The Sun.
London, England, 1827-05-07 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The defeated Tories bid fair, we think, to in-
demnify the nation for much of the evil which is
owing to their long dominion over it, by the
course upon which, as an Opposition, they have
already entered. There assuredly must be some
familiar, in Mr. Canning's pay, at the elbows of
this late colleagues, to pinch and tickle, and worry
them on into a series of imprudences, which no
men of the least tact, and certainly none of expe-
rience like theirs, could, in the natural order of
political manoeuvrings, have committed. Mr.
Peel's first defect seems to have been the want of
a proper thickness and uniformity in the varnish
which it was his game to lay over his Undoubted
hostility to the new chief of the Cabinet ; un-
doubted now is that lir:-,'Stility, notwithstanding
the early attempts tit:, disguise it on the part of
Mr. Peel. But it was to be suspected from the
moment when Mr. Peel's brother-in-law and
creature, Mr. Dawson, assailed the co-operation
of Mr. Canning and the Whigs with such very
edifying virulence. Next to the brother-in-law
"slue the brother. The second of the Peels, or
'Peelers, protested broadly that he had no confi-
dence in Mr. Canning; that his confidence was in
Cie Ministers who had resigned—in "the cooler
heads and more regulated minds' of the Earl of
Westmorland, for example—of Mr. Goulburn,
for example ! Now this might do well enough
for the younger Peel ; but what shall we say of
the elder, who, while he pretends to contain and
calm within his breast the fierce cauldron of his
own personal animosity, has not even so much
tradesman-like skill as would en'ole him to plug
up those collateral spouts Ind conduit; by which
it runs out, hissing, and bubbling, throUgh the
mouths of his :.confidential dependents ? Mr.
Peel himselri, however, has given way at last.
Even fo'i one short week he has been unable to
kee7, down the fire that consumed him. His
Lopes, if he had any, that Mr. Canning, de-
serted by some of his old brethren, would not
have been succoured by the Whigs, have la-
mentably failed the Right Hon. Secretary for
the Home Department. There has arisen a
new power ; an unanimity of principle has be-
come a practical coalition of parties ; and the
result is, a Ministry, better bottomed in the
confidence and affections of the people of Eng-
land than any that has appeared since 1792, ere
vet the talisman of Mr. Pitt's popularity was
broken. This unlooked-for issue of the policy
(plot we presume it would be treason to call it)
which left Air. Canning naked, and seemingly des-
perate, through the defection of his ofEciarfriends,
has manifestly filled the Tory ranks with consterna-
To make a successful attack upon their
enemy, they seem to feel that it must be attempted
before he has entrenched himself in his position.
Hence the precipitancy and want of regularity in
their movements—hence the juvenile ardour of Sir
Thomas Lethbridge, who was for some weeks past
designated as leader of the Tory Country-Gentle-
men Opposition ; and who, now that Mr. Peel has
taken to being a country-gentleman, we are bound
to believe is rather an object of jealousy to the Ex-
Secretary of State. But, however this newly ap-
parent violence of the Right Hon. Gentleman has
shown itself, the language of Mr. Canning towards
his late colleague has presented a contrast not only
favourable to the character of the first Lord of the
Treasury, but clearly demonstrative on which side
exists the consciousness of intellectual superiority :
Mr. Canning can afford to treat with gentleness a
man upon whom he can look down. He need feel
no mortification, and Mr. Peel must feel it ; for the
more accurately this gentleman is measured, the more
moderate, we begin to suspect, will his dimensions
be found; and in that respect some resemblance is
visible between him and his present party in both
Houses; for we speak the common sense of the
country in affirming, that when the dust which these
old cart horses of the Government have raised, by
restiveness and prancing on a road which is strange
to them, shall have subsided, it will be discovered
that their numbers are but few, their paces feeble,
their condition miserable, and the prices which they
may again be bought at, little more than what are
current in a knacker's yard. If his Majesty shall be
pleased not only to bestow, but to manifest that he
bestows, his kindness and favour on the supporters
of his Minister,---if he exhibits but half as much
steadiness in the protection of those whom he has
chosen, as he has of discernment in the choice, and
spirit in declaring it,—there is little, indeed nothing
to fear for the existing Ministry. Let Mr. Can-
ning be grateful to his Sovereign, and respectful to-
wards the people, and towards his Tory adversaries
he may be as contemptuous as he lists.—Times.
Lord Bobadil and Lord Prig have had a
hard week of it. What an amusing scene, the
congratulations of these two great personages,
after the termination of their first week's work :
—" Well, my dear Prig, we have done won-
ders ; between us that must be said. Old Eldon
may come forward with his puzzling motions
when he likes ; but by G— the business is done.
