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 may
a respectable family. with dishonour to many a respect-
able firm. In three months fell the fortunes and hopes
of thousands. But it England was then sufferieg much,
Ireland was suffering more. Rioandism had been con-
secrated by popular combination into Thuggee. Murder
inspired the sympathies a 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 xho 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
addrgenssiefidedth reproach Pnezls t
o inhe iof a pageant and the brilliance of a raree-show. When
last her Majesty
alluded in terms of di
with the King of the French. Yesterday there stood
beside her Throne—distinguished from the glittering
nse°ltio
13; shens
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 deaf 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 pui 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 France is "taking the lead in
civilization" by enunciating the dogmas of her twentieth
constitution, MM. Guizot 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 ! 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 reiressed ;
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 In r Parliament on the enactment of an In-
cumbered Estates Bill. But the Ball 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-
ceive 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 I s.,"—
with every possible change in the terms of its clauses,
and every imaginable alteration in the constitution of
its functionaries—displays an irresolution and 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-
rage. 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 Don 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 purposeand immature counsels—a Govern-
ment which takes five months to bring a measure from
its introduction to its close—which interweaves twenty-
five arithmetical blunders with the first, and nine
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 no scope to the latter,
through its carelessness, its disunion, or its propensity
to promise too much. " The strength of our instate-
tutions," in the words of the Queen'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
The
confidence of an " enlightened constituency 1"
course of Mr. Bickham Escott's public life has
the
been remarkable for these two things first,
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 and 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 toe eat dirt.
In that 'particular his prowess is unqustionable.
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 edifying. Perhaps the practical lesson
taught him by the electors of Winchester on the
subject of promise-breaking may have led him to
think that he was qualified to impart knowledge on the
subject. But let us do the gentlemen justice. In one
thing he is almost 'sublime. His effrontery is transcen-
dental. When twitted with having voted against repeal
of the corn-laws as well as in favour of their repeal, he
begged to know whether, if he
Inini office
office by voting for the repeal of the corn-laws in 1843, ,
t Sir
ol R. Peel cut
Sir R. Peel would have been able to carry the repeal in
1846 ? Who can approach this ? Mr. Eseott was in
1843 a furious, red-hot Protectionist; but blame him
thatHe was
he
e only acting
not, ye gentlewater-quaffing Free-traders had put
f Cheltenham. of
1846!
Admirable Escott! But of such stuff are the men made
who think themselves entitled to the favour of the new
popular constituencies created bY the Reform Act of
1832.
carry atphs ertt repealo keep
oftl3. Sire eOlt .
. I'eelw sn
rn

DR. HAWTHORNE ON CHOLERA.
TO TAE EDITORS OF THE " LIVERPOOL MERCURY."
Gentlemen,—lss it a time to linger
in the path of duty
when the destroying angel is winging its rapid flight to
our shores? Do not the exigencies of the occasion
demand that the talents and energies of all should be
pthuet
litnverseqeufisthiteiopeentooede?visisTeetehdel, beat means cans of preserving
offer y
an..
apology
for soliciting a space in your paper at this alarming

crisis? I
My attention has been directed to a report of the
Cholera 1
Liverpool officer of health, entitled " The Precautions .
providing of
aExpedientpyearing iwithn
i,
ißeferenceverpooi tp tithe
is
hPeods s
ii bn ili t y °[
to
othe actually
Your paper of
1 julnin:dtatihoanpp:
nnialisuarrieYn and cure
find that
fnuorttherrecornenwdhatthe
strict accord-
ance be merely
Friday last, and
0I
cases home
that the ta-
lented author has expressed an opinion that patients
choleradit thatree es
treatment
itstmsuraetertn,ylll 1,
to:siat:oniradtd:ol .the
hos
bef those
impracticable,
by their re-
sacmco
maaffectednocytia with
ittohw with cholera
shoousl3llidteasl wt. :Tine lhvidi
views
oou
fps
tti
han lei no
disease. In any encouraging placardsissued by the Health
Committee, such as have been wisely recommended
by their excellent officer, I would respectfully suggest
that an assurance be given that no one be sent to an
hospital who can be possibly treated in his own house
By doing this, they will easily persuade the poor to give
timely notice of their illness, which will afford the medical
attendants every facility of treating their cases with
success.
In my pamphlet on cholera, lately published, to which
I beg to refer the reader, I have already stated that
hospitals for the reception of cholera patients are worse
than useless; that to remove a patient affected with
cholera from his own habitation, however humble, to an
hospital, is utterly out of the question, such a step being
totally incompatible with the ascertained proper method of
cure. The evil, however, sloes not rest even here ; the moral
effect produced by them- on the general community, is