The Sun.
London, England, 1835-06-10 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

There is something very amusing in the sudden
conversion of the Tory journals to the necessity of Mu-
nicipal Reform. After years of laborious defence of
the corruption of close corporations, and all the most
scandalous abuses of the existing system, our contem-
poraries are now zealous proselytes to the popular
cause. We must now, forsooth, respect the Tories
for deigning to examine the Ministerial measure ; and
Sir R. Peel, the ancient ally of Leicester, Northamp-
ton
and Coventry—the advocate of the nomination and
rotten boroughs, is to be the arbiter of a new system
of municipal government I We again warn the Re-
formers to be on their guard. The Tories have but
one object in this new-born zeal. They hypocriti-
cally profess a new faith, because the old one is worn
out and unpopular. The Conformers abandon their
old political positions as untenable in the present state
of public opinion. Sir R. Peel, in this critical stage
of his public life, is forced to bow the knee to the Peo-
ple. However loth the Tories to follow the leader,
they cannot act a part without him. They resemble
drowning men lashed to a plank : to the Right
Hon. Baronet they must cling, as he is their only
chance for salvation as a party. We cannot, however,
safely receive the new recruits into our ranks ; their
designs are too thinly concealed to deceive the Re-
formers. The Tories will oppose all the really popu-
lar parts of the Corporation Bill. Already their
journals have denounced the franchise, the provisions
for a police emanating from the municipal constitu-
ency, and the popular selection of municipal magis-
tracy. The inconsistency of the Tories is vastly
amusing. They are alternately the advocates of uni-
versal suffrage and a high standard of electoral right,
as best suits their party purposes. The corrupt free-
men were perpetuated in 1831 and 1832, in the divi-
sions on the Reform Bill, at the same time that the
Tories were defaming the ten-pounders and middle
ranks, and predicting the advent of democracy.
Though the old constitution of Parliament was based
on the most anomalous electoral rights, and although
the municipal franchise now comprehends numerous
sorts of qualification, Sir R. Peel fears the effect of three
different rights of franchise in corporate towns—the Par-
liamentary, the vestry, and the proposed municipal qua-
lifications. The ancient constitution of corporations
was extremely popular. Every settled householder of
the towns participated in municipal power. Elections
were generally annual, and our ancestors were haunted
with no Tory dread of the people. So in the counties
all freeholders, without limitation, voted, and sheriffs
as well as coroners were elected by the local consti-
tuencies; and this in a state of society where there did
not exist the numerous gradations by which the highest
and the lowest classes are connected together, and when
education and knowledge were extremely limited. It
would now, however, appear, that as the people be-
come more trustworthy and enlightened, as the prin-
ciples of liberty are more diffused and respected, and
the limits of taxation extended, popular rights are to
be more restricted, and our institutions are to become
more aristocratic. Our ancient municipal charters in-
vested • a popular constituency with the power of
electing mayors, magistrates, and coroners ; the
conservation of the peace was exclusively intrusted
to the inhabitants of the towns, and the police
was jealously controlled by the local authorities.
Under the rule of the Tories, the Corporations have
been perverted to party and political purposes—
the public funds have been appropriated to jobbery
and electioneering devices—institutions which inz.ve
outgrown their municipal ends, have been continned
by the Tories unimproved and corrupted—and now
the evil-doers step in to bestow their assistance in the
work of their reformation I No provision in die
Ministerial Bill is more wise and justifiable than the
proposed municipal franchise. In the majority of
corporate towns, a ten-pound qualification • would
yield no sufficient constituency. The mass of the
people ale deeply interested in the advantages of good
local government. It would he most injurious if the
periodical elections of town councils became trials of
party strength preceding Parliamentary contests. The
Bill, moreover, gives a power of local taxation, and a
co-extensive representation is the just and constitu
tional principle of a municipal electoral right. The
proposed qualification, by its accompanying essentials
of residence and period of rating—the latter, perhepe,
too restrictive—will secure the moral and intellectual
character of the elector. The Standard entertains
a very groundless fear of the fiscal powers thus in-
tended to be intrusted to the lower class of rate-payers,
and apprehends that the smaller contributors to a bo-
rough-rate will not be very moderate in their levies on
the pockets of the higher property classes. In answer
to this objection, we need only cite the notorious and
recent experience of the woi king of the open vestry
system. " The canaille of London," quoting the
contemptuous and illiberal words of our Conservative
Contemporary, have, in Marylebone and other metro-
politan districts, proved the popular estimation of pa-
rish economy, by a degree of retrenchment of expendi-
ture and improvement of localgovernment scarcely cre-
dible, when we consider the short period of the ex-
istence of open vestries. The same results have fol-
lowed the " open system" throughout the country.
