The Sun.
London, England, 1831-04-30 00:00:00

recently took place at Lisbon makes it very neces-
sary that such au inquiry should have been made
without delay, lest British subjects should suffer
he worst sort of assassination—that of a Miguelite
Court of Justice 1.-11forning Herald.

We congratulate our readers—we congratulate
!he King, his Ministers, and the country, on the
glorious progress of the Reform question in all
quarters, and among all classes. Yesterday we an-
nounced the triumph of the men of Kent at Dover
—today we have the satisfaction of adding London
mod Southwark to the list of reforming cities and
boroughs, without opposition, or even the show of
opposition ! Weto minster will follow the example;
and of the neighbouring counties there is not the
slightest doubt that a majority will return Members
pledged to vote for the .Bill,—the whole Bill,—and
nothing but the Bill. Essex is all but certain to
return Members of this description ; and in Kent,
it is confidently affirmed, that there can be no
doubt of Sir E. Knatchbull being outvoted.
Subscriptions, also, pour in all from all quarters, to
the" Loyal and Patriotic Fund ;" and in zi'most every
city, town, and county, local committees have been
appointed, and subscriptions set on foot for the pur-
pose of insuring the election of Reforming, and of
none but Reforming, repr, sentatives. Such is also
the case in all the respectable taverns and public
houses where club-meetings are held. This is the
true way to uproot Toryism and corruption. Let
hut the people will it sincerely, and there can be no
doubt of success. In the meantime, we cannot too
strongly impress on the public generally, the neces-
sity of not furnishing a handle to their enemies, by
any acts of riot or outrage, on person or property.
Let it be remembered,—let it be deeply impressed
on the mind of every Reformer, that we are still
but half-way oat of the " Slough of Despond"
though we have the best reasons for hoping that
we shall eventually emerge from it,—and that
every exertion beyond fair fight with the bo-
roughmongerieg crew, which may oppose our
liberation, furnishes an argument against Reform,
and a handle of which the anti-Reformers will be
glad to avail themselves, in order to procure co-ope-
ration with them from the hesitating portion of the
country. Sir John Rae Reid, we are informed, was
roughly handled at Dover; and we deplore the cir-
cumstance as likely to produce an unfavourable im-
pression ; but we are confident we have only to
caution the Reformers against a repetition of such
practice, in order to prevent it. Let there be una-
nimity and enthusiasm, and let there be a resolute
determination not to return any one who has either
voted against the second reading of the Reform Bill,
or who voted for General Gascoyne's motion ; but
on no account let the person, or even the frill, of the
veriest boroughmonger, or anti-reformer, be dis-
turbed. It is beneath Reformers to trample on the
falling.—Morning Advertiser.
We sonic days ago thought it our duty to fore-
warn the country, that the Ministers who insulted
and vilified the two Houses of the Legislature as
the only possible means of vindicating their own
desperate measure of dissolution, were unques-
tionably prepared es a dernier resort, rather than
relinquish the power they had so grossly abused, to
attempt to carry on the Government of the country
by means of royal ordinances. That this was no
factious unfounded conjecture was sufficiently evi-
dent. Ministers already begin to despair of obtain-
ing in the new Parliament a majority favourable to
the revolutionary measure upon which their official
existence depends ; and their organs are accord-
ingly instructed to proclaim the necessity of dis-
solving the new Parliament the moment it refuses
obsequious obedience to the mandate of the Execu-
tive Government, and of omitting to issue writs
for the new election to the boroughs marked out
for disfranchisement. The Time:, the leading-
ing Ministerial Journal, expressly says that this
csurse must be adopted " at all risks," if the
Parliament now about to be elected should
prove refractory. Let no man flatter himself that
this is an idle menace. The Ministers if they should
be disappointed in the composition of the new Par-
liament, as they and their adherents evidently antici-
pate, will, no man can now doubt, in the desperate
circumstances in which they stand, do all they can
towards realising this arbitrary, insolent, and trea-
sonable threat. They will advise the King to a
course of conduct amounting in effect to the assump-
tion of unlimited, despotic, lawless authority. They
will precipitate the Crown into an act of clear and
naked usurpation, which, if once attempted with im-
punity, under whatever motives or pretexts, would
prostrate at once and for ever, the constitutional free-
dom of the country. They find that they cannot go-
vern the empire with any other House of Commons
than one of their own nomination,and rather than per-
nsit the Government of the Empire to pass into other
and morecapablehands, they will urge their Sovereign
to provide for them such a House of Commons, by
means of an act identical in all respects with that
which a very few months ago cost the Sovereign of
a neighbouring nation his Crown, and brought upon
him and his family the sentence of perpetual banish-
ment. This is what the friends and advocates of
the present Ministers say they are determined to do
if the elections should not produce a House of Com•
mons sufficiently submissive to their authority, or
sufficiently prompt to re
believe e as ully. It
avows, plainly and distinctly, what, in the face of
Parliament, the Chief Law Officer of the Adminis-
tration ventured only obscurely to hint. The elec-
tors of England will not, however, submit to be
thus bullied out of their rights, or act so base a
part as to pet mit the constitutional freedom of the
nation to be thus insulted and impaired while it is de-
posited in their hands. If Ministers, without exciting,
one general burst of indignation, one determined reso-
lution of resistance, may threaten the boroughs with
arbitrary, despotic, and illegal extinction, will not
every part of the national representation be hence-
forth at the mercy of the Crown ? What shall
henceforth prevent the suspension of writs to ob-
noxious cities, however populous, or counties how-
ever important ? What shall henceforth compel
the issue of writs to any body of electors whom
the Minister of the day may think likely to return
an unaccommodating representative ? What, in
short, is the threat which Ministers have dared to
mutter but an experiment, intended to try whether
the people of England are disposed to submit to a
system of Government under which every successive
Administration shall substantially enjoy the power
of nominating its own House of Commons ? It is
now clear that the new Parliament will have a
question to discuss, anterior to that of Reform in
point of order, and superior even to that great ques-
tion in point of importance. The question is no less
than this : shall the performance of a Ministerial act
any longer be entrusted to the Executive Govern-
ment, after the Ministers of the Crown have threat-
ened the nation that in a certain probable contin-
gency they will so perform it as to crush the national
representation altogether ? It must be obvious to
every man, until this question is decided, and ade-
quate provision made to protect existing elective
rights—so long at least as they shall not have been
changed by law—against the illegal and despotic
power which Ministers have threatened to exert,
that there can be no such thing as free or indepen-
dent deliberation in Parliament, either upon the
subject of Reform or any other measure that Minis-
ters may be determined to enforce. The electors of
the kingdom will not fail seriously to reflect that the
appeal to them which the King, in his speech to
Parliament, described as the most constitutional and
authentic moths of ascertaining the sense of his
people, the Ministers of the same King have pro-
claimed their intention to despise as an unconstitu-
tional and unauthentic mode of collecting the sen-
timents of the nation, should the result of the ap-
peal happens to be in any degree different from what
those Ministers expect and desire. The electors
will not fail to perceive that this despotic threat
goes as far as a mere threat can go to reduce the
elections in which they have been called upon to in-
iciest themselves, to a mere idle ceremonial—to a
pitiful and contemptible abortion. Nor will the
electors fail also to discover that this insolent and