The Sun.
London, England, 1837-11-27 00:00:00

and thinking people of this country will endure to be
told by the Standard of last Friday, that " the
full investigation of the state of Ireland and the
Ribbon system is to be put off to a more fitting
moment" ? to he postponed until some more rivers
of Protestant blood be shed, and until every
Catholic in Ireland is involved in that conspi-
racy, encouraged by Lord Mulgrave, the bond of
whose union is a pledge to exterminate Protestants ?
No ; the season is, thank God, arrived when the
shameless fabrications of the Tory orators and press
will be laid bare. No doubt crime, and that to a con-
siderable extent, subsists in Ireland. -Two years of a
liberal Government have. not repaired those moral ra-
vages which centuries of that worst of oppressions—
religions ascendancy—have produced. Lord Roden
will prove this, and nothing snore. No doubt combina-
tions prevail, founded upon that ignorance of true poli-
tical principles which must abound in a country where
education was either proscribed by Act of Parliament,
or turned into an engine of proselytism, and thus ar-
rested in its progress, or opposed by a faction who
hated the light as midnight robber dreads the dawn.
No doubt the people of Ireland, the victims of a code
" designedly framed to extinguish within them every
moral sentiment," will not bear comparison with the
inhabitants of this favoured isle,
" The greatest and the best of all the main,"

Conservatives are in the ascendant. As far, then, as
concerns the retention of office, the noble Lord and his
colleagues are evidently of opinion, that any hostility
they can encounter from the wretched corps of impract►-
cables may be more than neutralized by that abstinence
from factious opposition which they can count upon
on the part of the Constitutionalists. Knowing, there-
fore, that the Conservatives will disdain to join in any
Radical vote for the mere purpose of dislodging the
Whigs, it will probably be the studious object of the
latter to conduct the business of the session on such
negative principles as, while not provoking the strength
of the one party, will treat with indifference the impo-
tent wrath of the other. Accordingly, taken in con-
nexion with Lord John Russell's fulminations against
ultra-Liberalism, one may not be far wrong in pre-
dicting, that in the measures about to be submitted by
Government we shall have no " appropriation clause,"
no Church-rate divisions, no tampering with the Uni-
versities (nay, in Scotland they are actually endowing
new theological professorships), and since Lord Pal-
merston's journal declares at length that both parties in
Ireland, Papists as well as Protestants, are equally
culpable in point of sectarian partisanship, we may fur-
ther assume that the forthcoming Municipal Bill for
that country will be tendered in a shape to which no se-
rious object►ons can be offered. In disposing of all this.
there is implied, no doubt, a good deal of unfastidious
bolting ; but the oesophagus of a Whig, famishing for
the grub of office, is wide enough to swallow anything.
Meanwhile, the Parliamentary Radicals seem threat-
ened to be placed in a very sorry predicament. The
unexpected trimming of the Whigs has stung them to
madness. The juicy orange which they had expected
to suck resists theirdirty paws, and submits itself to the
squeezings of their opponents. Now, their wrath at
this has known no decent bounds. The high- aristo-
cratic contempt wherewith Lord John Russell con-
signed Mr. Wakley's " three powders" to the ridicule
of the country is unforgotten and unforgiven. The
leading Radical practitioners have sworn war against
the Melbourne Ministry, as sharply as ever the
Member for Finsbury applied his Lancet to the tu-
mours of medical corruption. Mr. Leader declares
that he " detests" the Whigs. Mr Ward avows that
l►e will take the earliest favourable opportunity of
squeezing them out of office. O'Connell protests that
he is no longera Whig-Radical, but a Radical absolute.
Well, will anything come of this ? Not a shadow. To
all practical purposes it is mere noisy palaver, every
word of it. These Republican braggarts will sneak
back again into their old habits of compromise, and
will once more lick the feet of their betters ; and there
they will lie, scouted and scorned by the entire public—
" As pale as any clout in the 'varsal world."
—Times.

