The Sun.
London, England, 1860-01-10 00:00:00

any reformer, to hand over the supreme power to
this or to that section of the community ? If that
section is not, naturally, the predominant class,

what right has he to make it so by merely artificial

arrangements ?
We are amongst the most willing to acknow-
ledge the claims of our " old nobility" and terri-

torial gentlemen ; but our new nobility have at least
equal claims an the generation which has created
them ; and our educated gentlemen whose depen-

dente is, not the acres or the titles their father left
them, but the intelligence and industry which has

made them what they are, are surely not inferior

as persons to the former. We deprecate " setting
class against class," but how can that be done more
effectively than by constructing Reform Bills in-
tended to give the predominance to one class—and
that, too, the smallest class in the land ? The land-
owners number, we are told, about 30,000 persons
Could anything be more calculated to irritate the

seven millions of other male adults in the nation

than to learn that a youngest son of one of the thirty
thousand having got the question of Reform into his
hands, and having contrived to spread abroad an

opinion that he was a thorough Liberal, should turn
round after he had got his bill through Parliament
and tell the seven millions, " it was always my in-

tention that the Bill should place you in the power
of the 30,000." Was this right ? And if not, what
security have we that the same trick will not be
repeated? Had it been avowed in 1831, the reform-
ing "millions" of Birmingham and Yorkshire would
hardly have been so enthusiastic in support of the
Whig Cabinet of the day ; and it is the certainty
that the old. spirit is not departed from our aristo-
cratic Reformers that renders every one lukewarm
now. Any Bill they may bring forward will
either, on the face of it, be a second bill for the
perpetuation of Whig and Tory ascendancy, or it
will be one in which that purpose will be pretty
easily detected.
There is, however, a kind of fatality accompany-
ing the possession of power. Of how many a despot
are we continually saying, how strong he might make
himself. The mass 3f mankind are in general but
too easily governed. Indulge them by anticipation
almost in what they will soon understand to be
theirs by right, and instead of stimulating the
craving for more, it disposes them to confide in the
ruler who gives rather more than they ask. A firm
hand is repressing what the community under-
stands to be crimes, and a generous one is conced-
ing powers which they know, or will speedily
know, to be their rights, is the obvious way to
secure both respect and attachment. Despots rarely
perceive this : they press the paternal theory till
the children convince them by rebellion and revolu-
tion that these would-be fathers are but selfish and
self-willed pedagogues, whom the men they would
treat as children have outstripped in intelligence.
We have ceased to wonder at this in despots; it is
their innate, their original sin. A baptism of blood
is too often the only one which can regenerate
them.

But the same folly in the leaders of a party in a
.ree community may well be wondered at. Lord
JOHN RUSSELL and the Hon. BENJAMIN DISRAELI
alike know well that the path to political power in
this country is that of fair dealing with the many.
Mr. BRIGHT, indeed, painted so vividly in this
Birmingham speech the noble part Mr. DISRAELI
acted as the teacher of real liberalism to his party
—quoting also his avowal of last June, that any
measure for extending the saffrage in boroughs
must be a sincere not a delusive one—that we
almost imagine the angry scowl at Mr. BRIGHT of
the great organ for the Palmerston Cabinet was due
to this honest praise of the great Tory leader. in the
Commons. It was too plainly telling the exclu-
sives of the Whig factions, "If you do not
understand that a ' sincere' Reform Bill
is the path to power—take care; there
is a gentleman of vast influence and ability
on the other side of the house who cannot
indeed, in public, go too far ahead of his party, but
who is already himself quite ahead of them—and
who is fast teaching' them lessons, which will
make the Tories the sincere Liberals, and leave the
Whigs to become what that party is already in
America—the Tories of a better order of things."
Englishmen are not Americans. They, at least, like
an aristocracy. Let the aristocracy but trust the
people, let them, by frank and unexpected conces-
sions in Parliamentary Reform, show the people that
they are willing to be an aristocracy on the basis of
the freest institutions, and the many rhey trust will
be a source to them of considerable strength. We
believe no man in England knows this better than
Mr. DISRAELI and the late Premier's son. They
cannot go too far beyond their party at a bound.
They must say the least they can for what their
party will accept ; but does any observant man
doubt their real views ?
We heartily believe then, in the latter part of
the sentence we quoted from Mr. BRIGHT at the
commencement. Any Ministry which will do what
is" right" in regard to a Reform Bill, and will then
stake their existence on their bill, will be the people's
Ministry. No" dodges" would suffice to eject them.
The people would have them. It is right that all who
contribute to the national taxation should have a
vote on the taxes they have to pay ; right that their
representation should be fairly equalled in power
by the members being reasonably apportioned to
the number of elector] in each constituency ; it is
right that the electors should be protected against
undue influence by the BALLOT, and that by the
same means, and by others in addition, the upright
and independent electors should be protected against
having their votes nullified by the corrupt and
venal few. These things are simply right. Pro-
posed by any Cabinet, they would impart to it the
irresistible strength of right. They would be a
moral artillery which no hostile faction could with-
stand. The Cabinet which proposed them would
be the People's Cabinet.
T'S

However briefly we are constrained to do so, we
cannot but refer to the singularly able resume of our
Social Progress during the last decade as given
elsewhere in the tantalisingly abbreviated or fore-
shortened report of the last Charge (to the local jury)
delivered on Friday by the learned Recorder of
Hull. A charge from the lips of Mr. WARREN is
at all times certain to evidence some earnest purpose
which the learned gentleman is bent upon
inculcating. It is invariably full of ripe
and sound deductions, arrived at by calm
and deliberate reflections, these reflections con-
scientiously enforced throughout by a variety of
striking and pertinent illustrations. The Charge
delivered on Friday, however, was far more than
this—it was above things impressively sugges-
tive. It constituted a standing point upon which
the learned Recorder paused at the close of another
decade to cast a retrospective glance back down the
vista of those ten years which have just been tra-
versed ; afterwards casting an anticipative gaze
into those mysti
ten years, cal and for the most part inscrutable
beyond the merest verge of which we are
now adventuring. All these retrospections and an-
ticipations having especial and solemn reference to
the Social Progress already made, and that addi-
tional Social Progress likely to be made in the im-
mediately ensuing hereafter. Pausing, as we have
said, upon that point of separation between the two