TORY TACTICS.
BESIDES an equivocal compliment from the Perthshire Pledge- breaker, Lord BROUGHAM has, since our last notice of his ma- noeuvres, enjoyed the advantage of Conservative sympathy and support from the Standard. Lord DURHAM, on the other hand, has been treated with a double portion of the gall which that elo- quent journal has been in the habit of discharging against him, periodically, for several years past—from the time, we believe, when his important share in the framing of the Reform Bill began to le surmised. These are pleasant symptoms. The Standard is a capital partisan: and we have always observed that its support and p. aise have been charitably bestowed on the party that most needed such helps—the weakest party for the time being; while its rancour was reserved for the strong and popular enemy, whose politics Tories feared. It shrewdly suspects, that the circumstances which bring a man of Lord DURHAM'S rather retired habits so pro- minently forward among the masses of his countrymen, bode no good to Toryism; and that the tricky Chancellor's power of betray- ing the Liberal cause, by pretending to lead it, is nearly over. This is all right. But why should the Standard seem to ques- tion the sincerity of the Examiner and the Spectator in takilig the Part of Lord DURHAM against Lord BROUGHAM, although the former has in two or three instances prosecuted the Press, and the latter has never prosecuted, but gets the credit of favouring it? Our excellent elder brother will no doubt give admirable reasons for his preference, if he be so minded: in the mean time, we beg to offer, in our homely way, a few words for ourselves. We are accused of inclining to "Revolution politics ;" and yet the Standard, who nicknames Lord DURHAM as the "Jack" of Reform, while Lord BROUGHAM is the " Martin," seems surprised at our preference of the former. If Lord DURHAM is indeed the "spirit of faction," and if the Spectator is a "Revolutionary" journal, the preference is easily accounted for.
But then, we are told that Lord DURHAM has prosecuted the
Press ; and that "to champion Lord DURHAM'S quarrel against any man, is an unwise desertion of its own interest by the public press."—Our own interest I Really we never should have thought of viewing the subject in this light. Lord DURHAM'S quarrel we hold to be that of the British Reformers, whose leader and chain; pion lie is become; and therefore we take his part,—utterly repu- diating the selfish and contracted principle, that where the peculiar interests of our class are concerned, all other considerations should be disregarded.
The Standard enlarges upon these prosecutions, with evident de' light at being able to fasten an unpopular act upon Lord DURHAM. We too blamed those proceedings; though we believed them to be prompted by a sense of injury operating on a warm temper, not by the deliberate malice of a bad heart, or by a desire to injure or curtail the just liberty of the press. At the same time, we were ashamed to see that too many of our contemporaries, instead of battling for the rights of free discussion and liberty to speak the truth, claimed immunity for falsehood. This we have never wished to possess : all we ask is protection for truth—the privilege of dis- cussing fully and unreservedly the public conduct of men, leaving the fabricators of personal slander to be dealt with according to their deserts. Had the law been such as we think it ought to be, we are not sure that we should have equally blamed Lord Dotal Am for ap- pealing to it for protection against the pertinacious libellers of his private life. Were the law of libel so amended as to fall heavy on the wanton propagators of slander, while it shielded those who spoke and wrote useful truths, we, for our own part, should thank 1.0 one for refraining from appeals to lawful protection. But Lord BROUGHAM thinks, that to proceed by criminal information is the very best mode that could be adopted. According to him, Lord DURHAM took the best, indeed the only effectual means of clearing his character from malicious and false imputations. And yet we are called upon to abandon Lord DURHAM, and varnish over Lord BROUGHAM s rotten character, because, forsooth, the latter is a friend to the press ! A precious reformer of the libel law will he make, who is not ashamed to eulogize criminal informations ! But Lord BROUGHAM'S hands arc not quite so clean in this mat- ter of prosecuting the press, as the Standard would represent. He might have relieved himself from the imputation cast upon him by the Morning Post respecting the entiy on the journals of the Lords, last session, by a few ms ords of explanation : he pre- ferred making a breach of privilege of it. W' ho does not re- member his repeated denunciations of the press during his Scot- tish tour ; and his famous speech at Aberdeen, when, in allu- sion to " certain persons," lie said, "The net is enclosed around them, and they shall soon be held up to ridicule and to scorn, ay, and to punishment." The meaning of this enigma ; tical denunciation was explained subsequently at Edinburgh, where the Chancellor made no secret of his intention to prosecute the Times. This threat he has refrained from executing ; but we do not believe that it is love of the press that has kept hum back. Then, Lord BROUGHAM was a concurring party to one of the most odious prosecutions that ever disgraced a Government—that of the True Sun. Even now, the victims of that prosecution are in gaol, one of them suffering severely in his health. Lord DURHAM, be it remembered, did not press his prosecutions: no one lies in prison at his instigation. Lastly, we would remind the Standard, that although Lord BROUGHAM has been four years in power, the law of libel has not been amended in one iota, and the worst of the Six Acts is still unrepealed. Lord BROUGHAM has vapoured, and boasted, and promised mighty things for the press: what has he done for it? He has prosecuted the True Sun, brought up the Morning Post for a breach of privilege before the Lords, threatened the Times with a prosecution, and eulogized as the perfection of wisdom the mode of proceeding by criminal information ! Truly, the press is under weighty obligations to Lord BROUGHAM and VAUX.
