The Sun.
London, England, 1845-03-10 00:00:00

infrMiliTA

LONDON, MONDAY, MARCH 10, 1845.

The condition of her MAJESTY'S Government, be-
tween its malcontent followers, and the formidable op-
position who hover about all its evolutions, with a de-
gree of generosity not often equalled, perhaps, in Par-
liamentary skirmishing, is not a little peculiar. The
destitiation of the two forces is now pretty well ad-
mitted, by both, to be the acquisition of a given point
which, among its other designations, may well enough
be identified as free trade. The army which first
proposed to achieve this point—that of the ex-Govern-
ment—was beaten the very moment they attempted
to leave the lines they had previously occupied. The
battle-cry of their victorious enemies, was, " Down
with the champions of free trade;" and when the excite-
ment languished, for however short a period, the ral-
lying cry was " Down with the open-corn-trade
Ministry"=" Down with the liberal, Roman-Catholic-
disabilities-alleviating Ministry—Down with the
Ministry who would maintain the assessed taxes at
an increased rate of 10 per cent." The course of
events has run itself out. The attacking force now
in their turn, occupy the entrenched camp of power'
from whence they this time four years ago expelled
their predecessors; and, strange to say, they carry
banners so closely resembling those which were borne
by the men over whom they triumphed, that the ejected
forces can scarcely distinguish them from their own.
In truth, the essential and prominent difference
between the late Whig garrison and the present Con-
servative one is, that whether as a feint only, or with
settled and serious purpose, the Conservative govern-
ment are pushing their advances towards the point
common to both sides, with far more of vigour,
animation and success than the Whigs, whose interest
and earnestness in the same design could never be
doubted, hut whose operations were not directed, it
should seem, with quite so much of tact and prudence
as those of their adversaries. It is mainly to this sin-
gular identification of the great objects—secret or
avowed, matured or in contemplation—of these party,
combinations that we must attribute the other-
wise inexplicable results of the most important
divisions which have thus far signalised the pre-
sent session of Parliament. It cannot he imagined ,
that an intelligent and still formidable, though
it he not a sufficiently compact Opposition, would
forego such palpable advantages as the run
of fiscal and commercial questions has for some
time past presented to them, were they really disposed
to turn such advantages to the account of a factious op-
position. It would be obviously on that assumption
their tacti, s to avail themselves of every reinforce-
ment which aggrieved recruits from the West
India interest, the Baltic trade, the landed or
agricultural interest, the monopoly protectionists,
and so many other class proprietaries that have
sustained, more or less, of temporary disturb-
gnce, by reason of the present Premier's measures
in respect of the duties on sugar, coffee, timber,
Canada flour, &c:, &c. They could have set up a
still more certain and popular appeal for ensuring
the defection of a vast contingent of their antagonists
by proclaiming their readiness to embark in any
common movement to resist and put down the pro-
perty and income-tax, which so accurately resembles,
in most of its features and its effects, the forcesl levy
of a heavy war-tax in a time of profound peace. We
y,elhyteVsil4for our parts, that it has not con-
.^,4,l.irsiett.witiltlvieilics or policy of the Opposition to
('<glire the moat',lrete,k mined resistance to that most
IpPrzel and inqii4itri,al impost. But, on the other
s Ihand, it is. be itiv4ided, to the perpetual honour of
-s`s. her ALSieety'i CiPisOsition," that, be the principle of
theieforbearaoos on this point a mistaken one, as
i
wi:eonsider it toAtes or not,, in this matter they have

not hesitated to vindicate that principle by a generous
and disinterested sacrifice of the most effective of all
the means of partisan warfare that can reconquer and
consolidate political power. Nor is it possible to be-

lieve that had Lord JoHN RUSSELL and his friends
been of that class of political mercenaries who can
readily persuade themselves to blink the stringency or
application of their recorded professions under the
extreme exigency of altered circumstances, they
would not have found a most formidable diversion
in their operations for re-effecting their junction
with office, in acting upon the acknowledged
divisions and dissatisfactions that have long existed in
the Conservative camp, between its Commander-in-
Chief and some of those officers who have given him
good aid, and done some signal service in executing
certain movements rendered essential by his scheme
of action, whilst he was still in the " open country" of
opposition.

