The Sun.
London, England, 1837-08-07 00:00:00

one a Member of the Government, Mr. Robert Steu-
art and Mr. Angerstein, have declared their conversion
to the necessity of the ballot, although they had
hitherto zealously opposed it. Sir Henry Parnell has
also declared distinctly and decidedly in favour of it.
It may be recollected that Lord Howick and some of
the higher functionaries of Government stated, while
giving their opposition to it, that an extreme case,
proving the progress of corruption and bribery,
might urge them unwillingly to the necessity of
adopting it as the only protection of freedom
of election. We have not certainly far to look
' for the establishment of such an extreme case.
The only valid objection to the ballot, by these
and other statesmen, is, in reality of the most unsub-
stantial description. They express their fear lest the
characteristic manliness and sincerity of the English
people should suffer by the employment of secret vot-
ing. We, on the contrary, think that the charac-
teristic of manly sincerity which the sticklers for things
as they are assign to Englishmen, would benefit by
the change. Is there anything open and sincere in a
man being compelled to express an opinion at the
hustings through fear or reward which lie does not
really entertain? . There is nothing so desirable as to
deserve preservation in the bludvon and brick-bat
system recommended and enforced by the Tory myr-
midons against the Reform candidates—nor in the un-
paralleled amount of funds devoted by the Conserva-
tives to the purchase of the public liberties—nor in the
audacious spirit of calumny and detraction to which we
began by adverting. All this would be overthrown
by the Ballot ; the various arts of corruption would be
at once extinguished by being rendered useless ; they
would be suffocated in the suppressed exhalations of
their own mephitic atmosphere.—Morn. Advertiser.

The most disgraceful feature in the character of the
Melbourne-O'Connell administration is the contempt-
ible shuffling and evasion which they constant practise
in regard to their principles and opinions. With one
class of people and on one occasion, they are mode-
rate Whigs—with another class, and on another occa-
sion, they are downright Radicals, and sometimes they
think it expedient, as in the case of Mr. Spring Rice
at Cambridge, to give utterance to sentiments which
no good Conservative need be ashamed to avow. From
all this we may collect that they have no principles
of their own, at least none that they are not, at any
time, ready to sacrifice for the retention of place. Un-
der such an administration, any honest, enlightened,
steady course of policy at home or abroad, is entirely
out of. the question. The vessel of the state is like a
ship at sea without helm or compass, drifted at the
mercy of wind and tide, and leaving it a pure matter of
accident whether it arrive at any port or be engulphed
in shoals and quicksands and shattered on the rocks.
It is indeed a melancholy thing to reflect, that this
great empire, the mightiest upon which the sun goes
down, if it ever does go down upon the vast extent of
its dominions—should, by the inscrutable will of Pro-
vidence, and the foolishness of the people themselves,
be placed under the misrule of an administration
which has no fixed principle of policy or con-
duct whatever, or at least none that it has the
honesty or firmness to act upon, or that the
most sagacious person can calculate it will act
upon for seven consecutive days together ! But
one of the basest things we have heard of the Mel-
bourne Ministry, next to the degrading compact with
O'Connell at Lichfield House, is the underhand con-
spiracy with certain Radical leaders to deprive the
great mass of the Liberals themselves of the enjoy-
ment of freedom of election which has lately been ex-
posed by the Radicals of Dunfermline. It appears
that a secret compact has been entered into between
Radical Members of the late Parliament and the Whig
Ministers whom those;Radicals were eternally charging,
with political dishonesty, to force a Whig or a Radi-
cal, as the case might be, on every Liberal constituency
in the realm, without allowing the electors the op-
portunity of a choice. These be your Reformers, 0
England. Let us see what the Radical electors of
Dunfermline say in reference to this disgraceful
conspiracy. They speak thus—" By a secret and
unexplained coalition and understanding between the
Whig and Radical Members of the last House of
Commons, entered into without the consent or know-
ledge of, and carefully concealed from the constituency
of the empire, it appears that they bound theinsslves
to offer no opposition to the return of candidates of
either party who had served in the former Parliament,
or who had contested the election with Tory nominees,
and that this conspiracy against the freedom of the
electors in their choice of representatives, has the
direct effect of compelling the electors to accept of a
Whig Member for a Radical constituency, and of a
Radical Member for a Whig constituency, contrary to
the spirit of representation, and to the uniform profes-
sions of political obligation of the parties to that
very coalition." Such is the sentence of condemna-
tion for acts of the basest political duplicity passed
upon the Whig Ministers, and such Radicals as
Hume, Colonel Thompson, and others, by a sturdy
Radical constituency that will not allow their electoral
rights to be sacrificed to a set of political adventurers
who barter them away to serve their own cupidity or
ambition, with as little ceremony as if the franchises
of the electors were their own " goods and chattels."
But the game is nearly up. The hypocrites are un-
masked.—Morning Herald.
The elections proceed with a success to the cause
of the Queen and Constitution, which, if not wholly
uninterrupted, is marked only by such impediments
and reverses as merely suffice to impart variety, and
animation, and interest to the glorious game which is
in progress. The Jacobinical Administration, which
for the present disgraces the name and injures the for-
tunes of Great Britain has up to this moment lost
more than fourteen seats in the House of Commons.
County elections, English county elections, are about
to commence, or hare already begun, the result of
which will infallibly be, to add six or eight more to
its aggregate of loss. But, taking the loss of Minis-
ters by the returns from Great Britain at the lowest
estimate which can possibly be made, say 20 seats,
here will be a difference against them of 40 votes on
any division involving a trial of party strength in the
House of Commons, as compared with their force in
the last Parliament. And how few of the nume-
rous divisions upon which they staked in the last
Parliament their existence as a Ministry were
won by a majority so large as forty ? It would
be, however, greatly to underrate the effect
of the present election upon the Constitution
and character of the House of Commons if we were
to limit our computation of the change which has
been wrought to the numerical result of the returns.
To say nothing of the numerous instances in which
the returns in favour of Ministerial candidates have
been obtained by discreditable and illegal trickery, and
will unquestionably be reversed immediately that they
are submitted to the revision of an Election Com-
mittee—to say nothing of this source of augmented
strength, upon which the Conservativepartymay
securely reckon, how much ought we to allow for the
moral effect of the temper and principles manifested
so generally by the people of England upon the votes
of Members who are expected to support Ministers ?
In deference to the sense of the country, plainly ex-
pressed as it is, will not many of these think fit to
vote occasionally against the Administration, unless
Ministers should elude adverse votes by assimilating
their official conduct and their Parliamentary mea-
sures to the general feeling of the community, as it
has been made manifest by the elections ? But the
Ministerial faction solace themselves, or affect to do so,
with the expectation that they will gain something at the
elections in Ireland to counterbalance the deep and se-
rious losses they have sustained, and have yet to sustain,
in Great Britain. There never was an instance of more
egregious self-delusion, or of grosser misrepresenta-
tion, than this. Whatever the Conservative party
may lose in Ireland, and we see no reason to fear that
its losses will be severe, it is morally certain that the
Ministry, so far from gaining a single vote in Ireland,
will lose all or nearly all the independent strength, and
truly it is not much, which they have hitherto drawn
from that country. That Mr. O'Connell may gain at
the Irish elections a few additional votes—that his tail
mar be elongated by four or five supplementary joints
—is not improbable ; although this is not yet by any
means certain. In the last Parliament no doubt,
though the partisans of the Administration have often
denied it, the Ministry was Mr. O'Connell and Mr.