The Sun.
London, England, 1860-01-19 00:00:00

MAJESTY'S army when they are first going through
their facings and practising the goose step. " Eyes
right"—when they are goggling in all directions
" Stand at ease "—when every limb is in a
state of angular discomfort These and all
the other mystic directions of the drill-yard
are not one jot less eminently ridiculous
at the outset among one class of recruits than among
another—call them by what name you please, royal
soldiers, militiamen, or rifle volunteers. And as to
the hopelessness of any set of these recruits ever
winning their way to a state of efficiency, how
many raw recruits, we wonder—men who had never,
as the phrase is, fleshed sword er bayonet, men
who had never before smelt (when burnt in earnest)
a single grain or whiff of gunpowder—how many
of these recruits went up the hill of Alma to a
glorious victory ? How many for that matter
passed triumphantly through the deadly whirl-
wind of death careering forty-five years
ago, upon a certain Sunday in the Belgian
summer, over the plains of Waterloo ?
Why, it is a mere farce for Lord MELVILLE, as
General Commanding in North Britain—even sup-
posing, for the sake of example, that he were the
oldest veteran in the army—it is the merest absurdity
for him, or for any other professional wearer of the
sword, to be jeering, and flouting, and deriding any
body of recruits, be they riflemen, or militiamen,
or QUEEN'S soldiers, simply because they were but
yesterday mere civilians, simply because the briefest
interval has elapsed since their enrolment. It is
an egregious folly this which might be demon-
strated as such by the light thrown upon it from
almost any page of history. To know this Lord
MELVILLE need not go so far back in his researches.
He need go no farther back than the annals of the
last generation. He may there recognise at every
turn of the leaf, as he reads the marvellous
volume, that the greatest soldier of modern, per-
haps of any times in the annals of the world,
overran Europe during several successive years
with a series of armies of raw recruits,
young artisans and peasants, gathered from the
plough and the workshop by the agency of the in-
exorable proscription. The vieux soldats, the scarred
and tawny veterans of the Emperor and King
NAPOLEON being but a comparatively small and
numerically insignificant portion of any one of his
vast and triumphant armies, of the army of Ma_
rengo or of Austerlitz, of Wagram, or of Moskowa.
And the recruits there were led on for "glory "
they were martialled not so much for the defence
of their own homes, as for the ravage of the homes
of others. In a word, the derision expressed by
Lord MELVILLE, in reference to the Rifle Corps j
movement, may be most aptly and accurately pro-
nounced a betise a word happily signifying,
among our gallant neighbours across the Channel,
at once a stupidity and an indecorum.
It is a pleasant indication, by the way, of the
enormous value in which the opinions of Lord
MELVILLE are manifestly held in this matter by
his gallant fellow-countrymen, that Scotland has
already, in answer to the national summons, en-
rolled under the two heads of rifles and
artillery a goodly total of upwards of fourteen
thousand volunteers. To Lord MELVILLE himself
this must be an indication of the value in which his
opinions are held, especially agreeable and de-
lightful.

Domestic politics will soon become of more
pressing interest than those of Italy and Hungary.
The latter will, W.l. hope, share in Parliament the
attention which would best represent the sympathy
of England with civil and. religious liberty, and the
struggle to attain it everywhere. Parliamentary
Reform, however, must be the grand topic. It is
the one in which there will be most room for dis-
cussion. With the exception of Mr. BOWYER and
the few Catholic members who fancy that the
Romans should be political slaves for "the glory
of God and the good of the Catholic Church," then
will be none to dispute that our practical policy
should be non-intervention, and that our moral
influence should be used, not to uphold incapable
rulers, but the right of subjects to be ruled as they
please. Reform will be the subject of conflicts
and divisions ; the POPE and his crew of eccle-
siastics will be left to steer their vessel as best
they can, and will probably not be the subject
of a motion on which a division can be taken.

Of course we are all in suspense as to the
specific intentions of the Government. It may
be that they will bring forward some fran-
chise practically very different from the one which
common report speaks of—the £lO county and
£6 borough franchise. Lord JOHN himself sug-
gested them on the eve of the great division, but
adroit limitations may reduce materially the not
very large addition they will make to the con-
stituencies—to the borough constituencies at least.

