The Sun.
London, England, 1827-08-10 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

e have the important intelligence this day to
communicate, that Lord Goderich has been di-
rected-by his Majesty—we ought not to say. L.)
form a new Administration, but—to supply, as
much as may be out of the existing members, the
toss of the departed Minister and Premier. The
despatch which has been here shown, evinces a
proper sense of the exigencies, not only of the
British empire, but of all Europe ; for the career
of public events, the affairs of Greece, and of
Portugal, will not wait for a directing hand—
they press onward, and though no one may pos-
sess vigour to guide their course with absolute
precision, yet even moderate powers may be able
to bend and bias it towards a happy result. We
suppose it will not now be debated, Who is to be
the Chief of the Ministry of which Lord Gode-
rich is to have the formation. No external
person ought to- doubt,. or can doubt,
whether a wise choice has been made, when
those who are alone affected by it in their
relative positions—namely, those within the
Ministry—acquiesce with pleasure in its pro-
priety. Indeed, his Lordship neither sought
the distinction, nor was it courted by his
colleagues. The choice has fallen upon him,
because, amongst worthy men, it must fall
somewhere; and it rather imposes a task which
all would avoid, than confers a distinction which.
any might envy. The persons out of the Mi-
nistry stand in a different light. 'We will not
say that they are passed by : his Majesty has not
come to them yet ! And as many others, of a
different feature in politics from them, might,
even after Lord Goderich, catch his eye or ar-
rest his attention, he grill probably never reach
their files. With respect to the admission of
gr. Peel into Administration, it is curious that
the professions which were thought to do him
credit at the time of Mr. Canning's elevation,
now seem to operate for his exclusion. It was
no personal objection to Mr. Canning that pre-
vented his accepting a subordinate post in the
Administration of which that gentleman was the
chief. What, then, was the objection ? We
might almost quote the whole of his speech on
Mr. Canning's acceptance of the Premiership ;
but the tenour of it is this—that all that in-
fluence and power which belonged (and most
properly belonged) to the office of Prime
Minister, was transferred to a zealous friend
of that measure of which himself had al-
ways been the equally zealous opponent.—But,
without arguing further upon a mere personal
question, we put it, not only to the inhabitants
of England, but to the whole enlightened world,
whether it would not have been one of the most
preposterous things ever heard of in the admini-
stration of public affairs, to have selected, on the
instant of Mr. Canning's death, a Ministry which
should hare suddenly inverted the whole system
of which he was the author, and which, under
his guidance, was beginning to work well and
easily. Such an event would have given a shock
to Europe—would have rendered all nations
distrustful of our policy, and uneonfiding in our
measures. It is said in private life, when a man
has asserted that which is unfounded, and
which he cannot avouch, that " he has
been made to eat his words ;" but in the
case which is here supposed, monstrous as
the thing may seem, we should have bee it
made to eat up our system, and that not only
before its fallacy was proved ; but when, on the
;!ontrary, all the official returns of import and
export, and all the cordial returns of gratitude
and affection were beginning to evince its utility
at home, and its beneficial effect upon foreign.
States. What a lamentable thing it would be if
our ports were now to be again hermetically
sealed against foreign manufactures, on pretence
of protecting our native artisans, who are actually
beginning to thrive by competition ; and whom a
great statesman should force not to fear
rivalry, but to face and tower over it ! And
what a cruelty, if our harbours were now
again to be shut against foreign Corn,
on the plea of securing high prices to
the native grower ; as if unemployed manu-
facturers could give high prices ; or as if money,
idc,horpreiocueldistion,,,iadteo,
itwsesrheotrhees
fiswlahn
tproduct
e or i
of
lt h oe
but by unrestricted commerce ! The effect of
such measures would be. to place us under the
ban of civilized Europe, and to make our nation
retrograde, while all the other States were im-
proving and progressive. We have said above,
that Mr. Canning was the author of the liberal
system of policy, the continuance of which depends
upon the Administration now filling up. It is
Very true that that system was adopted by Lord
Liverpool long before Mr. Canning was Prime
Minister. But whilst its success was doubtful,
—whilst the measures introduced seemed to
press upon the various interests, to which there
was the promise held out of ultimate advantages,
he and Mr. Huskisson bore the odium of the
experiments. Lord Liverpool was excused as
being their dupe. Those advantages are now
felt ; and we are convinced that it will be more
easy to carry these on to their full developement,
than to bring back and re-establish the old
system, in opposition to the rising hopes and
improving intelligence of mankind.— Times.
The King has commanded that Mr. Canning
shall have a public funeral; and on this day
leek his remains will be buried in Westminster
Abbey, between Mr. Fox and Mr. Pitt. The
interview between his Majesty and the Marquis
of Lansdowne is said to have been very affecting ;
and, we understand, that his Majesty, on that
occasion, expressed it as his wish that no nomi-
nation whatever should take place'until after the
funeral. The uncertainty of life is the constant
theme of the Divine and.the Moralist ; and few
are the individuals who are not reminded by the
loss of dearest connections and friends, of the
fragility of the tenure ,by which we hold our
being. Yet, frequently as this lesson is im-
pressed on us, and useful as it may be,to men
unmersed in worldly pursuits, to be withdrawra
from them for a time, to the considerations which
it is calculated to suggest, it is with difficulty we
reconcile ourselves to the decree, which hurries
rapidly from the scene the arbiter of the destinies
of nations, in the midst of his beneficent and
comprehensive schemes for the advancement of
the welfare of his country and of mankind, in
the maturity of his talents, and long before the
perm • d which the course of nature, and the ori-
ginal vigour of his frame, appeared to assign to
his life. We do not recollect having ever seen
concern for the loss of any individual so univer-
, sally expressed. The belief pervaded men in
every situation, that if his life had been spared,
it would have been devoted to the furtherance of
the policy, foreign and domestic, on which the
Cabinet has for some time acted, and which
may
he said co have commenced with his entrance
into the Cabinet on the death of LOrd London-
derry. Along with the fieling.of grief for the
loss of this popular Statesnian, is mixed up ConL.
iit)erable anxiety with regard to the future. As
vicissitude and nit stability seems to be .emble,

