The Sun.
London, England, 1837-08-16 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

As several returns have not yet been received from
Ireland we cannot complete our election list. All un-
certainty, however,•is now over ; and the strength of
parties in the approaching session may be stated with-
out difficulty. Scotland has returned 19 Tories and
54 Reformers (not: 20 Tories as stated by the Times,
for Mr. Howard, the Member for Sutherland, is a Re-
former). Out of the Scotch borough the Tories
have obtained only one, Mr. Colquhoun, for the Kil-
marnock district. - Ministers may well be proud of this
strong manifestation of public opinion in their favour
by. what may be called the whole of the town popula-
tion of Scotland. , There was a time when England
had just cause to complain of the state of the Scotch
representation. It was literally a drag on the repre-
sentation of the southern division of the island, and
it sometimes happened that important questions were
carried against ae majority of English Members by
the aid of Scotch Members who voted generally for
the Minister as a matter of course. But the Re-
form Bill has reversed this state of things, and the
Scotch now complain that they cannot derive the
benefit which they are entitled to expect from the de-
fective state of the English representation. "We are
not astonished (says the Scotsman) that the Irish
should call for a repeal of the Union.' If Scotland
had a domestic Legislature, thanks to the public spirit
of its inhabitants, the Liberal.Memhers would be to
the. Tories as five to three, even as matters stand ; and
if our town population had their due weight, as five to
one. Every rational reform would be carried with
ease. The Peers would be compelled to give in, or
be annihilated by our gallant countrymen an pas de
charge ! If we -lose the advantages of good govern-
ment, it is because we are united with the mercenary
mass of English borough electors. This state of
things calls for further reforms. It is not fit that the
portions of the electoral body who do their duty to the
public should be sacrificed to the stupidity or venality
of their associates. We shall enter upon the xemedial
measures by and by." The number of small and venal
boroughs in England, with the influence of necessitous
freemen in Liverpool, Norwich, Hull, &c., render the
Enelish representation much less respectable than
the Scotch. But still, in the boroughs alone, Minis-
ter. hare a considerable majority. However, the Scotch
cannot be blamed for complaining of the defective
sate of the English representation. With hardly an
exception, every enlidihtened town constituency in
Eogland.has returned Reformers; and yet such is the
extent of corruption in the smaller boroughs (the
counties are akogether an affitir of property), that
tt itlibut the aid of Scotland and Ireland the Reform
Bill would be a mere nullity. In the south and west
of England there are Ina:ly boroughs which once were
p;aces of comparative impottance, but now are sunk
down to absolute insignificance ; while in the north of
En7lantl places hardly known half a century ago have
aiming up into importance. Manufactures have be-
takim themselves to the north of E”glaml and Scot-
-11 ; and white the towns in the south of England
hate for the most part either remained stationary or
gone to decay, the increase in the towns of the
north has been enormous. But the 11 eform Bill
d:d not adjust the repi-esontation to the altered
circumstances. A town population of 580,000, namely,
Edinburgh, Glasgow,- Paisley, Aberdeen. Dundee,
Greenock, and Perth, return only ten Members. A
town population in the West Riding of Yorkshire and
Lancashire of 650,000, namd v, Manchester and Salford,
Liverpool, Leeds, and Sheffleki, return only 9 Members,
while fifty places in -the south of England can be
Lamed which return 100 Members, of which the
N 1 hots population little exceeds that of Glasgow, or
I'vlenchester, or Liverpool. These anomalies enable
the Tories, by means of corruption and intimidation,
to counteract the public opinion of the country ; and
till the representation hater adjusted to the popula-
tion of, towns it will be impossible to remedy the evil.
Why should not more of the borough representation be
given to the large constituencies, and a number of the
towns in schedule B. and of those of four, five, and six
h,,n4and, be formed into a district to return two
.:I,inhers ? The Tories are really as unpopular. in
En(r:and as anywhere else, arid they hare men ly
themselves of the defects in the representation
1-It by the Reform Bill to defeat public opinion.