_
Now, however, since the opposed forces have so
amicably combined their movements in several direc-
tions as to take away from those movements all cha-
racter of hostile conflict, we really wish they would,
in a sober, business-like manner aldress themselves to
the business of amicably ascertaining, and publishing
to the world, what the points are on which they do,
and what are those on which they do not, in the
main, concur. "Justice to Ireland," we have a fond
and confident hope, is about to be no more a
mere ironical figure, thrown in the teeth of every
successive Government by every successive Opposi-
tion; but the grand object of a grand imperial policy
about to be carried out to the letter of its promise.
It is the mere dismounted, invalided, non-effective
proportion of either force, which cannot yet be disci-
plined to a right appreciation of the free- trade evo-
lutions, so utterly unknown when they first entered
the service, but now becoming so universally popular
with all sections of the " effective rank ani file."
Beneath the influence of the sugar question, under its
various phases, and in relation to the various schemes
of duty, the most embittered misunderstandings of
party and local prejudices are becoming much miti-
gated. Animosities—active hostilities—those pitched
battles that determine in divisions only ex-
cepted (and even these not always)—turn
rather upon details than broad abstract
principles. Pity that the combatants can-
not be induced to compromise their remaining" dif-
ferences, and enter into some sort of honest, straight-
forward, public-spirited negotiations, which for the
first time in the history of parties contracting, or
coalescing, shall have for their object the true welfare
of the country, and the much-neglected interests of
the overtaxed, long suffering, and patiently enduring
British consumer of the corn, colonial produce and
foreign commodities, with which there seems to be,
happily, an awakened desire to indulge him for the
future on more reasonable terms than have yet been
accorded to him.

Mr. COBDEN on Friday, in the debate on the sugar 1
duties, made a very simple statement, rather by way of
hypothesis and with a view to information, than as a
matter of fact. his object was to ascertain, by a proxi-
mate calculation, how much the people of this country
would be compelled to pay the West India proprietors
by the proposed resolutions of the CHANCELLOR of the Ex-
CHEQUER. " The Right Honourable Gentleman," he
said, " assumed that we should receive 230,000 tons
of colonial sugar, and were to pay 101. a ton of
duty, the amount of foreign sugar being reckoned
at 20,000 tons. He therefore thought it was evident,
before we should have 20,000 tons of foreign sugar,
we must have previously paid the 101. extra duty on the
colonial sugar. If he was right—and he was taking
the Right Honourable Gentleman's own proposition--
then the amount which the House was about to vote in
the way of Protection would be about 2,416,000/. In
fact, the tax which they were to vote was 3,500,0001. to
the Crown, and to the colonial proprietors, as he had
before stated, a tax of 2,416,0001., a sum which would
have enabled the Right Honourable Gentleman to have
taken off the window-tax and the soap duty, and have
left him about half a million to spare. If there was
any fallacy in what he had stated it should not remain
uncontradicted." The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER,
who showed he was unable, or speaking perhaps more
correctly, unwilling to answer the question, begged to
reserve the discussion of a general question for a future
period. Lord HOWICK thought the qtiestion fair, intelli-
gible, and most important, and contended that it involved
a point which should be cleared up before they proceeded
farther. Sir R. PEEL, at last urged by the general feeling
of the House to make some reply, adopted one of his
usual modes of explanation when placed in a difficulty,
by putting another question not at all applicable. In
Place of enabling the House to ascertain s hat the people
really were to pay the West India proprietors, in
addition to the twenty millions already taken out of
their pockets, he put an absurd question about corn.
He went off at a tangent to a different subject, and left
the House as much in the dark as ever. Dissatisfaction
still prevailed,
,when Mr. GLADSTONE came to the
rescue of the two Right Hon. Gentlemen, but
neither could he answer the question. He had
recourse, therefore, to that mode of argument in which
the Jesuits and their disciples, the Puscyites, are well
skilled. In their usual style he imputed bad faith
to his opponents. He charged Mr. COBDEN with hav-
ing put a question, not for information, but for the sake
of argument, and laid that down as a fact for his special
pleading. His object was evidently two-fold--to shirk the
question, and throw ridicule on Mr. COBDEN. He suc-
ceeded in the first, but the discussion to which the ques-
tion of the Hon. Member gave rise, showed that he
failtd in the second. The general feeling of the
House was in favour of Mr. COBDEN, and
against the ex-Minister—who, whatever may
be his abilities, and however skilled he may be in Jesui-
tical logic, will find it difficult to convince practical ;nets
and men of honest intentions by any other arguments
than those founded on fact.

