The Sun.
London, England, 1837-07-26 00:00:00

Grote's majority, therefore, over the Conservative in
1833 was just

3,300

IA 1835, after democracy began to be a little better
ka.;vve, Wt.ol had 6,418
Grote (the beau ideal of the movement) 5,955

Leaving Wood a majority over him of

Whilst Lyal, who was accompanied by two other
Conservatives, had 4,599
Being in a minority of

loteacl of 3,300
We come then to 1837, when we find, that accord-
ing to the latest official statements put forth, though
we have potent reasons to believe most unfair and dis-

parag,ing to the suppo►ters of the Conservative candi•
date, Mr. Palmer, the electors in the interest of Mr.
Grote have been reduced from 8,400 and upwards,
%% hie!) was their amount in 1833, to 5,879, being a

diminution of 2,500 votes ; while the Conservative

poll has exceed d that of 1E23 by about '760, and that
of 1835, by nearly 1,300 ; Mr. Grate's majority hay-
ing in the same tithe, and by the same process,
dwindled from 3,300 tl the magnificent (but more

thin questionable} sum-total of six. It is, as we said
beforc, of little if any moment to the nation generally,
w Nether this majoritt he a real one, and such as en-
titles Mr. Grote to the possession for some longer
period of seat in the House of Commons ;or whe-
ther, on a scrutiny by order of that Housc, it shall
tern out to be an actual minority, and the means of

seating Mr. Palmer. We know that a legal scrutiny
not, as before the Reform Bill, under the eye of the
P.-turning Officer, but one under the sanction of the
House itself, must and will he shortly entered upon,
and if- we are not much deceived will bring certain
parties to confession. But, as compared with the
establishment of the one inestimable truth, that City
-Tholicalism is going out of fashion, and loyalty and
r;,ll:2ion spreading in the place of it, we hold the accident
of Mr. Grote representing democracy in its decline, or
Mr. Palmer the constitutional spirit in its progress, to be
a thing not certainly indifferent to the citizens of Lon-
don, or to those persons who may sit within the walls
of the House of Commons, but of small national.
&guificancy. This is not the fitting time (we ar.e too
much busied, and too anxious about the future) to
dwell upon the accounts we have received of insolent
and daring dictation by the Ministers, as well as of
gross fraud committed by their subordinate functiona-
ries, for no end but to defeat the law, their own reform
law ! and to crush the freedom of election by every
knavish and villanous practice that bad men in despe-
rate circumstances, and conscious of impending ruin
could devise. Those proceedings shall be duly exposed
hereafter, ay, and fitly punished. But in the mean
while let us look at occurrences more notorious. The
metropolitan boroughs of Southwark, Lambeth, Fins-
bury, and Marylebone have re-elected Radical sup-
porters of the O'Connell Ministry. Procrastination
in the employment of efforts which, resorted to earlier,
might have proved successful, besides other descrip-
tions of mismanagement, especially the splitting votes
at Marylebone, have locked up or frittered away the
Conservative strength ; but that such strength exists
and is maturing, even the facts of those several con-
tests and their adjuncts prove. Southwark, in 1835,
was surrendered to Messrs. Daniel Whittle Harvey
and his colleague without the shadow of a struggle,
whereas 840 Conservatives have now voted for Mr.
Richards. In 1835 Lambeth polled for Alderman
Farebrother 919 Conservative votes ; it has now fur-
nished Mr. Baldwin with 1,587. In Finsbury, the sup-
port given to Mr. Perceval is in the highest degree credit-
able to that gentleman and to the electors, considering
the late period at which the contest was first thought of
and the canvass began. Sir William Horne, when,
with a good deal of Conservative backing, he fought
Sir S. Whalley for Marylebone, in 1835, brought
forward just 1,860 votes. On this present occasion,
in the teeth of the most systematic and barefaced
frauds, numbers of bad votes having polled for Sir S.
Whalley, Lord Teignmouth's friends mustered, of
votes, against which no valid exception could be
taken, 2,925—a1m05t 1,100 more than had appeared
en the previous election. Of Westminster we shall now
say nothing, but that the game is in the hands of the
Conservatives, and that if they lose it, the guilt is
theirs, not that of fortune. The tactics of the battle
are brief and plain ; they confine themselves to this
one movement—that every man who prefers a consti-
tutional monarchy to a republic, without protection to
law, property, or religion, must prove that preference
by an early registration of his own vote, and by an ac-
tive canvass for the votes of all other electors of whom
he has any knowledge. All who act thus will have done
their duty,and have rendered effectual service to that cause
wherein their own dearest interests are comprehended.
Those professing Conservatives who act otherwise are
but hypocrites, and unworthy the name and rank of Bri-
tons. Above all, let the Marylebone defeat be a sea-
sonable warning to the Conservative committees and
voters throughout the country. Marylebone has been
lost by splitting with a Radical. Especially do we
call on the promised supporters of Sir Geo. Murray
to avoid this fatal error. For every vote which they
split with Leader, Leader will be enabled to bestow a
corresponding vote upon Colonel Evans, who may
thus possibly be enabled to supplant the great Penin-
sular warrior, whose breast is as radiant with honour-
able stars as his mind is distinguished for every sena-
torial accomplishment. Our advice to one and all is
poll early, and pall plumpers. We have the happi-
ness to assure our readers that the clamorous vaunts
and boastings of the Ministerial newspapers, touching
the pretended success of their election contests, are ut-
terly and ludicrously false. The Conservatives have
been gaining beyond their most sanguine hopes through-
out the greater part of England. We shall before the
end of this current week present the public with an au-
thentic list of the results of the struggles which will ere
then have taken place, and from which our countrymen
may see with their own eyes the real prospects of this des-
perate Ministry, even before the returnsfbr counties can
be quoted, wherein lies the acknowledged force of the
Conservatives. Even allowing Ministers the full be-
nefit of all the seats for London, the boroughs and the
just
where of Middlesex, those places would remain
where they have been ; the Conservatives would lose
"' .%ilittiiikWkiiiihey now possess. We beg leave, never-
lEisrici.76ln k, that Westminster is not over, nor
----"Cigeksviebebt nor Middlesex over, and that four
4r, j• 7- : !_--- ""-, •- • f..
y air 4Air-:.; tign a division, are in those several in-
*4l.-,,,... •,.-.7-.,,i, i -.
AT),
--4.047:'%4 --!z-,..jt-'.
_.....-,n,_ ......,, ~3, 717,/,

