The Sun.
London, England, 1865-01-27 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—If the electors of Huddersfield are rather
[ate in receiving from their member an account of the

proceedings of the last session, they certainly have
no retson to complain that they suffer by comparison
with those constituencies whose representative have
been more hasty in laying before them an account
of the Parliamentary campaign. The speeches of Mr.
Leatham bear evident marks of careful study and

preparation, but the labour that is bestowed upon
them is by no means thrown away. This gentleman,
one of the most promising of the younger members
of the Radical party, has evidently taken Mr. Bright
for his model, and from a merely oratorical point of

view it would be scarcely possible for him to select a
better. He has, in common with Mr. Bright, a strong
faculty of humour, but Mr.Leatham treats subjects in
a lighter and more cheerful manner than his leader.
He does not appear so deeply impressed as. Mr. Bright
with the tragic miseries of the people of England; he

seems rather struck with the ridiculous than with the

melancholy aspect of things, and draws, with great
force and humour, a picture of the embarrassments of

Government! and Opposition on the Danish question
—the Opposition anxious for war in order to turn
the Government out, the Government anxious for

peace as the only way of retaining their places. Mr.
Leatham then proceeds with much force and good

sense to argue against the measure which has ob-
tained the name of the Permissive Bill, mainly, we
suppose, because its object is to empower the majo-
rity to tyrannise without dispute over the wishes of
the minority. Mr. Leatham's argument on this
subject is well worthy of attention, not only for its
bearing on the question of compulsory temperance,
but from the much wider range of subjects to which
it is applicable. "It is," he says, " the essence of
representative Government that the electing class,
which is analogous to the class paying rates, shall
possess no direct legislative power ; and the princi-
ple of Parliamentary representation is that not
even the representative principle shall alone legis-
late. We have taken the precaution to protect the
rights and property of Englishmen by the preroga-
tives of the Crown, the privileges of the Lords, and
the authority of a representative assembly. All
these constitute the threefold and invaluable shelter

which we have raised over the rights and property
of the meanest subject in the realm. But here is a
proposition which, with naked and revolutionary
simplicity, proposes to intrust the property and
maintenance of the rights of a large class of persons
to diminutive, homogeneous, democratic, and irre-
sponsible Parliaments set up all over the country,
in place of a central, responsible, compound, and
constitutional one. It seems to me that this strikes
at the root of a constitutional and representative

