The Sun.
London, England, 1831-02-24 00:00:00

the redeeming powers attached to the title-page of
his own periodical sheet, when he put forth an ar-
ticle, headed " Parliamentary Reform," in an extra
number of the said Review for the present month of
February. The aim of the article is clear ettough,—;
as plain and undisguised, indeed, as its execution,
however fill-11W, is artificial, plausible, and dishonest.
It:may be called the " Manifesto of the Oligarch
faction against the British Crown, Constitution, and
people, preparatory to the Ist of March." It is
the protest of all decay against all recove y,—the
murmur of all abuse against all amendment,—the
war of rubbish against renovation,—of corruption
against purity,--of prejudice against knowledge,—of
shadow against substance,—of inveterate and daring
vice against every throbbing of conscious shame and
breathing of patriot.sm or integrity. To make his
pretn'ses and conclusion tally,—(and a false conclu-
sion being indispensable to his purpose,—viz., that it
would be quite ruinous to the Constitution of Eng-
land to repair it on any extensive scale),—the writer
presses into his service two assertions, in themselves
the most glaring untruths that ever disgraced a
political publication addressed to an enlightened
people, viz. Ist, That the great majority of those
individuals of all classes who insist upon the neces-
sity of Reform, are sudden converts to that senti-
ment; 2d, that this (assumed) sudden conversion,
expressing itself in the form of a general conviction
upon the subject, proceeds from a dread of physical
force!—meaning the physical force of the untaught
multitude or sans culotterie of Great Britain. It
might be sufficient to ask the reviewer for some
proof of this very modest position—that the pre-
valence of a desire for Reform in England is founded
on the fear of violence, and not on the sense of jus-
tice or the love of truth. We might ask him—is
there no perception of the difference between right
and wrong among Tories, except where the alter-
native of impunity or punishment is presented to
them ? But proofs do not abound in that quarter,
and we spare him. The nation will nevertheless
be apt to inquire whether Mr. Pitt, in his early
eagerness for Reform, was moved by the apprehen-

sion of a mob ? Was Lord Grey—that noble
person who has been for more than 40 years the con-
sistent advocate of Reform in Parliament, and who
employed the first hour of access to his present
Majesty in obtaining, as the condition under which
he accepted office, the Royal concurrence to a mea-
sure of complete Reform,—was, we demand of the
Quarterly Review, the head of the existing Cabinet
originally frightened into an approval of that remedy
which Mr. Pitt had proposed almost 50 years ago ?
Or were his colleagues, Lord Brougham, Lord
Althorp, Lord Palmerston, and Mr. Grant, dragooned
into the same service, because they feared the fag-
gots of the supposed revolutions ? If Lord Grey
and the great body of the Whigs, and such of the
Tories, too, as are not candidates for Bedlam, have
during the best part of the7r respestive lives main-
tained the abstract wisdom, and, as soon as the
measure might be practicable, the solid expe-
dierry and permanent usefulness of Reform,
is it not too much for this arrogant sophist
to allege that the " dread of physical outrage"
has become the prime mover of that reforming
spirit which now, as we are told in almost the
•ame page of the very same article, pervades, and
animates, and ehrects the whole public mind of Eng-

laud? But it is curious to remark how in the en•

forcement of a favourite absurdity, when the brain
of a partisan has been sufficiently heated by decla-
mation, and his perception proportionably dimmed,
those facts which if left in their natural shape and
position would operate the most fatally against him,
are wrenched from their sockets, and doggedly ap-
plied to the cross-grained necessities of his own un-
discriminating logic. We quote a paragraph, where-
in the Reviewer seems to have no capacity for de-
ducing the most obvious consequence from the de-
cisive fact, that men of opposite principles in rela-
tion to all other political subjects are agreed on the
value and urgency of the measure of Reform. We
do not remember to have seen in any recent publi-
cation so remarkable a talent for combining with
more than the common-place dexterities of literary
knack and practice, such a portentous disregard for
truth,—such entire destitution (or suspension) of
common sense,—and of every characteristic of a
reasoning creature as in the subjoined passage :
" But the most amusing circumstance of all (if any
thing can be deemed amusing where the whole is in truth
so melancholy), is the simplicity with which individuals
the most diametrically opposed to each other, in principle,

