Star.
London, England, 1825-02-05 00:00:00

peg of tilt Corn tide, the attempt tittlst ruin dui. Ma-
nufactures—would that the judgment of the same Hon.
Member had been equally unbiassed upon the question
of that worst of impostures, the Sinking Fund, to
support which the Assessed Taxes were continued.—
And here he must take the liberty of reading to him his
own lecture to another Honourable Member, who, in
the last Session, had soared above all in his flight of
humanity upon a question wherein be had no private'
interest; but upon another question, between the Brewers
and the Public, stuck to the golden rule, of every man
for himself ; so the other Honourable Member, who
had fought like a lion in the cause of the people
throughout all the stages of the Corn Bill, turned tail
upon the question of a Sinking Fund, to which he
could only look with the eye of 4 Loan Contractor.—
I I-re lay the root of the evil, which nothing but reform
oaild cure; for it was to this feeling of self-interest, in
those who held the remedy in their own hands, that all
the miseries of Spain. of Ireland, and of suffering hu-
manity throughout the world were mainly to be ascri.
bed. The Right Honourable Secretary bad declared
that his Shibboleth was England. Would to Goo it
were so, and that he would only prove it in setting that
example of public virtue which alone was wanting to
raise her to a prouder station than she had yet filled
amongst the Powers of Europe.
" Ob, England! model to thy inward greatness,
Like little body with a mighty heart;
What migheat thou do, that honour would thee de,
Were all thy children kind and natural!"
And what prevented her but that unnatural system of
her Government, which had wasted her strength, blasted
her character, and reduced her to the lowest state of
moral and political disgrace ? For what was her real'
situation, and the shoi t answer to all the vain
boasting: of her Ministers ? Look to her debt of
eight hundred millions, which neither ten years of
peace, to.r all die retrenchments forced upon her
Government, had one jot diminished; and this was
the key to the new system of her policy, wherein the
same Ministers who had expended millions upon mil-
lions to deliver Spain from France, and uphold the li-
berties of England in the general liberties of Europe,
had now forsooth discovered, that her true interest was
to stand alone, and (as the Right Hon. Secretary ex-
pre,sed it), to move within the circle of her own orbit.
But for once let him quit his tropes and metaphors, and
answer in plain language to the charge of conspiracy
against the liberties of his country. The Ministers, in
the King's Speech, had again openly boasted of their
friendly relations with those Powers, who had as
openly declared their hostility to all Constitutional
Governments, and proved their intention by their acts
in destroying that of Spain? What, then, could be
the basis of such friendship but their mutual un-
derstanding and agreement upon that vital ques-
tion of public liberty, the existence of which was
incompatible with the principles the Holy Alliance
stood pledged to establish? and that this was the
fact he boldly asserted and as flu mly believed ; whilst
of all parties concerned the Ministers of England stood
the deepest involved in the guilt. As to the others.
with the exception of him whose monstrous abuse of
the power to which his brother legitimates had restored
him, seemed to have been ordained by PROVIDENCE to
mark the folly of their cause, and the justice of the
came of the people ; there was not an individual of those
exalted personages whose private character, from all he
had semi, heard, and believed, he did not respect; whilst
he considered their political feelings to be only thkna-
tuna consequence of the causes which had excited
them ; but he could find no excuse for those who, born
in the land of liberty, educated in her school, and in-
debted to her protection for the wealth and honour they
had acquired, should now desert her cause, break down
the ladder which had raised them, and trample on the
people's heads. But, 'Whatever the motives of the par-
ties, tor which they must answer to their Gon, it was
their conduct the people had to look to; and whether
the Governments of France and Spain, the Govern-
ments of the Holy Alliance, or above all, the Govern-
ment of England, he denounced the *hole as conspira-
tors against the liberties of mankind, and called upon
the ringleaders to answer to the charge. Most gravely
and deliberately he accused them of having wilfully
neglected that glorious occasion which the return of
peace, and the destruction of Bonaparte's power, had
afforded of re-establishing the liberties of Europe upcfn
a firm basis ; and of setting up a more dangerous and
detestable tyranny in its place; and that instead of
availing themselves of that dear-bought, but invaluable
lesson which the history of the French Revolution had
taught both crowns and people, in pointing out to both
their true interests; once more, like their prototype Pitt,
but with still less excuse, they had conspired with the
Powers of Europe against the liberties of the people, to
prevent reform in the abuses of their own Government.
And let the people look to the progress they had made. Three years
since Spain was free : and France boasted of her Charter ; but now,
Spain was groaning under a double slavery • France was plainly
told by her Ministers she must expiate the crimes of her revolution
by returning to her former state; whilst the Ministers of England,
who began their part in the performance with invectives against
Bourbon treachery, and prayers for Spanish independence, were
now praying in their hearts fur the re-establislunant of that system
in France, which they found to be the only chance for the conti-
nuance of their own; f.ir they well knew that peace could not be
maintained between the two nations, without a fairer balance of the
conditions of the people in both, and that neither tithes nor exces-
sive taxation could be muck longer imposed on the one without
being regenerated in the other. But if the distresses of the people
could hoc move the Ministers, let them at least turn their eyes to
their own dangers, and the rotten foundation on which their power
rested ; for whilst the Govermatnt of France rode triumphant over
the people, and found it needless to dupe them longer even with
the name of their Charter ; the Ministers of England had no real
power whatever, but, like dishonest servants, only kept in place by
imposing on the credulity of their master—what better illustration
of the strength, courage, and generosity of the nation, contrasted with
the weakness, cowardice, and baseness of her Government, than the
act of the (tight Honourable Gentleman, who, as one of the peafles
had advertised his subscription to the relief of the Spanish Patriots,'
from whom, as Minister, he had withdrawn the trifling support the
Government had allowed them ; and whilst thus meanly
to foreign Powers, what greater proof of their tyranny at bonne,ali
the insolence of that faction which usurped the powers of the COO.
stitution, and lorded it equally over the Crown and the People, than
that the same Sovereign, who had proclaimed the equality of civil and'
political rights to all his German subjects, was prevented by hia M-
inisters froze doing the same justice to the Catholic population of his
United kingdom. And *hat was their excuse? The danger of the
Protestant Religion. But was ever assertion so false, or hypocrisy so
great, 25 that which pretended to believe it?—but which well knew
that the danger was not to the Established Religion. hut to an enor-
Mous Church Establishment in Ireland, which required the expense
of a large army to support it, in the teeth of all justice and true re-
ligion,
and the seine and feeling of the people. As toCatholic Emus.
ciliation, if no other benefit arose from the measure, but the trans.
fer of the tithes collected from the Catholic People to the Catholic
Church, he should consider it an act of justice and sound policy, and
appeal to every argument of the Right Hon. Secretary, upon his
motion to enable Catholic Peers to sit in Parliament, to confirm hie
own opinion ; and as to others of his pie-bald Cabinet, who would
scare the nation with the danger of Catholic Ascendancy, he called
=au ar once to put an end to all religious differences, and unite
Protestant, and Dissenter, in their country's cause, by
pulse* permitting their own Sovereign to do that by the people
al the United Kingdom, which he had done by the people of