The Sun.
London, England, 1828-10-23 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE LONDON JOURNALS,

The Brunswickers throughout those parts of the
country which tolerate them, are basy in their seve-
ral workshops. A dinner meeting was held at
Aylesbury on Tuesday, where the Cumberland Life
Guards admitted only members of the corps, arid
therefore managed matters just as their own good
taste and charitable dispositions directed. When
we say that Lord Chandos was in the chair, the
rest will occur to our readers without difficulty,
The heir to a dukedom,—and to a patronage, poli-
tical and clerical, which promises to have the distri-
bution of some dozen or so of benefices,—will be
sure to command a certain tribe of partisans in his
politics, and of bottleholders in his revels. There
is one class of candidates for church preferment,
who seldom fail to illustrate their piety by a pro-
fession of such sentiments with regard to things
temporal, as must perforce convince the aristocratic
dealers in such commoditins, that things eternal
may be safely intrusted to dieir keeping. What
description of candidate Parson Fry may be, or
from what source he seeks the advancement to
which he evidently aspires, it is not our busi-
ness to answer ; but we do know that the part
imputed to him by the reports of the proceed-
ings at Aylesbury, is enough to make other cler-
gymen of the Church of England hold down
their heads with shame and mortification. For
despicable folly, alternating now and then with
beastly ribaldry, indicating in every sentence a
mean, malignant, and ferocious spirit, undis-
guised by any one of the outward incidents
or pretensions of an educated gentleman, as
it was unredeemed by the smallest inward spark of
Christian charity or forbearance, it has never been
our fortune to read any printed speech professing to
have insulted the ears of an English audience, so
disgusting as that which is given by the reporters to
parson Fry at the Aylesbury dinner with the Mar-
quis of Chandos. And is it, we ask, from such
materials that the Cumberland Regency would be
satisfied to recruit their intolerant host ? Is it from
feelings, or opinions, or arguments, like those
ascribed to the above reverend " bolter" of religious'
bitterness, that Lords Winchelsea, or Chandos, or
the cognate lawgivers Newcastle and Kenyon, are
ready to be judged by the generation which • they
adorn, or to be saved from the oblivion of posterity ?
Alas ! it is all of a piece. This is, in fact, the same
in nature, though in degree perhaps more extrava-
gant, as the rubbish wherewith the honest men of
Kent are likely to be entertained to-morrow. The
outcry of " No Popery" has no.meaning in it at the
present era • and after the extinction of the House of
Stuart, no shadow of meaning but sheer unmitigated
tyranny. The field of right, of liberty, of industry,
of ambition,presented by this magnificent Empire,has
long been too spacious to be occupied by two-thirds
only of the nation. We require our whole strength and
all our hands to cultivate that moral surface which time
and the progress of society has exposed to the eye of
every politician in the realm who deserveS the name of
statesman. The Cumberland Committee would
treat the constitutional privileges 'and capacities of
England, iu this season of multiplied natural re-
sources, and of innumerable though destitute claim-
ants, as the greedy dealers of Billingsgate act with
an extraordinary supply of fish, annihilating a large
portion of what Providence vouchsafed for the use
of all mankind, that the monopolists might be ena-
bled to hold up their established prices. It is thus
that your ascendancy-men are wild at the notion of
placing the power which they monopolize, but
which, by their monopoly, is cramped and para-
lyzed, within reach of that class which hungers and
thirsts to enjoy a fair portion of it. Ireland, in
1779, as we are informed by the accounts of that
period, was reduced comparatively to a desert; op-
pression had broken the heart of the people, and
withered the sinews of the State. The first relaxa-
tion of the penal laws created and then developed
new powers in the nation; the Irish took a more
lively spring—they became more industrious, more
active, and more affluent; the country grew more
prosperous, as her chains were turned into plough-
shares. Now, again, the progress of the surrounding
world has produced for us a political emergency, ana-
logous to the physical and statistical one of 1779. The
political soil of the empire requires a mere extended
cultivation. We have a demand for the whole of our in-
tellectual and moral power : the food of that power
is constitutional liberty. Let us not throw away,
like the rapacious monopolists above alluded to, that
share of the blessing which our fellow-subjects crave
after, because we cannot ourselves consume it, and
because we will not lower the Protestant monopoly
price. With respect to the great meeting appointed
fur to-morrow, a report is abroad that the amend-
ment to the Cumberland resolution is to recommend
a reliance on his Majesty's Ministers, as well as on
legislative power. We would almost as soon rely
on the Duke of Cumberland himself. With the
empire almost in the agonies of convulsion—with a
perfect knowledge that they have, by one syllable,
the means of silencing all disaffection,—of appeasing
all anxiety, of showing every man in the kingdom
what is really before him,—with so much misery
under their eye, and so much alleviation in their
hand, these Ministers breathe not one word to re-
assure a trembling community.. Reliance, therefore,
on such men, it would be childish credulity to place;
and we trust that no such silly-proposition will be
made on the respected authority of Lord Camden.
This Cabinet, which may well be termed, like
Trinity College, Dublin, " the Silent Sister,"—this
Cabinet must either have decided 'on emancipation,
in which case, not to say so is inhuman, or not de-
cided at all, is which case it ought to be condemned
for imbecility and utter incompetency to appreciate
or controul the crisis now at hand.—Times.
Thank God, we are now arrived at a crisis in what
is calied the Catholic Question. It is now univer-
that something must be done of a de-
sally admitted
cisive nature in
Ireland. The ascendancy men say
0 safetytC,_an any man:. for Protestants in the present
that there is T 1
state of things. said Captain.
Swabey, at the Brunswick.. Club at
Aylesbury,
I
" possessing and exercisig Msdreason, ddenyy that the
return
Roman Catholics of relan may „w
nearly the whole hundred Members representing that
the Morning Journal)
country ?" A contemporary (
maintains even that the Government untbh !vine'
unable
to protect the people, the latter must 1 y_
the
vernment aside and take on themselves the
Govern-
ments self-protection. '• Had (he says) the weak.
with which this country has been cursed for
many years done their duty, or a tithe of their duty,
there would have been no occasion for these Pro-
testant meetings. But they have not done their
duty ; and, therefore, the people have no resource
left but to rally in their own defence, and in de-
fence of the religion and the Constitution they re-
vere, and which their fathers swore to transmit to
their children inviolate and entire. An Irish mob
has ruled Ireland, and the King's. Lieutenant has
had no more authority than a Chinese god. His
sword slept in its scabbard, and a faction administered
the law, exercised the rights of the Vice-Royal pre-
rogative, isued proclamations, levied head-money,
and boasted that they had the power of peace and
war, of tranquillity and disturbance, is their own
hands. In England we have been pestered with a
similar but less powerful faction." . We now find,
then, that the Irish have too much political power
to allow of the farther duration of the existing state
of things. The share of political power which they
already possess places the Government under the
necessity of adopting a nesv system. They have too
touch political power for the safety of the Protestant
ascendancy ; for the share which they possess se-
cures to them the acquisition of more. The Go-
vernment must, therefore, either give them what
they ask, or throw itself into the arms of the Pro-
testant ascendancy, who contend that they ought to
be deprived of all political' power. Of course it is
not an easy task to strip seven millions of subjects, or
about one-third of the population of the empire, of
the elective franchise. But why must we reduce
one-third of the population of the British islands to
the.condition of bondsmen ? Why must we establish