The Sun.
London, England, 1829-09-29 00:00:00

fused to allow a woman the usual contribution
from the funds incident to child-birth, because
she had been married only according to the Ca-
tholic form ; and this after having quietly taken
the husband's money, without asking any ques-
tions. Alderman Atkins, with great humanity
and good sense, said he would not be a party to
this act of injustice. The legal adviser of their
Worships appears to have intimated it as his opi-
nion that the objection taken !by the Society,
however dishonest, was at least legal, and that
no order made by the Magistrates would stand.
There are other persons, however, who look upon
these marriages as what the law calls " voidable,
but not void," and that, till set aside by due
course of law, they must be presumed to be as
good and valid as any other. Indeed, it would
be preposterous in the extreme that the mere
clerk or steward of a benefit club could have
the power, by his ipse dixit, to pronounce upon
the validity of that which, till dissolved, all laws
both human and divine, hold to be of the most
sacred and indissoluble nature. The subject,
we imagine, is at any rate one which it would
well become the Legislature calmly and dispas-
sionately to consider ; nor would those who
have been such bowlers for what is called Ca-
tholic Emancipation be ill employed in consi-
dering whether this is not a topic of infinitely
more concern to the lower class of Catholics
than the empty boon they have obtained for
them.--Morning Herald.
The Whigs and Liberals are attempting to
raise a clamour throughout the country against
the Duke of Newcastle, on account of his
Glace having recently given notice to quit to
a considerable number of his tenants in the
town of Newark. This, like most of those set
•up by the same parties, whether founded upon
local or general topics, is, we do not hesitate to
say, a dishonest, hypocritical, and contemptible ,
outcry—an outcry which, even admitting the
facts to be as they describe them, cannot injure
the Duke of Newcastle for a single moment in
the estimation of any reasonable man, or produce
any other feeling in the public mind than that
of scorn and indignation towards its authors. ;
The accusation against the Duke is, that he has I
taken the necessary legal steps to remove from the
occupation of his houses in the Borough of New- I
work about two hundred persons, who derived
their right to vote from such occupation exclu-
sively, but who nevertheless thought proper to •
exercise it on the last election in opposition to the
Candidate whom his Grace was understood to
filvour. This is the whole matter of charge, I
and for this the Noble Duke is overwhelmed
with a torrent of invective, as if he were one of
the basest and most atrocious criminals. It is I
unnecessary, in addressing a community in which
the rights of property are respected and under-
stood, to waste much time in the vindication of
the Noble Duke. The houses are his, and he
has an unquestionable right to determine and to
act upon the determination, that they shall be
held only by tenants whose political opinions are
similar to his own. This right he would have,
as an inseparable adjunct of property, even if
the houses in question did not invest their te-
nants with any portion of political power ;
but as the occupation of these houses does
in fact confer political power of some im-
portance, he not only possesses the right,
but lies under a moral compulsion to exercise
it, believing, as no doubt he sincerely does, that
the ascendancy of the political principles he him-
self professes, would conduce to the welfare and
security of the Nation. Those who lavish their
abuse upon the Duke on account of what he has
done, are not in truth as they would pretend, the
fiends of purity and independence, but the ene-
mies of consistency and zeal. If the fact be as
the assailants of the Duke assert, that two
hundred of his tenants voted for a candidate
known to hold principles diametrically opposed
to those which he believes essential to the welfare
or salvation of the country, the inference would
be, not that his Grace is au arbitrary and tyran-
nical landlord, but rather, on the contrary, that
he has not heretofore been sufficiently rigidi
in
exacting conformity to his own opinions, consi-
dering the warmth with which he professes
them, and has encouraged dissent among the
vaers he can make and unmake, by the
prospect his past conduct has afforded
of excessive toleration and indulgence.—
The clamour now raised against the Noble
Duke for conduct which would naturally
have been expected in similar circumstances from
any other man, is certainly favourable to this
view of the subject. Who ever heard, or ex-
pected to hear, of any considerable number of
the tenantry of the House of Fitzwilliam voting
against Lord Milton in the county of York, or
of the tenants of Lord Thanet voting in favour
of Lord Lowther at Appleby, although the right
to vote in the cases we have mentioned is not,
as at Newark, dependant upon the tenantry ?
The Duke of Newcastle, we greatly fear, has not
been sufficiently tenacious of his rights, or pe-
remptory in upholding his own excellent princi-
ples. He might have taken earlier—and we re-
joice that he has taken at last—a valuable lesson
in these respects from the Whids But whatever
may be thought of the Noble Duke, there can-
not we think be much difference of opinion as
to the merits of his two hundred tenants, who, in
opposition to their landlord's judgment, pre-
ferred Mr. Serjeant Wilde to Mr. Sadler for
their Representative, or as to the motives and
principles of those who make• so clamorous-a-
demand of public sympathy •on their behalf.'
These two hundred persons thought once, as
the Duke of Newcastle, whose opinions have
undergone no change, now thinks upon political
affairs, or they became his tenants at first by •
meana of a deception the most offensive to him
and the most dishonourable to themselves. We
willingly adept the former of these suppositions,
as it is unquestionably the more charitable of the I
I two. We should like very much then 'to hear
what account these persons have to give.of their
simultaneous political conversion, and we hope it
is for the purpose of satisfying the natural
• curiosity of the public, as to the causes of so ex-
traordinary a phenomenon, that they have
called a meeting of their fellow-townsmen.
It cannot be that their former principles were
discradited its their estimation by any personal
disqualification on the part of the eandidate who
appealed to them at the last election, since his
opponent who obtained their suffrages is in no
respect his superior, and in point of talent about
as much his inferior as the Bristol Alderman,
who said ditto to Burke, was inferior to that
accomplished orator and sticesmau. A cloud of
Imystery hangs over the affair, which, before they
I utter a word of complaint against their landlord,
They have very
Wilde to attend
zoirsseixbpl eiaTaattiphne,
irthrepipr behovesgmr them to c. es
it :erriiiepi an t
eeting,
OUL—Morn-
may be able to assist them
if he can be prevailed on to speak
ilia Post.
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