matic of every thing here below, people are not 1
without apprehension that the tranquillity which
the nation has so long enjoyed may be succeeded
by the prevalence of animosity and rancour
among the different classes of the community. We
have enjoyed a repose of several years—a repose
which has been favourable to the development of
many improvements, and how few are the periods
in our annals in which the Government and
the people have not been in fierce col-
lision ! And yet alittle reflection might, we think,
be sufficient to dispel this uneasiness. His Ma-
jesty is neither an inattentive nor an inaccurate
observer of what is passing in the world ; and
the causes of the satisfaction of his own subjects,
and of the respect manifested by the people in
every part of the world for his Government, can
no more have escaped him, than he can have for-
gotten the signs of the times which preceded the
present. It would be to libel the Sovereign to
uppose that he could wish to see his Govern-
ment deviate from the course which it has held
with so much advantage to the nation and lustre
to the throne ; and, therefore, so long as his
:Majesty's life is spared to us, we may rely on
the continuance of the present system. All the
men of any talent or reputation in the late Ad-
ministration, with the illustrious exception of the
departed Premier, are still in the service of his
Majesty ; find it is idle to suppose that the So-
vereign would hazard his own peace of mind, and
the well-being of the country, by the withdrawal
of his confidence from men who have been tried,
and not found wanting, to bestow it on men who
with all their exaggerated notions of self-impor-
tance, durst not dare to hold the reins of Govern-
ment themselves, and were thus forced to pro-
110111Ce their own condemnation, whom it would
be impossible for the country ever to respect or
to held in regard. No ! regard for his people,
respect for the memory of the highly accom-
plished Staegolan, who reflected such lustre on
his Councils, the anticipation of
.the calamities
which would. inevitably result from governing in
oosition to the inclZgtions, and without the
approbationp of the great bod,u of the nation, will
prevent our enlightened and ami,"ble Sovereign
from meditating even for a moment, substi-
tution to the present Ministers, of men chai":,c-
terised by narrow-mindedness and incapacity, by
hatred of every thing truly deserving of respect
and regard—who look with an evil eye on all
that has been productive of so much good and
so much satisfaction of late years—and who
would seek to punish the people, as well for their
satisfaction with that on which they themselves
have looked on with so evil an eye, as for the
:contempt which imbecility in authority could
not fail to excite. Of course, any thing like an
amalgamation of the present Administration and
the Outs, is impossible. When the late puri-
fication took place, the dross alone was thrown
out, and with the men of kindred views of the
late Administration and the Whigs, no part of
the Outs can coalesce.—Morning Chronicle.

