The Sun.
London, England, 1847-10-15 00:00:00

titning

LONDON, FRIDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1847.

Parliament being again prorogued until the 11th of
November, another interval for conjecture is afforded
to those who have been speculating on the probable
position of political parties since the dissolution of
the last House of Commons. We may safely under-
take to assert that, dating from the period when the
popular representatives first assembled in St. Stephen's
Chapel, a new Parliament has never been regarded
with more curiosity by the population of the United
Kingdom than the one which will commence its
sittings under the Administration of Lord JOHN
RUSSELL. The broils of factious antagonists have
been dissipated by the dispersion of the Conservatives
and the recent triumphs of Liberal opinion—the con-
tentions of squabbling politicians have been forgotten
in the achievements of a patriotic statesman—the
struggles between an effete minority and a superci-
lious majority have been definitively terminated by the
unparalleled innovations of a converted Prime Mi-
nister—and yet, notwithstanding the tranquillity
which was the necessary consequence of these
movements (a tranquillity originating on the
one side in despair, and on the other
in a complacent conviction of supremacy), the
inquisitiveness of the multitude with reference to the
futurity of the new Parliament is doubled, if that be
possible, in its intensity and concentration. What
will be the actual strength of the Government? Who
will be the acknowledged leader of the Opposition ?
How will the Irish Members be distributed ?
Which names will appear in the catalogue of Minis-
terialists ? Are the Repealers decided upon the policy
to be supported ? Will they combine for the purpose
of weakening the present Cabinet ? Is their hos-
tility to Whiggery—or rather to the ghost of the
shadow of the shade of Whiggery—so implacable
that
they will sell themselves, body and soul, votes
and declamation, to the Protectionists ? And then—
the awful mystery of the approaching session—a
mystery more profound than the Masonic secret, or
or th
the Rosicrucian doctrines, the riddle of the Sphinx,
or the aspirations of the alchemists,lor the spectacles
revealed to the neophyte in the tem
the oaths and subterranean ceremoniespeewoif Eleusis, or
lde
of the
Vhemgericht—the august and b
blem of the new Parliament, sirring pro-
PEEL ! What will be his influence ? WRhoonzaT
will
be his associates ? Where will he sit ? Cheek-by-
jowl with :,Colonel SIBTHORP ? Vis-a-vis to Mr.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI ? Will he be attracted by the
magnetism of ex-official dignity into the immediate
vicinage of the red tape and the red boxes ? Will he
reveal the expansion of his waistcoat below the gang-
way ? Or, taking the facetious hint of an ansnymous
pamphleteer, will he swing intermediately between
the floor and the ceiling, in a basket ? His ambi-
tion—is it extinguished ? His self-possession—is it
imperturbable ? His magnanimity (as evinced to
Mr. COBDEN, to Lord JOHN RUSSELL, and, in short
to the entire nation)—is it inexhaustible ? His long-
suffering (under the opprobriums and calumnies of
his late supporters)—is it unbounded ? Have the tac-
tics of the Peelites been deliberated on in the sanctum
sunctorum of Drayton Manor ? Happy Sir ROBERT !
whose projects are as inscrutable as those of Death,
and whose reveries are guarded from vulgar investi
gation as by the utterance of the Sybilline interdict,
"Procul, 0 procul este profuni
It is aVUsing to observe the bewilderment of the I