The Sun.
London, England, 1829-04-06 00:00:00

The great lacy of religious liberty—the Magna Charta
of 1829 e—has arrived at yet another stage of its triumphant
, Course .. all the artifices employed to disturb that course—
end they were numerous, and some of them flagitious—
; ,have. been defeated. King and people have been alike
abused : his Mijesty's confidence, and the prejudices of
'his subjects, have been basely tampered with. Numbers
. have keen enlisted against property, bigotry against cha-
. pity; ignollnte, against knowledge, obsolete and chimerical
`ilakrnlA igainst emergencies pressing, immediate, and irre-
; Aitible ; ' the worst extravagancies, of the coarsest and
most sweeping jacohinism, have been set in array against
1 .every.soned maxim of right and justice familiar to the
. "Conititution of England ; and to what end, ive ask, has
• so much iniquity been mixed with so much effrontery,
by " tho*t who worked the mechanism of the anti-
Catholic
multiplied debates have had an effect precisely opposite
.that is that Which was proposed by their authors,—
Binlotus accession to the votes in favour of the
hue
tte
..... growri out of every new comparison between
r
• Seeohey made in support.bf that measure, and in hos-
ty to it, as the contest was continued in either House
. tif Parliament ; so that the majority in the House of
Commons, instead of 100, which seemed to be the limit
of the highest expectation at the first introduction of the
till; swelled to upwards of 180 ; and that in the Lords,
Which was estimated, no longer than ten days ago by the
friends of Ministers, at 50 or 60, amounted, on the se-
: eond reading laet Saturday evening, to no less than one
' Hundred and five ! Such, in conformity with those sa-
'Vary laws of which the origin may not be always mani-
fast, though it is, we apprehend, always active, which
ltrect and regulate the affairs of men, has been the benefit
reaped by truth, from seeds of which her enemies were
the sowers; and suph the punishment inflicted en fac-
tion by its own wiles and machinations ! Of the speeches
delivered in the course of this debate of three days'
duration in the House of Lords, we will commit ourselves
rely to the assertion, that there was not one made against
the Bill, which—whatever its merits might be as an ab-
stract diesertation—contained a single argument, or gave
in evidence a solitary fact, which ought to have gained
the extent of any practical statesman. It is proper to ac-
knowledge the merit, as compositions, of some of those
Which were pronounced by the heads of the Church, more
-especially hy the Primate of Ireland and the Bishop of
Durham against the measure. The Bishop of Ox-
ford's, in favour of it, was fraught with powerful
reasoning. Amongst the lay Lords, after the opening
of the Duke of Wellington, which we have already
glanced at, Lord Lansdowne's quick and vigorous reply
`the 'Lord Chancellor's luminous and energetic expo-
sition of the state-necessity, which constituted the real wis-
, dorn of the measure—Lord Grey's fine constitutional argu-
ment--and Lord Plunkett's masterly annihilation of Lord
;Eldon followed by a deep, full, concise, and most im-
:Passive concluding speech, in self-defence, by the Duke
Alr Wellington, will long be read and dwelt upon by readers
:of Parliamentary history with pride and gratification, as
PreKnant with political instruction. The desperate and
4YlliteffOrt of Lord Eldon to move, by his mystic alto-
llions to the coronation-oath, the unshaken mind of an il-
itrioua personage, will meet with just the notice and re-
!Peet which it so obviously merits.— Times.
... '
_*-e believe few people were prepared for such an over-
-.lehelming nutiOrity as that by which the second reading
-of the Catholic Relief Bill -was.carried on Saturday night.
