The Sun.
London, England, 1831-10-01 00:00:00

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of primary importance, without reference to the opi-
nions and feelings of the people affected by it. The
writer of the pamphlet meets this point fairly. " Is
the House of Lords (he asks) an isolated and im-
passive idol, before which men may bow down but
not speak ? Is it as deaf to reason as Baal ? So
its interested partisans would assert,—so we its con-
stitutional friends deny. We declare, and are proud
to declare, that the House of Lords is a necessary,
intelligent, reasoning, deliberative portion of the
British Constitution. And, being such, we are
prepared to approach it with arguments to point
out consequences, to show the temper of the
age, the desires of the community; in short,
to pour into its ears, the wisdom and petitions of
its fellow-subjects. And bold and bad must that man
be who bids this House not attend to him. After
all what is intimidation ?—the intimidation from
which the wise and brave revolt, it is from bully-
ing threats, unattended by reason. If I see a man
walking towards the edge of a precipice, and tell
him a few steps will plunge him into a blind abyss,
he will probably stop; but if a by-stander thereupon
call him a fool and a coward, will he, to show his
wisdom, his enurage,and indeperidenee,plunze head-
long down ?" After all, what is the principle of the
British Constitution, but that all who are entrusted
with power and authority are liable to abuse it ?
The people are justified in looking with jealousy on
the Press, more especially in a question, in which
many of them have a personal interest at variance
with the interest of the nation. When a Judge is
disposed to commit injustice, he no doubt feels it
unpleasant to be intimidated from committing it.
But intimidation is not the less proper, are all
accountable to one another, for society supposes de-
pendence. The Deity alone .s irresponsible. Many
Noble Lords would, no ''.oubt, act purely under any
circumstances; bur many also would act under an
improper bias; but for intimidation; that is a pru-
dential est;•mate of the consequences like to flow from
their votes. Well has the writer observed.—
" Brave men are little influenced by threats ; they can
afford to he afraid. The Great Captain of the day did nor
shrink from confessing his fears of a rebellion in Ireland.
He has not that small pittance of courage that shrinks from
concession ; and we shall see him now, if haplessly he
continue unconvinced, boldly contending upon the broad
merits of the question, upon its anti-ultra provisions, and
not upon the weak and Buhadil fears of giving way to the
stedfast resolves of a whole people. He may deny that the
people are so resolved, but I have better hopes of his
shrewdness and observation-----of his candour ; for I cannot
feel otherwise than probli of that great man to whom his
country and Europe at large are so greatly indebted.
" If by intimidation," adds the writer, " Is meant an
expositionof the dangerous consequences likely to ensue from
a rejection of the Bill by the Lords, then there is—there
has been—and there ought to be, much question of inti-
midation. Let those who quail hide their heads with an
ostrich courage, and fancy, because they will not see the
danger, that it is past; but let the stout-hearted thank
those who enable them to look it full in the face, before
tbey resolve upon an attack.
" What is danger, then ? It is lest the long-growing
discontent and disaffection, generated by the almost uni-
versal belief in the existence of gross abuses in the whole
system of Government, should not, now that it is concen-
trated in one focus by the charm of Reform, burst, should
the Lords reject that Reform with overwhelming force
upon them and their order, and through them upon the
whole nation.
• ti •

"At the present crisis, truth—bare truth--however
unpalatable, however fearful, must bespoken. A rejection
of the Reform Bill by the Lords would be the signal for
revolution—deliberately, avocrediy, I say, for a revolution.
In that single word what awful miseries ate included. It
makes the blood run back upon the hardest ',heart, when
the mind's eye looks upon the fair scenes of smiling pros-
perity around, when it thinks upon the gigantic strides in
improvement and civilization that this glorious country
has achieved,—when it contemplates the noble path be-
fore it, the bright example it has set to neighbouring
states, the marked exemption from internal strife with
which it has been blessed ; or when it draws nearer home,
and dwells upon the thousand domestic sympathies, upon
the eleganciez, the affections, the engagements of social life,
and thinks that at one fell word these enjoyments may
cease—this affection be broken, prosperity be blighted,
civilization thrown hack ; and the example that has hi
therto been held up fi,r emulation be hereafter cited as a
fiery beacon to warn nations and individuals from obsti-
nacy and perverseness."