~= I''~ri:~ '^~f
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stances still to be divided. The Conservatives have, in

the persons of Sir W. James and Mr. Wilberforce,
carried two seats for Hull, which were occupied be-

fore by those outrageous Radicals Colonel Thompson
and Mr. Hutt. The Conservatives have carried one
seat for Wells, which they had not before ; two seats
for Bridgewater, ditto ; one seat at least, if not two,
for Canterbury, ditto : one for Wells, ditto. We
shall, however, as we promised, soon present a list of a
nature to make her Majesty's Ministers, much as they
proclaim themselves devoted to Queen Victoria, and
free as they are with the conversion of her Majesty's
name to their own uses—we shall, we repeat, present
a catalogue of living consequences produced by this
appeal to the people of England, which will draw real
tears from the eyelids of some among them for the de-
cease of William IV.— Times.

There can be no greater political misfortune to any
nation than that of being placed under the guidance of
Ministers who are in themselves feeble and mean spi-
rited, and are yet pledged to attempt changes which,
if they were truly justifiable or politic, would still re-
quire the most cautious heads and the most determined
hearts to carry them into effect without danger of sha-
kin°. the Commonwealth to pieces. This, however, is
the misfortune of the British nation at present. It is

in vain that Ministers assume all the pompous manner,

... .._... _____ . .
and not a little of the despotic spirit, of a Govern-
ment conscious of power. It is not difficult to appear
mighty in the bestowal of appointments, to be very
grand at privy councils, and to be very threatening when
persons of inferior power and emoluments presume to
act more independently than their official superiors. This
is but a poor excuse for that power in matters of real na-
tional moment which our Government ought to possess

—a power derived from the confidence of the more in-
telligent classes of the public, and exercised with the
energy and the ability which, in former times, have
distinguished British Statesmen. We do not see how
any man—except it be those violent partisans of the
Government who appear to set truth, probability, and
decency, equally at defiance—can pretend for a moment
that the existing Administration possesses either the
public confidence or the personal ability which we have
adverted to. It is apparent that fur the last two years
there has been nothing like general confidence in the
Government. Even they who are in the habit of vot-

