The Sun.
London, England, 1831-07-08 00:00:00

. many word,,,, go and attack the Parsons, but tho).
'said, we could give you higher wages, were it not
for the exactions of the Parsons anti upon this hint
the labourers acted. In short, it appears to us that
the alleged libel is rather at attempt to expose the
insufficiency of tht.s; arguments of the parson, as nor
go'ng below the surface of the question, than an
tended exhortation to outrage. h) this inoral world,
good often comes of and every statement of the
manner ;Vmeh the evil produced the good, may
ire construed to have a tendency to produce the evil.
In describing the French Revolution, there are the
excesses, the cont)equent feats, the emigrations,
cordiscations) the rate of the emigrant estates to the
pe,asants and the consequent equality of property.
daffy people admire the equality of property, and in
tracing the connection between the equality of pro-
perty and the rirtuMstances above stated, it may he
said te have a tendency to produce the horrors of
the Punch Revolution. Humboldt, the traveller, lays

it down, that the higher orders of a country may be
highly civilized for ages, and the lower orders suffering
under oppression all the while ; and he instances the
north of Germany, Livonia, Courland, &c., adding,
that the condition of the lower orders is seldom im-
proved, except through some terrible convulsion. This
may he :,aid to have a tendency to drive the lower orders
into insurrection. But it is dangerous to carry the
argument of inferring the intention to produce a
certain result from mere tendency, so far as the
lawyers are inclined to Ca, ry it. Mr. Cobbett seemed
to direct his efforts to make the Whigs appear black,
rather than to defend himself in this particular case.
He is evidently a man of strong passions, and his
indignation seemed to know no bounds. His accu-
sations against them are ludicrously extravagant.—
We wish they had not meddled with this prosecu-
tion, which opens a door which it is not always easy
to shut. The best way is to let the Press alone,
except when private character is attacked. A ‘Vhig
Ministry are, however, under a strong temp.toion to
prosecute, more than a Tory Ministry. In the first
place, the populai ity of their measures is calculated
to disarm Jurors, and to facilitate convictions. And,
in the next place, they are under a cons,ant dread of
being charged by the enemies of liberal measures
with all the obnoxious opinions which they do not
prosecute, and of being thus identified with them.
The Unitarian is much more annoyed at the charge
of infidelity than the Presbyterian or Catholic, the
two most rigid divisions of orthodox Christians.
The Tories know that they will not be charged with
sympathy with radical or revolutionary writings;
and their abstinence from prosecution will be imputed
to generosity and not to sympathy. On the other
hand, a Tory prosecution stipposcs a determination
to put clown the liberty of the Press, and throws all
the friends of liberty into alarm. Whigs, on the
contrary, receiving credit for honesty and good in-
tentions, are supposed to encroach on liberty for the
sake of ultimately promoting it.—Morning Chron.
The majority of Wednesday bight will produce its
impression in the House of Lords. We have great
confidence in the wisdom of that House; defects in
the personal character of a King, or sudden excite-
ment in a House of Commons, might break up the
Constitution ; but such a catastrophe cannot be ex-
pec•ed from the House of Lords. A hereditary
body preserving its relative position, as to property,
towards the other classes of society, can never change
its political character—that character is essentially
conservative and conciliatrry. Let the House of
Lords consider that in the last Parliament the second
reading of the Reform Bill was only carried by a
majority of one, arid that in the present House of
Commons the majority has risen to one hundred and
thirty-six. Who can say that this is a mob majority ?
Will any one call the best gentlemen of England a
mob ? Admitting that pledges stricter than usual
were given at the late election, what is the fair infe-
rence ?—that, the interest taken by the people in
the question at issue was so intense as to render
them more scrupulous than usual in the exercise
(whenever that exercise was not a mockery) of their
electoral rights ;—hence the sacrifice of personal at-
tachments, and the abandonment of personal inte-
rests, displayed in so many instances, all tending to
prove beyond the possibility of doubt, that Reform
in Parliament is the fixed resolve of the people of
England. Anti-Reformers contend that the "louse
of Commons, as now elected, is, in truth, the Con-
stitution—the rest is leather and prunella. The

borough of Windsor, according to them, is the
King's; close boroughs are the Lords, and pot-
wallopping places are the people. Well, then, we
take this description, and we submit to the Lords
who are opposed to the Bill that the Constitution
has, by the vote of Wednesday night, in full
assembly, pronounced for Reform. now they can
justify to themselves resistance to a decision promul-
gated by such competent authority we know not—in
fact, we are sore that, reasoning twos the past, there
can he no doubt as to the conduct of the House of
Lords ; their situation in the last Parliament was to-
tally different. The Anti-Reformers had a perfect
right to maintain that a maj,Tityof one on the second
reading of the Bull, neutralised, if not annulled, by
the majority on General Gascoyne's motion against
the Bill, was not such a declaration of the sole con-
stitutional body as to require them to give up their
opposition. If the Tory Lords should treat with
disrespect the determination of an unreformed House
of Commons, we shall begin to question the since-
rity of their attachment to that Constitution (or the
preservation of which they are ready to sacrifice
their lives, or their windows, as the case may be.
We attach no importance to comparisons between
England and other countries; we are altogether after
the manner of John Bull, and we think that the
Chamber of Peers in France has something the sort
of proportion to the English House of Lords that
the Emperor of Elba had to the Emperor of France.
Yet we cannot think that the time would be fortu-
nately chosen for opposition to the representative
body on a question affecting the mode of electing
that body, when the maintenance of a hereditary
Peerage was the great controversy in a neighbouring
nation.—Morning Herald.
The first division on the Reform Bill has taken
place in the new Parliament, and the majority has
proved a considerable one. It must be remarked,
however, that many Members have voted for the
second reading upon the princip!e of not being
opposed to a modified Reform, who will nor give
their support to the Bill in Committee ; and the
Government know full well that their majorities
will decrease upon every future stage of the Bill.
It will in fact, if it ever shall pass through the
Committee, go up to the House of Lords in a very
different form from that in which it stands at present.
The most amusing feature in the debate on Wed-
nesday night, and in the remarks of the Mini-
sterial Press upon that debate, is the ludicrous
attempt to deceive the public mind as to the im-
pression produced by the speech of Sir Robert Peel.
To those who heard it, it is unnecessary to say a
word respecting its effect. In eloquence, argument,
reasoning, and constitutional learning, it equalled
the best orations which have ever been made within
the walls of Parliament. It left no point in the de-
bate untouched or unanswered, anti it withered,even
to annihilation, the prosaic verboseness of Lord
John Russell, as well as the flimsy and unsubstan-
tial, although it must be confessed eloquent, sophis-
tries of Mr. Macauley. There never was a more
complete refutation of an elaborate highly-wrought
piece of rhetoric (for that is the true definition of
the speech,) than Sir Robert Peel's reply to Mr.
Macauley. We are induced to make these remarks
from the ridiculous writhings of the Ministers and
the Press under its chastisement. The Times, the
illorningC'llioniele, and the evening advocates of the
Ministry, all join in the same clamour, and their
unanimity ought to convince the public of the mo-
tivesw e a
are
ef their
distressed impotentta s
edee trrhe miserable
ac ti As i t .
Eslntualitlhoinnetrol
which our Ministers are reduced in the. gHou. se of
Commons. There is not one among them, except
Mr. Stanley, who can make even a decent speech
upon a great and national subject ; they are
men who have just that kind of loquacity (for
we cannot call it eloquence,) that by the
aid of the Parliamentary debates and Parliamentary