The Sun.
London, England, 1835-12-15 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

We have received a letter from Sir Francis Burdett,
addressed to the Electors of Westminster, which will
be found in another column. It is rather an uncom-
mon specimen of a very common style of literary com-
position—appertaining to an •ancient and respectable
variety of the genus twaddle. Sir Francis certainly
takes a very different, and in fact an entirely opposite,
view of things to that of his elected foe. O'Connell
declares that the political warfare in which he is en-
}aged, is a war "of things and not of words." Sir
rancis appears to have persuaded himself, and would
fain persuade the electors of Westminster, that the
battle is entirely one of words, and not of things.
And, by the way, for a person who sets himself up
as the arbiter elegantiarum of political literature,
our ci-devant Liberal is . not particularly happy
even in his choice of words ; however, we sup-
pose we must take quantity and variety in lieu of
quality and selection, and then certainly we have
no great ground to complain. In classical epi-
thets the Baronet is unusually lavish. A question
is stript "as bare as iEsop's crow." O'Connell is
likened to Jupiter Tonans and Jupiter Scapin ; and
the electors, who are not versed in mythological lore,
are instructed by the information that the thundering
Jove assumed the form of a bull—not an Irish bull,
nor a Pope's bull, but a John Bull. Next, O'Con-
nell is a fine gentleman, using monstrous long words,
with Garagantua's mouth and Lord IZurleigh's
shake of the head, and his productions are immorta-
lized in the chastened page, as a " skimble-skamble
epistle," consisting of " gaudy rhetoric," " poetic
prose,"" braggingbalderdash," "fustian," and " goose's
gabble." The Baronet himself is metamorphosed in his
own estimation into" Horace's Just Man, so ludicrously
translated by Mr. Creech ;" and the only consola-
tion to the Electors, amid all this change and con-
fusion of names and things, is that their courtly
representative is determined to stick to them to
the last, which will doubtless be thought parti-
cularly acceptable. On calmly and seriously reflecting
upon this production, we apprehend that the parties to
whom it is addressed will agree that it is calculated to
produce a feeling of deep and painful regret. It is im-
possible not to look back with some degree of grateful
remembrance to the days when Sir Francis stood forth
as the champion and forlorn hope of Reform ; but,
alas, how changed ! Sir Francis says his war was
with the Boroughmongers, and they are vanquished.
True, but did the electors of -Westminster intend to
stop short at this stage of Reform ? Did they exert
themselves year after year to acquire a Reform in Par-
liament for no other purpose than that they might say
they had beaten the Boroughmongers ? Was it even
any one particular measure of Reform to the acquire-
ment of which they looked as the prize for which they
strove ?—or rather was it in the hope and expectation,
aye, and in the serious and solemn determination of using
the machinery of a Reformed Parliament, to pro-
cure and maintain a permanency of good, equal, and
liberal policy, carried out by honest and enlightened
Statesmen, and bringing the searching light of inquiry
and reform into all departments of the Church and the
State ? Does the present Government go too far in
the way of Reform ? Are Lord Melbourne and his
colleagues too great Reformers for the people of
Westminster? Are the electors prepared to incur
all hazards in order to maintain the abuses of a sine •
cure Church, at the cost of the Irish Catholics ? Do

they think it just that the respectable and intelligent
Catholics of Ireland should be excluded from all cor-
porate offices, and the whole country be for ever kept
prostrate at the foot of Orange ascendancy ? Have
th.-3y no sympathies with O'Connell, his struggks
to obtain for his countrymen those rights and privi-
leges, that civil equality which ought not to be
withheld except from imbecility or crime? Are
they prepared, finally, to fold up their hands and
await, in the indolence of selfish repose, the effects of
intrigue and treachery upon the forces and prospects
of Reformers ? Are they really so reckless as to whe •
ther a Liberal Whig Government or a conforming
Tory one is at the head of affairs ? Let the Electors
of Westminster remember the long period in which
they were placed, as it were, in the very van of the
conflict ; they have obtained the machinery—let them
resolve to maintain in power those who will honestly
use it for their and the public benefit. They know
that, though the boroughmongcrs may be dead, their
spirit still lives, and a host of corrupt and factious par-
tisans are actuated by it, and form a compact and pow-
erful body, which, added to the gains acquired by
treachery, and intrigue, and reckless apostacy of princi-
ple from the Liberal ranks, are sufficient to impede any
course of equitable policy, and, if the people were
to be • apathetic or lukewarm, entirely to defeat the
prospects of Reform which arc identified with the
maintenance in power of a real Reforming Government.