with that people whom a thousand years of popular
government have made pre-eminent among the nations
for virtue, for morality, for every noble quality. Lord
Mulgrave carries no enchanter's wand, nor is the -ele-
vation of a people depressed by ages of misrule the
work of a moment. But what any ruler in his circum-
stances could do, that we verily believe he has done.
Opposed in every step of his policy by a Tory magis-
tracy, slandered by a Tory press, preached at by a Tory
pulpit, denied by a Tory House of Lords those mea-
sures of redress by which the condition of the Irish
people would have been exalted, he has infused into
the public mind that confidence in Government which
is the seminal principle of all improvement ; he has
introduced an improved vigilance into the execution of
the laws, now an object of fear only to the offender,
and produced that marked improvement in the moral
state of Ireland, the proofs of which we have so often
laid before the public, drawn from sources above all
suspicion—the charges of judges politically hostile to
the Government, and the results of official reports, the
accuracy of which admits of no question.—Morning
Chronicle.

In our opinion much more importance has been at-
tached to Lord John Russell's recent declarations
than they are really entitled to. We do not mean that
they arc deficient in explicitness, or that they present
any conceivable postern whereby their author can ho-
nourably retreat from the course of action to which
they bind him ; but after all, interpreting them by such
parallel passages as have occurred in former announce-
ments by the same oracle, our conviction is, that the
Conservatives have just as little reason to confide
in their constitutional tone as the Radicals have to
protest against their anti-revolutionary tendency.
Heaven forbid that we should do his Lordship injus-
tice ! We would shut the door of repentance against
no man. Nay, we even admit that the symptoms of
Monday and Tuesday were somewhat encouraging ;
or, at least, one of the evidences of true penitence (we
mean confession) was exhibited by the Noble Lord to
this extent—that he acknowledged his evil ways were
reprobated and condemned from honest conviction by an
immense proportion of the people of England. Indeed,
his Lordship could not very decently do otherwise :
for, in answer to the appeal which he and his colleagues
have recently made to the general constituency of the
empire, backed by all the admitted advantages arising
from the possession of Government patronage and the
assumption of Court favour, the electors have returned
a Parliament, neatly one-half of whose members have
publicly declared themselves to be hostile to the Mel-
bourne Ministry. To account for this the usual de-
clamatory cant about intimidation and so forth may do
well enough for your raw greenhorns. Bat Lord John
Russell is neither raw nor green : he is gray enough
to know, that if Tory gold or Tory winding could.
compel Conservative returns in 1837, the same mate-
rials must have been equally efficacious in 1833, when
the Tories could hardly muster 150 votes. Accord-
ingly, his Lordship's confession, touching the consci-
entious and unbiassed condemnation which the Eng-
lish constituency have pronounced upon Whig policy,
is not only well founded, but is creditable to his in-
genuousness. At the same time we cannot forget that,
in the course of a protracted prodigality, he has done
a good deal which he is bound to atone for. He has
allowed himself too long to be a mere chartered
smuggler, under the supercargoship of O'Connell.
The plague of democracy, so prevalent among the re-
gions in which he has prosecuted his contraband traffic
has been extensively propagated by his instrumenta-
lity. We therefore maintain that his Lordship must
perform a tolerably extended quarantine before he can
get rid of his political infection ; and if the period of
his probation should bear any proportion to the cha-
racter and continuance of his malpractices, we fear
that a considerable interval must transpire ere the pre-
fessed Conservatism of the noble skipper can restore
him to public confidence, especially after • the suspi-
cions indications into which lie and his comrades re-
lapsed on Thursday night, in regard to election peti-
tions, and the adjustment of the Civil List. Indeed,
we strongly suspect that the ostentatious way in
which they have flung overboard the three principal
bales of Radicalism, has only been a manceuvre to
throw the preventive service offtheir guard, in ckrder the
more easily to effect a landing for some smaller kegs
of equally interdicted commodities. To these things
we deem it right to draw the attention of the proper
officers, who in due time, will put the broad arrow
upon them, we have no doubt. Now, while such are
our own views respecting the Conservative feint where-
with Ministers have opened the present Session, we
are ashamed to say that the accusations, apologies,
threats, and invective with which they have been
variously treated by their Radical expectants and the
Liberal Press, have afforded us a good deal of down-
right irreverent fun. An evening quidnunc, sorely
discOntented, gives a gentle utterance to his belief that
Lord John Russell has greatly under-estimated the
extent to which the public are favourable to the Ballot.
Another nocturnal, of somewhat bolder kidney, de-
clares,
that if his Lordship can be supposed to have
spoken the concurrent sentiments of his Colleagues,
they ought all to be cashiered witfrout a moment's
delay. But what we have been most amused
with, beyond comparison, is the tremulous twaddle
put forth on this occasion by the accredited
organ of Lord Palmerston. Notwithstanding the
." sure and decided majority" which his Lordship
boasted of in his address to the electors of Tiver-
ton, he manifestly feels that the ground of liberalism is
tottering beneath him. As usual, therefore, he is pre-
paring with great circumspection to fall back upon a
more profitable position. This is always the first
object of the Noble Viscount's solicitude ; and so ur-
gently has he felt the necessity of putting himself into
marching order, that amidst the alarms
of the week he
actually could not find leisure to take his seat in Parlia-
ment until he had written the protocol, which is ob-
viously meant to pave the way for whatever exchange
of treaties his official experience may suggest. The
paper in question was given to the public on Thursday
night, the evening on which his Lordship took the
oaths, and a beautiful piece of diplomacy it truly is.
This wily disciple of the Talleyrand school has at
length discovered that " there is a good deal of
recently developed Conservatism in the country,"
from whence he argues the necessity of eating
in a good deal of his formerly developed Liberal-
ism, in deference to the paramount necessity of
his retaining the pay and patronage of the Foreign-
office. How far that Conservatism can be said to
be recently developed, which three years ago ejected
his Lordship from South Hants, dismissed his Home
colleague from North Devon, and sent 300 representa-
tives to the last Parliament, it is not necessary to say.
The fact that the formidable phalanx on the Opposition
benches convinces Lord Palmerston that the Whig
majority is by no means so " sure and decided" as he
had represented to the Tivertonians, is quite sufficient
for
our purpose ; because on this single fact the whole
policy of the Melbourne Ministry, during the current
session, if they can weather it out, will unquestionably
hinge. Mark what we say—Radicalism is found to
be at a discount in the country. The principles of the

