The Sun.
London, England, 1858-05-10 00:00:00

LONDON, MONDAY, MAY 10, 1858.

The CANNING Despatch, it appears, is to l •
made the pretext fur a vigorous onslaught on the
Government. We use the term pretext advisedly,
for it is but too painfully notorious that the Pal-
merstonians are greedily aiming at the "loaves
and fishes,"
their
which they have fancied should be
devoted to peculiar use, vainly supposing
that the Independent Liberal members and
the various constituencies will support them in

the monstrous assumption, and thus render the
modern " Vicar of Bray " the Minister of a,
dozen Cabinets of different politics, a permaneni

dictator. They may perhaps find that in-thttiri-
stance they are "reckoning without their host,"
and that however willingly the TAPERS and TADPOLES
may join in the interested outcry, the Members of
the House of Commons will refuse to march
through Coventry with such a troop.

There.is no act of Lord DERBY'S Government
that will receive more commendation than the
refusal to assent to the wholesale confiscation,
the indiscriminate spoliation, indicated by Lord
CANNING'S despatch. There was a wide distinc-
tion between the cases of the discontented inhabi-
tants of Oude, who had seen their lawful Sovereign
dethroned and that which had been an
independent kingdom coolly annexed, and that
of the mutinous Sepoys, who had been
unfaithful to their salt-, and the cold-blooded as,
sassins and miscreants, who were not contented
even with the wilful and deliberate murder of our
unfortunate countrywomen who fell into their
hands. The latter should be treated with the
most stringent severity, while the former should
receive every. consideration, and more especially
when there were any redeeming circumstances
in their favour, treated with the utmost leniency.
Lord CANNING did not sufficiently discriminate be-
tween these cases. His policy was. calculated to
drive men to desperation; depriving them of their
property, unless theycould prove to the satisfaction of
his Commissioners that they were completely inno-
cent, or had done something. to merit not merely
pardon, but reward. Such a course was calcu-
latteod d tsop drive
might otherwise submit,
in nan whdtoo indefinitely protract the
desperation,,
tei men,
contest, adding enormously to the expense and
loss of life during its progress.

Had the Government sanctioned these proceed-
ings they would have become accomplices, consti-
tuting Lord CANNING a despot as absolute as any
that over swayed with iron hand the destinies
of the Eastern Hemisphere. It was an impe-
rative duty to arrest his reckless path, and
that they have done so firmly, but at the same
time so temperately, gives additional cause for
rejoicing in the substitution of Lord DERRY for
Lord PALMERSTON, and of Lord ELLENEOROUOR
for Mr. VERNON SMITH.

We can easily conceive the vexation of the ex-
Ministers at the exposure of the grave mistake
into which their pet protegee permitted himself to
be betrayed. When Lord CANNING was perhaps
the most unpopular administrator, when every
journal was casting the most unequivocal censure
on his proceedings, and the Times was launching
almost
daily thunders at his devoted head,
he was sustained and supported by
Lord PALMERSTON and his coadjutors. But
the Leviathan has, according to its usual custom,
performed another daring act of " grand and
lofty tumbling,' showing the unblushing tergiver-
sation of which it is capable. Can any reader of
the Times forget its energetic denunciation of
Lord CANNING, or conceive how it can justify its
present servile adulation. The position of " THE
CERBERIIS CLUB" might give some inkling as to
the reasons, but it is still difficult to understand
how any public journal can be so totally indif-
ferent to the voice of public opinion on which it
must depend. Men may for a time blow hot and
cold with impunity, but retributive justice must
eventually fall on those guilty of such reckless
conduct.

The meeting of hungry expectants at Cam-
bridge House, yesterday (Sunday, of all days
in the week. !), shows tlie lengths to
which the Palinerstonians are inclined to go.
Provided they cm achieve office they care not by
what means it m4y be attained, or through what
dirt they may beidragged in their progress. They
think that " the end justifies the means," and
their organs of the fourth estate have shown them-
delves to be equally reckless.

