The Sun.
London, England, 1837-04-26 00:00:00

tl e determination or the country not to suffer him to

av so pitiful a character.—Morning, Chronicle.
In the House of Commons, last night, time ballot
was taken on the ' Carlow election petition. The
‘naim its arc Reformer::, and Mr. Francis Darin,. As
cbosen Chairman. The doors were closed at four
o'clock, and remained so until seven, when the Com-
mittee were sworn at time table. The cause of this
delay was an application made by Counsel on behalf of
the High Sheriff of Carlow, to be allowed to defend
I,inlself from some, gross imputations on his character
s returning officer, contain,d in the petitions that have
been presented atcainst the return. This application
was ably snpported by the Irish Attorney-General, by
Mr. O'Connell, Mr. Roebuck anti others ; and was
resisted by Sir IL Pee!, Lord Stanley, and the Tory
party generally. A most uproarious discussion was kept
up fcr two hours, when a division took place on the
general proposition, that it was competent to the House
to grant the returning officer's application. This
proposition was affirmed by a majority of 128 to
118. It was next moved that the House do concede
time prayer of the High Sheriff in the present case.
The Speaker having given it as his opinion that there
was but one petition before the House, and that time
High Sheriff could not properly be made a party iu
the defence of the return, this motion, which was vi-
)nlently opposed by Lord Stanley, was negatived by a
majority of 131 to 115—ten of the Reformers, who
voted in the majority on the first division, having voted
with the Tories on the second.—Morning Chronicle.

The English law is made up of fictions, which are
no doubt often, though in an odd enough way, sub-
servient to the ends of justice. It sometimes, how-
ever, happens that a circumstance, apparently unessen-
tial, deprives the suitor of the benefit of fiction.
Every one knows that in cases of seduction the action
can only be brought against the offending party for
loss of services ; and that juries give verdicts for
large sums in cases in which a father not only re-
ceives no services from a daughter, but would gladly
pay a large sum to be freed from her mainte-
nance. In fact, the Jury consider themselves bound
to extort from the seducer something like a provision
for his victim. In a case. reported in the Chronicle of
yesterday the circumstances under which seduction took
place appear more than usually aggravated. The
plaintiff placed his daughter with the defendant's
wife, as an apprentice to the business of a milliner, and
gave with leer 251. a year. The defendant, who was
particularly bound to take care of the morals of the
girl, sent her home enceinte. One would have thought,
if ever redress was due for seduction, it was in such a
case. But no ;—the letter of the law interposes. The
plaintiff having parted, with the services of his
daughter, could not sue for loss of that to which he
had no claim. The whole matter is a fiction, as we
have said, but still there must be a literal pretext to
enable the Courts to afford redress. Foreigners will
hardly believe that, in the middle of the nineteenth
century, the law of England still remains in so bar-
barous a state.—Morning Chronicle.

