The Sun.
London, England, 1836-08-22 00:00:00

01"FlIE PUBLIC JOURNAI..

We have elsewhere copied from a Sunday contemporary,
an account of the mode in which the various Bills intro-
duced into teal: Houses during the late session were dis-
posed of. The havoc made by the Lords is truly stir-
prHee But a question naturally suggests itself here. Is
this Legislative firce to be continued? Is the Minister
constantly to send up from the Commons Bills to be re-
jected or mutilated in the Lords? Certainly not. What
was wanted has been obtaineil. We have obtained the
proof—a proof that must satisfy the most difficult—that the
Lords are guided by a different spirit from that which
actuates the people of England—and that, consequently,
no House of Commons fairly representing the people can
avoid corning in constant collision with the Lords. It is
not necessary to revert to Lord Lyndhurst's speech. That
speech merely added insult to injustice. It was a challenge
-thrown out to the nation. The people are treated as if no
a.eoount was due to them. We should grieve, indeed, were
the triumph to be any thing but short lived. Between the
close of the late Session and the next meeting of Par-
liament, there will be time for deliberating on the course to
be taken to meet the difficulty. Nothing must be pre-
cipitated ; !Mt at the same time respect must be had
to the feelings of a great and enlightened nation disap-
pointed in its best founded expectations by the Peers, who
seem determined to allow no measures to pass which con-
duce to the promotion of the interests of the people. The
next Session will be a trying one for Ministers. During
the present, there has been an understanding to give the
Lords full scope, to go no faster than Ministers proposed
to go. It was understood that the Lords were to have a
fair trial. But the constituencies sill in their turn be
heard. They will no doubt inform their Representatives
that the object for which they were sent to Parliament re-
quires that something should be done to remove the Con-
stitutional objection. When there is an admitted evil,
a remedy must be sought for. We may assume, then,
that a large portion at least of the Reform Members
will be anxious to bring matters to an issue with the Lords,
that new spirit may be infused into that body. It is quite
clear that ultimately Lords as well as Commons must be
made responsible to the nation ; not responsible in the
way the Lords now choose to term themselves, wherein
they do as much, or as little as they please, having
no check on their caprice, except that which even ty-
rants have, the dread of provoking the people too far.
This is not the responsibility with which the nation will
be satisfied. In some way or other, the wishes and in-
clinations of the people must be brought to bear di-
rectly upon the Peers. We observe that some of our con-
temporaries seem to think that Mr. O'Connell is disposed
to carry patience too far in return for the excellent and im-
partial administration of Ireland. But no man sooner
understands the nature of the crisis and its claims than Mr.
O'Connell. He will see the necessity of all Reformers
acting in concert. It is possible that the Peers are not
altogether satisfied with the tone of Lord Lyndhurst's
speech on Thursday night. Lord Melbourne remarked
that no one thing could differ more from another than the
speech of the Duke of Wellington from that of Lord Lynd-
hurst. But this is more matter of taste than anything else.
It is clear that all the Tory Peers approve of the policy
which has been pursued towards the measures which re-
ceived the sanction of the representatives of the people.
All the Tory Peers are actuated by one and the same spirit
of hostility to the nation and its interests. Some may think
there is no use in adding insult to injustice. But these are
minor matters. The problem which is to be solved is how
the House of Peers shall be made to sympathise with the
nation. But as we have said, grave deliberation must
precede the decision as to the course which must be adopted
to effect the object of the Reformers. The people will
rouse themselves to the exertions that will be demanded of
them. At present they are disgusted with the Lords ; but
they remain passive, knowing that it is unnecessary for them
to bestir themselves. When the time comes they will be
ready. There are few, we. believe, who carry their notions
of Reform so far as to dispense with the Lords altogether.
The advantage of having every measure canvassed by a
second body prior to its becoming law is generally felt. In
fact, the Lords at present very skilfully avail themselves of
the persuasion that the power to examine the measures sent
from the Commons is indespensable ; as if the necessity for
subjecting the measures which pass the Commons to a re-
vision, proved that the revision could only be performed by
a House of Lords constituted as the present is. We must,
therefore, have two Houses ; but not two Houses actuated
by opposite views, and impelled by a different spirit.
We may still, therefore, have a House of Lords, but a
House of Lords so modified as to be responsible to the
nation. The feelings of the Reformers in the House
of Commons with respect to the House of Lords are
expressed in Mr. Hume's speech on Saturday, which
was interrupted by the entrance of the Usher of the
Black Rod. "We have been at our posts (said Mr.
