The Sun.
London, England, 1829-01-07 00:00:00

SPITITT OF THE .LOND(VS

We believe that up to text night
.a Lard Lie-u-
-tenant of Nand had not- been appoin ed. ft
delays unlooked for by Ministere have occurred,
it is more a proof of gepd sense on the part of
those who shrink from an office which has been
rendered unnaturally formidable, than of tiloaz
by whom this new and repulsive character has
been affixed to it. There is no denying the.:
the successor of Lord Analesea will have an un-
enviable place. • The spirit which has dictated
that nobleman's dismissal is in itself a ground
of prejudice against any who may come after
Viceroy
him. If Lord Anglesea he exlted for libera-
lity, it announces that the next Viceroy must be
some degrees leas liberal ; and can the alarmed
fancy of the Irish Catholics be condemned, if it
anticipates in this retreat from kindness a recur-
rence to coercion at no distant day ? conjev.
tures, of course, are busy with regard to the
unknown individual. A determined anti-Ca-
tholic the Government will hardly choose for its
representative in Ireland at such a crisis; and
yet there are persons who pretend that the
Duke of Northumberland has been applied to
on the occasion. His Grace has always voted,
we believe, against the Catholics : we are ready,
however, to allow that in other points, front
his respectable and moderate character, as well
as from his great fortune and magnificent expen-
diture, he might not be, personally, an injudici-
ous choice.—Times.
It would seem to be pretty certain, that it is
not intended to appoint a successor to the
Marquis of Anglesea immediatelll upon the
surrender of the important trust, which he has
exercised with such high-minded independence.
In the first instance, his place will be supplied
by Lords Justices, and the routine usual in
such cases will not be departed from. Lord
John Beresford, the Primate of Ireland ; Sir
Anthony Hart, Lord Chancellor ; and Sir John
Byng, Commander of the Forces, will be the
temporary depositories of the Executive autho-
rity. The subject of the abolition of the Vice-
Regal office certainly has been much and
seriously canvassed. It is pretty well known
that the Leader of one of the platoons into
which our motley Cabinet is broken, has ex-
pressed himself strongly in favour of the abo-
lition. Recent events unhappily prove the prea
ponderance of the influence of the Right lie
nourable Gentleman alluded to ; and he further
claims on the subject in question, the weight due
to conviction, the result of a personal experience
of the inconvenience and embarrassment that are
inseparable from the collisions to which such a
state of things must inevitably give rise. We
?prebend that the advantage accruing to the
Irish capital from the semblance of i resident
Court (the only plausible argument in favour of
this Imperium in Imperio) have been most pre-
posterously overrated, and we are quite sure that
a most corrupt and iniquitous source of political
influence and prostitute patronage would receive
a mortal wound by the contemplated abolition ;
to say nothing of the advantage that must result
to the empire at large, from the removal of an
obstruction which impeded the course of public
measures in their legal and constitutional Awl.,
nets.---Morning Chronicle.

Though a declaration of hostility to the claim
of the Catholics be not a test of qualification for
office, and the Catholic question has ahvays been
left open, yet we do not exactly see that the
Marquis of Anglesea could with propriety have
written the letter to Dr. Curtis, had his recall
or reelanation not been fixed. That the Duke
of Wellington revealed to Dr. Curtis, an old
friend, his intention of not attempting tO settle
the Catholic Question this year, could hardly
justify the Irish- Viceroy in censuring the head
of the Ministry in a subsequent communication
to the same Prelate, because the liberty to retain
and declare his opinon allowed to every man in
office, cannot be extended to a liberty to censure
the acts of the Premier. The cue of Mr. Dawson
is not in point. Mr. Dawson is no doubt in office.,
and he delivered at Londonderry, on a memorable
occasion, a very different opinion on the Catlin-.
lie Question, from that which he was accustom..
ed to deliver ; but what gave importance to Air.
Dawson's speech was, the inferences drawn front
it, with respect to the policy of the Administra-
tion, and nut any arraignment of the policy of Ole
Ministry. We do not say that the letter of Lord.
Anglesea led to his recall ; belt we say that a re-
call, or a determination to resign, could alone
justify the letter. It is now alleged that the mo-
tive for recalling the, Noble Marquis was the im-
partiality shown by him in the discharge of the
vice-regal functions. He made no distinction
between Catholic and Protestant, and this was,
it seems, accounted in him a henry crime. The
Catholics must not be tempted to forget,, that
though they are tolerated, they are still looked on
with disfavour. The Protestants must be hacked,
to use the expressive word of the Archbishop of
j Dublin. The Duke of Wellington, it is said,
intends to combat his Parliamentary opponents
with the tactics from which he has already de-
rived his reputation as a politician. Words, he
says, break no bones, and when Opposition
Members are not answered, they will tire at last..
It is the answering which supplies constantly
matter for fresh speechifying. He cannot of course
restrain the independent part of his force, the
Lethbridges, Knatchbulls, Goodies, &c., but
as far as Treasury authority extends, his man-
dates will be obeyed. The business of Govern-
ment, he says, is to take money and to spend it,
and so long as enough is taken, and enough ie
spent, things must go on well. No speeches will
persuade men to vote contrary to their interests,
and their interests are found in the expenditure
of Government, and not in eontrouling it. Vice
must say that we feel inexpressible gratitude to
his Grace for consenting to hold the reins of
Government. We have hundreds of treaties on

