The Sun.
London, England, 1858-09-15 00:00:00

He is not very enthusiastic on the subject, but he
acknowledges the necessity, and we hope and
believe that we shall obtain far better terms from
the present Government than from their pre-
decessors. It will be the great ordeal, which, if

successfully encountered will give them a prolonged
tenure of office, at all events " during good be-

haviour."

Side by side, yesterday evening, we reported the
speeches of a Liberal member to a large manufac-
turing constituency and of two county members to
an agricultural one. Mr. EWING gave an account
of his Parliamentary behaviour to the busy men of
Paisley, and our old acquaintance, W. 8., with his
colleague Mr. Dv CANE, told their story to the ap-
plauding yeomen of Essex. In some things they
agreed, as all Englishmen, Whig or Tory, county
or town representatives, are sure to do. The honour
of the country must be maintained, however alarmed
French counts and colonels might be, and its secu-
rity must be absolute even if Cherbourg be rendered
doubly stronger than it now is. As to what it be-
comes ts to do in regard to foreign powers, friends
or foes, all are pretty well agreed among us, except-
ing the celebrated school whose loud and bitter de-
nunciations of war, however righteous the cause,
emboldened, as we verily believe, the guilty
NICIIOLAS to imbrue his hands in the blood of

Europe.
The Paisley senator, however, and the members
for North Essex, differed, as good party men should
do, when the question came to be the policy of
1859. Not so much, though, as might have been
expected. Both parties look forward to next spring
—the Liberal orator, however, is almost at sea about
his party. Mr. EWING thinks, that by. a " fusion of
the independent Liberals," a strong party and go-
vernment might be formed which should comnand
the respect of the country. As to the Reform Bill,
some people thought it would be more liberal than
one proposed by the Whigs, but that must be mere
conjecture ; he believed that they had not yet
made up their minds, nor would do so till the
eleventh hour, and that then we should have just
as little offered as it might be supposed the country
would put up with. Mr. EWART certainly drew
his Tory Reform Bill picture from the PALMERSTON
Cabinet of this spring. That more would be offered!
than would not be a positive Imockery of the
country no one believed ; while the Reform Bill
promised in the QUEEN'S Speech in December was
not even in draft by the Easter holidays—it was
not in the power of the ejected Minister to draw
forth from his desk a bill of any sort, and to say to
the disobedient house, and the laughing country,
See what you have lost by turning off PALMERSTON
and Reform for DERBY and nothing.
But what does Mr. EWING mean by the fusion
of the independent Liberals ? Who and what are
they ? And does he mean that the fused indepen-
dents are to form a Cabinet from among themselves,
as his language would seem to imply ? Hardly,
we should think, the latter, since he scarcely ex-
pects that Mr. GIBSON and Mr. BRIGHT would be
likely to take office, although others of the Liberal
outsiders might be ready enough to do so. Perhaps
he ranks Lord J. RUSSELL amongst the indepen-
dents ;.unless, however, the noble lord marvellously
reforms himself, he will want to exact an obedience
from the advanced Reformers, which they would
be foolish indeed to concede, since it is not easy to
say wherein he will go much further than the
present occupants of the Treasury benches. He
opposes, like them, the Ballot and the abolition of
Church-rates—that is, he is on the wrong side, as
much as they, of the two ecclesiastical and political
testing questions of the day. In fact, we hope that
both sections, of the Whigs—both the Russellites
and the Palmerstonians—are sentenced to penal
opposition till they haTe learned to serve their
country, not to domineer over it, and to carry out
its wishes instead of palming off their own upon it.
We want something worth changing for when we
change our Ministry again.
But what, in regard to Reform, is the tone of the
Conservative members ?—of such a Conservative
member as Mr. Du CANE, who regrets Lord
DERBY'S concessions of last session, and even
wishes he had left the property qualifica-
tion to be dealt with as a part of a larger
measure ? It is curious to see how this
gentleman, the colleague of Major BERESFORD for
a county, has been compelled to adopt the new
creed which Mr. DISRAILI has taught the Conser-
vatives. Though he opposed Mr. LOCKE KING'S
most reasonable Bill, he is "not averse to any
change in our present representation." On the
contrary, he thinks that " resistance to progressive
improvement forms no true item in a Conservative
creed"—a statement which his Tory supporters
loudly cheered. He added, fairly enough,
that "if we persist in opposing all improvement,
under the name of innovation, the day will come
when, as in 1831, we shall be compelled to swallow
innovation divested of improvement." If he had
modified the last sentence, cleverly turned enough
in the Conservative sense—if he had told his con-
stituents that they would, if they resisted too long,
be obliged to swallow a double dose of improve-
ment, administered, not by autocrats, but by an
aroused country, he would have told them the
exact truth. Mr. Du CANE distinctly expresses his
hope that Parliament will deal with the subject in
a comprehensive and impartial spirit next session ;
though between "those whose desires are boundless
and those who would let well alone, the task wil
be a Herculean one."

On one point he agrees with our old friend Lord
GREY, who on this subject has become a thorough
Tory, and hopes that the bill will be of such a nature as
to be regarded as a final settlement by the country.
He thinks that nothing is " more detrimental to the
progress of sound legislation than reopening and
tampering, bit by bit, and piecemeal, with so great,
and vital-a question- -as- -that of Parliamentary
Reform." We think, and always have thought,
that there is a deal of cant in this kind of talk. It
is the excuse for leaving obvious amendments in
our representation untouched for years. Our
legislation is all of the patch-work kind. We have
no codes, much less any constitutions, cut and dried
in our history. Be it a defect or otherwise, such is
the plain fact. Our constitution and legislation is
not a straight poplar tree growth, but rather that
of an oak ; much less:sytnmetrical it may be, and
with hardly one long straight bough on it; but this
has Proved its strength. There may be little regularity
but each small part has pushed itself, it may
be crookedly, forward, and it forms one strong
whole. Of course we care not how far the Con-
servatives, or any other party, will take us
in their love of progress ; but we do not mean
to bind ourselves over to stop progress at their
milestone. Nothing of the sort. We wish
that to be distinctly understood. We shall
be Reformers while anything is left to be reformed,
whether it be in our representation or in our laws.
It may be convenient to the anti-reforming class to
fling us a good large mouthful, and tell us, as Lord
CHELMSFORD did the electors of Stamford, that that
should stop our throats ; but our throats will last
and be all the worse if they had
nfoorthinfurtgliemr
osreervce'tioswallow. Our representation, ,
like everything
else belonging to us, will, for a cen-
tury to come, perhaps till the New Zealander actu-
ally uwiii3t4 the brQUA archedolo4oll4'ridge)