The Sun.
London, England, 1845-11-13 00:00:00

Viening

LONDON, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1845.

The doleful ditties of Conciliation Hall speak well for the
working of the Irish Colleges measure. The Liberator weep-
ing over Dr. KrelvAN's adhesion ; Mr. SMITH 013P.rts, of
the white handkerchief, subsiding all at once from his theatri-
cal indignation of last session into faint praise, and Mr.
JOHN O'CONNELL quarrelling with Mr. Small O'BittEx for
his faint praises—are all unequivocal proofs that the mea-
sure is succeeding fast. Little as we believed in the power
of Conciliation Hall abuse against the intrinsic merits of the
Irish Colleges Bill, we never expected so soon to see Mr
O'CorasELL's tone so humbled as in his apostrophe to Dr.
IC-ntwAs, the newly-appointed President of Cork College.
That Rev. Gentleman was his friend, and he could scarcely
believe he
,would have countenanced a scheme which had
been unanimously condemned by the hierarchy. GOD help
the people Of Ireland; but I trust the thought will not cross •
Moir minds that th4ir clergy would be accessible to bribery.

At no former period of our experience as journalists have
we felt so sensibly as we now do the value of that maxim
in political criticism which is summarily expressed in the
well-known terms—" Measures, not men." We doubt
whether—since the days of ministerial autocracy, when the
pleasure of the Minister was the will of the SOVEREIGN, and
the will of the SOVEREIGN was the law of the Minister—any
such undisguised assertion of the doctrine, "stet pro ratione,
voluntas," has been ventured on as that which the Govern-
ment of Sir ROBERT PEEL is palpably inculcating, in its
utter disregard of the popular demand for the open-
ing of the ports. A very much greater and
more generous statesman than Sir ROBERT PEEL
—we mean Sir ROBERT WaixonE—neither misunderstood
nor affected to misunderstand the popular disgust elicited
by his EXCISE SCHEME, about a century ago. That bold
and unhesitating statesman did not during a Parliamentary
recess assemble councils to deliberate only to adjourn with-
out coming to any decision on the propriety or impropriety
of modifying his obnoxious plan for creating or rather re
viring new sources of revenue; but carefully, repeatedly,
and pointedly announced, explained, and reinforced the rea-
sons upon which he felt himself called on to persevere in it.
Between the two Sir ROBERTS of 1742 and 1845 there is,
to be sure, little enough of similarity; yet there does subsist
one remarkable analogy. Both of them have mananifested a
marvellously low estimate of the morality of public men, and
of the dignity of public principle. But the man who " ran
away with the clothes of the Whigs whilst they were bathing"
(to use the felicitous metaphor of Mr. DISRAELI), is all
nothing the greater perverter of that morality—the greater
disparager of that principle. The contemporary of PULTENEY
and, "honest" SiiirrEN was ill-advised enough to blurt out
the stupendous fact avouched by his own Ministerial experi-
ence, "that every man" (of that day) "had his price." The
contemporary and colleague of the illustrious CANNLNG, whose
early-dated liberality he repudiated for the then stern Toryism
of the Duke of WELLINGTON, since modified to his own
sliding-scale of indefinitely expansive concession, according
to the force of the external pressure brought
to act upon it, sets about exemplifying the same
proposition in a more cunning and less hazardous manner.
Far too plausible to risk gratuitous avowals of dangerous
frankness, our present Premier is neither too high-toned nor
too unaccommodating in his political ethics to avail himrudf
Gime min, ime is at all times ready to extend
the basis of his own power. Public men are no longer cor-
rupted in this country by rouleaux of guineas "unexpectedly
discovered on their breakfast tables," or large Bank-notes
anonymously inclosed to them on the ere of debates on
which the probable divisions appear likely to affect the ex-
istence of decaying Governments, or to threaten them with
relapse after their re-establishment. But patronage—(the
possession, on the one hand, of official power or influence,
and the careful appropriation of lapsed or vacated places on
the other, not on the principle of detur optimo, but so as
to be the exclusive reward of official service)—this is
a lever as all-powerful, far safer, and more decorous,
and less palpable than direct bribery. It has never
been wielded—this patronage —with more effect than by
Sir ROBERT PEEL; and to his skill in the use of this
weapon we attribute the sort of disarmed and passive apathy
wherewith public men of all parties seem to look on, in vague
expectation of the adoption of some remedy for impending
scarcity.
Rating the morale of the Premier's government at no
higher value than this, and thereby not taking up any hypo-
thesis calculated to betray our judgment into any disparag-
ing estimate of his sagacity, we yet cannot compre-
hend the delusion under which he must be labouring
if he imagines that he can with impunity attempt
to obviate, by procrastinating, the opening of the ports.
He who is so ready to school others about their inability to
read the "signs of the times," must be seized with a chronic
blindness—a defective perception pro laic vice—if he cannot
recognise in the condition of the country the imperious and
paramount necessity for such a measure--in the quiet but
emphatic bearing of the public upon it—the decree which
must compel its prompt concession. The, potato crop failure
now shares, with Ireland, the fatal distinction of proving
" bis greatest difficulty." His tenure of power is
staked upon the single cast of solving that diffi-
culty. The opening of the ports is the only card
which can save the trimming and difficult game he has
hitherto had to play against adversaries who have become
more formidable as antagonists from the very successes he
has achieved against them, and with partners who are inca-
pable of playing up to him.