The really important and influential meeting of
120 sincere and consistent Liberals, last week,
may be fairly set off against the Sabbath-day
demonstration of . the Palmerstonians. That
meeting indicated the true feeling of those who,
after all, are the real arbiters between the Govern-
ment and the Paimerstortian opposition. . They
are not disposed to sacrifice their political cha-
racter for the sake of reinstating the veteran
Viscount, or bringing in the Ministry, who, not-
withstanding their prepared promises, had not
even prepared the Reform Bill, BO long and so
antionsly looked for by the people of the United
Kingdom.

What course will be taken by the independent
Liberal members respecting the factious opposition
which it appears is to be founded on the recent
despatch of Lord CANNING ? That is a truly inte-
resting question, for on it will rest the last hope
of the ex-Ministers during the present session.
Judging from the feeling displayed at the meeting
on Wednesday last these gentlemen are by no
means anxious to displace Lord DERBY for the
purpose of putting in Lord PALMERSTON, who,
under such circumstances, would be more
likely than ever to display petulant
contumely towards every malcontent. They gave
him rot merely a fair trial, but generous support
so long as lie was maintaining an English policy.
But the despot-loving Lord CLARENDON, by his
truckling subserviency, inflicted irreparable damage
on the Cabinet, to which neither Mr. V. Suers,
Sir C. WOOD, nor Sir G. C. LEWIS brought mach
favour. The extraordinary greediness of the iin-
meiiate followers, which grasped at everything
that fell vacant, did not strengthen the Ministers
_conniving at such a system, and perhaps there was
nothing that occasioned greater disgust than the
appointment of the brother-in-law of the Hon•
WILLIAM COWPER to the situation vacated by the
death of the late Mr. CoProox.
The Liberals' were justly discontented at the
entire syatem-pursuee, towards them, Although
as numerous. as either the Palinerstonians or
the Russellites, they were grossly
neglected.
By a sort of Parliamentary fiction Lord PALMER-
STON assumed that they were bound to regard him
as their recognised leader, whose dictates they
were bound to obey, although
he neither pro-
moted the measures on which they had set
their hearts, given them their fair share
of influence or promotion, or even treated
them with common civility, whenever they deemed
it right
to exhibit an inconvenient interroga-
tory. Row then could h© suppose that they
would still obey his orders or act in obedi-
ence to his slightest hint ? Lord DERBY
has displayed far more liberality than the
soi disant ]ibaral PA L3l ERSTON. He has
dropped the Conspiracy " bill, has rescued
Fuld demanded compensation for the injured
engineers from Naples has saved Mr.
HODGE from judicial murder has averted
the wholesale confiscation of the soil of Oade
—given an unexceptionable budget, which even
the Times has been compelled to applaud, and
surrendered the property qualification as a first
instalment of the reform which he intends to
ietroduce at the commencement of next
cession. Disinterested and unprejudiced men
:will weigh these matters, and compare them
with the " sayings and doings" of the former
Cabinet ; and should the representatives of the.l
people not understand the true state of the popular
feeling, they will receive a lesson on the appeal to

the country; that will unquestionably take place
in the event of any factious movement or factious
vote.

To-night a grave question indeed will come
before the House of Commons. The Oaths Bill
itself is trivial in comparison with it. Whether
our constituencies shall be held qualified to judge
who is fit .to represent them, and whether the
great principle of religious equality shall be ex-
tended to Jews, are weighty questions ; but they
are insignificant in comparison with that which
the House of Lords has wilfully raised upon them
—What is the ultimate authority in the realm ?
If the House of Commons shirks meeting this
question now, then surely every constituency in the
Kingdom ought to memorialise her MAJESTY to
dissolve at once a Parliament ignominiously below
the demands of the crisis—for a crisis it is. We
will not, however, believe, till after the debate of
to-night, that the representatives of England can
fail to assert the rights of the nation, as distin-
guished from those of the small hereditary body
which now assumes the Dictatorship, and which
contemptuously refuses to acknowledge the sove-
reignty of the nation. The three or four last
Governments have all promised or talked
of a Reform Bill ; but of what impor-
tance is it to reform the representation,
or of what avail would it be, if when
reformed, the Lords are to be allowed to put
an absolute VETO on the oft-repeated, and more
and more loudly repeated demands of the nation.
It will become' a question of the most urgent im-
portance, how to reform the Upper House. At
the present day it can never be tolerated that a
body of men, having no qualification whatever,
but that of being " their father's sons," " the
tenth transmitters—it may be—of a foolish face"
—that these men shall overrule for ever the deci-
sions of men possessing qualifications for which a.
million or more of their contemporaries have held
them worthy to be their representatives and legis-
lators.