But what does the Chancellor owe to the press ? Every thing: Till within a late period, he has been the enfant gate of the newspapers. At the present time, when he is strivino, to decry its character and proclaims the decline of its influence, he is using it in every possible way. We see him and his tools at work in a variety of quarters. His own Secretaries, and not his own only but others in Government offices, are constantly scribbling to his dictation and on his behalf. The facie ing specimen from the Scotsman, published in Edinburgh on the 18th, evidently prol reeds from this industrious clique.
. . . . " What has Lord Durham done, and what is he capable of doing, that he should be held up as preaminently.entitled to our gratitude and our homage? We have heard much of his services in regard to the Reform Bill : in what did they consist? Merely in digesting, along with others, the plaredeyised by Earl Grey. In as far as we recollect, his other services went no further than a single speech of any considerable length,—his speech, namely, in regard to the number of Members proper to be assigned to the Metropolitan Districts ; a speech evi- dently gut up for the occasion, and with the materials for which, it has been said, he was crammed by others.. . We have no personal grounds of dislike to Lord Durham ; but when we see him attempting to exalt himself at the ex- pense of the Lord Chancellor, the only man in the Government in July last, who, if we are rightly informed, would have agreed to sit with him in the Cabinet,—and when we see others abetting him In a course detrimental to the public, because calculated to sow dissensions, and to create divisions among those public men to whom alone we can trust, as well as to generate groundless ex- pectations among the ill-informed,—we think it our duty togive utterance to our own observations, though our doing so should prove disagreeable in wine quarters."
It must be confessed that Lord BROUGHAM has talked a great deal more about reform than Lord DURHAM; and not only about it, but against it,—as there is ample evidence to prove, from the time he threw overboard the friends of Annual Parliaments and Universal Suffrage, whim in 1814 he sedulously courted, to his Do-nothing speeches at Inverness and Aberdeen. But people are getting sick of Lord BROUGHAM'S talk, and prefer men of more action and less babble. Lord DURHAM is exalted above— ay, and since Lord BROUGHAM will have it so, at " the expense of, the Lord Chancellor." There's the rub. To see Lord DURHAM rising daily in popularity, without trick or humbug of any kind, is gall and wormwood to the Chancellor. "Hine Wee lachrymee"— hence the insinuations, the falsehoods, the endless attempts at depreciation with which the BROUGHAM reviews and journals abound.
The article3 in the Spectator on which the Standard cotntnented, had exceedingly little to do with the press. Neither was our ob- ject especially to hold up Lord DURHAM ; but to discuss with an- other journal the question, whether there was not a substantial difference in the views of Lord DURHAM and the Chancellor, and in their mode of pursuing them. We showed that there was ; and here we are in accordance with the Standard, who, by com- paring one to "Jack" and the other to " Martin," in Swier's Tale of a Tub, admits at least (however inapplicable the parable may be in some points) that the characters and intentions of the two are very different. But the difference we aimed at making clear, was that which exists between a statesman -whose words and actions have the public good constantly in view, and him who, having achieved office and emolument, bends all his efforts to re- taining them at whatever expense of character to himself or injury to the common weal.
To expose the falsehoods of the Edinburgh Review, was an- other part of our design ; but Lord BROUGHANI'S asserted mild- ness, and Lord DURHAM'S harshness towards the calumnious press, had nothing to do with these questions.
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