The Sun.
London, England, 1833-07-29 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF TrIE PUBLIC JOURNALS

The political conduct of the Tory Aristocracy,

the House of Lords, is past comprehension. They
appear, as they probably are, stone blind to the
state of public opinion and the signs of the times.
Faction and party are the grand fulcrum of their
motions; and however sensitively alive to the ef-
fect and ends of the recent reform of the Com-
mons' House of Parliament, they have relapsed into
their old habits and practices, and have forgotten
what they apprehended and predicted during the
discussion on the amendment of the representation,
viz., the omnipotence of the representatives of the
people. They now vainly seek to render the Re-
form Acts a political abortion. The real interest of
their order—the interest of the King and
,Royal
Family of Brunswick—the maintenance of the
constitution and present form of the British
Government, are conveniently overlooked ; and
the " Conservative" Peers seem disposed to
make a scorn and mockery of their assumed title of
honour "Conservatives." It requires no foresight
to discern the certain consequence cf their insane
and suicidal course. Abandoned to the guidance of
oi-deartat Liberals—Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Wyn-
ford, Lord Rosslyn—or of any bold Peers of cou-
rage, a trifle mentally superior to the mass, they
form cabals for the palpable and declared purpose
of pounding up public opinion, and smothering the
electoral power recently created. They cannot see,
moreover, that by degrading the present Ministry
;n majorities of Peers temporal and spiritual in the
House of Lords, they are rapidly destroying the
national confidence in public men, and approaching
that period when one branch of the Legislature
must necessarily destroy the other. Both cannot
dwell under the same roof as matters now proceed ;
and we can see no ultimate safety against a prema-
ture dissolution of the Constitution, save in the
creation of new Peers. To that cure we must
come at last, and without much loss of time, or the
ultimate consequences all men of political sagacity
foresee. The House of Lords has yet to legislate on
the Irish Church Bill, the East and West India
questions, and the Scotch Burgh Reform. Can it
be denied that party motives will not influence the
'Cory Peers on these several important subjects ?
Does any rational man credit that their Lordships re-
jected the Lord Chancellor's Local Courts Bill
from the pure motive of securing cheap and speedy
justice to the people ? Has Lord Lyndhurst—the
subtle and cunning politician, and party manceuvrer
—educated Field Marshal the Dnke of Wellington
as a jurist, that the military Peer should ►ake such
an intense interest in a question of remedial juris-
prudence ? Can Lord Wynford be suspected of any
Intense anxiety to increase the supply of justice to the
suitors of England ? Have the scales of prejudice and
self-interest fallen from the eyes of "auld" Lord Eldon,
that he so late and suddenly should turn law refor-
mer ? Did any of these patriotic Peers, while in
the long possession of undisturbed power, originate
or concern themselves on any one real question of
State reformation ? Would Lord Lyndhurst hastily
quit his duties on the circuit as a judge, and post to
London from religious zeal and bursting piety, to
watch over the remains of Christianity in the Irish
Protestant Establishment ? His Lordship, in his
Harlequin changes of mind on the Catholic ques-
tion, exhibited no such excessive evangelical feeling,
and probably was moved by the same springs of
human action which plainly influence his present
political bias ! A more disgusting exhibition of
fanatic party spirit was never acted by any " party"
at any former period. Do the Carlton Club really
conceit themselves that their country is to be go-
verned tinder the old regime ; that Mr. William
Holmes, their old " whipper-in," and Lord Rosslyn,
his new assistant in the Upper House, can hunt
Tory Peers as in the old party chase ? We pity
the obtuse and crack-brained minds deceived by
such political dreams. They may in vain array
Tory " Noble-men" against the reformed House of
Commons. Their labours will be thrown away.
The Crown—willing or unwilling—must soon be
obliged, for self-preservation, to exercise the prero-
gative of creating Peers. Lord Grey and the pre-
sent Cabinet may be adverse to that measure of
extremity, but come it must ; and what some Mi-
nisters will riot or cannot do, others must and will.
The variance of the two Houses of the Legislature
cannot continue, arid it behoves the Tory Peers arid
their deluded followers, the Bishops, to reflect
while there is time, and to work out a timely re-
pentance. Parliament will not separate without
some significant arid decisive expression of opinion
on the present anomalous state of the Legislature.
—Morning Chronicle.

This evening the printer of a contemporary jour-
nal is to appear at the bar of the House of Com-
mons, to answer the charge of a breach of privilege.
The breach of privilege, in point of form, consists in
having reported the debates in Parliament ; but, in
reality, it is a charge of not having reported certain
speeches of Mr. O'Connell, and the declining to re-
port any thing which he says in Parliament for the
future, except upon condition that the Hon. Mem-
ber withdraws an accusation of designed and wilful
partiality which he has made against the reporters
of that journal. As this is not a question between
one individual and another, or between the reporters
of a particular newspaper and a Member of Parlia-
ment, but involves in its principle and consequences
the interests of the whole daily press, we cannot pass
it over in silence. Whatever may be our differences
of political opinion with any of our contemporaries,
we have always felt it our duty to make their cause
our own, when a power subversive of the liberty of
the press is attempted to be exercised by any person
or any party. The war which we waged against the
ea cjicio informations filed by the Attorney-General
of the Wellington Administration, for the purpose
of crushing certain journals, whose opinions were in•
conveniently adverse to some acts of that Government,
was dictated by this feeling—and never was a more
fatal victory obtained—fatal, we mean, to the victors
—than that which the Ministers of the Crown oh-
tiined in that day by the exercise of vindictive law
nainst the liberty of the Press ; it was among the
causes which led to the overthrow of that Adminis-
tration; for never yet did tyrannical power wan-
tonly coerce public opinion in a flee country with-
out paying the penalty in the consequences of retri-
butive reaction. If it be a breach of privilege to
report the debates in Parliament—as by a standing
order of the House of Commons, it is declared to
be—it certainly is a breach of privileges, the daily
and nightly commission of which lays the House of
Commons under great obligations to the Press. If
it were not for the continued violation of such a
standing order, the House of Commons would have
no more hold upon the mind of the people of Eng-
land than the Spanish Camarilla or the Turkish
Divan. How long, indeed, any English Assembly
of Representatives could exist that closed its door
against reporters, and enshrouded itself in the
darkness and secrecy of a Venetian Senate, is a
question which we do not pretend to solve. Such
a Representative body would certainly invest itself
with more of austerity than glory. Its character
would be more pompous than reputable—its
career more mysterious than splendid—and,
whenever its days should be numbered, there is
no doubt that its epitaph would convey an in-
structive lesson to posterity. To assert an imprac-
ticable privilege is absurd, and therefore it is not
consistent with the character of the "collective wis-
dom" of the nation to maintain the doctrine that
reporting the debates is a breach of privilege. It
is a privilege which for many years past it was
utterly impossible for an unreformed House of
Commons to have acted upon. A reformed House
of Commons should consider it as abhorrent from
reason as impossible in fact. Yet the motion which
calls the printer of the Times to the bar is founded
upon the revival of what the public long regarded
as an obsolete privilege, and which they had good
grArts)td kkinsider so ever since a former House of
out of the conflict into which it
177/11 i in this very point with the cele-
(( t.the*" I ilks, who committed to prison
oLl:11.-*1(,-.tHouse kr endeavouring to exe-
Y-Wtt •7"'
_ . arrant on the printer of a