The Sun.
London, England, 1834-11-19 00:00:00

us in the coarse of lacit night, the Tories will soon
find good reason to be lieve that they have put their
sickle into the corn ". -,when the harvest was green."—
Morning Advertiser.
The answer of the .TLord Mayor to certain members
of the Common Count il, who signed a requisition for
an early Court to c onsi.der the propriety of presenting
an address to the King, expressing the general alarm
of the citizens of .London at the dismissal of the
Melbourne Ministry, is an answer becoming the Chief
Magistrate of the city of London on such an occa-
sion. It is temperat reasonable, and constitutional.
The requisition itseliF contains two statements, which
we abstain from callinv untruths, because the word is
discourteous, but which we must take the liberty of
designating as political , if not poetical, fictions. The
requisition states it :as a fact, an admitted fact,
that the dismissal of the Melbourne Ministry had
caused a general alarm of the citizens of London. It
might as well be said that the event had clone that
which the flames that burned down the Parliament
Houses had failed to tio—had set the Thames on fire.
General alarm, indeed! Where is it to be seen? where
are the evidences of it ? Does the mind of London,
then, so distinguished. for good sense, and so capable of
discriminating between.genuine pate iotism and interested
partisanship—does the mind of London, we say, re-
flect the tragic solemnity of Dr. Wade's countenance,
and the moping melaTacholy of Mr. Buller ? Illus-
trious leaders of an illustrious cause, is their agony of
alarm so contagious tha t it infects all London, which
can find no vent for its grief unless in spouting dolo-
rous addresses to the throne to tell his Majesty he has
no right to do what every other man has a right to do
—to choose his own servants—and to assure him, in
fact, that lie is and ought to be the only slave in his
own dominions ? The other fiction introduced into
the requisition is that the late Ministry possessed a
large share of public confidence. When the Whig Mi-
nistry was in its best days, before Stanley, Graham,
Richmond, and Ripon abandoned it, there was much rea-
son to complain of its frequent deviations from principle,
and its falsification of pledges formerly given to the public.
But from the moment when Lord Grey, compelled by
treachery to retire from his high station, abandoned
the Cabinet, which his hands had originally con-
structed, its last claim to respectability was gone. His
successor never had any political name or weight in
the country ; and Lord Brougham so conducted him-
self as to give the finishing blow to the lath-and-
plaster thing which was built upon the ruins of Lord
Grey's power. Indeed the declarations of Lord
Brougham, both in his itinerant speeches and in the
Edinburgh Review, made it no fiction to say, " the
better Broughamite, the worse reformer." Now, those
members of the Common Council who have been so
anxious to give the citizens of London the opportu-
nity to express their " general alarm," and who
have ventured, after the manner of their patron,
to make opprobrious charges against the press,
because it will not lend itself to the con-
templated political juggle, are evidently inte-
rested for one man, and that man the one who
has had more to do in overthrowing the Melbourne
Ministry than any other man living. We mean that
Noble and Learned Lord, who lately sentenced, with
a dash of his pen, in the Edinburgh Review, the in-
dependent London Press to extinction, because it
vainly endeavoured to avert from the heads of the poor
of England the curse and the calamity of the Mahhu-
sian Bill. The Lord Mayor truly stated that the
"terms of the requisition were such as directly to involve
the principle of dictation to the King with reference
to one of his Majesty's most important prerogatives—
the free choice of his Ministers, the constitutional
and responsible advisers of the Crown." Nothing
could be more correct than this view of the matter. We
have never advocated any unfair stretches of the Royal
prerogative; but, as lovers of Constitutional principle, we
consider the legal prerogative of the Crown ought to be
as sacred from infringement as the privileges of the Par-
liament, or the liberties of the people ; and, certainly,
there is no more undoubted prerogative of the Crown
than the right of the Sovereign to choose his responsi-
ble advisers. When chosen, if their acts displease the
country, let Parliament and the people, according to
the prescribed forms of the Constitution, express their
