The Sun.
London, England, 1835-01-08 00:00:00

standing. But happily we are not yet reduced to the condi-
tion of those who are roused to action by the desperation of
their circumstances alone. No, we have a little mixture of
prosperity to encourage us. The City may be full of smoke
and darkness and dirt, as usual, but there is a bright spark in
the horizon for all that. Other constituencies have come for-
ward in a different spirit from that of London, to acknowledge
the King's prerogative, to pursue reform for its own sake,
without regard to party or to person, and without any
other abatement or qualification of its claims than those
which the venerable institutions of the country, the fun-
damental laws of the land, and the good of the com-
munity prescribe. If the Radicals have had a field day
in the City, and if, as we believe, the general aspect of
things in the metropolitan districts favour the rash more
than the careful process of reform, the friends of order
have found supporters elsewhere. At York city, for instance,
Mr. H. Lowther, a Conservative, is at the head of the poll,
and Mr. Barkley, who declared himself a disciple of Mr. Hume,
at the bottom. At Liverpool, again, two Conservatives are at
the head of the poll, Lord Sandon and Sir Howard Douglas.
We call Lord Sandon a Conservative, merely to distinguish
his principles from Radicalism, which is now identified
with Whiggery. In other respects his Lordship deserves
the name of a Reformer, if to improve without abo-
lishing the Constitution may in these days be consi-
dered reform. From various parts of the country the most
gratifying intelligence has been received. In some places
anti-Radicals have been already returned, and we have
borrowed from our respected Contemporary the Stan-
dard a list, which will be found under the election
head, containing no less than ten instances in which
Conservatives have already been chosen in the room of Whigs,
and eight more in which a similar substitution appears to be in
progress. But to return to the metropolitan boroughs, we re-
gret to find that Sir William Horne does not occupy that sta-
tion on the poll to which his liberal politics, his just and ra-
tional views, and his excellent character entitle him. The no-
mination took place at Finsbury, Lambeth, and the Tower
Hamlets, from each of which we give reports, but without
knowing at present how the contests are likely to end, for
which different parties have made preparations in each. Upon
the whole, if the Radicals see reason to triumph, we and those
who think :yith us see no reason to despair. The struggle is
but in its beginning, and those who are dissatisfied because
they have not succeeded at every point, should learn betimes
to moderate their expectations if ever they would arrive at
content.—Morning Herald.
The people of England have now to choose between mo-
derate, Reform and revolution. Disguise this fact as we may,
it is impossible not to foresee that one or the other must be
the result of the ensuing election. If the Conservatives are
compelled to resign who is there to succeed them? The De-
structives ? Is not that the beginning of revolution ? The
NVliigs? How is it possible that they can retain their seats,
being (as they inevitably will be) a small minority in the
House of Commons, and firmly opposed by a large majority in
the House of Lords ? They must of necessity then, if restored
to power, coalesce either with the Conservatives or the De-
structives, for the nation will never endure a Ministry bring-
ing forward measures to please one party one week, and the
other the next. If they coalesce with the Destructives why
should they riot make Whittle Harvey the Prime Minister,
and thus openly declare their intentions? If with the Con-
servatives, what confidence can any one have in men who,
after ejecting their opponents from power, pursue the same
measures which they had before reprobated ? The struggle is
now between Monarchy and Republicanism. The " Liberal"
Holy Alliance is labouring (with an energy always displayed
by Revolutionists, and never repelled with equal ardour by a
Conservative party in any country) to overturn the Peerage,
the Church, and, in short, everything that offers the least
opposition to the establishment of a furious Democracy. It is
true we have the wretched consolation that if this band of
infidels, leagued with Dissenters of every possible variety of
creed, from the high-flown Calvinist to the cold-hearted
. .
unorian—if, we repeat, this desperate league should suc-
ceed in o;f'rthrowing all the time-hallowed institutions of the
country, then nothing else to destroy, " will the wolves
devour e:'ch other!' :Ylto can expect that the infidel Propa-
gandist, in his zeal to enforce Republicanism at the point of
the sword, will respect the ciiscreet scruples of the
Quaker as to risking his life in bathe ? Or that the
sour puritans, whose predecessors justified even mur-
der by texts from Holy Writ, and whose intole-
rant bigotry denounced death to any one who dared to
keep a Comn on Prayer Book" in his house, will, if they
obtain the ascendancy, permit the Atheists and Infidels to pour
forth the flood of blasphemy through the medium of that curse
to society, a licentious press? Conflict the most intense, uni-
versal, and ruinous—warfare, sanguinary and envenomed war-
fare, civil and religious, are the necessary consequences if, as
is now threatened, the established institutions of the country
should be overthrown. But will the country submit to such
total destruction? Are the wishes of (at the very worst)
nearly half the House of Commons, of a large majority of the
Peers, of the King, of the Clergy, of the Magistracy, and of
three-fourths of the Gentry of England to be set at nought, in
obedience to a faction who, if left to themselves, would be the
first to turn their violence against each other ? If, indeed, the
struggle must come, let us not, like the French Conserva-
tives, desert the Monarchy at the first appearance of danger ;
but rather let us nail our colours to the mast, and adopt as our
motto that sentiment of the dying Roman, to which the Con-
servatives alone can justly lay claim—" Moriemur in patria
scepe servata."—Morning Post.
The City election was terminated yesterday, as for some
days past had been foreseen, by the return of the four—we
must now assume them to be—" popular" candidates. That
many of those who voted for them may not eventually find
reason to deplore the choice—and we mean no personal.disre-
spe,3; to any of the gentlemen so elected—is our hearty and
earnest pi';:yer ; but it is impossible for any reflecting friend of
the constitution of England, as it now exists, to be free from
such anxiety. It might now be ungenerious to bring the peril
thus entailed upon the cans.: of constitutional, as opposed to
revolutionary, Legislation, in the firm of a charge against
those who, on the side of the Conservative;, undertook the ma-
nagement of this important election contest in the .7..!ty• Be-
fore the question was decided, or the day of nomina:l9ll
had arrived, we frankly stated the intelligence which then
had reached us, and strenuously admonished the parties inte-
rested of what might, and probably would, be the result of
their unskilful and careless proceedings. That the result has
to them and their hopes been most unfortunate, is indeed too
clear ; but we will not indulge the unjust and unreasoning
resentment of disappointed men, by imputing exaggerated ef-
fects to partial causes, or accounting for the bad success of a
struggle so momentous as this has been by throwing the whole
blame on individuals who, we doubt not, exerted themselves
to the utmost pitch of their abilities, when a great deal more
was manifestly owing to the numerical weakness of the anti-
Radical electors compared with their opponents. This last fact,
attested, as we think, not merely by the large amount of
the majority in the city of London, but collaterally
confirmed by the course and progress of other elec-
tions in the metropolitan districts, it would for us be
criminal to deny. We lament and do bitterly grieve
to find that here, about the capital of the empire, the spirit of
the movement is so powerful. Our surprise and apprehension
are almost equally excited by those in the midst of whom we
live being so apparently blind or indifferent to consequences
involving no less than a fundamental change in the genius and
character of this hitherto mixed constitution, by subjecting all
its other attributes, qualities, and operations to those of an in-
tolerant democracy. This, we confess, appals, as it has asto-
nished us. But we are therefore the more bound in justice
broadly to admit the fact. Nor is it in any other spirit but
that of deep conviction that the whole of this subject,
the whole state and relation of Parliament, Ministers,