Is it to be supposed, then, that Westminster will long
submit to have its forces paralysed, and its votes neu-
tralized or wasted, in deference to a garrulous Repre-
sentative, who, after much wavering and inconsistency,
must now be regarded by every one as entirely changed
from his former self, and with decayed intellect and
perverted principle taking his final station among the
ranks of the subservient allies of that Courtly faction,
which, though it may conform for the moment to gain
its ends, has never failed, when it has had the power,
to evince its downright hatred to the very name of Re-
form, and determined opposition to every principle
which their Representative once professed ?—Morn-
ing Chronicle.
A letter from Sir Francis Burdett to the electors of
Westminster, published in this day's Times, confers
a great deal too much honour oil one especial portion
of the said electors—namely, that low and malignant,
but utterly insignificant, synod of some two or three
dozen of Destructives, who lately met to record their
solemn judgment on the spirited and patriotic Member
for Westminster, and through their Chairman, Mr.
Devear, addressed a letter of rebuke and menace to Sir
Francis. Things are come to a magnificent pass with
these-high-life-below-stair politicians. Here is a repre-
sentative for Westminster, a man of high rank, of un-
impeachable independence, of unshaken consistency, of
known experience in public difficulties, and the most
intrepid courage, moral as well as personal ; who has

devoted a long life, if ever man did, to the maintenance
arid extension of constitutional rights, and has grown
gray in the service of the people—a man who risked
more in the course of his public career, and sacrificed
more in warfare with political corruption, and with
boroughmongering in all its branches, than any other
Member of Parliament within the last half century.
If any man, therefore, deserves the gratitude, the
respect, and deference of a " Liberal" Constituency,
it is such a Representative as Sir Francis Burdett.
What, then, has been the conduct of that clique
among the electors of Westminster by whom the Hon.
Baronet is provoked to write the letter we have just
alluded to ? Sir F. Burdett, in his quality of an ac-
knowledged gentleman, anxious to preserve those laws
and usages of society which constitute the civilization
of English life, makes a public appeal to 300 or 400
other gentlemen, his own associates, forming a club,
which was established for carrying on, in a manner the
most convenient and agreeable, a daily intercourse of
conversation and courtesy among its members--an ap-
peal, wherein he charges a certain member of the club
with language and demeanour which prove his unfit-
ness to fulfil the obligations imposed upon each mem-
ber of that select community, and undertaken by him
at his entrance into the club. Every candid person
will confess that this was a proposition affecting
O'Connell, and Sir Francis, and the club itself, ex-
clusively in their social character, and not at all as
partisans or politicians. We stated as much on
reading the first letter of the Hon. Baronet, and this
his last latter confirms fully the view which his
former one suggested to us. He says in this present
address, that the question is, " not between Mr. Daniel
O'Connell and me, but between Mr. Daniel O'Con-
nell and civilized society." But it does not suit the
abettors of Mr. Daniel O'Connell to take that plain
and simple view of the proposition made by Sir
Francis. They dare not do it. As a question between
gentlemen, and regarding the rights and interests of
gentlemanly society, it would not bear a moment's de-
bate. On the other hand, there was a second appre-
hension the Ministers of the day durst not be other-
wise than abettors of O'Connell in any and everything
which he considered to be of importance to himself

personally. These Ministers durst not view the matter
in its social aspect or circumstances, because then they
must have done a thing personally and heinously offen-
sive to O'Connell. And had they asserted their rights,
and discharged their duties towards him as a gentle-
man, he would have punished them as politicians.
