The Sun.
London, England, 1856-04-01 00:00:00

THE " WHISPER OF FACTION."

(Fromm the Dispatch. )
There are 'few features of our time more ominous of
the future, or significant of the recent past, than the
striking disruption of the political ties which formerly
bound citizens and their common principles of govern-

ment up in a bond of co-operation in Parliament, and of
firm union before the face of the country. The issues
of political power and the forces of government being
centred in the Howe of Commons, it was early seen

that to " doctor" the theory of popular election by the

. .
practices of
,norruption and by the perversion of the elec
tive system, was the only way whereby government,•by
mt.narchy or an oligarchy, e :uld be possible. King and
lords, therefore, set their wits, and, we may add, their
creatures, the judges of the laud, Co watk,'to mould the
las, the electors and the suffrage districts to their pur-
pose.. When other interests arose, these were assumed
into the general partnership of corruption ; and, in place
of divid;ng, added to, the strength of the vicious system.
The Church, the Eivst India Company, the B,nk of Eng-
land, the municipal corporations, the colonial, the ship-
ping, the aizecultural interests, sopped by exclusive
privileges, differential duties, and protective tariffs and
riAts, conspired with the army, the navy, and the sti-
yendiaries of the State, to strengthen the fir-1 and second
t states at the expense of the third. War came and no it,
drowning us in debt. Protection over-reached itself, and
found that it had smothered its fondlings into feebleness

and ruin. Discontented exclusiveness and grumbling

privilege quarrelled with its accomplices in the plunder
of the pu4lic. Catholic emancipation shook the loyalty
of the Church to the cause of corruption ; and the
Reform Bill, albeit defective in details, " took
away the breath" of veteran reformers by the exterit
and thoroughness of its changes. Even that great
chatt.tr of the people would perhaps have failed to eradi-
cate the peccant humours of the elder Adam from our
political system, had that been a sillittry measure. But
the depression of commerce throng monopoly, and the
crippling of our manufacturers by the protective policy,
at the very time they had to sustain a fierce competition
in neutral markets with formidable and unfettered rival,,
necessitated, under our burdensome dispensation of na-
ti;Mal debt and extravagant expenditure, an entire ex-

plosion of the protective system. The charter of the
East India Company went first ; the corporations were
converted into provincial free Parliaments ; Cetholice
an,: Dissenters invaled the civil privileges of Chtirch-
men ; the colonial tubs were made to stand on their own
leaky bottoms ; the home shipping was ma le to sink or
swine as its own seaworthiness or otherwise might find
it ; even bread was untaxed, the farmers expored to the
breezes of competition, and home manufacturers left to
sustain their own merits in competition with their foreign
rivals in the colonies and the mother-country. Those
privileges, the creatures of statutes wade by their bene-
ficiaries, have gradually been destroyed ; and there has
for some time ceased to be any motive presented to large
classes of the community to command the issues of Par-
liamentary power, and, therefore, to combine together
with other estates to defy their common enemy, the great
body of the nation. While these ruined interests, no
longer of any social account, have been unable any longer
to sustain their Parliamentary position, the new
policy of free trade has called into existence other
classes essentially popular and independent in their
spirit and tendencies. The unprivileged shipowner and
merchant, the unprotected manufacturer and land-
owner, thriving by the freedom of commerce,
competing in wealth with even the hereditary aristocracy,
have sought to crown the ambition of their success by
seats in Parliament. The railway system and other
great joint-stock undertakings have given enormous
wealth, suddenly acquired in open competition to persons
sprung from the ranks, sometimes the dregs of the
people. Having no other badge and sign of social dis-
tinction open to them, these parvenus and 720tirCaux riches
have instinctively turned their eyes to that which would
command for them the attention and flattery of the
titled and the powerful. A seat in "the House" is the
"(pen sesatne " to rank, fashion, society, high life ; and
Parliament is populated from the Stock Exchange, the
counting-house, the factory, with engineers, contractors,
manufacturers, steam-shipeing managers and railway
directors. In "the good old time, when George 111.
was King," men entered Parlament with definite public
objects and specific political views. They were not,
indeed, suffered to climb the steep of power until they
had pledged themselves to a distinct political confession,
The members were all nominees of others who held the
strongest opinions on affairs of state, and looked upon
seats in Parliament solely as the instruments whereby
those were to be upheld and enforced. With the de-
struction of corporatora, monopolists and ecclesiastical
ascendancy, the powers of nomination have ceased.
Men enter into Parliament as mere political amateurs.
they
pledged
T
ton o party,heyear and utterly indifferent to
mere politicalelitPieadl views.
too rich to be drawn
within the influences of the Treasury or the at.
iacl
most:here of the .blandishments of the Opposition
whipper-in. The nicest calculations of faci can•
not count their noses, and party has become, on
all sides, a mere rope of sand. Party leaders, in place of
resisting the innovation, have lent their influence to the
change, and responded to the spirit of the time. Sir
Robert Peel brolee up his party. The Liberals have
always been too disunited to sustain each other in office
with the firmness and unanimity which would enable
their leaders to dispense with the occasional assistance
of the Opposition to defeat their own supporters, and,
therefore, they have been in a chronic state of resigna-
tion for many years. They have, however, always as if
by common consent, instinctively united against Tory-
ism whenever in the exigencies of party it surprised
itself into office. The recent coalition was a virtual ac-
knowledgment that parties bad failed and were super-
seded by a temporary union of abstract principles.
Broken up by the capricious secession of the leader of
the Reformers, that combination has been succeeded by
a scratch pack of all parties; and now we are assured that
Palmerston holds office only on sufferance, until peace
is proclaimed ; that party is dead ; that there are no
factions at all, and that all Government is very nearly at
a dead lock. It is said that faction is the madness of
the many for the gain of the few ; but it requires a high
attainment of political principle and public intelligence
to do without it. To that moral height we fear we have

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