its associate lay disturbers of the realm, is a sword
in the hands of our deadliest enemy, to be used for the
destruction of the British empire. It is childish to
imagine that mere justice to the people of Ireland will
recall to the duty of loyal subjects those whose daily
practice, for a whole generation, has been to mystify
and inflame the people, and to prolong their own power
over the multitude by poisoning their minds with false
hopes and with unfounded animosities. If these men
were mere mistaken demagogues--if they were among
those visionaries who picture to themselves some vague
and flattering chimeras of vast general good, to be
effected through a course of clamorous violence and
popular excitement, however hollow and delusive such
their anticipations might be, we should not only be in-
clined to pity and forgive them, but we should have a
tolerable confidence that when their errors were exposed,
and the evil fruits of persisting in them brought home
to their convictions, they would betake themselves to
more wholesome walks of life, and leave their coun-
try to its fair chances of improvement under what-
ever system of practical reform the Legislature might,
on due consideration, authorise. But there is no such
prospect of peaceful concurrence in any bona fide mea-
sures of reform, or tranquil enjoyment of their conse-
quences, with agitators like O'Connell. These men
are not enthusiasts. They are rigid calculators of self-
interest, not dupes of political error. The sole purpose
of the Irish agitators is to keep alive the ferment of
the vulgar mind, being the hot-bed of their own power,
and converted by them to the ends of a cupidity,
the most sordid and rapacious, but hitherto the most
astonishingly triumphant, that ever disgraced on one
side the morals of any nation, or its intelligence
on the other. O'Connell's business is to invent
grievances—not by any means to have them redressed.
He therefore twists everything into a grievance ; and
as the most enormous extravagance is always that
which most tickles the diseased palate of the mob,
he finds his account in bringing forward, by way
of grievances, matters which admit of no legislative
remedy. The existence of the Protestant Church
has become one stock text for declamation with the
agitator, who knows extremely well that the Parlia-
ment of the empire (whatever a few empty dabblers in
abstract theory, having unfortunately places in the Ca-
binet, might do) never will, by a direct vote, abolish
the Church Establishment. This, therefore, which
has lately been manufactured into a grievance, will
afford O'Connell a perennial topic of invective against
the Protestant state, being that species of grievance
which the state will never remedy. So, the Union is
another grievance, the moat apt and commodious ima-
ginable for O'Connell's purpose, because that also is a
nuisance which never will be abated by Act of Parlia-
ment. Here, then, are two sources of everlasting dis-
turbance picked out, and polished for use, by this
master workman; and it is quite obvious that let the
Ministers do what they may—let them go to the very
verge of revolution, for the sake of reconciling the in-
satiable agitator, the very circumstance of their stop-
ping short at this side of the precipice, should they
be able to arrest their own downward course, will by
him be inexorably construed into as bad a crime as the
refusal to do any thing from the first, perhaps worse,
and a fresh shower of rockets, shells, and filth will be
fired off at Lord John Russell (should he still by
means of some yet untried seat in Parliament be able
to retain his office of Home Secretary), just like last
autumn's scurrilous vollies inflicted upon Lord Dun-
cannon. We say, therefore, redress every real griev-
ance of which Ireland, Protestant and Popish, can
complain. Do it for the sake of justice. Do it for
good government, and for self-justification hereafter.