and people, should be carefully canvassed, and well un-
derstood, that we revert to our own early remarks—at
an early stage, we mean, of the Conservative Adminis-
tration—upon the worse than doubtful polio.), of dis-
solving Parliament, without previously ascertaining how the
then existing Parliament might be disposed. Our opinion
was explicit, that the predominant character of the former
House of Commons, taken as a body, was that of an assem-
bly not inclined to carry the reforming principle to a point
at all hazardous to the constitution, and therefore that the
very act of a premature dissolution of such a Parliament,
would subject the Minister to a question difficult to an-
swer—viz., Why have you dismissed an assembly which
had not shown itself unworthy of the public or the Royal
confidence; and for whose dismissal, therefore, there can be
no cause imagined by those who have no specific information
a 3 to facts ; but that such a Parliament is in advance of

the Minister in its reform policy—and, therefore, that a House
of Commons less favourable to reform is necessary to his pur-
posel „In words as near as possible to these, we expressed
four or five weeks ago our misgivings as to the wisdom of a
dissolution, the necessity of which should not be made mani-
fest to the world ; or a fair and unexceptionable groundwork
laid for an appeal to the equity of the nation, by some capri-
cious and indefensible measure of the majority, directed against
the Government, qfter the latter had evinced a disposition to
govern on principles of reform. It is true that a violent, and
indeed rancorous, determination of certain members of the
last Parliament, to attack and overthrow Sir Robert Peel's

Government, before it would have _ time to exhibit the

nature of its policy, was ostentatiously declared at public meet-
ings in London, and presented a tolerable, though partial, spe-
cimen of what might have been expected from at least a given
section of that body. But perhaps it might have been as well
judged to wait for the execution of such threats, and on the
evidence of faction afforded by it, send gentlemen back on a

voyage of vindication to their constituents, as, by anticipating
such an event, to throw the necessity of self-justification upon
the Ministers, with the additional disadvantage that none could

be offered, either formal, precise, or satisfactory. All this,
L-,svever, is arguing almost in the dark. His Majesty's ad-
visershave possessed, though
they have not yet had an
opportunity, tomake public, the most abundant materials
for satisfyin every one that a dissolution was g--
ine-
vitable, and doubtless those reasons will be clear-
ly stated when the prooer occasion shall arise. Above all
things we deprecate the imptation of having started this ques-
tion from any other motive than a wish to have matters of pa-
ramount concern to the country placed in every light in which
they can fairly be considered. Upon to. conduct which it be-
hoves the House of Commons, intrusted as it is With the inte-
rests of a great nation, not of a limited party, to adopt tfriiirds
the Government, we have met some apposite observations an a
pamphlet entitled The Plain Truth, and which, not upon that
point alone, hut on every other connected with the downfall of
the late Ministry, the accession of the present, and the causes
and consequences of that important domestic revolution, de-
serves for its calm and masterly sagacity to be read and studied
with attention.— Times.

The election for the City of London is the best answer to
the Address of the Tories. Four Reformers have been re-

turned, and the lowest Reformer is 1,436 above the highest
Tory, Upwards of 11,000 electors have voted; a number