The Sun.
London, England, 1860-04-20 00:00:00

THE SUN,7rLONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, APRIL 20, 1160.

campaign. Lord DERBY will, however, do wisely
not to welcome such aid too heartily. The country
does not, it is true, like the old Whigs, but neither
do they like those of their nominal adherents, who,
as it is imagined, on account of some actual or
supposed grievance, harrass their old companions
when the latter are doing their work, or any part
of it, well. Lord DERBY may or may not have
good reasons to condemn from his point of view
the Government Reform Bill, but as the coD ntry
disrelishes Puseyites because they ought, as it
thinks, to go over to Rome, so it dislikes the dis-
contented Whigs, because it thinks that if honest
they should join the Tories.

What is Lord GREY'S case ? That the proposals
of the Government are too democratic. He does not

like the £lO franchise in counties, tho Ugh it is one
which both the great parties in the Commons have

accepted. But the borough franchise quite terrifies
him. On this ho spends the strength of his argu-
ments, and out and out Conservative arguments they
are—the necessity of extreme caution, the danger
of prompting t• demands for further extension, the
probability of the existing constituencies being
swamped in the proposed additions, the certainty
that the ball once set a going will roll down hill till
it reaches the lowest depths of democracy—and,
above all, the appalling results of democracy in
America. Indeed, the degeneracy of America was,
judging by the space allotted to it, his great argu-
ment. America is corrupt from " the crown of the
head to the sole of the foot." The President is corrupt
—the Senate corrupt—the Administration corrupt
—the courts of justice corrupt—the Federal Legisla-

tion corrupt—the State Legislation corrupt—the
Municipalities corrupt—rottenness everywhere.
America, in a word, is going to the bad—demo-
cracy is hurrying her thither—and Lord JOHN
RUSSELL is doing his best to send us in the same
direction.

All this Lord GREY sees so clearly that
he stands aghast, and begs the House of
Lords to interpose some little hindrance—to
erect a weir across the stream, which may
stop the flood for a while—any how, anything,
if extension of the borough franchise can but be
delayed, or if the greater blessing of preventing it
altogether can be secured. Heice this committee.
Its only possible result, so far as the ascertainment
of unknown facts is concerned, is that we may
know with a trifle more accuracy the numbers
which will be added to the constituencies by the
£6 franchise. The Government still thinks the
returns are as correct as such documents can be ;
some private members have imagined that they
have given the numbers considerably below what
they will prove to be. But it will be of the
smallest imaginable consequence whether Bodmin
have 80 or 50 electors more. As to Ashton, it is
incredible that the estimate of the returns, 800 or
900, should not be nearer the mark than 2,000. Be
that particular ease as it may, the addition in the
great majority of boroughs must be well known.
The lists have been published, and the few cases
which have been called in question plainly show
that they cannot be numerous. With all the de-
ductions which have to be made in working, few
persons conversant with such matters can doubt
that the estimated total addition of 200,000 is
rather over than under the mark. Mr. BRIGHT,
who has no desire that we know of, to misrepresent
the case, computes the number of working men
which will be admitted at considerably fewer.
But the truth seems to be that Lord GREY has
gone wholly wrong on the subject of Reform. He
gravely asks the question at this time of day, " I
want to know what is the real advantage of having
a vote on the election of members of Parliament ?"
But if that question be answered in the negative,
as he means it should be, there might very well be
an end of the matter. "We have only an interest
in good government," he goes on to say, " not in
having a vote !" The very argument of every despot
in Christendom, and out of it too. The favourite
dogma we remember of NICHOLAS of Russia
when he expressed, as he so often did, his undis-
guised contempt for free institutions. His subjects
liked good government—he gave them it—they
cared for nothing else. How strange to find the
Lord HOWICK, of the Reform Bill era, saying—
What is the advantage to a man of a vote ; give him
good government, and tell him to eat his pudding
and be thankful ? We hardly need say that to us
old Reformers,—not weary, either, of Reform yet,
nor likely to be for our lifetime—the advantage of
having but the thousandth, or the ten thousandth
part in our representation is incalculable. Our
having it implies that all in our position have it,
and all in our position having it, implies that our
representative can be called to account by us all if
he neglects our interest; and the same reason
applies to men of every position in society
—in a word, it is the advantage of representation.
Hitherto five-sixths of the population at least
have been wholly unrepresented; the bill before
Parliament proposes to lessen the fraction some-
what—perhaps three-fourths of the male adults
only, will now be left outside, and one-fourth, alto
gether, admitted ; and, if Lord GREY'S committee
proves all it wishes in regard to numbers it will
not materially alter the proportions. But as for
the rest of the subjects to be inquired into by the
committee, no committee can tell the public more
than it knows in each locality. The member for
Leeds gave us a very minute account of the character
of the additions in his own borough, and one which
g e ehveenr
eyfi at s seuorual nd c ea
rthat
fnr
oo m
n jy, b i
tu. r
And
p dt
ase tttoy ob-
vious
e
working of things in large and small constituencies
sh
w o
respectively, who could enlighten any of us
have lived in the daylight of the world.
As to the great American argument, it may as-
suredly be said that it is irrelevant enough in
regard to the " poor little Bill." Universal Suffrage
and the Ballot can furnish no argument against a
suffrage of at most one-fourth of the people without
the ballot. It would have been more to the point,
could the relevancy of comparison be admitted, to
show that all the evils of America flow
from democracy—this Lord GREY did not
attempt to do; It may be with rea-
son affirmed that they flow from aris-
tocracy. A select 300,000 in the South—the
" Old Chivalry"—are the direct and immediate
cause of the depraved moral tone of American poli-
tics. From them has proceeded the corruption of
presidential elections and of the bench ofjustice, the
two worst of all the evils ; indeed there arc hardly
any enumerated by Lord GREY which may not
be traced directly or indirectly to the demoralising
influence of the slaveholding aristocracy, struggling
per fas aut nefas to acquire and maintain their
political supremacy. It is sufficient, however, to
answer that the Government does not propose uni-
versal suffrage ; and, we regret to add, it does not
propose what would be, we are confident, the
most conservative of additions to the present bill
—the Ballot. America is out of court as
as an argument, taking her at the very worst,
and taking the proposed extension of suf-
frage at the largest. Let us keep to England
and the English ; and, we have not a shadow of
a doubt that the electors to be added, if thousands
of them be of the poorer—will yet be of the most
sensible and honest classes. Would that they
could enter on their duties under the protection of

