The Sun.
London, England, 1836-05-23 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY, MAY 23, 1836.

ture, and to protect both against insult, or at the least
to refrain from encouraging it against either, they must
follow Mr. O'Connell's bidding in some other position
than that of Ministers of the Crown.—Morn. Herald.
A Ministerial evening paper has supplied what we
must take to be an unofficial answer to a question said
to have been put by Sir G. Sinclair, viz., " how a
majority in the House of Lords could be over-
powered?" The reply is as flippant, impudent, and
reckless as could have been expected had it been con-
cocted between Mr. O'Connell and Mr. C. Buller,
with Dr. Wade and Mr. Savage, of the Circus Tavern,

for their assessors.
" Now we will assume," says the Globe, " and Sir G.
Sinclair will not venture to assert that the assumption is an
improbable one, that the constituent bodies of England,
Scotland, and Ireland, which have the power of returning a
majority to the House of Commons, are desirous of ex-
tending to the Irish people that essential element of free-
dom—local self-government. Should this be the fact,
and the Liberal Members of the House of Commons know
full well that it is the fact, then, on this vital question, it.
is not impossible that the hostile majority in the House
of Lords may be speedily, tranquilly, and constitutionally
overpowered. Let us suppose the following case by way of
illustration :—Early in the next Session, and before the
Supplies have been voted, or the Mutiny Bill passed, the
Commons send up a Bill to the Lords for reforming the
Irish Corporations, which Bill the Lords again transform
into a Bill for destroying these Corporations, and for abo-
lishing local self-government in Ireland. On this the Com-
mons vote a loyal address to the Crown, assuring his Ma-
jesty that the Supplies shall be granted, and the Mutiny
Bill passed, as soon as his Majesty shall be graciously pleased
to create such a number of Peers as may be sufficient to
overpower the hostile majority in the House of Lords.
This loyal and dutiful Address has the effect of an irresisti-
ble decree. It is forthwith intimated to their Lordships
that if they do not consent to pass a Bill giving local self-
government to Ireland, the next Go.zettc will contain a crea-
tion of 150, 300, or 500 Liberal Peers, as the case may re-
quire. Their Lordships perceive that further resistance
would be hopeless, and thus the hostile majority of the
House of Lords is overpowered without its becoming neces-
sary to go the length of effecting an organic change in the
Upper House, the necessity for which, we believe, their
Lordships will not be desirous to create."
There is much easy assumption at the foundation of
this argument ; but there is not enough. It should
be assumed not only that the constituent bodies of
England, Scotland, and Ireland are desirous of creat-
ing in the Sister Kingdom " normal schools of agita-
tion," of which the Roman Catholic Priests, and lay
demagogues under their command, shall be the pro-
fessors, which we may venture to describe as an ex-
travagant and absurd assumption ; but that the consti-
tuent bodies are so intensely anxious for the establish-
ment of such institutions in Ireland as to be willing:,
for sake of this object, to destroy the British Constitu-
tion. Now, let us assume that a barrister wio never
has the good fortune to get a brief, should threaten that
unless the first jury lie may have the opportunity to address
shall decide his way, he will positively shoot the fore-
man and hang himself, an assumption as exactly as
possible parallel to that of our Contemporary : or let
us imaeine that a pert declaimer at the Union De-
bating Club at Cambridge, were to say in that''so-
cietv, " If you do not decide every question under
the implicit guidance of my speech, I will abolish your
society by stabbing its leading members, and burning
to the ground the building in which you assemble,"
another assumption in pretty much the same spirit—
what, we a',k, would be the natural consequence of
threats so silly, spiteful, and absurd ? Simply, that
the person using them would be laughed at for his
folly ; - cr subjected to the discipline of bread and water,
a strait waistcoat, and the scourge, in the hope that
his insanity was not incurable. The only difference
between our assumptions and that of our Contemporary
is that ours makes rather free with a briefless barrister,
and a spouting boy, while that of our Contempoiary in-
sults the Commons' House of Parliament, and the ag-
e-res•te body of its constituents. The House of Com-
monso n "
cannot threaten to stop the supplies or to suspend
the Mutiny. Bill, for the purpose of advancing any ex-
isting question, without exhibiting in combination the
wickedness of the assassin and the impious madness
of the suicide. The assumption, therefore, that the
House of Commons will resort to such a threat is in
the highest degree injurious to that assembly. There
is ho doubt whatever, in the mind of any man of
common sense or information, that the first, or
rather the only, effect of propagating the opinion, if it
could be propagated, that the majority of the present
`I
-louse of Commons is capable of .such wickedness and
folly as the Globe assumes, would • be to render the
whole British people impatient for a dissolution of the
Parliament, in order that they might obtain the oppor-
tunity of providing themselves with less vicious and
more sober Representatives. In all that we have
heard of late about stopping the supplies and sus-
pending the Mutiny Bill there is .a fallacy the absurdity
of which alone has exempted it from exposure. So
far from either the Crown or the House of Lords
having any exclusive or peculiar interest in the neces-
sary supplies for carrying on the affairs of the nation,
or in the maintenance in a state of well-ordered dis-
cipline, that. army which keeps together our colonial
empire and maintains the public peace at home, it is the
House of Commons, and the constituents of the House
of Commons, who have not certainly an exclusive interest
in the measures conducive to those important purposes,
but an interest more urgent, direct, and imperious than
any other order in the State. For sake of the nation
at large, and especially for sake of the Commons of
England, we sincerely hope that the advice of the
Ministerial journal will never be followed by the Re-
presentatives of the people. But this we confidently
say, that the necessary result of such a mad proceeding
would be not to reduce the power of the Crown, not to
diminish the influence and authority of the BritiSh
Peerage, but to increase both to an extent utterly re-
pugnant to the principles of the British Constitution,
and utterly incompatible with the existence for many
future years.of public liberty in Great Britain. The
Monarch, if stripped of the defence of the army, and
deprived of the means of paying his servants, has still
thousands and tens of thousands of subjects who would
show themselves willing, and, for a time at least, able
to serve the Crown of England, and, if necessary, to
fight for its preservation, without pay. The aris-
tocrcy, the Tory aristocracy, of Great Britain, even if
the Whig aristocracy were to stand aloof, which in
such circumstances they would not do, for it would
not be thiir interest, are, thanks to the liberal
and confiding concessions of their independent
revenues by successive constitutional Monarchs, in
a position far stronger, and more elevated, even
then that of the Monarch. While the army would
have been converted by the treasonable vote of a House
of Commons into a gang of lawless marauders, and
while the constituents of the rebel House of Com-
mons would have begun in every corner of the land to
make war and prey upon each other, the aristocracy of
England would, in two days, have 10,000 gallant,
loyal, high-spirited, and well-regulated yeomen in arms,
fully prepared to protect their own homes and fami-
lies,
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iotouht
liecdi r
militialandlordshave
been
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dd benefactors.oh.navede
swollenby
hundreds of 'experienced and skilful officers nifat In
many
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prized as now, would cheerfully forego for a
time that pay of which the House of -Commons
had deprived them. What in the meanwhile
would become of Manchester, and Liverpool, and Bir-
mingham, and Leeds, and Cheapside, and Thames-
'street, and the London Docks? What of their pro-
prietors ? • What of the millions whose daily subsist-
ence depends upon the uninterrupted progress of these
commercial and manufacturing processes, which the
least disturbance of the social machine would suddenly
suspend? But we have unconsciously been led to pay
too much attention to the drunken driveller of the
Globe. An irresistible decree truly I Such a vote as
this idiot recommends would, indeed, for one purpose,
be an irresistible decree. lt would be a decree con-
demning every man who voted for it to be hanged, a
sentence which could not fail to be carried into speedy
execution, amidst the general acclamations of the Bri-
tish nation.—Morning Post.
Though there can be no doubt of the course of ac-
tion which it is incumbent on the people to pursue in
the present momentous crisis, yet as it is desirable that
even the semblance of rashness or precipitation should
be avoided by the Liberals, we consider that the Par-
liamentary recess has most opportunely intervened, as

