The Sun.
London, England, 1849-06-06 00:00:00

.ate
t but And

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 6, 1849.

The motion so anxiously looked for throughout the
entire country was last night brought forward by
JOSEPH HUME, the honest and consistent advocate of
popular rights, and was, we regret to say, rejected by
a majority of 186. Those who are pleased to term
themselves the representatives of the people refused
to take into their consideration a measure calculated
to amend the national representation—to extend the
elective franchise to millions who are mere
political cyphers, without any voice in the
election of those by whom laws are to
be framed, and taxes imposed—to enable the
voters to exercise their rights freely and honestly,
and to bestow their suffrages, without fear, upon
those whom, in their consciences, they believe to be
best qualified to represent their wants and wishes in
the national Legislature—to preserve that just re-
sponsibility of Members to the constituencies by
whom they were selected, and to remove the
extraordinary disproportion that at present
exists between the various electoral districts.
Such were the objects contemplated by the lion.
Member for Montrose; but he was denied liberty
even to bring in his measure—to lay the new " Re
form Bill " upon the table. The advocates for
finality have prevailed on the present occasion. All
those opposed to any species of reform—all those who
would still keep up an extravagant and wasteful ex-
penditure, who would make the industrious classes
provide for the interest of the National Debt and the
maintenance of the national establishments, who would
withhold the life blood of industry, a currency ade-
quate to the wants and energies of the country, mus-
tered strongly on the occasion, and succeeded in
obtaining a temporary triumph. Unfortunately the
Reformers, although strong out of doors, are nume-
rically weak within the walls of Parliament. The
rival parties, the aspirants to official rank and emolu-
ment, whatever may be their difference in other re-
spects, are cordially united on one subject—to
prevent any accession of strength to the popular cause.
Fur that purpose they will heartily co-operate, and
for a time may succeed. But the voice of popular
opinion, temperately and constitutionally expressed,
must ultimately force itself upon their unwilling
ears. The pressure from without must be attended
to, and will become particularly potent on the eve of
a general election. When llon. Gentlemen are about
to appear again before their respective constituencies,
and solicit a renewal of former confidence, then, in-
deed, greater respect and deference will be exhibited
towards measures strongly advocated out of doors,
and eagerly desired by the great body of the people,
questions that at present are " pooh-poohed," or
superciliously rejected, will be more seriously de-
bated; the honest and uncompromising minority, at
first few in number, but zealous, energetic, and de-
termined, will gradually attain more respectable
dimensions. The majority will become " small by
degrees and beautifully less," will dwindle away day
by day, until at last it vanishes altogether, when a
complete victory crowns the exertions of the cham-
pions of democracy.
From statistical statements last night brought for-
ward by Mr. Hums, it appears that no more than
one in ten of the adult male population of Great
Britain are at present represented, while in poor,
unhappy Ireland the disproportion is still more
glaring. There are but 820,000 registered electors
in England, Scotland, and Wales, while the
people number twenty millions of persons, nearly
two-fifths of whom—eight millions of souls—are adult
males. The number of inhabited houses for that
population are about three millions five hundred
thousand. So, that if Mr. Humes motion were car-
ried, and the franchise bestowed on every house-
holder, more than one-half of the people would
still be unrepresented. It would, however,
more than quadruple the number of electors,
and might therefore be received as a con-
siderable instalment of justice, which would for
the present be accepted by the nation, in order to
unite all honest Reformers, and to conciliate those
differences of opinion that will be found in every
body of rational men thinking for themselves, and
forming their own judgments on passing events.
The questions of the ballot and triennial Parlia-
ments have, each in their turn, received the assent of
the House of Commons. They are required to protect
the voter in the exercise of his constitutional privi-
leges, to enable him to avoid the coercion and undue
influences too frequently resorted to, and which
renders the franchise a curse in place of a blessing to
its possessor. The cases of intimidation cited
in the discussion on the motion of the
Honourable Member for Bristol sufficiently
prove how essential it is that the same mode
of voting for Members of Parliament should be
adopted that has so long and so beneficially prevailed
in clubs and societies of various kinds. The Mem-
bers should also be bound to appeal to their con-
stituencies more frequently, to ask whether they
have fulfilled the promises made on the hustings,
if they have fulfilled the reasonable expectations
of those who elected them to seats in
the Legislature. The ballot and triennial Parlia-
ments are now looked upon by every sincere Re-
former as measures that cannot long be protracted,
that must speedily be conceded to the wishes of the
people.
But, perhaps, the greatest anomaly of all, the most
indefensible of the existing regulations, which carries
on the face of it the greatest absurdity, is the dispro-
portion between the sizes of the various boroughs.
Hence the statement of the Hon. Member with re-
spect
to this inequality. lle says—
" He had made a comparison between the great and
small constituencies. Ile had taken 16 boroughs con-
taining a population of 2.317,000, being one-half of the
whole population of England. Those 16 boroughs ro
turned 32 Members. lie wished the House to compare
them with 23 small boroughs, wh,re there were only
100.000 inhabitants, and yet they returned as many
Members as that immense population in the former 16
boroughs. Nor could any man say that was a fair par-
ticipation in the elective franchise to which all were en-
titled by the constitution? He asked a fair participa-
tion not as a favour, but as a constitutional right.
Would any man place himself in the situation of any
one of those who were deprived of those rights, and see
how he would aet if he was compelled to remain in that
situation."

