LORD ANGLESEY'S RECALL. THE PRESS.
TIMES—.The sentence passed upon Lord Anglesey by the Cabinet court-
martial has been dismissed from that service to which he was an ornament and honour. The publication of the sentence not being accompanied by any avowal of the reasons for it, has given rise to some conjectures among honest men ; and among knavish understrappers in the Tory subdivisions of the ministry, to many impudent and malicious misrepresentations. The real me- ancholy truth is, that Lord Anglesey was found too liberal in his policy—too independent in his character—too much penetrated with his sense of Irish sufferings--too well qualified to attach the hearts of the people—to foster • their hopes and to unfit them for future disappointments, to suit the jealous
spirit which has passed from Court to Cabinet, and vice versa, within the • last sixteen years, ever since the decease of Mr. Percival. Lord Anglesey has been recalled, because high principles to him were dearer than high places, and because amongst the " difficulties" complained of by another sort of letter-writer from Lord Anglesey, as surrounding the consideration of the Catholic question, the paramount and only real difficulty for his Grace was never glanced at—viz. that of resigning. We are unfortunately ruled by a generation who, though they may not in common cases be without some ad- ministrative talent, are men of inconceivably little minds. All public virtue is sneered at by such people as a weakness, or the pretence to it branded by their conscientious impudence, as rank and foul hypocrisy. Nothing can be done with the Tory placenien of the time but by bringing a new force to bear upon thein,—that of the middle classes of the community,—which political artifice and selfishness have not yet corrupted, whose impressions are strong, their hearts fresh, their purpose grave, their enthusiasm tangible, with whom virtue is not a name, nor duty a scarecrow. These men in our day saved a Queen of England; they may be wrought upon to save the empire in our day also. It the press try them, and they will answer to the call. Ireland is lost if Lord Anglesey, and the cause of integrity, honour, and humanity,— for which a would-be chastisement is inflicted on him,—be abandoned by the people. He has acted nobly, and therefore has judged wisely ; but were his judgment as erroneous with respect to policy as it is sound in principle, we say support him. It is honesty and independence which the nation needs. We apprehend there may be some difficulty in finding a Lord Lieutenant fitted to keep the community together. We envy him not, whoever he may be, the martyrdom of such an office as that which seems destined for him by those whose pleasure it has been that Lord Anglesey should be discarded. This act throws a new but not wholly unlooked-for colour upon the Welling- ton administration.
MORNING dourness—In this proceeding there is something so similar to
that which prefaced the expulsion of Mr. Huskisson that we cannot forego the pleasure of noticing it. Mr. Huskisson performed in an oratorical dis- play at Liverpool, in which he represented himself as the leading organ of the Ministry. He was continued in the Administration, he said, for the sake of his wisdom and experience—for the advantage of free trade—as the only sen- sible person with whose talents the Duke of Wellington could not dispense. Ile represented himself as having all his colleagues, the noble duke amongst the rest, under a strict mortgage. They could neither sell nor buy, transfer nor pledge, without his permission. The noble premier, he said, had gua- ranteed to him the direction and control of his own opinions—he had placed the measures of his " lamented friend, now no more," under his protection, and he assured his gaping constituents that nothing would be done affecting the trade or interests of the country but with his consent—the consent of Mr. William Hnskisson ! The Duke of Wellington was the first man who was most astonished at this declaration ; and he took the very earliest opportunity, from his seat in Parliament, to give a plain and unequivocal contradiction to Mr, Huskisson's assumptions. He denied them in terms which were enough to make the old ships in Queen Elizabeth's tapestry blush, and her heavy silken ships of war to run aground. The contradiction was most gratifying to the nation; and we do seriously believe there was not a man in it, whose
opinion was worth a single seed of Mr. Cobbett's corn, who did not inwardly rejoice to see the presuming quack thus demolished and rendered ridiculous
by the breath of the Duke of Wellington. Oh, how it did delight our hearts to see his wincings, his explanations, his word-eating, his nauseous apologies, his paltry subserviency, his begging of pardon, his petitioning to be forgiven, and restored to office and four thousand a year ! We shall never forget it.
It was the most finished picture of degradation which we ever beheld. It was the beau ideal of contempt personified. It was spanielism in perfection—
humility licking the dust, and clinging to the feet that kicked him out of office
and out of society—that sent him back to the clubs of Paris, to be hooted by the sans culottes whom he had formerly deified ! Had the Duke of Wel-
lington not been a great man, and the greatest of his age, his treatment of Mr. Huskisson would have enticed us to worship him. The Marquis of An- glesey's fall is the counterpart, with the exception of the contemptible ser- vility of that of the late President of the Colonies. The Marquis assumed the lofty, the imperious, and the dictatorial. He seems to have imagined him- • self King of Ireland, to be able to dragoon the Government as he would a shy and sickly cornet of hussars. "1 am of this opinion," says the illustrious Viceroy !—" you must or ought to do this," says the Governor!—" Ireland can only be medicated by my prescription," says the best of cavalry officers ! —but, alas ! the poor Viceroy is called in, like a blustering ensign who has gone beyond his instructions. It is a right capital joke, serious though it be. As to who shall be Lord Anglesey's successor, if successor he have, we shall speak again. The office ought to be abolished ; but if this should be deemed inexpedient, then the only man is Lord Melville. He will soon restore peace. to Ireland. But abolition is the word.
Coo iilEn—For our own parts, we do not believe that his Excellency's remain- ing in Ireland, or returning from Ireland, would or will have theslightest effect in accelerating orretarding the settlement of the Catholic questiob—and we wish to impress this more particularly upon the minds of the Irish people, because at- tempts will be made by the coarse and calu mniating body of agitators to represent it as a proof of the peremptory decision of the Government against concession. The recall, we repeat, neither advances nor retards the settlement ; and, how- ever we may lament the occurrence of such an event, particularly at the pre- sent moment, we must not be permitted to deny that any blame is to be at- tached to Government. The Prime Minister does not see a present prospect of a settlement of the question. The Lord Lieutenant does, and makes his sentiments known to a Catholic Bishop, who is eager to give them publicity. Each entertains his own opinion, and no one has a right to blame either of them. The Prime Minister could not be expected to abandon his view of the subject, because it did not coincide with that of the Lord Lieutanant—and vicevcrsd. But such a difference of opinion having been recorded by his lordship, it followed, as a matter of course, that he could not remain any longer at the head of the Irish government. No doubt it is the difference of opinion upon the subject that has occasioned the recall. But the recall is not to be considered as bearing at all, either one way or the other, upon the main question. Hail the Marquis staid in Ireland, the Duke's policy would have remained the same, as iLwill remain after his lordship's return.
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