The Sun.
London, England, 1841-05-17 00:00:00

DISSOLUTION or RESIGNATION.
The adjourned debate is still proceedinl, and likely
to extend into nest week. The foul and unnatural
eonfedere.cy of the monopolists makes the result. cer-
tain. Ministers he in it minority. Will they dis-
solve, then, or will they resign ? is the common in-
quiry. How it is that there can be a question or a
doubt as to the choice we cannot understAnd. Minis-
ters must have fore-known the opposition of the anti-
national interests which their project would encounter ;
and with what view did they bring it forward if not
with the intention of appealing to the country ? To
resign now Without a dissolution would be to deliver
the nation, bound hand and foot, to the monopolist
majority in Parliament. When Ministers brought for-
ward their plan for the relief of the country, and the
improvement of its finances, they, in so doing, rendered
it at the same time their duty to enable the people to
make all constitutional efforts to obtain the great object
proposed. Knowing that the project would be de-
feated in this Parliament, Ministers must surely have
been prepared to give the people the opportunity of
exerting themselves for the return of a Parliament
which would more fairly treat their wants and interests.
The proverb says, that Heaven helps those who
help themselves ; but how are the unfortunate people
to help themselves, if the resource of an election be de-
nied them !

Lord John Russell, in his great speech, memorably
said—

" All these combinations I am prepared to meet, and I
know at what disadvantage I stand here, not having to
represent gentlemen belonging to any large branch of
commerce, or connected with our colonial interests ; not
speaking the sense of members of a great body com-
bined and associated together, having their subscriptions,
and advertisements, and meetings regularly marshalled
before the eves of the public ; not speaking of any other
body than that—and a very helpless one on most occa-
sions, the great mass of her Majesty's subjects—whose
interests, whose welfare, whose fortunes are so deeply
involved in the decisions to which this House may come.
—(Cheers.)"
Helpless as this body generally is, to refuse it the op-
portunity of making an effort to struggle for the inte-
rests, the welfare, and the fortunes at stake in this mea-
sure, would be to condemn it to a helplessness which is
not among its necessities. This would be like locking she
crew under batches when the ship is sinking, instead of
ealling them up to exert themselves to save her.
Government has done its duty honestly and coils
rageously in taking the field for the country against
the monopolists, but it is a consequent duty that upon
its defeat it small call the people to the rescue of their
interests. Indeed no project of such dimensions of
importance was ever proposed by a Government, with-
out the intention to appe..l to the country on the
.nerits of the question, in the es ent of a defeat by
a majority influenced by factious and interested motives.
A scheme having been brought forward to provide
''or great difficulties, to obviate grievous distresses, an'l
to afford much needed relief, a vast agitation must
ensue, and the only question is, whether it is to be
left to work by irregular and stormy means, or whether
,1 is to flow in the constitutional channel of a general
election ? To excite the country greatly, without
;Wing it the legitimate vent for its excitement, seems
,o us as little the part of prudence as of patriotism in
the present crisis.
Whether the people, by any efforts and sacrifices of
,nthusiasm, can return a majority against monopoly in-
erests in the present state of the electoral system, in
which the landed interest has such confessed prepon-
derance, may be a question, but the right to be allowed
to make the trial is surely theirs.
As for views of party tactics, we have always a great
distrust of them, and against some notions of stratagetic
advantages to be gained from resigning the arovernment
with the present Parliament to the Tori'es, we have to
consider the great wrath With which the Tories are 4:-
flamed when contemplating the possibility of a dissolu-
tion under the existing Ministry. As the Tories are the
wealthier party, it is not the cost of election that so dis-
turbs them—it is the consciousness that they cannot
meet the country on this question, for that they will
!osc in the towns more than they can hope to gain in
the counties, which are already almost as much their
own as they can be.
As for their recent successes in single contests, we
have seen the same desultory victories before, followed
by great reverses to them in general elections. For in-
stance, after the general election in '3l, in the enthu-
siasm for reform, when a 1 age majority had beea re-
turned for the Bill, several contests for boroughs fol
:owed in a few months, and in all, or nearly all, the To-
ries suceeeded. But of what was this a sign ? Of nothing
but this fact, that the Tories can bring their powers of
the purse to bear on single points more effectually than
they can distribute them in ageneral contest. And the
next trial bore out this explanation, for in the general
election of '33 the Tories were beaten by the largest
majority against them ever returned. But the predica-
ment of the Tory party is now a new and a more trying
one than they have ever yet been placed in. The To-
ries arc not all men of Parliamentary views and expecta-
tions. There are Tories in commerce and Tories in
trade, who recognise the benefits proposed in the Minis-
terial plan, and who cannot be disposed to sacrifice
their great commercial interests for a party triumph
which, in effect, would be a victory over their own in-
terests, fraught with the most calamitous results. Sub
men will support the Government, to which they base
hitherto been adverse, in measures which they know to
be beneficial to themselves, and essential to the relief
and prosperity of the country ; and already-, in earnest
of their views, we see Tory journals in the great com-
mercial towns, the Manchcslcr Chronicle for example,
exposing and combating the errors of their Tory Mem-
bers, in their opposition to the project of Ministers.
Well, then, may the Tory tacticians tremble at the idea
of a general election with this rent in their house.

BLit to return to our text. We have no reason to do
Ministers the injustice of supposing that they contem-
plate the abandonment of the great cause they have un•
dertaken without a blow—without enabling the people
to make a struggle in their own behalf ; but we have
taken the alarm at the mere fact that we have found
that a matter of question which ought to be no question
whatever.— Examiner.