The Sun.
London, England, 1845-03-28 00:00:00

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LONDON, FRIDAY, MARCH 28, 1845.

The recent letter of the Duke of NEWCASTLE, ad-
dressed to an Evening Contemporary, is a document
too remarkable to be passed over in silence—although
we are very far, indeed, from any desire to impeach
the truth and genuine character of its averments. No
mere associations of party shall ever make us wit-
tingly unjust to persons. We therefore feel it our
first duty, in considering this letter, to separate our
recollections of the staunch Tory opponent of Reform
and the progress of liberal opinions from those which
regard the personal character and reputation of an
English nobleman of the highest rank, family, and
fortune. It has happened to us to have had con-
siderable opportunity for forming an unbiassed judg-
ment upon the deportment of his Grace in this dis-
tinguished position ; and we are bound to declare that
we have always heard, moreover, from others who
have had the best and the nearest means, in the
transaction both of private and professional affairs, of
observing that deportment, that he has discharged, in
the most unexceptionable manner, all the relations
and duties of private life, as a parent, a landlord, and
a master, a steady friend, and an excellent neighbour.
That the Duke of NEWCASTLE should be prepared,
at any time, amply to vindicate his personal
integrity and honour against all impeachment,
was no more than we were at all times fully prepared
to expect. The vindication of his Grace, therefore,
on the present occasion,from the constructive imputa-
tion (for his Grace will allow us to remark that, after
all, the motion which has occasioned him so much
annoyance implied nothing more, and died abso-
lutely in the moment of so perfect an explanation as
it had already elicited from Lord LINCOLN)—this
vindication, we say, does not move us by any emotion
of surprise. We may intimate a doubt of the dis-
cretion of his Grace's proceeding, with as much free-
dom as we have excepted, in times past, to certain
unfortunate declarations made by him in the House
of Lords. But we can as frankly declare, that we
respect the very excitement under which he writes so
boldly, albeit perhaps unadvisedly, as we adhere to
the emphatic protests we have repeatedly made
against the general tenour of his political views and
connexions. And the Duke, to do him justice, leaves
neither to us, nor to any others who have most vehe-
mently animadverted on his ultra-Toryism, any plea
of difficulty in reconciling past with present profes-
sions. He manfully, if wrongly, adheres to his con-
sistent text. He is no political latitudinarian. He
may have compromised the expediency-politics of
the party with which he was once connected, but
he will not compromise his own deliberately
recorded opinions. From that party he has
now withdrawn. This secession from the
party adopted in the earlier period of a
public man's public career, is the most common thing
in the world in our times. But he has not passed
over to the opposite party, nor changed his opinions
in that transit. This is one of the rarest phenomena
now to be witnessed in the political horizon. In so
far, therefore, as regards singleness of purpose, con•
sistency of party adhesion, uncompromising profes-
sion of a political faith, which it has become the
almost universal fashion of its former votaries to ab-
jure—this letter is no every-day production. But it
has yet more signal and distinctive properties about
it. There is a straight-forward, searching, stern, and
almost misanthropic truthfulness of statement about
it, which is as honourable to himself as we fear it
will be distasteful to his quondam connexions, and
even to his own family. There is no mincing of
matters with the Duke. In his justification, even
his s'm had not gone far enough. His Grace
seems to have been indifferent about going too far,
provided he could completely justify himself from the
imputation that might, as we say, be constructively
inferred from the terms of Mr. Huma's or Mr.
WIL-
Lima's motion. Is he determined to set out the
whole truth, even at the cost of some revelations of
private concernments which it must be, at all times, a
painful sacrifice for such a man to make to
a sense of duty ? If the extreme step the
Duke has taken might have been avoided, as it is
reasonable to infer from the prompt acknowledgment
with which Lord LiNcoLN's speech was responded to
by all persons who heard it—it is now too late to
lament, and impossible to recal it. We, like the
rest of the world, are exempted from all liability to
the charge of indelicacy in further discussing a pub-
lished letter, after readily acknowledging that it has
completely answered its purposes of complete vindi•
cation.

For, surely, there is a moral beyond the matter
in hand, on the present occasion, to be drawn from
this document. What, after all, is this phantom of
Parliamentary influence, of aristocratical distinction,
of Ministerial connexion, of the authority attaching
to vast property and high alliances, of all, in short,
that goes to make up the showy pageant which men
call "power," and the atmosphere of whose existence
is designated public life ? Here is a ducal mantle
withdrawn from the glittering mystery it coveted;
and that mystery, for the mastery of which men sa-
crifice their: convictions, their opinions, the con-
nexions of their youth, the deliberate pledges re-
corded by reflective manhood, the good will of those
from whom only applause is worth the earning, the
confidence of constituents, the respect of a contem-
porary public, and the favourable judgment of pos-
terity ? It is a shapeless, revolting, hollow, mock-
ing deformity. The heir of the honours and for-
tunes, estates and grandeur of the PELHAMS, the
FIENNESES and the CLINTONS tells you so.
He tells you that he his been made, for
years past, the subject of deliberate misre-
presentation and vilification, on account of opi-
nions he never professed; and that he now finds him-
self comparatively alone, in the profession of those
which he did and does profess, which his former poli-
tical connexions did profess, and have now, one by
one, abandoned. So much for the fate of political
singleness of purpose ; for the duplicity of political
connexions. All the accidents of position, all the ele-
ments of success were with the Duke, and he broadly
avows that, " at his first entrance into public life
he possessed great power in a political point of view."
It is evident that the sapping operation of selfish in-
terests, the cabals of treacherous associates, and the
secret defection of trusted leaders, making their own
terms at the expense of the parties who trust them, do
more to wreck political " power " than the most
stormy shocks of violent but open enmity. Then
comes the Duke's exposition of his borough property,
and the authority that gave him in the Legislature.
We are quite willing to believe that his Grace is not
less candid in his declaration that he never made use
of this property in the way of dishonest traffic or for
purposes of gain, and that he dispensed it by nomina:
tions the most eligible and the best adapted for the
public interests, according to his own notions of what
those interests required. We cannot go along with him
in considering it a grievance which any British Peer
can be in a condition to plead, that if the sacrifice of
these boroughs, by the Reform Bill, entailed a pecu-
niary loss, equivalent to 200,0001., he has never re-
ceived any compensation for that loss. But we think
he is entitled to the praise of great and most honour-
able moderation, looking to the immense importance
of his influence and support to any Tory Government,
in having exacted—we should rather say accepted—
so very little in the shape of mere honorary
distinctions,—so absolutely nothing in the
h s ape of public money or official pay. His conduct
with regard to the offers of the Garter to him—his
manly waiver of that high honour in favour of
the Duke of WELLINGTON, when he was himself re-
commended for it on the ground of eminent public
services—ought to be remembered, and to endure to
the Duke of NEWCASTLE'S honour, when all the