—men who have never before been able to agree on any
given proposition,—knots of exclusive theorists in politics
and political economy, possessed with dogmas the most
incompatible, Land advocating every one some sovereign
specific of his own for the evils which he thinks beset the
nation, have yet all submitted themselves to the common
prestige, and join, or affect to join, in hailing a consum-
mation which, as each little antagonist unit fondly imagines,
is to bring the little antagonist nostrum of each into active
operation. One calls for Reform, because it is to be the
precursor of unbounded freedom of trade ; another sees in
it the triumphant revival of the old system of protecting
duties and monopoly ; the bullionist relies on a reformed
Parliament for the defeat of all future attempts to tamper
with the metallic currency ; while the champion of paper
trusts that it may yet save the nation by a copious issue
of I/. notes ;---the people of Liverpool hail in its advent the
total and instant downfall of the East India Company ;
the saints, the equally total and instant emancipation of
the West India slaves :—to the Whig it is a millen-
nium of office ; to Joseph Hume, pounds, shillings, and
pence ; and to the Orangemen of the Standard a repeal
of the Catholic Relief Bill; one set of writers anticipate
from Reform an immediate extension to Ireland—a mea-
sure in their opinion otherwise hopeless—of die English
system of poor-rates; while those of au opposite persua-
sion expect the abrogation of all poor-rates whatsoever.
By Return: the annuitant hopes to obtain a repeal of the
corn-laws ; the landholder a reduction of taxes and the
eventual demolition cf funded property ; the farmer an
exemption from tithes and rent; and the Lancashire
operative a rise of wages ; the rioter and the rick-burner
trusts, through the acute powerful engine, to drink wine
every day, and to swing in a coach ; the dogmatic cox-
combs of the school of Bentham, the Spenceans, Owenites,
and iepriblicans of all denomination., look to Reform for j
the realization of their Utopian dreams; and Mr. Daniel
O'Connell, not tb least sagacious of the array, sees in it a
boundless field for neve;c-e,-ading agitation, and is already
menacing those who c at prestni; t;.ample down him and his
followe;s, with punishment and degradation from the
strong power- of a Reformed Parliament.' On they rush,
following each. (atria like a flock of sheep to the brink of
the precipice, and commuting themselves to their lite,
some in the gaiety of unreflecting zecurity, some with the
reckless levity of despair.'
It appears, then, that these several classes of Re-
formers have become so, beeau2o of the anticipated
tei4ency of the measure to procure for each the
accompizl47ient of its own peculiar object, whether'
of colonial, finial: 4.7 J? or general policy. Is this true ?
we ask. Is it true that tie bullionist promotes Re-
form, because lie thinks it gecure him against
a return of one-pound notes,—or tiia free trader,
because t monopoly,—or the mono.
polist, because he in it the downfall of free.
trade—or the a,unuitaut, trosi tiffs hatred of the
corn laws—or the farmer, becausc. it s4l lead to
the abolition of tithes and rer)t f!'• is it, wc reheat,
a ue ,tatennent of the case, that these, tam (:l tWentyl
other bce,i,s catalogued by the Reviewer in the fare?
going paragraph,
.!.,.q4 constituting nine-tenths of the
whole British nation riot 4riyen to resort to manual
labour for subsistence, have realiy;;c2ome advocates
of Reform, as a stepping-stone to such improve-
ment in thecc4dition of the commonwealth as each.
conceives to he er;a4-.•,:.:!.r.l to the public good? If
this be true, then what a daiitii.cel9rnny in the same
ic:e;;_tical writer to promulgate, that the kL.O7,t :power-
ful motive with Reformel,; is the base one of,
" bodily fear?'-' comes another display :
" No man surely' can seeio4ali ;)rofess to believe that
the lio;ne of Commons is at this momeinl., n ob,dience to
the call of the peovle,, prepared to commit an act cf po-
litical suicide, absolutely to surrender the privileges by
vhich a majority of its member:. hold their seats and their
influer,:e, and have the effrontery to maint;in, in the same
• breath, that public opinion is not represented in that
House of Commom."
From the last sentence we draw this interesting,
and salutary adjuration of the Reviewer against all
species of amendment in our representative system,
viz.—" You Members of the House of • Commons.
are said not to represent the people ; but it is