The proceedings in the House of Lords last night
were precisely what might have been anticipated by
any one who had taken pains to examine the position
of the respective parties, and the obligations imposed
on the Conservative Peers by their own antecedent
policy. Lord Melbourne proposed the second read-
ing of the Irish Municipal Bill, in a speech which
(always wishing to act fairly by the Noble Viscount)
we must state to have been in its general spirit and
temper less objectionable than some others which have
been lately delivered by him. In argument, as is in-
variably the case with Lord Melbourne, he made a
conspicuous failure. The Noble Lord described the
present Bill to be one which differed only in one par-
ticular from that which the Home had rejected last
Session, and that single point of difference was the
giving the Lord-Lieutenant a power of nominating
Sheriffs from among successive lists of three indivi-
duals each, whose names were to be sent up to him
by the corporate bodies—a change of little or no im-
portance, and- one which could not weigh a feather
against the collective and ponderous vices of the measure.
It was, we presume, in a fit of natural carelessness,
or bacchanalian jocularity, that the Noble Viscount
first resolved on paying the House of Lords so hu-
mourous a compliment as that of recommending to
them a certain measure, because it was almost word for
word the same as they had last year refused to pass
without many and important alterations. His Lord-
ship attempted another topic in the way of argument
with just the like success. He told the Peers that the
beneficial working of the English Municipal Bill was
an example to them of the good which might be ex-
pected from the Irish measure. But in this it did un-
fortunately happen that Lord Melbourne lost sight of th
one grand consideration on which the resistance to the
Irish Bill, both in and out of Parliament, is founded,
inasmuch as the good working of Corporate Reform in
England, where it has wrought well, arises from the
nature of the community upon which it operates ; and
to bring forward a loose analogy from the mere
fact of local Government in this country, to prove
what must be its effects in another country,
which differs from this in the first elements of
its social system, is to beg the whole question, and
assume that thing of which the existence- is denied.
The Noble Lord, the Whig Prime Minister, desires
us to accept a code of local self-government in Ireland
—first, because it has succeeded here ; and next, be-
cause it substitutes a dispersed and district power for
a " centralized power far off from the spot, of which
there is too much in Ireland." The Conservatives re-
ject the inference drawn by Lord Melbourne from the
operation of the system here, seeing that there is no
monopoly here ; and the prime and fundamental charge
against the Bill is, that the self-government proposed
for Ireland can, in the nature of things, be nothing
else but a monopoly, a monopoly by the rulers of a
particular sect, organised avowedly into a political
force, and directed against all who are of a different
religious communion. The Conservative revolt at the
nonsensical pretext set up by Lord Melbourne of taking
refuge from an excess of " centralization" in the enact-
ments of such a Bill as this, because, forsooth, of its es-
tablishing " local authorities" everywhere, instead of
the supremacy of the Castle, when the truth insisted on
by us Protestants is, that all the powers created by this
Bill, instead of being exercised by responsible Ministers
of State in Dublin, would be flung into the hands of
a Popish priesthood, wholly irresponsible to the State,
acting under a single authority, moved as a single man,
with all the mechanical subserviency of a puppet, and
with no more moral discrimination between right and
wrong than the same puppet, hut obeying the mandates
and promoting the dominion • of one undivided auto-
crat—viz., the Church of Rome, which presents the
most perfect image of " centralization," that is to say,
of a central despotism, that ever this world afforded.
The Dulae of Wellington declared broadly and em-•
phatically that he never would support the present
Bill ; and, amongst other striking remarks put forth by
his Grace upon its multifarious vices, he mentioned tha
power enjoyed by a five-pound rabble of levying rates
upon all the inhabitant proprietors in the borough, the
scale of which rates should rise in this pkportion—
viz., on occupants of houses or premises valued between
.5/. and 10/., sixpence in the pound ; on those between
101. and 20/., ninepence in the pound ; on those above
201., one shilling in the pound ; while the beauty of
the invention is, that the five-pound burgesses, who
constitute the bulk of the corporation, and therefore
the main body of the tax imposers, are themselves
exempt from paying a single halfpenny ! There is
legislation for you. There is foresight. There is
equality of protection. What a pity that the Lords
will no pass such laws under the Watchword of " Jus-
tice to Ireland I" The Duke of Wellington, however,
conceived that the Peers were bound, as they had last
year felt themselves, not to reject the principle of abo-
lishing the actual corporate bodies of Ireland, which
had shown themsdyes to be exclusive and objection-
able—he would therefore vote for the second reading,
and reserve his arguments against the 'passing of the
Bill' until it should be committed on sonic: future day.
Lord Lyndhurst << entirely agreed" with the .Noble
Duke " that this Bill ought to be read a second time;"
and we notice the expression more particularly, that,it
may serve to silence the silly but malignant gossip re-
iterated hourly by the Radical prints, and more fur-
tively circulated by their masters, to the effect that
-there is discord, or at least difference of opinion, among
Conservative leaders, as to the course to be pursued—
'when we do believe that if the annals of English party