The Sun.
London, England, 1831-12-06 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

Parliament meets again this day. The last Royal
Proclamation by which the re-opening of that body
was fixed for so early a period as the 6th of Decem-
ber, gave lively encouragement to the friends of
Ministers—that is, of Reform—throughout the
whole empire, disheartened as some of them had
permitted themselves to be by the systematise eeid
never-ceasing falsehoods put forth daily Oteough the
medium of the borough press, as to the weakness,
wavering, nay, backsliding, of several members of
the Government. Within a day after the proroga-
tion of Parliament, we stated it to be a matter of
more than probability that it would re-assemble
about the first week of December, and we feel it to
be a ground of reasonable confidence in the firmness
of purpose, and the conscious power of Ministers;
that they have thus, through various difficulties,
held on the even tenour of the course which they
had originally traced out for their proceedings. In
the same degree, or a greater than that in which
the resolution of Ministers to renew at -once the
fight with the public enemy cheered and gratified
the advocates of Reform, have the Tories been
stricken with rage or panic, So reluctant are they
to believe in the manly decision of the Government
to carry to prompt extremities the wee against the
rotten-borough system, that they affect to lay the
immediate opening of the Session at any door ra•
ther then the true one. No longer ago than yester-
day one of their journals, in a tone of hypocritical
peevishness, complained that the sit' Bankruptcy
Bill had been so bungled as to compel the early
meeting of Parliament, with a view to the correction
of its errors ! The new Bankruptcy Bill ?—no,
gentlemen, none of your hoaxing. Doubtless you
would be well enongh pleased to see the time of
Parliament from this hour to Christmas, and possibly
to Christmas twelvemonth, engrossed by Bankrupt
Bills, Game Bills, Corn Bills, any Bills but that
which now is the one thing needful with the people
of England—namely, the Bill for a Reform of Par-
liament. The same honest print which had con-
jured up the Bankruptcy Law as the only conceiv-
able ground for a premature opening of the Session,
has tried its hand again upon the Bristol riots, and
threatens to make that pleasing topic a cheval
de battailc for an amendment to the address.
Let them try it, we say. Let the worst tricks
of the past Session be played over again, and
the House of Commons will be but so much
the more stimulated so the discharge of those
sacred duties which it has already fulfilled in a
manner so effective and so honourable. There
is no question that immediate notice will be given,
and a day appointed for the resumption of the great
subject of Reform. There is no shadow of justifi-
cation for the least alarm touching the amount of
the majority in one House, and none, we hope, after
such displays of national feelings as have met every
eye since the list of Peers in the division on the se-
cond reading was made public, that the latter House
will not discreetly re-consider the possible conse-
quences of its votes. Their Lordships are as deeply
interested in mairitt.ining the peace of die kingdom
unbroken as any other class of Englishmen. Let
them, therefore, support that Reform which has the
people unanimously- and fervently in its favour.
Their Lordships have privileges derived from law,
and they enjoy demonstrations of public deference
derived from custom,—and a real authority, the
exercise of which is facilitated by popular opinion,
—and constitutional rank and enormous property,
buoyed up, in a manner, and floated upon confluent
streams from all these several fountains. We would
pray them earnestly to look around, and watch the
signs of tr mpest and the hazards of shipwreck;and
to shape a true course ere darkness comes, lest they
overshoot their only port,while a,sailed by unknown
elements of destruction. It must now be ob-
vious to Noble Peers, that on the last occasion
they mistook the nature of national feeling
throughout this country,—of that feeling which
many of them declared should, by its eagerness or '
its languor, have a positive or negative influence on
their votes. They must now see that there never
was an indifference to Reform in the minds of the
people of England : still more fully must they be
satisfied that there never has been a re-action.
What will be, what can be the condition of this
realm, if the Reform Bill be a second time thrown
cut ? Are the Lords prepared for all the results of
unfeigned exasperation among the honest portion of
their countrymen—for those of pretended provoca-
tion ministering in aid of outrage, plunder, murder,
and anarchy among the wicked ? Do the Lords
trouble themselves with conjecturing to what sinis-
i• r uses a second failure of the Reform Bill may be
lo de subservient in Ireland,—or what a deadly and
unconqueiable spirit is silently, but terribly, crouch-
ing in Scotland, to spring upon the 'whole body of
our monarchical institutions, at the first proof of the
incapacity of Ministers to raise this great barrier for
their defence ? The situation of Scotland, we say
again, if known to the House of Lords, as it might
be known to them, would convert the most head-
strong fanatic among the Tories into a staunch sup-
porter of the intes.

Yesterday's dawn saw the execution of two of
those monsters, which, if not created for the pur-
pose, are suffered to exist, and to go on eentinually
dehasitig themselves by crime after crime, in order
to show to what a state of depravity man can at
last arrive, if not restrained by principle or awed by
religion. IN/liana and Bishop drew mother's milk
like the rest of their race.—they were reared in
their childhood by maternal care,—they appear, the
latter particularly, to have received some education,
and to have had fair natural parts; yet, in spite of
these advantages which might have pointed out to
their adoption and placed them on the entrance of
a better course, they fall into a foul, disgraceful,
end illegal mode of obtaining their bread; and thee,
as it were, set themselves against the whole human
race,—murdering those whom they had allured to
their haunts under the plea of kindness, and con-
signing the bodies of their murdered guests to
sale. Let us ransack the stores of language as we
please, we can find no word capable of express-
ing such a degree of criminality, or describing
those who are guilty of it. Monster is feeble;
miscreants, wretches, and all the known terms
of reproach, when applied to them, are really
epithets of praise. They drat k with the unstis-
pectiog victim of their dark designs ; they stupified
him with their drugged liquor. They than drank
again with each other, and returned to the besotted
sleeper : they plunged him into the well, and sus-
pended his feet to the contiguous paling, in order
both to close his sleep in death, and from an erroneous
idea that the stomach would discharge its fatal con-
tents when in that position. Then they drank again,
returned, drew their chill ware from their deep store-
houses prepared it for sale, and took it to the
several markets. At every fresh bid, or new chap-
man, drink filled up the interval. 0 ye, whose lot
of life dooms you to certain labour, uncertain meals,
beware of drink. These men could never have com-
menced their desperate trade without the aid of
liquor. At last,
through the operation of that sti-
umlaut, they learned to carry it on without fear or
feeling, till they are surprised in the midst of their
guilty courses : human law awards to them its
severest, but that an insufficient, penalty ; and they
die amidst the exultations of thousands. Let it not
be thought that we blame the surgeons in this me-
lancholy affair, though it is clear that there has
been in other cases a want of due caution ; but in
this particular case the surgeons deserve praise,
for it has been owing to the scruples of those
connected with the new establishment of King's Col-
lege that the murders of Bishop and Williams have
been discovered. Subjects have always—unfortu-
nately, but of necessity—been procured in this
countly for dissection by purchase, and the bodies of
the dead have thus been rendered tributary to the
safety of the living ; but it is time that this traffic--
a traffic, as it has now been proved, always having a
tendency to murder—should give way to some better
and acknowledged system. We are aware that the
subject is one of extreme difficulty; but the evils
which it should prevent are of the most horrible and'