The Sun.
London, England, 1831-11-23 00:00:00

is the sort of suffrage created in these populous
places ? Why, not one of the 54 boroughs in this 1
predicament can muster 300 ten-pound freeholders, 1
and in every case, in order to make up that mini- 1
mum constituency required by the Bill, the Pashas
mentary Commissioners will be obliged to set out
' from the precincts of the borough into the surround-
ing districts in search of full-rented voters, like
Diogenes with his lamp in search of a man. Such
is the mob of these voters, that in 54 boroughs we
find only 5,040 of them ; and the Commissioners
will therefore be obliged to invite from " the roads
and highways" 10,000 more, to make up the neces-
sary complement of guests at the electoral feast.
We confess we think this schedule requires amend-
ment. But let us leave the schedules, and proceed
to towns of too respectable a size to be included in
such condemned lists. The Duke of Newcastle
claimed the right of " doing as he would with his
own" in the borough of Newark, and found " his
own" a little refractory, Will " his own" now
outgrow his authority by the addition of a mob,
or is he now to be bearded by universal suffrage ?
Let the returns speak. There were polled at
one of the late elections 1,362 voters, and the
Bill will reduce the new constituency to 351 ! ! A
similar process will happen in every one of the
small or considerable boroughs of the kingdom.
Hunt's borough of Preston, for instance, polled
at a late election 7,122, and its number of 10/.
householders or, in other words, its future con-
stituency, is estimated at 976 ! Is this universal
suffrage, is this a democratic constituency ? But,
perhaps, it may be said that the dangerous principle
of universal suffrage, though avowedly banished from
towns hitherto represented, is to be concentrated in
the newly-endowed boroughs. We may remark in
passing, that though this were the case, the change
could not be considerable on the whole body of the
House of Commons; for it matters not, in voting
away our money, or in performing other acts of legis-
lation in St. Stephen's how many constituents return
a Member in a particular interest and with a popular
bias, but how many Members are returned in that
particular interest and with that particular bias.
Though, therefore, the forty or fifty representa-
tives in populous towns were all returned by uni-
versal suffrage, we should not regard the change
with any alarm while they composed not one-
tenth part of the representation. But nothing
can be more false than this imputation on the Bill,
even with respect to the new constituency. In
looking at the returns for the 26 large extra me-
tropolitan towns to be endowed with the right of
sending one or two Members to Parliament, we
find that their whole constituency will be only
67,405, and when reduced by the abstraction of the
freeholders who formerly voted in the counties, and
who are now to be town electors, the new votes
created will not amount to 40,000. Can this be
called any thing like.universal suffrage, when Man-
chester, one of the 26 places, possesses for itself, in
its electoral circuit, a population of 187,019 ? The
, , ,
real fact is, tnat tne constituency ought to be still
further enlarged instead of suffering any diminution.
But it has been alleged,—and no doubt the falsehood
has had its influence on the electors of Dorsetshire,
as well as on some of the equally wise persons who
composed the late majority in a certain house,—
. . that though the influence of property is not sacri-
ficed to numbers, the influence of one species of pro-
perty is sacrificed to another, and that the landed in-
terest must lose, while the commercial gains, by the
Bill. We have left ourselves no room to argue

this point at length, and to show how absolutely the
fact is in contradiction to the assertion ; but we
shall just remark, as a thing easy to be proved, that
the landed interest do, by this Bill, acquire an
ascendancy in three ways. Ist. The new Mem-
bers given to the counties and returned by the
existing constituency, over which the landlords re-
tain their influence, is a direct and obvious accession
of power to the landed aristocracy. 2d. The con-
stituency of counties will come more directly under
the controul of that aristocracy by the withdrawal
of the town freeholders, whose suffrages will now
be confined within the limits of their boroughs.
That the power of this class of freeholders was con-
siderable, and consequently that the influence of the
landed aristocracy was greatly diminished by its
exercise, may easily be inferred from the return of
Mr. Marshal by the influence of the freeholders of
Leeds. 3d. As we mentioned before, all the smaller
boroughs in schedule B, and many above 4,000, will
be obliged to make up their necessary constituency
out of the country, and will thus come within the
range of the landed proprietor's influence. Let the
squirearchy, therefore, be consoled. They are not
to be deprived either of their property or political
influence—of their preserves of game or voters by
the Reform Bill, and may therefore support it them-
selves, and urge the Peers to pass it without terror
or alarm. Let them also be aware lest their absurd
resistance should create a demand for a Reform
which may justify those fears which are now ridi-
culously visionary.—Times.

The Liberal continental papers, both French and
German, have been unanimous in; their declarations
for some weeks past, that the Emperor of Russia in-
tends to destroy the independent existence, and even
to abolish the name, of Poland, and to incorporate
the provinces of which that kingdom was composed
with the Russian empire. 'We have hitherto re-
frained from giving credit to these rumours, and do
not even now believe them to their full extent. We
remember that when the news of the capture of
Warsaw reached Paris, and occasioned those conti-
nued tumults for three or four days, which we hope
will not be repeated, the Minister for Foreign Af.
fairs, M. Sebastiani, ascended the tribune, and read
despatches, both from St. Pet ersburgh and Berlin,
containing the most ample assurances from the Em-
peror's own lips, and from the mouth of his father-
in-law, that the rights of Poland would be respected,
—that independent existence would be guaranteed,
—and that the faith of the treaties which conveyed
its sovereignty to Russia would be sti icily observed,
whatever should be the result of the contest. These
assurances had been repeated on various occasions,
and were, no doubt, expressed to the English as
well as the French Ambassador. They made the
recognition of Polish rights to depend upon no
contingency—upon no question of immediate sub-
mission or protracted resistance—upon no condition
of a few days fighting more or less—but stated
broadly and unequivocally, that Poland, when con-
quered, was still to be Poland,—was still to be a
kingdom separate from Russia,—with its own laws,
its own institutions, its own army, and its own civil
administration, and only united to the other domi-
nions of the Czar by the diadem of its Sovereign.
When these declarations were made, Warsaw, it is
true, had not as yet fallen, but that event was
avowedly contemplated, and therefore its actual oc-
currence, which had previously all the weight of
an absolute fact in the mind of the Imperial Govern-
ment, could not consistently interfere with the ful-
filment of the Emperor's solemn pledges and re-
peated engagements. In conformity with this
boasted generosity, the Commander-in-Chief of the
Russian troops, assisted by the Grand Duke Mi-
chael, engaged, on the morning previous to the sur-
render of Warsaw, to grant a general amnesty to
all the Poles who had taken arms during the war,
and even to extend it to the insurgents in Russian
Poland, who, regarding more their ancient ties
than their recent subjection, had risen to assert
their own claims to independence and to aid their
struggling brethren, already free. The stipulations
of that amnesty, we regret to say, cannot be claimed,
in strict right, by the Polish army, or the Polish
Provisional Government, which stood out for one
hopeless month longer ; but the conduct of the lat-
ter does net alter the. engagements of the Emperor
to his allies and to Europe. Since the complete
re.subjugation of the country by arms, and the an•
flounced attempt to restore tranquillity and order by
a Provisional itlovernment, we have carefully
watched the manifestos and orders of the day issued
from Petersburgh oriWarsaw, but can find in neither
of them any professed indication that the Emperor
intends to place Poland under the same regime and
to hold it by the same tenure as he does Siberia.