The Sun.
London, England, 1848-09-06 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
FROM THE MORNING PAPERS OF THIS DAY.
TIMES.—It is now nearly ten months ago since the
Sovereign of these realms addressed the assembled
members of an infant Parliament. They met—several
of them for the first time—under no ordinary circum-
stances. It was a time of pressure, of dejection, and
gloom. It was a time pregnant with calamity to many
a respectable family, with dishonour to many a respect-
able firm. In three months fell the fortunes and hopes
of thousands. But if England was then sufferieg much,
Ireland was suffering more. Ribandism had been con-
secrated by popular combination into Thuggee. Murder
inspired the sympathies if the people, and too often en-
joyed the sanction of their priests. All was gloomy and
foreboding then. But who could have predicted the more
awful calamities of which all that was endured then was
but a foreshadowing and an augury? To those who yes-
terday saw the Sovereign meet the Assembly which she
had convoked, and heard her thank them for a laborious
attendance of unparalleled length, there was much in
the ceremony that had a meaning beyond the splendour
of a pageant and the brilliance of a raree-show. When
last her Majesty addressed the Peers in person, she
alluded in terms of dignified reproach to her relations
with the King of the French. Yesterday there stood
beside her Throne—distinguished from the glittering
corps of Ministers and diplomatists by the comparative
plainness of their attire—the exiled sons of that exiled
Monarch, whose ruin was precipitated by the fatal am-
bition which had made him d'af not only to the precepts
of strict honour, but to the promptings of true interest.
Around her crowded the Ministers and Representatives
of States and Governments whose existence now trem-
bles in the scale of destiny. And close to the Royal
person, wielding with feeble arm the sword of State, and
bowed by the weight of nearly eighty years, stooped the
soldier who had helped to rear the crumbling edifice of
continental monarchies, and had put his seal and sign
to treaties and nationalities which he was destined to
outlive! And if it were strange for the victor of Waterloo
to contemplate the exiled occupants of that throne which
his own right arm had rescued for another, but
not less unprosperous, race, it fell not less
strangely on the ears of the descendants of Capet when
the Queen of a constitutional monarchy gave her fiat to
the deliberate will of her English Commons in the tradi-
tionary language of the Norman William. Nor less
curious is it that while Franca is " taking the lead in
civilization" by enunciating the dogmas of her twentieth
constitution, MM. Guisot and Louis Blanc, the authors
and victims of two rival revolutions, by a curious coinci-
dence should attend at the sittings of a Parliament which
has preserved its unwritten usages without the necessity
of dogmas or the dictation of revolutions 1 Who that
looked upon that gorgeous ceremony could fail to
moralize upon the text it supplied—upon the instability
of fortune, the crash of nations, and the vanity of human
wisdom? But what Englishman could suppress a self-
complacent thrill, as he saw the old forms and heard the
old words in which his country has made her laws for
eight hundred years repeated in the presence of a be-
dizened throng sent from every capital of Europe to sue
for a generous neutrality or a peaceful intervention.