Relieve the poor from their horrible state of destitUtion,
of which no particle is caused by the Protestant Church
whose revenues are drawn exclusively from the land-
lord ; but relieve them—first, by taking the support
of their own tyrannical priesthood off the shoulders of
the Catholic poor, as forcibly recommended and ex-
plained by the Rev. Mr. Croly. Next, release
them from the burden of their own aged, orphan,
and helpless relatives ; and do this, and more thin
this, by a tax upon the land, sanctioned by the
same authority as the tax for which tithe shall be com-
muted, and levied, if necessary, with even superior
promptitude. These would constitute a real redress
of real Irish grievance. But would these silence the
O'Connell cry ? We apprehend far otherwise ; and
we are borne out by his own declamations against the
existence of the established Church, in favour (hypo-
crite as he is) of the voluntary principle in matters of
religion, and as the keystone of all Irish prosperity in fa-
vour of a Repeal of the Union. What we have to say,
then, is this—that any English Government which
takes O'Connell for its guide in the political adminis-
tration of Ireland must fail of its alleged object--
namely, that of pacifying the Irish mob--because
O'Connell's position and his passions require that it
should not be pacified. Every step, however, made
by the Government for the sake of satisfying O'Con-
nell at the expense of our Protestant institutions,
though it may not and will not satisfy, will be sure to
strengthen him, until, by escorting him a part of the
road, and lifting him to a certain point of the ascent,
he will be able to reach the summit by himself, having
first kicked away his supporters. Lord Morpeth, for a
man who talks of taking on himself the activegovernment
of Ireland in a few days (that is, by leave of the constitu-
ency of the West Riding,) seems to know marvellously
little of the interior •working of that country. He
talks, like the rest of them, about having the benefit
of O'Connell's unstipulated services in the pacification
of Popish Ireland. Why, if O'Connell can make the
Whig Ministers do his business for him, and be re-
sponsible to England for the solid power with which
they invest him over Ireland, where is the occasion for
his stipulating anything ? He must be a rank fool to
accept office and be responsible, when he can have, by
rejecting office, irresponsible and absolute power.
The transient pacification of the Irish Papists may
perhaps be procured, but the permanent subjugation of
the Irish Protestants to Romish rule will be the price '
we shall pay for it. If Lord Morpeth be ignorant of
this, he is wholly unfit to undertake the Chief Secre-
taryship of Ireland. If, knowing this, he holds the
language reported of him, he is unfit to be member for
the West Riding of Yorkshire. We do no more than
our bounden duty in putting the electors on their
guard.—Times.

The nomination of the candidates for the West Rid-
ing of Yorkshire, which took place at Wakefield on
Wednesday, appears to have been a spirit-stirring scene,
and, according to all appearances, the honour, for which
Mr. Stuart Wortley has entered the field against the
former possessor, Lord Morpeth, will be severely con-
tested. Among the difficulties with which the new
candidate will have to contend is the great influence
possessed by such large landed proprietors as Earl
Fitzwilliam, the Duke of Norfolk, and some other
Whig landlords ; for though the Whigs and the Jour-
nals always object to the exercise of any influence by
Conservative landlords, none exercise a similar sort of
influence more unrelentingly than the Whigs themselves.
The interference of Whig landlords with their tenantry
was never carried further than during the late Devon-
shire election ; but, assisted as it was by Government
influence, and, according to accounts, by still more
tangible arguments to induce adverse electors to absent
themselves from the poll, it failed to enable Lord

John Russell to make head against the stream of
public opinion, which swept the ally, or rather the
protege of the Repeal Agitator far enough from the
representation of South Devon. For our own part,
we like to see landlords and their tenantry on good
terms with each other. When a kindly feeling is
cherished between them it speaks well for both. It
shows that the landlord cultivates the good will of his
tenantry, and that the tenant is sensible of his libe-
rality, and contented. In Ireland, one of the greatest
curses brought upon the country by the despotic in-
terference of the Roman Catholic Priests at elections
has been to sever the kindly connection between the
tenantry, and the best resident landlords which the
country possesses. 'We should not have the tenantry
treated either as political vassals or superstitious serfs
by landlord or priest ;—rteither do we deny that a
landlord, be he Whig or Tory, may exercise a legiti-
mate influence with his tenantry, when he merely can-
vasses for himself or others, without resorting to
threats or promises--to corruption or intimidation.
The Priests in Ireland who denounce adverse vo-
ters from the altar, and exercise the spiritual ter-
rors of the infallible Church over the superstitious
minds of the more ignorant portion of their flocks,
have succeeded to the dominion of the ancient bo-
roughmongers, with a securer hold of the represen-
tation of that unfortunate country in the grasp of a
terrible and withering supremacy. It is chiefly by
their aid that the, repeal Agitator—the political patron
of Lord Mulgrave and Lord Morpeth—has been able
to place more nominees in the House of Commons
than any ten boroughmongers ever could under the
old unreformed system. Not content with this, he
demands that the electoral qualification shall be lowered
to 51., that he may have the whole representa-
tion in his hands ; and the Ministers with whom Lord
Morpeth is associated know that they dare not refuse
this demand, because it is he and he alone—as he
has boasted..-that has blown into their nostrils the
breath of political life. The triumphal procession,
which we noticed yesterday as being prepared by Mr.
