THE LONDON NEWSPAPERS ON THE NEW PROSPECTS AT COURT.
The illness and death of the King, the accession of the Queen, and the prospects of a new reign, have, of course, furnished ample topics of reflection and discussion for the newspapers this week. The Times, which a few days ago only dealt in depreciatory insinuations against the Dutchess of Kent, while it made rough attempts to coax her daughter into Tory arms, broke out into a fury on Monday- " We have not heard that so much as one message of kind or dutiful in- quiry after the King's health has been sent, at any period of his Majesty's illness, from ' the powers ' at Kensington, to the afflicted household of Windsor Castle. Whether this was dictated by a becoming spirit on their part of regard for those laws of decorum and propriety which ought to regulate the proceed- ings of civilized life, and any marked deviation from which towards the King of England might be ascribed by the public, not initiated in factious motives, alike to the innocent and guilty members of the Royal Family, we leave to be determined by others. If the fact be in accordance with the above hypothesis, it must be considered by every right-minded person as most indecent and re- volting. For the rest, it is positively asserted, that not the Princess Victoria, but an older personage, sent off on Wednesday last a messenger to Lord Durham, being then on his way to England, the purport of the missive having reference to the ,j'ormation of a Kent-Coburg Ministry. If this be so, or indeed whether it be so or not, the affairs of the realm will be in a beau- tiful ' mess' before another fortnight has expired. For ourselves, we have but One object at heart in relation to the fearful political crisis now opening upon the people of England. It is, that the future Sovereign may be enabled forthwith to cut her leading. strings, and to act upon her own reason and good sense undis- turbed and unlamented. An irresponsible and selfish back-stairs tyranny is what we can assure all the parties concerned, the British nation will soon de- tees! and detecting, will not suffer, especially an intriguing, sordid, female, foreign tyranny."
The Post saw the blunder of the rival Tory journal ; and contemp. ttiously disclaimed all concurrence in the sentiment of the Times, oa behalf of the Conservative party- " A morning paper, which pretends to call itself Conservative, thought fit yesterday to indulge in a torrent of senseless invective and malicious insinuation against an illustrious and exemplary member of the Royal Family of England— a woman ; a woman too, who, in addition to her share in the common affliction with which the Royal Family was then immediately threatened, and which has indeed already overtaken it, had grounds for deep and painful anxiety in the important change about to take place peculiarly and exclusively her own. • • We feel that it is our duty to say fur ourselves—we claim, and who will dispute our pretensions ?—full warrant and authority on behalf of the whole unanimous body of the Conservatives of Great Britain—to disclaim and repudiate the sen- timents expressed, and feelings exhibited, towards the Dutchess of Keut in the article to which we allude. The Couservative party have no participation in such sentiments and feelings; they hold them, and those who express them, in utter dislike and condemnation ; they regard the manifestation of such senti- ments and feelings as a proof of enmity to their principles and of treachery to their cause."
On the subject of inquiries at Windsor, the Globe had the follow- ing— " We have received information which leads us to believethat the insinuation of the Times is as false as flagitious ; and that tholgh ;them may have been no public or obtrusive manifestation of .a deep and sympathizing interest in the sufferings of our late revered Monarch, that interest has, nevertheless, been shown in a manner highly gratifying to the venerable sufferer, and honourable to the feelings of his relative and successor. A mind less vulgar than that of our notorious contemporary, might well have surmised that such would have been the case ; but it happens frequently to those who have no standard by which to judge of the feelings and conduct of others but their own gross concep- tions, that they are betrayed into errors of the most flagrant kind. It has been said truly enough, that a rogue is never so much puzzled as by the simplicity of direct and uncalculating honesty ; and in the same way the Times is unable to understand or account for a course of action springing from a pure and high- minded delicacy."
The Standard quietly rebuked its morning colleague- ,' We know that, in our views upon this subject, we differ from some with whom we usually agree, and from whom we always differ with reluctance; but our readers will do us the justice to remember, that we have ever held the same language with reference to the illustrious family at Kensington. Our first impressions of that family were received six years ago, from a sainted lady of high rank—alas ! now no more—who described such a scene of domestic piety, and anxious zeal in the discharge of every social duty, with simplicity and humility, the daily picture of the family at Kensington, as she, though naturally associated with the first and best in the land, had never been happy enough to witness elsewhere."