The Queen's speech is always less pleasant in its retro-
spections than its promises. This year the inauguration
of Parliament was melancholy enough. But it cannot
be forgotten that the promises of Ministers were also
copious enough. There was Ireland to be looked to ;
there was a sanitary reform to be proposed and enacted ;
there were the navigation-laws to be overhauled ; there
were the West India colonies to be relieved and redressed;
then there were the usual vague "remedial measures"
for Ireland to be considered. Well, Ireland has been
looked to. An Arms Bill was passed in the early part
of the session. At a later period a Coercion Bill was
passed, with a unanimity which was itself no less effec-
tive than the powers which it committed to the Govern-
ment, and no less signal as a contradiction of the time-
honoured maxims of its authors. The Queen has con-
gratulated her Parliament on the enactment of an In-
' cumbered Estates Bill. But the Bill is not
what its authors professed it ought to be,
and promised that it should be. She has con-
gratulated them on their sanitary Bill. Is this any-
thing like the measure which at the commencement re-
ceived the approval of the Cabinet? The progress of
this Act from the 10th of February, when it appeared
labelled as " A Bill to promote the Public Health, price
8d.," to its final and full-grown development on the 27th
of July, as " A Bill, as amended by the Lords, entitled
An Act for Promoting the Public Health,' price ls. ,"
with every possible change in the terms of its clauses,
and every imaginable alteration in the constitution of
its functionaries—displays an irresolution sad a weak-
ness
of purpose which the fourfold budget and the thrice-
altered West India scheme can neither extenuate nor
efface. We have spoken of the administrative acts of
the Ministry. They were acts of necessity and of cou-
rsee. But in their conception, no less than their execu-
tion, they were animated, or rather they were antici-
pated, by the mind and spirit of the country. To quote
Mr. Disraeli again, Parliament treats the Ministry
as the villagers treated Dun Quixote ; it is aware
of their weakness, but it respects them. But
Ministers should not presume on this. The English
nation likes any Government better than no Govern-
ment at all ; but it infinitely prefers a strong Govern-
ment to a weak one. And it especially dislikes a Govern-
ment of infirm purpose and immature counsels—a Govern-
ment which takes five months to bring a measure from
its introduction to its close—which interweaves twenty-
fi‘ e arithmetical blunders with the first, cud nine with
the last stage of a financial scheme—and which, being
admitted to possess great talents and good intentions,
gives no proof of the former and ne scope to the latter,
through its carelessness, its disunion, or its propensity
to promise too much. " The strength of our institu-
tutions," in the words of the Qacen's speech, " has been
tried, and has not been found wanting." But, as the
House of Commons has already been reminded, there
are things more formidable than midnight clubs and
secret societies; and that which no lawless confederation
could accomplish a weak Government might earn the
infamy of having done.
POST.—It is impossible for us to congratulate the
fascinating community of Cheltenham upon having
elected Mr. Grenville Berkeley to represent them in the
House of Commons; still, however, there is something
upon which to congratulate them—we mean their escape
from being represented by Mr. Bickham Escott. That
would indeed have been a disgrace which all the waters
of Cheltenham would have been insufficient to wash out.
We admire the delicate taste of the 842 who gave him
their votes. What happy conceptions they must have
of the sort of honour, consistency, and modesty which
entitle a man ambitious of public station to the
confidence of au " enlightened constituency !" The
course of Mr. Bickham Escott's public life has
been remarkable for these two things first, the
rude violence with which he insisted on the sound-
ness and certainty of his own views as a Protectionist;
and, secondly, the extravagance of his servile protesta-
tions in the very opposite direction, when Sir Robert
Peel (at that time the dispenser of patronage) became a
renegade to the principles and the party of which he
had been the advocate arid the leader. Mr. Escott at
one time affected to be a particularly zealous cham-
pion of the landed interest, but when Sir Robert Peel
surrendered to Cobden, Mr. Escott showed no sympathy
with the land, save in his eagerness to eat dirt.
In that particular his prowess is unquestionable.
The lecture of this gentleman to the inhabitants of
Cheltenham upon the propriety of choosing repre-
sentatives who would keep their promises must have
been highly edit) ing. Perhaps the practical lesson
taught him by the electors of Winchesterled on
him the
he
impart to
subject of promise-breaking mayhave de on the
think that he was qualified to know.le g
one
subject. But let us do the gentleman i
thing he is almost sublime. His effronteersytise:transcen-
dental. When twitted with having voted against repealie
of the corn-laws as well as in favour of
their repeal, i
begged to know whether, if he had put Sir R. Peel out of
, office by voting for the repeal of the corn laws in 1843,
, Sir 11. Peel would have been able to carry the repeal in
1846 ? Who can approach this? Mr.
Escott was in
1343 a furious, red-hot Protectionist ; but blame him
not, ye entle water-quaffing ee traders of Cheltenham.
• He wasg only acting it part to keep Sir it. Peel in office