The Sun.
London, England, 1839-10-24 00:00:00

. -
,he door to all who choose to enter upon a declaration

that they are what they are not. Orangemen and Rib-
bonmen ; Mr. Stowell's Protestants and Mr. O'Connell's
Catholics ; Mr. Oastler's Poor-law men and Mr. Fear-
gus O'Connor's point-of-the-pike men ; Mr. W. Gar-
nett's operative-conservative men, and Mr. E. Dixon's
no-police men ; all these, and all others who can afford
to set conscience aside to serve their purposes, may,
under his Lordship's plan, enrol themselves as voters,
provided they only take the precaution to enrol them-
selves previously as members of come association which
they themselves choose to call a " Mechanics' Institu-
tion" or an " Education Society," or a " Literary So-
ciety." The plan would, in short, give a vote to every
man who is fraudulent enough to otain it under false
pretences.
We propose to sweep away a baker's dozen of those
fifteen conditions of qualification, affording, as they do,
a high temptation to dishonesty. There ought to be
no narrower test of the capacity of the voter, after
flaying arrived at his majority, than being able to read
the proceedings of his representatives, and to exercise
the right of petition by writing his own name.
There will be an objection to both the extension and
the limitation of the suffrage that would be the result of
adopting this test of the capacity of the voter. Mere
Whigs will say that the franchise would be held by too
many ; and those who have had the words .. Universal
Suffrage" so long upon their tongue that they believe
there is some potent charm in them—some " open
sesame" of the doors of full representation—will say that
it would be held by too few. The test, however, ought
to meet the views of the former at the period of its
I adoption ; and of the latter when the system had been
some time in operation.
We verily believe that the extension of the suffrage
to all above the age of twenty-one who can read and
write, would, at the present moment, give a smaller con-
stituency than Household Suffrage would. Tens of
thousands, we might almost say hundreds of thousands,
of agricultural labourers who are householders can
neither read nor write, and consequently would have
no vote. Nay, more—thousands, perhaps tens of thou-
sands, who have 101. occupations in boroughs and forty
shilling freeholds in counties, would, is the first in-
stance, be disfranchised. The sweeping away of the
totally uninstructed would certainly be more than coun-
ter-balanced by the accession of the instructed ; but
still the increase to the number of the voters would
not be so great as to give any reasonable grounds of
fear to the really sincere friends of progressive—even
slowly progressive—reform.
On the other hand the test would be exclusive of
none who really valued the franchise ; for the desire
for its possession would be the strongest motive for ac-
quiring the necessary qualification, and an hour's ap-
plication every evening for a few months would put any
man of ordinary abilities in possession of it. Still, how-
ever, there would be many who would not make the
effort. There are many so ignorant as to be perfectly
contented in their ignorance, many who are so idle as to
make no exertion, whatever may be the inducement, and
many so besotted as willingly to forfeit their birthright
rather than forego the gratification which a pot of beer
affords them. The accessions, therefore, to the list of
voters would be gradual ; but provision would be made
for the ultimate admission of every industrious and in-
telligent man who desired to have a vote in the choice of
representatives. Would the wildest Chartist ever an-
swer honestly if he said that this was not a sufficient
extension of the suffrage ?

