The Sun.
London, England, 1831-02-19 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

It is seldom without very painful emotions that
we can look at any of the numerous aspects which
Ireland and her miserable inhabitants present to us.
When one evil begins to disappear, the horizon is
soon overcast by its successor. The forms and de-
tails of Irish calamity are endless : but its leading
outline seems to be, that it either alternates between
the extremes of agitation and privation, or under-
goes them both at once. Let any man look over
the report of last night's proceedings in the I-louse
of Commons, and a-k himself whether taking into
account what he must recollect to have occurred
within the last ten years in the wretched country
alluded to, whether any, the most hapless and de-
graded state of humanity known to exist on earth,
contains a parallel degree of suffering to that which
was brought before Parliament by Mr. Dominick
Browne, and borne out in its most dreadful circum-
stances by Mr. Stanley, Minister for Ireland. But
what shall we say to the statement—the official state-
ment—of the Irish Secretary, that out of a landlord
rental in two baronies, amounting to 14,0001. per
annum,the donations offered to the starring poor were
just 1001.? One hundred pounds ! 1-140th the frac-
tional part of those fitrits of their toil wrung from the
poor unhappy creatures, and exported from the
country which produced it, to pamper the heartless
appetite of some far-distant voluptuary, who would
have dared to wonder, we suppose, had the miser-
able population so outraged by his inhumanity, pre-
ferred the rights of nature to those of law, and
broken out into wild insurrection ! What a brand
of infamy is infi;cted by the statement of Mr.
Stanley, that in the wretched district alluded to,
" the local subscriptions were next to nothing, and
the rents were at the very highest !" What a pic-
ture of Irish landlords ! and yet evidently not over-
coloured, for Sir R. Peel, who is well-acquainted,
admitted its accuracy ! A poor rate was recom-
mended by 11r. John Smith. Mr. Stanley an-
nounced a measure to be in contemplation, of which
we have already spoken, and the details of which
we may take some early opportunity of laying be-
fore our readers, as in one sense, and that a va-
luable sense, a variation of the principle of poor rate,
—one which does not hold out charity as the meed
of idleness, but which exacts labour and industry, on
works of public usefulness,as the necessary conditions
of relief. When it is considered that in England—
even the most prosperous and well-administered
counties—the fund set apart for the poor exceeds
2s. in the pound, or I-10th the average rental, and
that in Ireland our unfortunate fellow-creatures, in
their destitution, 'are cut off with 1-140th, in a part
of the island also where the rents are comparatively
low, the land little productive, and the population
scanty ; it is some comfort to be satisfied that hence-
forth the rents of the 11,000/. a-year absentees, will,
in spite of them, be made to contribute to the alle-
viation of poverty ; public works, undertaken after
adequate investigation, and under the controul of
the Government authorities, will be paid for by
assessments on the neighbouring estates, so that the
grinders of the poor may themselves be subjected to
the millstone ; and it must be confessed, that in a
country so devoid of communications as not to
possess a single practicabk; road, on a line of coast
which, with its sinuosities, extends to 150 miles,
there is ample field tor employment of the people on
solid and pert-I-moat improvements.—Times.

