The Sun.
London, England, 1840-05-20 00:00:00

We turn from Lord STANLEY to Lord JOHN
RUSSELL'S hearty and vigorous speech, and right
glad were we to find the Noble Lord stigmatizing
the system of registration adopted in England as
harrassing and vexatious. So it is felt to be by
almost all the electors. Many hundreds of them
think the franchise, overborne as it is by the land-
lords' dependents, and by corrupt freemen, dearly
bought by the vexations of the registration. Now,
that it is properly stigmatized in Parliament, no
representative of a vexed and harrassed English
constituency will dare, we should hope, to rote for
its extension to Ireland, and so deprive us of the
chance of redress.

One passage of Lord JOHN RUSSELL'S speech
almost delighted us. He reproached the Tories
with " regarding the man as a public enemy who
asked for the franchise ;" he condemned them for
" cunningly trying to diminish, abridge, and ulti-
mately to destroy the franchise." The Noble
Lord, then, is a friend to the franchise, and cannot
regard him as a public enemy who seeks it. Such
language is well calculated again to reconcile the
almost alienated people to the Whig Government.
Would to GOD we could say that the Noble Lord
bed acted consistently up to his words ! But, un-
fortunately, the Government has actually treated as
enemies those multitudes who have sought, though
somewhat rudely, an extension of the franchise.

A promise to extend it two years ago, a
hope that the Government would extend it,
would have stifled the Convention, and would
have prevented the country from ever hearing
of those lamentable outrages by which it has been
disgraced. To mourn over " fair occasions gone for
ever by" is now useless; we must take care to profit
by them when they again occur. Such language
has heretofore enlisted, in the cause of the Whigs,
many vigorous pens and many noble hearts, which
have afterwards sunk or grown nerveless, as Lord
JOHN and his friends have fallen back on the
Tories, have avowed their hostility to the Ballot,
refused to concede an extension of the franchise,
and have proclaimed the finality of corruption by
proclaiming the finality of the present imperfect
system of representation.

'There is very little news of the least importance
in the French Papers of Monday. ,Early in the
day ridiculous reports of the illness Pf the KING,
and the arrival of the Duke of ORLEANS maimed
at Toulon, were maliciously circulated, to the
great alarm of the .:itock-jobbers, but they were
contradicted before any evil resulted from them.
In the Chamber of Deputies, on Monday, the
question of the renewal for twenty-five years of the
Bank Charter came under discussion. "If the
Bank," says the Courrier Francais, " would re-
duce its discount to 3 per cent. on bills of the first
respectability having three signatures, and to 4 per
cent. on paper with but twu signatures ; if it aug-
mented its capital as it extended its operations, did
gratuitously certain Treasury business, reformed its
statutes so as to place them in harmony with the
recognised principles of credit, the Chambers might
grant the monopoly which it asks, but not
otherwise. From what the Bank is here required
to do our readers can themselves infer in what it
falls short of public expectations.
The investment of Morella by EsPARTERO was
fixed for the 11th inst. The number of pieces of
artillery to be employed amounted to eighty-two.
The garrison amounted to 1,500 men, and the
place was regarded by the ablest Carlist engineers
as impregnable. It was stated that CA BRER A had
thrown himself into the town, resolved to defend
it to the lost.
- -

The Madrid papers of the 11th state that the
Liberal minority, consisting of from forty to fifty
Members of the Cortes had resolved to quit the
Chamber in a body, rather than vote the Muni-
cipal Law. The Five per cents. were at 28i for
cash.

Leters from Alexandria of the 27th ult. state,
during the six previous days, eighty-nine cases
of plague, of which forty-five proved fatal, had
occurred. Lord KEANE had arrived there on his
way from India, anti was honoured by two long
interviews with the Viceroy, the secondbeing strictly
private. It was supposed that the Viceroy hail