COMMERCIAL GAS-LIGHT AND

COKE COMPANY

The friends of the Solicitor-General at Falmouth
and Penryn, embracing the opportunity of his hasty
visit to his constituents, invited the Honourable Gen-
tleman to a public dinner at the Royal Hotel, Falmouth,
on Monday last. The notice of the dinner having been
very brief, the company was not so large as it probably
would have been had more time been allowed, but the
important duties of his office required the return of the
Solicitor-General to London. About fifty gentlemen
of the two towns, Penryn and Falmouth, sat down to a
very handsome dinner. James Cornish, Esq., presided,
with his usual spirit and ability, and Francis Pender,
Esq. was Croupier. E. W. W. Pendarves, Esq., one
of the county Members, was present. Sir C. Lemon
and Mr. Turner were also invited, but could not attend.
1
When the cloth was removed,
The CHAIRMAN proposed " The Queen," which was
drunk with all due honours and great cheering. The
band then struck up " God save the Queen." The
next toast was " The Duke of Sussex, and the rest of
the Royal Family resident in England."—Tune,'' British
Grenadiers." " Lord Melbourne and her Majesty's
,Ministers," was received with great applause.
Sir R. M. Rota's then rose, and as the long-continued
cheering subsided, said, that although he held but a
very inferior office connected with the present Govern-
ment, he felt called upon, on behalf of his Noble
Friend, Lord Melbourne, and those who were associated
with him in the Government, to thank the company
for the very flattering and cordial manner in which
the toast had been received, and he was sure it would
afford his Noble and Right Hon. Friend the highest
satisfaction to learn that the manner in which they had
conducted the affairs of the country was approved of by
a company such as the present. They had been
accused of having done nothing ; it was true that they
had not done so much as they were desired to do, and
it was inconceivable, except to those who, like himself
and his Hon. Friend the Member for Cornwall, were
witnesses of it, how much that they did was undone—
how, after days and weeks and months of ;anxious toil
in preparing and forwarding measures, their labours
were negatived in another place, and their best efforts
rendered unavailing. But notwithstanding this, was it
true that nothing had been done ? Suppose it were
proposed to undo all that had been done since the Libe:
rals came into power, would there be nothing to undo ?
To say nothing of numerous other measures, if they
had only carried Municipal Reform, that of itself would
have been a work of infinite consequence. Here,
perhaps, its importance was not felt so strongly as in
other places, where the abuses of the old system had
for years and years been intolerable—in Liverpool,
in York, and many other towns, aye, and even in
Penryn. Ministers were also accused of a want
of energy in not having adopted more rigorous
measures to put down the Chartists. It was quite a
mistake to suppose that Ministers had not all along
been most anxious on that matter, or that they had for
a moment allowed their attention to be diverted from it.
It had been his duty to be in daily conference with
Lord John Russell, who watched their proceedings with
the utmost anxiety,and was deterred from adopting what
might be termed more rigorous measures, by the assur-
ance which he felt that the thing would wear itself out,
and that he might safely rely upon the sound English
feeling and good sense of the people generally to put it
down. Was be right or was he not ? Where were the 1
Chartists now?--Cheers.) They might be considered
as extinct. Had the Tories been in power, he knew
perfectly well that they would not have acted as the
present Government had done. Oh no, we should
have had the Manchester massacre re-enacted.--- 1
(Cheers.) Who does not remember what they did in
1819 ? They adopted a different course then. After
their rigorous proceedings at Manchester they called
Parliament together and passed the " Six Acts" for
abridging the liberty of the press, and the liberty
of the subject.—(" Hear, hear," and cheering.)
He then made some remarks on the ill-founded com-
plaints made against Lord Normanby's Government of
Ireland, and asked what did it all amount to ? Why,
that Bill Jones had been let out of prison too soon,
and that Dick Smith had been kept in too long.—
(Laughter.) The tranquil state in which he bad left

THE LIFE OF A MEDICAL MAN.—There
is not any career which so rapidly wears away the
powers of life, because there is no other which requires
a greater activity of body and mind. He has to bear
the changes of the weather, continual fatigue, irregu-
larity in his meals, and broken rest ; to live in the
midst of miasm and contagion ; if in the country, to
traverse considerable distances on horseback, exposed to
wind and storm, to brave all dangers to go to the relief
of suffering humanity. A fearful truth for medical men
has been established by the tables of mortality of Dr.
Casper, published in the British Review—of a thousand
members of the medical profession, six hundred died
before their sixty-second year ; while of persons lead-
ing a quiet life, such as agriculturists or theologians, the
mortality is only three hundred and forty-seven. If we
take a hundred individuals of each of these classes, 43
theologians, 40 agriculturists, 35 clerks, and 32 soldiers,
will reach their seventieth year ;
.of a hundred pro-
fessors of the healing art 24 only will attain that age ;
they are like sign-posts to health ; they can show the
road to old age, but rarely tread it themselves.