But why should Sir ROBERT hesitate to obey the wish of
' the vast majority, by virtue of whose past confidence or ap-
t proval he retains the first place in her MAJESTY'S Councils?
Is it because he would compromise his popularity with his
• own party, the Conservatives? Why he has over and over
again relinquished and repudiated them on other ques-
tions, when be could command adequate support
for his purpose from their opponents. Is it that
he dreads a combination of the landed interest ?
In how many instances has he already thwarted and re-
sisted them? Does any man imagine that he is afraid to
appease the alarms of the empire, and to satisfy the clamour
of the famishing, out of some delicacy for the trammels Of
those views and prejudices which the political associations
of his earlier official and Parliamentary career respected and
upheld as identified with the principles of a sound and saga-
cious policy ? Such a man needs only to be reminded
that Sir ROBERT PEEL, has thrown them overboard, from
time to time, with as little ceremony as he knocked some
hundreds of items out of the tariff of Customs' Duties
retained by his predecessors. Besides, who among
our modern Ministers has ever bidden higher, or morn;
largely for the favour of the people than Sir ROBERT, in Eis
measures for the relief of civil and religious disabilities--
the extension of education—the relaxation of imposts on
raw materials, of manufactures, &c., &c. In a wrred, it
seems difficult, if not impossible, to ascribe his dogged re-
fusal to open the ports at once, under exigencies so fe,:Arful as
those of the present time, to any other motive than'personal
deference or consideration for some colleague in o ffice, the
prestige of whose continued and close alliance ft e is rash
enough to set before the cordial and firm support (of a great
and determined people. If this be the fact, tiff: career of
the Prime Minister draws as near to its termi-action as the
past reputation of the statesman.

The Madrid Gazette of the sth contains e circular issued
by the Intendant of the Queen's Household, caL ling upon all
persons whose pensions on the privy purse were t uspended in
1834, to send into his offic; ;le documents necesi ary to prove
that they enjoyed S!J f!1 pensions, in order that thteir payment
may be resan);ii. These pensions, it is understood, amount
to aboli.". 15,0004 The NARVAEZ Government appear to be
;lopting a more merciful system. All the perso...a ; implicated
in the disturbances which took place in Cataloniii 1, and who
had been imprisoned since at Palma, had be, s i pardoned
by the QUEEN, and permitted to return to th eit
The municipal elections had commenced, and th Progres-
slates had succeeded in returning their candidates at several
places, among others Saragossa, Cuenca, and G madalajara.
A mutiny in the regiment of Girona broke out; on the 3d
inst. at Valencia, but with what object is not stet( kr. A ser-
geant and twenty-five soldiers attacked the guard, killed its
commandant and twoofficers, marched out, and ber-ngjoined
by some of the townspeople, attacked the Pilar 'arracks,
where they were repulsed. Their plan being frq strated,
they fled and concealed themselves. Eighteen soldii vs and
other suspected persons were arrested, and, two hours after,
'tranquillity was restored. The town and province had been
lona
declared ina state of siege. A good deal of bueineve