The Sun.
London, England, 1841-02-16 00:00:00

JOURNALS

,PIRIT of the

FROM THE DAILY PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
(From the Morning Chronicle.)
The time is fast approaching which will put to the test
the sincerity of Lord Stanley and the Tory party, and
place the real nature of their Irish policy beyond the
possibility of doubt. The charge against Lord Stanley
is this—that his Registration Bill is an insidious mea-
sure; that under the ostensible object .of, providing a re-
medy against certain admitted abuses in the present system
of Irish registration, it has two real objects in view, which
its author is afraid to avow. The first, to cripple the strength
of Liberal Ireland ; the second, to obtain a party triumph
over Ministers. This charge Lord Stanley and his sup-
porters have constantly denied. They have indignantly
protested against the imputation of being swayed by party
motives or by hostility to Ireland. They have over and
over again, and in the most solemn manner, assured the
country that they were actuated by no other motives than
those which they avowed ; viz., a disinterested desire to
repress fraud and to discourage perjury. The second
reading of Lori Morpeth's Bill will put these professions
to the test. If the pi erention of fraud and perjury is the
real object, the Tories will, as a matter of course, gladly
ao:e for a Bill which effectually provides against the pos-
: ioility of doubt or evasion respecting the franchise. If,
on the other hand, their real objects are those im-
putei to them by their opponents, it is more than pro-
bible that they will pitch Lord Stanley's measure
against Lord Morpetb's, and tight the great
party fight of the 'Session upon the ground of high
registration. This is evident when we consider the real
point at issue betwsen the two bills. The imperfect defi-
nition of the franchise in the Irish Reform Act is the
admitted source of the evil with it is sought to re-
medy. The words " beneficat interest of the yeaely
volue of 101.," admit of two constructions. Otte of
them would have the practical effect of narrowing
the already meagre constituencies of Ireland to an
extent which would virtually throw three-fourths of
the representation into the hands of the Orange aris-
tocracy—a result which, it is admitted, is contrary
to the spirit of the Catholic Emancipation Act, and
contrary to the avowed expectation and intention
of the framers of the Reform Bill. The other, which
has been hitherto acted upon, avoids this evil, and secures
to the popular voice of Ireland a tolerably fair share in tts
representation; but does so at the cost of introducing very
grave abuses, and holding out a strong temptation to fraud
and perjury. Against these abuses Lord Stanley's Bill
provides a partial remeidly by throwing great difficulties in
the way of registration, forcing it in against indiscrimi-
nate access by a formidable array of legal technicalities
which will prove an almost equal irapeeiment to the bone
fide, as to the fictitious claimant, and, finally, by giving an
appeal to the Judges upon all points, whether of legs
construction or of fact. And yet the remedy is but par-
tial, for after all the question of construction, upon which
all turns, remains doubtful.
(From the Morning Posh.)
The men at the Reform Club are laying wagers, and
even, we are told, batting odds, that Parliament will be
dissolved by the present Ministers of the Crown within a
fortnight. We do not know, nor do we care, as we are
sure the Conservatives will be found ready, whether there
be any other foundation for all this betsing than mere con-
jecture. But such a conjecture so strongly entertained in
such a quarter shows how mean and spiteful a set the pre-
sent Ministers of the Crown are in the estimation of
those who ought to know them best. Nobody pretends
to believe that Ministers, if they dissolve Parliament, will
do so with the slightest expectation of having a majority
in the new Hotise of Commons, and being thus enabled to
retain their places. It is admitted on all hands that
such an idea is too extravagant to have entered
into the mind of any reasonable being; and
why, then, do the partisans of Ministers speak so
confidently of a dissolution ? There is no disguise or con-
cealment about the matter. It is because they know that
Ministers must go out, and because they think that they
are the kind of men who will do anything, no matter how
inconvenient or detrimental to the country, to tie the hands
of their successors in office, and to secure fur their own
use, when they shall be in opposition, as large a share as
possible of the representation of such places as, being the
sorts of dockyards, arsenals, Royal residences, or other
great public establishments, are, more or less, under the
influence of the Administration of the day. It is proper
and necessary that this should be well understood. And
we hope the constituencies of Devonport, and Portsmouth,
and Falmouth, and Chatham, and Windsor, and Brighton,
and even Westminster itself; will take note of the insult
and degradation that Ministers are said to have in store
Lr them.

