The Sun.
London, England, 1833-06-15 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The privileges of the Peers were granted to
them by the Constitution, not for the sake of
the Peers themselves, but that they might be
the better enabled to discharge certain public
and specified duties. When the Peers, or any
portion of them, make the enjoyment of their
privileges the most essential object of their po-
litical efforts, they forfeit, in fact, the condition
on which those privileges were vested in them.
The Tory party seem now to have decided that
the whole realm shall be subdued to its will,
and that those interests which are acknowledged
by the nation and its representatives to be the
most precious and important of all others, shall
be sacrificed to the selfish views of a certain
branch of the aristocracy. This will never do.
It is all very well to put forth common-places
on the Constitution, and to talk about the dif-
ference between the two Houses of Parliament,
or, in other words, " a collision," as just no-
thing at all—something which the framers of the
Constitution looked forward to as a matter of
course, not having any results or -tendencies
beyond the mere assertion by each branch
of the Legislature of its own distinct
and admitted power. Now, let us quietly
ask these free and easy gentlemen whether the
independent rights of each House of Parliament
were given in contemplation of their co-operat-
ing on important subjects, or of their drawing
in different and opposite lines ? If concurrence
were not the rule, and variance the exception—
and the rare exception, too—it is plain that the
Government of the' commonwealth must soon
be brought to a state of political paralysis. A
difference between the two Houses on very se-
rious questions can no otherwise be considered
than as involving constitutional dangers of the
deepest import. Reform in Parliament is one
of these ; church refortn is one of them, and
perhaps the most perilous of all such questions
on which the Lords and Commons could divide.
Vain and foolish is it to ring in our ears that the
Lords may do so and so, if they like. Of course
they may—and of course they must take the
consequences. The English nation will not be
cheated out of what they deem the substance of
their own prosperity, out of complaisance to
the abstract, however acknowledged, rights f the
upper House of Parliament. If rights be indis-
creetly and mischievously exercised, they are, in
fact abused ; and if abused, the abuse will by an
intelligent and high principled people be resisted.
If one party must give way, then the Peers must
give way, for the nation will not, and ought not,
to do so where its vital interests are concerned.
The House of Commons should be prepared
for such emergencies—not, indeed, to follow the
old precedent, and vote the House of Lords " a
nuisance," but to put on record instanter that
the House of Lords, by setting itself repeatedly
and perseveringly in direct opposition to that re-
form which is demanded by the whole people of
England, has rendered it impossible to carry on
the government without an absolute extinction of
that assembly which represents the people, and
the establishment of a pure oligarchy in place
of King, Lords, and Commons. We have
reason to apprehend that the leaders of
the so called " Conservative" faction meditate a
direct war upon the nation. We do not mean a
war of words, or sentiments, or legislative inea-
atires, but literally a war of the bayonet and the
sabre. We have no doubt that there are some
persons who would, almost immediately on their
accession to the government, declare formally
against any reformation of abuses,—pronounce
that reform and republicanism were identified,
that both must be put down come qui collie,
and ancient con options clung tO,—and that it
any show of resistance, even within the forms of
the constitution, be presented by the body of
tl'e people, that then, without an hour's delay,
the glove should be thrown down, the troops ap-
pealed to, and the standard of despotism and
misgovernment hoisted, in the name of our up-
right, constitutional, and beloved Monarch. We
assert all this from a knowledge of facts as they oc-
cur. There is nothing figurative in the statement;
all is literal, all is true. The subject has been
well discussed in the Conservative council. The
army is described to be " stanch to a roan."
What might, what must be the fate of him who
employs it to such sanguinary and traitorous
ends has, we suspect, been but slightly adverted
to. The militay and Court faction (the
highest personage of all forming a noble excep-
tion)—the military faction and Court faction
are besotted enough to imagine that if certain
persons were once in power the battle might yet
be restored and the day be won. They are the
most ignorant, the most infatuated, the most
unteachable of all human beings, who so judge
the people of this country : within three months
of such an attempt being made not a vestige of
conservatism would be left throughout the king-
dom. In the mean time, every city, county,
borough, and parish in the island, ought to be
in readiness for whatever, even the worst that
might happen. Petitions, remonstrances, decla-
rations of distrust in a" Conservative" Ministry,
ought to be prepared in case of necessity ; the
House of Commons ought to be on the alert,
and, should events require them, be ready to
pass resolutions and addresses to the Sovereign
that specific persons whom we will not now name
should be dismissed for ever from the service of
the Crown, and banished from the Royal pre-
sence. Another Bill should be sent up to the
Peels, the same hour in which the appointment
of a Minister professing to govern by the sword
was promulgated, for disbanding the Guards and
the whole of the army now at home. A nation
must not be nice about details when its existence
or liberties are threatened. In our opinion, no
crisis ever arose in Great Britain , more pregnant
with grave alarm than that on the eve of which we
at this moment stand. As for a
_dissolution of the
existing Parliament, one man--and one only—
among the Conservatives can be blind enough
to plunge into such an ,experiment,—it is he
who made- the grand !Ander of denouncing,
surd thereby producing, a reform of Parlia.
moot.—Times.