A letter has been addressed to Lord John Russell
" On Registration and the trial of Controverted Elec-
tions," by a Member of the last three Parliaments,
which contains many suggestions well calculated to
alleviate the inconvenience and evils consequent upon
the present mode of qualifying for the elective fran-
chise. In regard to the superintendence of the re-
gistration, the author proposes to appoint seven
judges, who, it is calculated, would complete their
labours between the months of September and March,
and might afterwards meet in London as an appellate
Court to decide all contested cases ; every person
appealing unsuccessfully to pay all expenses. The
appointment of the Judges to be vested in the Go-
verninent, and no practising Barrister to be eligible.
As to the mode of election, until the Ballot be
introduced, the author despairs of any peace or har-
mony being established in the country. In cases of
disputed returns the unsuccessful candidate is to de-
posit 1001. in the hands of the returning officer, to be
returned if unsuccessful, in which case also he shall
pay all costs. Either party who objects to a vote
shall, if unsuccessful in the objection, pay to his op-
ponent 51.; and also, either party retaining upon his
list a vote declared to be bad, and the unsuccessful
party upon the whole scrutiny, shall pay all other
costs. This would effectually throw the responsibility
of fictitious votes on the party seeking to make them
available. The following is the mode in which it is
proposed to try the elections :—At the beginning of
each Session, the Speaker should name one hundred
Members who he shall consider the best qualified to
sit upon Election Committees ; the House afterwards
to reduce such list to fifty, in the following manner—
each Member to deliver at the table a list of twenty-
five of such names to which he objects, and the fifty
to whom there are the greater number of objections to
be struck off the list of one hundred. The foregoing
are some of the more important hints contained in the
pamphlet before us. With regard to the improve-
ments of the system of registration, they merit deep
consideration ; but as the present state of the franchise
and mode of taking votes is such as will never give sa-
tisfaction to the British public—such as will, on the
contrary, i❑ progress of time, create more and more
discontent—it will be necessary that these emendations
in the mode of registrations and the trial of contro-
verted elections, should either be preceded or accom-
panied by an extension of the suffrage and protection
in its exercise, or we shall be as far as ever from ob-
taining the great object of all fundamental changes—
a full, fair, and effective representation of the people.
If the people of Great Britain were disposed to limit
their claims to the zdtimatztm of representative reform
specified by Lord John Russell, the letter of his cor-
respondent would be admirably adapted to form the
basis of amelioration such as alluded to by his Lord-
ship. But the 'people expect other and greater re-
forms, and not only expect, but are determined on their
accomplishment. Therefore, to attract public atten-
tion in the present critical juncture of affairs, it is not
on registration and controverted elections only that one
must write, but on an extension of the suffrage, the bal-
lot, and short Parliaments. These are the subjects
on which public attention is now fixed, and on which
the country and the Home Secretary are at issue. This
is the time for the friends of these measures to declare
themselves in a manner that will leave no mistake as
to their sentiments. Let it never be forgotten that,
however much we may confide in Ministers, we must
always depend most upon ourselves.---Morning Ad-
vertiser.

