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

THE "WHISPER OF FACTION."

( Front the Dispatch. )
There are few features of our time more ominous of
the future, or significant of the recent past, than the
t,triking disruption of the political ties which formerly
bound citizens and their common principles of govern-
ment up in a bond of cooperation 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 House of Commons, it was_early
.sPen
that to " doctor" the theory of popular election by the
practices of corruption and by the perversion of the elec
tive system, was the only way whereby government, by
monarchy or an oligarchy, e ,old be possible. King and
lords, therefore, set their wits, and, we may add, their
creatures, the judges of the land, to work, to mould the
la 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
f dividing, added to, the strength of the yielous rystem.
The Church, the East India Company, the Rink of Eng-
land, the municipal corporations, the colonial, the ship-
ping, the agricultural interests, sopped by exelusile
privileges, differential duties, and protective tarin and
rights, conspired with the army, the navy, and the sti-
endiaries of the State, to strengthen the first and second
estates at the expense of the third. War came and welt,
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 public. 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 extent
and thoroughness of its changes. Even that great
charter of the people would perhaps have failed to eradi-
cate the peccant burnoure of the elder Adam from our
political system, had that been a solitary measure. Bat
the depression of commerce through 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 rivals,
necessitated, under our burdensome dispensation of na-
tional debt and extravagant expenditure, an entire ex-
plosion of the protective system. The charter of the
East India Company went first ; the cerporations were
converted into provincial friee Parliaments ; Catholics
and Dissenters invaded the civil privileges of 'Church-
men ; the colonial tubs were made to stand on their own
leaky bottoms ; the home shipping was ma le to sink or
swim as its own seaworthiness or otherwise might find
it ; even bread was untaxed, the farmers exposed to the
breezes of competition, and home manufacturers left to
sustain their oven merits in competition with their foreign
rivals in the colonies and the mother-country. Those
privileges, the creatures of statutes made by their bene-
ficiaries, have gradually been destroyed ; and there has
for some time ceased to be any motive presented to large
naoebdnm le,eyn a, t
ntt
ihhyneei
longer
interests,nrnhgeereae,
new
classes of the community to command the issues of Par-
liamentary power, and, therefore, to combine together
tblwoooindt
longer
euorostftobatfeiharneneystnti
siaaoetticieroisantl. to
cadefyocrN :i)Parliamentary
theirnllinaitore,
nh tataialiEreodeys common
been
lEpou(nioniesnupieetnendi
policy of free trade has called into existence other
classes essentially p
spirit and tendencies. The unprivileged shipowner and
S 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 nouveaux recites
have instinctively turned their eyes to that which would
command for them the attention and flattery of the
high
i and
Parliament
titled and the powerful. A seat in "the House" is the
"c
hmi oi
ttni,
e society,stock Exchange, re ; ,
u
engineers,
acontractors,nge
manufacturers, eteam-shipping 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,
countingfeu sesame
e-
sha om is'ul se e' '
p, ot t populated
ue rank,l
factory,at e
fashion,
with
indeed, suffered to climb the steep of power until they
bad 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 corporators, monopolists and ecclesiastical
ascendancy, the powers of nomination have ceased.
Men enter into Parliament as mere political amateurs.
They are pledged to no party, and utterly indifferent, to
mere political views. They are too rich to be drawn
within the influences of the Treasury or the at-
mosphere of the blandishments of the Opposition
whipper-in. The nicest calculations of faction 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 broke up his party. The Liberals have
always been too disunited to sustain each other in office
1 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 had 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 deadlock. 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