Eldon is too fond of roundabout ways. I like
to attack the enemy whenever I can get a sight
of him. That is my way." " And a good way
it is, my dear Bobadil. But pray what did
you think of my logic ? With one blow I took
the Catholics from Canning. In a trice I sent
the Protestants after them. He could not pos-
sibly be prepared for this. I proved, as a Ca-
tholic advocate, to demonstration, that the Ca-
tholics would be irretrievably ruined by their
cause being abandoned by Canning ; and then
in the same breath, as a Protestant advocate, I
proved that Canning was waiting to emancipate
the Catholics till he thought. success certain,
which was laving a mine under the feet of the
Protestants, to blow them into the air. Was
not that logic with a vengeance ? I plunge the
Catholics into deep despair, and out of that very
despair I draw matter to fill the breasts of the
No Popery-men with indignation. By the bye,
it must be allowed, my dear Bobadil, that I take
very original views of things. That was a
happy thought of mine to secure the certainty of
punishment, and consequently the efficacy of
example, by killing the innocent as well as the
guilty, so that the interruption to the course of
example by the escal:.3 of the innocent is avoided.
I know it has beeß said that Pouqueville gives
this as Turkish law ; but I'll swear I did not
owe the thought to Pouqueville. Canning is
done for, my dear Bobadil. One week of my
brilliancy and logic, and of your sense and
bravery, is more than lie can stand. It was a
happy thought in you to tell the House of your
sense, because they are so deficient in penetra-
tion that they never would have found it out."
—" True, Prig, did you perceive what I was
driving at ? I have my happy thoughts too.—
I told told them plump that I was a man of
sense—well, what a man of sense says must be
sensible—that is logic, you know. Then I told
them, once and again, that I was a man of cha-
racter and spirit, who would not allow myself to
be put down, and that I was a sort of man who
would have it all my own way, and would not bear
the treatment which other Lords were pleased to
put up with. Who do you think will dare to contra-
dict me after that ? Well, here then are my proposi-
tions; lam a man of sense ; whoso contradicts me says
I am not a man of sense; then let him take the conse-
quence. By heavens ! there is not one of them
dares. Thus I vanquish at once the whole of oty

lion.

opponents hi the House of Lords. I have an ex-
cellent coup They laughed at first when I
told them I was a man of sense, but they found it
was no laughing matter—when I told them that if
they did not think what I said sensible, they should
answer for it. I don't mince matters. I told the
Duke of Wellington, at Vienna, in lS2i, that he
was a fool to choose a successor to my lamented
brother so very unlike him. I told his Majesty
a piece of my mind too. I told Ministers they were
all rubbish—that they would never cause this coun-
try to be honoured and respected abroad as lily late
lamented brother did ty the by, between us
be it said, was Accounted by all the foreign Princes
the ft -At magnanimous Minister that ever lepresented
Britain; for he ga-e them all that they asked,
wishing to show them that England was far above
shopkeeeping principles, and was far above at-
tending to her own interesta).—Zounds, who shall
Aare to gainsay a word of all that I, Bobadil, have
chosen to utter !"—" My dear Bobadil, the cam-
paign is over. I hit both Catholics and Protes-
tants at one blow—that is, I disposed of all the oat-
of-doors folks. You have knocked down the Lords,
so that between us we have done the business com-
pletely. If both Protestants and Catholics are
taken from Canning, the Jews only remain ; I will
not leave him even the Jews. I have ar excellent
head, and I shall task it for an argument that shall
hit at mice Catholics, Protestants, and Jews."
When Bobadil was at the Court of Vienna, the old
Prince De Ligne used to draw him out in admirable
style. But his courage increases with his years, and
he can furnish a very good exhibition of himself
without any assistance. He and Prig will give us
a much more merry Opposition than we have been
used to in the solemn Assembly to which they be-
long. Lord Bobadil's sense, Lord Prig's logic, and
the historical research of a Winchelsea, are almost
too many good things for any one Assembly.—
Alorning Chronicle.