sentiments, or carry them to the foot of the throne ;
but to constrain the King in the choice of his Minis-
ters is, indeed, to supplant the Constitution of England
by a wild democracy. We observe, however, that after
the Lord Mayor had returned his answer to the requi-
sition, another one was drawn up by the same persons
as had signed the former, and containing nothing
illegal upon the face of it. It was in the following
words, as our report in another column will show :
" We, the undersigned members of the Court of Common
Council, request your Lordship to call an immediate Court, to
take such measures as the Court may think right in the pre-
sent state of public affairs, and to address his Majesty thereon,
if the Court shall think fit." _

On reading this the Lord Mayor observed that he
saw nothing objectionable in the terms of it, (and
having promised to give an answer at two o'clock, he
was waited upon by the requisitionists at that time),
and he would comply with the requisite on by sum-
moning a Court, but it was impossible to Lill one im-
mediately. It was a custom from which he could not
at all consider himself at liberty to deviate, for the
Lord Mayor to go in State to the first Court of Alder-
men, before he went to try any other Court, and it
would be impossible to hold a Court of Aldermen at a
moment's warning, for most of the Members were out
of town. He was, therefore, constrained to wait for
the regular time of summoning the Court of Alder-
men, which would be Tuesday next ; but instead of
appointing the Thursday following, which was the re-
gular time for holding the Court of Common Council,
he should appoint the Wednesday, on which
day the matter of the requisition should stand
first on the paper. This courteous—and some-
what accommodating answer, however, was not
quite satisfactory, to the Broughamite patriots,
—the admirers of the " do-little," and " do-
less" principle of government. They wanted to strike
the blow while the iron was hot. They wished to
embody the " general alarm" of the citizens in the
address, lest, peradventure, it might evaporate in the
space of one little week. Thereore they pressed the
Lord Mayor for an immediate Court,. and one of the
requisitionists put it to his Lordship, whether if he re-
ceived intelligence of the demise of the Crown to-
morrow, he would not call a Court of Aldermen at the
moment? He answered in the affirmative, saying that
would be an emergency indeed; but another declared that
the present was a far greater emergency. The Lord
Mayor,in the midst of the combined attack made upon him
with great nafvate,observed that he had been on 'Change,
and in very many public places,and did not find any symp-
toms of the alarm which some people spoke of. The
matter ended by the worthy Chief Magistrate declaring
he could not possibly hold a Court until Wednesday
week, on which the requisitionists departed very much
dissatisfied. Why should they he so ? If there be
a general alarm, and a just cause for it, surely it must
increase instead of diminishing in a week's time ; but
the fact is the " alarm" is like the merits and public
virtue of the late Melbourne Cabinet, very difficult to
find out.—Morning Herald.
While the public, we suspect, are destined to wit-
ness—nay, indeed, are already witnessing—some
changes on the part of the public Press which add
neither to its respectability nor to its influence, we
have fortunately no such metamorphosis to undergo_
no new adhe;ions to give in. Our party is that of the
country—to its interests we have hitherto adhered,
and shall adhere, quite regardless of who the persons
or the party may be which are at the head of affairs.
While their measures are such as in our opinion are
calculated to promote the general welfare, they have
our unbiassed support—when otherwise, our free and
fearless censure. With these preliminary remarks we
proceed to notice the all-absorbing subject of the
changes which are now taking place in the Adminis-
tration—changes which we have long been persuaded
were as inevitable as any political event which has
ever taken place. The return of the Duke of
Wellington to the head of affairs was not so ob-
viously the necessary result of any change. We are
not behind the warmest of the Duke's admirers
in enthusiastic respect for those high claims on public
gratitude and homage which he, above all men of the
age, possesses. But it is not in the Cabinet that his
Grace's laurels have bent won ; nor as a Statesman,
that any portion of his splendid fame bas been ac-