the English Constitution, some of them, no
doubt, very ingenious ; but the Duke has fur•
nished a more intelligible readiiag than is to be
found in any of these treatises. He has divested.

the business of Government of all complexity',
and simplicity in machinery is always a pre-
sumption in favour of its excellence. No -Jar-
nish ; no mystification ; no long speeches of
common places; no attempts to daggle by flashe:4
of imagination, or to fill them with admiration of
the wisdom of that of which the merit is its am-
biguity or incomprehensibleness ! The raising
money and spending it, is the sum and substance
of governing ; those who receive the money re-
quire no arguments to persuade them to take it,
and to see that it continues to be raised.—lbid.
The world has seldom witnessed a more re-
markable instance of political indiscretion than
is furnished by the Marquis of Anglesea's letter
to Dr. Curtis. It is in vain to say that the Duke
of Wellington's letter to the same person led the
way. What induced the Duke to write is not
yet preciSely known. His writing at all was no:
the wisest act of his Grace's life, and so, by this
time, we suspect, he thinks it, But the Liu.ke'4

letter may be palliated,„ tp a certain extent at
least, on the score of private acquaintance, - and
on that of a wish to see how itailigiat act,
.as .a
feeler among the Catholic body ;
_whilso the Mar-
quis's, at least.to Our. conception, stands Wholly
inexcusableari act of Wilful indiscretion, to call
it no worse, quite without,at parallel. We quar-
rel with no man—least of all with men in public
stations—for an honest avowal of their public
opinions ; there is too much of hypocrisy and
truckling in the world,' not to render candour
and opennessdesirable ; but that which is right,
in its right place, may become diametrically op-
posite when out of place. That Lord.Anglesea s
views upon the Catholic question should be
known is highly desirable. A Viceroy of Ireland,
tongue-tied and silent upon public affairs, would
be an automaton, such as no high-minded
honourable man,- like Lord Anglesea,, would
consent to become ; but surely the King's repre-
sentative in Ireland might find some more pi oper
channel, through which to speak his mind upon
the Catholic question, than a Catholic Priest
(Prelate we ought to have said), and that one
who had just shown such a remarkable instance
of holding no faith with heretics by the publica-
tion of the Duke of Wellington's private letter
to him, and for which he now gives the world
this shallow excuse, that, the Duke's autograph
having been seen at the Post-office, the world
had of necessity a right to know what the letter
contained. No—such a man, however high
and respectable his station, was not a proper cor-
respondent for the King's. representative, as
such. If Lord Anglesea feels—as we have no
doubt he honestly feels—the conviction set forth
in his letter, the Government at home was the.
channel through which he should have made it
known, and his place in Parliament that wherein
he should have enlarged upon it. We want no
Letter or stronger confirmation of the view we
take of the Marquis's letter, than the rapture
with which it is received by the Leaders of the
Association ; and the Marquis may take our
word for it that that which Mr. O'Connell pro-
poses shall be framed and glazed, and hung up
in the Corn Exchange Parliament, ought never
to have been written. This is to be " damned
to fame" in a way from which the Marquis's
better judgment must, we should imagine by this
time, recoil. But there is another reason, upon the
face of the letter itself, why it ought not to
have been addressed to the person who has
received it. The Marquis tells Dr. Curtis that
" he (the Marquis) did not know the precise
sentiments of the Duke of Welling-ton upon
the present state of the Catholic question."
Surely then it behoved his Lordship to commu-
nicate with the Duke first, and not with a Ca-
tholic Bishop. The Marquis had some reason
to complain that the Duke had chosen the Doc-
tor for his correspondent ; and the Duke of the
Marquis, that the latter should for once have
followed so questionable an example. The very
