The Sun.
London, England, 1829-01-14 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF TEE ►_ONDON .101711NAI.S.

If, as we cordially wish, the. Duke of Wel-
lington's political character is to pass with pos.
terity for direct and undesi,ning, the evidence
for ceding to him such a reputation must be pu-
rifled from much, to which, on a transient view,
a diKrent effect might be ascribed. When his
Grace first entered upon office, he found it ne•
cessary to propitiate the public mind of Eng-
land by displaying the liberal colours of a Can-
ning Government, pretty largely mingled with
his own and with those of his Tory adherents.
We make this assertion not unadvisedly, 'be-
cause it is notorious that the Duke of Welling-
ton, so far from openly seeking at the outset to.
displace the coadjutors of the deceased Prime
Minister from his Cabinet, besought them to re-
tain the departments which they already held ;
nor were these of a trifling nature. The Foreign
Affairs and the Colonies—the two most impor-
tant (save only the Treasury) in the whole Admini-

sivtirra. Ilusks O e,ti
n oLdtiiiletneldenbyoLf
coierdeiDdetdidalehyi'l,iatyndaibu,e;
usefulness. The office of President of the Board' of
e
Trade was filled by Mr. Grant, a man of liberal
views and extensive information. The Duke of
Clarence, appointed, with the King's concur-
rence, by Mr. Canning, was left at the head of
the Marine. Lord Anglesea, elected also by
Mr. Canning for the Lord Lieutenancy of Ire-
land, though not formally inducted until after
the decease of that Statesman, proceeded to his
Irish Government almost simultaneously with
the Duke of Wellington's accession to that of
England. Such, then, was the infant aspect of
the Wellington Cabinet, bearing a mixed resem-
blance to both its parents—to the dead Liberal
and to the surviving Tory. As the child grew,
however, the complexion betrayed a mournful
change ; for a negro bantling will show at its
birth no more than a slight shade of dinginess,
not blackening thoroughly but with time and
exposure. The truth seems to be, that the
country was not ripe at once for the endurance
of a complete expulsion from power of all men
professing those liberal principles which had re-
commended them to Mr. Canning's partnership,
and the early promise and development of which
had diffused real gladness over the empire. 'it
was, therefore, obvious to any comnon obser-
ver—even to one who looked at things through
a Tory medium—that there might be danger
in too sudden and violent a revulsion ; a dex-
terous manceuvrer might easily flatter himself
that circumstances, after the Government should
begin to work, would ere long enable him
to elbow his uncongenial associates off the,
stools on which, for temporary convenience, -he
had seated them ; and so it happened. No
Tory or Servile has been disturbed by the Duke
of Wellington, and every Liberal has been, by
some movement or other, ousted. Every trace
of Mr. Canning, on both sides of the water, has
been, with curious diligence, swept away. Lord
Dudley has been displaced : the navy has been
' once more borough-logged by Lord Melville ;
new job-master-general has been provided for the
Ordnance; and Lord Anglesea, from no ade-
quate reason but his demonstrating the manly
determination to think for himself and to rule
the people of Ireland through their grateful and
kind affections, is now the last sacrifice to the
half-Tory, half-military jealousy of every man
who dares to hold passive obedience in con-
tempt, and to value at their native worth the
confidence and attachment of a gallant people.
