The Sun.
London, England, 1831-02-05 00:00:00

charge of about 81,000/. This is so far well,
but we suspect that there will be some sharp op-
position to continuing many of the items, for
Mr. HUME has stated his determination to re-
duce them.

With all our disposition to view the proposi-
tion of Lord ALTIIORP in the fairest light,
we cannot help thinking that in the present
condition of the country, and the reduced
price of the necessaries of life, the amount of the
several pensions might be reduced one fourth
at least; and we are the more confirmed
in this opinion by the consideration that, as the
parties have no legal right to the continuance
of the pensions at all, they can have no
equitable right to object to the reduction.
Those receiving bounty have no right to make
terms.

Those who may object to receive three-fourths
of pensions to which they have now no right,
ought to be at once relieved from the trouble of
any further solicitation. Let their portions be
placed to the account of any distressed families
who have only five shillings per week for the
subsistence of eight or ten souls. Towards
the conclusion of his speech, Lord AL-
THOItP stated a circumstance which more
than ever endears his MAJESTY to the
affections of a loyal people. At the com•
mencement of a new reign it is always
usual to grant a sum of 50,0001. for the
outfit of the QUEEN, but the KING, with
characteristic benevolence and true Royal spirit,
spurned the gift !

When the several items of the Civil List
comes to be discussed there will be of course
some further reductions made, and Lord
ALTHORP and his MAJESTY'S Ministers
deserve well of the country for having sub-
mitted the Civil List to a Select Com-
mittee for its special scrutiny and revi-
sion. It was on this rock that the WEL-
LINGTON Administration foundered. The pre-
sent Ministers have only to be honest and
the country will support them. Measures not
men—good intentions and better endeavours—
these are what the people want—and all these
we hope to see realized in a reformed Parlia-
ment, but not before. Honest Ministers and
a corrupt Parliament are totally irreconcileable
things.

We learn from the concurrent testimony of
all parties, from the Tory as well as the Whig
Journals, that Mr. PADDISON'S speech at the
late Lincoln Reform Meeting made a very ex-
traordinary impression on his audience. So
excited, indeed, were his hearers, that at the
conclusion of his eloquent harangue, they rose
to a man and gave him three distinct cheers !
Had this display of popular feeling occurred
in Ireland, we should have thought little of
it ; but here it is a different matter. A
respectable English assembly is proverbially
slow to be pleased, and difficult to be
kindled into animation, and it must be some-
thing very much out of the common way indeed
that can at all rouse their enthusiasm. Mr.
PADDISON'S speech, however, achieved this
novel triumph, and singularly enough, not by
an appeal to the passions, but to the judgment,
the cool unbiassed judgment, of his hearers.—
He proved the necessity of Reform, by a series
of the most convincing arguments we ever read ;
and the common sense of the Meeting at once
acknowledged, almost, as it were, in spite of
themselves, that he was right. We have great
respect for an orator who, having the power to
inflame the passions of his hearers, prefers rather
to appeal to their reason, and digs in the quarry
of good sense for the enduring materials of his
eloquence.