Here then are one hundred thousand persons re-
turning as many Members, and exercising as much
political power as thirty times their number, who
inhabit the metropolitan diztricts and the large mann-

facturiilg towns. Well might the Honourable Member
exclaim that " no other legislative assembly but an
English one would suffer such an absurdity to exist."
Take the- subsequent calculation, where the Honour-
able Member stated—

,4 He coned 28 English boroughs returned two Mem-
bers each, with only 500 registered electors each.
Fifteen other boroughs returned only two Members, and
had each more than 5,000 registered electors. Thus.
while London bad four Members with 20,000 electors,
Carlisle and Reigate, with only 606 electors, also re-
turned four Members. It was impossible to make the
absurdity more glaring; yet the country gentlemen of
England, and those connected with the aristocracy, sat
themselves quietly down under the mistaken notion that
nobody saw the inequality."
If statements such as these do not excite the atten-
tion of Members, it can only be because they are
determined to sanction " no further reforms."

Democracy is the very atmosphere breathed by
Frenchmen, and although Monsieur GuizoT may
mutter a sardonic hint to the contrary, it is an atmo-
sphere essential to the vitality of the political insti
tutions of his countrymen. In proof of this we have
only to take the succession of events in France since
February. When, on Saturday the 26th of February,
1848, the Provisional Government declared Royalty
abolished and Republicanism proclaimed, it was said
that the whole affair was a coup d etat—that France
did not want any change of the kind, that the whole
was the result of a conspiracy, the contrivance of a
gang of adventurers, not the solemn and unanimous
wish of a population. Well, days passed over, weeks
passed over, months passed over, and what has been
the consequence ? Has Royalty been restored ? Has
Republicanism been repudiated ? Far from it. Every
additional act has been a confirmation of that initia-
tive act of the Provisional Government. And at the
very time when plots have been developing them-
selves both within France and beyond her frontiers,
both among the ultra-Socialists and the ultra-
Royalists, among the advocates of anarchy and of
reaction, the people have clung through all
changes, through all catastrophes, through all
vicissitudes to the democratic principles pro-
claimed by the men of February. Those democratic
principles survived the daring attack of 200,000
workmen on the 17th of March ; they called forth in
their defence, spontaneously, like the work of magic,
200,000 members of the National Guard and of the
Guard Mobile, on the 16th of April ; they survived
the desperate assaults of the pretended friends of
Poland on the 15th of May; they passed trium-
phantly through the tremendous ordeal of the three
sanguinary days of June. On the 4th
of May, 1848, they were consolidated by
the inauguration of the National Assembly, and
on the 28th of May, 1849, by that of the Le-
gislative Assembly. Even when the representative
of the greatest of all the sovereigns who had ever
wielded the sceptre of France, the representative of
the imperial dynasty, received the suffrages of the
electors, he was welcomed not as the descendant of a
crowned head, but as the representative of the Sol-
dier of Democracy, he was elevated not to the
throne, but to the chair of Presidency, the Presidency
of the French Republic. Beyond all which, it must
be borne in recollection that the Republic received
the truest expression of approval' ever accorded since
the commencement of the labours of civilization to any
one form ofgovernment—it was accepted, and the accep-
tance was reiterated again and again under the cover
of the ballot and through universal suffrage ! Show us
any monarchy consecrated by universal suffrage ! Show
us any political institutions the truth of the votes in
favour of which has been so universally proved by
the employment of the urn of election !
Ye', in spite of all these brilliant and decisive argu-
ments, M. Guizo-r sneers at the instability, at the
insecurity, at the evanescence of moderate democracy
in France ! It remains yet to be shown upon what
right the bankrupt politician of Old Bromp-
ton presumes to advance any opinion whatever
upon the political institutions of his country. Why
it is notorious by this time to every schoolboy that
this elderly gentleman, who takes upon himself the
office of talking oracles about French government
in the pages of a dry pamphltt, was such an igno-
ramus as to the real nature of the rights and wishes
of the French multitude that he brought the whole
monarchical system down about his ears by his
blindness and his obstinacy. To show the facility
with which every one of the sophisms advanced
by M. GUIZJT in his " De-nocratie en France"
may be exposed, a hook has recently been
published in London and Paris, from the manuscripts
of one of the WELLESLEYS. Although written by an
Englishman, the work is not only penned in very
graceful and flowing French, but displays a remark-
able familiarity with the exigencies of the age in the
great continental democracy.* Upon one or two
points no doubt the two pamphleteers are of the same
opinion. In their detestation of Communism they
thoroughly sympathise, abhorring with an equal inten-
sity doctrines subversive of all society—of all family—
of all good government. The English publicist, how-
ever, is wholly in favour of a broad, national system of
government, the French being, on the contrary, wholly
for the compacted but brittle concentration of the
administrative powers, a system which his antagonist
rather felicitously terms " cette funeste politique
d'isolement." As to the sincerity, nevertheless, with
which France regards the democratic principles, the
fact does not repose on the argument ofa pamphleteer,
it is blazoned in the history of France between this
present time and the revolutionary explosion of
February.
W hen HYDE DE NEUVILLE, in the April of last year,
said, in answer to the question, "What do you think
of 1.4 AMARTINE r " Il a bien lair d'un in-
cendiare qui s'est fait pampier—He seems like an
incendiary who has turned fireman !" he spoke with
a witty appreciation of the position of France at that
extraordinary period of emergency. The bon mot
expressed felicitously enough the extremes of action
to which France had just then been driven by the
wicked rulers expelled by the recent outbreak. But
it failed to acknowle ige the truth which has become
an axiom with historians from the time of TACIT us
to that of Macaunav, that revolutions are never, can
never be the result of a conspiracy, the deed of a little
band of intriguers—that, on the contrary, each
revolution is the fruit of ages, the act of a whole
generation. France, not LAMARTINB, was the in-
cendiary in February. LAMARTINE, not France, was
the fireman. Had not the people been ripe of
themselves for the revolution, not LAMARTINE, great
man as he is, nay not a hundred Lamartines,
could have brought about the catastrophe of Febru-
ary ! On the other hand, had it not been for the
courage, the eloquence, the integrity of LAMARTINE,
on the night of the 25th of February, 1848, the con-
flwaegur
ladt iho
an v Newousld
andanointhly
ihrraevperersasvihagleedful:yraenvceer, butthe
Continent. These things should not be forgotten.
They
has
slowncannotnot
sbe re s c
onpsepaicteudoutsolyo frequently.purity Tm
o Time
M.
DE LAMARTINE'S patriotism, the devotion with which
France clings to that Democracy which his noble ora-
tions were the means of inaugurating.
* " De la France Contemporaine, et de ses Divisions Hie-
rarebiques. lleponse a, l'Ouvrage de M. Guizot, •De la
Dernoeratie en France.' " Par W. Wellesley. Bvo.ppp. 212.
Bailliere Londres et Paris. 1849.