O'Connell, under pretence of doing honour to Lord
Mulgrave on his entrance into Dublin as Lord Lieu-
tenant, but really to show the King's representative
that he who gives or withholds popularity at his
pleasure is " Viceroy over him," would have re-
flected a portion of its charitable glory upon Lord
Morpeth, if there was not a law upon the statute-
book which made it necessary for him to re-
turn to his Constituents upon accepting office under
the Crown. That law which the Whig-Radical
Journals now describe as a very inconvenient one,
proves doubly inconvenient to Lord Morpeth on the
present occasion. It makes it necessary for him to
go through all the drudgery of a contested election,
and prevents him from accompanying Lord Mulgrave
as Chief Secretary, under the auspices of the man
whom 4he Whigs, with Lord Grey at their head, de-
nounced as a public enemy in the speech from the
Throne. Thus, Lord Morpeth is obliged to be soli-
citing the votes of the electors of the West Riding,
when he might, otherwise, have played a prominent
part next to Lord Mulgrave—the second character in
the dramatis personce of O'Connell's melodramatic
procession, the Repeal Agitator himself being the
chief actor, and not only that, but the "getter-up"
and stage-manager of the piece, combining in himself
also the offices of machinist, property-man, scene-
shifter, and arranger of every thing connected with
the show, even to the dresses and decorations.
Whether the free and independent electors of the
West Riding of Yorkshire will clothe Lord Morpeth
in the character of their Representative, to lacquey the
heels of the great Agitator, as Chief Secretary of Ire-
land under the Melbourne Ministry, remains to be
seen. Ltlel Morpeth tells the electors, in his sneech
at the hustings, very wittily no doubt, that 1%::. O'Con
nell is not the Pope, and that there is no law making
it an indictable offence to hold intercourse with him.
No, lie is not the Pope ; but the Pope himself is not
mote despotic in the Vatican than Mr. O'Connell is at
this moment in the British Cabinet. He has already
had his own nominee appointed Attorney-General for
' Ireland, and no rational man believes that either Lord
Mulgrave or Lord Morpeth were appointed to the Irish
offices which they now hold without his sanction and
approval. Lord Morpeth took care, while he talked a
great deal of florid prettinesses about meadows and
mountains, lakes and rivers, soil and scenery, and forges
gleaming in unfrequented glens, to steer as clear as pos-
sible of that dangerous rock—the Church-spoliation
clause of Lord John Russell—the commencement of the
great work of pillage and destruction—the beginning of
the end. Mr. Wortley showed less apprehension in
touching that subject. He contrasted the innocent in-
terpretation put upon it by his Noble Friend with the
Radical declarations of Sir John Hobhouse and Mr.
Shiel, and he appealed to the common sense of all
who heard him whether such declarations did not mean
something very different from an appropriation to an
indifferent education of an imaginary surplus. He
asked would the Romish party be satisfied with any
thing short of an appropriation to Roman Catholic
purposes ?—would they who assisted to place the pre-
sent Administration in office be satisfied with any
thing short of an appropriation to their own ends and
objects ? He thought that the first lesson in educa-
tion should not be a lesson in the art of plunder. So,
we believe the great majority of the people of England
think,
Sand the Melbourne Ministry will find that they
think so, if they have not discovered that truth already ;
for most assuredly the assistance of Mr. O'Connell
and his " tail" will not long be able to sustain such a
Ministry in power, with its mediocriry of talent and
slenderness of character, against the weight of the
property, intelligence, and Constitutional patriotism of
the country. They must deliver themselves from their
thraldom to the Repeal Agitator, or their dream of
power will be short indeed !—Morning Herald.
The Bishops, the Parsons, and their scribes, set no
bounds to the exultation which they feel in conse-
quence of their equivocal triumph in South Devon.
