The Sun.
London, England, 1865-07-27 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

Tiro s.—The literature of our elections has now
changed its character ; we have no longer to deal
with the fervid aspirations of candidates, with all
the hopes and fears of a desperate and uncertain
contest before them. Hope and fear have taken
flight together. It is curious to watch how the cer-
tainty of victory or defeat operates upon the minds
of different men—how in some it evokes the better,
and in others the weaker and meaner parts of human
nature. We are alternately surprised by the cor-
diality and good humour with which men will
sustain a crushing and mortifying defeat, and by
the bitterness and ill-temper with which they will
welcome a hard won and gratifying victory. It is
only just to those who have been conducting elec-
tion contests for the last fortnight to record that
upon the whole the exhibition has been very credit-
able to the good feeling of English gentlemen, and
has exhibited the national character in one of its
most favourable aspects—the love of a fair stand-up
fight, and no malice borne on either side after it is
over. There are, as it will be seen, exceptions, but
we cordially acknowledge the great predominance
of good feeling over bad, the very considerable im-
provement in the demeanour of the candidates to-
wards each other, and the absence in general of
those bitter altercations which have so often dis-
credited the upper classes in the eyes of their infe-
riors. There is, probably, no occasion where a
gentleman is so imperatively bound to act worthily
of that character as when brought into collision with
other gentlemen in the face of a large assembly.
Example is more powerful than precept ; improve-
ment of society travels downwards,and if the coarse-
ness and brutality with which the lower class of
English may still be reproached are to be removed,
it must be, we are convinced, by the spectacle of the
self-command and respect for each other's feelings
afforded by those who are their superiors in wealth
and education. Perhaps the most exciting contest,
the one giving most triumph to the victors, and most
regret to the vanquished, was the election for Berk-
shire. In this instance a signal change in fortune
seems to have had an excellent influence on every
one's mind. Col. Lindsay can regret that his senior,
Mr. Benyon, is not at the head of the poll, and Mr.
Walter can afford to give his antagonists the satis-
faction of seeing how a defeated candidate looks, and
can console himself with the reflection that he carries
with him the good wishes of his political opponents.
It has been reserved for Col. Lindsay, however, to
give a new reading to the history of the question of
Reform ; it is not a happy one. The Conservatives,
he says, have had thrown on them the work of de-
fending the Constitution. They have thrown out
the measure which the Government of Lord Pal-
merston " came into office to carry, and in the
course of the struggle they have so educated the
public mind that on the final decision of that ques-
tion a much better informed public opinion will be
brought to bear." In this sentence " defending
the Constitution" means opposing Reform, and the
way that the Tories did that was by bringing in a
Reform Bill themselves. They did not throw out
Lord Palmerston's Bill, which they were willing to
read a second time, but they sat still and allowed
it to be talked out by the Liberal members them-
selves ; several among them, Mr. Walpole, Mr.
Henley, and Mr. Gerard Sturt, for instance, being
in favour of a reduction of the borough franchise
below £6. But the strangest assertion is that the
Conservatives have educated the public mind on the
question of Reform. Having deserted their old
principles, and finding their new ones meet with
little acceptance, they were during the last Parlia-
ment very shy of the subject, and, so far from
taking up a position opposed to Democratic change,
it has been a common remark during the present
elections that the Conservative addresses to con-
stituents have been much more sweeping in their
advocacy of Reform than those which have ema-
nated from Liberals. A member of Parliament is
not necessarily a professor of history, and we dare
say at the next general election Colonel Lindsay,
who seems to be labouring under the delusion that
all Liberals are in favour of Democracy, will not
only know the history of the Parliament in which
he has sat, but will have extended his studies into
thoproceedings of its predecessor. In West Kent,
where the contest has been exceedingly sharp, the
election at first seemed likely to pass off with much
good humour. The Liberals, finding themselves
thoroughly beaten, wisely abstained from troubling
their successful adversaries with their presence.
But this fair prospect was overclouded by an
unforeseen circumstance. It appears that some
one had recourse to the shabby and miserable
device of sending round a circular to the elec-
tors announcing that a compromise had been
entered into, so that their presence would not be
required at the poll. The paper purported to be
signed by the Chairman of the Tory Committee.
