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 hitn 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 sma had not gone far enough. His Grace
seems to have been indifferent about going too far,
providel he could completely justify himself from the
imputation that might, as we say, be constructively
inferred from the terms of Mr. Humes or Mr. WIL-
LIAMS'S motion. Is he determined to set out the
whole truth, even at the cost of some revelations of
private concernmeLts 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 covered;
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-
tune 3, estates and grandeur of the PELUAMS, the
FIENNESES and the CLIN TONS tells you so.
He tells you that he has 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
conies 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 Rill, 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
shape 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 or 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
strifes of parties throughout the whole term of his
xi-tenee shall have been forgotten. his subsequent
investiture with the blue ribband, " by command,"
was the proper and becoming sequel of these acts of
rare disinterestedness. In showing, at the conclusion
of his letter, how the views and the measures of
those with whom he was once associated have altered,
and, as he contends, to the manifest prejudice told
peril of the public welfare, in reference to the state of
the Church and the revision of its temporalities—to
the reforms Parliamentary, Municipal, and Commer-
cial, which have been since established—we may and
must express our utter dissent from and regret for
the views so pertinaciously adhered to by his Grace
—erroneous, obsolete, and mischievous as we conceive
them to be. - But we respect him for his bold and
upright avowal of them. In these days we are
brought almost to venerate the phcenix-like virtue of
consistency, so that only our persuasion that the
Duke's is a consistency in error can qualify our ad-
miration for it in his own person. But whilst we la-
ment to perceive that we can find no grounds of con-
gratulation in the views he still announces as a states-
man or a politician, we cannot abstain from declaring
that our respect for the integrity and honesty of the
man are enhanced by the very misgivings we enter-
tain of those who have abandoned him and his party
for the power they wield in virtue of that abandon-
ment.

Madrid journals of the 20th have been received.
The Cortes had adjourned their ssttings for the holi-
days, and the Bourse was closed, and the entire popu-
lation were occupied with the religious ceremonies of
the Holy Week. On Thursday the young QUEEN
washed the feet of twelve poor men, and administered
to them food, with a sum of money to each. The
Court also visited in procession several churches, ac-
companied by persons of rank, among others the
French Ambassador. The weather, however, was
very unfavourable, as rain or snow fel during the
greater part of the day. At the Puerta del Sol the
Three per Cents. were done at 34 for cash, and 35
at 60 days.

The Paris papers are chiefly occupied with the
discussions in the Chamber of Peers on jobbing in
railway shares, and on the Customs' Bill in the
Chamber of Deputies. Great opposition is made to
the Bill brought forward by Count DARU on the
former question, and among others Count D'ARGOUT,
Governor of the Bank of France, and General CA-
BRERES spoke against it. The latter would willingly
support any feasable measure for putting an end to
gambling in shares, but he could not concur in the
present Bill, because it tended to strike a mortal blow
at the industry, commerce, and prosperity of the
country, The Governor of the Bank whose
authority stands very high in France, spoke
in equally strong terms. The Bill, he said,
infringed on the common right of all—
full liberty of transacting business ; for let the
Chamber look at what was done by any company in
endeavouring to obtain the concession of a railroad,
and judge if there was in the plan pursued any ille-
gality. First of all, some scientific men, bankers,
and capitalists, met, and came to the determination to
form themselves into a Committee on the matter in
hand. There was certainly nothing against the law
in that. Next they announced the provisional for-
mation of the company, and offered shares to the
public in case of success. On these offers of shares
they received money, for which they gave receipts.
All this was perfectly legal, since the money was
given back in case of non-concession. The objection
11 to this proceeding was, that the acknowledgments for
the money paid in were mere bits of paper, without
value. He must avow that he could not
comprehend this exaggeration, for the re-
ceipts, in place of being bits of paper without
value, were the acknowledgments of sums duly
paid and to be duly repaid in certain circumstances.
After some further remarks, he said on calculation he
found that the sums required to be lodged by com-
panies for the working of railways, would amount to
not less than 290,000,000 f. (11,000,0001.), the with-
drawal of which from the market would cause great
confusion. Besides the plan would tend to withdraw
the capital of foreigners from railway speculations.
The mere fact of taking the measure into considera-
tion had already induced many foreign capitalists to
sell their shares; and he would mention, in support
of this assertion, that last month three thousand
shares in a Belgian railroad, deposited at a banker's
at Paris, bad been taken in two hours by French
capitalists, and that at a moment when so many
French lines demanded their support. lie concluded
by observing that, before deciding on any mea-
sure it would be desirable to have a Committee of
Inquiry appointed to examine into the matter, to
ascertain the gravity of the abuses and the excesses
which had taken place in the last few years, and to
draw up a Bill in accordance with the result of their
examinations. This speech has settled the question.
Count DARU replied to it, but without effect, and
the general belief is, that the Bill will be rejected by
a large majority. The debate on the Customs' Bill
was still going on in the Chamber of Deputies at the
hour of post on Wednesday, but it possessed no
public all the Opposition jour-
nalsthe Ministry for yield-
ing make interest. Nearly
attacksl Cea
on rly
to the Chamber on the Belgian tariff,
and adduce the fact as another instance of the utter
abasement of M. GUIZOT. Marshal SOULT presented
a Bill for an additional grant of 18,000,000 f. for the
fortifications of Dunkirk, Soissons, Lyons, Besancon,
Sedan, Toulouse, and St. Etienne, and to extraor-
dinary works which are to be executed by military
engineers in the ports of Lorient, Havre, and Henne-
bon. On the same day Commissioners were elected
for examining the Railway Bills for the lines between
Paris and Lyons and Lyons and Avignon, seven of
whom are favourable to the plans proposed by the
Government.