The Sun.
London, England, 1837-05-08 00:00:00

.tes who throng round him, and who, if he succeed,
.11 set up a joyous yell of triumph throughout the
whole Tory camp. Can we, Reformerg, min&e our
cheers with their corrupted atmosphere—with them

" Vhose breath we hate

As reek of the rotten fens ?"

What Sir Francis has been is notYng to do with the
question. " Let by-bones he by-Jones." There is
the body of Sir Francis Burdett ; but the spirit has
departed. We may believe any thing if we believe that
copal mortuurn to be a Reformer. It would prove that
transubstantiation in politics is at least no miracle.
The '' unclean herd" of the Dawsons, Crokels, and
Castlereaghs have entered into the decayed body—have
tal:en possession of it, and will hurry it down the steep
hill of decliniii senility into the sea of oblivion. Re-
formers, it is them w how you oppose, when you op-
pose Sir Francis Burdett. Ile is merely their incor-
porate epiphany. Away with pernicious tempering
with your great cause, by childish reference to the past.
It is with the present you have alone to do. The
election of Burdett would push backward the cause of
Reform for seven years. So vital an interest as yours
is not to be sacrificed to the mawkish romance of sen-
timental compliment. It is what Sir Francis has done
which renders what he is now c:oing and about to do
mote dangerous. Take care that you are not stabbed!
by Tor) ism under the insidious cloak of old alliance in
Reform.—Morning Advertiser.
The Ministers and their organs of the revolutionary
faction have received a cruel- blow from the decision
come to by the House of Lords last Friday. The
Peers have postponed the further consideration, that
is to say, the committal, of the Irish " Municipal"
Bill, to the 9th day of June. The Ministers, there-
fore, are thrown into a frenzy of rage and disappoint-
ment at this precaution of the Upper House of Par-
liament" against being trepanned into a premature af-
firmative or negative upon a measure with regard to
which their Lordships wisely determine that they
cannot legislate otherwise than in the dark, if they
fail to treat it as a portion of the whole system of po-
licy affecting the relations of Church and State in
Ireland, on which both Houses of Parliament have
been invited to deliberate by his Majesty's speech
from the throne. To any mind not utterly distorted
by passion, we can conceive no proposition more self-
evident than this—that if three measures be pro-
posed for any country, all bearing unquestionably
and forcibly, whether more or less directly it mat-
ters not, upon the same great branch of the pub-
lic interests, no body of individuals who are not
parties to the framing of such measures can safely
form a judgment as to the merits of any one
of them without being made simultaneously cognizant
of at least the more important provisions which each
of all three is to consist of. Is it not so plain as al-
most to defy explanation, that the working of any one
of a series of general laws may be so assisted or so im-
peded, but at any rate in one way or another so essen-
tially modified by others which will have to operate
upon the same people, as to render it a matter of down-
right necessity that those whose duty it becomes to
consult upon the justice and expediency of such laws
should, before they pass a final vote upon the sub-
ject of them, be enabled to examine what their effects
are likely to be relatively towards each other, as an in-
dispensable means of even conjecturing what will be their
collective operation. The House of Lords, therefore
have acted with the sagacity of experienced statesmen
in requiring that they shall have the proper materials
for legislation submitted to them ere they pronounce an
irrevocable judgment. Nor has the spirit manifested by
the Duke of Wellington, who moved the postponement
of the Municipal Bill, or by Lord Fitzgerald, who en-
tered more largely and very ably into the argument founded
on the difference between the actual position of the House
of Lords at this moment and that wherein they stood
when last year's Bill was sent up to them, been such
as to provoke the slightest impulse of just anger at the
course adopted by their Lordships, or of distrust as
to the sincerity of their views. The Noble Duke
declared his anxious wish to find in the other Bills
now before the House of Commons some materials
for a final agreement between the Lords and that As-
sembly on the policy to be pursued towards the Irish
Church. Lord Fitzgerald affirmed his own deep
anxiety to see at the proper time, under fitting circum-