It is pure gasconade, therefore, on their part to
boast of a majority of English Representatives.
IThey have a majority of the Members returned
by men wh, dare not express an opinion. the
unfortunate 501. tenantry-at-will ; and they have
a minority of the borough representatives, chiefly
consisting of time representatives of small and
venal places. England disowns them as well as
Scotland and Ireland. These representatives re-
pr. sent only the shameful parts of the English
constituencies. With nearly all the great towns of
England in their favour, the whole borough repre-
sentation of Scotland, and a great majority of Irish
Representatives, Ministers may boldly set the Tories
at defiance. The Queen% name is a tower of strength ;
for no one can doubt that time policy pursued by her
Majesty's Ministers receives•her full and entire appro-
hation. What have the Tories effected with all their
corruption and bad practices ? They are as 'far 'as
ever from the object they have at heart ; and, indeed,
the Reform Ministry must play their • cards very ill to
enable the Tories, with all their tactics, to assume the
Government of this country. Ministers have nothing
to apprehend from them, and may set them at com-
plete defiance. There is a well-known French work
with the title of " Spanish Rhodomontades." The
Times seemed yesterday to be trying to beat
Spanish rhodomontade. "We see," exclaims our
moon-struck (?) contemporary, " an extensive and po-
pulous region stretching through almost. eight de-
grees of latitude, rich in all the signs of industry
and civilisation, and in the tokens of a venerable
antiquity, diversified with noble mansions and busy
towns, andbroadgolden corn-fields, and towering cathe-
drals, and white spires gleaming through village trees
—we see the people of that wide and fair country
threatened with the overthrow of all that has reared,
adorned, and sanctified it, and at once, over hill and
valley, by river and plain, we mark them uplifting
their voices and their hands to guard their father-land
and their mother church, and they have won their
triumph tranquilly ; nothing of heat, nothing of ex-
citement in their demeanour ; no mania—no cry—
" • At once they rose ;
Their rising all at once was as tho sound
Of thunder heard remote.' "
But we see something more than this; for we see in

all the seats of industry and civilization throughout
this extensive region Reformers determined to defend
the blessings they enjoy, and identifying themselves
with the government of their choice ; and we see at
the same time a number of Tories dissatisfied with
the ameliorations which our institutions have re-
ceived, and anxious to plunder their fellow citi-
zens, driving the unfortunate tenantry-at-will to
the polling places like so many serfs to vote
against their consciences, intimidating the trades-
men in the small boroughs, and corrupting
.the poor
and the necessitous in order that the voice of the
inhabitants of. the seats of wealth and industry. may
be drowned by their slaves and their hirelings. We
see also, in the endeavour to excite dissension between
the inhabitants of Ireland and England, an attempt to
revive the experiment of converting a great empire into
a small one. This wicked, this monstrously wicked
attempt, will be scouted by every honest man in the
three kingdoms. The Irish representratives represent
the opinions, the feelings, and the wishes of a people
grateful to a Ministry under whom they have for the
first time experienced the blessings of just and equal
government. Had Ireland returned as many Tory
representatives as she has returned Reformers, the
consequences would have been most disastrous. In
that case Ireland would have seen no hope, and her
despair might have been calamitous to both i.slands.
But as it is the Irish representatives will come pol,ver-
-7"—\,-s "r3a n aid of ail that is liberal in England ?dud Scot-
.l.:7lllite- 1. 'and the combined host of Reformers will triumph
.p.7.4Y,.74....z.,5•-;L* 'he enemies of civil and :eligious liberty. We
Ich to Ireland and her representatiyes.—Morn-
/1# ronzc e.
