The Sun.
London, England, 1841-08-02 00:00:00

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LONDON:
MONDAY, AUGUST 2, 1841.

The insurrectionary spirit, which an
attempt to
revise the taxes in France is awakening in the
principal cities of that kingdom, sufficiently
proves the miserable inadequacy of the
popular
representation. When a nation, qualified by
education, and by an experience of the blessings
of -,ocal and civil liberty, to respect the laws,
and to appreciate the advantages of preserving
social order, complains of wrongs in the lan-
guage, or resists oppression with the weapons, of
rebellion, it is because the Government has de-
nied to it more peaceable channels of intercom-
munication than the barbarous mediums of blows
and defiance. For upwards of half a century has
France been engaged in a struggle for freedom
and after two revolutions, and the shedding of
seas of blood, her people are still fully half a
century behind the population of Great Britain.
Is a grievance, general or local, felt in England,
the people, if they choose, may meet, and give
expression to their wrongs in speeches, peti-
tions to Parliament, and addresses to their
sovereign. If they prefer it, they may call
upon their fellow-countrymen to join them. and
may raise what sums of money they please to
enable them to accomplish any constitutional
pur)ose. If one among them becomes by his
violence amenable to the laws, the Government

er thinks of interfering should the sympathies
of ilis friends prompt them to subscribe double the
am oust of his pecuniary losses. In France the
Grf hvernment act.; quite differently. It suffers no
pr :blic meeting to take place ; and on several oc-
casions within the last six months the advocates
of an extension of the suffrage have been pre-
-ye rated from dining together, lest in their after-
dinner harangues they should insist upon amend-
ig the representative system. As representation
is not direct in France, as with us,
poorer classes never'the bulk of the
come in contact with the
Deputies, and thus their vole • e is never heard,

save in the hoarse rumbling of an insurrection.
The Press, too, is fettered—an evil which would
be of the utmost magnitude were the Press of
France so constituted as at • any time to be an
echo of public opinion. But this, from the ab-
sence of public meetings, and the defective sys-
tem of reporting, the Press of France is not, and
never has been. A newspaper in France is the
aggregate of the opinions of a few clever writers,
who can only judge of public opinion amoag
the masses by the popularity or their
political, commercial, and literary views,
and by the countenance which they
receive from the leaders of a faction in the Cham-
bers. In England, on the contrary, the columns
of a newspaper, whenever the public mind is in
the slightest degree agitated, are monopolized
by the proceedings of vast assemblages of the
people, over whose movements the newspaper
itself may exercise no control whatever. Thus
the Times, the Post, and the Herald, are daily
filled with the doings of Mr. O'CoNDIELL in Ire-
land; while the Chronicle, the Advertiser, and
The Sun, are constrained to pay as much atten-
tion to the vagaries of Sir R. PEEL as to the
manifestos of Lord J. RUSSELL. Here public
writers are oftenest to be found in the rear of
public opinion; but in France no public voice
but the Editor's or the Deputy's is heard till the
clangour of arms, and the first shocks of a revo-
lutionary earthquake apprise the Press, the
Chambers, and the Government, that the mea-
sure of popular endurance is exhausted.
The French character, as exhibited in their
celebrations of the triumphs of liberty, differs so
widely from that of the people of England, that
we doubt whether they could maintain, for any
length of time, such a form of Government as
that under which we live. To the sterner virtues
they are in general strangers. They have not
learned to offer a passive resistance to wrong.
They cannot appreciate a freedom which knows
nothing of dramatic effect, and never appeals to
public sympathy through the medium of strong
excitement. "Liberty," in the language of a
writer who had carefully studied Frenchmen in
their history, their institutions, and their man-
ners, " must have its festivals, its garlands, its
altars, and when these fail, or are soiled, its tra-
gic stage, its scaffolds, its daggers, and the slider
of the guillotine. Otherwise the interest soon
flags—they would be sick of it in a month." In
England the anniversary of the Reformation is
never heard of; much less celebrated ; and yet
the people act as if it constituted their only Sab-
bath—formed the only pivot upon which their
thoughts turned; while in France a succession
of shows, illuminations, and myriads of mumme-
ries are required to perpetuate the memory of
the Revolution of July. Freedom seems a
French instinct ; it is an English principle.
But in admitting that the institutions which
best harmonise with the moral and physical con-
formation of so phlegmatic an animal as JOHN
BULL may be unsuited to the mercurial disposi-
tion of the French, we cannot admit for an in-
stant that their greatest happiness is pro-
moted by the present administration of the
Monarchy of July. There are some vices and
many weaknesses in the French character which
a more extensive exercise of political rights
would not fail to eradicate. A system of direct
representation would not make them less noisy,
but it would make them more self-dependent, and,
by materially adding to their sense of their own
importance as recognized members of the body
politic, increase their solicitude for the promotion
of its general happiness. The habit of indulging
in grievance-dinners might neither increase their
sociability nor improve their eloquence; but it
would dissipate a great deal of political bile, and
expend in angry words burning thoughts and feel-
ings which, if denied a vent by the mouth, would
resolve themselves by the hand in acts destructive
of all law and social order. There is no just rea-
son why the franchise should not be as extensive
and as direct in France as the conscription.
Every man bound to find a soldier for the State
should have a voice in making the laws by which
that State is governed. Where the law of enlist-
ment is imperative, as in France, the right of
voting for Members of the Legislature, when de-
manded by the subject, ought to be equally so.
The right which obliges a man to shed his blood
to save his country, can never be more im-
perative than the indefeasible right which,
as a citizen, he inherits to preserve it
by his wisdom and his integrity. His wisdom is
not less due to his country than his valour. But
neither individuals nor nations learn to discharge
all their public functions intuitively. It is after
repeated failures that communities arrive at per-
fection in the exercise 'of the simplest political
rights. What we would then claim for France
is a fair trial, in order that the world may judge
how far she is capable of that self-government
which discovers not in its own happiness a justi-
fication of any interference with the self-satisfied
repose of others. As yet no such trial has been
allowed to France. She has been judged by her
conduct in the delirium of a revolution, the mad-
ness of which thrilled through the strongest heads
in Europe. Men are the creatures ofcircumstances ;
and institutions are circumstances which, above
all others, give an impress to national character.
The gravity which the study of medicine and
theology impart to the French character may
be equalled, at least, by a more extensive know-
ledge of, and direct interest in, the administra-
tion of government, acquired through the exer-
cise of political rights.