The people have too much self-respect, and too great
care for their own pockets, to tax themselves or any class
for no beneficial purpose. It is the close Corporations
who mis-spend the public funds, and who over-tax
their communities ; it was the self-elect Corporators
and the Boroughmongers who heaped onerous debts
on the country, and close vestries who mortgaged the
Poor and Church-rates of posterity. Periodical elec-
tions, duly regulated, where recently adopted, have
effected infinite good, and produced no evils in the
parishes of the metropolis and the country. When it
suits the Tories, they never scruple to dissolve a Par-
liament ; and, as in Ipswich, Hull, Liverpool, Bris-
tol, Cambridge, and other towns, they deluge the
constituencies with bribery, treating, and all the cor-
rupt practices of electioneering, and in the Legislature
always resist every attempt to punish delinquents, or
secure the people from demoralization. Some of the
Tory Journals strongly object to the licensing
system being vested in the town councils. In whom
is it now placed, and by whom is the power
notoriously misused, and perverted to party ob-
jects ? In the close Corporations. And who can
be such good judges of the local necessity for
public-houses and spirit-shops as the Municipal
Councils ? The opposition of the metropolitan classes
to the introduction of a Government police has been
cited as an argument against the popular appointment
and control of the country police. No fair objection
can be drawn from the well-known prejudice originally
entertained in the metropolis against the existing
system. It was a novel experiment, and the metro-
polis was not one municipality, but an aggregate of
municipalities. The necessity for placing all the divi-
sions of the metropolis under one system of police, in
order that it may be effective, is now generally admit-
ted. But it was a violent innovation in the national
habits ; for there exists in England a strong feeling
against military interference and a constabulary
force, under the exclusive direction of the Execu-
tive Government. The introduction of such a po-
lice in the country towns would be impossible, and
the attempt would be unjustifiable. Necessity does not
require it, and the metropolis is an exception to the
general rule of a constabulary force. London, with
the exception of the City, was utterly destitute of any
municipal constitution. A million and a half of peo-
ple, congregated in one immense town, require more
than common restraint, and a police for such a place
must be under the direction of one head. The pre-
sent defective state of the country police is no crite-
rion of its future improved regulation. A close
corporatiOn, steeped in misconduct, and without pub-
lic respect, can never effectively controul a large coin-
munity. We are, however, on the eve of a new and
improved municipal government. Supersede the ex-
isting self-elect bodies by popularly chosen officers,
and order and justice will soon take the place of
misrule and corruption. When an elective system
has been at work a very few years, we shall see
the towns governed by town councils and a ma-
gistracy commanding the public respect. If any
new powers are necessary for good government, they
will seek and obtain them from the Legislature. Life
and property will be their natural care. A new and
rapid formation of public character cannot fail to take
place. The opulent and intelligent classes will obtain

rule, and supersede the needy partisans of the Tories
and the bigots of the day. The existing municipal
system has been that of party and corruption ; it can
only be rooted up by the agency of self-government.
Ministers deserve, and will obtain, the confidence and
support of the country for this great measure of Le-
gislation, and our only care now is to preserve it from
mutilation. The Times treats it as a grand manoeuvre
of a party ; but the motives of public men, lately the
adored of that journal, are rather more pure than those
of the scribblers of the Times. It is not in the power
of political apostates to injure the measure, or suc-
cessfully to defame public men who have thus honour-
ably redeemed their pledge, to give to the country an
honest Municipal Reform.--Morning Chronicle.
If the Queen's Government in Spain can maintain
itself without foreign intervention, why does it call for
it ? If it cannot, why do those who acknowledge the
necessity for that intervention deny or palliate the des-
perate condition of the Queen's Government ? The
" patriotic " Ministry, and the brave Liberals at
Madrid, denounced " foreign intervention " as a trea-
sonable phrase five or six weeks ago. As to the blus-
tering Urbanos, who showed the untameable spirit of
their heroism by dyeing their swords—untarnished
with battle-stains—in the blood of defenceless
priests and unarmed monks, they were ready
to immolate on the reeking altars of their fe-
rocious patriotism every man who dared to breathe
the words " foreign intervention." Where are
those gallant defenders of their country's inde-
pendence now ? The cry for the armed assistance
. of the foreigners has gone forth from the Court of Ma-
drid. The Queen-Regent, awakened from her
dream of pleasure by the mountain-thunders before
which her armies have been scattered, has raised the
cry of distress, and implored the succour of foreign
States to save the Crown upon the head of the baby-
, Bourbon. The patriotic Ministers join in the suppli.