e success of the Conservatives in the recent
ions, great as it has been numerically and post-
s ti‘ely, wilt be found still (Treater if regarded relatively
and morally. It is a solid achievement under any cir-
cumstances ; it is a splendid triumph under those of

the present time. The first and chiefest of the advan-
tages against which the Conservatives have had to
0
contend is, as everybody feels, the accession of office
by the Melbourne party under a new, a young, and a
female Sovereign. Office is at all times a material
point in the- game, but particularly when parties are
nearly balanced ; besides its fixed ':influence, which
goes almost the whole way to secure the seats at
Windsor, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Chatham, and other
boroughs where Government is the great local patron
and employer, there is an occasional influence also
which office must needs possess in every district where
there are (and in what district are there not ?) uncon-
nected voters, looking for some favour from the Go-
vernment. When eithert' party is very much stronger
than its opponent, these self-seekers are of no great
importance ; but when the scale hangs at all doubtful,
their united forced plumped, in beats down the balance,
and weighs out the bargain to the Ministerial buyer.
If to all this advantage, fixed and occasional, there
be added the reputation of personal favour on the part
of the Sovereign to the Ministers, and especially of a
Sovereign for whom all classes of the people feel the
interest naturally attaching to the innocence of youth
and the tenderness of sex, the Cabinet thus aided and
honoured might be expected to win, almost without a
struggle, the general suffrages of a loyal and confiding
people. In point of fact these sentiments are very in-
fluential, and have done much for the Ministers. We
should even have been sorry if they had not had con-
siderableeffect. We should have been grieved if there
had not been found, among those numerous electors
who have no very strong political opinions, a willing-
ness to let the Ministers enjoy the benefit of the new
trial awarded to them by the Crown ; still more, if
there had not been a prevalent disposition—call it gal-
lantry, or chivalry, or by whatever other name you will
—to sacrifice somewhat of private judgment for the
gratification of obeying wimat were supposed, no matter
how truly, to be the personal wishes of the Queen. It
was a natural and a generous hope, that saw the pre-
sage of a fairer day in the brightness of the morning star.
But this devotion, though generally cherished, has
yet been tempered by very powerful considerations.
Interests are at stake too great and too sacred to be
hazarded for a mere impulse, however chivalrous, of
" loyalty to rank and sex." And thus it has htppened,
that, in spite of the utmost imaginable combination of
favourable circumstances and chances, the Cabinet of
the Queen, if it venture upon meeting Parliament at
all, will have to encounter, in the House of Commons,
an assembled force—more formidable, by far, than even
'that stalwart minority which in the last Parliament of
King William opposed a barrier to the-march of Minis-
terial revolution, reinforced the saving power of the
House of Lords, and defeated the hopes and prophe-
cies of the Republicans, by preserving the Crown un-
impaired for its young ,and illustrious heiress. How
desperate were the efforts of the Whig-Radical party
during the last month to pack a House of Commons
that :night place her Majesty at their mercy, it will not
be easy for any man to estimate who has not witnessed,
and that pretty closely, the efforts of the Ministerialists
in the elections for Middlesex and for the metropolitan
boroughs. There were some notable and noble ex-
amples indeed of tradesmen, pressed by Government
authorities to vote against their Conservative opinions,
or to refrain from voting for them, who in-
stantly and indignantly rejected the allurement, or de-
fied the menace of the official. But in a vast majority
of cases it must be admitted that human nature was
found weak—that the influence, or the intimidation,
was successful, to the. extent at least of nullifying, if
not of converting, tin; vote. We hold as cheap as
anybody can hold it, the visionary notion of a large
constituency, ,vhere every individual would vote purely
upon the Conclusions of his own uninfluenced judg-
ment. We claim nothzng so fantastical. We are
thoroughly aware that a thousand disturbing causes
mint always interpose to prevent such a consummation.