Now, it is surely time that intelligent Reformers
should consider well by what measure they shall
test any Reform Bill which may be presented. The
professed object of every bill is to make the re-
presentation of the people more of a reality.
Neither our Whigs nor our Tories will acknowledge
that the changes they may propose are designed to
strengthen their party. They all agree that
to collect the opinion of the more intelligent
portion of the public is their object. Pro-
perty qualifications for electors are adopted,
as all agree, because they are a rough test of intel-
ligence. It is presumed that the man who has a
little money has either possessed the native capa-
city which enabled him to rise in life, or that he is
descended from those who could afford him a decent
education. The opinion of this large class of per-
sons is the avowed desideratum. To include it
within the franchises proposed, and to enable it to
elect those whose sentiments on public matters it
prefers, is therefore the practical object of every
Reform Bill. A bill which accomplished both
these points would make representation a reality.

Is the course now taken by reformers the one to
attain these ends? We think not. We shall not
oppose the smallest bona fide improvement in our
representation, but we may be permitted to doubt
whether sincere reformers have done the best for
their object. They have placed extension of suf-
frage Suffrage, last. Their
first—Reality of
alleged reason is that the extension will lead to the
reality. We doubt it. We must think that the
order could be more successfully inverted. In Aus-
tralia, indeed, we Lave h case in point. There, pro-
tection to the voter was followed by an almost uni-
versal suffrage. Be this as it may, we hold that a
pure but comparatively limited suffrage is of more
value than a numerous constituency exposed to per-
verting influences. What we want in judges and
juries is not numbers, but fair ability and indepen-
dence. We need the same in constituencies. A
sufficient number of honest and sensible men of all
classes, could they but vote free from any influence
but that of public discussion in the press and at tLe
hustings, Would be a better constituency than tin
or twenty times their number, at the mercy of
threats and bribes,
of personal fears and hopes.
Lord STANLEY
and Sir E. LYTTON BULWER
both openly avowed that they wished the elective
power to remain, where it now
is, with
the middle
classes—that they had used it well
and would con-
tinue to do so. We have little doubt
Mr. DISRAELI
cordially concurs with them. If any class has the

supreme electoral powcii certainly the one interme-
diate between the most numerous but illiterate,
and the select but most tempted to legislation for
themselves, seems fairest. But if these distin-
guished statesmen are consistent, they, too, ought
to be as earnest as any, to give their favourite class
a real representation. They may justly consider
themselves to be in a position parallel with that of
a judge at a trial, who, while he must feel his
superiority to the jury, has yet declared again and
again that he regards the plain practical sense of
the jury as of the highest value to him. So our
statesmen, with all their information and talent,
yet need the jury of an honest public to pronounce
their verdict on the practical worth of their policy.
For this, however, they need to have the unper-
verted sentiments of those to whom they appeal.
As to our Whigs, we hardly know what to say
to them. They ought, by all their professions, to
be most ready to accept our doctrine. Popular
liberty is continually on their tongues; we ought
to be able to believe them to be sincere. Yet, if
they postpone freedom of election to increase of
electors, we cannot think them so, and this is just
what they do. Not only what they do, but what
they would compel our ROEBUCKS, COBDENS,
BRIGHT s, LINDSAYS, and all hearty Reformers to do.
Extension now, they say—the Ballot when you can
get it ! This policy we denounce as the mockery of
Reform. We have already enough of electors of th•
'present sort; of borough electors accessible to the
innocents of Gloucester and Wakefield and Nor-
wich fame ; of county and agricultural borough
electors, accessible to the landlord's steward, and
as much at his mercy, electorally, as the slaves in
South Carolina, are to that:of their drivers. What we
need is not an increase of such unfortunates, but
their liberation. We want to give them their own
votes, that we may get at their own opinions, not
at the party wishes of their landlords. And there
are no means of effecting this but that of giving
them the Ballot. The county constituencies, above
all, are a sham, not a reality.

We call upon Reformers then to consider whether
they have not been duped by Lord JOHN RUSSELL.
We think they have. He has coaxed them into
accepting extensions of suffrage which Tories
would have given if pressed to do so ; they whisper
among themselves, and we shall get the Ballot and
independence afterwards ; but Lord John also
whispers to his timid ones—and his soothing whis-
per is—" Let them have extension as a sop—while
we have open voting they will never have inde-
pendence." Lord STANLEY and his friends avow
that they wish power to be in the hands of the
middle claises. Lord JOHN and his friends —prefer
to go lower, but it is to fence of the demand for
reality of representation.

