THE DUKE'S REPENTANCE.
THE Duke of WELLINGTON'S pious attachment to Mother Church has shone forth conspicuously during the past week. Even the atrocious "guilt" of having carried the Catholic Relief Bill is atoned for by his sincere repentance; and the Standard is fully persuaded of the truth of Isis Grace's declaration, that he intended the bill of 1829 for the security of the Established Church. To be sure, he did advise his Majesty GEORGE the Fourth to violate his Coronation Oath; but then, he will by no means consent to Lord GREY'S involving King WILLIAM the Fourth in the same guilt. His opposition to the Irish Reform Bill has obtained his pardon for all past delinquencies, and no doubt is to be entertained of the sincerity of his scruples or the disinterestedness of his mo- tives on the present occasion. Such at least is the colouring which our ingenious contemporary, the Standard, employs its elo- quence and logic to throw over his Grace's speeches and deeds. But let him be weighed in a more severe balance—let a more searching test be applied to his conduct—and the result will be any thing but favourable to his character as a British statesman.
It is evident that there is no sacrifice of political principle which the Duke of WELLINGTON is not prepared to make rather than suffer a permanent exclusion from power. He gave the lie to all Isis past professions, when, in 1829, he carried Catholic Emancipation, which he had assured Dr. CURTIS, in the famous letter written within a few months of the passage of the Relief Bill, must be laid aside and forgotten for some years. At that moment, he was plan- ning the means of carrying it in the session just about to open. In 1832, when he found that in consequence of the determination of the People to have a Reformed Parliament, no Anti-Reformer could hope to bear sway in the King's Councils, he was quite ready to eat up all his professions once more, and carry the very measure which he had solemnly denounced as destructive of the Constitution. And now, when it suits his ambition to oppose the slightest possible reform in the Irish Church, he has the effrontery to take up the old exploded stuff about the Coronation Oath, which never for a moment stood in his own way when a point was to be carried. How is it possible to place the least reliance upon such a politician as this? and how ludicrous it is to have such a one held up to the world as a pattern of piety and conscientiousness !
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