The Sun.
London, England, 1835-01-27 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

- The speech of Sir Robert Peel at the Tamworth
dinner on the 16th inst, of which we gave some days
ago, from another journal, a short and uncorrected quo-
:talon, has since been published in the Staffordshire
'Advertiser at full le•se,th, and in a form which appears
to be authentic. This is a striking exposition of the
sentiments of the. Right Hon. Baronet, more animated
than his written address to the same community, and
more apposite and interesting at the present moment,
because it treats, and, in our judgment, settles, with
masterly power and truth, some points which have
•been most fiercely mooted since the appearance of the
first address to Tamworth, and which, while they re-
mained disputable, were of a nature to leave the
conduct of the Right Honourable Baronet exposed
to much and unme:itcd suspicion. It is notorious
with what impusience a conspiracy of the Duke of
Wellington and Sir Robert Peel, to destroy the
-former Ministry, and usurp its place, was assumed by
,all the present Opposition journals, and vollies of
malignant execrations were heaped upon the plot, so
taken for granted, and its authors. The gross injus-
tice thus offered to the Sovereign and his new coun-
sellors was denounced by this and some contemporary
newspapers : assurances were given that the whole
case was misrepresented, that a monstrous injury was
inflicted upon honourable men, and a flagrant outrage
offered to the first personage in the realm. The clamour,
nevertheless, in no degree subsided ; the same lies
were repeated in the same words, the fury of the winds
or waves might as well have been deprecated as the
rage of dismissed and disappointed faction. But Sir
Robert Peel noticed this iniquitous clamour, and by
the late speech -of the Right Hon. Baronet it has,
we think, been silenced effectually. Instead of con-
spiring to return to office, -Sir Robert Peel de-
clares, " upon the honour of a gentleman," that he '
left " England, never dreaming of office, or the re-
turn to it." " That he left England without one
word of previous communication with his illustrious
friend the Duke of Wellington, as to his intention
of quitting England at all, and of course without
a word either as to the place of his destination or the
period of his a.lsence ;" and he put it to the meeting,
as indeed he may safely put it to all reasonable men,
whether he would, with any designs upon office, have
left England at all, or at least have left it without a
word of communication to his most intimate friend
and confidant upon political matters. Thus falls, and
sinless we are mistaken, not to rise again, one grand
topic of abuse against the present Government, rest-
ing, as it did, upon a monstrous and convicted false-
hood. The hardship which the partisans of the ex-
Ministers would entail upon the King, viz., that of
being forced to adhere, under all circumstances, how-
ever discouraging, to any one fragment of the liberal
Ministry which might pertinaciously cling to office,
after almost all its original members had retired from
it, is well exposed by his Majesty's present Prime
Minister. Now we shall never retract our own early
and repeated declarations, that the King's dismis-
sal of the late Government, under all the then ap-
parent circumstances of the case, was abrupt, pre-
mature, inconvenient, and unfortunate for the coun-
try, which would itself have dismissed the Mel-
bourne Cabinet before many months should have
expired, even had his Majesty been ever so
well disposed to retain them. But the ground of
the condemnation passed by the Radicals upon the
Sovereign, and transferred from him to his present ad-
visers, is somewhat different from the ground of our
regret. They insist on turning an ordinary and con-
stitutional exercise of the Sovereign's discretion into
an unpleeedented crime, and although of the original
Government of Lord Grey, not half in respect of-per-
sons, and a still less portion in point of ability or
weight, as estimated by public opinion, held seats in
the Melbourne Cabinet, the King must by their rea-
soning have no choice but such as would equally bind
him to one, and that the most insignificant, member of
the whole Whig party, should that one be the last and
most reluctant to quit his hold of office. But again,
Sir R. Peel and his colleagues must either be enemies
to the Reform principle, or by conforming to it, prove
themselves devoid of all public' principle whatever.
