The Sun.
London, England, 1841-01-28 00:00:00

FURTHER REFORM.

If the first effect resulting from the Scorpion
Bill of Lord Stanley was a wild cry for repeal,
from ore end of Ireland to the other, the second
and more abiding effect has been a consolidation
and direction of the entire national energy to wards
wise and prudential measures for self-defence.
The necessity of union, in the most extended sense
of the word, is now generally admitted by the
Irish Reformers. They no longer endeavour to
express mere national feelings, and to rouse
mere national sympathies ; they appeal for aid to
the great body of the English, Scottish, and Welsh
Reformers, and we trust their appeal will not be
made in vain. As a proof of this fact we need
only refer to the late aggregate meeting in Dub-
lin. It exhibited a truly magnificent combination
of the Liberal aristocracy with the Democratic
power, and presented the picture of a united
people consulting upon the measures best adapted
to preserve them from a common danger and a
common foe. As the latter, Lord Stanley was de-
nounced by every speaker at the meeting, and his
Scorpion Bill was unanimously regarded as the
worst danger with which their country had been
threatened in human memory. The importance of
the meeting may partly be inferred from the list of
noblemen and gentlemen who headed the requisition.
Forty noblemen of the first distinction, backed
•by the general feeling of the people, present
something like a national front ; but it is to the
moral strength of the meeting, as manifested in
its resolutions, that we must principally look.
To those resolutions, elsewhere given, we refer
our readers. They will be found worthy of the
cause which gave them birth. They show that
Lord Stanley's party will open their Parlia-
lary struggle for power, convicted of an overt con-
spiracy against the liberties of a third portion of the
empire, the sympathy of the other two-thirds being
at the same time enlisted in favour of those whose
rights have been conspired against. Defeat can-
not but be as consequent upon such a position as
disgrace and infamy were its concomitants from the
beginning.
But although the brand of infamy was on the
Bill from the beginning, its introduction will be
productive of one benefit at least : and this benefit
cannot be lessened even by the defeat of the Bill.
it will put to shame and silence the doctrines of
finality in the camp of the Reformers. It will
show the folly of a go-to-sleep policy at the time
when the enemy is watchful and rampant. It will
in short prove that the Reformers must be as ready
to progress in extension of the suffrage, as the
Tories are to retrograde towards the days of good
Old Sarum.

As we before stated, the introduction of Lord
Stanley's Bill, and the support that has been al-
ready given to it, form a good ground on which to
rest the necessity of a further reform of the Reform
Bill. The Scorpion has proved that an interest
and a spirit essentially hostile to liberty have sur-
vived the very Bill that was provided for their ex-
tinction ; and this obvious imperfection in the Re-
form Bill is an unanswerable argument for a search-
ing reform of its provisions.
The resolutions passed at the aggregate meeting
are an epitome of the speeches delivered on that
occasion. Bold, temperate, and frank, they show
that the Irish are as averse to the idea of " finality"
as Lord Stanley himself, but that they differ from
him in thinking that motion ought to he progres-
sive rather than retrograde. They fairly state the
rights of the Irish people, their determination to
maintain thoee rights, their indignation at the
fraud and cruelty combined in the Scorpion Bill,
their confidence in the present Ministry, and their
devoted attachment to the throne.

It may be truly said that the chief fault in our
Parliamentary Reformers has been that of conced-
ing too much to the presumed difficulties of the
Cabinet ; and that the chief fault in that Cabinet,
has been to augment or create those difficulties by
conceding too much to the clamorous opposition of
the 'furies; and hence it is that the Conservative
Journals have presumed to prattle about a coalition,
and to soothe themselves into a hope that all ques-
tions of organic reform are finally shelved.
" Time," however, " can couch the blind ;" and
let the Tories vaunt as they may, their support of
the Scorpion Bill of Lord Stanley, and their own
scorpion tricks in the Registration Cigirts, will -be
the sure precursors of an extended and simplified
franchise both for the British and the Irish people.
Pressing difficulties cannot for ever be staved ofF
by temporary expedients, and no truly Liberal
Government can long be embarrassed by the an-
nouncement and furtherance of Liberal views,
Something has been, and may again be, ceded to
the exigencies of the moment ; but the Govern.
ment begin to be aware that the tendency of " hope •
deferred" is more calculated to create a permanent
difficulty, than even the rash impetuosity of ultra
and inconsiderate Reformers.—Carnarvon Herald.