The Sun.
London, England, 1864-02-24 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

Tmes.—Mr. Locke King is the Nemesis of what
Mr. O'Connell used to call Whig brutality. The
Liberals were wont to bear rather hard on the bi-
gotry of their antagonists, on their idolatry of in-
stitutions, phrases, names, creeds, and forme. So, in
revenge fer this excess of intellectual zeal, several
members of the Whig party are working out a penal
servitude in the drudgery and chains of political
dogmatism, There is no reason why Mr. Locke
King should not indulge in Parliamentary enter-
prises of the most injurious or the most innocent
character ; but he always reappears with the famitar
old fetter clanking about his lege, the old log at his
heels, and the old number on his uniform. For
aught Wo know, he may change the figure some
day, just for Change's sake, and to delude
novices into the idea that it is a new invention,
but no doubt it will be substantially the same ticket.
His one article of faith on this point is the reduction
of the county to the level of the borough franchise.
This would be in effect to abolish the county consti-
tuencies, and to have nothing but boroughs, with
every possible irregularity and anomaly of popula-
'tiuns, boundaries, territories, and other conditions.
Mr. Locke King, however, leaves all this confusion
to the future. He has taken his stand on the first
step. Subscribe yourself a ten-pounder, and that is
enough for him. But year after year, year after
year, he stands and pleads in vain. A phantom of
success is always floating befoie his eyes. As he de-
ceives, so is he deceived in return, and every session
renews the reciprocal imposture. His share in ilee
deception is this. He knows well enough that every
county member, and every borough member tou,
would rather not tell the ten-pounders any whefe
that they are not fit to have a vote, not only
because it is a gratuitous insult, but also because it
is not really true. No doubt the great majority of
the ten-pounders in the county are quite as well
qualified to decide on the merits of a candidate as
the great majority of the ten-pounders in the
boroughs. Indeed, a rental of ten pounds a year
most certainiy represents a better income, a better
social position, and, so far, a better class of men,
in villages and small towns than in our existing
boroughs. So it is not only the wish to be popular
bat a regard for abstract truth, that compels a good
many men of the safest opinions and most Conser-
vative bias to vote with Mr. Locke King. Such is
his share in the performance. That of his victims is
not very dissimilar. They know perfectly well
that the division will produce no result ; that
the proceeding is as wholly unpractical as the
answer to a question in an examination
school. They know that the county franchise
will not be reduced to £lO without necessary re-
adjustments not included in the bill, and that the
enormous difficulties that would arise out of such an
event will not occur in our time at least. So they
give Mr. Locke King the worthless vote he asks for,
because it is worthless. As to Mr. Locke King, it
is useless to appeal to him, and ask him to desist
from a performance which he considers his stepping
stone to an honourable immortality. One might as
well ask a Fair to cut his naits, or to draw out from
his ribs the hook by which he has been suspended 20
years. But to the devotees of the sect perhaps a re-
monstrance may be addressed. For this purpose we
will avail ourselves of the great lights of the age. The
latest conclusion of social philosophy is to proscribe
indiscriminate alms-giving. You must not give a
man a halfpenny simply because he takes stand on the
pavemen tend chooses to ask for it. A late enlightened
and most kindhearted prelate used to make the
very unpharisaicel boast that he had never given a
halfpenny to a street beggar. So we ask, " Why
give worthless votes to Mr. Locke King simply be-
cause he asks for them ?" According to annual cus-
tom, he delivers himself of an appeal to the benevo-
lent in behalf of the unrepresented county ten poun-
ders. We are expressing a simple fact when we say
we never yet saw or heard of a county ten pounder
who wanted a vote, and that we never yet met with
a gentleman who wanted, as a separate measure, on
public grounds not personal to himself, to enfran-
chise the ten pounders in his own county. Of course
we have met with people who wanted a lowerfran-
chise generally, and a good deal besides, but that is
a very different thing from a special and serious de-
cision in favour of enfranchising county ten pounders.
We disbelieve in the very existence of a real party
for Mr. Locke King's measure as it stands. Such
party as there is votes for it simply because they
may as well vote for it; they will do neither harm
nor good by so doing; the measure is nothing, and
the vote for it is nothing. But they do harm, for
they establish a fashion of frivolity and insincerity.
The trimmers in Pagan antiquity offered incense to
idols, saying to themselves, and to one another in
private, that the idol was nothing and the worship
nothing, and therefore they had done nothing. This
is precisely what the trimmers who wish to keep in
with everybody do to Mr. Locke King's measure.
