The Sun.
London, England, 1831-01-29 00:00:00

we exposed is now laid open to the public gaze, and
has burst upon the very person who, of all others,
if it were not rotten in the extreme, it never could
have visited. Let us hear no more then of civic
patriotism; and let the wisdom of Gotham pass in
future for I%hat it is really worth—•the mere 'Nice of
selfishness.—. Morning Herald.

It appears pretty certain, from the "signs of the
times," that Parliament will be the scene of a great
and fierce struggle on the question of Reform. Al-
ready the boroughmongers prepare themselves for
battle, putting on a panoply far different from the
" whole armour of righteousness," that they may
defend the "rotten parts of the Constitutive from
the assault with which they are threatened. Whe-
ther they will, with the desperate energy of the
Ilighland Thane, hang out their barner on the outer
wall, and fight man to man in the breach, or whe-
ther they will prefer resting their hopes of safety on
springing a mine beneath the feet of their antago-
nists, remain yet to be seen. Certainly some indica-
dons have already appeared of preparations being in
progress for the latter mode of defence. Indeed,
the circumstances of the times hardly allow of any
chance of success to the champions of the rotten-
borough system in open warfare; arid, therefore,
e should not be surprised to find that they had
taken advantage of the present long recess of Par-
liament to arrange some plan of political strategy
which may supply, by secret and well-concerted
miveMelitS, the want of force necessary for
more open operations. By such means was the
celebrated India Bill of Mr. Fox defeated in the
House of Lords, while that great Statesman was
himself Minister, and which defeat caused the over-
throw of his Administration. The present Pre-
mier, one of the ablest and most high-minded of the
pupils of Mr. Fox, knows, from old experience, the
difficulties that the question of Reform must, of ne-
cessity, encounter. It is now upwards of forty-five
years since Mr. Pitt proposed his last plan of Re-
form to the House of Commons, which was three
years after he first introduced the subject to the
Legislature. The plan he declared to be not a
measure of innovation, but one calculated to pre-
serve the spit it of the Constitution by restoring it
in conformity with its original principles, which the
changes induced by time had materially impaieed.
He stated that it would correct the inequalities of
' the existing system—give back its pure energy to
the representative principle, and not only render
the Constitution consistent, but, if possible, im-
mortal. What was Mr. Pitt's project of Refor:n ?
He proposed that the actual number of Members
constituting the House of Commons should remain
inviolate, while thirty-six rotten boroughs should be
disfranchised, and the right of choosing the seventy-
two Member., which they returned should be trans-
ferred to the counties, and to such large and popu-
lous towns as were till then unrepresented. He also
proposed the admission of copy holders to an equal
right with freeholders, and an extension of the elec-
tive franchise in populous towns where it was exer-
cised by a select few, to the inhabitants in general.
Connected with this plan was a recommendation to
appropriate one million sterlinx to be applied to the
purchase of the franchise of the boroughs on their
voluntary application to Parliament—a recommen-
dation which nee noticed with the reprobation it de-
served when recently started by some writer on
ParFarnentary Reform, as anew mode of reconciling
the boroughmongers to the transfer of the elective
franchise. This plan of Reform, moderate as it was,
and favourable in a pecuniary point of view to the
proprietors of boroughs—supported as it was by
the eloquence of . Mr. Pitt, in power, and that of
Mr. Fox, in opposition, was rejected in the House
by a majority of 248 to 174. It may be doubted,
indeed, whether Mr. Pitt was sincere in advocating
his own measure, or whether he only brought it for-
ward to afford a colourable appearance of redeeming
the pledges he had given when out of office, and to
show, by its defeat under such circumstances, that
no hope wee to be -entertained -of-a Civoutable
result from any future discussion of the ques-
tion. Certain it is, that when, in the year 1793,
Mr. (now Earl) Grey introduced the memo-
rable petition for Reform from the Society of
the " Friends of the People," and moved that it,.
along with other petitions for Reform, be referred to
a Committee of the House, the proposition, though
only preliminary to a measure of Reform, found
in Mr. Pitt a most determined and uncompromising
opponent—who vehemently dwelt upon the danger
to be apprehended to the country from what he was
Men pleased to describe and denounce as meaning
nothing else than a change in the Constitution ! He
then knew the value of an unreformed House of
Commons to a Minister who had resolved to em-
bark in a career of ambition which required the as-
sistance of the boroughmongers. By means of that
unreformed House of Commons he was enabled to
plunge the country into a war of which it is now
paying the price, and of which remote generations
will 'feel the bitter consequences. The motion of
Mr. ..Grey for a Committee to take into consideration
the petitions on Parliamentary Reform was defeated
by the enormous majority of 282 to 41. Hence the
profligate expenditure of blood and treasure to restore
the Bourbons, who when, after a war of more than
twenty years, they re-ascended the throne from which
their folly and vices had justly expel!ed them, so
small was the store of wisdom which they derived
from their adversity, that in much less than the
time occupied in fighting to restore them, they con-
trived to make France perform a new revolution,
which has shaken Europe to its centre, and made
the fabric of despotic power " a mutilated structure
soon to fall." There is a retributive justice which
Statesmen are not apt to calculate upon—but which
the Divine Wisdom that governs tee universe has
ordained shill grow eut of the political vices which
it is designed to chastise. Mark it in the present
instance. The champions of the rotten borough
system hurried the nation into the destructive war
against France, which nearly ruined the two finest
and most enlightened countries in Europe. Out of
that war grew the gigantic national debt, which in
grinding operation on the national resources and,
the national industry, makes the cry for Reform
more loud anti general than ever it was before. If
Earl Grey succeed in breaking down that borough
system in 1831, which in 1793, with the splendid,
talents of Mr. Fox to support him, he could not
touch, lie will owe it to that debt, which the bd-
rough-patrons created, arid which descends as an
avalancheto overwhelm themselves.—Morn.
The Government of the Marquis of Anglesea
and Lord Plunkett in Ireland is at length fairly com-
mitted in uncompromising hostility to the cause of
agitation. They are acting vigorously and well.
We do not upon the present occasion see any reason
to doubt their zeal or sincerity, for they have not
now any political object to carry, which agitation is
likely to promote. We believe that this time they
really wish to succeed in restoring the peace of the
country, and we heartily wish them success. It is
perhaps to be lamented, however, since it rather
diminishes the chance of their success, that the task
of suppressing agitation, by the vigorous application
of the law, should have been committed to men who
cannot even pretend that in their estimation any moral
guilt is implied in the act of disturbing the
peace of a country with a view to promote
the success of a political project. Lord An-
glean has openly encouraged agitation. Lord
Plunkett, when filling the important office of
Attorney-General, encouraged it still more effec-
tually, by conniving at and tolerating it. But then
the object in view was a pet object of their own.
These elevated Statesmen are now wielding the
thunders of the law against agitation, the only vi-
sible difference being, that the present object of the
agitators happens no longer to be a pet object' of
their own. The inconsistency must be allowed to
to be unfortunate, by all who really wish that the
powers of the law should be effectually exerted,
and its dignity adequately sustained. If the facts
upon which the pending prosecutions in Ireland are
founded were one degree less notorious than they
are, or the law one degree less clear than it is in
application to those facts, we own we should have
considerable misgivings as to the result of legal pro-