The Tory aristocracy is determined to c;rin-
mit political suicide. We have forewarned the
country that the present intention of the Con-
servative Peers is to throw out, by a considerable
majority, the Bills for church reform. This
malignant design has a two-fold object—to
drive out of office the present Ministry, that die
Tories may punish them for their amendment
of the representation, and usurp the reins of
power—and to defeat the ends of which Parlia-
mentary reform was the intended means. The
Tory Press is actively urging on its blind party
to this desperate course, forgetful of its recent
admissions that the re-construction of the House
of Commons had rendered it impossible for any
Administration to govern the country, and had
exiled for ever from office the Tory party. It
is not many weeks since the Standard openly
avowed its preference of revolution to the con-
tinuance of Lord Grey's Cabinet ; and a coNli-

tion between the Ultra-Tories and the Ultra-
Radicals has been openly recommended by the
Conservatives in their profound despair. Such
an unnatural and absurd combination of extremes
is not only ridiculous to imagine, but cannot by
possibility happen. And what do the Tory
Peers expect to gain by their desperate and
destructive designs ? Do they hope to repeal the
Reform Acts, and to re-possess themselves of their
rotten boroughs ? Can they blind themselves to the
fact, that the aristocratic principle is essentially
destroyed in this country, and that all Europe
is in a state of rapid transition from feudal to
federal principles of Government ? Is it pos-
sible that the popular power should recede—can
its advance be prevented ? Blind and infatuated
must the Tory aristocracy be, not to perceive
that a legal revolution has been effected, not by
the Whigs, but by the people, and earlier than
it would otherwise have come, from the mad
and infatuated resistance of Tory Administra-
tions to the mere shadows of reform ! And
what do the Lords really intend by their
threatened opposition ? They object to three
parts of the Irish Church Reform Bills; to
the reduction of the number of Bishops ; to
the relief of Catholics and Dissenters from
tithes and church cess, by the appropriation of
part of the revenues of the church in lieu of
these odious imposts ; and to the application of
any surplus revenue of the church to other
objects of national utility. If the Irish Church
Bill is thrown out on these grounds of objection,
and Lord Grey's Cabinet retire, what would be
the course of any Tory successors ? Would
they dare to uphold the existing system ? Could
they do it, however much they might desire to
prop up the Irish church establishment? If, on the
other hand, the Tory Lords fail to throw out the
present Administration, then, as in the case of the
Reform Bills, a more extensive measure of church
reform would assuredly be successfully proposed
in the next session of Parliament. By the
smallness of the present measure, the Ministers
have lost friends, and suffered in public opinion,
and betrayed a vain hope of conciliating implacable
political enemies. Four Bishops and an Arch-
bishop were surely a sufficient number of shep-
herds, and more than sufficient, in the opinion
of a majority of Reformers in the House of
Commons, for tending the Protestant flocks in
Ireland ; and the Irish church establishment
may be reduced next session, if the present Bill
miscarries, to one Archbishop and four Bishops.
If such a reduction failed in the next session,
then the entire abolition of the Irish church
would follow in the succeeding one ! Such
would be the natural and infallible consequences
of the folly and stupidity of the Tory faction :
the Tories always succeed in annihilating abuses
which they desire to maintain. The present
Ministry, say the Tories, are unpopular with the
country, because they have done too little in the
vineyard of reform ; anti the Conservatives hope
to succeed them and gain favour with the peo-
ple by doing nothing! The Budget of Lord