The approach of the Ministerial disclosure of the
plan of Parliamentary Reform, naturally draws out
the enemies of the measure. A grand effort has been
made in the Quarterly Review, to stem the torrent
of public opinion. After an interval of a few weeks
only, a fresh number of that Journal (No. 88) ap-
pears this day, for the avowed purpose of delivering
an Anti-Reform article in time for the fight. The
note of preparation for this article has for some days
been loudly sounded. As far as workmanship is
concerned, this political manifesto is able. The
writer is evidently of the school of reasoners; and
his production forms a curious contrast with that of
Dr. Southey on the state of the country, in the last
number. Before noticing any of the arguments of
this opponent of Parliamentary Reform, we may
mention that a sort of lecture is read, towards the
conclusion, to no less a man than Sir Robert Peel,
for not supporting the great Duke, as lie ought to
have done, in his hostility to Reform. " Nor is
even the late Administration itself," says the writer,
free from the blame of deficient concert (or the
appearance, at least, of deficient concert) among its
io:vmrem er
Members. Either no declaration whatever on the
question ofßel
ic
revoice
nnshould
ahave h
eb e eonp
emo
odge byof theth
head of the Government
Session of Par
supported in that declaration he aughtonby le concurrent l to havetot bee
of his colleagues. In either case, the great restorer
and conservator of European peace, the illustrious
Duke of Wellington would not have been left alone
to bear the brunt of popular outrage; much sub-
sequent embarrassment might have been saved—
very possibly the change of Ministry might have
been altogether prevented. Every man has his
peculiarities. The Duke of Wellington's tactics
were, on this occasion, somewhat too bold for Sir
Robert. The latter thinks a straight-forward course
ought to be avoided even when nothing is to be
gained by a round-about one. He was in his ele-
ment when assigning as a reason for proving and
punishing the corruption at Evesham, that they

might prove " to any future constituent body—if
the existing constituent body were to be changed—
that they would be visited with punishment, if at
any future period they were found to be justly
chargeable with corruption." He will, the Re-
viewer may rest assured, never bear the brunt of
popular outrage if he can help it. He will never
astound his hearers by any of those flights of im-
pud:•nce or audacity on which the Noble Duke
ventured, when our matchless Constitution, rotten
boroughs, and all, became the subject of his far-
famed eulogy. The Reviewer sets out with no-
ticing the astonishing unanimity in the country on
the question of Parliamentary- Reform :
" To what, in the name of wonder (says he), are we
to ascribe all this sudden choice of unanimity? Is Parlia-
ment less competent to perform its functions now than it
was a year ago? Or by what new process of reasoning
has the conviction of its efficiency been brought home at
length to minds, which, up to the present moment, had
stubbornly resisted every argument ofits impugners? Has
the influence of the Crown, or of the Aristocracy been
gaining ground of late in the Lower House, or are those
influences less controuled than formerly by the force of
public opinion, so that a fresh infusion of popular elements
has become necessary to preserve the balance of the Con...

stitution ? Quite the contrary. It has !teen manifest to all
the world, fora long time past, that if the balance of the Con-
stitution be in danger, it is from the preponderance of the
opposite scale. What better proof, indeed, need we seek
of the actual predominance of all popular voices in the Le-
gislature, than the position which this very question of
Reform itself has now assumed ? No man surely can
seriously profess to believe that the House of Commons
is at this moment, in obedience to the call of the people,
prepared to commit an act of political suicide, absolutely
to surrender the privileges by which a majority of its
Members hold their sects and their influence, and have the
effrontery to maintain in the same breath, that public opi-
nion is not represented in that House of Commons."
_