Our Dublin correspondence is sufficiently uninterest-
ing, so far as regards the general interest of its general
contents. Nevertheless, it suggests some considerations
to us, which do not appear to have produced, hitherto,
much impression on the other side of the water. Mr.
O'CONNELL and his friends would seem to have hit
upon the oddest expedient imaginable fur obtaining a
redress of grievances—by retiring from the field on
which alone those grievances can be effectually resisted,
or their removal permanently accomplished. Because
they want the legislative union repealed, they remove
their pleadings out of the only court in which they
can ever—if at all—obtain a decree to that effect.
Because they protest against the tendencies of the Im-
perial Parliament to overlook the peculiar wants, and to
neglect the spt7cific interests and rights of Ire-
land, they retire from that assembly altogether,
and leave it, with impunity, to indulge that
anti-Irish bias which they are so forward to attri-
bute to it. Because they have succeeded in
arousing the attention of the whole empire to the dis-
organisation and oppression experienced throughout all
ranks of domestic society in Ireland by reason of
absentee landlords, they are resolved to persist in the
analogous experiment of absentee representation on the
political welfare of their country. That larger section
of the Irish Members whom Mr. O'CONNELL influences,
coucur with the Hon. anti Learned Gentleman in bitter
complaints that the English and Scotch Memteers so
frequmtly outvote them on essentially Irish questions;
and therefore—they withdraw from voting at all, in the
House of Commons, or exercising any other duties
of the legislative trust. Their just corn pla int
has long bcen, that the voice of Ireland has not
been sufficiently heard in deliberations and acts of the
Imperial Parliament, and yt t their wadoubted devotion
to her cause impels them to retire to Dublin, instead of
giving their personal presence and supervision when
questions so important as those which have already
signalised the present st-ssion were to be discussed, in
connexion with public expenditure, taxation, and the
foreign policy of the Govornmint. This may be a
very emphatic, very picturesque demonstration, as it is
certaihly a very original one. But if it be considered
in Ireland an eligible or effective mode of accomplishing
the objects of the repeal movement—(a point on which,
1 we suppose, we must allow the parties most active in
promoting that movement to be the best judges) we
cannot help submitting that, on a common sense view of
the matter, in England, it is at once an unprofitable
course for the Repeal party, and an invidious one to-
wards the people of England and Scotland. They might
not unreasondbly have looked, from the Members for
that integral portion of the United Kingdom ts Bich
is exempted from the burden of the property and
income-tax, for some sympathy and active assistance in
averting fr.,m the people of England and Scotland the
three years renewal of tle:t most arbitrary and inquisi-
torial impost. It has not been denied by the most zealous
champions of repeal that Ireland has found in the House
of Commons, more especially since the passing of the Re-
form Bill, a large par l of steady, able, and unflinching
Scotch and English friends, who have manfully asserted
and upheld her just rights, and insisted on a full and fair
hearing fuller just complaints. Commercial treaties —a-nd
party alliances, of late years, have had one common, dis-

tinguishing feature. They profess, in their turns, to be
founde I on a basis of reciprocity;;in their working, the
condition of reciprocity is always carefully evaded by one
of the two contracting parties.
Our opinions on the repeal question, we have so
often and emphatically avowed, that it cannot now be
necessary to restate them. But we are not biassed in
the doubts we must express of the wisdom, or the
propriety of the tactics adopted by Mr. O'CONNELL
and his friends, in not being " present in their places"
in Parliament, by our recorded and entire dissent
from them in the objects of their agitation, for a
repeal of the union. We perceive that seven-eighths
of the business of the " Conciliation Half' sittings are
occupied by its assumption of the functions of
a Court of Review, sitting in judgment o❑ all
the contemporary legislation of the House of Lords
and Commons in Westminster. Would not the att,n-
tions and labours of Mr. O'CoNNELL and his friends be
occupied to.much better purpose, and in a manner much
less obnoxious to any exception, if, on the one hand,
they were at their posts of duty, in person, within the