Althorp was stated by Sir Robert Peel to secure
too small a surplus, and to smack of excessive
retrenchment. The Tories are in fits of horror at
the distant sound of municipal reforms: the insane
Bishops hang with the Tory Peers in defending
non-residence—in maintaining pluralities—in
perpetuating tithes, church cess, and an unne-
cessary band of ecclesiastical drones ; and yet the
people (says the Conservative press) yearn for
the return of the Tories to office ! And to
what events and consequences would the advent
of a Tory Administration lead us? The
Standard would insinuate, that if the present
House of Commons was " refractory," a "Con-
servative " House of Commons would replace
it. Our contemporary cannot he serious, and is
only decoying the Duke of Wellington and Sir
Robert Peel to destruction, as a punishment for
that never to be forgiven sin, their sudden con-
version to Catholic emancipation. - The Ultra-
Tories owe their ci-devant fi iends much re-
venge on this old score, and will never be easy
till they have given them another dose of that
bitter antipathy they displayed on the memorable
motion of Sir H. Parnell. A dissolution of
Parliament indeed, grounded on an obstinate
refusal by a majority of Peers of any, quantum of
Church reform, and a collision with the House
of Commons on such a vital question of state
policy ! Can any man, topically acquainted
only with the present state of the public mind,
expect that his Grace the Duke of Wellington
would obtain by dissolution a subservient
House of Commons ? The Tories can now
muster barely one hundred and twenty Mem-
bers in that branch of the Legislature.
Some of the moderate .men of both parties
might lose their seats if sent at this period be-
fore their constituents ; but admitting that 30
or 40 seats might be gained in addition to the
present " Conservative" numbers, would the
Duke of Wellington numerically govern his new
House ? Would he not, by such a dissolution,
call up more decided Reformers ?and would his
quondam enemies, the political unions, sup-
port the destructive Administration against the
public opinion of the reformed constituency ?
Would the Whigs out of office leave him any
rest in either House of Parliament ? The ruse
is a miserable and shallow deception. If the
Reform Acts have not realized so early as ex-
pected the sanguine expectations of the people,
they have at least given the people ample power
to destroy a Tory Administration. The return
of such a Government—its co-existence with a
reformed House of Commons—is impossible;
and if the Duke of Wellington flatters himself
that he can retake the citadel ofthe Horse Guards,
he is as miserably deceived as he proved himself
in May, when he risked the Throne of the King,
and placed the nation on the verge of revolution.
We suspect that Sir R. Peel knows more of the
state of the public mind, and would risk neither
his property nor his political station in such a
mad project. His Grace is old enough to turn
his thoughts, beneficially, from this to another
world. And who are these wild and infuriated
aristocrats who call themselves, par excellence,
loyal, and the exclusive friends of the Monarchy?
They are the real enemies of his Majesty; the
genuine destructives ; the active republicans.
tot content with the lamentable injury they
perpetrated on William IV., in May last year,
they would again betray him, and again lay pros-
trate his popularity. Can they not discern that
they are scattering far and wide the seeds of an
early harvest of democracy ? Do they want the
substitute of an American King ? or are they
anxious to pull down, prematurely, the hereditary
Peerage ? Are the examples of Charles I. and
Louis XVI. lost on the Court of St. James ?
Have they not learned the European lesson of
the present century—" To-day, a throne ; to-
morrow is a prison !" The King has, however,
shown no ordinary courage in perplexing and
trying times; and on the good-sense and politi-
cal sagacity of his Majesty the country relies ;
ha has too much at stake himself to be deceived