The Lords themselves, we repeat, have raised a
great constitutional question, and the Commons
owe it to the country to take the decision into
their own hands. Every consideration demands
this at their hands. There is, first, their own too
long and. too courteous forbearance. From the
beginning we have been indignant at the crotcheti-
ness, or must we say the meanness, of Lord JonN
RUSSELL in allowing the oaths in regard
to the Jews to be made the subject
of a Bill. It was one of his bits of
petty personal conceit ; he thought he could
manage the peers, and they have only showed how
glad they were to have an opportunity of snubbing
him, and religious liberty, and the Lower House
together.. However, the concession to the vanity
of the Peers was the same ; thus far the. Co-
mmons have humbly bowed to them—if they yield
again, it will not be bowing but cringing►
There is, next, the perseverance in insult on
the part of the Upp3r House. In one form or
another for twenty-five years the Commons of
England have pronounced Jaws qualified to sit
with them, and the majority of Lords against their
admission, is, if we rightly remember, greater than
ever. In every form it has been sought to smooth
the matter to their Lordships ; bills directly for
the object, bills including it in more general
objects, a wholly new oath with the objectionable
clause omitted, an oath retaining it, with a special
exemption for the Jews—all modes have been
tried, but nothing will do. Perversity, bigotry,
pride, dull obstinacy— we sincerely wish we could
think more respectfully of the majority of England's
Peers—have still continued do defy the intelligence
of the nation as expressed in the House of Commons.
A hundred names the ignoti, the vulgus of the
Peerage—for assuredly there is a numerous
vulgar amongst the Peers as amongst other classes..
—rush to every division against the Jews, just
to reveal to the public once a year the ignobility
of our peerage. And these uttarly insignificant
men, merely because many of their fathers were
men of mark, are able to compel the House of
Commons to perform political penance to them
once a year ! Is it to be tolerated that a few,
a very few, peers of ability should year after
year entrench themselves for party purposes
behind embankments formed of the very
mud of the peerage, and thus successfully fortify
themselves against the country by mate-
rials which reason, argument, and genius can never
breach.

Again, there is the aggravation of the case,
that the question is a House of Commons one.
It is not merely for a great principle that the
Commons contend with the Lords, but for thtir
own right, moral right to say the least, to decide
on the qualifications of the people's representa-
tives. The Commons, fresh from the hustings,
have sent to the Lords their last de-
mand for Jewish emancipation by a
larger majority than ever. It must, therefore,
be the demand of the country ; indeed, at all
times, the elected representatives of the people
must be presumed to have the best knowledge of
what is a faithful representation of the people ;
yet the Lords have presumed, notwithstanding
repeated protests, to take the keys of the House
of Commons into their own hands, as well as those
of their own House.

What, then, ought to be done? The Lords
have had already every opportunity for repent-
.ance, and they refuse to repent. Arguments are
now completely Exhausted ; considerate treat-
ment of a Conservative Ministry by an immense
Liberal majority has had no weight ; considera-
tions of Statesmanship so forcibly, yet kindly,
pressed by Lord GREY, wore all thrown away;
the clause which embodied the demand of twenty-
' five years was stolidly, wilfully, proudly erased
from the Bill. We think it undignified for the
CJUIMOI3S, under these circumstances, even to de-
mand a conference with the Lords. The result
must be foreknown. It would be inviting one more
insult. The only procedure worthy of the Commons
would he to treat the emasculated bill, as they
would a money-bill altered by the
.Lords, by
ordering Mr. SPEAKER to kick it out of the House.
Such a course would raise the house incalculably
in the eyes of the nation, and of all Europe and
the world. It wouli proclaim that we were not
the slaves of a titled aristocracy, but a self-
governed nation of freemen.
Shou!cl the House, however, unable to free
itself from red-tapism, humble themselves to a con-
ference, we trust that, on its own part, it will appoint

