The Sun.
London, England, 1831-06-07 00:00:00

(c 7.

PRICE ID.

the feelings of the whole country. Under other
circumstances it might be expected that he she trid
enter into argument to prove the necessity of Re-
formin general, and the expediency of the measure
introduced by his IVlajesty's Ministers. At present
it would be an idle task. It was no longer necessary
to have recourse to argument—or to fight over a
betle already gained. He knew it was said to be
a transient impulse—the passion of a day, and that
;il:e other phantoms it would soon vanish, and we
would cease to hear its voice. He denied that it
was a transient feeling. It was no transient feeling
in England—none in Scotland or in Ireland. The
true test of the transitory or durable nature of any
popular emotion was its justice or injustice. If
founded on the latter it would live its hour and be
heard no more. But if it is a British. feeling—if it
is a just feeling, and as generous as it is just, and as
profound as it is generous, and as expansive as it is
profound, it must continue, and- pumas% and
triumph.—(Cheers.) 'TPhuman means could have
arrested the progress of public opinion on Reform,
it must have yielded to the gravity and judgment of
Lord Liverpool. If experience and sagacity could
have prevented it, it must have fled before the
calm and dignified rebuke of Lord Castlereagh. If
genius and eloquence could have availed it must
have withered at the glance and voice of Canning.
If the inflexible firmness of military severity could
have triumphed, it must have shrunk, never to
revive, at the bidding of the Duke of Welling-
ton, when he said to the asscending waters—" thus
far shalt thou go and no farther."—(Loud and
tremendous cheering.) But it has surmounted ail these
obstacles, and gathered strength, because it wells
forth from the deep untainted sources of national
knowledge and virtue and intelligence. It is in the
power of the Legislature, by temporary and severe
enactments, to oppose contemptible obstacles to its
progress. It is alike in the power of the Legislature
to diffuse that element over the whole surface, and
to till the waste places of the earth with joy and
fertility. It has been objected that there is a rash-
ness in attempting such a general Reform—so sweep-
ing a measure—but nothing less than an honest sub-
stantial Reform would satisfy the country. He
thought they had some cause to complain of their
opponents, for up to that moment no limited plan of
Reform had been developed. In all the speeches
which had been delivered, no such plan was adduced
only as a peroration to those speeches a wish was
expressed for a moderate and modified measure of
Reform. Before they were condemned for intro-
ducing a sweeping measure he thought it but right
that they should be told what was not a sweeping
measure. The objections urged applied equally
against both. They were accused of having opened
the flood-gates which they could not shut again, but
would not this objection be also true of a moderate
Reform ? There was another argument, that
though the present system has anomalies, yet they
were not all removed by the new. Thus the ano-
malies of the old system were to remain chargeable
upon the new one. We are told also that the aboli-
tion of the close boroughs would strike at the root of
the Government. He would ask the moderate
Reformer, what do you mean to do with those
boroughs ? Whatever the plan of Reform may be
which is brought forward, the transfer of the fran-
chise 4om convicted boroughs to places now without
representatives is part of the principle. We only,
therefore, mean to do by a summary process what
you prefer accomplishing by a tardy one. But is it
not something like a mockery of the feelings of the
people to tell them, that ages may pass away before
the Constitution can be perfected—that the progress
of Reform is to be something like the procession of
the Equinoxes, a degree in seventy-two years ?
(Cheers.) It was also objected that the Ministerial
measure was not a final one, but this applied much
more strongly to a moderate plan of Reform. It
certainly was of paramount necessity that the Mini-
sterial plan of Reform should be final. When we
speak of final measures, he knew how idle it was to
designate any thing human by that term, but the
Reform measure was final in its intention—in the
selection of its position—and in its principle to
maintain its place for centuries. In such a period,
no doubt, the inferior details might require to be
altered. This might be illustrated by the case of
the forty-shilling freeholders in England. It was now
four or five hundred years since that limit was fixed,
and though many changes had been introduced into
our electoral system the leading principle remained
untouched and unimpaired. One favourite objection
to the Bill was, that it was a strong departure from
the principles of the Constitution. He contended
that it was strictly in consonance with them. The
House of Commons had from the first moment of
its existence posses.ed and exercised the power of
varying the Constitution according to the exigencies
of the times. Edward I. first admitted the repre-
sentatives of boroughs to Parliament, and this was a
very important change, a recognition of the increased
wealth and augmented intelligence of the people,
which in the present day would perhaps be called an
innovation. He need not trace the successive reigns,
in all of which this principle was to be found. But
it is said, we might have endured the defects of the
present system from the incidental advantages it
conferred. The nomination boroughs were not evils
to be deplored, but to be tolerated because connected
with collateral advantages. Our ancestors were men
of gigantic mind who could legislate for all future
times, and to destroy, these nomination boroughs
would be to plant a dagger in the -vitals of the Con-
stitution. This was at least a new view of the Con-
stitution. We have been accustomed to consider its
security of life, of property, and of character its grand
characteristic. But now it was the nomination
boroughs, and the salutary streams of corresponding
purity which flow from them, that were to be held
the true sources of its greatness. Whenever it is
proposed by the Legislature to correct an abuse, that
moment the abuse becomes the guardian genius of
the British Constitution. Even in the case of the
Slave Trade this course was adopted. What ! it was
said, abolish a trade which is at least as old as the
days of Queen Elizabeth, and with which are asso-
ciated the names of Hawkins and of Drake ? It
was the same with the removal of the commercial re-
strietions. By what argument was that relaxation
opposed ? Why, by the assertion that in interfering
with ancient usages we were endangering the
British Constitution. There was, however, a still
more remarkable instance. When it was pro-
posed to correct the Criminal Law, on the ne-
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it was said stand up for
those defects, but they are interwoven with the
Constitution and the administration of British justice.
By such objectors, institutions are sacred, not be-
cause they are just, but because they exist. It is
related by the Earl of Chesterfield, about the middle
of the last century, that mentioning to the Duke of
Newcastle, then prime Minister, his intention of
bringing in a Bill to reform the Kalendar, the Duke
was quite astonished at the proposal. It was a pity,
he said, to agitate things that were settled," adding,"
says Lord Chesterfield, " that he did not like those
new-fatigled sorts of notions." He (Mr. Grant)
could easily conceive a Member of Parliament of that
day objecting to that measure on the grounds now
urged against the Reform Bill. What it might
have been asked, plunge the nation into all the evils
of a sudden innovation for a mere chimerical advan-
tage ? The people don't want Reform—better to
take the tried advantages of the time that is than
the visionary bent.& of the time that is to be.—