The debate on the Address, and the political esca-
pade of the unmanageable Member for Finsbury,
which lent so unusual and unexpected a brilliancy to
the opening scene of the Parliamentary campaign,
have elicited the expressipn of very different opinions,
and betrayed the operation of very different motives, in
the lucubrations of two of our weekly Contempo-
raries. We allude to the Ministerial Examiner, whose
principle seems to be expediency, and to the Radical
Spectator, whose notion of expediency involves the
uncompromising advocacy of principle under any cir-
cumstances. The Eapaminer reprobates the egotistical
impudence, the " fever of impatient patriotism," the
passion for premature notoriety, the bad taste and the
bad temper which induced the medical and mulish mover
of the amendment, in defiance of the remonstrances of
his Reforming confederates, " to give the Government
an attack in the rear." But, as our irate Contem•
porary himself admits " that the Government drew
up their front so as best to frustrate their enemies,"
we really cannot perceive the indiscretion of Mr.
Wakley's mode of attack. To say nothing of the pro-
fessional habits of the Hon. Operator, it was obviously
safer to direct his battery against that quarter which
the enemy were least prepared to defend. " Hine
lachrymm." Hence the Jeremiade of the Exa-
miner. The ruthless impetus of the a posteriori as-
sault on his Ministerial friends may well have scan-
dalised their sensitive and calculating ally. A mere
Melbournite must have been horrified at the frantic
folly of Mr. Wakley's amendment, which called forth
" the declaration of Lord John Russell—.a declara-
tion, the irrationality and offensiveness of which no irri-
tation can excuse, a Vandal declaration of war against
any step of improvement beyond the rotten ground of
the Reform Bill." Our discomfited Contemporary,
however, consoles himself with the hope that " Govern-
ment will reconsider their judgment upon alpoiiit so
important ;" and by way of encouraging them to be
good boys, and behave better in time to come, he
gives them a broad hint that the Radicals are not to
be affronted with impunity ;--." It is clear that a Go-
vernment must be in a false and unnatural position
when it is at direct issue with the large majority of its
supporters. Reformers are like other men ; and, in
looking to the talent, the industry, the commercial
wealth, the natural ambition of that vast party which

IIE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 18)7

are pledged to this question (the ballot), it is impos-
sible that they should not feel it almost as an affront
that while their support is necessary to the Govern-
ment their prinicplcs are proscribed in the Cabinet."
The complaint is natural. No man can deny that the
Radical ballot-mongers, and Reformers in general,
have undergone on this humiliating occasion the very
" worst of ill-usage, at the hands of the Parliamentary
Papa of the Reform Bill. But—

