The Sun.
London, England, 1855-06-18 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, JUNE 18, 1885

the manufacturing multitude, hardly no less than

among the agricultural population. The leaders
of the new agitation have only to point out the
necessity for the proposed changes, for chat ne-
cessity
to he at once, almost. universally, recognised.
The rapid growth of an association, which was only
the other day inaugurated by a meeting in the
London Tavern, is of itself a sufficient testimony
of the fact that far and wide the reasonableness
of the projected innovation is to the full appre-
ciated. That initiatory assemblage of a few emi-
nent City men was pooh-poohed by its deriders, in
the first instance, somewhat cavalierly. Its in-
fluence is now recognised, however, to have proved
itself, even thus early, rather formidable than
otherwise. It very speedily excited an emulative
enthusiasm in the cause of Administrative Reform
throughout the provinces, so that the movement
may be said to have already made the round of the
country, returning to the metropolis reinvigorated,
so to speak, by the circumstance of its having
been welcomed on all hands with a prompt and
plenary approbation. Wednesday, the 13th of
June, 1855, will henceforth be long remembered
as the date of the first monster meeting in Drury:
Lane Theatre of the great Administrative Reform
Association. It will be remembered years
hence as the beginning of the end of the system
of Exclusiveness. It will be then remembered as
the commencement of a new epoch in this country
of social and political development—as the dawn
of a new era in which fresh blood had to be in-
fused into the dwindling veins of the Constitution.
It will not be forgotten very readily that this inaugu-
rative assemblage of our Administrative Reformers
took place, as it were, on the very eve of the day
on which their views were to be first brought for-
mally and distinctly under the notice of the popu-
lar branch of th 6 Legislature. Any more than it
will be soon lost to recollection that the demand
for a reform of this comprehensive character had,
in the latter instance, been enforced by the vir-
tual coincidence of the opinions expressed before
the House of Commons by two among the most
remarkable men of our generation—sentiments
enunciated, that is, through AUSTIN LAYARD'S
motion and BULWER LYTTOI'S amendment. The
popular gathering in Old Drury, followed almost
immediately afterwards by the discussion provoked
within the walls of Parliament by the lion. :mem-
ber for Aylesbury, will be looked back to, we
doubt not, by the more reflective among our re-
mote successors as the events which marked the
close of the old blundering scheme of patrician
intrigue upon which, up to that time, had been
built up the whole of the vast and complicated
fabric of our Constitutional Government.

Already, indeed, we may recognise in passing
occurrences substantial guarantees that sooner or
later there must come inevitably the desired re-
form in our system of Administration. It is no
longer a question of practicability. It is only
one of time. We shall be rid at last of the
ancient incubus which has hitherto clung as per-
tinaciously to our shoulders as did the Old Man
of the Sea to those of SINBAD the Sailor. At last
we shall be enabled to escape from under the
poisoned boughs of the genealogical Upas. At
last we shall be afforded an opportunity of
passing out into the common sunshine, from
beneath what our contemporary the Times, in
this year of grace, 1855, called the " cold shade
of the aristocracy," but what had already, as far
back as 1824, been designated more explicitly by
THOMAS MOORE, in his " Life of SHERIDAN," the
" overshadowing branches of the Whig aristo-
cracy"). phrase which he tills us natively in his
" Diary," under date 12th December, 1825, was
particularly unpalatable to " ears polite," meaning,
to those of the still surviving Nestor of the party
reflected upon, Lord LANSDOWNE, as may be seen
by the curious in such matters, detailed at page
17 in the sixth volume of the " Memoirs of
MooRE," edited by my Lord JOHN RUSSELL.
Another illustration of the evil we are all of
us complaining of so loudly nowadays, an illus-
tration equally as amusing as that just referred
to in the preceding paragraph, may be found
duly recorded in a volume of politico-literary me-
morials still more recently published than the one
last mentioned as having been conducted through
the press under the auspices of the Colonial Secre-
tary. It relates to a remark of a similar charac-
ter, made, however, this time, not thirty
years ago, but barely fourteen from the
present date, au allusion not to the exclusiveness
of the Whigs, but to the exclusiveness of the
Tories, or rather of their successors the Conseria-
tives, a sarcasm, not uttered by the lips of the
Irish Poet, but by those of one of the few men
who were eminent, as countrymen of his, among
his own immediate conteaworaries. RICHARD
SHlEL—himself a staunch Whig, though an Irish-
man, and once a demagogue—SHlEL it was who in
the September of 1841, when. Sir ROBERT'S new
Cabinet was in process of con.struction, thus is re-
corded, in his own words, to have drawn the atten-
tion of a noble Whig Lord, to the preference shown
at that time by the great parvenu statesman, for
peers and the sons of peers, as the members, both
principal and subordinate, of his Conservative
Administration. " Happening," said the late
Mr. SHIEL, " to sit beside one of the ex-ministers
at dinner, soon after the writs for the new officials
had been moved, I observed that PEEL was filling
up all his posts with Lords. And he is quite
right,' said Lord ; 'he .understands what he
has to deal with, how his majority can alone be
kept together.' " Yes, Whigs and Tories,
Liberals and Conservatives, are all alike.
As Mr. TORRENS M'CULLAGH, in recording the
incident we have here particularised, observes im-
mediately thereupon in his newly published
" Life of SHIEL" (Vol. 11., pp. 304-305.) " The
esoteric principle of the Whigs and Tories is, in
this respect, the same. They tolerate a few ple-
beians as working colleagues, but they think and
feel towards them rather as advocates whom they
have retained than equals whom they are bound to
recognise"—adding, a little further on—" the
House of Commons is more intensely susceptible
of aristocratic prejudices than any assembly in the
civilised world." Every syllable of that is true
—and without being coloured by one particle of
exaggeration. The time, however, when those
prejudices will, have to be abandoned both by
Whigs and Tories has even now arrived. The
signal for the change has gone forth, it has already
become audible within " those vary thick party
walls" wittily alluded to the other day in a noble
letter penned by the honoured hand of CHARLES
DICKENS—those walls which have constituted
hitherto the fastness of the younger sons of the
nobility,
the " very thick party walls" of the
so-called popular branch of the Imperial Legisla-
ture.

The One Hundred and First Anniversary Dinner of
the Society of Arts is to be held at the Crystal Palace on
Tuesday, the 3d of July, when his Grace the Duke of
Argyll, F.R.S., will preside.
The third and fourth volumes of Mr. Macaulay's
History are expected to app
ear in the present year. The
concluding volumes of " Moore's Life," by Lord J. Rus.
sell, are in the press. ~
The Ville de Paris, line-of-battle ship, is about to be
disarmed at Toulon, in order to be fitted with a screw-
propeller.

The Jupiter, line-of-battle ship, arrived at Toulon on.
the 14th, froni Constantinople.
The Nile, Indiaman, sailed from Spithead on Sunday,
morning for Calcutta.