This is the key to the whole mystery—that O'Con-
nell, whom every man in the Cabinet, nay, probably
in Brookes's Club, holds, as an individual, in de-
testation and abhorrence, should still be upheld by
both Club and Cabinet in a character, that of " Gen-
man," which no member of either accords to him in
private—because if they oust him from the Club, he
will dismiss them from the Government. Is this a
position for men of honour to be placed in ? But if
any other proof were wanting, is not this one fact re-
dundant evidence to the close partnership between
O'Connell and these Ministers ? He actually holds
them in a political durance so vile and unrelenting, that
they are not masters even of their own acts as gentle-
men, lest they should lose their places ! And what
is the meaning of the step now taken by this coarse
end of the Rump of Westminster ? Messrs. Devear
and Co. have no more business to obtrude themselves
upon the notice of Sir Francis Burdett, or of the
public, on this occasion, than they would have to sum-
mon before them the Committee of Brookes's Club,
and prescribe to them what line they should adopt
in their treatment of the proposal of Sir Francis. What
have these meddlers to do with questions between
gentlemen, who, as gentlemen, have no concern with
any Westminster pot-house politicians ? Sir Francis
Burdett, we presume, made no compact with these
mob autocrats of the Rump of Westminster how he
should demean himself towards O'Connell in any re-
spect, and least of all as a member of Brookes's or any
other club. Yet the Devear faction, as if they had
been (and no doubt they have been) prompted or bul-
lied by some of the O'Connell junta, venture not
merely to distort this social question into a question of
politics, but to connect it with the cause of Reform,
and to abuse the Hon. Baronet as an enemy to Re-
form, (he having done more than any man to obtain
the reform which has been accomplished, partly through
his means) for no other reason but that he has a dis-
like to blackguard and ruffianly behaviour. 'Who
among all these gadflies of pretended liberalism will
stand the trial with Sir Francis Burdett, as to the stea-
diness and strictness of his political principles ? Which
of them all will compare his exertions for a redress of
real grievances, and his devotion to the cause of liberty,
to those of the Hon. Baronet for a period of 40 years ?
And now the miserable, conceited, capricious, and per-
verse fools, call upon this old English gentleman and
unflinching patriot to resign his scat, forsooth, be-
cause he disdains to bow the neck to O'Connell !
Who is O'Connell ? and what ? but an enemy
to England, and a rancorous hater of the British
name and nation ? Is he yet lord of this great
country, which hold in abhorrence the sway both of
Popedom and anarchy, which execrates, above all
things, hypocricy, selfishness, and falsehood ? Is
there an intrigue to transfer to Westminster some joint
of the tail about to be dislocated from its Irish socket ?
Is Daniel himself about to be set up for Westminster ?
We would that he were representative of the Rump,
hut of the Rump onlg. What precarious tools he would
make of them I—to what a rofitabie market he would
bring them I Oh that we could see him levying a smart
tint upon the Rump I But this indecency of an in-
significant gang of pedlars in the small wares of de-
mocracy must not be endured. We have some infor-
mation upon the state of Westminster, and can tell the
Rump that they rule the roast no longer since the last
registrations. The letter of Sir Francis administers
the lash so freely and adroitly to Mr. Daniel O'Con-
nell, and winds it so very near the purlieus of the
Rump itself, as to save us a good portion of our own
diurnal exercise. The "faded gentleman" makes a
tolerable use of his declining sinews. So farewell
Daniel, Melbourne, and Co., till to-morrow.—Times.
