The Sun.
London, England, 1870-06-10 00:00:00

LONDON, FRIDAY, JUNE 10, 1870.

CHARLES DICKENS.

THE news of this morning will carry grief to
every home in England where the genius of °MULLES
DICKENS is loved and honoured. The appalling sud-
denness of the death of this true man, of this noble,
gentle heart, renders it impossible for us to
do more than simply record the fact of
our great and quite irreparable loss. For all of
us who have ever laid his books to heart this morning
marks the close of a dearly-cherished friendship.
For ourselves, the fact is thus so literally, that we
can do no more at this moment than give in another
part of our impression some few words of tribute
already offered to this loved and honoured memory
by our contemporaries.

There are probably very few disinterested obser-
vers who will regret the termination of the Bristol
Election Inquiry. Whatever opinions men may
entertain of the merits and advantages of the Ballot,
there can certainly be only one opinion as to the
conduct of professing Liberals, who bribe under its
shadow. Bristol, the stronghold of the secret voting
party, has for years filled a prominent and an honour-
able place in our electoral history. The late Mr.
BERKELEY was the stalwart and unflinching cham-
pion of the cause which he lived to see pass through
the successive stages from contempt and ridicule to
the very threshold of success. This generation has
always associated the names of Bristol and BERKE-
LEY with a degree of electoral purity and political
sincerity, because they were connected with an emi-
nently practical remedy for an oppressive pract;cal
evil. No one expected the western town to prove a
political Utopia, nor did any one suppose that
corrupt and corrupting agents could not find
scope for action in the borough. It was not too
much, however, to expect that those who so eagerly
thrust themselves forward in competition for Mr.
BERKELEY'S seat before it was actually vacant, were
prepared at least to act up to the principles he
had always professed. It appears incredible that
any one should stand for Bristol, who was not pre-
pared fully and heartily to support the Ballot, and
it must on all sides be acknowledged as an intolerable
inconsistency that an advocate of the Ballot should
stoop to electoral corruption. Yet so it has proved.
The unseemly haste with which the Liberal candi-
dates came forward to solicit the suffrages of Bris-
tol during the late member's last illness did not en•
courage us to hope great things from them. But
the circumstances which have led to the Bristol

election petition are not certainly what might have
been looked for in the stronghold of the Ballot.
The competition was so sharp, the rivals so re-
luctant to give way, that for fear the
Conservatives should get the seat, the expedient of

a preliminary test ballw, between the rival canlidates
was resorted to. Nothing could have been wiser or
more suitable. Here was an opportunity of sub-

mitting to a practical test the theory which had

always been so popular at Bristol, and a means, too,
of eliciting the real opinions of the electors without
endangering the seat for the party. So far so
good, but as so often has happened from
the days of ADAM do' nwards, theoretica
virtue turned out to be very different from prat•
tical self sacrifice.

The test ballot it was clear
must go against some one, and the loser must not
stand for the borough. The illustrious ROBINSON
was not to be thus tamely deprived of his prospective
Parliamentary laurels, St. Stephens must not be
thus defrauded. In the interest of the public his
friends bestirred themselves, but the mode in which
they exercised their talents has not unfortunately
succeeded in gaining the approval of the Court of
Common Pleas.

The noticeable point raised by this inquiry was
whether corrupt practices at the preliminary test Bal-
lot, could be held to vitiate the subsequent election.
It was at first a doubtful matter, not so far as the
justice of the case was concerned, but as to the
technicalities of the law. Happily for this once
the dream of Lord HATHERLEY has been
realised. Law and equity are united, and
offenders will not escape the punishment they
so richly deserve. The test Ballot, said the
Court, in delivering judgment yesterday, was a step
in the election, and so far from regarding it as an
unimportant or trivial matter, they deliberately an-
nounce that, inasmuch as the candidate heading the
list was almost certain to gain the election, the
bribery at the preliminary ballot would have a direct
effect upon the poll. It was bribery, said the Court
in plain and unmistakable terms, within the meaning
of the Act. After this nothing more can be said.
Mr. ROBINSON'S election is void. The Liberals of Bris

tol have another oppoatunity of going through the
preliminary forms, and pushing and elbowing one
another out of the vacant seat of the veterau elec-
toral Reformer. Only we should advise them, if
such enlightened and illustrious politicians will

listen to a presumptuous suggestion from the outer
world, we should venture to hint that it might be
better for the candidates in their canvass to let the
subject of the Ballot and Electoral Corruption alone,
and for the electors aot to cheer too heartily any re-

'erences to Conservative intimidation and Liberal

independence.

History, it has been said, is continually repeating
itself. The remark was justified at the time of its
first enunciation by a multitude of retrospective in-
stances, readily enough aduceable by wayof illustra-
tion.- But, since then, it has again, and yet again,
been illustrated afresh, even yet more strikingly, by
reason of these perpetually recurring repetitions of
history coming directly within the scope of our own
immediate observation. Very recently, yonder
in the east, yonder in the west, here
in the old world, there in the new, we
have been startled by the almost simul-
taneaus announcement of an appalling conflag-
ration, destructive in each instance of the chief part
of a great city, and recalling to mind in its origin, i❑
its magnitude, in its resistless spread in defiance of
the most desperate efforts to arrest the course of its
,devastations, the event which in 1666—now more
than two hundred years ago—reduced one
entire moiety of this vast metropolis to
ashes. As calamitous for the time being as
that terrible illeideut in the annals of (AU own