by faction, by courtiers, or political maniacs.—
Morning Chronicle.
The Bill of the Solicitor-General to alter the
law of debtor and creditor, and abolish arrest for
debt, is one of the most important measures of
the present session, but it has been brought in
at so late a period of the session that, threatened
as it is with the opposition of Sir Robert Peel,
who never yet was capable of conceiving any sound
measure of legal reform, it is scarcely to be ex-
pected that it can pass before Parliament rises.
We know not why this Bill has been so long
delayed. The report of the Law Commissioners
on which it was founded, was laid before Parlia-
ment last year, and a Bill was promised to be
brought in as speedily as possible, in conformity
with the recommendation contained in the report.
The principle and general outline of the Bill
having been agreed upon a year ago, it was easy
for the law officers of the Crown to have per-
formed the mechanical work of arranging the
details, and drawing the Bill up in form, so as
to have it ready to lay before the House of Com-
mons at the commencement of the present ses-
sion. If so, it would, in all probability, by this
time have been the law of the land, and the
cruel, impolitic, and pernicious system, which it
is intended to supersede, would not have an.
other year to run, as there is now great reason
to apprehend. We shall be glad, however, to find
that we have over-estimated the difficulties that
stand in the way of the Bill. The law of
debtor and creditor we have so often and amply
discussed, that we can add nothing new upon the
subject. It is several years since we first called
the attention of Parliament and the public to
the defective state of that important branch of
our civil jurisprudence—we more especially de •
precated the practice of arrest for debt, and
contended for its abolition on the several grounds
of policy, equal justice, and humanity. We
showed that the law which pledged the body of
the debtor as a security for his debt, engenders
a species of false credit, which affords that large
class of persons who are not unwilling to live
beyond their means a temporary accommodation
at the price of permanent ruin—here is its im-
policy. We showed that it confounds poverty
with guilt, and misfortune with crime--treating
a breach of contract like an act of felony, by the
deprivation of personal freedom, which crime
alone should forfeit;—here is its injustice. We
showed that it furnishes the creditor, if he be a
hard-hearted one, with the means of gratifying
a vindictive feeling by the total ruin of his
debtor, who, by being immured in a prison is too
often deprived of the last chance of retrieving
his affairs;—here is its inhumanity. And
besides all this it violates the first principle
of justice by constituting a 'plaintiff a judge
in his own case in the first instance ; for
upon his er parte statement, affirmed by
oath, the body of the defendant may be
arrested and thrown into gaol, although it
should subsequently appear, upon trial, that no
debt was due from the latter to the former, or
that the plaintiff was indebted to the defendant
in a larger sum than the latter owed the former.
Having stated all those arguments formerly, and
followed them out in all their bearings, it is the
less necessary to dwell upon them now that the
I public in general, and the Executive Govern-
tnent, appear to be convinced of their validity.
The report of the Law Commissioners was ably
drawn up, and developed a luminous view of the
question ; but all the material arguments of that
report, as far as the principle was concerned, we
had anticipated, and repeatedly urged at a time
when circumstances were most adverse, and when
nothing but a consciousness of the goodness of
the cause itself afforded us the most remote
prospect of successfully contending against the
prejudice and power arrayed on the other side.
We do not wonder that Sir Robert Peel, who,
by his iniquitous Currency Bill—that great le-
gislative fraud—added one-third, j, not one-half
to the debt of every debtor whether due on
mortgage, bond, or simple contract, by making
him pay in an enhanced gold currency what was
contracted in a depreciated paper currency ; we
do not wonder, we say, that Sir. Robert
Peel, who by that act of legalized wrong
and robbery, added about the value of three
hundred millions to the National Debt,
should exhibit a great deal of maidenly
timidity and coyness when it is propoied so to
reform the law of debtor and creditor, as to re-
lieve the former from oppression, and give the
latter such a mode of redress as sound justice
dictates, and as is worthy of a civilized country.
Sir Robert Peel is not a solitary instance of a
politician capable of rashly deranging the affairs
of a country on the side of his own interest, and
affecting an exceeding delicacy and caution
touching any measure of innovation which has
for its object nothing but the prevention of in-
justice and the promotion of the public good.
As to the particular merits of the Bill of the
Solicitor-General, we must defer our opinion
until we see the Bill itself. We always advo-
cated the principle of making the property at-
tachable instead of the person. If there be no
property, the taking the person can serve no
other purpose than to gratify revenge ; and in
all cases where there is property the arrest puts
into the pockets of sheriffs' officers, keepers of
sponging-houses, gaolers, and (slier harpies of
the law, a considerable portion of the money
that ought to go to the creditor. There is one
provision of the Bill which, we would suggest
to the Solicitor-General, if not carefullyguarded,
might be a means of producing the very oppres-
sion which the Bill is intended to prevent.• We
allude to the arrest of the person on affidavit
made that the party is in meditatione fugcc.
Such a power of arrest ought not to be allowed
unless the plaintiff gave security to prove that
the defendant actually meditated flight. The
affidavit to hold to bail, under the existing
law, is often abused to purposes of malice and
revenge. The affidavit to arrest under the pro-
posed law, might open a door for the most op-
pressive violations of the principle of the Bill,
by enabling debtors to be arrested on the oaths
of suspicious and fanciful or vindictive creditors
where nothing was farther from their mind than
meditating flight. This could only be known
by some overt act, and if so known it would be
capable of proof, and the person making the
affidavit should be bound to prove it. As to
the cessio bonorum—the making copyhold pro-
perty liable as well as freehold, and granting,
execution on bonds, bills, &c., when due, with-
out the expense asid delay of a law suit, unless
the defendant put in security for costs—likewise
the compulsory disclosure of property, and the
distinction taken between fraudulent and holiest
debtors, they seem to be all very proper provi-
skins; but, as we said before, we must reserve
our opinion upon the particular merits of the
Bill until we know more of its details.—
Morning Herald.