secret voting, to shield tkem from temptation. In
what they may become some danger may lurk. In
what they are, as a whole, and what the Ballot
would keep them, we hare entire confidence.

No matter what the subject, no matter what the
circumstances, it is always just possible to have
too much of a good thing. If the right hon. gen-

tleman the member for Stroud has not yet quite
realised the force of this truth—a truth, as we have

intimated, of nearly universal application—beyond
any manner of doubt, the House of Commons has,
by this time, most unquestionably. So long as
there was any chance whatever that good might
really come of it—we have accorded to Mr. HORS-
MAN that hearty applause which we certainly con-
ceive to have been his due throughout the earlier
period of this session for his unflinching deter-
mination to speak the plain truth right out
upon every available occasion coute qui coule,
and, by so doing, to vindicate in a very
brilliant manner the perfect freedom of speech and
opinion which is foremost among the most cherished
and inalienable rights of the Commons House of
Parliament. Notwithstanding the precipitate re-
solution passed by Mr. HORSMAN'S constituents
down in Gloucestershire—a resolution condemna-
tory of those very proceedings which we, certainly
among thousands and hundreds of thousands of
others, regard as on the contrary in the highest de-
gree eommendable—we believe that by the distin-
guished ability with which Mr. HORSMAN carried
out the very line of conduct for which that right
hon. gentleman was thus formally reproved by his
own constituency he materially advanced and ele-
vated his Parliamentary reputation. For the very
sake of that advanced and elevated reputation, it
will be well, however, if Mr. HORSMAN resolves to
restrain at length the ardour of his invective, and
to curb somewhat of the impetuosity of his now
fully recognised powers of vituperation. Otherwise
—we are seriously beginning to fear, lest the very
man who has latterly given such rare promise of
taking high rank among the shining lights of debate
should, in this respect, most lamentably disappoint
the expectations of us all, by degenerating, on the
contraryf into—(O types of horror and words of
terror in the ears of the House of Commo-is )
the veriest dinner-bell and the most unconscionable
bore!

Glancing through the latest of these erratic and
impassioned speeches of Mr. HoRsMAN that
harangue of " sound and fury signifying nothing"
with which he indulged the House only last even-
ing—it might seem to a superficial observer, from
the frequent applause scattered through it, more
particularly towards the close of its highly rhetori-
cal peroration, to have been yet another success
to be added to the long list already num-
bered up in the voluaie of Hansard for
1860 by the right honourable gentleman
the member for Stroud. Upon a little closer exa-
mination, however, both of this speech itself and
of the applause by which it was interrupted, we
shall be constrained to arrive at a very different con-
clusion. There is, in the first place, what we must
at once frankly designate a sinister significance in
the fact, that the plaudits invariably greeting the

