The Sun.
London, England, 1831-05-19 00:00:00

ton have been. Yet Mr. Cartwright has for three
or four days past been regularly gaining on the t,
Noble Viscount.* Kent is an agricultural county,—
no is Devote—so is Dorset ;in every one of which
triumphs the most signal have been achieved by the
friends of the national liberties. But in these, and
in Worcestershire, if there wets equal ignorance or
dulness among some of the clodpole freeholders, there
was at least among the gentry, and all classes ef
men with money in their pockets, a heartier spirit
of exertion and co-operation, more teet and energy,
and the unconquerable will to be viotorious. It they
who proposed Lord Miltott as a candidate were
serious in desiring to emancipate the coun
have set county from
the old borough faction, they ought to
seriously about providing the proper ways and
means of success. Lord Milton not being in a eon;'
dition to come personally forward, they ought to
have ascertained whether it was the Noble Lord's
intention to epos his parse-string for the Convey-
ance of voters to the poll : tailing all efforts at sub-
scription in other quarters, and (we speak it in perfect
good will towards Lord Milton, and with unfeigned
respect for his manly .and exemplary' character)
in case of his Lordship's ticrignance on that points
they ought to have secured the triumph of Reform
lsy choosing some other candidate. It its, we repeat,
quite shameful, that the public 'cause should be
thus compromised, as in Buckinghamshire, through
imbecility or apathy, or a sordid unwillingness to
come forth with the nece,:sary funds. There is
money in abundance among the Northamptonshire
gentlemen, there is leisure enough among all the
middle classes to allow the formation of effective
committees in almost every parish of the county ;
but we are afraid there is likewise too much truth in
the maxim of some of our doctrinaire friends—that
a large amount of boobyism must be reckoned on,
where agricultural habits and characteristics prevail
over any given district of the country. We should
not pity these Northamptonshire goodies, or those
of any other place in England, where the Anti-
Reformists are suffered to have things their own
way, if the first law enacted by a Reformed Parlia-
ment were to erect in each of them a close corpo-
ration, confine to it the privilege of electing Mem-
bers for the said county, &c. to all future ages, and
thus secure the blessings of the borough system
in their highest eminence for those who seem so
thoroughly to relish them. If men will be
slaves, why not saturate them with their much-
loved discipline of the cat-o'nine-tails ? The last
account which we have received from Haverford-
west was, that Greville was within 38 of Owen,
the numbers at the close of the poll on the 16th
inst. being, Greville, 1,339; Owen, 1,377; and
there may still pt rhaps be about 1,000 to vote, so
that there is yet hope here for our Anti-Reformer
It would be hazardous to charge a returning officer
with partiality ; but still we know full well of what
importance the private opinions of a person in that
situation are, in swaying (perhaps to himself un-
consciously) his public decisions; and we know alto
that there is great dissatisfaction at this place with
the Sheriff and his Assessor. Sir John Owen's
situation also, as Lord Lieutenant of the county,
vesting in him the nomination to commissions in
the militia and other offices, enables him to turn the
patronage of Government against itself. In look-
ing at the Scotch returns, we find that there has
been what is called an election, but more properly,
a nomination, of a Member of Parliament for Perth-
shire, awl if the House of Commons had been al-
tearly a reformed one, we do not know that a more
estimable choice could have been male than that of
the gallant and able gentleman who has been re-
turned for that county. Sir George Mur-
ray, in expressing his thanks for the ho-
nour done him by that, his fifth election, took
occasion to make a speech against Reform. In
every syllable of that speech we have no doubt
whatever, from the constitution and habits of his
mind, that the gallant officer spoke no more than
his own honest and settled conviction. If we say
that we have little respect for Sir G. Murray's ar-
guments, there is nothing to prevent us from re-
specting very highly the talents of the individual
who employed them ; for as much as his discourse,
considered altogether, strikes us to be one of the
ablest, if not the most powerful, which has yet been
composed on the same side,—that is, the wrong
side,—of the great questiori of Reform. Two false
principles pervade the speech; but then they are
fundamental principles. Ist, He assumes that Go-
vernment has thrown aside all experience, and re-
commended a new Constitution for this country,
totally adverse to the principles of the old. Now
this datum of the'gallant General can be only met
by another, which is, that Ministers have been go-
verned by a profound experience of the evils result-
ing from a direct opposition between the theory of
the Constitution Of England and its practice, in
proposing that the practice shall be rendered
more consistent with the theory-. 2dly, Sir
George Murray takes for granted that Ministers
have shown an utter disregard of the rights
and interests of men of property, by the provisions
ef the Bill. On this point, too, see have no difficulty
in appealing to the candour of any dispassionate
man who reads the Bill, or in asserting that if there
be one feature of the whole plan more prominent and
essential than another, it is the anxiety with which
power has been maintained inseparable from pro-
perty; the unlawful propsrty now exercised over
the consciences of Englishmen, and over their con-
stitutional privileges, being the only species of pos-
session of which the securities are not extended and
consolidated by every clause of this truly anti-je-
cobiti Reform. Sir George Murray's allusion to
Caesar as a demagogue might have been spared,
without detriment to the modern officer's historical
reputation. Cesar did court the Roman rabble im-
doubtedly, as did other conspirators against the
liberties of Rome. But did Caesar strive to distri-
bute the powers of the state throughout the middle
classes of Italy, or to call into real influence upon
the Government the other great cities of the re-
public ? No. When the mob of St. Giles's or of
Covent-garde:l can, by their individual votes,
make laws to bind the British empire, and when
Lord Grey unites in his own person the demagogue,
mob courtier, arid military leader,—then, and not
till then, the example of Caesar may be admitted as
apposite to the policy and to the position of Lord
Grey. That Noble Earl is as little of a demagogue
as the Duke of Wellington himself; anti as much
disinclined (though we confess not more) to turn
the King's troops against the liberties of England.
We have left ourselves no room to say more upon
the Lord Advocate's explanation of the language
used by him in addressing the Council of Edtri•
burgh, than that it completely negatives the absurd
notion of his having intimated any probability of a
change in the qualification of electors, as first pro-
posed by the Bill cf Lord John Russell. The Irish
elections are proceeding generally with all the suc-
cess that the best friends of Reform could wish for.
That of Dublin is all but concluded ; and in Kerry,
such was the popular enthus;asm for the Bill, that
Mr. Maurice Fitzgerald, who has represented the
county between thirty and forty years, has been
forced to give up without a contest.—Times.
everbe
Great expectations, it is said,—greater than can
realizsd,—are formed from the forthcoming
Reform of Parliament. It is imagined that it will
relieve want, pay debts, and put us' all at ease.—
Now the fact is, that ths!ot,prresent is not a period of
heavy public distress;
manufacturers pare not
unemployed; our ships are notma rotting in our ports;
and last year was not unfaeoural(:l the. farmers,
and the other branch of the agricultural
Ninvt,e,rest.h—
And what do we infer from all this's'
the people, in the calmest temper of mind
and acting under no immediate irritation, but possible,
from,
the well-weighed determination of a free and un-

It is evident that this was written }Wore we had re 1
ceived the state of yesterday's poll. Up to one o'clock
yesterday, as will be seen, Lord Milton had gained seven
votes over Mr. Cartwright—the numbers standing as

follow

Althorp
Milton
Cartwright
Knightley

. .