They put on a grave face, listen with decorous
attention to the eloquent hierarch as he descants
on the virtues of his idol and repeats its high-
sounding titles; they then take the censer, throw
in a few grains of incense, wave the fragrant
homage, perform a slight genuflecxion, and are
glad to escape into the open air and forget
all about it. In pure kindness to the many most
respectable gentlemen who give their annual votes
for this proposal, we should be very glad to believe
that the proposal had the least solidity in it as it
stands. That it may be advisable at some not
very distant day to revise the whole system, and
even, in the interim, to make now and then a par-
tial improvement, we understand and believe ; but
we do not understand an insulated alteration which
would destroy the balance of the existing system.
When an outward-bound ship finds itself encoun-
tering heavy weather in the Bay of Biscay the
crew may make the discovery that the cargo might
have been better stowed, but that will not be
the time either to put things all right or to
make just one great change and no more. Our
Representative system is one of many equipoises.
We set one thing against another. We represent
a good deal besides men as Nature made them ;
or rather to correct ourselves, as Nature did not
make them, for Nature has not made all the same,
or all equal. We represent in the House of Com-
mons all that makes the country—numbers, intelli-
gence, education, property, rank, institutions, and
even traditions. We represent also an empire
which surrounds the globe, which occupies large
territories in five continents, and has a great part
to perform in the history of the world. All this is
not to be represented by delegates from so ne
ten pound householders. A pound of flesh cut from
Antonio's breast, even if it had been multiplied a
hundred times, would not have made another
Antonio, nor is this empire a mere aggregate of
several million ten-pound householders. Were it
that, it would soon find itself in the predicament of
an army which was all rank and file. But that is not
our social constitution. It is not the constitution of
a single neighbourhood, a single town, a single vil-
lage in these islands. A representative Legislature
must be harmonised to the actual state of the coun-
try and to its natural sentiment. Any plan of Par-
liamentary reform which fails of this harmony is as
pure an imposture as the composition of a baboon's
bead and arms with the tail of a fish, once passed
off as a mermaid in our curiosity shops. The thing
cannot be. The first oomparative anatomist will tell
you it is impossible, but not more impossible than
an American or any other Democratic Legislature
sewed upon the British people and empire.
DAILY NEWS.—The time has gone by for dis-
cussing the propriety of some new Court of Criminal
Appeal. The trials of Smethurst, M'Lachlan,
Wright, and Townley furnish conclusive proof that
the appeal upon questions of law which is now
allowed is not sufficient. In every one of these
cases there has been substantially an appeal upon
the facts. The Home Secretary has been compelled,
often sorely against his will, to sit as a judge of ap-
peal, and to confirm or overrule the decision at
which the judge and the jury who tried the case
had already arrived. In short, an appeal as to the
facts now exists. The Home Secretary is the pre-
siding judge, and the Home-office is the place where
it assembles. It is vain to ignore its existence. Such
a court is a necessity. A civilised country can no
more dispense with such a jurisdiction than it can
dispense with the jurisdiction in equity. Judges and
juries are confessedly fallible. Ample provision is
made for reviewing the conclusions at which they
may arrive in cases of contract and in actions for
yr a aibttusaudinred; to suppose that life
civiland
portant
d ea taas injuries.ulnb pe lar tti
dyi sabsnii
bills
s plry servitude,
eare c
hnaorta qc_tueir.
t e asi
Andm
it is obvious, therefore, that the same principle upon
which the right of appeal rests in the former case
may be used with additional force to justify it in
the other. The only question now is as to the
hest form in which an appeal in criminal cases can
be allowed. The bill introduced by Sir Fitzroy
Kelly, which now awaits the second reading, is an
objections
against supply
tthhee a requireduouilu
u s
attempt tojurisdiction
The chief
is exercised by the Home-office are, that it niswehxiecrh-
cised upon no definite principle, that t it is exercised
in secret, and that the Home Secretary is not com-
petent to act as a judge of appeal. To try any man
for his life, or even to try the right to any property,
before such a tribunal, would not be tolerated
an instant. But society has its rights as well as
the accused person, and the one is entitled to as
much protection as the other. As things now
stand, however, whilst the chances of escape for the
criminal are at a maximum, the security of society
is almost ignored. Now Sir F. Kelly's Bill does
certainly provide for some of the defects of the pre-
sent system. Under its provisions, upon the certi-
ficate of a barrister that the case deserves further
investigation, an application may be made to any of
the Courts of Westminster-hall, or to three judges
of the Court of Criminal Appeal—who may it at