The Journals which convey to the apprehen-
sion of the public the various sentiments of
various sections of the Government, have been
predicting coming events with a marvellous una-

Cr. 2,37,06,100
By Government securities 1,52,510
By Bank shares—Bengal, Union, and Commercial
By Marine Insurance and Oriental Life Insurance
shares
By shipping property, including the Forbes steamer 3,9 ~000
By houses and landed property 10,93,900
By sundries—viz. share in the India Gazette, two
steam-engines, and Pachstte Colliery (Burdwan) 1,13,000
By indigo factories
By civil servants'debts
By military ditto
By private itniividuals unconnected with the services 20,88,000
By corn:num' debts and those of indigo planters 19,23,000
By surplus consignments short drawn

BY SUSPENSE ACCOUNTS. 98,78,310
Philippine Company
Coffee Plantations
Indigo factories formerly belonging to the
estate of Messrs. Mercer and Co 8,00,000

31,08,000

BY PROFIT AND LOSS.
Depreciation of value of sundry prope•ty,
bad debts, &c., as estimated by com-

mittee
44,74,916
By profit and loss written °lrby the house
as actual loss

1,21,08,740

2,50,9.5,050
A meeting of the creditors of Alexander and
and Co. took place on the 7th of February, when a motion
was made and carried offering a commission of 2 per
cent. on dividends, as a remuneration to the assignees,
and to cover all expenses, including establishment ; but
the assignees declined accepting the offer, stating that such
a commission was quite inadequAte to meet the expenses
of the ordinary establishment, without affording any sum
to pay those partners whose mistime was required, or to
give any remuneration for their own time and labour.
Tt e meeting broke up, and the subject is left for the deci-
sion of the Insolvent Court.

Within the next six weeks the registering
under the Mom Act must take place, when it is to be hoped
that the many hundreds who omitted I ist year to avail
themselves of their elective franchise, will now ',smelts
themselves of it. It may be as well that persons who
have changed their residence should know, that that cir.
cumstance requires that they should re-regiver their votes.
The gale had a very strong effect on the
tide. In many parts of the river above London-bridge,
where there is usually a considerable depth of water,
persons might walk about on dry land. Early yesterday
morning the tide was so Low at Blackfriar's-bridge, that
six out of the nine arches were left dry, and several buys
actu illy .valked across the bed of the river. On Tuesday
night the floating bath; at Westminster-bridge hid no
water, sod was aground for seven hours. The injury
done to the bolts and small craft is most extensive, and
many have been lost!