In all times and places votes will be asked by land-
lords, employers, and customers, and given accordingly
by tenants, workmen, and tradespeople ; so that in the
machinery of politics the friction will always befits the
theorist. But in discia::ming the expectation -of any
Utopian result, we. certainly have a right to expect
that to the disturbing causes by which the theory must
always be partially discomposed, there shall not be
added the undue influence, at least, of that particular
party who claim, par excellence, and even exclusively,
the title of honest politicians. If a Board, or a Con-
troller, or a Commissioner, under a Tory Government,
had conveyed an intimation to the workpeople or
tradesmen in the employ of the department, that a
vote in opposition to the Tory Cabinet would he
likely to dissolve the relation of master and servant,
or of buyer and seller, such a hint would have
been proclaimed by everybody's voice bad enough, and
too had ; but that the Ministerialists, the saints, and
purists of the age, who for more than half a century
have been turning up the whites of their eyes, and the
palms of their hands, in holy horror at the alleged mal-
practices of the Tories—that they who, like the two
attornies in the Pickwick trial, have " sate up and
looked virtuous," should now be caught in the un-
seemly fact, in the flagrant delinquency, of using the
Government influence to stop the electors of Middlesex
(and of Westminster) from voting as their consciences
would have impelled them, makes a chapter in the
" History of the Cabinet who governed without pa-
tronage," which will bind up most appropriately with
the secret memoirs of Whiggery under Sir Robert
Walpole, and with some of the most poignant pas-
sages in the, biography of Seignor Gil Blas, to
which instructive compilation may be usefully sub-
joined, by way of appendix, the recent correspon-
dence in the Portarlington case, and a cursory notice
of the borough of Woodstock, with a dedication to an
illustrious Duke, by his gracious permission, to be
obtained through the meditun of his private secretary.
At no general election before the " compact alliance"
at Lichfield-house was there ever an avowed coalition
between the Whigs and the Destructives. Even after
/hat notable arrangement appearances were kept up
for a season. The Whigs protested against being
' confounded with their supporters, and argued loudly
against the unreasonableness and injustice of identify-
ing the two sections, merely because the Destructives
chose to vote for the measures which the Whigs pro-
posed ; for, said the Whigs with the utmost innocence,
" how can we help their voting with us ?" That was
a touching appeal : but what becomes of its effects,
when we find that the civility is not only re-
ceived, but largely returned, and that the Whigs
in every contest have been openly voting for, and in
many cases avowedly coalescing with, the Destruc-
tives? Colonel Evans, and Mr. Leader, and Mr. Hume,
and a band of other gentlemen who have fairly declared
war against almost every institution of the country, are
the espoused favourites of the Whigs, and stand forth
with them in a common cause. Mr. Byng no longer
tells the electors of Middlesex that he stands alone ;
but he takes the arm of Mr. Hume, and those others of
whom Lord J. Russell testified but three years ago
that " their object is to destroy :" and thus we have a
regular union—not, as heretofore, a shamefaced, coy,
connivance, but an avowed, unblushing coalition be-
tween the Radical, whose " object is unblushing
destroy" the
institutions of the country, and the Ministers, whose
duty is to presesve them I It might be a curious
question for an inquisitive mind, on what terms such a
coalition may be settled ? Which party finds the mo-
ney ? And what does the other party find ? Now,
we have never peeped into the Committee-room of the
Humo-Byngian party ; but we should be ready, to
bet a pony (or, adapting ourselves to the formula of
the gamesters at the Reform Club, we would " wager
a new bat") that the defeated candidate furnished
none of the money. He makes it a rule never to give
money, and an excellent mule it is, if one could but
establish it ; the only difficulty is to bring the world in
general to that understanding. But we are told he fur-
nished the organization, and brought up the majority
of the joint votes, through which votes and organiza-
tion he ended in returning his comrade to his own ex-
clusion. To this, then, is the boast of the stiffilecked
Radicals reduced—that the only purpose to which
they can convert their strength is to sell it to a buyer
whom they hate ; and to this are the Whig pride and
the Whig popularity fallen—that the Court candidate
can carry his election only by the aid of the purchased
Republicans. " C'est one belle alliance," said' an
eminent person, " (pre l'alliance de la Cour et de la
canaille.' It is fortunate as a matter of accommu-
datioe, airl must, no doubt, be grateful as a .matter

of feeling, fora genuine Parliamentary Reformer ex-
chided from a popular representation like that of
Middlesex, that there is found across the Irish Chan-
nel a huge boroughmonger with a close snug seat for
him. We give joy to Mr. Hume that his patron has
returned him for Kilkenny. We give joy to our
countrymen that the freeholders have done their duty
in Middlesex. We congratulate her Majesty's Go-
vernment that their tenure of office is backed by the
Priesthood and Papistry of Ireland. We offer our
humbler and more respectful congratulations to their
Royal mistress, that her throne is guarded against her
Ministers and their friends by the resolute strength
of Great Britain—by the Church and the State—by
the Peers and the people.—Times.