" Insults are innocent when men are worthless;"

and we have little doubt that the contumelious denun-
ciation of the Movement-men by Lord John Russell
will, for expediency-sake, be forgiven and forgotten.
The Radicals know, and feel acutely, that even in the
Reformed House of Commons they cannot stand alone.
Powerless themselves, their Whig allies are equally so ;
but the two negatives united make a clumsy affirmative.
Hence the laborious efforts of our Contemporary to
smooth down the ruffled feathers of the Radicals on
the one hand, and to explain away the unqualified de-
claration of Lord John Russell on the other. Our
Contemporary may lay the " flattering unction to his
soul," that though " Lord John has said that he will
not support the Ballot, he has not said, nor even im-
plied, that the Cabinet will oppose it." To this extent
Lord John Russell has not betrayed the secret of his
colleagues. But does the Examiner suppose that the
Noble Leader of the House of Commons is sufficiently
out of his leading-strings to walk alone ? No, no. The
Movement and the Ballot are cushioned for this Session
at least. The Spectator, more attached to principle than
to expediency, and wholly regardless of times and sea-
sons, and person and place, is much more moderate in
his qualified and quasi condemnation of Mr. Wakley's
irregular attack on the rear of the Government. "Our
criticism on the amendment would be, that it was not
ill-timed, but somewhat inexpertly framed. It should
'have been made to grow out of the topics of the Royal
Speech, and been general, not technical. It should
have been based on the old and admitted Parliamentary
claim of redress of grievances." " It might have
stated that her Majesty's faithful Commons desired
to direct their early and earnest attention to the re-
medy of imperfections in the Reform Acts, the evils
of which have been growing for some time, and have
been especially felt in the recent general election,
constituting, in fact, the heaviest existing grievance of
the nation," &c. The Reform Bill " The heaviest
existing grievance of the nation I! !" If it be
so, what, then, are we to think of those who
engendered the monstrous abortion ? Of Lord
Grey and his journeymen—of the rabble of Re-
formers who lifted up their most sweet voices for
" the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill"
—of the refuse of the Grey, now constituting the
Melbourne, Cabinet ? Can it be expected that after
such a costly experiment, and such an unparalleled
failure, the reflecting people of England will again
embark on the shoreless ocean of innovation, under
the guidance of the same presumptuous and unskilful
pilots, who have already all but wrecked the vessel of
the Sate ? The idea is absurd. The so-called Re-
formers have rendered the name synonimous with arro-
gance, incapacity, and empiricism. Lord Brougham,
the brightest and boldest.of the band—he, too, has
made public proclamation that the very fundamental
principles of the measure which, on his bended knee,
he besought the Peers to pass, were so ill adapted to
the end in view, that no correction, no amendment in
detail, nothing short of new principles and new
details, could make it what it ought to be, and what
it was intended to be. And this is the Reform Bill !
and these men are Reformers ! And to such political
quacks—to men who have thus ignorantly and reck-
lessly tampered with the very vitals of the body politic
—are we again to commit the national safety, again to
become the subject of their desperate experiments !
Morning Post.