ROCIIESTER.--oRFri Friday
sfienveen feetriver, the
in Medway,
daannlbalset
sturgeon, measuring
hmt,eainsurtilinigs
length.
The Mayor,Robert Clements,
yraealetyheatindi attention,
being
Esq., ever on the alert to prove
instantly gave instructions for its°
Buckingham Palace, which place it
con-
dition on Saturday. It was most graciously received,
and the Mayor's polite attention acknowledged.
for
SOUTHAMPTON, WEDNESDAY MORNING. -- The
Peninsula and Oriental Steam Navigation Company's ship
Erin, Captain Russell, has arrived here with d
ltates26 from
Gibr Ctn..-
stantinople, May 19 ; Smyrna, May 21; Maa, , al-
tar, 31: she brings 28 passengers, a large and valuable cargo,
and specie value 50,0001. sterling. From Constantinople we
learn that there were constant arrivals of Turkish and Egyp-
tian
steamers
'she greatgreate ntu nafebtievrsi
tyotrecru prevailedit a
s or the
Turkish army.
Con-
stantinople in equipping troops in consequence of the
menacing attitude of Russia. Letters from Cyprus announce
that the locusts have made dreadful havoc amongst the crop 3.
Quarantine restrictions have been removed at Gibraltar, and
the Erin is the fir-t vessel that has received pratique at that
port. The Bishop of Gibraltar was a passenger from Con_
stantinople to Gibraltar in the Erin. Her Majesty's frigate
Spartan sailed from Gibraltar on the 31st ult. for England.
Exchange on London, 90 days, 50q.
ESCAPE OF LIER, HIGIMESS RANEE CHUNDA,
MOTHER OF DHULEEP SINGH.—Her llighness the Rand
Chunda Koonwur, of Lahore, escaped from her guards, and
the fortress of Chunar, during the night of Wednesday, the
Bth instant (May). No particulars of her escape have trans-
pired, but the native report is, that she bribed two of the
sepoys of her guard, who aided her and escaped with her, it is
believed
towards the hills of Mirzapore or itewah.—Bewares
Newspaper.

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