The Chronicle also perpetrated an attack on the Times, intended as an illustration of its ability to rival that journal in racy and elaborate Billingsgate : but the failure was manifest—the essay of the Chronicle is a mere string of coarse expressions, wanting wit, humour, or force. Take the following specimen of epithets, unmatched in the Times itself since the days of Bonapartephobia,—" beldame ; " " spat upon by her foes ;" " vulgar, blackguardly old thing;" " dirty kettle ;" " sordid, stinking, venal, virulent creature ;" "bag, denied by the very Devil ;" " old reprobate ;" "piece of inky blackguardism r " retie. gade r " rubbish ;" "that 'ere lady," and so on. Such were the chosen flowers of an article devoted to the defence of the Queen of England and her illustrious mother, the two first ladies in the land, by a Ministerial print, which boasts of holding the " Mirror of Fashion," prates of decorum, and lives upon the failings of the Leading Journal. The Times thus replied to its assailants- " For some of those who affect to number themselves with the Conservative party, they enjoy just as much of our esteem or consideration as a certain ill- conditioned cur in a certain morning paper, the manual of sempstresscs, and the housemaid's guide to fashion, that in the two last numbers has been alternately whining and swilling at the Times, and in the name of ' the Conservatives,' God save the mark ! disavowing what he calls our attacks' upon the Dutchess of Kent. Now, if we had attacked the personal character of that lady, the cur might have snapped at us, and fairly earned a caress from the underling in charge of him. But we did no such thing. We said, and we repeat, that the Dutchess of Kent has constitutionally nothing to do with English politics, and that her Royal daughter ought to have responsible, not irresponsible, advisers. As for the defences put forth fur the Queen's mother on points where her Royal Highness never was assailed, and the trash about sowing dissensions in the Royal Family, we have many days since exposed their folly and their falsehood. But there are traffickers and trucklers in all parties ; in all there are camp followers; and the Conservatives apparently have their share. These are personages whom we would willingly save the trouble of disavowing us. They are not the subjects of our formal disclaimer, simply be- cause we hold them in contempt. They are in consternation at our cool de- fiance of resentments, which they fancy may overflow upon themselves, and postpone their chance of that Court favour in some quarters, which we can tell them it was long ago decreed that they should not be blessed with. A month or two will teach the country whose views have been the soundest, whose judgement the keenest, whose estimate of characters and calculation of national prospects have been the most deserving of public trust and confidence."
The Times was also unfortunate in an attack on the declaration of the Queen to the Council- " Subscribing to all that has been announced as to the correct and becoming
manner in which her Majesty, on this first performance of a public duty, read the declaration composed for her, and demeaned herself before the members of her Council, we are still bound to regard that declaration on the same con- stitutional ground which governs the construction of King's speeches to Par- liament—as merely the declaration of the Minister by whom it was framed. And who is that Minister? No other than Lord Melbourne, the Whig slave of the Radical Joseph Hume, and of the anti-Saxon Papist, O'Connell—the
same Lord Melbourne who has fur these two last years and more been levying open war against, or trickily undermining, the ancient laws, the fundamental institutions, and the Protestant Monarchy of Great Britain. Has lie (under the tuition of Middlesex Josciili) turned black into white? Has this IVIlig- Radical Ethiopian changed his skin ?'—' this leper' " of Popery ' his spots e. The speech of yesterday was Lord Melbourne's speech, and what was its cha- racter? Why, the greater portion of it a string of commonplaces ; and one part something worse, for it was a mixture of implied misrepresentations and dangerous, because indefinite, pledges. Lord Melbourne makes the young Quceu congratulate herself on succeeding a Monarch whose ' desire to promote the amelioration of the laws and institutions of the country has rendered his name the object of general attachment and veneration.' Now, here is an assumption which involves a notorious falsehood. It is positively untrue that King William desired to promote those schemes of factious and 'evolutionary policy which Lord Melbourne chooses to designate by the word ' ameliorations.' " This provoked a bitter retort from the True Sun, with which we conclude our newspaper fragments for the present week- " The Times, smarting under the gentlemanly but Bev ere and indignant cas- tigation which it yesterday received from the Morning Post, in the name of the entire Conservative body, seeks to vent its rage and disappointment by charging a direct falsehood on the first royal declaration of the new reign. The Times denies that her Majesty ' succeeds to a Sovereign whose constant regard for the rights and liberties of his subjects, and whose desire to promote the ame- lioration of the laws and institutions of the country, have rendered his name the abject of general attachment and veneration.' Fur, says the Times, these 'ameliorations' were 'schemes of firetious and revolutionary policy' and ' King William detested and abhorred' them ; but it was his unhappy condition' to be' cruelly coerced.' What a pitiful wretch this makes of the late Sovereign. No honest man would or coedd have been so ' coerced.' While his mortal frame is yet scarcely cold, here is a journal which assumes to be the very pink of loyalty, branding him, by implication, with the meanest cowardice, the basest hypocrisy, and treachery if not treason to the country. And all to answer some selfish purpose of a selfish party. Such is the loyalty, the truth, and the principle of faction."
• Our Bible has it "leopard:" doubtless "leper" is an improved reading, for Ntitich sunkleut authority can be produced at riintiug.house Square.
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