stances, and on safe and solid principles, a system of
local government framed and rendered applicable to
Ireland. Why should such assurances as these, from
quarters so respectable, be received with sullenness, or
produce a spirit of revengeful violence in honest po-
litical opponents ? Yet, what was the language of
Lord Melbourne is reply to the Duke of Wellington ?
It was neither constitutional nor honest language. It
was that of a fierce and desperate revolutionist. It
was a broad threat that the House of Commons should
be instigated by him and his colleagues to put off
" other " measures, if their Lordships, in the exer-
cise of their discretion and of their indubitable
right as independent legislators, should do that
which they deemed necessary for the guidance of
their own judgment, by obtaining a full knowledge
of the questions to be submitted to them previous
to their recording their votes. The mode of
action threatened by Lord Melbourne was avowedly
one of hostile retal'a- tion by the Commons against the
Lords. The Commons can plead for such a proce-
dure no intelligible argument, none but an illegitimate
and immoral motive ; they require no delay for the
sake of information--they have taken the initiative
with their own measures, and are neither interrupted
nor meddled with by ally other body in their treatment
of them. The menace, therefore, held out by Lord
Melbourne is one of open war I And what is the de-
scription of warfare against the House of Lords which
he—himself a member of that legislative assembly—
las ventured thus loudly to proclaim ? Why, on the
understanding and showing of his own partisans, it
no less than that the supplies shall be stopped, and the
whole machine of Government unhinged, if the Lords
dare to fulfil their deliberative functions in a man-
ner not pleasing to the taste of the Noble Vis-
count and his friends, or unfavourable to their party
objects ! This is somewhat of a new experiment on
the part of a Fiist Lord of the Treasury. But
doubts, it appears, have been cast upon the above con-
struction of the words delivered by Lord Melbourne in
his first address to the house of Lords. In his se-
cond speech, a short one, which does not seem to
have been reported, and after the energetic and power-
ful, thought off-hand attack, upon him and Lord
Brougham by the Earl of Haddington, Lord Mel-
bourne at once drew in his horns, and attempted to
shuffle, which he did mast awkwardly, out of the mire
into which his former fury had betrayed him. Now,
either he meant what he said in his *first reply to the
Duke of Wellington, or he did not. If not, his threat
was a paltry bravado, worthy of O'Connell or some
such low-bred bully ; but if, lie did intend actually to
stop the supplies, what a Minister is this man for any
empire not yet in the agonies of revolution i Lord
John Russell, from what passed in the House of Com-
mons, would appear to translate the expression of his
colleague; the Prime Minister, into a softer significa-
tion titan that affixed to them by Mr. Joseph
Hume, whose dreams all smack of money. The
former of those two high authorities will have
it, that the Irish Church Bill is the sufferer about
to be " hung up" by the House of Commons,
instead of the public treasury. His Lordship is said to
have pledged himself for Lord Morpeth, that the Irish
Secretary was quite-willing to sacrifice his "improved"
tithe measure, for the sake of glutting their joint re-
venge upon the Peers, by a delay of the second read-
ing of that Bill until the 9th of June. Well, then,
what will happen ? Why, as the Lords have wisely
and providently called for such aid as the Irish Church
Bill might afford them to assist their deliberations upon
the Municipal Bill, they obviously owe it to themselves
and to Ireland, in the Event of such assistance being
denied them, on the day appointed for the committal
of the Corporation Bill, to postpone the latter measure
from the 9th of June to that clay six months--viz., the
9th day of December. If the collision be really me-
ditated by these blind and unprincipled Ministers, let
them force it " an they choose--but let the act be
theirs. The people of England will not be long in
measuripi,x, ,out to them the retribution which they
will have sir'iriatpt:parned. As for the silly allega-
timt.oeUrWifit'iatigliannt , that there is no more eon-
nexrdn:, betiveen this -11 ill for poperizing the Cor-
piitatiOnsi off..lielaneii-0 that now in the House
of pairperizing and then subverting

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