The Sun.
London, England, 1839-07-10 00:00:00

METROPOLITAN POLITICAL

SUMMARY.

The Courier of last evening thus speaks of a judg-
ment of the Carlow Election Committee, which was
pronounced yesterday :—" The Carlow Election Com-
mittee, whose proceedings have not from the commence-
ment been liable to impeachment for their liberality,
pronounced a judgment yesterday, which is as
little calculated as any thing it has done to pro-
cure unmingled respect for its legal opinions and
decisions. Occupied the whole day in considering the
point whether the vote of a person who had given
bribes was good or bad, the Committee at last decided
it to be good. There would have been no question as
to the vote of a person who had accepted a bribe.
Here then is a grand distinction, exquisitely illustrative
of election-Committee morality."
The Globe draws the following portrait of the Ipswich
Tories :—" The Ipswich Tories are fine specimens of
their species. It would be difficult to find an equal
number of men in the present day more distinguished by
the qualities which constitute the essence of Toryism, or
more proud of possessing them. They are none of your
half-and-half-measure men. Conformity to the spirit
and manners of the age—trimming to adapt themselves
to the circumstances of the times, or the position of their
party—enters not into their policy. They are back-
bone Tories ; who carry out their principles ;' stick-
ing at nothing likely to advance their cause, or to effect
a triumph for the candidate they select as the rallying
name for their partisans. Fraud and force are the
weapons of their warfare. Intimidation and bribery
are as regularly practised by them upon the electors who
are accessible to either, as the writ is issued by the
Speaker when a vacancy occurs in the representation.
In other towns these practices are occasional—in IPS.
wich they are reduced to a regular system. The agents
are always at hand ;the price of every man who will
accept a bribe is known."
The Standard, commenting on Mr. Hume's motion
on Monday in the Commons, alludes as follows to the
Bank of England :--" No matter what drains upon
the quantum of gold in the world may be opened else-
where—no matter what wars or panics, political or
commercial, in any other countries, may draw, as such
causes always do, to the countries where they exist,
an undue share of the common stock of gold, the Bank
of England must always be provided. France and
Russia may be, as they notoriously have been, hoard-

ing gold with a view to political enterprise—a 1
panic in the United States may require that
every note in circulation be exchanged for gold, as was
lately the case—a deficient harvest may cause the ne-
cessity of remitting millions of specie in exchange for
corn ; the inexorable law still enjoins it upon the Bank
of England to be provided with a sufficient stock of
gold to supply the wants of the country. Every one
surely must see the delicate nature of the duty thus cast
upon the Bank. How is it to husband its supply of gold
but by contracting its issues ; that is, diminishing the
amount of demands to which it is liable ? How again to
recover the specie drained off, but by some effort in the
opposite direction when time and opportunity serve ?"
The Times of this morning, after hinting at the necessity
of a Reform in the Bank of England, says :—" How this is
to be accomplished is another question, and may well em-
ploy the constant earnest attention of the best heads in the
country in the interval which must elapse between the
present time and the expiration of the Bank charter in
1844. We say expiration, because Parliament in its wis-
dom, instead of granting, as previously, a term absolute of
21 years, has reserved to itself, at the end of ten years, the
power of revising the contract entered into in 1834, between
the Government and the proprietors of Bank stock. It will
appear in the sequel, as we arc firmly persuaded, that in-
stances of Parliamentary wisdom,' more perfect than this,
cannot easily be adduced. If the Bank of England, as a
corporate monopoly, shall survive that period, with all its
existing rights and privileges, under the battery—for we
can think of no better term—of new light which has been
poured upon the world since the last charter was granted,
it will be a phenomenon to which no age and no country,
under circumstances like ours, can produce a parallel."
The Morning Post observes, in reference to the penny
postage scheme :—" Let us have cheap postage by all
means ; but let us not throw away the Post-office revenue
until we have provided some other, or found out how to
carry on the affairs of the nation with a million and a half
less of revenue than we have hitherto possessed. We say,
again, that in proposing this abolition of a tax to the
I-louse of Commons:, it is the business of the Chancellor
of the Exchequer either to propose a substitute or to show
how he can manage with a million and a half less of reve-
nue than has hitherto been supplied to the Treasury."
The Morning Chronicle thus speaks of the Chancellor
of the Exchequer's propositions respecting the penny
postage t—" Mr. Spring Rice has walked into a Tory
trap. Walk out of it again he may ; but it must be at the
risk of leaving the penny postage behind him. Unfortu-
nately, while the escape will be his own, the risk is ours,
and that of the community. But the Chancellor of the
Exchequer plays Juliet to the Romeo of Toryism ; his
bounty is as boundless as the sea.' There is the future
tax-pledge to encourage Toryism. Sir Robert Peel, with
his usual candour, says " there can be no clamour against
a new tax ; the Chancellor of the Exchequer will of
course face the responsibility of diminished revenue.' And
then Mr. Rice replies, with a most winning smile,
Neither, fair saint, if either thee displease.' So opposi-
' tion is not displeased, and the winning is more likely to
remain with the smile than to extend itself to the measure."
The Morning Herald comments in the following terms
on the conduct of the police during the late Birmingham
riots :—" As to the Birmingham riots, these would seem
to have been created, partially at least, if not entirely, by
the London policemen themselves. All accounts concur
in describing these men to have proceeded direct from the
railway carriages, which had brought them down from
London, to the scene of the meeting in the centre of Bir-
mingham ; end to ha, e been themselves the first breakers
of the peace. Lord John Russell intended, no doubt, to
exhibit the expertness of his favourite force in dispersing
mobs; and had the meeting in question dispersed quietly,
loud would have been the Whig songs of triumph over
the results achieved without the interposition of the mi-
litary. The end, however, did not justify the House Se-
cretary's anticipations. The policemen were repulsed,
and beaten; and but for the interposition of the military,
they might, in all probability, have been dealt with after a
eery serious fashion. Nothing, indeed, is more remark-
able, on all occasions, than the vast superiority of regular
soldiers over the Home-office policemen, as conservators
of the peace, whenever the peace is seriously threatened."
The Morning Advertiser replies as follows, to a leading
article that appeared in the Morning Chronicle of yester-
day, on the subject of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's
penny postage scheme:—. We have looked upon tbe
pledge which it pleaseth our Contemporary to attack, lesa
in the light of a promise on the part of Parliament to make*
good the deficiency than as the formal participation by
Parliament in the responsibility of the transaction, under the
unprecedented circumstances in which the measure is pro-
posed. We should have held the Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer to be deserving of impeachment had he propounded
the charge with such a budget, in a less formal and solemn
manner. Strong as our desire is that the measure should
be carried, and confident as we are of its success, earlier
or later, and that not distantly, we cannot suffer ourselves,
for love of the measure, to overlook the position of the Mi-
nister, and the duties which it imposes upon him on behalf
of the country's interests."