The writer seems to be not without hope that
the Duke of Wellington, whom he acquits of a cor-
rupt exercise of his authority—" the laurelled hero
of a hundred battles, will not rise up in defence of
those boroughmongering trammels which his owl)
great exploits in war enabled him to shake off, but
which sent the indefatigable Cellingwood broken
and disappointed to the bed of death, and Moore,
less unhappy, to the glorious grave his valour
achieved in their very despite. What is there in
common between the frank, gallant soldier, and the
corrupt proprietor of ten seats? No; let him and
those gallant brother spirits, whose valour by sea
and land has written their names in the history of
their country, as well as in its Peerage—let them
and the two services stand forth and free the future
Moores and Collingwoods from the evil influence
that so cruelly blighted their career ; let them also
liberate the scar-worn veteran, and the enduring
soldier of fortune, from tlic griefs of eedh ss super-
cession, and that hope deferred which maketh the
heart sick." No men appreciate more correctly the
benefits likely to flow from the Reform Bill than the
officers of our army and navy, who, if they have
any spirit and feeling, most, long before they have
reached the mid-day of life, have a thousand times
cursed the day and hour that ever they entered a
boroughmonger army. Reform opens the door to
merit and service. Anti-Reform says to them, be
without hope—

• " Lasciate ogni speranza voi rile entrate."
Fraud, corruption, and hypocrisy are inseparable
from a boroughmongering Government, of which
the great object is to discover how little merit it is
necessary to employ as a screen for their lazy and
stupid connections, that the political fabric may be
preserved from tumbling about their ears. Bo-
roughmongering is another name for fraud. It is
the substitution of the substance for the reality. It
is, to use the words of the writer of the pamphlet,
`• A Government which, under the semblance of
freedom, hides certain checks and resources, which,
as the curb-chain under the herse's chin, may re-
strain infinitely more than the light ostensible bit
in its-mouth." The notions of the boroughmongers,
he adds, " tend to isolate the Peerage and the
Throne, to place them behind a well fortified en•
trenchment with a strong masked battery of rotten
boroughs ready at any moment to open upon the
villainous people." The writer concludes with a
powerful appeal to the Church, and more particu-
larly to the Bishop of London, who, in his younger
days, professed liberal opinions :—" Let him now
step forward, and, having first thanked his God
for placing such a glorious opportunity of reconcili-
ation in his hands, let him address and convince his
brother Bishops—let him choose between the ill-,
fated Bishops of what is called our rebellion
and the wise Bishops of our revolution.
Let him call upon them, by their duty to
heir God and to their Church, to preserve their holy
religion from imputation, and their establishment
from destruction. Let him call upon them, by the
faith they teach, to set their faces against legalized
and acknowledged corruption; by the heavenly ex-
ample of their great Master to lean rather to the
lowly than the high, to the poor than to the rich ;
to believe with hint in the integrity and singleness
of heart of the people." No Minister of England,
with an unreformed Parliament, can preserve his
honesty. Mr. Hume, at the Middlesex meeting,
the other day, stated that in the course of his Par-
liamentary career the Ministers had all been more
virtuous than the Parliament, and that the', were
not allowed to give effect to their intentions to pre.
serve the people from being pillaged. It is curious
that it should be stated as a characteristic of the
system of complete responsibility, that a rogue in
power would be forced to be honest. There is, in
the New Monthly Magazine for October, an ar-
ticle on America, evidently from the pen of Cooper,
the celebrated Novelist, and Secretary of Legation
at Paris, in which it is stated that " the whole se-
curity of our institutions, and I think of our succe€s,