That public opinion has been gaining ground in
the House of Commons is no doubt true, and that
the entertainment of the question of Reform proves
the fact is equally true. It is not during debility
and weakness, but when the stimulus of strength
and vigour is felt, that men are disposed to be com-
bative. The question is not whether public opinion
is or is not gaining strength, but whether the people
are not entitled to avail themselves of their growing
strength to free their institutions from abuses, from
which they suffer in their proportion. All strength
we know, resides in the people; but it does not
follow that the people should be constantly obliged
to rouse themselves to great and inconvenient exer-
tions to operate on the fears of those who hare in-
terests hostile to those of the people, and who are
only deterred by popular demonstrations from avail-
ing themselves of their power, under the Constitu-
tion, to carry abuses to an extreme. The Reviewer,
as was to have been expected, notices the failure of
all the attempts at a Constitutional Monarchy on
the model of that of England :
" Looking to experience shine," says the writer, " in-
deed the results are enough almost to fill the friends of
rational liberty with de-pair. The construction, more
especially of what is called a Constitutional monarchy, as
that form of Government is commonly understood, a Go-
vernment, namely, composed of three distinct powers in-
dependent of each other, and mutually checking and ba-
lancing each other, is, in truth, a problem that yet re-
mains to he solved. There is not, see believe, at this
moment in existence a Constitutional monarchy of more
than thirteen years standing except our own ; and that, we
need scarcely say, does not come strictly within the de-
finition, but is distinguished from all the others by innu-
merable anomalies, the growth of time and accident,
which do not admit of being easily transplanted, and are
probably, indeed, as little applicable to the condition of
most other nations, as would he the federal democracy of
America to any feudal country in an advanced state of
lization, where the price of labour is low, and that of
land high. Of the several free Constitutions established
since the war of the French Revolution, two have already
perished, others have been violently assailed, and all are
at this moment menaced. To judge from the complaints
against them, scarcely one has been working' satisfac-
torily."
We have more than once said, that the theory of
the English Constitution laid down by popular
English writers is false, for such a monster could
not exist for a month. England is not a Constitu-
tional Monarchy, but an Aristocratical Republic,
with a hereditary President, under the title of King.
That there is a popular infusion in the ruling body
does not alter its character ; for the aristocracy have
a majority ; and, in all cases in which the order has
a common interest, it commands a majority. The
King can only act with the aristocracy; so that he
is riot a distinct and separate power, but a part ne-
cessary to the completion of the political machine.
All the Constitutional monarchies have been at-
tempts to construct a system, in which mo-
narchy, aristocracy, and democracy should ba-
' lance each other, and they have merged either
into monarchy or democracy. It is the popular
infusion which has preserved the British aristocra-
tical republic. All history proves that an aris-
tocracy can only be kept from feuds by the ►ieces-
sity of uniting to make head against the democracy.
In countries where they have had nothing to dread
from that quarter—as in Poland, for instance—fac-
tion has constantly broken out in bitter hostility.—
By receiving constant accessions of the new rich
from the ranks of the people, the English Aristo-
cracy, kept on the alert by the popular part of the
system, have been enabled to maintain their ascen-
dancy. That this ascendancy is to the people a
most expensive machinery, is a point as to which
there can be little question ; the weight of the bur-
dens pressing on the country is a proof against
which there is ►►othing to be said. Ever since the
Revolution of 1688, which terminated the warfare
between the King and the aristocracy, the Go-
vernment has been carried on with the principle of
cramming the possessors of Parliamentary interest.
Occasions for war have been sought, public opinion
has been corrupted at the fountain-head by interested
parties,civil and military establishments have been in-
creased to meet the wants of the governing few, and
thus a National Debt has been created, the magni-
tude of which, while it presses severely on the
people, threatens at the same time to destroy the
aristocracy, by limiting their power to obtain the
means of corruption on which their ascendancy
rests ; for the power of the aristocracy under the
English Constitution is in very few cases quite
direct, but rests on the fiction of popular suffrage.
The patron, even of a close borough, is only the
head of a firm, with all the members of which he
is obliged to share, according to their influence, the
good things obtained by his Parliamentary interest.
The collection of the Revenue, the Government
Offices, the Navy, the higher stations in the Army,
the Colonies, the Church—all must be open to the
members of the various corporations, because the
conditions of obedience to the will of the patron is
access to the public money in one way or other.
The Reviewer objects to the Reform which he
assumes to be in contemplation, that it breaks in o►►
the ascendancy of the aristocracy. He states—
" That Ministers are prepared to shake their political
existence on a proposition for at once, bred manu, dis-
franchising a certai❑ number of the least populous of the
old boroughs, and filling up the vacancy by enabling an
equal number of the most populous places, now strangers
to elections, to return Members to Parliament; for extend
ing the borough -elective franchise generally to copyholders
and householders ; for placing the system of county elec-
tion in Scotland on a footing similar to that which prevails
in England—in other words, depriving the aristocracy and
landed gentry of Scotland of their inherited and just in-
tluence—we might almost say, in several counties, of ail
efficient influence whatever—and poss►bly for shortening
the duration of Parliaments ! * a In the
first place, it would be a Reform commencing at the wrong
endue iiefertaa directed especially spiral that braucil of

