The Sun. — 1868-05-16 (London, England)

HENRY. BROUGHAM,—speaking in round numbers, from the year 1800, when  he was little more than 30 years of age, that is, while still a young man, down to 1830, when he became Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain : in other words, during the first 30 years of the present century. And now, last not least, another important point forces itself upon our consideration, namely, the wonderful contrast which exists between the Whig Opposition when it was headed by HENRY BROUGHAM and Lord GREY, and the so-called Liberal Opposition of the present time. We were then ruled by a Ministry which, though entitled to merit in many respects, nevertheless resisted reform and progress in a most unfair and shameful manner, and which, in consequence, was not unjustly an unpopular Government. We then had an Opposition which was worth something, such as the present is no muro to be compared to than is a deformed child with a comely ancestor. Had the question of the disestablishment and disendowment of the Irish Church been brought forward at any time prior to the Emancipation Act of 1829, no oue could have wondered at or condemned the movement ; that is, no one at all desirous of civil or religious liberty. The Ireland of the present thy is no more to be compared to the Ireland of fifty, or even twenty years ago, than summer is to be compared to winter, or rain to sunshine. Where are the awful accounts of the murders which crowded our newspapers but a few years ago ; where are those agrarian outrages since the death of The Liberator, in the days of SMITH O'BantN, and of the last French Revolution ? But even at that period Ireland was by no means in the disturbed state and condition she was in during the years 1833 and 1831, or, when O'CONNELL was fighting hard for a Repeal of the Union. Referring, again, to the present Opposition, however, we would reiterate our remark that were we now in 1828 instead of 1868, there might be some excuse for pressing forward so very expeditiously the abolition of the Protestant Established Church in Ireland, even at the fagend of a moribund Parliament, considering the state and condition of Ireland at that time. The perpetuation of the State Church in Ireland we have now for many years resolutely opposed. But we do decidedly object to the conduct of Mr. GLADSTONE and his colleagues in having brought the subject forward at such a time, and in such a manner as they have done, considering that during all the years they were in office they never thought of mooting the question. It could therefore have been brought forward from no other motive than that of faction and place-hunting. Reverting , however, to the lamented death of Lord BROUGHAM, we would recall to mind the fact that he was Lord Chancellor in the only strong and really respectable Whig Government England was ever governed by, and that there his Whig career may be said to have ended. For never, daring any one of the Ministries that ruled us from 1835, when the late Lord MELBOURNE retained to office, and for the second time in his life became Premier, down to the dissolution of Lord RUSSELL'S Ministry in the summer of 1866, could Lord BROUGHAM be called anything more than a most qualified supporter of the Government. During the five years of the late Sir ROBERT PEEL'S Administration, Lord BROUGHAM was far oftener to be found voting with the Government than with the Opposition. And it is a remarkable fact that the old income-tax, which was so strenuously opposed by HENRY BROUGHAM in 1816, when Lord LIVERPOOL'S Government proposed to make it a perpetual tax at £5 per cent.' so streuously opposed by him that upon the motion of HENRY BROUGHAM every paper connected with the tax was burned, that same individual a quarter of a century afterwards was the first to uphold its reimposition by the Ministry of the late Sir