The highest niimber anticipated, even in quarters likely to
be well informed, Was 60 or 70. A majority of 105, in
li total of 129; annihilates at once the hopes of those who
',, Itceived that, they would be countenanced in their ap-
e to the ignorance and prejudices of the people, by the
Ill..teligth of the opposition to the measure of Ministers in
:the House of Lords. The cry was, Dissolve the Parlia-
Aleut ; but they must now cry also, Annihilate the House
Pt' Lords. What a state we must be in, if Parliament
17,41pathise so little with the country that votes of two to
°lle, in both Rows, are not to be considered indicative of
the sense of the nation ! When we see this great majority
in both HOuses--and when, on the other hand, we look
to the arguments urged in opposition to the measure—the
narrow ground taken by the Bishops, with whom the se-
curity and prosperity of the empire, and the happiness of
five or six millions of human beings, were not deemed of
sufficient moment to be even taken into consideration—the
pitiful cavilling of the Judicial faction respecting clauses
in Bills and Treaties of Union, and the intention with
which certain oaths were prescribed, as if the means
were to be preferred to the end, the welfare of the nation,
:the miserable arguments ad hominem of another class of
oPponents, as if tke peeving that the Lord Chancellor and
kr. Peel had formerly held opinions different from those
.they now professed, were sufficient reasons for refusing
, latent to a measure, the' necessity of which could not be
ii
denied. When we discover this poverty of mind—this
htek of all Statesman-like views in the opposers of the mea-
- sure---where a prOud array of talent was enlisted in sup-
... Port of it--and when we reflect upon the important de-
, claration with which the Duke of Wellington closed
the debate on Saturday night, we hardly know what
to think of the circumstances by which the fate of nations
:is determined. " When my colleagues and myself,"
Peid his Grace, " determined to adopt this measure, we did
to With a determination to sacrifice ourselves and our popu-
my to the duty which we owe to our Sovereign and to the
t°,lmtry at large. We knew very well, that if we had
eiileen to, put ourselves at the head of the Protestant cry
"4 'No Popery,' we should have become much more po-
Pldar than those who have raised the cry of ' No Popery'
egainst us. But we felt that in doing so we should leave
danburtben,,by which it must ultimately have been borne
~,,/vn •• and further, that we should deserve the hate and
—eel-Ilion of the country (cheers). '1 he Noble Earl on
the erawbench (Lord Falmouth, we believe) has alluded
rertkularly to me, and has mentioned the services which
must..lood enough to say I rendered to the country. I
13;vgolodtbe Noble' Earl that I performed these services
m*pute and under bad repute, and that I was
neverdeterred, iom doing my duty because the cry of the
country happened to be against me at the time " Is it
true, then, that by adopting the course pursued by an Oppo-
sition, in both Houses, less distinguished for ability than
i,u_Y Opposition since the Revolution,--so little distinguished
L%Weed, that the accession of a visionary enthusiast from
eads, whose imagination had greatly the better of h;s
dgment, was hailed as an acquisition of the first import-
tbee ;—.is it true, that by adopting the course so lamely
4 Vomited, and so little capable of being otherwise than
illarely advocated, his Grace would have been, even for a
,_r:
.9e; more popular than he is ? It is a humiliating con-
1111_, sion ; but we fear, that had he been wicked and unprin-
,9'Pled, he would have been for a time more popular. The
-71 y admiration which is entertained by all sensible and
t,tf eating people of the conduct of his Grace throughout
%tie business is in a great measure au admission of the
Path of the position, that, by adopting a policy calcu-
lated to perpetuate the miseries of one part of the United
,_•‘lagdom, and to endanger the safety of the whole, he
2111 d have been more popular ; for, we do not lavish
7loiration on success in that which is easy, but success
_'° that which is difficult, and the admiration here is
:11 ded on a persuasion that he has overcome difficulties
111 ch no other man could have surmounted. With the
pi°:_estY peculiar to great minds, he has endeavoured to ex-
,vtl.o away the merit of his achievement. The popularity
r WI I rejected (he says) would not have been lasting.
then
have been boin down ultimately by the bur.
p°ell it would have left, and I should have deserved the
~and execration of the country. In short, he merely
ti:hee to have it thought that he preferred future good
6Present temptation. But how few have courage to
),711 their y ularit for eventual good ! And how
ii.
.11nY are deterred from attempting the public good at the
th7tl of their own popularity, by the consideration that
1, themselvee may fall a sacrifice in the attempt, and
,tt-llt
in
in languagethe of one of our best historians, failure
by r
hereproach of History, too often the
celave of Fortune." We confess we think not the
to
uttuighly of the merit of his Grace, that he himself seems
Awe dervalue it. He has nobly succeeded—he might have
eon (1., The intrigues of that hoary opponent, who, in the
I,oe, of his long life, never entertained one thought
tai‘, bad .not, directly, or indirectly, self for its object,
aiir,t bave defeated his magnanimous attempt; and history
s4C't then have been the slave of the crafty old man, who,
nka.°oll4lding the trumpet of a resistance so factious as a1(719.411-itditioua,
(719.411-itditioua, would, if success had corresponded to