It has already cast into the shade of oblivion the gene-
ral rout which their Admiralty Lords and Secretaries,
and their Ordnance officers, encountered at the last
general election. It has beguiled them from the con-
' templation of the Gazette, which, day after day, records
L
tneir disasters elsewhere—at Newport, Dungarvon,
Cashel, Drogheda, Berwick-on-Tweed, Sandwich,
their own Totnes, the northern division of Northum-
berland, Nottingham, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Man-
chester, Dundee, Haddington, Kincardine,
wherever in fact the Church has no power of intimida-
tion, no instrumentality for corruption, no Phillpotts
for the fabrication of slanderous placards. Their victory
is like a child's new toy, everything for the day—it is
to produce all sorts of important consequences—it is
turned on every side, looked at in every kind of light
—in order to examine it in all its phases. If we
are to believe the Anti-Times, that victory has already
destroyed the Whig party, swelled the Tories to treble
their recent numbers, and prepared the immediate
downfal of the Government. Never were predictions
so lightly hazarded or so vainly announced. A ma-
jority of six hundred at a poll where seven thousand
votes were recorded is undoubtedly decisive as to the
sentiments entertained by a considerable body of free-
holders in the county of Devon, but it shows that even
there a strong minority is to be found holding opinions
of a diametrically opposite character, and it predicates
nothing whatever as to the general feeling which per-
vades the United Kingdom. That feeling is assuredly
much more truly represented by the new returns which
have been made in different parts of England, Scot-
land, and Ireland ; and we fearlessly assert it to be
as six to one in favour of his Majesty's present Govern-
ment. We are told indeed in the most unblushing
language, that that Government has been " formed out
of nothing," and that it leans upon " nothing" for
support. If this were the fact, why all this joy about
Lord John Russell's defeat ? It is an ancient adage,
Ex nihilo nihil fit. If the Government be really
formed out of nothing, it must instantly perish, and
the labour of the Devonshire ecclesiastics has been
therefore quite superfluous. If it be true that the
Government leans upon " nothing," why was the Times
purchased to rail it down ? Why was the most
shameless apostacy that ever disgraced the literary his-
tory of any country perpetrated in order to annihilate a
nonentity ? No, no ; these infuriated scribes, who affect
to be engaged in the sport of " breaking a butterfly upon
a wheel," well know that the " nothing " from which
Lord Melbourne's Cabinet has sprung, is Ireland—that

vexed ocean of political strife in which so many mi-
nistries and systems of misrule have successively
found their ,cfraves. If the wrongs of seven mil-
lions of the King's subjects be "nothing"—if the exac-
tions from the miserable widow and the famishing
orphan, extorted through the blood of the husband and
the father by the pampered Ministers of a sinecure
Church, be " nothing' —if the long years of subjection
to Orange oppression and scorn, through which Ireland
has struggled for existence, are to be accounted as
" nothing"—if the total denial to that portion of the
King's dominions of the spirit of the British Consti-
tution in the practical administration of the laws be
" nothing"--if the substitution of discontent for hap-
piness, of agitation for tranquillity, of misery for prospe-
rity, of crime for industry and virtue be " nothing," then
it must be admitted that the overthrow of Sir Robert
Peel's Government must have been a most puerile
operation, since it was produced by a series of
" nothings." These are, however, the sort of nonen-
tities upon which the New Government has been
constructed ; and we are only grieved to say that
they combine to form perhaps the most dense and
solid mass of grievances that have ever afflicted
any nation of ancient or modern times. As to the
" nothing" upon which the Government " leans," we
suspect that here too, by some marvellous process, it
will be composed of a decided majority of " noes" in
the House of Commons, whenever the Tories choose
to try their strength upon any proposition of an affir-
mative character. It may be true that the Aristocracy
is determined to withhold its support from the Minis-
try. So much the better for the people. If the Mi-
nistry can look for no assistance in carrying on the
Government to any other quarter than the great body
of the people, the fact will be the strongest guarantee
which we can require, that their measures must be
unequivocally popular in their tendency. There are
Whigs in the Cabinet, but the men who are resolved
to maintain it with all their force are not Whigs ;
they are the Reformers of the three Kingdoms.