We are not of those who look on the slight diminu;,
tion which the previous Ministerial majority in the
House of Commons has experienced in the late elec-
tions with gloomy forebodings. We believe, on the
contrary, that the eventual and not very distant results
of the recent adverse elections will be of most signal
service to the cause of Liberalism. One great ad-
vantage which the Reform interest has already gained
from the issues of particalar contests is, that the ne-
cessity for the vote by ballot is now seen and acknow-
ledged in quarters where but a few short weeks before
one had thought that such necessity would never have
been seen, far less admitted. We will not particu-
larise cases ; but the fact cannot be disputed, that the
demand for the ballot has now become so general and
urgent that no Ministry will be able, were they so dis-
posed, any longer to resist it. But we grievously err,
indeed, if any such disposition to withhold the protec-
tion of honest voting be entertained by the Mel-
bourne Administration. To speak more plainly,
we are happily in a condition to pledge ourselves
to this fact—that though Ministers may not them-
selves bring forward any measure for the vote by
ballot, the question will be made an open one in
the Cabinet. Need we say what will be the result of
a discussion on the propriety of the vote by ballot ?
And how could it be otherwise, unless men were de-
termined to shut their eyes to everything that is passing
around them ? Where is the man who can any longer
question the fact that the elective franchise is, in the
existing state of things, a positive curse to a large pro-
portion of the constituency ? Are they not manifestly
reduced to the humiliating alternative of either outrag-
ing their consciences, and proving the instruments of
their own self-degradation, or of ruining themselves,
and consigning their families to beggary ? Need we
wonder, constituted as human nature is, that when a
man's conscience is opposed by the mighty odds of
the claims of a wife and family on him, he should suc-
cumb to the latter ? And ought such a state of things
to he any longer tolerated ? Ought the electors of
Great 13ritain—especially those in counties and small
towns—to be insulted by being called on to come for-
ward, ostensibly as free men, to vote for the candi-
dates of their choice, but in reality as much fettered
as if their landlords and customers stood with a
lash over their heads, just as the masters or overseers
of the nesioes used to do in the Wist Indies over
the heads of the latter unhappy class of men ? And
to aggravate the hardship and humiliation of the con-
dition in which so large. a portion of the constituencies
of this empire is placed, in consequence of the protec-
tion of the Ballot being withheld, they are insulted in
all the addresses of the respective candidates by the
phrase " independent electors." Independent, indeed
Poor men I I'hc very word is felt by every intelligent
person among them to be no better than a solemn
mockery. Of the instances of bribery, corruption, and
Intimidation, which took place at the elections now
concluded, we will not farther speak than to say, that
rampant as such things have always been in Tory
they have been innneasuralily more luxuriant of late.
Nay, so common and barefaced were such expedients
among the Conservatives, that in many instances they
were as clear as the sun at noon-day. The vote by
ballot, instead of giving Ministers a majority of 30,
would have given them a msjority of at least 150 at
the elections now concluded. It is never too late to
learn wisdom. " Give me where to stand," said
Archimedes, " and I will move the globe. Give us
the sad resting-place of the ballot, and we will not
only move Toryism, hut will hurl it into some unheard-
of planet. The boon of the ballot will not be dearly.