' land are concerned, whom, in spite of all experience,
he persists in treating on the arrogant old English
persecuting principle. He disdains to listen to
their prayers. They have assembled in great mul-
titudes and have petitioned Parliament. The Re•
presentative of all Ireland, the chosen organ and
champion of the Catholics, and the majority of
their Representatives in the House of Com-
mons, are all against Lord STANLEY and
his Bill, but that lie disregards. He sets out on the
principle that they are all priest-ridden and per-
jured ; he refuses, therefore, to listen to their
prayers, and treats the whole nation with contempt
and scorn. Acting on that principle, which he and
his friends are at no pains to conceal, and which at
once convicts them of being wholly unfit to legis-
late for a free people, he imagines they are to submit
in quietness to his measures, and he and the Tories
hold it to be unreasonable and ungentlemanly to
question his motives. Equally Silly and arro-
gant, he insists on the Irish regarding that as
a noble metal which the West India planters found
to he no better than putty.
He begun his speech on Monday evening, by
pretending to treat with contempt Mr. O'CON-
NELL'S remarks, but knowing now acceptable a
subject is the abuse of that gentleman to the whole
Tory squad, the greater portion of his speech was
devoted to exposing Mr. O'CONNELL'S inconsis-
tencies. He pretended to despise the Hon. Mem-
ber for Dublin, but his remarks showed he was
writhing under Mr. O'CONNELL's words, and that
all the cheers of his biggoted abettors availed him
nothing, while that Hon. Member could beard him
in the House, and command the confidence of his
countrymen. Most of the Noble Lord's ilhistra-
tions of the present system were drawn from Mr.
O'CONNELL'S speeches, and the anecdote which
told the best was borrowed from him. Without Mr.
O'CONNELL Lord STANLEY could neither pro-
pose a law nor find arguments, and. both his
Bill and his oration are the noblest homage yet
paid to Mr. O'CONNELL'S power.
Called on to give proof of the effects of the pre-
sent system, besides extracts from Mr. O'CON•
NELL'S speeches, the Noble Lord could only sat
that on the Dublin Register there are 19,000
names, while there are only 9,000 bona fele electors;
on the Longford Register theme are 2,900 names
and only 1,400 electors, Sec. But though changes
have taken place, and the old names still remain
on the list, it does not follow that a single improper
person actually voted. The Noble Lord subse-
quently gave three cases of individuals who had
voted improperly, who, having lost their qua-
lification while they still remained subject to all
the burdens of the State, only demonstrate the
gross absurdity of making the franchise depend on
conditions totally extraneous to their rights as men,
and their duties as subjects. Better illustrations of
the folly of making a man's rights depend on his
possessions we have not met with since we read the
story of a man losing his franchise by the death of
his ass. We will quote the cases, and our readers
will then, we think, conclude with us that if' Lord
STANLEY had meant to deal fairly, honestly, and
justly by the Irish, as a law-maker ought to deal
with the people, instead of jumping to the conclu-
sion that an annual registration is necessary to pre-
vent such tmn from voting, he would at once have
acknowledged that the principle of the franchise
was a greater fraud on them, though enacted by
Lord STANLEY, than any that CARROLL and
CARLY Were guilty of:—
Two persons, named Timothy Carroll and J. Carly,
were registered in October, 1832, for lands which they
held from Mr. C. White ; Mr. C. White died in 1833.
At the election of 1834 these two persons attended and
voted against Mr. Vigors, and took the oaths."
" At the death of the late Lord Forbes, in December,
1836, a vacancy occurred in the representation of the
county; that he stood, and was opposed by Mr. Luke
White, and that Mr. Luke White was returned ; however,
he petitioned against the return, and on his petition was
seated; that there was a tenant of Mr. Maloney's, who
held his land on a lease on the life of Lord Forbes, or for
twenty-one years. But he was registered in 1832, arid
had voted. Now the death of Lord Forbes was matter of
notoriety—it was that which had created the vacancy—
yet this man had been told, I will not say by whom, that
his vote was good, because the time mentioned in his lease
had not expired, and he had actually voted,"
We have done with Otis most mischievous
politician, whose arrogance, supercilious contempt
of his Catholic countrymen, want of judgment
and discretion, eke all made extremely danger-
ous to the conkMunity by a species .of ready ad
captandam eloquence, extremely well adapted to
the heated and shallow partisans, yclepzd law
makers, to whom the Noble Lord adapts his dis
courses.