It has become the custom of late years, and
one in bringing about which the Press has had
but too large a share, to view events, from the
highest to the lowest, through a false and mag-
nified medium ; so that, instead of viewing and
treating things as they are, w.e may be said to
be living actors in a perpetual drams, or in a
state, at least, of fiditious society. In further-
ance of this, new names ai:d epithets are bestow-
ed upon the commonest ocClirrences ; a crowd
is called " an assembled multittici; ;"—a break-
fast
or dinner is described as " a sumptuous
banquet ;"—if an actor obtain a decent staiT of
attention, it is call " intense interest ;"—and
even the funeral train at an Irish wake, is desig-
nated as " the melancholy group." Minor af-
fairs being thus thrust from their proper level,
those of more importance have a still higher
tone of hyperbole assigned them ; every hew
event is described as " the most striking
and extraordinary that ever happened," and
the stores of language are ransacked, to
the very confines of the ridiculous and of
bad taste, to give an air of unparalleled
importance to what truth and reflection in
the end bring down to a very different level. Of
this description are the comments which are now
issuing from a part of the Press on the death of
iMr. Canning—an event which these writers
would have us believe lays prostrate the Consti-
tution and liberties of the country, and was never
,equalled in importance by any thing which has
hapl;ned in our own or past times. It is with
no view of throwing the slightest slur upon Mr.
Canning's memory, or of undervaluing the true
importance of his life or death, that we declare
that we approach such diatribes with disgust.
At any time, and under any circumstances, ;the
loss o' splendid talents to the 'world must be an
object of regret ; and in our time, when stoes-
m inlike qualities are unfortunately so rare, such
talents can be the :ass spared. But qualities of
the mind, however apparently dazzling and splen-
did, can only be fairly judged of by their utility.
Mr. Canning's public life, like that of other men,
suust be tried by this criterion. In the ample
uscrnoir which we published of him yesterday,
we have shown, we trust, no disposition to de-
preciate
either his talents or his services—but
truth compels us at the same time to declare,
that much of"Oeir utility was, of late especially,
neutralised, if not destroyed, by the too frequent
want of that presiciiN quality which the Roman
Poet tells us brings it:: it, the presence of most
others. Discretion, the quality which we allude to,
is rarely the attribute of ardent minds, and seems
at no period of Mr. Canning's public life to have
been the accompaniment of his genius. We will
not advert, as we might do, to numerous in-
stances illustrating this, but content ourselves by
remarking that this very circumstance led to, and
should have prevented the last error of Mr. Can-
ning's life—we mean his ambition to attain the
nominal head of the Government, when he was
in virtual possession of the fame attached to it,'
both in the eyes of Europe and at home. -If
_report speak truly, Mr. Canning, in some of his
*weak habits, exhibited the same want of pm-
„knee, and thus accelerated an event which die-
cretiL N 1 might have averted. The inevitable state
of his I:sealth for some time (for some years, we
might say ,\ past, seems to have been apparent to
all but to hi:it-self; and therefore, when, among
the other ficti.lra of the day, we see it stated
that Mr. Canning' fell a martyr to the calumnies
of the Press, we feet hound tf) repel so evident
an untruth, though in no way afecting ourselves.
Though opposed to the !atter part of Mr. Can-
ning spublic career, we have not publisii4ld cue
word in personal anger, or which, " dying, we
would wish to blot-;" and though part of the
Press may have expressed itself more strongly, it
surely cannot he laid to its charge that it has
done so wantonly or without provoCation, or
that even Mr. Canning himself has not iz't the
example of warmth, of language, which it
be difficult for any writer to surpass. Even in
announcing his decease, one of his admirers
could not refrain from loading his colleagues in
:he late Ministry with the mint opprobrious epi.

:bets; and the terms " monsters in human
'orrn ," " titled ruffians," " mean and vindictive

nen," are applied to persons of the highest rank
tricl most amiable manners in the state. It is a

common saying, that " bard words break no
bones," and though they are better abstained
from on all occasions, we do not believe that