What says the Minister upon this dogma of the candid
Whigs ? He bids them first explain to him what they
signify by " a Reformer," a term of which we are apt to
suspect it would be difficult to devise a definition equally
agreeable to the Whigs and Radicals, or even to any haft'
dozen members- of the Whig Government itself. Sir
Robert Peel might remind his Whig assailants that more
than half of their professed supporters—to wit, the
Radicals—n the former Parliament, almost worried
them to death for being, said the Radicals, false to the
reform principle—in other words, not Reformers. Sir
Robert does remind them that he himself voted with
Lord Althorp and Lord John Russell against five or
six motions which by the Radicals were maintained to
be Reform motions, but to which the above Reform Mi-
nisters, as to Sir Robert Peel, appeared no other than
revolutionary motions : of whom, then, the advocates
of such motions or their enemies, can it be with most
Robert
predicated that they were Reformers ? Is Sir
Robert Peel to be termed an apostate for still agreeing
on many points with Lords Althorp and John Russell
as he did before ? Is he, as he himself asks, an
apostate, supposing he does " enforce economy,
reduce unnecessary offices, facilitate commercial en-
terprise, or remove impediments from the course of
justice ? " He may not agree in regarding as an
abuse that which Mr. Joseph Hume or Mr. Daniel
O'Connell (if the latter be in Parliament) shall choose
to designate an abuse. He may deem a proposed " re-
medy ' worse than an imputed disease ; but is he for
either of such examples of dissent from the quack-
doctors of the constitution, to be set down as a foe to
the real and substantial cure of recognized grievances ?
As he proudly declares himself, " he has done mc,re
in the cause of real and substantial improvement than
nine-tenths of those who call themselves Reformers,"
—men who throw the greatest obstruction in. the way
of real reform—who consume the public time in use-
less motions—who make speeches for niere display--
who condemn every thing as wrong, P:nd set nothing
right—who soar above the vulgar task, of devising prac-
tical remedies themselves, and leas:e no time to others
to devise them. Sir Robert Peel, it seems to us, may
dispense in future with any o'oliaation to disprove the
charge of his apostacy, as Irma; as of his conspiracy
with the King and the Duke of Wellington to under-
mine the Melbourne As:iministration. However, the
most important passa,,,Ter of the speech is that which
contains the Right Hon.' Baronet's judgment as to the
character of the -new House of Commons, and the like-
lihood of its rendering him such a support as will
enable him to carry on the Government. The worm-
wood of the whole composition will appear to a certain
class of Ctsto lit
ical readers to be concentrated in that
One sentvis6 but to the great bulk of our unbiassed
county:l men it will be a• wholesome and palateable

The batteries which the Whig-Radical Press had
been ordered to re-open upon Sir Charles Manners
Sutton have thrown out much more smoke than fire.
But all that smoke will not have the effect of blinding
the eyes of the public to the real merits of the ques-
tion. The public know that Sir C. M. Sutton is
struck at in the furious way in which he has been as-
sailed, not because any individual can be named whose
qualifications for filling the 'Chair of the House of
Commons can for a single instant be placed in com-
petition with his, but because the faction that intended,
and openly avowed the intention of making the King's
exercise of his constitutional prerogative the subject of
a vote of censure, have discovered from the turn which
the elections have taken, that such a step would ex-
pose them to certain and ridiculous discomfiture at the
,very opening of the campaign. Seeing this to be the
case, but not yet abandoning their project of trying
to oust the Ministers before the country shall have
had any opportunity of judging of their measures,
the Whig-Radicals have thought it a more prac-
ticable effort of hostility to oppose the re-election
of sir C. M. Sutton to the Speaker's Chair. They
flatter themselves that if they succeed in that ef-
fort, the - Ministers would be compelled to resign,
without receiving that " fair trial" which they have
asked, or rather without receiving any trial at all ; and
the consequence would be the triumph of the allied
▪ lorcia,tharmgrch under the associated-banners of the
i., Whii'aia.EK4ructive battalions, to the establishment .
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