tk representation whose corruptions, ac_•ordiog to the
arguments of the Refin•mere themselves, are the least
extensively pernicious : we mean the close boroughs.—
Those boroughs are in general the property either of
Peers who nominate to them, or of the Commoners
themselves whom they return ; and they are free at
least from the reproach of maintaining i❑ idleness a de-
graded and demoralized pauper population, living by the
sale of their votes. It is in its influence on the hilts
and happiness of the lower orders in a large class of
those boroughs which are commonly considered open,
that the operation, indeed, of our borough system is
really felt as a grievous practical evil. * *
Another objection to the selection of the close boroughs as
the first subjects of legislative experiment, is, that the
measure in regard to them involves a question of compen-
sation, MICA, without a contempt for individual inte-
rests, unexampled in the history of Parliament, it will be
impossible for the Legislature to overlook. That the pos-
session of a freehold, which invests its owner with an in-
fluence securing to him the nomination of one or more
Members of Parliament, should be a❑ object of general
desire, is not very surprising. No law on earth, indeed,
could prevent such an influence from constituting a part
of the money value of the freehold ; nor is it in the least
necessary to its doing so that the person acquiring such a
freehold by purchase should contemplate any corrupt traffic
in the seats which it places at his disposal ; nor even that
seats should be a marketable commodity at all. There
can he no legal offence in buying or selling the freehold ;
nor yet in paying a iari'cr price for it, in consideration of
the influence which it conveys ; nor yet in the honest
exercise of that influence. Nothing but the most wilful
perversion of intellect could confound this class of trans-
actions with the corrupt sale and purchase of seats.
There is the same difference, indeed, between the two cases,
as between the sale or purchase of an advowson and an act
of simony."
It has been more than once observed, that the
people would be great gainers by a direct payment
of two or three millions to the aristocracy, because,
in order to enable them to derive so much circuit-
ously, much more is uselessly squandered. Thus,
for instance, the rank and file are paid for, that the
aristocracy may receive the pay of officers—a useless
colony is kept up, that a Lord Charles may receive
the salary of Governor, &c. &c. The same thing
may be said of the boroughs. If the close boroughs
are so valuable because bribery may be dispensed
with in them, why not declare that the possessor of
a certain freehold should have at once the power of
nominating two Members of Parliament ? The
patron of the borough, if freed from the machinery,
might either be generous to the public, by giving
his votes gratuitously—which he cannot do at
present without ruining himself, for he must be
at the expence of the machinery—or by the dimi-
nution of expence, he could afford to take a smaller
remuneration from the public. At present the
Corporations are kept up at a heavy expence to
some party. There are, the Reviewer truly states, but
two systems of Government ; one in accordance with
the will of the people, and one capable of controul-
ing the pi ople. The great advantage of the British
Constitution, according to him, is, that it admits of
a controul of the people. " That system of Go-
vernment must be wanting in a most essential point
which is incapable of protecting, the peep Ie from
themselves, of resisting clamour from without, and
securing to the country the practical fruits of the
wisdom and knowledge engaged in the direction of -
its affairs." What is the difference between this
principle and that of the Governments of the Holy
Alliance ? Merely this, that the Holy Alliance
affords a more perfect check against the increase
of the destroying► power. The infusion of the po-
pular principle into the British Constitution, how-
ever weak in its direct operation, by the constant
appeals to the people, to whom it bends, en-
lightens, and consequently stimulates the people,
who thus gradually become acquainted with
their strength. The diffusion of knowledge is
the destruction of the ascendancy. What have
not the people gained in strength since the com-
mencement of the French revolution ? And how
is it possible for the aristocracy to prevent the
further growth of the antagonist power which will
at last overcome them ? " What can be the motive