Hume) early and late, and for one I will say that I was
anxious to see those improvements carried into effect which
the country call for. But why do we of the House of
Commons feel•ealled on to defend ourselves ? For this
reason, that very little has been done. And what has been
the cause ? The House of Lords, to whose arbitrary and
factious proceedings the Commons have been compelled to
submit." " Can we (he afterwards observed), I should
like to know, suffer this determined opposition to go on
much longer without raising the question How long shall
such a power continue ?'" And the Honourable Member
went directly to the question which must now be agitated :
" Sir, I do not think that the other House can reject a propo-
sition coming from this for reforming themselves, when they
were not only willing to sweep away corporations altogether in
Ireland, but had assented to the reform of this House. —( Hear.)
When we meet again, Sir, which I trust will be in November,
because I think the Government should call the House toge-
ther as soon as possible, I hope his Majesty's Ministers will send
up their measures as soon as possible to the Lords, and let the
other House of Parliament do with them what they please.
It is only by such means that we can obtain for the people
what they desire, and what the Reform Bill intended to give
them ; and should the Lords persevere in the course they have
pursued, it may speedily become a question, Of what use
are the Peers?' Are we, Sir, to be told, when we know
that a change has taken place in the Monarchy, after a
change has been effected in the constitution of this House,
that no change should take in the House of Lords, even
though it will not allow the business of the country to be car-
ried on in a constitutional and proper way, and sets itself in
opposition to all popular rights, and above all' popular control ?
Sir, the contest which is going, on is—whether the aristocracy
or democracy shail have the ascendancy—whether the Peers,
or the Government of the people of England shall prevail.
The business of the country ought to be carried on by the re-
presentatives of the people; but the House of Lords denied
this, and therefore arrayed themselves in opposition to all good
measures, and put a stop to all improvements."
This, then, is to be the watchword of the country—Re-
form of the Ilouse of Lords, without which all reform is
illusory. When the people of these kingdoms are deter-
mined on the reform of the Lords, that body must yield.
The voice of an united people is irresistible.—Morning
Chronicle.

The Speech front the Throne on the Prorogation of Par-
liament is now before the public, and a precious specimen
it is of the incapableness and the contemptiblenes of our
Radical-ridden Ministry. We told our readers of one of
the passages of it that would be struck out—we need hardly
say we mean that which reflected on the House of Lords.
It is evident, however, that the Speech underwent curtail-
ment in other particulars. An eye practised in the perusal
of Kings' speeches will discover at a glance that whole
paragraphs must have been omitted from the draft of
this, and that others might have been supplied, or the con-
nexion of the dislocated parts clumsily contrived in sulky
and suflea haste. We will not pretend to point out where,
besides in the attack upon the House of Lords, his Ma-
jesty thought proper to apply the knife to what zoos one of
the longest, and is one of the shortest, speeches ever de-
livered from the Throne. It is not a little amusing to ob-
serve how, on this subject, the Ministerial print; not con-
tenting themselves with falsehood, which is their forte, have
been betrayed into attemprs at argumentation, which their
friends in mercy should advise them to eschew. For see how
they have succeeded. They tell us now that the Ministers
could never have dreamed of putting in the speech a passage
reflecting on the House of Lords, for that would be " most
unconstitutional and unprecedented." In the name of all
experience, what better ground could the most refined in-
genuity have adduced for-believing that the apostate Whig-
Radical Government would have inserted the passage if
they could ? Has not their whole conduct been—is not
their whole conduct—" most unconstitutional and unpre-
cedented ?" Besides, the very ragamuffins who hold this
language now had for the last day or two preceding, in re.-
ply to ourselves, been assuring the public that " his Ma-
jesty would not shrink, should his Ministers deem it
expedient to characterize as it deserved the destructive
Policy of the Lords !" May the Lord reform and inform
these poor wretches ! Had any of them, not purblind,
been present in the House of Lords on Saturday, they
would have had token sufficient of his Majesty's feeling to-
wards the Conservative Lords. Which of them, with eyes
in his head, could have failed to notice the friendly con-
-Yerse,of his Majesty with the Duke of Wellington ; the
marked and cordial greeting of the King to Lord Lynd-
hurst ; and, in contrast, the pitiably stiff spectacle of poor
'Lord Melbourne, shouldering- the sword of State—an
awkw.ird victim of stately etiquette—no more thought of
than thei gentleman that laboriously enacts in ephemeral
finery the part of champion on Lord Mayor's day in the wet,
and is stuck up in a niche to dry during dinner-time ! We-re-
-peat here that his Majesty did reject from the speech a pas-
sage, such as we have described, directed against the House of
Lords ; and therein his Majesty acted in consistency with his
;recorded opinions respecting the value and importance of
t, he independence, of the House of Lords. So long ago as