close of each of those telling sentences ring ever
and ever monotonously (to say the least of it) from
the side of the Opposition. Mr. HORSMAN is
cheered again and again to the very echo—
but it is always the Conservatives who cheer him.
We can hardly wonder, therefore, that, under these
peculiar circumstances, the right hon. gentleman's
supporters down at Stroud have looked somewhat
dubiously and with an eye askance at his recent
performances in the discussions of Parliament. But
beyond, far beyond the mere significance of his
remarks being upon every possible occasion so pe-
culiarly palateable to the Conservatives—there are
now fast becoming more and more apparent upon
each successive occasion two peculiarities about
Mr. HonsmAN's speeches, which two peculiari-
ties are to them in the most deadly and fatal
degree damnatory. One has reference to their
source, and that source may be expressed in a single
word—i.e., Epleen. The other relates to their
result, and that result is—to record the fact with
equal terseness—the most valueless and vacuous
Futility. Before listening to or reading a single
syllable of Mr. HORSMAN'S utterance, when he rises
in his place to hurl one of these crackling oratorical
bombs at the Ministry, we may safely mutter to
ourselves—rpite. And when the right hon. gen-
tlemen is resuming his seat, in the midst of the
ringing cheers of the Opposition, we sigh forth,
under our breath, with equal appositeness, the
lamentable query Cui bone ? Answering our
weary ejaculation—" Certainly not Ministers —not
the House of Commons—not England—nay, not
even Mr. HOUSMAN himself !" For while the bril-
liant and outspoken member for Stroud is yet
talking in season and out of season, upon any and
every occasion, about the folly of the
Alliance, and the immorality of the French
Government—[stamping upon our corns quite
unnecessarily, while that Italian boot is pinching
them painfully enough of itself without Mr. lions-
MAN'S interposition to add thus to the poignancy of
our wounded feelings !)—we cannot but reflect all
the time that it is really and truly just a trifle too
late ! That Savoy and Nice are annexed to
France ! That they have been formally ceded to
NAPOLEON by VICTOR EMMANUEL ! That the
whole affair is long since un fait accompli !
That we have protested against it through
the resolute despatch of our Foreign Secretary !
And that there is consequently an end of the matter
altogether. Or, if not altogether, that, at any
rate, all we have now to do in relation to the close
of these occurrences is to see that no violence, at
least, is done to the neutrality of' Switzerland. Such,
in effect, was the wholesome moral of that temperate
and statesmanlike reply with which Lord J. RUSSELL
last evening scattered to the winds the powerless sar•
casms discharged against the foreign policy of the
Cabinet from the over-bent bow of Mr. Hoßs-
MAN'S tediously reiterated vituperations.

apApNeraelptuobtlhisehwinomanenothoefrEpnagrtlaonfdoubry iomnpereosfsitohneman.
selves. The writer, in a few vivid and impressive
phrases, beseeches her countrywomen to do all that
lies in their power to put a stop to the cruel usage
of children at the bleaching and dyeing works,
1 and directs their attention to the evidence given in
a recent pamphlet addressed to them on this sub-
ject.* The chief features of this evidence we have
before given in these columns. We have again
and again reiterated the mournful details of the
days and nights of consecutive labour, of boys and
girls going home to die " from the long hours," as
the witnesses pathetically express it. We have
spoken of the exhausting heat, the impure atmos
phere which they suffer from, the scorched feet
and bleeding hands of little ones of eight or ten
rars old, the taskmaster's office of " shouting at
them and frightening the children to keep them
awake." We have dwelt upon the feebleness of
the arguments opposed to their claims, argu-
ments which melt away entirely before the
light of common sense and common humanity.
We have little fear that the appeal to the women of

An Appeal to the Women of the United Kingdom on a
subject demanding immediate attention. Houlstou and
Wright, Paternoster-row, Price threepence,

England will remain unanswered. Political econo-
mists and manufacturers may discuss the relative
merits of labour and capital, the self-regulating
power of trade and the evils of legislative inter-
ference ; they may disguise the truth from them-
selves by ingenious logic and cogent arguments,
but such reasoning would have small force to the
mother of smiling little ones, who had once realised
the idea of the feeble and fainting children drop-
ping asleep as they stand, growing up sickly and
stunted, or creeping home to die before their
mother's eyes, that the owners of the bleaching
works may gather in a little more gold. The love
of children is intuitive in almost every woman's
heart ; they will scarcely then fail to be moved by
this stirring appeal to enlist their energies and in-
fluences in the good cause. For ourselves, we con-
fidently anticipate an immediate alteration in the
system, and have little doubt that Mr. CROOK'S
bill will pass triumphantly through the approach-
ing committee, and through the third reading.

LATEST NEWS.

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