The Sun.
London, England, 1841-10-04 00:00:00

PUBLIC OPINION.

-The Morning Post, commenting on Lord Brougham's
speech in the House of Lords a few evenings since, on
the subject of the bribery practised at the late elections,
says :—" It is our belief that the changes produced by
the Act of 1832 did greatly extend the possibilities of
getting into Parliament by means of bribery and intimi-
dation, and therefore to that Act (along with whatever
goal it may have done) may justly be attributed the evil
also to which Lord Brougham has drawn attention.' But
it is not our purpose to argue that question now. Though
it were admitted by all that the changes produced by the
Reform Act were the immediate cause of the increased
bribery, still it would not follow that such a result was
reasonably to be expected. The real cause lies deeper
than any Act of Parliament It is in the immorality
of the bribers and the bribed. If these two classes
were manly and honest, the new system created by
tla3 Reform Act might have been carried into practice
without producing any increase of corrupt voting."—
If, as the Post states, the Reform .Act haT greatly in-
creased the facilities of bribery, an additional argument
is adduced in favour of the Ballot, which is the only sure
means of putting a stop to such a crying evil. But this
, is a remedy which a Tory journalist will never advocate.
He will cunt about bribery, as Joseph
,Surface canted
about morality, because it looks decent and respectable ;
but he will never seriously set about its removal, because
he knows well, that by so doing, he will be depriving his
party of one of its most powerful weapons. It is on the
broad shoulders of bribery and corruption that the Tories
have lifted themselves into office. rlt is bribery that has
swelled their majority to ninety-one ; it is bribery that
has enabled them, with a plausible appearance of truth,
to cry out, "Reaction !"—and, so long as they have
an influential voice in the State, never will they apply
more than a skin-deep remedy to the abuse that has made
them what they are..
The Times is delighted with the Earl of Shrewsbury's
pamphlet, chiefly, we presume, because it aims a blow
at the authority of O'Connell in Ireland. "Never,"
says our Contemporary, " never were the Irish Roman
Catholic priests addressed by a sincerer friend than the
Earl of Shrewsbury—never was justice so impartially
awarded to the more exemplary members of their order,
as well as to the more turbulent—nor is it possible to
conceive a series of suggestions better fitted than his
Lordship's to encourage the virtuous conduct of the
one class, or to restrain the unseemly excesses of the
other, or to advance their common respectability and
usefulness. Not only does the Noble Earl declare his
conviction that the Irish Roman Catholics are now ab-
solutely free from all degrading disparagements, and
from every imaginable contingency that can justify their
hostility to the Protestant Church, or their distrust of
a Conservative Government, but that the alleged
grievances still palmed upon them by O'Connell,
(even including the vevatious question respecting
the right to Church property) are wholly +visionary
or grossly exaggerated, and in either case, if
susceptible of redress at all, such as can by no means
justify the agitator's plans for obtaining it."
If the " alleged grievances" which O'Connell declaims
against, were " wholly visionary"—as the Times hints
in the above passage—never would he exercise the vast
influence that ho exercises throughout the length and
breadth of Ireland. It is not the shadow, but the sub-
stance, of ill that engenders discontent in a country.
People do not rally by thousands round a leader who
goes forth to battle only against the phantom of a griev-
ance 1 They clamour, not from imagined evils, but
from the actual iron pressure of adversity. It is the
thorn rankling in their side that extorts their cry of set-.
faring, Mr. O'Connell is only powerful because Ireland
is oppressed, and his power is in exact proportion to the
extent of that oppression.

The Morning Advertiser says :—" The independent
labourer is reduced to the condition of subsisting with-
out the ordinary necessaries of life, while the idlers of
society are revelling in abundance! How astounding
would such a fact as this be, had not our experience fa-
miliarised us to its existence ! As the national wealth
has increased, the comforts and enjoyments of the labour-
ing classes have been diminished. As the means of
abridging manual labour have been multiplied, the toil
of the labouring classes has become more severe and
protracted. As the power of acilitating and multiply-
ing productions has been enlarged, the consumption of
the labouring portion of the community has been cur-
tailed. Instead of increasing in comfort and happiness,
in proportion as the country has increased in scientific
knowledge, and its application to the purposes of
production, the • industrious part of the population has
become impoverished and debased, and deprived of one
comfort after another, until they are found—we speak
upon Parliamentary authority—absolutely. lying by
hundreds in one locality from utter inanition !"
This is the state of things that Sir Robert Peel is caileol
on to remedy ; but for this he has no remedy ; or if he
has, be declines to make it known. He is prompt enough
at remedying the imperfect ventilation of the House of
Commons ; but the starving thousands must wait five
long dreary winter months, before he condescends even
to inquire into their condition Alas, how many will
have died off from the face of the earth, utterly worn out
bir the pressure of hunger and disease, before that
anxiously-desired period arrives ! But what cares
Toryism-for the sufferings of the people, so long as it
can feather its own nest, and provide handsomely for its
own callow brood ? But the hour of retribution is at
hand. The starving, half-frenzied operative, at whose
wretched hearth the gaunt phantom, Despair, sits a con-
stant guest, will not wait—cannot be expected to wait—
the return of Spring before his sufferings are redressed.
He will force the Tories, however reluctantly, into a
prompt consideration of his case ; or such an uproar will
arise throughout the country, as will hurl them from
their snug, easy posts in Downing-street,
The Chronicle,. alluding to certain rumours respecting
dissensions in the Cabinet, says—" It is tolerably cer-
tain that if any material change is to take place in the
Corn-laws, the Right Hon. Baronet must get rid of some
of !Ai colleagues in the interval between this and the
next Session. If we could suppose Sir Robert Peel to
believe either that there was no distress in the country,
or that the distress was not mainly caused by the opera-
tion of the Corn-law, we might also suppose that too
much importance has been attached to the supposed
divisions in the Cabinet. But the belief has very gene-
rally gained ground, notwithstanding some equivocal
speeches of the Premier, that he is anxious to pro-
pose. a much more important change than his present
.colleagues will consent to, and that the Cabinet must
therefore undergo, ere long, a material change."—
Whatever change may take !place in the Cabinet, be-
tveen this and spring, one thing is certain—the change
mast be for the better, for it cannot possibly be for the
worse. We defy Sir Robert Peel, with all his perverse
ingenuity, to find a more unpopular colleague than the
Dctke of Buckingham. His Grace and Sir James Graham
are "loads that might sink a navy." They are a con-
stant drag-chain on the movements of the Premier.
the very time, And yet he talks of his independence—and atme, too, when the chain is clanking at his
heels ! We tell him that lie is the mere tool—the puppet
of the aristocracy, and this is the price he pays for his
elevation. The plebeian Premier may be the nominal
ruler, but his patrician colleagues are the Viceroys over i
him.
The Herald pays the following tribute to the merits of
the Duke of Wellington:--" No sooner does any one of
the Conservative MiniPters utter in Parliament a truth
distasteful, not to the Opposition—for Lord Melbourne,
with Lis usual contempt for facts and realities, assures
the country that there is no party of legislators united
for the parpose of opposing the Peel Administration—but
to the Whig-Radicals, than he is assailed by their organs
with a yell of execration. Thus on Friday evening the
Duke of Wellington simply stated a truth as palpable to
every one who will use his senses as the nose that completes
awl adorns his face, and on Saturday morning he wasted h-
v.161 denounced as a monster, and as a modern Herod. He
whose whole lite has been, with a single interruption,
one. reat and remarkable example of foresight and cir-
cumspection, is declared to be now incapable of making
c ontemporaneous observations on the most ordinary sub-
.'