tome sturdy JOHN BRTGIITS, as well 'as (to Lords)
pliant JOHN ltussEu.s. A❑ unwonted tone mu't
be taken by the managers fir the Commons. They
must inform the Lords that the Lower House
feels itself, and the people it represents, insulted;
that no compromise can now be thought of; that
they are determined to assort the principle that
to the national will, steadily expressed for a long
succession of years, both Lords and Commons
must give way ; and that the Commons intend to
seat Baron ROTHSCHILD—with the Lords if asp
prefer it, if not, without them.

The Lords ought also to be informed that if
common-sense and reason are not sufficient to
make the two Houses work harmoniously, other
means must be devised. We have always thought
that the harmonising device, peculiar, so far as we

know, to the Norwegian Constitution is a really
admirable one. The Norwegians have an Upper

House, styled—how appropriate would be the
untranslated name to our own—the Lagthing ; if
the Lagthing declines for three years to pass a
measure sent up to it annually by the Lower
House, the measure becomes law, the Lagthing
and the Crown notwithstanding. There is
surely reason in this under a representative
Constitution. We commend the plan to the
consideration of our Reform Bill makers. The
House of Lords plainly needs reform, even more
than the House of Commons. It threatens to be-
come a simple obstruction. If not vanquished on
the Jew Bill, it will most certainly take courage
from the precedent, and we shall have the revolt-
ing spectacle of a few partizan Lords, with a long
tail of hereditary dunces, year after year, thwarting
all liberal legislation, and especially every Eccle-
siastical reform, on which the hearts of the people
are set. We warn the Lords that, as the Com-
mons have overthrown the titled dictator in their
own house, so they will overthrow the titled and
hereditary dictatorship of " another place."

Upon the occasion of the recent anniversary
dinner in aid of the Royal Literary Fund, the
Noble -Viscount who occupied the chair, Lord
PALMERSTON, incidentally referred to what must
certainly be regarded as a rather notable circum•
stance in the history of Literature. It was in
giving the customary loyal toast—The Queen—
that the ex-Premier reminded the assembled men-
of-letters and their convivial symp9.thisers that
her present most gracious MAJESTY was the first
English Sovereign who had, by investing an
Author with the dignity of the Peerage, admitted
to participation in the highest rewards within the
:Lilt of the Crown the cultivators of the fields of
literature. Hitherto the bauble of a coronet has
never been dreamt of as a recompense to a great
writer in this country. Baron MACAULA.Y is the
first, and, up to this account, the only literary
noble admitted to "the other place," the Upper
House of Parliament. Upon the opposite shores
of the Channel they had in this, too, managed
things much better, and very differently. M.
VICTOR HUGO, a poet-novelist, was long ago made
Viscomte by King Louis PIIILIPPE; It is re-
corded, moreover, of the first Emperor—Na.vo-
LEON the Great—that he had said of CORNEILLE,
" If be had lived in my time I would have made
him a Prince." There is, of course, very little in
the distribution of these honours. They are mere
symbols—symbols, too, that have often and often
been abused and misapplied. [Everybody remem-
bers the Roman horse who was made a senator
and fed out of a golden manger.] Yet, as one
poet has said—