it affords time for that calm deliberation which becomes
the dignity of a people conscious of the power to give
effect to their resolves, and which ever constitutes the
best preliminary to decisive and energetic action. The
first mode of procedure is by agitation and petition.
The people of Ireland are already actively en-
gaged in organizing a plan by which public meet-
ings may be simultaneously called in every part
of the country. The people of England and Scot-
land should immediately follow the example. The
object of all these meetings should be a reform of
the House of Lords—no other topic should be dis-
cussed. Petitions to that effect should be prepared,
and at the termination of the recess every county and
chief town, .from the Land's-end to John O'Groat's,
from Cape Clear to the Giant's Causeway, should be
prepared to lay before the House of Commons peti-
tions for the abolition of hereditary legislation. Till
this be obtained no other reform can be full or ef-
fective. The House of Lords, as now constituted,
will always endeavour, if they cannot destroy, to maim
or mutilate every measure calculated to restore to
the people the rights of which tyranny deprived
them. What is the alleged ground of opposition to
Corporation Reform in Ireland ? The population
being for the most part Roman Catholic. In
•1829 the Lords themselves assented to the promul-
gation of a law professing to remove Roman Catholic
disabilities, and to be based on the principle of
civil and religious liberty. This principle they now
repudiate—so that; by their own showing, to be con-
sistent, they should either grant a Reform of the Irish
Municipal Corporations, or repeal the Act for the re-
,ef of Roman Catholics ; there is no middle course.

To profess to admit Roman Catholics to the rights of
citizenship, and at the same time make their religion
the grounds of abolishing all popular controul in Mu-
nicipal Government, is a piece of flagrant hypocrisy
and fraud—it is keeping the promise to the ear, and
breaking it to the sense. We shall not, however, at
present dwell on the exposure of this aristocratic
knavery—the great question is the Reform of the
House of Lords, and for this consummation, so de-
voutly to be wished, we again call upon our fellow-
citizens, by every thing that is dear to them as free-
men, to petition, petition, petition.—Morn. Advertiser.