As our readers are all interested in the pro-
ceedings of the new House of Commons, and
many of them have expressed a wish to know the
very earliest period at which any deliberate plan
can be brought forward for alleviating the alarm-
ing distress now prevailing throughout the entire
country, the following Parliamentary prospectus
may be found useful. In making the statement,
the plan suggested by a general correspondent
of the newspapers is not taken into account, as
our object is simply to calculate the time re-
quired for the commencement of real business,
.without reference to a prorogation or any con-
test for the Speakership. The Houses meet on
Thursday fortnight, the 10th instant, when Mr.
SHAW LET,EVRE will probably be chosen Speaker;
sworn
a great number of Members will afterwards be
i , and
the, sowenarTuinge's' will
sneaut
ses oo
nn
Monday
afternoon.
Tuesday the
on the Address will commence, and as the
speech from the Throne • Vlll embody topics fur-
nishing matter for
at least a hundred speeches,
and there are a hundred new Members who
never heard their own sweet voices in Parliament
before, they will, with the usual courtesy, be
allowed every latitude as well as •
longitude;
the
debate cannot close before
Saturday morning,
the 28th. Lord J. RUSSELL, of course h •
, having
been defeated, will take a day or two, notwith-
standing the taunts and sarcasm of Colonel Sin-
THORP, to consider what advice he should give
her MAJESTY, and on Tuesday, the last day of
August, come down with his resignation and his
reasons. The House will be adjourned for a
week, Sir lii,. PEEL will require that and some-
thing more to arrange the bed-chambers, and
when he is suited with maids of honour, and
his liking, he will state in
pages, and porters to
the House that, at the gracious request of her
MAJESTY, he had consented to take office. This
will happen on Tuesday the 7th of September,
seven days after the commencement of partridge-
shooting; new writs next day will be issued for
the places represented by PEEL, and STANLEY
and GRAHAM, GOULBURN, SIBTHORP and D'ls-
RA ELI, GLADSTONE, BORTHWICK, and all the
other Dii minorum gentium. The doors of Par-
liament, of course, during the elections will be
shut, and will not be opened for twelve days—
that is on Monday the 20th. Here is a good
month spent in preparations, when all eyes will
be turned towards the doctor and his patient.
He will commence, as all good doctors do, by
feeling her pulse, inquiring minutely into the
nature of her disease, the regimen prescribed by
the old doctors, and the quantity of blood let to

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