The Sun.
London, England, 1844-07-17 00:00:00

rbtrli 12bitton

SUN OFFICE, Seven o'Clock.

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF THIS DAY.
GLOBE.—"I repeat it again," said Sir Robert Peel
last night—and indeed he does repeat it, at least as often
as modesty tolerates—" I repeat it again, that we have
done more, without destroying any existing interests,
though they were frightened at first—we have done
mere for the relaxation of commerce, and contri-
buted more to the restoration of commercial pros-
perity, than any Government that has preceded us."
Now, in every point of view, it appears to us Minis-
ters made an exceedingly bad beginning. In the first
place, so far from contributing to the restoration of
commercial prosperity, we affirm that nothing could
possibly have so much retarded it, as the extreme de-
gree of distrust they created b 7 their unexpected unset-
tling of favoured interests. This is what Sir Robert
Peel euphemises as frightening existing interests at first.
May we ask, how it came to be Sir R. Peel's part to
frighten existing interests ? Frightened them he had,
to his heart's content, at the measures of his opponents.
Taken his stand he had, to all human appearance and
understanding, and so had that slippery corn and cur-
rency convert, Sir James Graham, on the Bill, the
whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill—of 1828. Ever
since the Agricultural Committee of 1836, at which
epoch the Whig leaders in the Commons evinced them-
' selves favourable to the substitution of a fixed duty fur
the sliding scale, the Conservative leaders had lost no
occasion of marking that as a grand point of difference
between parties. On the one hand, they presented them-
selves as the steady supporters of the existing law against
even inquiry—and, on the other hand, they pointed to
their opponents as men who had shown and avowed
themselves disposed to change that law. It is fallacious
to accuse the late Ministers as having only bethought
themselves of commercial relaxations in the fashion
of a death-bed penitence in 1841. For years pre-
viously their expressed desire for a change in the
corn-laws had been worked by their intended suc-
cessors as one of the most dangerous things about
them. Well, no sooner were the elections carried by the
alarm against change of the corn-laws, than the new
Minister intimated that he was not pledged to every
figure of the sliding scale. He had previously stood
by the existing law, as something it was sheer heresy
to inquire into ! Instant innovation on the existing law li
was his first measure for frightening existing interests.
Consistency (save the mark !), however, demanded
that the change should not be complete. Something
else, therefore, was to be thrown in as a makeweight—
a tub to the popular whale. Corn could not, for de-
cency, be satisfactorily handled, amongst the new " re-
laxations of commerce." Cattle, therefore, which no
soul dreamed of, which no tongue or pen asked for,
were to curry favour with the food-appetent public for
these "knaves in grain." Here was another "fright" for
the interests whom Sir Robert Peel came in to save from
being frightened. First he frightened them at the reckless
Whigs, who could dream of making corn an object of
commerce. N. B. Corn was already so—at intervals of
few years—and the Whigs, therefore, in seeking to give
its commerce steadiness, were far from seeking to de-
stroy any existing interest—but, on the contrary, as we
are firmly persuaded, consulting for the best, as re-
garded the lauded interests themselves. Cattle, how-
ever, was no object of commerce in any one's contempla-
tion. To begin making it so was to break new ground;
• to bring in foreign competitors de gaiete de cceur. Eng-
land is as eminently fit to supply herself with home-fed
cattle, as she is eminently unfit to devote her inferior soils
to wheat Here then was was a totally wanton and treache-
rous aggression on the very interest these men declared
required to be excepted from common commercial princi-
ples. Here was an inlet of competition with that interest
-opened in an article of importance to it—and the neces-
sity of importing which had never shown itself in the
manifest shape which called loudly for change as re-
garded the commerce in corn. But not only are these
Ministers chargeable (from the protective point of view)
with starting unexpected game—with throwing open
unasked-for imports—but the admission of these
imports was flatly contradictory to their plea for
landed protection. If land required protection,
it required it pre-eminently for this branch of
products. For this is essential to all the rest—en-
couraging cattle-breeding is encouraging cultivation ;
discouraging it is discouraging and impoverishing the
very culture Sir Robert Peel still pretends to keep
out of the ordinary commercial category altogether.
We do believe that nothing more astounding ever was
conceived, or perpetrated, by any Government keep-
ing up the pretence of protecting agriculture—having
turned out its predecessors because they would not
enough protect agriculture—hallooing the hounds of
every county on Lord John Russell and his late
colleagues for proposing a duty of Bs. on coin, which
comes in whether we will or not—and then adopting a
nominal duty on cattle—whose manure is essential to
corn-culture ! Let any intelligent agriculturists,
even who still cling to protection, answer the ques-
tion, whether Lord John Russell's moderate ap-
plication of commercial and financial principles
to the article of corn, or Sir Robert Peel's
unsettlement of corn, ' and new start with cattle,
be the more pregnant with ultimate depressing effects
on agriculture I We know this, that men of that order
think the repeal of the cattle-laws far more mischievous
to them than could have been repeal of the corn-laws.
Such men say that the small number of foreign beasts
hitherto imported supply no criterion whatever
