The Sun.
London, England, 1823-04-03 00:00:00

PROVINCIAL JOURNALS.

tFroni the Bury Ca;wife, April 2.1
In no place is it so diflicult to ascertain the
actual state of popular feeling, as in the mitlat,,of a popular
assembly;. for in no place is there so little room firedisenssion ;

in no place is titers so little deference paid to the seasoning of
the wise, or the conclusions of the just. Of what use, then, ii
will be asked, are county meetings ? As now conducted, lite.

rally none. Time was, indeed, when the general voice in
duced the delegated authorities t' call together the " good and
true men of the county to seal and sanction, with the general
voice, those measures, to which the great majority of a county
gave cordial and wilting consent; but those times are past: and
now, instead of county meetings expressing the general wish,
they are mere assemblies of tools and partizans, drawn to-
gether by intrigue., to echo the will of an individual, or a fac.
don ; to promote the views of some designing demagogue, or
electioneering speculator. Such at least is the case in this
county, yid of this description will be the atipproaching county
meeting. The county of Suffolk not only does not require to be
called together to petition for Reform, but is absolutely
sick of the subject, and nauseates the very name. If
the honest freeholder; of the county had really any
wish to meet, would they not have spared a few mi-
nutes front the market hills, to, have given a sanc-
tion, by their presence, to the co-operative and co-ordinate
preparatory musters under Sir Henry Byribury, at Bury ; and
Sir William Middleton, at Ipswich ? Would the former gen.
tleman have been left to pace the great parlour at the Angel,
like a debtor waiting for' bail, in expectation of those requisi-
tionists, who should have assembled at his requisition, but who
cared not for his bidding, and .came not at his call ? Would
the latter worthy Baronet have been doomed to throw away his
ready-made oratory upon two patrician and seven plebeian au-
ditors, in the Town Hall, Ipswich, if the County possessed
one atom of that spirit which it is pretended pervades the
realm ? Or supposing it just possible, that the advertised pre-
paratory convocation really escaped the notice of all the pa-
triots who were asked to come with a whoop, and come with
a call," yet, when every body knew what had been done by
the chosen few; when the proceedings of the half-dozen or
half-score who did meet, were pompously displayed in the
" vehicles of the faction ;" when co-operation was entreated,
and signatures solicited; surely then, every man who had
the cause of Reform at heart, .or who felt for the disappoint-
ment Sir Henry must experience if the thing failed, would na-
turally rush to the place
.appointed, eager to show his zeal,
though late, and by subscribing to the important docu-
ment, make some atonement for his past neglect. This would
have happened, had not the county required a meeting.; but
this did not happen, and the conclusion is obvious. Thirteen
hundred names are said to be appended to the requisition ; how
have those names been obtained ? and how many have been
signed by the individuals concerned ? One man whom we
could name
,boaated be came to sign for seven ; another may
signedhave ' for seventy ; and on such a principle, *thirteen
thousand 'names are as easily obtained as thirteen hundred ;
but, supposing every name to have been signed by its owner,
and it may be so, still we may venture to inquire what portion
of the soil belongs to about tell thirteenths of the requisuonists,
shall we not find- the major part of them of that description of
freeholders, which the law never contemplated, and which the
spirit of the constitution rejects ; we mean your bare forty shil-
-114 freeholders, your rent-charge men, possessors of pig-styes,
and lords In fee.iiimple of estates too small to bury a dead voter
in, but just lar enough td endow with the elective franchise,
, a living freeholder! if we should find this to he the fact,
is it from such men we are to form our judgment of the
sense of the county ? Or, say that the thirteen hundred re-
quisitionists possess thirteen fourteenths of the property of the
county : still, the labour it has cost to obtain those signatures
is too notorious to suffer us to consider the call, any other
than an impertinent intrusion upon the county, and the
foundation of a proceeding which, we may yet find it neces-
sary to designate by a harsher term. }or the last six or seven
weeks, the humble instruments of mischief' have been hawk-
ing the requisition about in every town, village,sand cluster of
cottages in the country. We know many obscure individuals,
on Whose land the sun never yet shone, who have deserted their
business, and neglected their homes, to scour the country day
after day, in search of signatures. A hundred similar instances
could be found, and there is no doubt that three-fourths of the
names have beets obtained by a similar process. Ilad the free-
holders wished a meeting for reform, would there have been
any necessity to resort to such measure ? No ; for in such a
case, as the Editor of the Sufolkehronicle anticipated, " nine.
tenths of the freeholders of the county" would have signed the
requisition, and their overwhelming numbers would have dumb-
founded opposition to their views : as it is, the Paucity of .pa_
triots is laughable; anrthe means taken to obtain those few
contemptible. That there will be a great mob at Stowniarket,
on Friday, there can be no doubt ; and, it is almost certain
that a vast majority of the assembly will be composed of a de.
scription of persons, whom we would not entrust to frame laws
for a pot-house, smoking club, and whom therefore we deem
L utterly unfit to Reform tlie Constitution of England.