The Sun.
London, England, 1839-08-05 00:00:00

PARLIAMENTARY REFORM.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.
Sin—When you have a spare corner in The Sun, which
eclipses all its contemporary luminaries in fearless denun-
ciations against the infernal Corn-law monopoly, and every
other instance of legitimate tyranny, my lucubrations on
Ballot, Suffrage, Elections, Registration, &c., may not
prove unacceptable to yourself and numerous subscribing
readers, ab!e and liberal enough to encourage such an im-
partial journal by payments in advance, either quarterly,
semiannually, or annually at once, particularly, should I
be capable of making my remarks from time to time both
pithy and brief, to deprecate unseasonable resistance to un-
seasonable controul. If indigent individuals infringe any
law, however iniquitous it may be, and imposed without
the real or virtual consent of the great majority of the
working people, who are as millions to the other classes of
society, our Church and State legislators lose not one day
to punish the popular delinquents with death, banishment,
captivity, fine, &c., even when forced to pass a new uncon-
stitutional Act to meet the supposed or actual emergency.
In cases of treason—nay its simple misprision is deemed
a capital. crime the victim to kingeraft, with
priestcraft combined, is, or has been, cruelly mutilated,
tortured, and butchered in the glorious land of
Free Britons ; of course, with the due benefit of clergy,
who teach the wretched culprit who has not even t-n mi-
nutes to live, to pray fervently through the Lord's Prayer
for his daily bread 1 Proclamations offering immense re-
wards for the miserable sinner's discovery, conviction, and
consequent execution, to encourage informers and witnesses
of every species to bring the traitor's head to the block, or
his neck to the hangman's halter, are issued, appeals that
seldom fail to succeed among the devout followers of the
merciful Jesus; few of whom would scruple to denounce,
discover, or betray, like Judas, any tyrannicide, for a
munificent bribe, with a kiss. Let us contrast the horrible
fate of the above State criminals, or to descend lower in
the scale of homicide, to the Ministerial assassin of Perceval,
with the impunity of treachery, fraud, corruption, perjury,
liberticide, the lingering murder of the staff of life, starva-
tion committed against the nation by Peers, Prelates, and
lordly land proprietors, aided by their stultified fifty-pound
tenantry, opulent commoners, a crawling shopecracy, and
the whole tribe of venal slaves to luxurious courts. While
the foregoing evils exist, while soldiers and sailors are
pressed or brutally flagellated, and honest labourers are
famished by inadequate hire in every department of indus-
try, our absurd vaunt of " Britannia rules the waves" is a
despicable farce, and the actual condition of the country
seems the menacing prelude to an awful tragedy,
unless averted by more humanity and wisdom than
Whig and Tory Cabinets have yet exerted to conciliate
the Democracy, long since driven to despair by their innu-
merable privations, grinding taxation, and onerous duties
to perform, in which they have nearly as little interest as
mere beasts of burden, with education enough to teach
such unrepresented serfs by whom, when, where, how, and
why they arc degraded infinitely beneath the rank of free-
men; who, without the shelter of the Ballot never will
dare vote as they wish, from motives of self-preservation
alone, until the whole chicanery of electioneering ma-
nceuvres be extirpated by the severity of ignominious pet;
naltics and expoure of every person concerned in such
dast ,rdlv pursuits, which ought, in justice to the nation,
to be b: ended as infamous as perjury, burglary, robbery,
forgery, theft, sedition, and similar offences, not at present