The Sun.
London, England, 1858-03-08 00:00:00

THE 5 eiNi

any Minister would certainly show that he trusted
the people, and would, we believe, be as certainly,
ever after the Minister sustained by the people.
Lord DERZY knows full well what that act is.
The Minister who makes the people's votes their
own ; the Minister who forbids any superior to
pry into the way in which they have exercised
their right of suffrage—the Minister who says to
landlords, lawyers, mortgagees, creditors, Catholic
priests, and angry mobs, " You may persuade,
you may argue, you may supplicate, but you may
not intimidate ;" the Minister who first proclaims
a jubilee electien to the whole Kingdom, and bids
all the hitherto intimidated to vote as they please,
no man knows how they vote, and therefore no
man forbidding." This is the Minister whom the
present generation of electors would never forget;
and whose repentance, if, on this subject, he
needed repentance, they would, as in PEEL'S case,
regard as the crowning glory of his life. One such
act of confidence would cover a multitde of sins,
and if, like PEEL, he should not survive to test
their esteem by an election, his statues in every
large town in the kingdom would tell posterity
that his generation honoured him amongst their
greatest benefactors.

Sir ROBERT PEEL will live for ever in the
memory of Englishmen—and why ?—because at
the cost of reasoning himself out of former preju-
dices, and sacrificing all party ties, to truth and
justice—he gave the people free bread—why
should not Lord DERBY be immortalised in the
memory of Englishmen by giving them a free vote.
The Nobleman who shall come forward and say—
Fellow-countrymen I trust you. You have a right
to be trusted. Your representatives ought to
stand or fall by their fidelity to you, and not by
the powers to intimidate, or bribery, which any
party may possess ; henceforth your vote shall be
as free as you like to make it. Such a nobleman
would certainly earn for himself the highest place
in the popular confidence. If he did not please
them in every measure, they would yet have the
general and unshaken confidence that he was on
their side—that he meant them no wrong, and
they would not lightly displace him.
But, looking now at the House of Commons
itself—we do not assume that all who have voted
for the Ballot would like to have it ; but, if not,
this only shows the more strongly the potency
and course of public opinion. But how large is
the majority of Liberals who have voted for it—
a majority of 105 of the Liberals voted for it,
only 77 of them against it. Moreover, the
leaders comprise all the energetic and popular men,
and they numbered altogether 219 votes in a
' House of 506 members. They all know and be-
lieve that the Ballot is the test between the man
who distrusts, and the man who trusts the people.
Grant them this one puint now, and they would
not suffer the Minister who did so to be turned
out because his other reforms must be deferred
till'next session. We have reason to know that a
certain distinguished leader and ex-Premier, is
now seriously considering the wishes of the leaders
on the Ballot question ; he sees that he has no
other wicket-gate by which he can enter on office ;
and we are confident that if he should get out of
his Slough of Despond and pass that gate, nothing
can prevent his entering on the straight path to
loffice amid the acclamations of the people.
As the Ballot is a certainty, and an early one
too, as it is a measure of simple justice in itself—
as the noblest Ministers of England have succes-
sively conceded what the people have demanded
as a right, and as it is a condition of honourable
continuance in office—we press it on Lord DERBY,
that if he postpone all other points of reform he
will make s. Government measure of the Ballot,
and do it at once.

There is a necessity w•`th every Government to
do much of the work of its predecessor. That ne-
cessity is more or less urgent according to the
nature of the "situation." It may happen, for
example, that a ministerial transformation only
comes to pass at the fag end of a long and labori-
ous Parliamentary session, when there are scarcely
half-a-dozen Innocents left on hand to be Mas-
sacred. It may chance to occur that a Cabinet
falls to pieces suddenly upon the ♦ery eve of the
annual meeting of the Legislature. It may be, on
the contrary—in lieu of either of these casu-
alties that an administration may go to
he wall in the very thick of the
yearly labours of the Lords and Commons.
The position of the new Government in all
these various positions would, of course, be essen-
tially different. In the first imaginary conjunc-
ture, scarcely anything would devolve upon the
incomers in the way of clearing up the incomplete
work of the outgcers. In the second, but little
might have bean foreshadowed, much less actually
commenced. In the last-mentioned event the
newly-installed Administrators would have to
decide as quickly as possible what to adopt
and what to reject among the half-fin
ished schemes of their precursors they
would have as promptly as practicable to
discriminate between the measures to be thrown
out as idle and those to be carried through the re-
maining stages into ripened enactments.

The situation of the present Ministry---it ought
to be borne in mind at once—is rather peculiar
ender existing circumstances, the circumstances
forced upon them by the doings of the preceding
Government. The advent to power of Lord
DERBY and his colleagues takes place, it is true,
at the very commencement of the regular session
of Parliament. The Legislature, according to
went, meets in February, and before that
shortest of the twelve months has come to
an end, Her MAJESTY'S advisers have collectively
tendered their resignation to their SOTEREIGN.
The Budget has not come on, has not been
hinted at, has not been dreamt of when the
whole administration is no longer among the
things that be. Scarcely a bill is in Committee.
The work of the session has hardly in any parti-
cular seriously commenced. Yet—in spite of all
this—there devolves upon the Administrators
who are now suddenly called to power, a weightier
amount of responsibilities than almost any Cabinet
has ever left as a political legacy to the succeeding
Government.

There is a rebellion to be conquered. There is
a war to be hastened to its consummation. There
is a monetary problem to be solved. There is a
grand Reform Bill to be afterwards pre-
pared for the consideration of the Imperial
Parliament. There is a diplomatic difficulty of
the most exquisite delicacy t) be dealt with
adroitly and at once. A war with China---
a tiff witli France—a revolt in India----.. 1 commer-
cial crisis just passed through "somehow," almost,
we might say, "anyhow" at home—a hungering
and thirsting for instant and comprehensive
improvements in the representative system,
rapidly becoming more and more evidently
insatiable among our Liberal constituenchp.
These and a few other kindred trifles of the
like value are the bequests of the late to the
nno. manfully T
Present Government. That they are frankly ac-
cepted at once, for such as t`ley are, the Prima
Minister hasa
w prompt,
i
,and explicit statement. He has
I,al.etxr, d
that,
asserted in his very
n turn will be dealt with by his
Adnainistrtio
for example, the un-