The Sun.
London, England, 1847-01-14 00:00:00

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LONDON, THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 1847.

At an important meeting in the Corn Exchange at
Manchester, fully reported in another portion of to-
day's Sun, the late Secretary for Ireland has taken
a comprehensive review of the more remarkable
measures undertaken by the Government of Sir
ROBERT PEEL, and of the probable, and, in many
instances, assured measures of the Government of
Lord Jons/ RUSSELL. In this enumeration of pro-
jects, in the operation of which the happiness, and
not only the happiness but the prosperity, and not
only the prosperity, but the very existence of the
corporate power of Great Britain, is materially im-
plicated, the Noble Lord explicitly divulged his in-
tentions with reference to the approaehing Parlia-
mentary deliberations ; and in addition to that
avowed the peculiar principles by which he
was actuated in the various circumstances
of his political career. It is salutary that
the legislators of a community similarly con-
stituted with our own should satisfy the population
by these periodical explanations. It is judicious that
men aspiring to sit as senators in the Houses at West-
minster should at intervals enter the confessional of
some popular rostrum, that they should shrive them-
selves to the enfranchised multitude of their country-
men upon every question relating to internal and
international polity. A common understanding be-
tween the representatives of the people and the
electors of the United Kingdom is alone attainable
by proceedings of this description, and with-
out a common understanding between par-
ties whose interests are so intimately and
inextricably interwoven, the business of the coun-
try would be involved in endless confusion and
calamitous misapprehensions. It is beautifully or•
dained in the organization of the representative system
of Great Britain that no obscurity should surround
the sentiments of the representatives, that the repre-
sentatives should not be enabled systematically to
act counter to the wishes and aspirations of the po-
pulace, that in their representatives the people should
have a perpetual voice in the modification, the abro-
gation, and the revision of the national code. Upon
the hustings, and in the course of the more detailed
canvassing, the several candidates for a seat in Parlia-
ment are so situated that the concealment of their poli-
tical dispositions cannot be attempted, or if attempted,
must ultimately prove disastrous to themselves. It
is not one of the smallest of the prerogatives ensured
to every citizen by the Constitution of this wonderful
empire, that its legislation is not conducted with
closed doors, that the machinery of the Government
is as visible as the daylight, that in no matter apper-
taining to public policy can the nation be hoodwinked
or juggled with impunity. Beyond this a very ap-
preciab!e incitement is given towards the development
of civilisation and good government in the land by
this continual interchange of opinion between the
fabricators of the law and the observers of the law.
From such a correspondence of thought and energy
originates that incentive to the attainment of social
and political emancipation, which has in one session
produced a beneficent re-organization of the criminal
code, in another has relieved a vast portion of the
British people from the detestable and bar-
barous stringency of fanaticism, in another has
purged our Houses of Legislation with much
greater efficacy than did Colonel PRIDE just
anterior to the Protectorate, and, finally, in the ex-
traordinary session of 1846, has utterly subverted the
bulwarks of monopoly, hurled its debris into oblivion,
and ensured to the millions of England and her de-
pendencies the advantages and blessings of free trade
with all the world. Such a communion of heart and
intellect, auguring, we would fain anticipate, the
realisation of still greater and more ennobling boons,
was consequent upon the assembly (already men-
tioned) in the Corn-Exchange of Manchester.
Lord LINCOLN, in his elaborate but candid oration,
has so clearly revealed all his innermost sympathies
and intentions as to the policy upon which the Go-
vernment of this country should be modelled—he has
so copiously commented upon the past of the PEEL
Administration, and implied so many vaticina-
tions as to the future of the RUSSELL Adminis-
tration, that it would be altogether frivolous
and superfluous to recapitulate in this place
the observations therein contained. Nevertheless,
it may be advisable to epitomise, in a dry and un-
adorned catalogue, the avowals of the Noble Lord,
apart from the lingual decorations of oratory. It
will be as well to give the vertebrce of his harangue,
and we shall give the successive divisions of those
vertebrae in the sequence which the Noble Lord
himself has chosen. First, therefore, Lord LINCOLN
endeavours to exculpate himself from the charge of
being personally inimical to social, political, and
legislative reform. Yet he does not so much endea-
vour to exculpate himself on this particular—he
actually does exculpate himself from the sins of a
bigotted and inflexible Conservatism. He refers with
confident exultation to the records of the career of
that memorable Administration with which he himself
had been associated—that Administration through
whose instrumentality, since the period of 1842, the
i un dd abolished,
duties formerly levied upon 500 articles had been
`entirelya
Then s
publicid—
and those imposed upon 700 others
materially
thraetvenAudem,
in
inistraltBi4o2n, which
a found the public revenue, in 1842, bur-
with a deficiency
of 4,C 00,0001., and
w/htitcl
aht reAscitomreindisittr,abton by 1845, to
while it a surplus of 4'
000 000/
sustained the
thep pros s
pa emrit amount
t hado f
Exchequer in an almost unparalleled
simultaneously remitted duties to
something approaching to 7,000,000/. sterling—that
Administration which had raised the imports •