of the effect of Sir Robert Peel's cattle clap-
trap. They say that it required some years' pre-
paration—which preparation is actively making in Hol-
land, Holstein, Northern Germany, &c.—to enable
foreigners to feed up to the condition required by the
demand of the English market. The farmers on the
opposite coasts have now provided themselves with the
short-horned breed fitted for this market ; and they will
find no difficulty in fattening up to the point required, as
the greater part of the very cake with which our farmers
fatten comes from Hatuburgh, Holland, and Holstein ;
and the freight of oxen is less from Ilamburgh than
from Aberdeen.
STANDARD.—Putting on one side the deep crimi-
nality of fretting and teasing the temper of a diseased
though convalescent population, the Irish grievance-
mongering of the Opposition in Parliament is unspeak-
ably contemptible. Mr. Wyse on Monday occupied the
House of Commons with the State Trials, already dis-
cussed in half a dozen different shapes, and upon one
occasion, in Fetruary, for nine successive nights. The
charge, however, though false was grave, and we hoped
that it would remain the well-wearing stock of the Irish
grievance-mongers,
" As in some Irish houses, when things are so so,
One gammon of bacon is hung up for show."
We were, however, mistaken ; the House of Lords must
have its "gammon" too (we design no vile slang pun),
and • last night Lords Fortescue and Normanby pre-
sided at the beggarly entertainment. The "gammon"
which occupied the noble assembly was supplied
by the case of Mr. O'Driscoll, whom the Chan-
cellor of Ireland, having first dismissed from
the commission of the peace, as not having at the
time (in consequence of recent indisposition) sufficient
command of his temper, subsequently restored to the
bench, upon the request of nearly all the noblemen,
gentlemen, and yeomanry of the neighbourhood.• Un-
fortunately for the grievance-mongers, Mr. O'Dris-
coll is not an Orangeman, or even a Protestant. lie
is one of the sect which usually supplies them with
suffering innocents. Mr. O'Driscoll is a Roman Ca-
tholic ; but as a loyal, a liberal, and a respectable
gentleman, he is considered by the ex-Ministerial
party as fit an object of persecution as if he had all his
life toasted the battle of " the Boyne," or of " the Dia-
mond." The charge against Mr. O'Driscoll is cumu-
lative ; his crimes, if not of a very deep dye, are mani-
fold. He, it seems, in a rescue case in which himself was
the sufferer, sent fur a witness to the rescue to his house,
and then forwarded the same witness to give evidence
before another magistrate, which other magistrate, dis-
satisfied with the conduct of the witness, committed
him, the witness, to prison. To this vicarious respon-
sibility for the act of another magistrate, Mr. O'Driscoll
added the heinous guilt of impeaching the justice of a
decision of his brethren of the bench, and was even
reluctant to apologise, though in the end he made a
most ample apology ; lastly, he actually struck with the
iash of his riding whip an urchin whom he suspected of
having shot a hare before the hounds, which he was
at the time following in all the enthusiasm of the
chase. All these enormities were duly represented to
the Chancellor of Ireland, blazoned of course in that
style of eloquence by which the Irish so well know how to
bring :out a grievance in bold relief and full effect— an
art, by the way, like that which enables the French cook
to convert old shoe-soles, candles'-ends, and fish-bones
into the savoury_ and piquant " harlequin," eulogised
by Eugene Sub's Chourineur." The medley accusa-
tion, duly seasoned by the officers of the repeal con-
spiracy, was presented to the Chancellor, who lota re
perspecta concluded that Mr. O'Driscoll was like
many other squires of his age—a testy old gentleman—
that a recent indisposition (a fit of gout, we would
wager) had lately rendered him more irritable, and that
therefore it would be as well to suspend for the present,
so the Chancellor's words ran, his functions as a ma-
gistrate. We are tempted to stop here, and ask
whether this was not hard measure—whether there
is a 'squire of sixty years of age in . the com-
mission of the peace in England who has not trans-
gressed as often and as gravely as Mr. O'Driscoll ?
However, the Irish Chancellor was right. Living in a
cloud of slanderers and false accusers, he could not be
too circumspect. Meanwhile Mr. O'Driscoll's friends
and neighbours of all ranks, those best qualified to
estimate his sterling worth, felt the slight apparently
offered to him as a wound to themselves ; they re-
spectfully remonstrated with the Chancellor, and
the Chancellor complied with their anxious wishes
by restoring their old friend to the commisson ;
and if the Chancellor had not done so, he would be un-
worthy of the station he holds. Such was the trum-
pery case with which the House of Lords was entertained
last night, through the whole of its sitting, by the last
two Whig Viceroys of Ireland. Trumpery as the
affair is, the exhibition to which it gave rise
is of inestimable value—it shows out of what
sic the Whigs manufactured their Irish Viceroys;
it shoes. too, -hew,truly we spoke when we said that Sir
Robert Peel's Government lied been niggardly of Irish
grievances—niggardly indeed when nothing more pre-
sentable than the case of Mr. O'Driscoll's restoration
can be found. The state of Ireland is unhappily far
from one of perfect felicity, much less enjoyment ;
but if the conduct of the Government only was
concerned in marring the prosperity and com-
fort of the people, this very grievance proves that Ire-
land would be a paradise; for if we must set down as a
satiated voluptuary one who can complain of nothing but
a crumpled rose-leaf on his couch, may we not call that
people perfectly happy who have no more serious ground ,
of dissa 1
tisfactiol than such an act as Mr. O'Driscoll's 1
restoration