(says the Reviewer) of all these sudden conversions
to the cause of Parliamentary Reform ? The
answer is short enough, and must be on the lips of
every one who is nor afraid to look at the truth. It
is the dread of physical force. The events of the
three days of July, at Paris, have given, for a time,
to popular insurrection, a predominance of character
such as it probably never possessed before, at any
period of the history of mankind. If, then, public
opinion has been constantly acquiring strength
since the days of the American revolution—if, in
the collisions between the few and the many, the
many have always risen from every pressure with
augmented power—how is that (the Reviewer pro-
poses) to reconcile with this increased power and this
increased intelligence, the willingness to be pro-
tected from themselves, that is, to be controuled by
men who claim to be independent of them ; to
be governed, not according to their own views,
but the views of these who claim the right of con-
trouling them ? It is clear, that if you instruct and
enlighten a man, you do not render him more dis-
posed to resign blindly to others the management
of his affairs. The High Church Clergy, as being
part of the Aristocracy, were nor, therefore, such
fools in exerting themselves to retain the people in
ignorance. But instruction is no longer the ques-
tion,—the people possess it. Every year the power
of opinion must be more formidable. No man pro-
nounces willingly sentence of incapacity on himself ;
arid, therefore, the aristocracy may sophisticate as
much as they please about protecting the people
from themselves, the people will assert their right
to controul those who have the management of
their affairs—they will allow to no set of men the
power of taxing them at pleasure and expending
their money at pleasure : they will repeal the in-
sulting arrogant claim to treat them as perpetual
minors. Call the fear of the ascendancy what you
please—the fear of physical force or the fear of
moral force—that fear is not unreasonable, for the
people have only to will and they must be victo-
rions.-31Orning Chronicle.

The expedition under the command of Cap-
tain BErcurr to the Pacific and Behring's Strait was one
of those grand enterprises connected with Polar discove-
ries which have conferred such honour on the Briti+h Go-
vernment by who!,e order it was undertaken. Captain
BEECIIEY'S voyage was designed to co-operate with the
land expedition under Captain FRANKLIN ; and the vo-
lume which the former officer is about to publish will
form an indispensable part of the series of works of which
those of Captain PAltax are the most numerous; though
the approach to the Pole by the South S,as, confers a
new and irresistible attraction on the narrative of Captain
BEECHEN'.

On Tuesday and Wednesday the harbour of
Leith exhibited a novel and interesting scene. In place of
the water of Leith, as is usual when the tide is out, seeking
its way to the ocean under the vessels like a small burn
almost lost in the mud, it came roaring down a mighty
river, covered with large pieces of ice, and threatening de-
struction to every thing that stood in its course. Fortu-
nately the flood was foreseen by the shippers in the har-
bour, who had their vessels all well moored, and we are
happy to add that, with the exception of a few trivial ac-
cidents, little or no damage was sustained. In order to
give our readers a better idea of the critical situa-
tion of the vessels exposed, we shall quote the words of a
gentleman who was on board a schooner on Tuesday
night—namely, that the incessant dashing of the ice
against the vessel resembled the hammering of a number
of carpenters, but more violent. —Edinburgh Observer.
Died, at Antrim, on the Ist instant, in the
40th year of his age, JOHN WILSON, one of the most sin-
gular characters to he found in society. In the constitu-
tion of his mind, the Author of his being was pleased to
withhold from him the gift of sound reason ; hut he had
other gifts of a remarkable kind, which grently endeared
him to all who knew him—his heart was ardently devoted
to GOO. Attired in a red coat (for this was the colour he
particularly fancied), he attended public worship every
Sabbath, with a punctuality which many of the gifted sons
of reason would do well to observe. Whatever pence he
received as gifts from well-wishers, he gave for missionary
purposes ; and, with dispositions the most gentle, and a
deportment the most inoffensive, he was regarded by the
people of Antrim with affectionate feelings—and the numbert.
iLratyclie:CEEES:isiFia