ing with it have not hesitated to speak of it frequentl
with reprobation, and yet oftener with contempt. .
were an easy matter to cite the speeches of Mr. Roe
buck, the publications of Sir W. Molesworth, and
both the speeches and letters of Mr O'Connell, in
which the talents and the dispositions of the Govern-
ment generally are treated in anything but respectful
language. These persons, and nine out of ten among
all those who support the Administration, do so, not
out of any respect for the policy of the Government,
or the ability of the Ministers, but from a belief that
the very weakness and dullness of the Administra-
tion, and its absolute dependence upon the " destruc-
tive" party, makes it the most useful Government to
that party—the most convenient for carrying the de-
signs of that party into effect which could possibly
exist. A Government openly avowing " destructive"
designs would not serve the purposes of the ultra-Ra-
dicals half so well. They who hate the Church and
hate the Monarchy—they who love to see the founda-
tions of British institutions disturbed and loosened, and
made ready to fall at the first furious onset of popular
assault—are much better served by the existing Go-
vernment than by any other which it is possible to ima-
gine. They are doing the loosening work—they are
causing the buttresses to be pulled down, under the
pretence of making repairs. I'he process which leaJs
to ruin is going on, while a great part of the nation is
tdeludA wish the idea that it is merely a little alteration
which is carried into effect, in order to accommodate
political institutions to the new " liberal" fashion of
the present day. Even this delusion does not, however,
extend to the belief that the at:ministration does this of
its own free will, and by the exertion of its own energy.
Everywhere the conviction prevails that the Government
is of itself nothing, and that in all it does, beyond the
distribution of patronage, and the receipt of the public
money, it yields to a power which it would not yield
to if place could be maintained on any other terms.
Whatever the ultimate result of this may be upon
the people, after the ordeal of a revolution shall have
been gone through, it must be obvious to every man
of common sense that the Government—that is to say,
the present constitutional frame of Government in this
empire—must, under such a system, speedily fall into
degradation, and become a prey to its enemies. A
system of Government which is worked, managed, and
directed, not by the friends, but under the dictation of
the enemies of that system, cannot last. The present
Administration is as certainly and as palpably under
the dictation of the enemies of the British Constitu-
tion, in Church and State, as a ship when driving
upon a lee shore is under the direction of the storm
which it has not the power to resist. Who, then, is
to rescue this ancient system of British Government
from shipwreck ? Who is to save that political system,
under which Great Britain rose to be the greatest
among nations, from the destruction which threatens?
That can be done only by the electors of the king-
dom, and 71610 is the time for the great exertion to be
made. If such a House of Commons be not returned
as will cause a Conservative policy to be acted upon,
the British Constitution must fall a prey to those who
are watching in eager expectation for its fall.—Morn-
ing Herald.
We will not at present say one word about the elec-
tions, except that in the returns already given to the
public there is much suspicion of fraud. It has, we
believe, been determined that as large a proportion as
possible of the early returns shall be in favour of the
Government, and as the Returning Officers are gene-
rally nominees of the Home Office, and as the poll-
clerks are, of course, of the same complexion as the
Returning Officers, the Whig-Radicals have been
enabled to make the appearance of a good fight. Not-
withstanding these advantages, however, the Whig-
Radicals have not yet obtained any victory which
ought in the slightest degree to damp the hopes,
or relax time exertions of the Conservative party.
They have secured for the present their former
number of seats for the metropolitan districts—in
other words, in the metropolis they have, as yet,
neither gained nor lost. And to what expedients
have they not been compelled to resort, in order to
maintain themselves in this, not very triumphant,
position. In the city of London, Mr. Palmer, the
Conservative candidate has, according to the Sheriffs'
return, lost his election by six votes, in a poll of about
six thousand. But everybody knows that when an
electioneering contest runs so close as this, the Whig-
Radicals will not stick at trifles. Upon an investi-
gation we have no doubt that many more than six
who have been dead for months will be found to have
voted for the antaaonist of Mr. Palmer ; and, in addi-
tion to these, an equal number who never had any
right to vote at. all. We should be deeply grieved
to find that a City of London election had been car-
ried on upon the system which Mr. O'Connell and his
adherents have made so familiar to the people of Dub-
lin ; but we fear that this last and bitterest mortifica-
tion will not be spared us. Whether we are to have
the advantage of Mr. Pahner's vote in the House of
Commons, or are still to be annoyed and injured by that
of Mr. Grote, in either case the recent election fully
proves that in the city of London the Conservative cause
has made a great advance in public favour since the
electors were last called upon to exercise their
suffrages. In 1835 the majority of the lowest of the
Whig-Radical candidates over the highest of the Con-
servative candidates was 1,356. And in 1833, when,
as in the present instance, only one Conservative can-
didate was in the field, the Conservative, Mr. Liven,
was 1,094 below the lowest of the Whig Radicals,
Sir John Key. How striking and how encouraging,
is the change since the period to which we have re-
ferred ! The Whig-Radicals, to obtain an apparent
and nominal majority of only six over Mr. Palmer, the
Conservative candidate, have been compelled to resort
to the desperate expedient of putting upon the poll-
books the names of a large proportion of the persons,
out of a list of many thousand voters, who, in the
course of the last year, have either left the country or
died. In the course of the investigation to which the
City election must give rise there :ill occur exposures
sufficient to prove that the Whig-Radical leaders are
both weaker and more desperate than has hitherto
been imagined.—Morning Post.