avowal that the head of the King's Government
in Ireland is not in the confidence of the Go-
vernment at home, is an avowal which should
not have been made till the more obvious means
had been tried of obtaining that knowledge.
As letting them into a little of the arcane of
Government, the hunters after State secrets, as
well, perhaps, as the public in general, will not
be a little obliged to the Marquis of Anglesea.
On the other hand, if his Lordship wished to
!show the world the utter inutility of his office,
,arid the ease, if not the advantage to the coun-
try, with which it could be spared, he has effec-
tually done so, in showing that it is looked
upon, even in his person, as one of Yr:ere State
pageantry, to which State confidence on a most
vital question is not confided.—Morn. Herald.
It does not, appear to be yet settled whether
the Marquis of Anglesea was recalled from the
Government of Ireland, or whether he volun-
tarily resigned it—whether the letter of the Duke
of Wellington to Dr. Curtis was felt by the
Noble Marquis as an insult, and caused his re-
signation, or whether the letter of the latter,
commenting on that of the Duke of Wellington,
occasioned his recall ; and we have no means of
solving the difficulty ; but we believe that every
reliance may be placed on the statement which
we gave yesterday, respecting a Messenger with
the Marquis of •Anglesea's resignation, and an-
other, the bearer of his recall, having passed
one another on the road between Holyhead and
the metropolis ; and if such be the fact, it
follows as a matter of course that the blame of
the vacancy which has occurred is pretty fairly
portioned out between them. The question,
however, either of the recall or the resignation,
is one of altogether minor importance, when
compared with the still greater question of what
shall be done with Ireland. And here, while
we readily agree with the Marquis of Anglesea,
that the important question of Catholic Eman-
cipation cannot be too speedily settled, we
must also express our concurrence in the
sentiments of the Duke of Wellington, that
there is no possibility of settling it while
the opponents and advocates of the mea-
sure continue to persecute, to harass, and to
belabour one another, with such extreme vio-
lence as they have lately exhibited. A measure
Alf so great importance as that of the admission
of Roman Catholics to a full share in the
rights and privileges of the British Constitution,
cannot be satisfactorily settled by men whose
minds are governed by passion—who view the
conduct of their opponents through a distorted
medium, and instead of making allowances for
the prejudices and feelings of one another, are
only anxious to hunt down every one who may
have the hardihood to dissent from them in the
.6ig,litest particular. On this subject the opinions
of the Marquis of Anglesea and the Duke of
Wellington are much less at variance with one
another than might at first sight be imagined ;
and, as is observed by an Evening cotemporary,
while both blame the violence both of Catholics
and of Brunswickers, they agree in the main
question of the great benefit which would result
from a settlement of the question at issue,
and only differ as to the time. The Duke says,
and we think says truly, that it cannot be sates •
factorily settled, while such heats and animosities
continue between the opposing parties, and that
if these could be buried for a time in oblivion,
something of a permanent nature might be done
the Marquis, on the other hand, considers the
question of such infinite and overwhelming im-
portance, that no time ought to be lost in
settling it, whatever amount of opposition the
Duke might have to encounter, and that
any, attempt to bury it in oblivion would be
taken advantage of by the enemies of Emanci-
pation, and used as an argument that it ought
never to be granted. l3oth, in fact, are in favour
of Emancipation ; and if the Marquis of Angle-
sea has resigned on account of the sentiments
contained in the Duke's letter, his resignation,
we think, can scarcely be freed from the charge
of rashness. It was not certainly very respeetTul
on the part of his Grace to lay his sentients on
the Catholic Question before in-