The Sun.
London, England, 1833-11-22 00:00:00

not have been the placing of the Duke of
Orleans on the throne, who had hid his face until
the peril was over, and then came forward to
gather the spoils of a victory to which he did not
contribute, at least by any act of personal valour,
or by taking any share in the dangers of a
revolution. Every where, in short, in every
Government of Europe, there appears to be a
combination to destroy the liberty of the press.
Even the three Northern Powers, as they are

called, within whose dominions such a thing as
the liberty of the press is not known, have con •
sputpd to crush what freedom does exist in the
smail and once independent States of Germany.
They who Wish to rule by the strong hand of
despotism naturally hate and persecute the press
as the watchman of the people's liberties. Mock
patriots, who toast that liberty at their political
banquets, who flatter the press as if it were an
idol, while it feeds their vanity by emblazoning
their hollow speeches, and recommending them
for the honours of poPolar fame, become its
most virulent persecutors when it takes liberties
with themselves. Louis Philip has not evinced
a better inclination to destroy the power that
raised him than his friend Lord Durham, hot

from the fumes of patriotic dinners and the
froth of democratic speeches.—Morn. Herald.
The Corporation Commission is now, on all
hands, admitted to be illegal, and those who
have been most strenuously supporting that
Commission are at length driven to The dis-
graceful necessity of saying that they supported
it, knowing it to be illegal. But, of course,
nobody believes them. It is a fact that the
whole periodical press, with a few exceptions,
took the legality of the Commission for granted.
It is a fact that the Corporations throughout the
country generally took the legality of the Com.
mission as a matter not to he disputed. And,
although we and a few other journals, who did
not see the matter in the same light, may won-
der at and deplore the general infatuation, we
cannot condemn it with much severity. That
the Ministers of the Crown, acting under the
guidance of the legal advisers of the Crown,
should issue an illegal and invalid Commission,
was a supposition so monstrous that the rejec-
tion of it, even without inquiry, can scarcely
afford ground for censure. It is now, how-
ever, admitted, that the Ministers of the
Crown have issued a Commission which is
illegal and invalid ; that by overstraining the
prerogative they have exposed it to defiance and
contempt ; that, by an impotent invasion of the
rights of the subject, they have shown an enmity,
at once virulent and feeble, to liberty, law,
and justice. This is the plain import of the
daily language of the Ministerial Journals.
The Corporations of England have generally
manifested some weakness in submitting to the
illegal inquisition sent among them by the tyran-
nical Ministers of the Crown. In any other
respect their character has sustained no injury.
The inquiry, such as it has been, has produced
perhaps some instances of corrupt or equivocal
conduct ; but, in proportion to the number of
Corporations whose conduct has been scruti-
nized, these instances have been few, fewer,
we venture to say, than a similar scrutiny would
elicit, if such a scrutiny could be instituted,
with reference to the personal and social conduct
of individuals in any class of society. But be
the results of the inquiry still in progress what
they may, they are plainly worth nothing,
now that the illegality of the inquiry itself is
universally admitted. The records of an illegal
Commission can only be so much waste paper.
The only use for which this inquiry could have
been intended was to serve as a foundation for
some legislative enactment. And what delibe-
rative assembly worthy of the name will permit
the records of lawless itinerants to lay upon
their table or be quoted in their debates ? There
is at least one branch of the British Legislature
to the table of which, it may fairly be expected,
that evidence taken illegally will never be per-
mitted to approach. And if the records of
these Commissioners be merely waste paper,
what an unprincipled robbery will have been
perpetrated upon the community ? Their
salaries are not waste paper. The expense to
which, in their roving inquiries, the have sub-
jected corporations and individuals cannot be de-
frayed by waste paper. The public will have had
real value extorted from them in exchange for
something which is of no value whatever. There
is undoubtedly great merit in having successfully
withstood, by means of passive resistance, a
proceeding so nefarious as that which we have
imperfectly described. But, if passive resist-
ance be thus meritorious and successful, how
glorious a field must remain for active hostility.
The Merchant Tailors' Company have no ma-
gisterial power. It is no province of theirs to
say that an illegal commission shall not be per-
mittei to commence its operations in the city of
London. They have shown that the commis-
sion is illegal 11 setting authority at defiance,
and it now remains for those who exercise ma-
gisterial powers in the city of London to do
the rest. Would the Magistracy of the city of
London permit mountebanks or strolling players
to exhibit their antics in the Guildhall appropri-
ated to municipal proceedings ? Would they
permit such disorderly and unauthorised
itinerants to erect a stage for tumbling
and rope-dancing within atiy part of the
limits of their jurisdiction ? The grave
and sober Aldermen of London would no
doubt promptly issue their interdict against any
such preposterous undertaking. And will they
then permit a mock tribunal to be established in
their city, founded upon no law, authorised by
no competent authority, a focus for the concen-
tration of all imaginable falsehoods, slanders,
and perjuries? Will they tolerate men invested
with no public character of any kind presuming
to administer oaths within their jurisdiction ?
Will they endure that their fellow citizens,
whose rights and characters it is their duty to
protect, " shall be unjustly accused by perjury
and not have any remedy ; shall be defamed and
not have any traverse to it ?" We have no wish
to
his speakm ai
eds
ti
ys
se s pme chtifius lt leyr ofs htahvee gem
se
enl telctede n whom
for
orthe
discharge of an illegal function. They are to
be paid for what they do, or rather for what
they have done, and it was not for themto
question the legality of their own appointment.
But we do venture to say, that if they continue to
act under a Commission which is now confessed
on all hands to confer no authority they
will richly deserve whatever mortification and
whatever punishment may befal them. Magis-
trates, while they punish mountebanks and other
itinerant impostors as enemies to the public
peace and welfare, are guilty of gross incon-
sistency if they tolerate pretenders of a far more
mischievous description, who presume to ad-
minister oaths in the name of the King, for
which the swearers can never be made respon-
sible on earth, and, by the aid of witnesses thus
irresponsible,. to pass judgment upon the cha-
racter of ancient institutions and the conduct