The Cabinet must therefore be, in every sense
of the word, a council for the thorough reform of
all proved abuses ; the lines of distinction which
have hitherto separated the Whigs from the Irish
Members, and from such men as Gisborne and Grote,
must be erased. No nice delicacies of theory, no he-
sitations of exploded doctrine, no haughty traditions
can no Nbe admitted into the deliberations which are
to preside over the destinies of this roused and mighty
nation. The time has arrived when we behold our
institutions once more assailed by the myrmidons of
corruption, from whose talons those institutions had
only been recently extricated. The removal of the
evils of the Irish Church, and of those which convert
our Corporations into sinks of bribery and peculation,
may do much for the common welfare. These amelio-
rations must be speedily realized, the spirit that de-
muds them must be forthwith appeased—otherwise
we may look forward to a revolution, which, while it
crushes the Tory malcontents in its march, may be
productive of other consequences, of a nature calcu-
lated to fill the stoutest heart with apprehension.
Morning Chronicle.
The Tories are in perfect ecstasies at the assumed
success of their candidate in the county of Inverness.
What if their exultation should turn out to be some-
what premature I There is sometimes all the dif-
ference-in the world between an anticipated or wished-
for, and an actual triumph. Possibly before eight
days have elapsed the Tories will have been taught by
woftil experience what that difference is. It is true,
indeed, that they are moving heaven and earth to
secure the return of a Conservative for Inverness-shire;
and if the use of the most foul and corrupt means
can insure their triumph, that triumph is certain. The
Tories of the North are united to a man in support of
Chisholm," who has become doubly dear to
them, because, like that gcLat " curiosity," D'lsraeli
the younger, he has lately apostatised from liberal prin-
ciples. The Duke of Gordon, Lord Lieutenant of
the county of Aberdeen, and Colonel Grant, of
Grant, Lord Lieutenant of the county of Inverness,
are employinc, all the influence which their situations
give them to defeat the Government candidate. Their
factors are drilling their tenants, so as to have them in
readiness to " march" to the poll just as if so many
black cattle. It is truly humiliating to see the degra-
dation to which they are forced to submit. The two
Lieutenants are offering an outrage to the dignity of
our common nature by the means they are employing
to coerce their tenants. To the latter the elective
franchise, instead of a blessing and an honour, is
proving a curse and a degradation. The manifest and
only remedy for the evil is the ballot. In the mean-
time, are these ultra Tory Lord-Lieutenants to be suf-
fered thus to cabal with impunity for the overthrow of
that Government under whom they hold their appoint-
ments ? If Lord Melbourne is weak enough to over-
look this insubordination on the part of his servants,
lie does a grievous injustice to his own Administration.
and the country. Let him disarm them at once of
their power of doing mischief, by an unceremonious
dismissal from their situations : such vigorous conduct
would be a warning which would run but little risk of
being disregarded by other Tory Lord-Lieutenants.--
Morning Advertiser.
Mr. Littleton is about to be created a Peer forth-
with. The Whigs intend to start the Hon. George
Anson for the county of Stafford, and that gentleman
left town this morning, for the purpose of commencing
his canvass. We rejoice to hear that he will be op-
posed by a good man and true. It is a fortunate oc-
currence for Mr. Littleton that his reconciliation with
Mr. O'Connell (which as our readers will recollect,
took place last session) has prevented " the Dictator"
from offering any opposition to the sop which, in this
shape, it is intended to give to the Member for
Staffordshire, as some amende for the omission
of his name in the list of the late Ministerial
arrangements. Mr. Littleton, as we informed our
readers at the time, was never, in any shape,
communicated with, or consulted upon, the forma-
tion of the present Administration. Theremonstrances
however, of some of his friends in the Government
have at last procured for the Hon. Gentleman this so
long sought-for honour ; and Mr. O'Connell, as we
have stated, did not oppose his colleagues in their wish
" to do something" for their Chancellor of the Exche-
quer that was to have been. It was at first intended
to set up one of the Ex-Secretaries of State (as Lord
John Russell and Lord Palmerston are called) for the
county of Stafford ; but this it was found would lead
to a certain defeat, and so, to a certain breaking up of
the Government. What is to become of these poor
gentlemen ? Parliament'will meet in a few days ; and,
hear it people of England I you have Mr. Fox Maule
and Lord Fordwich to lead the debates, and illustrate
the home and foreign policy of the country, in the
Commons' House of Parliament.—i-Morning Post.