they have had any such effect as is imputed to
them. The seeds of Mr. Canning's dissolution
were evidently sown long before any such terms
of censure had reached him ; and though we
could wish that all parties had abstained from
every appearance of rancour, yet it must be clear
that it had no effect on the one hand, in produc-
ing the result imputed to it ; while, on the other,
it has been met, if not provoked, by a much
greater share of the same quality on the part of
those who now complain of it, and who, in ut-
tering their complaints, indulge still more largely
in the practice which they condemn. Whatever
change Mr. Canning's death may produce in
the Ministry, will, we trust, be speedily deter-
mined upon, if it is not in fact done already.
We do not believe that any attempt to form an
exclusively Whig Government can succeed ; on
the contrary, we feel persuaded that an Admi-
nistration which comprised the Duke of Wel-
lington, Mr. Huskisson, Lord Goderich, and
Mr. Peel, among its members, would be most
likely to enjoy the confidence and approbation
of the country.—Morning Herald.
The actual condition of the Ministry, now
that the effect of the shock given to the nation
by the sudden decease of Mr. Canning is
abated, begins to occupy all minds, and a thou-
sand conflicting rumours and speculations are
afloat as to the mode in which the Administra-
tion is most likely to be, or may be best remo-
delled. The conjectures of individuals upon
such an occasion, where the facts upon which
conjecture should be built are so scanty, can be
considered in hardly any other light than as an
intimation of their wishes ; but even in this
point of view it would be well worth while, if it
were possible by any means, to ascertain the re-
lative degree of prevalence which belongs at the
present moment to each, in order thereby to
correct or confirm our previous impressions as to
the state of the national mind. We have often
eiTressed our conviction that the loyal and in-
telligeti± part of the community are dissatisfied
with the constitution of the present Ministry ;
that the principle of union which holds its mem-
bers together is obscure, unintelligible, and sus-
picious to the nation at large ; that the myste-
rious nature of their connexion is repugnant to
the frank and manly spirit of the country, and
alien to that temper of straight-forward and tm-
bending integrity upon which all ranks and
classes of Englishmen pride themselves as one
of their peculiar characteristics. Nor have the
busy rumours and the fervent aspirations which
we hourly hear at this critical period failed to
strengthen very considerably our antecedent con-
victions. We venture, without the least hesitation,
to say, that the general and earnest wish of the
country at the present moment is for the forma-
tion of a Cabinet in which the superiority of in-
fluence, as well as the numerical majority, may
be devoted to the maintenance of the Protestant
Ascendancy. This is the cardinal point to which
the nation looks ; for after all the efforts of flat-
tery and of vituperation to exalt some and to'de-
preciate others, have been exhausted, the nation
has the good sense and candour to perceive and
acknowledge, that among the Statesmen now
living, and qualified for seats in the Cabinet of
the King, there is really no very considerable
disparity in any other of the essential qualifica-
tions for office—that they are all, without excep-
tion, upon a high level in respect to talent, to
personal integrity, to patriotic zeal. The
Pro-
testant Ascendancy is the one thing needful ; it
must he the key-stone of any Administration
which can satisfy the country ; it is the only na-
tional interest which manly appears to he exposed
to danger, however the Ministry may be formed.
We are not now disposed to argue the merits, or
any part of the merits, of the Catholic Question ;
they have been already argued too often, and the
nation has too fully made up its mind upon the
subject, for this to be requisite. We are entitled
to refer to the national sentiment as a fact esta-
blished and ineontestible, since it has been made
the apology of a Cabinet consisting almost
exclusively of Catholic advocates, for attempt-
ing nothing to advance the Catholic Claims.
It would, however, he a great error to sup-
pose that the opponents of the Catholic
Claims, although they form an iinmense ma-
jority .of the nation, are the only persons who
now wish to see an Administration constituted
upon the principle of securing the Protestant
Ascendancy. All who are zealously attached to
the interests of the British Monarchy, and whose
perceptionsi are izot in some degree clouded by
being enlisted as active. partizans to the Catholic
cause, would wish to see the religning Sovereign
rescued from the position in which he now stgeds
naked and exposed, as the obstacle, personally
and individually the obstacle, to its complete suc-
cess. The friends of the British Monarchy feel
that this is a position in which the King of Eng-
land ought not to stand towards any considerable
portion of his subjects—the ostensible cause of
our disappointment—the prominent mark for
their resentment. The friends of the British
Monarchy fear that this is a position in which
the King of England cannot constitutionally
stand towards the majority of his responsible ad-
visers. What, it is naturally asked, becomes in
this case of Ministerial responsibility ? Happen
what may, is not the King bound to shield-the
Ministers whom he has confessedly obstructed ?
Let us have a rebellion in Ireland with Lord
Lansdowne as Prime Minister, and who does
not see that it would be impossible to attach ef-
fective responsibility to Lord Lansdowne ?
Where then, in popular estimation, Avould the
responsibility rest ? Certainly where it ought
not to rest. With an Administration, the in-
fluential members of which concurred in opinion
with the King and the nation upon this para-
mount question, the same dangerous anomaly
would not exist. The moral and the constitu-
tional responsibility would then be, as they ought
to be—united.----Morning Post.

The greater number of our contemporaries,
with a haste commensurate to their wishes rather
than to the necessity of the case, have been
amusing their readers with the arrangements
which may be expected in consequence of that
decease which we shall long hare to lament.
We will not so far insult the understanding of
our readers as to reply to announcements which
have not awn a plausible conjecture to rest upon.
All the facts which, by the remotest analogy, can
be supposed to bear on the question of a future
Ministry, we communicattid'yg4tersiay. Laying
aside, .however, all conjecture of what ,v);11 be
done, we mar, without impropriety, from the
known materials otO of which the Sovereign has
to aPose, say what Inv be done. The late
Cabinet consisted of two parts, of which Mr.
Cctnning and -his private friends. constituted the
; -