The Sun.
London, England, 1853-02-07 00:00:00

LONDON, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1853.

Parliament will now in two or three days have
resumed its sittings, and that too under rather
momentous and peculiar circumstances. The re-
cent occupants of the Treasury Benches will be
found ranked together with their followers as a
compact and resolute Opposition. The lately
scattered and disorganised Opposition, on the con-
trary, will be found consolidated into a very
parti-coloured, or if you will, party-coloured Go-
vernment. If not " black spirits and white,"
MINTo, HOBHOUSE, and GREY—at any rate,
GRAHAM, GLADSTONE, RUSSELL, and " all their
trumpery," will be soon numbered in the crowd of
the Coalition. After a series of changes so very
remarkable, it must, of course, require some time
to elapse before the new Administration can be
shaken down into working order, so that the
business of both Houses can be conducted in
earnest, and to the popular satisfaction.

Meanwhile, without the purlieus of Downing-
street, other alterations are perceptible in various
quarters, and those alterations, if possible, of a
still more surprising character. Energetic efforts
are at length being prepared by the advo-
cates of improvement in our system of repre-
sentation. Instead of striving for all and
thereby obtaining nothing, the more sagacious.
Liberals are restricting their endeavours for a
while to the attainment of the one grand boon of
secret voting—the boon which will best secure
the electoral franchise from the accursed influence
of bribery—the boon of the Ballot. Simultane-
ously with this practical movement, some of the
mce:e liberal and enlightened men in the United
Kingdom are adventuring upon an enterprise
'uch as, while it reflects glory and renown
upon themselves, is best calculated to se-
cure the happiness of their own and fu-
ture generations. A grander and a nobler pro-
ject than that even of the Anti-Corn-Law League
is being set on foot by the principal champions of
that great and eminently successful crusade
against agricultural monopoly. The project is that
of preventing the outbreak of another of those
diabolical contests which originate in the most
villainous passions to grind down the various
countries engaged in them under the pressure
of.debt, and to deluge with blood and to
'revenge by spoliation the fairest fields
and lordliest cities of the European conti-
nent. Against the revival of war, such men
as RICHARD ConnEN—not dreamers, but practical
men of business—are bringing to bear at this
moment all the force of their logic, their common
sense, and their statistics. Their aim, it must
be admitted even by their opponents, is sufficiently
Pure and benevolent. Upon the triumph of their
u'adertaking more is dependent than the tran-
'quillitrof an age, or the prosperity of a nation—
the happiness of incalculable millions, and the
continuance of the onward movement of a
calmly progressive civilisation. With them
necessarily, therefore, go our good wishes and our
benison. We may conceive their notions to be
altogether fantastical and extravagant, when we
hear thlrra talking of the total and immediate sub-
stitution of protocols for artillery—the replacement
gof the engines of war by the harmless instruments of
arbitration. But, to our thinking there can be
nothing either fantastical or extravagant in their
solicitude
,to dissipate the evil prejudices of neigh 7
bouring. powers, by submitting to their cooler
judgment. the pages of history, so rendered as to
be comprehensible to the great mass of the
population—by laying bare the secrets of past
diplomacy—by setting the annals of the modern
world before the scrutiny of their