The Sun.
London, England, 1839-05-09 00:00:00

EVENING EDITION

LORD JOHN ItUSSELL'S LETTER

[This article was prepared yesterday, but with.
held in consequence of the Ministers Resigna
tion.]

We are not ashamed to avow that we have taken
time to consider what course we should adopt in
further noticing Lord John Russell's Letter. Nor
will we conceal from our readers that we have been
anxious to find in it some evidence that the Noble
Lord might still be called the leader of the Reform
party. We felt great respect for him on account of
his many former exertions; we still cherish a lin-
gering attachment to the Whigs, with whom for so
long a period we have co-operated, and our only
hope that a revolution or civil war may be averted,
and internal tranquillity maintained, rests on
the possibility of cherishinc, a belief in the masses
that they may procure redress' for many intoler-
able grievances without seeking it by physical force,
or wholly and violently overturning the Constitu-
tion. We are reluctantly obliged to give up that
hope, and compelled to call on the Liberal party
no longer to look on Lord John Russell as a
leader or an ally.
In the debate on the Irish question, the Noble
Lord complained that his observations on the per-
manency of the Reform Act had been carelessly
misreported or carefully misrepresented ; his letter
to his constituents was announced to clear up the
mistakes and set him right with the public; we
expected, therefore, to find in it a renunciation of
the finality doctrines, together with the expression
of a wish, and the outline at least of a plan, of
progressive and gradual, but extensive Reform,
while the reasons might have been set forth
why, in the present balanced state of parties, it
was quite impossible for the Government to
propose any part of such a plan with any
chance of success ; but our expoctations have been
grievously disappointed, and the Letter which was
to clear up mistakes and rescue Lord John from
the reproach of being a finality man, proves, be-
yond a doubt, that he has neither been misrepre-
sented nor misreported, and that he adopts, and
glories in adopting the principle, that he is bound
to resist the claims of the people for further reform.
We are therefore compelled, however reluctantly,
to enter the lists against Lord John Russell, and
show by his own deliberately expressed opinions
that he has deserted our cause.
It was expected that the pamphlet would do
something to re-unite all Reformers, as well as
enable Lord John Russell to return from his excur-
sion to Toryism. The necessity of union was the
continual cry of his friends. His letter has ren-
dered the hope of it impossible. It is a clever
nyinifesto against his own supporters ; sneers and
ridicule are combined with arguments to show the
impracticability of their views ; and as orators and
politicians never pardon a successful rival, he can
never hope to be forgiven. We said on Saturday
that his pamphlet was able and honest—able in its
arguments against Reform, and honest, because to
put them forth must be hostile to the Noble Lord's
own political interest. Its ability and its honesty
make it only the more injurious to his friends, and if he
upset the coach, as was said at the opening of the last
session, he has now laid it sprawling in the mire, one
set of wheels jammed motionless on the earth,
and the other revolving in the air, without a hope
of ever again righting it. For his friends and for
his party his letter is most mischievous, and quite
merits the compliments it has received from the
Tories.
We do not mean to set him down with one
epigrammatic sentence, and though we shall be
compelled to return to the subject, we shall assign
in full our reasons for differing from the Noble
Lord Not to do him an injustice we will first
notice two passages of his Letter, which are meant,
We understand, to indicate two methods of extend-
ing the franchise. In referring to the 501.
tenant-at-will clause in the Reform Act, the
Noble Lord concludes that if " occupation
were to be the foundation of a right of voting
for counties, a 101. occupier in them is as
respectable as a 101. occupier in towns," and
though the Noble Lord does not say that he is now
disposed even to introduce such a provision into the
Reform Act, we, are ready to give him credit for
wishing so far to extend the franchise.
Again, in speaking of the freemen, he says :
" It might have been difficult, it was not impossible, to
make the freemen the proper representhives of one of the
most valuable classes of the community, that of the in-
dustrious, intelligent, and able mechanics who abound in
our great manufacturing and commercial towns, and some of
whom only are sow admitted to the right of voting. Such
a change in the character of the freemen would do much
to purify our elections, and strengthen the House of Corn-'
mons."

tVe do not pretend to understand how the free-
men who had votes only in some few towns and
boroughs could be converted into representative:
of clever artisans in all towns, nor does Lord John
explain by what species of double election he pro-
poses to make the elected (we presume) represen-
tatives of the artizans concur in electing Members
of the House of Commons. Nevertheless, as this
is set down as an improvement of the Reform Act
to which Lord John would assent, though we do
not comprehend how, we give him credit for wish-
ing to that extent to improve the Reform Act.
We quoted on Saturday the two other passages
relative to improving the registration and defernee
the rate paying clauses, awl relative to the House ofa
Lords, which make up every concession to Reform
contained in the letter. They are, in our judgment,
so very small, so insignificant, so valueless we may
say, that they do not alter in the smallest degree its
general anti-reform character. But having made
this concession of petty detail, we now come to
the principles of the pamphlet.
Has the Reform Act answered the object of
those who framed it ? That is the question at
issue, and Lord John Russell's letter is written, in
fact, to prove that it has. He asks—
" Whether it is to be set aside as an experiment,
which has totally failed, and a new scheme of le-
presentation set up in its place ; or whether we may
not found upon the Reform Act, the amendments
and improvements which all institutions from time
to time require ?
I have put the question thus, because on the
one side the present Ministry
and their friends
have never pretended that amendments of the de-
tails of the Reform Act might not from time to
time he required; and on the other it is obvious
fthat nothing but. a total failure of the endeavour
Men made to substitute representation for nomi-
nation, would either persuade or justify the people
of England in commencing a new struggle for the
sake a change of so extensive a nature as those
that have been of late proposed to us."
Speaking merely technically, we answer, that
as an endeavour to substitute representation for no-
mination, it is almost a total failure. Lord John
Russell admits, that owing to the bribery and inti-
midation employed at the last election the Liberal
party is not now adequately and justly represented
in the House of Commons. He admits that the 501.
tenant-at-will franchise is mischievous, or makes the
counties little better than the nomination boroughs
of a few landlords and parsons. He says nothing
about it, but he must be sensible that as long as
five-sixths of the people are wholly unrepresented,
and as long as Harwich, Thetford, Andover, Chip-
penham, Tavistock, etc., in all ten boroughs, with
2,438 electors, and 47,000 inhabitants, send as
many Members to Parliament as ten boroughs with
1041.000 electors and 1,776,000 inhabitants, the
endeavour to substitute representation for nomina-
tion, though the authors of the Reform Act may
not like so confess it, has been a most wretched
and lamentable failure.

But there was a higher object contemplated than
the substitution mentioned. That was only a means
to an end, and the end was the centuntment of the
people. In 1830 the country was the prey of dis-
quiet. Swing and his followers lorded it over Eng-
land, and anincipient rebellion was spreading in
Ireland. A revolution had recently tumbled one
neighbouring Monarch from his throne, and severed
the dominions of another. Discontent, with exist-
ing -institutions, and enthusiastic demands for
change, made the masses uncontrolable. It was to
nay revolution by extensive reform, that Lord Grey
took ,office. Lord John Russell cannot forget the
debates of that period, and he must know that they
abound Passages like these :—" The mode,'
says Lord Grey,
you must - sek safety :on Nov. 2, 1830, " in which
is by securing the
A ffections of Your fellow-subjects, and by
redressing_ their '*e
nees, and, my Lords,
I will pronounoegnthe word, by Reforming
Parliament." On the sam
not to satisfye day Lord Althorp
adverted to an extensive Reform,
any pre-established harmonies between certain