The Sun.
London, England, 1860-03-02 00:00:00

denial would be taken, and at last—just the other I
evening, Lord JOHN disavowed any knowledge of
the annexation of Savoy to France. He went
further : he disbelieved that so great a man as the
Emperor NAPOLEON could not have contemplated
such:a junction, for that he was too wise and chival-
rous a Monarch ever to cherish such an
idea. Well, ' now, but forty-eight hours
after such a declaration on the part of our reform-
ing Minister—NAPOLEON, in vulgar phrase, " lets
the cat out of the bag," and openly proclaims his
purpose ! So that what was so often

"Denounced as fable, yet believed as truth,"

has actually been ratified by the " greatest " and
wisest of men !

After this, what will people think of the wise
ones of the Earth ? How can they reconcile pro-
fession with practice ? Monarchs are but men, and
seldom to be believed even when they speak the
truth.

The EMPEROR'S Speech, instead of tending to
Peace, will generate, if not confirm, well-founded
alarm for the future peace of Europe. He seems
indeed to prove that he is the man of destiny,
and wall go on heedless of his fate. He has not
increased his navy without a purpose, and he may
yet learn to regret its fate.

At length our great Reformer has brought forth
his—Bill. Disappointed we are not. We ex-
pected too little for that. Let us see what we have.
Half a million or so from the five or six millions of
the unenfranchised are added to the million of the
enfranchised. Twenty-five boroughs, which have
no claim to a separate representation, having,
nevertheless, two members each, are to lose one.
The counties are to have fifteen of twenty-five new
seats—the boroughs, old and new, ten. The borough
franchise is to be £6 rental—the county franchise
£lO rental. These are the main points of the third
' Bill of Lord JOHN RUSSELL. We have sketched
below the principal points of his two former Bills ;
also of Mr. BRIGHT'S and Mr. DISRAELI'S ; and
our readers can compare them all at their leisure.

The general character of the bill is, that it is
made to get through. Whigs and Tories are to take
it with thanks that it can do them no harm.
Radicals are not to grumble, because it may, here
and there, do them a little good, although the least
possible; moreover, Mr. VILLIERS, and one of the
firm of GIBSON, COBDEN and BRIGHT, is in the
Cabinet, and the firm has secured a French treaty
and the repeal of the paper duty; Manchester Radi-
calism is bound over, therefore, in heavy securities,
to keep the peace. What might be the issue of a
Cabinet disruption now no tongue in Manchester
could tell. A homoeopathic Reform Bill must
Therefore be swallowed. It can do no harm ; real
Reform can be talked about another year when the
tariff and the treaty are safe, if, indeed, Manchester
and Birmingham be not then getting too much by
the Treaty to care a straw about politics.
The Bill will, indeed, if it become an act, hardly
affect, we believe, half-a-dozen votes. It may be
termed a Bill for keeping Toryism, Whiggism,
and Radicalism where they are. The minimum of
change in respect to redistribution of seats and
franchise, is so ordered that constituencies already
large and liberal enough will be made yet larger;
while constituencies too small, and consequently the
subjects of patronage or of purchase, will be nearly
as small as ever. Why should the present House
of Commons, why should the Opposition quarrel
with this ? It is mild, even compared with the Bill
of 1854. That had a considerable number
of disfranchisements, although it gave so
many additional members to the counties ;
and it abolished the rate-paying nuisance.

The present bill, perhaps of necessity, has no dis-
franchisements, though what title the inhabitants
of Thetford, Arundel, &c., have to be more than
county voters, it is impossible to see.
The Bill wants two things, which alone can
entitle any bill to be termed a Reform Bill—it
does not attempt a distribution of seats in any
reasonable proportion to population, and it
does not emancipate the counties and purify the
boroughs by the ballot: In both these respects it
stands about on a level with Mr. DISRAELI'S Bill.
It does not indeed create the rock-a-head on which
his measure was wrecked —it does not
rouse up the wrath of the borough forty-
shilling freeholders by proposing to deprive them
of their second vote in the counties, and it proposes
to take securities against the creation of fictitious
£lO voters in the counties. These points and the
reduction of the Borough Franchise we acknow-
ledge to be good as far as they go. They increase
the constituency, and do not subtract from the
counties the liberal influences of the large boroughs.
But what can be the advantage to popular

power of all the additions to the constituencies,
unless they be rendered independent additions P
We are not more convinced than we have ever been,
that the £lO householders in the counties,
with open voting, will be more independent
than the present electors. They will to a
large extent consist of those little cliques, the par-
son, squire, churchwarden, and a village tradesman
or two, who are actually now sending up their
petitions in thousands, signed by four or ten per-
sons, in behalf of Church-rates ! Any village
will furnish a little batch of voters of this
kind, all of them completely at the
mercy of the rural authorities. On the

other hand, in the towns, the power of the m

lionairee and roasters will be augmented ; greater
numbers of their workmen will obtain votes, which
must be—votes for their masters.

The bill has one grand merit. On that ground

it cannot be too highly commended. It leaves plenty

of work for Reformers. The real reform of the
Ballot is all to come ; and come it will, much as
Lord JOHN " hates it." It is no finality bill. It

will not " settle Parliamentary Reform for five and

twenty years." It will do as Lord JOHN'S last ;
but we must som have a better man's first. The
Noble Lord has served his own and that of the aris-
tocracy ; the people must now have some one to
serve theirs. It was asked whether we were to
if the bill passed. Why should
have a dissolution,
we ? A different Ministry being in office might
make a little difference to a new Parliament ;tut,
as for the bill itself, it will leave the House about
what it now is.

It may be interesting, just now, to recal distinctly
the principal features of each of the Reform
schemes which have been presented fully and
fairly to the country. They pass, indeed, so
rapidly from memory that it is not easy, without
resorting to the well-known cemeteries, to obtain
clear information of the days of their birth and
death, the more so, since the " fates only showed
them to the world, nor suffered them longer to
exist." Long had Lord 3oIIJI RUSSELL opposed
every improvement, however obviously required, in
his first Reform Bill. Finality was his real eoc-
trine, though popular ridicule compelled him, so
far as words went, to recant it. Still more was
aristocracy the love of his inmost heart, and
though he had been contemptuously kicked about
himself by the Tory landlords in the counties, and
had to get a friend to resign, to secure him aParlic-
mentary voice through a thoroughly liberal
borough, he yet sternly resisted the Ballot, and