31A CA ULA YIN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

JANUARY 9, 1860.
(From Punch.)
Among the men whose words and deeds

lie best has taught our time to prize;
Macaulay's honoured coffin lies,
Mid hush of jarring cliques and creeds.
A shadow falls upon his grave
When morning lights the eastern pane;
And one, when sunset splendours rain
Through the west window of the nave :
That by his recent marble thrown,
Who sang of Nelson and the North,
And " England's mariners" rang forth
In music like a trumpet-tone.

This, by his earlier statue flung,
Who in the lettered reign of Anne
Stands out, serenest type of man,
Best wielder of our English tongue—
Addison, Campbell—such the guards
At our Macaulay's head and feet;
And what companionship moro meet—
Of Essayists and Lyric bards—
For him, whose almost boyish breath
The battle-ballad's clarion blew,
And thence heroic war-notes drew,
To breathe a soul through ribs of death—

When the Armada's march he sang,
Along the guarded English steep,
While leaping watch-fires lit the deep,
And village bells defiance rang?

For him, whose later essays taught
To narrative fresh arts of grace ;
Gave to old truths a novel face,
And new to crystal clearness wrought ?

If with the genial English life
That in Sir Roger charms the mind,
Drawing us closer to our kind,
His brilliant pages were not rife,
Yet let us own the Art that threw
Concentred light on giant men;
Made Clive and Hastings breathe again,
And Laud and Strafford strive anew.

Fitly his resting place is given
With these great dead he loved so well.
Stand on his grave, and you may tell
The chief stars of our English heaven.

From Chaucer's glad May-morning beam,
To Spenser's planet rays that warm
Cold Allegory with a charm
Of life, seld given to Fancy's dream—
And Camden's steady light, that falls
In each dim nook of England's past,
Now on some worn inscription cast,
Now on grey tower or minster walls—

And Johnson's, Beaumont's, changing stars,
One moment glad as Hesper's glow
With light of mirth :—to tragic woe,
Shifting, the next, like blood-red Mars—
And all the galaxy that fused
Their lesser splendours into one,
When William ceased, and Anne begun,
And state-craft writer-craft abused.

Who knew and treasured of all these
What was worth treasuring, more than he
Who to their silent company
Has last gone down, from life and ease ?

Yet love and skill of letters give
But half his claim to take his state
In our Valhalla, with the great,
Whose names in lettered memories live--

With our historic worthies, too,
He shared state life : their measure gauged
With rule, where strife of party raged,
Perchance not always just or true;

Yet, granting error, and an eye
Too prune to wink excuse for friends,
Too sharp for flaw in means or ends
Of those whose camps o'erthwart him lie.

Who shall deny his pen has cast
New life in all wherewith it deals ;
That light from his bright pages steals,
Between the clouds that wreathe the past ?

Who shall gainsay his right to sleep
With those wham England honours most
Whom, while they live, we loudest boast,
Whom, whey they die, we truliest weep ?

Their Royal Highnesses the Duchess of Cam-
bridge and the Princess Mary are staying at Ashridge
Park, on a visit to Lady Marian Alford. A select circle of
the aristocracy have been invited to meet their royal high-
nesses.

The Duke of Richmond left -town on Tuesday to
join the Duchess and family, who are passing the season at
Goodwood.

The Earl of Granville, as Lord President of the
Council and leader of the Ministerial party in the House of
Lords, will give a Parliamentary banquet on Monday
next, the 23d inst., at his residence in Bruton-street, to a
large circle of the leading supporters of the Government in
the Upper House.
The Earl of Hardwick° will come to town on
Monday from Wimpole Hall, Cambridgeshire. The coun-
tess and family remain at Wimpole for the present.

Lord and Lady Rokeby and the Hon. Miss Mon-
tagu have left Hazelwood on a visit to Lady Marion Alford
at Ashridge Park, near Borkhampstead.
Sir G. C. Lewis left town yesterday for Windsor
Castle.

RARE DOMESTIC EVENT.—We find the following
in a Scottish paper :—At Silverhillecks, Gamrie, the wife of
Charles Wilson, of twin daughters—one born on the 31st
December, 1859, the other on January 1, 1860.
TIIE EDINBURGH ANNUITY TAX PROSECUTIONS.
—On Monday came before the High Court of Justiciary, at
Edinburgh, the cases of Mr. James Hunter and Mr. Thos.
Pennock for resisting the officers in execution of their
while f collecting
acquittal
ithe b aboveoth ea
steasx,
duty'an juryla'nhneou ne e
mreturnedc ah ver-
dict
wasreceived with loud cheers,