Mr. Canning was at a loss to account for the
personal hostility manifested towards him by
several of the seceders. We have endeavoured
to account for the phenomenon, on the principle
of the natural hostility borne by dullness towards
cleverness. Swift said, long ago, that it was a
common saying with the dunces, that clever men
were unfit for business. Lord Melville thinks

that an Administration cannot have stability with,
out beeing chiefly composed of boobies—without
possessing largely in itself the vis inerticc of
stupidity. We cannot blame his Lordship for
laying great stress on what he naturally considers
the chief requisite in an Administration. We
are even disposed to think it might be of advan-
tage to have a heavy-headed man in the Admi-
nistration, on the principle on which Moliere
read his plays to an ancient female servant,
by way of preparing them for the difficulties
with which new ideas find an entrance into
the heads of a pretty numerous class in the
world. When clever men associate only with
clever men, they are apt to form too high an
estimate of the penetration of the world in gene-
ral. Now Lord Melville was as good a man as
could have been pitched upon for trying an idea
upon; anti a Colleague could always have been sure,
when he mastered it, that its currency was safe.
His Lordship was much better adapted for a whet-
stone, on which his colleagues might exercise them-
selves, than Lord 'Westmorland for instance ; for
the latter could never have kept to a point. But
Melville's fixed eye gives sign of undivided atten-
tion. In truth he may be said to have had far more
of the principle of stability in him than all the rest
of the seceders ; but there is now no remedy.—lbid.
Already suitors begin to reap the benefit of
Lord Eldon's resignation. Lord Lyndhurst, on
Saturday, on Mr. Ching pressing that a motion
he had to submit might be heard on Monday,
expressed his unwillingness, unless in cases of
absolute necessity, to break into the regular busi-
ness of the day. His Lordship added that "he
had always thought, and still continued to think,
that nothing tended to cause delay and inconve-
nience more than the interposition of matters
which interfered with the cases regularly set
down for hearing." No man in Lord Eldon's time
could tell what business would come on, and was
certain of nothing, except that a great deal of
unnecessary expence would always be incurred.
Lord Lyndhurst has a clear head, and his forte
is a lucid arrangement ; and by doing only one
thing at a time, and the precise thing which
ought to be done, and no other, he will, if we
mistake not, dispose of causes at a very
different rate from that of his predecessor. N% hat
with talking of himself, and pecking at better men
than himself—as Sir John Leach, for instance—
and writing letters on more interesting business than
that before him, the time really dedicated by Lord
Eldon to the business of suitors was very little in-
deed. We shall now see a different state of things.
We shall, at all event's, be very much mistaken if
Lord Lyndhurst allows himself to diverge from the
business before him on all manner of pretexts, or
feel jealous on account of the dispatch of the Vice.
We observe that Sir Anthony Hart has set himself
decidedly against chicanery. On Saturday he re-
fused to allow certain exceptions to be taken off the
file, on the ground of irregularity, observing, that by
granting the application he should merely create
delay, and heap expence on the parties. "If these
exceptions (said his Honour) are taken off the file,
it will be necessary for the excepting party to peti-
tion the Court for leave to file fresh exceptions ;
these must then be re-engrossed, and, in the end,
the parties, after all this delay and expence, will be
in exactly the same position they are now." This
is the way to cause the Courts of Justice to be re-
spected.--Ibid.
The Cambridge election takes place on Wed-
nesday, Thursday, and Friday ; and Mr. Goul-
burn having resigned all pretensions to this
honour, the contest now lies between the Soli-
citor-General and Mr. Bankes, whose partizans
are evincing the influence which even the higher
fruits of education sometimes have over the
mind and conduct by mutually abusing each
others protegee in good set terms. While one
candidate is called a " convicted libeller," the
other is not less courteously styled " a wolf in
sheep's clothing ;" in allusion, we suppose, to
the result of Mr. Buckingham's action against
the one, and the somewhat equivocal avowals of
the other upon the Catholic question. The
contest, even divested of its ill manners, is one
very little consequence ; and we strongly suspect
that, notwithstanding the strenuous efforts which
are making to bring up every out-lying curate
to the poll, it will in the end be found that not
a few of the really respectable part of the
electors—we mean of those who despise both
clamour and place, will abstain altogether from so
much as crossing the street to vote either for one
candidate or the other. In the mean time, the
Term (one of the three short periods in the year
dedicated to the avowed objects of the place) has
commenced, and grave masters, lively tutors, lazy
fellows, and the youth committed to their care,
are alike involved in a ferment but little suited to
what ought to be the dignified nature of the
place, or the peaceful pursuits of " sound learning
and religious education." In the mean time, too,
that part of the Press which professes to be the
exclusive organ of this body, is throwing -every
degree of ridicule and contempt upon a new In-
stitution, which its founders absurdly enough
propose to style the London University. We
are not insensible to the humbug in which no
small part of this undertaking is enveloped—of
which its title is not the least. At the same