' purchase of the price of the recent Ministerial losses.
—Morning Advertiser.

• When we accused Mr. Hume of ingratitude towards
his friends and supporters, we did so upon his own
showing, aui, therefore, upon no light or merely con-
jectural grounds. Among such of his friends who
were peculiarly singled out by the Hon. Member for
Kilkenny, as having been worse than lukewarm in his
cause, were those in the City of London, who were
denounced from the hustings at Brentford as guilty of
little short of downright treachery. This charge
seems to have been, and naturally enough, too much
for the parties thus unjustly accused to bear; and Mr.
Anderson, the chairman of Mr. Hume's London Com-
mittee, has very properly come forward with a plain
unvarnished statement, which not only proves Mr.
Hume's accusation against his city friends to be wholly
unfounded, but that he was there served with a degree
of zeal almost unparalleled, and worthy of a better
cause and a more grateful object. There are, we be-
lieve, few instances upon record in which all parties
have been more zealously assisted by their friends than
has fallen to the lot of both parties during the late
Middlesex election. On both sides, perhaps in some
few instances, zeal may have outrun discretion ; but
this, if excusable in any case, must be so considered
in one which was evidently a point of vital interest to
both parties. Well the battle has been fought, and
the victory decided and decisive. That Mr. Hume
should be mortified at the result, no one can be sur-
prised ; but that he should turn round upon his friends
and upbraid them with his ill success, instead of attri-
buting it to its true cause, is singular enough, and
affords, at all events, a tolerable answer to those who
have the extreme folly of talking about a different
result " next time." Mr. Hume's " next time" at
a Middlesex election will never come ; and if there
could be any doubt about it, his own injudicious
attack upon his friends must have at once settled
the matter. Should Mr. Hume ever venture to
mention " the next time," such zealous and active
partisans as Mr. Anderson will be apt to reply,
" No, no, we remember the last time' too well."
Most objects acquire a force by contrast ; and on this
very subject no stronger contrast can exist that the
marked difference there is between the conduct of the
two losing candidates, Messrs. Hume and Pownall,
upon the occasion. Mr. Pownall had every reason to
suppose (which Mr. Hume had not) that his election
was secure. Mr. Pownall has, however, been defeated
by the very same cause which swelled Mr. Hume's mi-
nority to full one-third more than it would otherwise
have been—we mean the very excusable, if not lauda-
ble, attachment of so many of the electors to the private
worth and long-tried public services of Mr. Byng.
Yet, thus unexpectedly defeated, we hear of no angry
vituperation on the part of Mr. Pownall towards either
friends or foes. He is grateful to every body, satisfied
with every body, and exults in his colleague's success
as much as if it were his own. Such conduct cannot
be lost upon those who witness it ; and while Mr.
Hume may look to " next time" with despair, Mr.
Pownall may fairly look to it with every reasonable
promise of success.—Morning Herald.
The Whig-Radical party, not feeling quite satisfied
with what the people have done towards rendering the
composition of the House of Commons congenial with
their character, and favourable to their objects, are, it
appears, seeking consolation in the hope that, under
favour of the Sovereign, they may be more fortunate
in respect to the Upper Branch of the Legislature.
The rumours which the Ministerial organs propagate
with much industry upon this subject have appeared
so unfounded and idle to us that we have seldom thought
it necessary to notice their momentary existence.
They are mere bubbles, which are no sooner blown
than they burst, and disappear. We were told the other
day that no less than four new Whig Dukes, and we know
not how many, not less, as we recollect, than twenty,
bran span new Whig Peers, were forthwith to be cre-
ated. But this is a mere trifle compared with
the swarm with which the provincial journals threaten
us. To judge from these authorities, it would seem
that the Royal prerogative of creating Peers had been
instituted for no other purpose than that of consoling
country gentlemen of lauded property who sustain the

THE SUN, LONDON, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 16, 1831