IV `ay, 1792, his Majesty being then Duke of Clarence, said,
in t `.lle House of Lords--," Another circumstance had great

w&glit, with him—namely, that an implicit obedienc.r to the 1
House of Commons, much as he respected that House,
would render the House of Peers useless, and thus the natu-
ral and constituent balance in the Constitution would be en-
dangered. This he never would endure." But we must
pass to our notice of the speech, which, curtailed cer-
tainly of its cardinal claptrap—the attack upon the
Peers—must also, as we have said, have undergone abridg-
ment in other parts which we have not the means of desig-
nating. The speech, then, is obviously " done by various
hands," as our early translations of classic authors were,
and in quite as odd a style. The part relative to foreign
affairs was " done" by Cupid, of course, and that must
.xcuse the true-lovers' knot nonsense about " drawing
closer the ties which connect this country," &c. Fancy
this modern antique connecting the old world with the
new by means of a bit of rose-coloured riband—for red
tape, we suppose, an " elderly young gentleman" of our
Cupid's cut would scorn to use ! The more abstruse
phraseology of another paragraph in the speech, which
makes honourable mention of certain enactments that were
" brought to maturity with treat labour," is, we suppose,
an obstetric contribution of Lord Langdale. The " large
principles" were obviously brought by a porter from Lord
Little John, and the Master of the Horse must have sent
his groom down to South•street with the " stable pros-
perity." So much for the style. The speech pompously
congratulates the country on the passing of three measures
—the Tithe Bill, the Marriage Bill, and the Registration
of Births, &c., Bill. It happens, however, that not only
were all these three measures announced by the Govern-
ment of Sir R. Peel nearly two years ago—that not only
would they have been passed nearly two years ago, iad it
not been for the opposition of the Whig-Radicals—but that,
if it be a subject of congratulation that these measures have
passed at last, the credit of their passing is wholly due. to
Ithe Conservatives, not to the Government or to their sup-
porters ; for the Conservatives put into the Tithe Bill
ail the good it has in it, and the Conservatives weeded the
Marriages Bill and Registration Bill of their most ob-
noxious enactments. In truth, there is but one passage
of the speech which (besides the parts relative to Fo-
reign Affairs that we have noticed separately) deserves
any serious observation, and that is the passage which
speaks of the prosperity of the country. We mean
that the subject of this paragraph should be gravely
treated, not the paragraph itself, for what between
Mr. Pullet Thomson, who wrote it, and the interpola-
tion of the Master of the Horse, it is exquisitely ridi-
culous. But no one, we apprehend, will venture to deny
that the country is in a most prosperous state. Indeed,
the fact is so notorious, that even the circumstance of the
Ministers bearing witness to it fails to throw suspicion or
doubt upon it—though (we need hardly say) that those,
alas for the honour of the country ! are the dark shadows
their countenance ordinarily casts on all things they recom-
mend for clearly true. But whence this prosperity ? Look
at our political condition, and tell us if there can be other
than one answer to the question. We have a sort of shut-
tlecock Government, that is kept in action, or rather in
motion, only by the battledores of two opposing parties,
either of whom might knock it, as Lord Melbourne would
say, " to the very Devil," if they chose to hit hard enough.
Of itself it can do nothing—nay, cannot even keep at rest.
The Destructive:, who put it in motion, live, breathe, and
move, but in the hope that by and by they may hazard
bolder play, and drive it onward by the application of a
stronger blow. Whither ? Let their own speeches and
their own writings tell. It has been their intemperance
that has betrayed, not their honesty that has declared, their
game. The English and Scotch Destructive: would de-
stroy the House of Lords, and annihilate religion by laying
the axe to the root of the establishment, and planting
that infidel tree of liberty catled the " voluntary principle"
in its stead. In this traitorous and unholy work they
have the assistance of the Irish rebels. But they pay
dearly for it. The rebellious Irish frankly tell that their
aim and end, no matter what the steps and stages, is the
dismemberment of the empire ; and though their parricidal
colleagues (we blush to write it !), British colleagues, say
they go not that length, yet they have proved that they
have no indisposition to establish Popery in Ireland, and
to hand over to the Papists in that country all the power
necessary to enable the Repealer: to compel the dismem-
berment of the empire, except at the expense of an out-
pouring of Protestant blood which it is frightful to con-
template. Lord Jahn Russell, a Cabinet Minister, who
encouraged these Rebel Repealers, and by coupling the
case of Ireland with that of the revolted colonies of North
America, but too clearly pointed out to them the course
they might, if they dared, pursue, talked much of blood-
shed, but more of the expense of treasure. The last is as
nothing in such a calculation, though to this Lord Russell's
peddling self, lately much pinched in pocket, and now com-
paratively pampered, it may seem the all in all. For the
other—the outpouring of blood in war—it is of far more se-
rious import than can be understood by such a one as he
whose greatest wound and largest loss of blood would pro-
bably be covered and stopped by the smallest thumb-stall.
