The Sun.
London, England, 1845-11-17 00:00:00

I ‘ftebs ATM

LONDON, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1845.

It has not been denied by the Treasury journals, and we
may, therefore, take it for granted that the general tumour is
correct which says, that Sir ROBERT PEEL has been beaten
in the Cabinet, in an attempt to open the ports. How are
the mighty fallen! "I," the great "I " of the House of
Commons—he who for four years has led his colleagues, as
so many sheep to the slaughter, into every imaginable con-
tradiction to their former professions—he who could even
venture rudely to push aside the aspiring heir of the house
of Derby when he wanted to speak, and the Premier feared
his indiscretion—" the gentleman," as the Duke of WEL-
LINGTON is said to call him with expressive emphasis, who
has managed the Duke, and every one, and everything—
" the gentleman," beaten by his own dummies, is, it must
be confessed, a remarkable, but yet not altogether astonishing,
event. Sir R. PEEL is probably himself the man most sur-
prised. From men who have so long been so submissive he
c,.uld not have been prepared for resistance. But every one
knows that dulness is a double-edged weapon. The ass will
work steadily and quietly, till something puts his
back up, and then there is no quieting or managing the
animal. The unreasoning dunce may long be an useful in-
strument; but if he takes to opposing his master, his master
cannot reason with him either. Sir ROBERT has long found
Lk account in his Dunciad. He has now come to learn its
dangerous and disagreeable side.

Oa ! what an opportunity has been lost for Sir ROBERT ;D
this refusal of his colleagues to open the ports. It would
have been the coup de grace of the corn-laws. For none of
his innumerable changes had Sir ROIIF.RT PEEL ever so good
a ca.n as he would have had for this act, and its necessary
repeal of the corn-laws by the Legislature. He
;Mel,woald have met Parliament with confidence, defending what
Le had done by the will of PROVIDENCE; or, as Sir JAMES
CE..111.01 would say, by " difficulties which no human pru-
dence could avt.rt ;" or by the pious Lord ASHLEY as " des-
tiny." To any opposition to permanent rspeal of the corn-
laws, he might have answered, " We have repealed them:
as it has been done, why not stay as you are?"
He might have treated corn-law repeal as un
fist aceompli. The great problem which must sooner or later
be settled—which Sir ROBERT burns to settlehimself—which
till lately no one exactly saw Isis way to the settlement of—.
and which is now again, the ports not being opened, thrown
on the wide sea of futurity—would have been solved easily,
anti Sir ROBERT would have had a fresh start of power. But
the decision of the Cabinet has changed all this.
Mr. ConDEs, in his admirable speech at Birmingham, did
not overstate the care:—
" But far Sir R. Peet, what a critical moment in his fortune has
now passed. I say passed, for let him do the act at the end of this
month which he ought to have done ten days ago, still he will nut
he the same man he would have been had he done it then. There
is riot even a child in statesmanship that could not have then told
Sr It. Peel, • Now is the critical period of your political fortune—this
is the tide of your political life; if you take it at its flood, you goon to
such a fortune as no statesman ever attained in this country before!
but if you miss it—if you allow the flood to pass by you—you wid
prove to tha world that you have been all your life a pretender, ant
a mare h. ax on the credulity of your countrymen.—(Great
cluvring ) We have all been thinking, for some time past, tha
Peel was the man—not the coming man—but the come mart.—
(A laugh.) Everybody began to say, Peel is the man for a
practical statesman, to govern a practical people, and I have no
Lesitation in saying that if Sir R. Peel had taken the course I
have suggested, of boldly bearding the Iron Duke—(A laugh)—
and at once dismissing him and his tail from the Cabinet—l have
HO hesitation in saying, so far as Lancashire and Yorkshire are
to.icerned, he would have rallied around him the whole of the
mighty population of these counties as one man in his support.
We should have buried Whig and Tory from the moment we found
sir Robert Peel had abolished the corn-laws.—(Hear, hear.)"

And what will Sir ROBERT do now as to opening the ports
at Ale end of a month ? We may take for granted that they
o ill not be opened now. At the end of a month we shall
baby have prices that will open the ports to corn.
Nothing done now and the sliding-scale are to carry Sir
Lous:iiT through the crisis—so his colleagues have ruled;
awl the versatile Premier will now prepare to meet Parlia-
ment with an eulogy on the sliding-scale, and to oppose
corn-law repeal, against Mr. Escort, against Captain Rous,
egiinst L•rd ASHLEY, against " destiny ;" and we shall
Lave another cession of Parliamentary struggles, perhaps
g•encral election, before this great question reaches a
N• ie • 0* ious consummation.

a:tother

We trust the example of the Birmingham meeting, and
the advice of Mr VILLIERS and Mr. COBDEN, will not be
thrown away; and that from one end of the kingdom to the
other the Cabinet policy and the corn-laws will be denounced
at public meetings between this and the meeting of Par-
liament.

Our readers will have perused with mingled feelings of
horror and astonishment the details we have published of the
preliminary examination of sixteen prisoners before Mr.
BRODERIP, the Magistrate at the Thames Police-court, on a
charge of mutiny on the high seas. It is usually our course
to abstain from offering any remarks on cases that are still
pending, Sin those stages which immediately precede their
remission before the superior law courts of criminal jurisdic-
tion. Of course such abstinence is generally desirable, in order
that the case of the accused may be as little prejudiced
as possible by its being brought under the consideration of
the public in a garbled and incomplete state, as to the evi-
dence which must dually determine the fate of the charge.