" halls"—not of their Dublin Convention, but—of the
Imperial Legislature? Do they detect nothing in the
" signs of the times" to warn them, on the one hand,
that what they have hitherto failed to achieve for their
compatriots, others, who hare the power, may accom-
plish in their absence? Or, on the other hand, that
whilst they are fighting for a shadow, Opportunities
of obt,ining substantial justice and permanent
advantages for their compatriots may arise, pass
away, and be irretrievably lost during their tem-
porary abandonment of their positions in the
House of Commons ? We recommend to their serious
deliberation the repeated pledge of SIR ROBERT PEEL
to adopt a large course of liberal government towards
Ireland; the announced intentions of the Ministers to sub •
mit a much extended Government grant to the College of
Maynooth ; and the rumoured return of Mr. GLAD-
STONE to office, on the explicit understanding that he
acquiesces in those liberalised measures of Irish ad-
ministration said to be in contemplation by her Ma-
jesty's Government.
It will be a remarkable episode, indeed, in the Minis-
terial history of the Premier, if ever, on this question of
Ireland, it shall prove to be his fortune to step in, as he
has done in so many other instances, and reap a
harvest which has been sown by other hands.
As regards the mere interests of party it will
be well for the Repealers to consider the risks they run
of losing alLthe popularity they have acquired in Ireland
by their agitation of a,hopeless proposition of dismem-
berment, whenever it shall happen to others (especially
if these latter be the possessors of office at the time)
to confer upon the Irish people some measures of such
pratical and universal utility and benefit to them, so
gratif)ing to their dearest prepossessions, so soothing to
their national senstiveness, that they shall secure to
those who dispense them a popularity as lasting as the
real conciliation they shall establish will be widely dif-
fusive.

The Madrid journals of the 28th ult. have been re-
ceived, but, as usual, they are very barren of intelligence.
The Three per Cents. closed at 244, at 60 days; the
Five per Cents. at 254, at 60 days; and the Debt withoat
interest at 71, at 60 days.

The foreign mail, which bad been delayed by stormy
weather, arrived at a late hour this afternoon. The '
principal subject of interest noticed in the Paris papers,
is the proposed conversion of the Five per Cents., which
meets with much opposition. The Peers, it is said, will
decide again,t it ; and the Finance Minister has re-
quested M. MURET DE BORD, who brought in a Bill on
the subject, to withdraw it for the session, but he de-
clined. M. LACAVE LAPLIGNE considers it a just and
expedient measure, but objects to the introduction of it
at present. " The Committee who recommended it," he
said, " hal used its right ; but he would be wanting in
his duty if he concurred in the proposition until the
last instalment of the loan lately contracted was paid,
and the penal enactments, now submitted to the appro-
bation of the Legislature, should have put a period to
the existing scandalous jobbing in railroad shares.
Should the contrary opinion prevail, he knew the course
that a Minister of Finance ought to adopt." In answer
to a question in the Chamber, M. LAPLAGNE said it was
his intention to bring in a Bill for the conversion of the
stock next session; if it appeared then opportune.
- The discussion in the Chamber of Peers on the Secret
Service Money Bill was still going on, but after the
speeches of Count MoLE and M. GUIZOT there had been
no others of importance. The Duke of BROGLIE was
expected to speak.
The Three per Cents. closed on the Paris Bourse on
Thursday at 85.20; the New Loan at 86.20; the Five
per Cents. at 120.55 ; the Orleans Shares, 1,322.20 ;
Rouen, 1,185; llavre, 975; Avignon, 1,112.50; Belgian
Two-and-a-Half per Cents., 62.60; Spanish Three per
Cents., 40 Ditto Domestic Debt, 34g.