The successful candidates expressed their firm con-
viction that their defeated competitors knew nothing
of this shameful trick. But Sir John Lubbock, the
defeated Liberal, while entirely acquitting his ad-
versaries, stated, as a good Blue, that, whoever was
the author of the circular, he did not believe it was
any member of his party. This statement, at such
a _time, and from such a man, not unnaturally gave
great offence to those who had come to celebrate a
triumph, and not to encounter aspersions on their
character. At an election everybody is either Blue
or Purple, and he who denies a thing of the Blue
asserts it of the Purple. After a scene of infinite
confusion and uproar Sir John Lubbock was under-
stood to say that, though he believed the forgery
was not the work of a Blue, neither was it the work
of a true Purple. The Kentish yeomen need not
have been so indignant. It is evident that their own
agents think little of the matter, for they have only.
offered £2O to discover the offender, while the Libe-
rals, against whom they discharged the vials of their
wrath, have offered £lOO. Whichever side forged
this document ought to be ashamed of itself, but the
anxiety to discover it is so far much more evident
among the Liberals than their antagonists. We
should be glad also to know what answer the Con-
servatives of West Kent have to make to the letters
which we have published showing that they, on more
than one occasion, personated Liberal voters. In
North Yorkshire Mr. Milbank, the Liberal candi-
date, who has been returned at the head of the poll,
seems to have been elevated to something like poetic
fury by the completeness of his success. His two
competitors are his intimate friends, and he will be
glad to extend to them the right hand of fellow-
ship. But this is the way in which he speaks of one
of them, and if such can be his friendship we
wonder what his enmity is :—" I have shaken to its
foundation," he says, " the House of Buncombe "
(his intimate friend) ; "1 have torn down the blue
flag that floated from the towers of Duncombe-
park—mind you, the symbol of the degradation
and the thraldom of the North Riding. I have
broken the neck of Conservatism in the North
Riding of Yorkshire." Who would not be happy in
the possession of a friend like this, who, though
driven by an imperious sense of public duty to oppose
his friend politically, can console him for any trifling
reverse that may occur by such comfortable words
as these? We confess that we prefer the modera- '
tion of Mr. Duncombe to the high dithyrambic tone
of Mr. Milbank. He confessed he was disappointed
with the speech of Mr. Milbank, because he thought
it would have been better taste at least to show
some moderation in language after having been so
triumphant in action. He admitted the triumph,
and he congratulated Mr. Milbank personally. Mr.
Morritt could not understand the feeling of any
gentleman who after he had beaten him still kept
hitting at him. We must confess that in this in-
stance victory did not declare for the side which
bore away the palm in good manners and good feel-
ing. All the seats except the cases of double return
are now filled up ; the great battle is decisively lost
and won ; the elections will make, as near as we
can calculate, a difference of fifty odd votes on a
party division. The turmoil has died away, and
people are probably themselves astonished at the
heat and vehemence into which they have been
transported ; but the bickerings and ebullitions of
the disappointment of defeat or the presumption of
success will soon be forgotten or forgiven, till at an-
other and, we trust, a distant day, the country is
again summoned to go through the fiery ordeal of
another election. We can only trust that the next
time rival parties confront each other things will be
carried on, upon the whole, with as much good taste
and good feeling as have characterised the very
lively, and, upon the whole, very creditable pro-
ceedings of the contest of the present summer.
POST.—Although the obligations which men and
women respectively undertake towards each other on
entering the marriage state remain theoretically un-
changed, it is unquestionable that they have of late
years, at least in this country, practically undergone
very serious modifications. In the eye of God, as
also in that of man, husband and wife continue to
be regarded as one flesh, but the necessities of a
higher order of social existence have rendered it ex-
pedient that, under particular circumstances, the
" one flesh" should be resolved into its component
elements. The man, as any one who is called upon
" to assist" at a wedding discovers, still assures the
woman that, irrespective of all possible contingen-
cies, lie forsakes the entire female sex for her during
her lifetime ; and the woman having on her part
entered into a correlative obligation, the priest pro-
nounces them to be indissolubly united. As a mat-
ter of fact, however, both the man and the woman
know better, and each is perfectly well aware that
the union will only subiist so long as both the con-
tracting parties desire it. It is not our intention now
to inquire whether the Divorce Act works well or
otherwise, but simply to remind our readers that the
entirely different complexion it has given to matri-
mony renders it scarcely possible even for those who
hare devoted the most careful attention to the sub-