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

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

As the most essential provisions of the Reform
Bill have already received the sanction of the Com-
mittee of the House of Commons, or will certainly
receive it in the course of this week, the country is
beginning to look forwatd with some curiosity and
interest to its fate in another place, where it. will be
admitted with less favour, and is expected to incur
more dangers. The unreasonable forebodings of
some of its timid friends, in regard to this stage of
its progress, have given a kind of countenance to
the criminal hopes of its unthinking adversarita,and
both have contemplated the possibility of its failure,
or postponement, by an opposition majority of the
Peers. Accordingly, hypothesis has been heaped
upon hypothesis to arrive at some conclusion on the
consequences of such an event, or the mode of pre-
venting it. And much ingenuity has been thrown
ays ay to prove that its rejection could not be final
—that the Lords who are hostile to the measure
would not dare to resist the nearly equal number of
their own colleagues pledged to its support,—
seconded as the noble minority would be by nearly
all the Members of the House of Commons who
have constituents,—by the enthusiastic unanimity of
lithe whole country, arid by the deliberate conviction
arid zealous exertions of his Majesty. Such a view
of the case however just, and such arguments how-
ever conclusive, will, we are persuaded, be found
unnecessary to remove alarm or to inspire confidence.
Thu: Bill must pass the House of Commons by a
triumphant majority; and thence will continue the
impulse which it has received till it reaches the
Thripe, where we are beforehand assured of its
safety. In making this declaration of our opinion,
let us not be understood as desirous to deprive the
Peers of any of their constitutional privileges,—to
deny their title to be considered an independent
branch of the Legislature,—to dispute the necessity
of their concurrence in every law which the country
is called upon to obey,—or to reduce their vote to a
cipher, to be thought of value only when added to
the unit of the other House. Neither shall we
suppose it possible that their Lordships can act
from the base motive of personal fear, or that their
consent will be obtained to a measure which
their judgment condemns, under any menace
of danger to their persons, their estates, or
their title,. No! let the enemies of the Bill rave
about revolutionary violence, popular intimidation,
and democratic sedition, as the results of a salu-
tary measure calculated to secure the riehts of all.
We anticipate no such things; we anticipate with
certainty the sanction of the Lords to the Bill, con-
sistently with the unassailed preservation of all their
privileges, and in their most perfect freedom from
terror or violence. They mar/ reject it, if they
choose, but they will not do so;—they have the
power of putting an extinguisher on the result of
several mouths' labour in the other House of Par-
liament, but they will not exercise that power ;
they may fly in the face of their Sovereign, and
disappoint the general and deep-rooted hopes of
their fellow-subjects, but we entertain no apprehen-
sion that they will act so insane a part. We ground
our anticipation of this gratifying result on the
theory of the Constitution, as expounded by some of
the Lords themselves, and as exemplified in its
mode of " working well," which they adduce
as their strongest reason for not attempting
its improvement. If you ask the most phi-
losophical of them how of late years the two
Houses of Parliament have beni, prevented from
clashing
n against ottliireer
regular.
I
thetheir
case,
and it
Government by angry collisions, you are
told that whatever may have happened formerly,
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