That the general, the systematic motive, how-
ever, for Lord Anglesea's recall, should be
frankly acknowledged, he must be an ignoramus
who expects. Even those minute and Petty
circumstances which were made the studied and
progressive steps towards a quarrel previously
resolved upon, will be denied with stout pertinacity,
and with a certain sort of impunity, by those olio
have it always: in their power to suppress the
evidence by a refusal of papers. It therefore
cannot be made public officially, whatever moral
conviction may exist upon the subject, whether
or no some points were urged upon the Lord
Lieutenant of Ireland, which his political ho-
nesty would not suffer him to_yield, and others
at which his pride and high spirit as a gentleman
revolted. There will, 'undoubtedly, be no ma-
terials furnished from the official archives, for
ascertaining what was the name of a lady, or
what the amount of Irish pension demanded for
her, by peremptory and supercilious letters front
England ; which lady was riot deemed by the
Government of Lord Anglesea to have per-
formed any meritorious services, and which pen-
sion was therefore by his Lordship conscienti-
ously refused. Nor will the tactics of Downing-
street admit of the production Of any corre-
spondence between a meddling chief on this side
the water, and the no less proud but more dig-
nified representative of his Majesty on the other,
the subject of which is reported to have been an
interdiction of all acquaintance between the gal-
lant Marquis and the most popular member of
the Irish peerage, from whom the Lord
Lieutenant had been in the habit of obtain-
ing highly useful knowledge upon the state of
the country which he was deputed nominally to
govern. It will we apprehend, be with. equal
repugnance that Ministers are likely to hear
questions asked as to any intrusive remon-
stances of theirs against a sovial visit to the pro-
hibited house of Lord Cloncurry by the Lord
Lieutenant and Lord Chancellor. Bow could
persons of their high rank answer to such en-
croachments upon their personal free agency,
but in terms of cool and haughty protestation
against the forwardness of the unlicenced in-
truder? So, with regard to Mr. O'Gorman
Mahon, when the law-officers of the Crown de-
clared their inability to punish that gentleman
further titan by depriving him of his commis-
sion of the peace, the Government will hardly
bear witness to its own reasonableness, in cen-
suring Lord Anglesea for his forbearance to-
wards the deprived county Magistrate ; nor do
we care whether such official testimony is with-
held or not. The correspondence above-men-
tioned may have preceded the recall, but the re- '
call was not the fruit of the correspondence.
The London letter-writer tray have been que-
rulous and troublesome, the Dublin one haughty
and unbending; still we say that Lord Angle-
sea's crime was his frank, conciliatory, and po-
pular heariw,. Pie was too much identified
with the conquered and stranger nation : lie be-
longed too little to the faction which held that
nation in abhorrence, and was abhorred by it,
" For God's sake," exclaimed a witty Irish-
woman to Lord Anglesea, " don't make your-
self so much beloved by us all : do something
unpopular, that you may be left here a little
longer." The Irish lady, under cover of a wit-
ticism, implied a melancholy truth. On com-
ing home from the infected soil of Ireland, Lord
Anglesea, like Lord Wellesley, will no doubt be
put under quarantine, and never be admitted to

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a certain illustrious presence, without producing
a clean. bill of 'health from the Officers of the
Irish Bran'swick Committee.—Tinzes.
We perceive from the Irish Papers, that the
circulars from the Hour and War Offices to
the Colonels of Militia, announcing the inten-
tion of his Majesty's Government to reduce a
portion of the Permanent Staff of that body,
have also been issued to Ireland, where, it must
he owned, there is no sort of honest excuse for
keeping up a single man on full pay. There
the Militia is not hallotted for and enrolled, as
in England, but enlisted when wanted, on a
bounty, like the regular army : and there has not
been a soldier, even on paper, since the conclu-
sion of the war. The Militia Staff there, as
here, are for the most, part composed of mu-
sicians, kept as a band for the amusement or
state of the Colonels, or for electioneering pur-
poses. The whole should be redeced as a use-
less, expensive establishment, for not one of the
present men, if we have peace for the next five
years, even if before efficient, will be fit to under-
take the duty of drilling and forming new levies.
Whenever a war breaks out, and it is necessary
to call out the Militia, let a sufficient number
of men, fit to be non-commissioned officers,
volunteer from the line into the Militia ; such
men, with a certain portion of commissioned
officers from the enormously expensive half-
pay list, would, in a very few months, make our
Militia equal to any regiment in the line, and
would instil into the country gentlemen and re-
cruits a military spirit, which could not fail to
be highly advantageous to their corps. It is
well known, that during the late war it was
found very tlifficult to procure a sufficient num-
ber of proper persons to fill, not only the rank
of Subalterns, but of Captains in the Militia ;
and that, as an inducement to procure them,
half-pay was granted to all Subalterns of Militia
for life, and that Officers on half-pay of. the
Line were permitted to hold companies, and to
receive with it the full pay of their Militia rank.
The whole of this will be saved by our plan.
