The Sun.
London, England, 1841-08-09 00:00:00

like the assertion made last year, at a meeting of this
same society, that " Popery is the religion of the Devil."
Words such as these are foolish, intemperate, and pro-
fane ; they excite nothing but disgust in the minds of
practical and moderate men ; their inevitable effect is
to recoil upon those who use them. We believe that
the agitators of the Protestant Association are likely to
make, if they have not already made, many more Papists
than Protestants ; and that they are chargeable
with fanning the flame of that truculent political Po-
pery which is so grievous a curse to Ireland. If we
were called upon to suggest the best method of convert-
ing a candid, reverent, . religiously and charitably dis-
posed, but not very well-informed, person to Roman-
ism, we should advise a course of attendance upon the
meetings of the Protestant Association, as an infallible
specific for producing, in the first instance, an unfavour-
able impression -of the moral character of Protestant
ism. After this, we should throw the inquirer into the
company of some soft-spoken, subtle-minded, learned,
and unpolitical Jesuit, such as Dr. Wiseman, whose
manner would be strikingly contrasted with that of the
Stowells and M'Ghees, and who would be able, easily
and with unexceptionable fairness, to refute many of the
assertions which form the staple of Exeter-hall ha-
rangues. We do not, of coarse, think that every accu-
sation against Romanism could be thus readily disposed
of ; but men seldom reason cautiously in such cases, and
the disproof of some stqpng statements would be sure to
create a general distrust of the cause with which they
were identified, and a dangerous presumption in favour
of its antagonist.
ADVEIiTISER.—We proceed to redeem our pro-
mise of Saturday, and to mention some of the measures
of reform which we would adjure Ministers, as they re-
gard their, own characters, and are anxious to promote
the interests of their country, to introduce into her Ma-
jesty's speech on the opening of the new Parliament.
That Ministers will amp a prominent place in that
Speech to those financial and commercial measures
which they lately propounded, and in favour of . which
they unsuccessfully appealed to the people, we assume
as a matter of course. Of these measures, there-
fore, we say nothing. We leave them in the hands of
Ministers, in the entire confidence that they will be
speedily adopted ; not, of course, while the present Ad-.
ministration are in office, but after they shall for some
time have discharged the functions of an opposi-
tion. The great measures to which we allude are of a
political, and not of a financial or commercial nature.
The reforms which the fearful crisis at which we hare
arrived imperatively demands may be all summed up in
a single phrase—an improved state of the Parliamentary
representation of the country. To accomplish this im-
provement, so urgently needed and so loudly called for.
by the voice of the nation, a variety of measures must
be adopted. First of all, the Chandos clause must be
expunged from the Reform Act. It has vitiated that
measure to an extent, which even those of its supporters
who were most sanguine in their expectations of mischief
from its operation, could never have anticipated. It has
consigned over the entire county representation of
England to the hands of a landed oligarchy, pre-
viously invested with an amount of power which no
class of men in the country could possess without a
violation of the first principles of the British Consti-
tution. It has converted the counties of England
into one great gigantic nomination borough—one Old
Sarum, returning its 150 Members, and neutralizing, in
their practical bearings, all the other salutary provisions
of the Reform Bill. What avails it to the people of Eng-
land that in the large and populous towns they are able,
by strenuous exertions—oft-times accompanied by great
personal sacrifices—to return a mejority of Members for
these places, when that majority is entirely swamped by
the operation of this obnoxious clause ? Until this clause
is blotted out from the Reform Bill, the county represen-
tion of England. must be regarded as nothing better than
a solemn farce—a mere mockery of the right which Parlia-
ment professes to have conferred upon the constituency, of.
exercising theelectivefranehise in any way which may seem.
to them most fit. If, therefore, Ministers do not avait them-
selves of the opportunity which her Majesty's speech from
the throne will afford them of denouncing and dealing a
deathblow at that vicious clause, they will subject them-
selves to the serious imputation of neglecting to perform
a duty which they equally owe to themselves, their Sove-
reign, and their country. Happily, they cannot plead
ignorance of the fact., that the Chandos clause is not only
at utter variance with the spirit of the Reform Act, but
that it is totally destructive of all real representation of
the views and interests of the nation. Lord John Rus-
sell denounced the clause in his address to the electors
of the City of London. Let him recommend its erasure
from the Reform Bill in her Majesty's Speech, and he
will at once seal its doom amidst the acclamations of a
grateful country. Then there is the duration of Parlia-
ments. The present term of seven years is a far too
prolonged period for the representatives of the people to
be exempt from the controul of those who have vested in
their hands the legislative functions.
HERALD.—Mr. Huskisson is continually cited by
the Ministerial Journalists, who do not read him as a
great authority in favour of the repeal of the Corn 'laws.
Nothing can be more true than that some seventeen or
eighteen years ago, he gave utterance to an aphorism,
which might serve as a justification of all changes what-
ever. "It appears to me," he said, February 12, 1824,
" that from the moment the policy of our laws is called
into question, no matter how numerous they may be, or
how long enacted, the onus of proving their necessity
rests with those who undertake to maintain them." It is
somewhat queerlogic this. Others might have thought the
contra), the case, and expected that the onus of showing that
hews which had the authority of various legislators--and
the sanction of long experience is enough to prove, at
least, that their existence has not overthrown the
State—should be abolished, ought to be thrown upon
the shoulders of the attacking, not the defending party.
Of very little moment this, however. Mr. Huskisson
did not always deal in such trivial generalities, and he
was of course very often obliged to come to the question
of the Corn-laws, distinctly and in real earnest. In corn-
mon with most gentlemen of his school, it was a question
which he did not by any means like to touch, and perhaps
if he had been nothing more than a sentence-twisting
essay-writer,, or a word spinning lecturer, he might have
condemned these laws altogether, as being perfectly incen-
sistent with philosophy, liberality, science, and so forth.
But it happened that he was something more. He had to
exercise the functions of a statesman, and moreover a
great commercial statesman, and he was therefore obliged
to look to living practice much more than to paralytic
theory. We may therefore ask those who are now quot-
ing his opinions with so much con plaeency, what.they
thinly of 61101 " iinatches of speech " as Tit) Corn