"Men are but children of a larger growth,"
and as another has written—
" The child's the father of the man ;"
so at every time of life there is real nted,. appa-
rently, of Toys—if only in reward and recompense.
And certainly the toys of adults, if we come to
examine into them are, all things considered, as
various and fantastic as those manufactured for
the younger occupants of the nursery. They
range from diadems and sceptres down through
many a nice gradation to clasps and medals, to a
bit of ribbon in a button-hole, and even for that
matter, actually to two or three letters of the
alphabet. How many are there who have striven
bard for years and years simply to the end that
they might be dubbed 14LP.,-N.e. or LL.D.,
or what-not : precisely in the same ambitious
mood in which Mr. NATXANIEL WINKLE or Mr.
AUGUSTUS SNODGRASS may have first aspired to
have the magic M.P.C. upon the brass buttons of
their blue dress coats, or Mr. SAMUEL PICKWICK
himself the still granderinitial-title of G.C.M.P.C.
It must be particularly borne in mind, moreover,
.that the. covetted prizes of the social system are
merely the fruits of old-world institutions. Some
of them are Of very recent organisation. There
is the Legion of Honour, founded by the
First Consul at the beginning of the present cen-
tury. There is Qat Victoria Cross, originated
only the other day by the reigning Sovereign.
We may laugh at these things as intrinsically
very frivolous. But they mean a vast deal more
than a morsel of bronze or of silver, a coin or a
:tar. For them, death is braved under its most
terrible aspects. The insignia have a priceless
significance. Nevertheless, reverting from these
comparatively minor and generally more attain-
able rewards to the original subject of our remarks
—the admission of men of letters into the ranks
of the Peerage—it may be cursorily observed that
hitherto literature has done very well without this
very magnificent and overwhelming recognition
of it by the aristocracy. And no wonder—for
what grander dignity, what more majestic title,
what more august glory could possibly belong to
the name and the fame of the chiefs in the grand
bead-roll of literature ? What order of knight-
hood, what grade of nobility, what heraldic
emblazonment could by any imaginable contri-
vance enhance the greatness of the memory of men
like HOMER, like DANTE, like SIIIKSPERII. Never-
theless one delights all the while to remember
that the Emperor CHARLES picked up the brush
of TITIAN—one does not very willingly forego an
apocryphal a belief in the pleasant dream that
FRANCIS the FIRST supported in his arms the
dying form of LEONARDO. Not that in either
instance the dignity of the great artist was in any
way enhanced—simply only that it was very
signally recognised. And so it i 3 110 W with re-
ference to the encircling of the forehead of a
bookman like TIIOMAS Lord MACAULAY with a
baron's coronet. The historian might say as a
famous lawyer did once (meaning Lord TEURLOW)
when taunted with his plebeian origin, "My
Lords, I must say the peersge solicited me, not
I the peerage." The honour appertains more to
the House of Peers than to a scholar who is ad-
mitted within it. Still the inauguration in this
instance of our distinguished national annalist, a
system in the distribution of the
an eeveet signal
event so
far
evidence noteworthyh
that
at
titlesptleiar ft
e itot constitutesifyi'ewnobility, i
thse most
could well be afforded of theetri
ndee andiistin n
distinct recognition
e
by the State of the intrinsic
dignity of the most elevated, because the most
purely intellectual of all the professions—that of
literature.

"The Narrative of the Defence of Lucknow,
by a Staff Officer, published by Smith, Elder, and
Co., Cornhill, is from the pan of Captain T. F.
Wilson, 13th 8.N.1., who was Assistant-Adjutant-
General during the whole of the mornorable defence
of Lncknow to its final relief.

We are informed that a meeting was held at Cam-
bridge House yeAterday, at %bleb it was resolved t•
move a Resolution in the House of Commons on Thins-
di.y nix:, upon the subject of the Despatch from Lord
El:enborough censuring the issue of Lord Canning's
Proclatua.ion to the people of Oude. and that this Reso-
lution will have the concurrence of Lord John Russell
and the principal members of the so-called Peelite
rty.--7Tirnes

_ -
The Bishop of Ext:ter completed his eightieth year on
Thursday, May 6, and he is reported to be in good
health and spirits. Eighty is not an uncommon age in
Devonshire.
Miss Burdett Coutts has signified her irtention
through Mr. JAn Cueetharn, M.P., to contribute a
donation of 2001, and to give an annual subser6 tion of
1001. to the Linca,hire Cotton Supply Associaticn.
THE AMERICAN MAILS. —LxvitnrooL, Saturday.—
The British and North American Mail steamship
Niagara sailed from the Mersey this afternoon for
Hal fax and 11-Aton
.with the weekly mails, 108
passengers, and a full cargo of manufactured goods.