The constitution of the Militia has been al-
ready so completely broken in upon, that what
we now propose cannot be considered as a vio-
lation of it. The Colonels may have the selec-
tion from the half-pay liet, and, the filling up of
the vacancies (should that list be exhausted)
from their electioneering friends. We need
hardly add, that there are many of what are
called improvements in military tactics, as
changes in the cut or fashion of the soldiers'
coats; and that the non-commissioned officers of
Militia, who now cost the country so much
money, will have as much to learn when em-
bodied as the recruits they are required to in-
struct.—Morning Chronicle.
We extract from the Essex Herald a para-
graph descriptive of the alarm into which a part
of Essex has been thrown by several conflagra-
tions. In one of the instances, at Hole Farm,
Finchingfield, the loss sustained is upwards of
1,5001., and no part of it is covered by insur-
ance. Such is the consternation, that no one
retires to rest without expectine that his- pre-
mises will be set on fire duringbthe night, and
many of the inhabitants employ a watch during
the night. We learn from this paragraph that
the agricultural labourers are generally sus-
pected to be the authors of these fires. 6' There
are some agricultural labourers unemployed in
the parish of Finchingfield, perhaps as many as
thirty ; - but they are not refused relief; and
many of these cases, when inquire-1 into, tell/
prove to have originated in early and impro-
vident marriages. In the adjoining parishes of
Great Bardfield and Saling, there does pot ap-
pear to be a redundancy of . labourers ; when
such is the case, the plan upon which they are
insured work is worthy of being adopted more
generally. The occupiers of land there have
agreed upon a rate of obligation to employ by
ballot those who are out of work. For instance,
a farmer rated forty pounds to the poor, employs
the redundant labourer, until he earns the sum
of Os.; being equal to 3d. in the pound ; the
labourer is then sent to another, who, if rated
50/., must provide him with work to the
amount of 205., and so on. In the two last
*parishes labourers are in constant employ." The
Editor of the Essex Herald says he is " unwilling
to go with the stream in stigmatising the agri-
cultural labourers as the authors of these acts,
and thinks they are caused by .those persons who
travel the country without any visible means of
obtaining their living." The reason why he
thinks the agricultural labourers are not the au-
thors is, thatthe destruction of property diminishes
the funds for the payment of labour. We should
he glad to think that time labourers of Essex,
when smarting under privations, are able to
reconcile themselves to their lot, from its having
originated in early and improvident marriages.
and refrain from violence, not through fear of
penal consequences, but an enlightened calcula-
tion as to the interest they have in the prosperity
of the country. We fear, however, this is giving
them credit for a degree of refinement they do
not possess. And how should they alone have
arrived at the knowledge of these truths ?
Mr. Henry Drummond, when examined before
the Committee on Labourers'. Wages, and
almost every Magistrate examined since that
time, have told us that Magistrates compel
nearly all the labourers to marry, by means of
the Bastardy Laws. The females of the class of
life to which labourers belong know right well.
that the sooner they violate their chastity the
sooner will they obtain a husband ; and it would
be odd indeed, if, with the disposition
.to obtain.
a husband, through the interference of the
Parish Officers and Justice, they should be
unsuccessful in finding customers. If a poor
devil is dragged before an Evangelical Parson-
Magistrate, he will have the satisfaction of hear-
ing from him, in addition • to the exposition of
• the law which consigns him to gaol, except on
condition of marriage, that the placing himself
in a situation in which he may give being to
those whom he cannot hope* to bring up pro-
perly is a meritorious work, by which alone he
Call properly atone for the, wickedness of the act
of giving life to one such being. We have more
than once alluded to the gross ignorance of the
people of this country of morals. They are left
to find out what is right and what is wrong as
they can, And it too often happens, that while they
are groping their way they come in contact with
justice. The moral instruction they receive from
the Clergy is vague' and general, and generally
/eaves them precisely where they were. The
Bible is put into their hinds, as containing all
that is necessary to. be known. But the very
circumstance of the Christian religion being
so" general in its principles as to be suited
to men in all ages and countries, is of
itself a sufficient proof that its rules require a
constant commentary, varying according to the
varying situations in which men are placed.
There is no such thing as an absolute morality
'applicable to all nations and times. Hence the
Roman Catholics have endeavoured, in what they