The subscribers to the Irish electio❑ petitions are
called by O'Connell and his faction " conspirators."
Who are the real conspirators in reference to the
Irish elections ? Are they the persons who have
come forward openly and in the face of day to subscribe
to a fund for the vindication of the law against fraud,
intimidation, and violence, or the persons who have
put their heads together in secret to disappoint justice
of its rights by rendering the law powerless ? The
subscribers to the Irish Election Petition Fund are
not the persons .who advocate the unconstitutional
and tyrannical principle of trying public offences by
ex post facto laws. They call for the execution of
the existing law relating to elections, while the Popish
and Ministerial factions are resorting to every possible
shift and contrivance to defeat the law. Which looks
more like a conspiracy, the open and manly effort to
uphold the law, or the manoeuvre to subvert it ? A
great offence, not only against the rights of individuals,
but against the public interests, is the usurpation of
Parliamentary seats by fraud or violence. Of this sort
of usurpation several of the now sitting Irish Members
are accused—are they guilty or i►►nocent ? That is
the question to be tried. Every man in the community
has an interest in the trial of that question, because
every man has an interest in upholding the due exer-
cise of that electoral privilege which creates the legis-
lature that enacts laws of every man's property,
liberty, and life. How should the question be tried ?
Justice says, " by the laws which were in existence
when the alleged offences against electoral rights were
committed"—faction says " Not so ; it should be tried
by an ex post facto law." This is a principle of ad-
ministrative justice new to tile Constitution—at least
it is a principle repudiated ever since the Constitution,
which James 11. had nearly subverted was restored and
defined by the Protestant settlement of 1688.
Whenever any attempt has been made since that
time to punish any offence by an ex post facto law,
the Whigs have most indignantly exclaimed against
it ; yet at this moment the Whigs, as is obvious
from the expressions and tactics of Lord John
Russell in the House of Commons, are conspiring
with the Popish party to prevent the administra-
tion of " Justice to Ireland," under the existing law,
relative to elections, which, if successful, would lead
to the establishing of a precedent most dangerous to
the liberties, and even the lives of Englishmen. If
any public offence can be tried by a law made subse-
quently to the committal of such offence, there is no
reason why any other alleged crime should not be triable
after the same fashion ; a doctrine as hostile to the
genius of the British Constitution, as to common rea-
son, and the first principles of justice. The great
object of the Ministerial and Popish stratagem seems
to be to procure delay by tying up the Grenville Act
in the first instance, and then, relying upon the diffi-
culty of framing a satisfactory law in its place for the
trial of election petitions, to extend that delay of jus-
tice over the whole duration of the present Parlia-
ment, so that the alleged usurpers of other men's seats
may continue to sit and vote in support of the O'Con-
nell-Melbourne Ministry, just as if there were no im-
peachment of their title, and their elections had not
been secured by the frauds and violence of the skull
and cross-bones system of intimidation.--Morning
Herald.

An enormous sturgeon was the object of much ad-
miration on Friday, at Gorton's fish warehouse, behind the
General Post-office. It was purchased by some loyal citizens
and forwarded to the Queen.

As Sir Richard Gethin, Bart., who, it will be re-
collected, lately succeeded to the title, on the death of his
grandfather, Sir Percy Gethin, and who is a minor, at present
under the tuition of the Rev. C. Roper, was amusing him-
self with firing off a small cannon on Friday, the powder..
flask which he held suddenly exploded, inflicting a very
serious injury on his hand, the skin being torn from his fingers
in a dreadful way. The sufferer was immediately taken to
Mr. Madnen, surgeon, of Heavitree, who dressed the wound
with the greatest care ; and though the appearance of it at
first was so serious as to threaten amputation, we are happy to
say that the youthful Baronet is going on as well as can bo
expected.— Western Luminary.
Grandy and Asselin, two English workmen at a
cotton manufactory near Calais, agreed lately to settle some
personal dispute by a boxing bout. The English residents
at Calais and Boulogne are, for the most part, exactly the
sort of people likely to take great delight in a prize fight; it
is therefore not surprising that on the appointed day a large
assemblage was found congregated in a field at a short dis-
tance from the town. Seconds, umpires, bottlemen, and the
rest of the paraphernalia of the ring were formally chosen,
and the fight commenced. The French police, however, had
received information of the intended " breach of the peace,"
and before many rounds had been fought a party of military
made their appearance, carried away the combatants to durance
vile, and dispersed the valiant crowd, who were highly in-
censed at so arbitrary an iinterferellee with the it fined diver-
sion which they had come to behold. Grandy and Asselin
were brought before the Tribunal of Police, and severally con-
demned to six days' imprisonment.