The Sun.
London, England, 1847-09-27 00:00:00

emugbr-,
2154..v.ixe5.

LOND9N, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1847.

Honour to LEUARDI DE Bra:GT.lEu, the originator
of the Free-trade Congress recently assembled at
Brussels. It is by the friction of discussion that
every measure of national amelioration has been ob-
tained. Caprice never destroyed enactments calcu-
lated to be injurious to the multitude. Magna
Charts was not the result of caprice ; the Bill of
Rights was not the result of caprice; Habeas Corpus
was not the result of caprice; neither was the Relief
Bill of 1829, nor the Parliamentary Reform of 1839.,
nor tl.e Emancipation Act of 1834, nor the Municipal
Corporation Bill of 1835, nor the Abolition of Pro-
tection in 1846. Whenever or wherever the abuses
of a constitution have been removed, the removal has
invariably been preceded by reflection and discussion.;
Formerly tilese preliminaries may have been latent,
it is true; but that constitutional improvements have
been invariably prefaced by debate and contemplation
is undeniable. Even when the advantage has been
assural by a coo)) de main, that coup de main has
been merely the sequence of an intellectual struggle.
When ROBERT FITZWALTER, aided by STEPHEN
LANGTON and the Barons, awed the royal caitiff, on
the field of Runnymede, into a concession of the
popular prerogatives, that overt act of intimidation
was simply the consequence of many profound and
protracted deliberations. When the Earl of SuAr-
Tnsnuar, in 1679, won for himself the lenient consi-
deration of posterity by being principally instru-
mental in the passage of 31 Car. 11. c. 2—that
glorious statute which secures his personal liberty to
an Englishman !—the assent was only wrested
from the Merry Monarch after a prolonged con-
ference between both Houses of the Legislature.
Every one remembers, moreover, the extraordinary
and reiterated discussions which alone extorted from
Ignorance and Prejudice the five memorable reforms
effected since the commencement of the nineteenth
century. Every one remembers that the measure of
1829 was only acquired by such impassioned displays
of oratory as almost amounted to temptations to sedi-
tion—'-y respectful appeals that gradually soared into
authoritative demands—by electioneering strifes that
threatened a serious, if not a systematic, rebellion.
Th.: measure of 1832, again, was the fruit of an agita-
tion aroused by the eloquence of declaimers and the
arguments of rhetoricians; it was a consummation
realised mainly by the rigid pertinacity of GREY, and
the dazzling orations of Ilaotoraam. It was as much
the achievement of a congregation of illustrious la-
bourers as the preceding innovation was the victory
of oneindiviclual—O'CONNELL, THE Linsaaroa. The
brilliant success of 1834—a success gained only by
the disbursement of 20,000.0001. sterling from the
national treasury—was in like manner the reward of
the most arduous and repeated advocacy : it was the
compensation at last afforded to the continual anxie-
ties and thwarted aspirations of CLARKSON and Wm.
ucaroacs. That the municipal reform of 1835 was
only carried by Lard JOHN RUSSELL, after a succes-
sion of the most wearisome disappointments ; and
that the commercial reform of 1846 was only carried
by Sir ROBERT PEEL, after disappointments still more
wearisome, because more repeated and overwhelming,
are facts which require no corroboration from the
pages of the Parliamentary historian, because they
are even now fresh in the recollection of our con-
temporaries. It is proved, therefore, by our own
experience as as by the records of our ancestors,
shat constj.tutional reforms are only to be obtained by
eriOUS filiffiary and candid argumentation. Even, as

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