But can there be in this frightful, though faithful, picture any
thing that a sane man will call satisfactory ? Can there be
anything that savours of security or safety in the composi-
tion of the party which props and propels at. pleasure our
(to the Destructives) passively obedient and non-resisting
Government ? Impossible. Whence, then, that sense
of security without which our commerce and our manes-
factures would fade and fall, not rise and flourish ? it

arises, as every man who can see and understand anything
must admit, in the palpable certainty that the restricting
force of Conservatism is greater than the propelling force
of Destructiveism—that the power by which the Government
is moved may be in an instant overcome and paralysed, if
that which is is opposed to it be called into action, as assu-
redly it will, as it ever has been, if occasion require it. In
the fact Lord Melbourne himself admitted, that the vast
inajority of the intelligence, the wealth, and the property of
the country was opposed to the Government, the people
have seen safety, and in the consciousness of that safety
they have proceeded with their characteristic energy and
activity to the acquisition of the wealth that constitutes
prosperity, but which, being precarious and insecure, no man
would think it worth his while to endeavour to try to make
his own, at however small an outlay of time and trouble. It
would be ridiculously absurd to suppose that every branch
of industry would not have withered and fallen to the ground
if the prospect which the Government holds out had form-
ed the horizon ofthe nation's view : it would be folly approach-
ing almost to insanity to believe that any man would have
trusted his money in the funds of this country if he believed
there was no power to stay the rash career of our Ministers
—if lie was not sure that, let the Radicals spur them as
they will, the curb of the Conservatives would still be
strong enough to pull such hacknied cattle back on their
very haunches on the shortest notice. We doubt whether
even the respectable shopkeepers at the west end of this town
would ever have ventured to take down their shutters dur-
ing the session of Parliament, notwithstanding the vigilance
of the police, if they had not been well assured of the ex-
istence of some power beyond the Government to prctect
them and their goods from the triune tail of English, Scotch,
and Irish " Destructives." In these plain and obvious
truths, then, let the Conservatives see the rich and substan-
tial tribute which their fellow-countrymen of all parties
and politics have paid to the overwhelming power, the in-
calculable worth, and the admirable direction of their ser-
vices. Let them proceed, nor fear, with God's blessing
and- the voice of the country on their side, that they can
ever fail to prosper.—Times.

The parliamentary session of 1836 is at an end, to the
great joy of a community among whom the feeling had be-
come nearly universal that there was much greater cause
of fear than of hope in the protracted labours of the Legis-
lature. It is admitted on all hands to have been a very
tiresome and a very unproductive session. Of the va-
rious subjects of legislation which Ministers promised
in the Royal Speech, at the commencement of the ses-
sion, to submit to the consideration of Parliament, some
have been entirely neglected, others have been brought
forward in a way calculated, if not intended, to en-
sure that nothing whatever should be done ; and with
respect to those subjects of national importance which
were recommended to the early attention of Parlia-
ment in his Majesty's Speech, and upon which legislation
has taken place, the measures finally adopted by Parlia-
ment are in most instances entirely different from those
which his Majesty's Ministers introduced. On the 4th of
February the King spoke as fellows to the two Houses of
Parliament. " I rejoice that the present state of public
affairs, both at home and abroad, is such as to permit you
to proceed, without delay or interruption, to the calm
examination of those measures which will be submitted
to your consideration." In these favourable circum-
stances Parliament has been sitting fer nearly seven
months. And what have the King's Ministers done
during this protracted Session to realise the anticipa-
Con which they advised their Royal Master to express
at its commencement? So little, as we shall presently see,
that their own words may now be quoted against them to
convey the gravest reproach and the bitterest sarcasm. •The
first subject to which the attention of the Legislature was
directed by the King's Speech at the opening of the Session
was the Church. After mentioning_ his expectation that
the further Report of the Church Commission would soon
be presented, his Majesty proceeded to say, " you will
direct your early attention to the Ecclesiastical Establish-
ment, with the intention of rendering it more efficient for
the holy purposes for which it has been instituted." Little,
however, has been done in pursuance of the important ad-
monition which Ministers put into the mouth of the Sove-
reign. And here, at least, it cannot be said that obstruc-
tion has been offered,. by the House of Lords. Their
Lordships manifested the utmost readiness to act upon
the suggestions of the Commissioners. They discussed,
and finally adopted, several important measures, " with the
intention of rendering the Ecclesiastical Establishment more
efficient." In their Lordships' proceedings upon this subject