We stated our determination yesterday to notice the
shameful and ungrateful manner in which Lord
Brougham had been treated by a certain portion of the
liberal press of the metropolis ; and our intention was
to have pointed special attention to two journals which
have fought nobly in the cause of Reform, in Church
and State—the Spectator and the Examiner—from
which better things were to be expected. One of
these, the Examiner, headed an extract from a severe
attack upon Lord ' Brougham in the Chronicle of Fri-
day last, " The Intriguer at his work again ;" and the
other not only gave all the currency that it could to
the mistaken insinuation of a morning contemporary,
that Lord Brougham was the writer of an article
which appeared in this journal a few days back, but
insisted that the Chronicle ought to have pointed out
his Lordship by name—adding, " By the way, to those
who arc fond of noting remarkable coincidences,' it
may be mentioned, that Lord Brougham was in town,
at the Privy Council, on the eve of the publication in
the Advertiser. We dare say Lord Brougham did
not write the article—of course he would not." No—
he did not write the article, and by the followins, letter
which he has addressed to the Chronicle, he has
attested, we doubt not to the satisfaction of all those
silly persons who were foolish enough to believe that
he (lid write it, that, to use the language of our own
immediate disclaimer on Friday last, " the article was
neither a Ministerial manifesto, nor written on infor-
mation obtained from any Member of the Cabinet, or
party directly or indirectly connected with the Go-
vernment." This disclaimer ought to have been
sufficient, inasmuch, as it was, on the one hand,
voluntarily made—and, on the other, that we know
of no law by which we are bound to deny or to
admit the authorship of any article, be its com-
plexion, its merit, or its demerit what it may ;
and we cannot, in consequence, but express our
surprise that journals which have so eminently
stood by the cause of Reform, should exhibit such ex-
treme eagerness to fasten upon the ablest and most
tried friend of the people an accusation, which, in their
estimation, they deemed to be disadvantageous or dis-
graceful to him. Lord Brougham may or may not be
always of the same opinion with that entertained by
his Majesty's advisers, or by Reformers generally ; but
no one can call in question his devotion to the cause of
Reform, or to the support of any Administration which
shall have that cause at heart, whether he do or do not
form a part of it. We trust, in consequence, that these
journals will see the propriety of retracting their hasty
insinuations against his Lordship, and of not only in-
serting his own personal contradiction of the assertion
made by the Chronicle, but of doing that justice to
him which a long life devoted to the service of the
public so amply merits. The base insinuation of the
Courier of last evening is unworthy of notice. Its
source, as well at its motive, arc well known to us. The
following is Lord Brougham's reply to the assertion of
the Morning Chronicle :
" Lord Brougham presents his compliments to the Editor
of the Morning Chronicle, and begs leave to inform him that
there is not the least ground whatever for the suspicions
expressed of Lord B. having written or suggested, or been
in any manner of way concerned in the paragraph copied
from the Morning Advertiser in last Friday's Chronicle, and
that Lord B. never saw the paragraph in question, nor was
aware of its existence except by reading it in the Chronicle.
" Petersham, Dec. 13, 1835."
The commentary of the Chronicle on Friday last is
ably commented upon in the Sun of last night, from
which we copy the following extract :—[Here follows
the article in yesterday's Sun.] Our Contemporary
ought to have said, " How deplorable to see Mr.
O'Connell calling out with one voice for union among
Reformers, and with the other sowing disunion among
them by a re-agitation of the< Repeal question—how
miserable to witness him professing the strongest at-
tachment to the Government of Lord Melbourne, and
at the same time insulting not it only, but the whole
of the Liberal representatives of the United Kingdom."
The folly would be pardonable were it not mischievous
-,--and had it not been mischievous to the character of
the. Government, it should, with us at least, have
remained as unnoticed as the idle wind, of which no
one taketh heed.--Morning Advertiser.
There never was a period at which the study of
history could more effectually assist in the formation
of opinions on public matters than at present. We
are well aware of the artful attempts of modern philo-
sophy to consign to oblivion the records of past ages,
or at least so far to depreciate them as to render them
matters of curiosity rather than of utility. The mo-
tive for such a course of proceeding is to be found in