system." It is impossible to state the case better,
and the argument is, to us, who are in favour of the
English Constitution mainly as it at present exists,
quite unanswerable and perfectly satisfactory. We
object as strongly as Mr. Leatham can possibly do
to the substitution of a pure democracy for one
central, responsible, compound, and constitutional
system ; but we see no reason, as Mr. Leatham
deubtless does, to limit these principles to the case
of Mr. Lawson's Permissive Bill, and would prefer
to extend them to subjects of infinitely greater im-
portance, to which they are equally applicable, and
where they would be infinitely more valuable.
Having, as we think, entirely demolished Mr. Law-
son, Mr. Leatham proceeds, in the same happy vein
of humour, to address himself to the subject of Re-
form. He regrets the agitation on the Permissive
Bill, because he thinks that by its counter-irritant
qualities it has tended materially to reduce the in-
flammatory action which otherwise must have
arisen in the body politic. On the question of re-
form in the representation of the people he considers,
very justly, that the energies of the working classes
have been unwisely divided, one portion of them
seeking for a democratic Reform Bill, and another to
enforce upon themselves the Permissive Bill—a mea-
sure presupposing a state of things as its foundation
which would render any extension of the franchise
a palpable absurdity. Mr. Leatham is far too clear-
headed not to see very plainly that the two positions
are untenable by one person at the same time. It
requires extraordinary boldness to argue that the
working classes are so degraded that they cannot
be entrusted with the right to determine for them-
selves what quantity of beer or spirituous liquors
they shall consume for their own use, while at the
same time they are so enlightened that they are fit
to take upon themselves, to the virtual exclusion of
all other classes, the management in the last resort
of the affairs of a mighty empire. Mr. Leatham
urges us, on the authority of Mr. Stansfeld, to take
these matters upon trust, but he can hardly expect
us to have more confidence in the working classes
than they have in themselves. We are not bound
to take every one at his own estimate, and we are
certainly not required to put any one higher, espe-
cially in a matter of such unspeakable importance
as an entire change in the power by which ultimately
-the destinies of the country are to be decided. 111 r.
Leatham struggles manfully against the difficulty
opposed by the undoubted fact that whatever faults
both parties may have committed with regard to a
Reform Bill, they have done so with perfect im-
punity—nay, with something like popular applause.
Mr. Gladstone, he says, made a speech which de-
lighted him and his friends who sit around him.
There was exultation below the gangway and con-
sternation in the House ; but neither was the exulta-
tion re-echoed in the country, nor was the conster-
nation of long continuance. Mr. Leatham forgets to
mention that Mr. Gladstone published his speech
with a preface, which, if it did not make it less mag-
nificent, certainly made it less intelligible, and drew
the sting of it so effectually that it is quite impos-
sible for any one to say what the views of the Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer upon Reform now are. If
he stands for Oxford, they are probably the views
of the preface ; if he stands for a larger constitu-
ency, they are probably the views of the speech.
Mr. Leatham takes substantially the ground of per-
sonal right to the franchise as the basis of a Reform
Bill, and is at much pains to prove that the working
glasses will make a good use of the power intrusted
to them ; he does not deny that this power will be
complete, and that upon their enlightenment and
good conduct the destinies of the country must
thenceforth depend. Granting this for the moment,
we would press him with his own argument, and
ask him how he can reconcile his mind to the
revolutionary simplicity which virtually takes away
the power from all persons who now possess it, in
order to vest it in what is undoubtedly the poorest,
though, of course, he thinks the most virtuous and
enlightened of the whole ? Is it desirable to replace
what he calls our " compound constitutional sys-
tem" by this extreme " simplicity ?" He regards
the prerogatives of the Crown and the privileges of
the Peers as among the safeguards of our liberties.
Coming from him the admission is of weight, and
is honourable to his candour ; but how can he sup-
pose for a moment, in opposition to Mr. Bright,
that these institutions can be permanently preserved
when the Constitution has been converted from a
mixed monarchy into a pure democracy, and when
the upper classes are virtually disfranchised ? How
long does he think the House of Peers and his de-
mocratic House of Commons would go on working
amicably side by side ?., He repudiates all check
upon democracy; does he expect democracy to check
itself, and, if so, on what historical precedent is that
expectation founded ? We can only say to Mr.
.Leatham what we have said to Mr. Bright, that
while assuming only to advocate the rights of a
portion of the people, they are really proposing a
complete subversion of the Constitution, and sub-
stituting something for it which they may succeed
in proving to be much better, but which is not the
Constitution to which England owes her liberality,
her freedom, and her progress, and by virtue of
which her own popular orators are permitted to tell
five millions of the freest people in the world that
they are reduced to a condition of slavery.
HERALD.—When the late Lord Elgin " opened
up" Japan he little thought what a terrible legacy
he was to leave to his country. How many fleets
and armies will have to be sent there, how many
ambassadors, admirals, and generals, before affairs
can be placed, as the cant phrase is, " on a satisfac-
tory footing," who can tell? How many more brave
Englishmen are to be hacked to pieces on the high
road, and how many towns are to be laid in ashes
to avenge them, we cannot say. This only we feel,
that it is a most unfortunate thing we ever attempted
to break down the barrier of isolation which, in
mercy to mankind, had been raised between this
treacherous people and the world outside of them.
Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, not to mention
a fifth continent which is but half explored, might
have satisfied even the avarice of trade for the next
century or so. The way in which for more than
200 years past these islanders of Asia had treated
blie Europeans who were willing to undergo any
humiliation to be allowed to barter with them, was
not such as to tempt other nations to go out of the
way in suing for their friendship or incurring their
animosity. We might have left it to the Dutchmen,
who liked it, to allow themselves to be shut up in a
prison on a small island, to be kept at more than
arm's length like dangerous reptiles, to have letters
poked at them on sticks or handed on tongs, to be
obliged to knock their heads against the floor when
suffered to behold from afar off a dignatary of the
great empire to endure all things and submit to all
possible indignities for that greed of lucre which
men call " commercial enterprise." We should
never have soiled our fingers with such a dirty