9 SEPTEMBER 1837, Page 10

LIES OF THE MINISTERIAL PRESS. . . . .

.that pass of utter corruption at which the greatest expenditure of the !meanest of all the vices, the vice of lying, is made habitually and uniuterrnittedly."— Ezaminer, Sept. 3.

The Examiner, on Sunday, prabtised that species of lying which consists in making garbled extracts from the writings of an opponent, and in wilfully misrepresenting his fully explained meaning.

The subject is, Conservative ascendancy in the Government ; and the support of practical measures, under such a Government, affording

us a congenial vocation. The point that this calumniator strains at, in the face of our protest on the 26th August against the misconstruction, is the Spectator's rejoicing in the advent of a Ministry of Tories. To effect his purpose, he clips a few inches from the Spectator articles of the 12th and 26th August, pastes them alongside, headed with the severe title " Tory. Radical Consistency," and then subjoins his own special-pleading on his own selection, as follows " The two passages are utterly irreconcilable. In the first the Spectator rejoices at the alleged necessity of a Government essentially Conservative, which it argued must

• bid fir popularity by promoting administrative improvements,' because ' destitute of pre. knees wherewith to !pelt the earnest Reformers.' But in the second passage it says that it meant a Whig•Conservative Government under the direction of a Tory Opposition; a Government, it adds, 'composed of Whigs so thoron,ehly opposed to all Reform—so truly Conservative—that the Tories shall have to wait for office and govern in opposition until such a Whig policy shall come to its natural end;' and in another part of the same article the writer supposes that the Whigs would be • utterly disgraced by becoming Conservative for the sake only of pay and patronage ; and then the Tories, taking office to continue the Conservative system of the Whigs, would have nothing to fear from a Whig Opposition.' This, then, could not be the Government essentially

Conservative in the fancied approach of which the Spectator rejoiced, for the Governs merit lust described, instead of bidding for popularity by promoting administrative im provementa, is, according to the Spectator, to be opposed to all reform—truly Conservative—and utteily disgraced by becoming Conservative only for the sake of pay and patronage. What, then, could be the • practical improvements' which the Spectator anticipated with so much satisfaction, its new labours for which were to be its' more congenial vocation?' The Spectator of the 26th ultimo has shown distinctly enough that It expected no practical improvements from a Conservative Whig Ministry. Under what conceivable sort of Conservative Government did it then expect the practical improvements the support of w hich was to afford it a 'congenial vocation ?"fhe attempt to explain the article of the 12th is vain, and it can only be understood as conveying the mean, degrading doctrine of the Tory Radicals, that it is desirable to submit to the 'domination of the Tory Lords for the sake of the petty concessions they may think it worth while to make in barter for the sweets and the powers of office."

The trick of this mystification hinges on the suppression of the two passages which explained our use of the words "Conservative Government" and" Reform." They were these

1. CONEERVATIVE GOVERNMENT. "We only mean a Government of Tory principles sad praeices, whatever its professions may be ; a Government of whatever men composed, decidedly Ceaserratice of 'he present franchise—of the present plan of open Maw under kit cry and intimidationif the present admirable state, in short, of the representative system as shown by this election—and tittally, both of the Peerage as it is and of the Church as if is—in one word, a truly Conservative Government, though it should be composed either of Tories exclusively, or of Tories and 1Vhigs in coalition, or of 11,1sigs only."—Spectator, August 12, 2. REFORM. " But, assuming that 'Reform,' (meaning by that term, not the mere administration of government, as carried on, sometimes with a really reforming effect, by the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel, but Reform in the sense which has served the Whigs as a theml de bataiile against these statesmen since November MIX) is at an end for the present, we shall apply ourselves to such measures of practical improvement as may be attainable under a Conservative Government and am instrument of legislation miserably defective. Perhaps it will be found that we shall abour with as much seal and effect in this our more congenial vocation, as some of our contemporaries, who have sneered at the organic changes we have advocated as a means or carrying practical improvements."--Speetator. Augtot 111.

It is thus evident that we used " Conservative" in a sense strictly applicable to the present Government. Moreover, in the paragraph immediately following that which contained the definition, we treated the

supposed condition under which the Government might be composed of "Tories exclusively," as scarcely deserving consideration. It is further evident, that "the opposition to all Reform "-in the sense we assigned to" Reform" on the 19th August-was predicable of 'Whigs as well as Tories, but did not preclude the bidding for popu larity by promoting administrative improvements. The supposition ;vas, that hav'ng nothing else to offer, the Conservative Government

" of whatever men composed," but most likely of Whigs-would make a merit of conceding such measures. Again, it was supposed that the

iteformers, being no longer deceived, whether by themselves or others, in the expectation of organic changes, would more earnestly, and therefore more successfully, demand administrative improvements, and indeed compel them, as had been done in times bygone, let the Ministers

be Whig or Tory.

The Spectator's ground of rejoicing was, that instead of pretences, we should in that case have realities. It was of the nature of consolation under adversity-that species of rejoicing in which Ministerial journalists me fain to luxuriate when they boast of their ;rish majority : they would rather have had an English one : so would we rather have had

" Reform" and practical improvements of the most efficient kind as a consequence; but since we cannot have " Reform" in the higher sense

of the word, we would rather have " administrative improvements" than delusion, and-nothing.

There is not in the whole of the three papers which our traducer founds upon, a single sentence implying "that it is desirable to submit to the domination of the Tory Lords." There is not a sentence wartenting the allegation that we rejoiced in the advent of "a Ministry of

'Tories :" it is excluded by the very terms of the last sentence quoted by our traducer from the paper of the 12th A ugust,-unless " the Mel. bourne prints" also rejoiced in the prospect of a Tory Ministry : We, who have constantly regarded practical improvement as the object of all political exertion, :toil organie reform as a mesas only, eau rejoice, therefore, at leust as truly as the illelbw,r■ie Whig prints, at the now obvious necessity of a Government essentially Conservative." — SpLetatur, Angust 19. Thus crumbles to dust the whole fabric of the Examiner's falsehood.