(From the Morning Herald.)
If Ministers have indulged in the fond hope, as was
lately reported, of improving their position by resorting to
a dissolution (f Parliament, we presume that the experi-
mental knowledge which the recent elections have afforded
of the state of public feeling towards them has not ma-
tured that hope into confidence sufficiently strong to em-
bolden them to reduce the intention to practice. The idea
of an " appeal to the country" may have been one of the
day-dreams of the self-indulgent Melbourne, who hes shaped
out for himself a sort of life which the luxurious Damocles
at the banquet might envy, for the Premier sees no sword
suspended by a single hair to mar, with the infusion
of terror, nis voluptuous enjoyments. He has been
fortunate hitherto, and he knows it; he expects to be more
fortunate still. What but one of fortune's most " fan-
tastic freaks" could have made such a man Premier of
England ? What but fortune's " constancy" can keep
him there, showing to all the world that a Minister need
not trouble himself about being useful to the State who
is ornamental to the palace ? Yet that Lord Melbourre
is his " roseate bower" sipping " nectar" like an epicu-
rean god, and enjoying celestial smiles at ambrosial re-
fectionsy has an occasional misgiving of not being quite
us admired an " idol" outside the palace as within, was
seen on the day of the opening of Parliament, when, be-
tween two fragments of a glittering and splendid caval-
cade, the Premier was dimly and doubtingly recognised
in the studied privacy of a job-carriage, with a driver out
of livery, which incognito was certainly net assumed
from a modest and blushing anxiety to escape the
anticipated applauses of the people. Conscious and
sensitive worth might have had an alarm of that sort, but
Lord Melbourne's consciousness" was of a different sort.
It was much the same as that which made his political
patron O'Connell, when on his northern repeal mission,
steal into Belfast and steal out of it again with face averted
and even "repeal-button" concealed frora the prying eyes
of popular curiosity. " Head of Confucius !" might the
great Fum Hoam exclaim, " what a monstrous bathos
have we got here 1 An epicurean god in a job carriage !
But the bathos is not ours—it has originated with the
:author of " the Premiership reformed." It is possible, as
we have said, that the idea of an improvement in the posi-
tion of the Melbourne-O'Connell Administration, by a
dissolution of Parliament, may have been only a day-dream
of Lord Melbourne's. If so, we think he must have been
awakened from that dream by this time. He must
.have even his eyes, at least, half opened to another
than a very brilliant vista opening upon Whig- Radi.
cat destiuies in the distance of a general election,

(From the Titws.)
Rumours of an approaching dissolution of the Parlia-
ment called together by Lord Melbourne's Government in
1837, at the cAnniencament of a new reign, and with all
the advantages which an unprecedented exercise of Pa-
lace influence was likely to command, continue to be cir-
culated. 'rise ground for these rumours is the very gene-
ral belief that the Ministry will be defeated upon the
question of the registration of voters in Ireland, as that
question has been raised upon the two Bills of Lord Stan-
ley and Lord Morpeth. Will a defeat upon that question
warrant the Premier in advising her Majesty thus to exercise
the Royal prerogative ?, Let us examine the main features of
the two measures, first calling attention to the fact that
Lord Stanley's Bill was last year carried through a
second reading and into Committee by successive majo.
rities against the whole strength which the Ministry could
command. Lord Stanley proposes, as was proposed by
the Bill introduced by the present Government in 1835,
approved of by Mr. O'Connell, and es; ried through the
House of Commons, that the registration shall be annual,
as it is in England; that an appeal shall be allowed against
the derision of the registering barrister, which appeal Lord
Stanley extends (the Bill of 1835 being in that respect de-
fective) to the cases in which the barrister shall have ad-
sniped a voter upon the register ; that such appeal shall
lie to the Judges of the Superior Courts at the assizes •
and Lord Stanley further proposes, in accordance with the
scheme of several of the Registration Bills for England
introduced by the present Government, to discourage fri-
volous claims of a right to be registered, and frivo-
lous objections to voters, by enabling the barrister to award
depots against the party making a frivolous claim or ebjec_
Pion. He proposes also to abolish the certificate of re-
gistry, which, by being at present made the evidence of
the right to vote, has been found to occasion much fraud
at elections, such certificates having fallen into the hands
of men who have not scrupled to personate the original
voter, though that voter may have been dead for years, or
otherwise have become disentitled to vote. But Lord
Stanley does not propose by his Bill to alter the franchise
—in other words, be does not seek, in principle, to alter the
Reform Bill. Lord Morpeth's Bill agrees with Lord
Stanley's, in so tar as relates to the establishment of an
annual registration and to the double appeal, to the aboli-
tion •f the certificate of registry as evidence of the right
to vote. and to the barrister's power to ;;;ive costs in the
case of frivolous objections. But the Government mea-
sure superadds provisions for registering at the Quarter
Sessions; under it, ne matter how frivolous the claim,
the barrister has no power to award costs against the
claimant; it establishes, until some change shall take
place in the voter's qualification, the right to vote of
any party who shall once have proved it, thus affording
a bonus to fraudulent and perjured testimony, which
it is the avowed object of all parties to put down ; it
gives the appeal, nut to the Judge of Maize, but to
three barristers to be appointed by the Speaker; it pro-
poses to define the law as to the beneficial interest
of the voter necessary to give a vote, in a manner
Apposed at once to the known intentions of the Reform
Bill, and to the solemnly expressed opinion of a large ma-
jority (we believe, ten to two) of the Irish Judges, to
whom the question was referred some seven yeirs since;
and finally, Lord Morpeth's Bill seeks to extend the fr an-
.eliise in Ireland to persons rated to the poor-rate at 5/ !!
In other words, Lord Morpeth does seek to alter the M.
form Bill in its essential principle—the franchise. Now,
in order to consider the question of the propriety of t dis-
solution of Parliament by the Melbourne Ministry, let us
assume that Lord Morneth's Bill will be rejected. In
.that case the House of Commons will adhere to the prin-
ciple of the finality of the Reform Bill, a principle asserted
by Lord Althorp, but for whose assertion of it the Bill
would most probably never have passed into a law.
(From the Morning Advertiser.)
As yet, the Parliamentary Session has progressed with
anon than ordinary tranquillity, and the cause is easily ex-
llained. On all matters of domestic policy, however
oudly they .may bluster, the Tories are perfectly satisfied
to abide by the status quo; and in reference to foreign re-
lations, the brilliant successes which have in all paps of
the world crowned our negotiations and our arms; not
only leave the opponents of the Government nothing upon
which to hang an opposition, but serve to make all hostile
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