cation, and the Urbanos, where are they ? Have
they gone forth to fight the Carlists, and to prove by
their valour in the field that foreign intervention is un-
necessary ? No, the cold-blooded butchers of Priests
and monks have "no stomach for the fight." They
are now convinced that danger is really near, and they
are unwilling to yield to the hated foreigner the post
of danger. How did the braggart patriots of Madrid
exclaim against the convention, or stipulation, entered
into between Zumalacarregui and Valdez, through the
mediation of Lord Eliot, to put an end to the butchery
of prisoners on both sides, and mitigate the war to
something of a civilized character from its spirit of
savage extermination ? Oti whose side lay the advan-
tage of this humanizing compact ? Surely it was not
on the side of the victorious Carlists, who took pri-
soners enough to enable them to clear off the debt of
bloodshed elsewhere than in the battle-field, with tre-
mendous interest ? But the noisy democrats of Ma-
, drid cared not for the lives of brave men on either side,
nor did they desire to risk their own. They would,
forsooth, have Ministers impeached for sanctioning
a convention which nothing but necessity induced
them to sanction—the same irresistible necessity which
causes them now to sanction the demand for for,eit
intervention, though they are silly enough to en-
deavour to disguise the intervention so hateful, yet
so desired, under the name of " co-operation." The
patriots of Madrid despise foreigners. Why do they
call upon them, then, to fight their battles ? h'y
do the successes of a handful of Carlist warriors in the
mountains of Biscay and Navarre overwhelm them with
alarm within the gates of Madrid ? Where are the
" annihilators" of those Cariil.ts, who, according to
the French telegraph, and the accounts of the bubble-
blowers of the Paris Bourse, and our own Stock Ex-
change, gained victory after victory over the " infa-
tuated followers" of Don Carlos ? Where is Saars-
field ? Where Quesada ? Where Rodil? Where
Mina ? Where Valdez ? Was there one of those,
not to mention other redoubted Commanders of the
Queen's troops, who did not scatter the armies of ant
Carlos, and cut up his cause by the roots ? The
• communication of our Correspondent from the head-
quarters of Don Carlos, in our Paper of yesterday,
contained much information, both instructive and in-
teresting to the public at this moment. In regard to
past occurrences, as connected with the present sup.
plication for foreign assistance, he says—" You c:ni-
not but remember the bulletin published by Valdes on
the 3d of May, in the Madrid Gazette—mark the
date—giving his version of the affair of Amescoas.
He stated that the Carlists were dispersed—that
they, were completely derouted, and that the Comman-
der-in-Chief had proved to the Carlists that lie could
enter the Amescoas at his will and pleasure.' Now
what has passed since the 3d of May so to change
the aspect of affairs as to compel a Spanish General
on his knees to implore the aid of foreign bayonets to
annihilate those same Carlists, whom only a few days
previous he dispersed and completely routed ? Has
not here, again, the basest deceptions been practised
on the public ? Read Espartero's bulletins of the
state of the war in Biscay. Read those from El
Pastor of the flourishing position of affairs in Gui-
puzcoa. Couple all those circumstances with the news
published by Louis Philip, and again and again I
ask, can Lord Palmerston consent to a French interven-
tion?" Our opinion of Lord Palmerston as a statesman
is known not to be one of profound admiration ; yet we
do not believe him so bereft of understanding as to
agree to anything of the sort. If we must make our-
selves parties to a war in Europe, let it be for Eng-
lish objects—not to protect the injustice and support
the frauds of the money-changing scrip-jobbing Go-
vernment of Spain. Let us drive back the Russian
Power from the Dardanelles, and restore the indepen-
dence of our ancient ally and customer, Turkey. If
we are chivalrous, let us take the field to restore the
independence of Poland, whose noble cause was not
connected with loan-jobbing, or any system of bubble-
inflating fraud. But as a nation we can derive neither
profit nor glory from interfering in a war of disputed
succession in Spain—a war most fitting for the Spa-
niards themselves to decide—for, undoubtedly, any
Sovereign placed upon the throne of that country by
foreign bayonets must be kept there by the same
means. Let those who by the issue of the contest
prove themselves to be the national majority, have
the Sovereign of their choice—any other mode of
" settling" the question will only lead to other civil
convulsions, even although it should not produce a
general war in Europe.—Morning Herald.
The present Secretary for the Home Department
having already given away, as Lord Melbourne ac-
knowledged the other night in the House of Lords,
about a quarter of a million of pounds sterling, the
produce of English taxes, to maintain the regal autho-
rity of the chaste and prudent widow of the late,King
of Spain, there cannot be much doubt of his readiness
to make any other sacrifice of the interests of Great
Britain, that may be required, for the same honourable
and disinterested purpose. A person in the position of
a mere spectator of passing events, having no interest
whatever in the scene, could not fail to extract amuse-
ment from the apparent • earnestness with which some
English journals discuss the policy of intervention
in the affairs of Spain at the present moment ; as
if the policy or impolicy of intervention with refer-
ence to the honour or interests of England had any-
thing whatever to do with the matter. This is a qtkes-
tion at the Tuileries—this is a question, probably,
in Capel-court ; but it can by no possibility be a
question for Downing-street, so long as Lord Palmer-
ston is Foreign Minister. The Noble Lord is not a
man to make a loss without being ready to do any-
thing, and everything, in order to recover it ; and for
the two hundred thousand pounds' worth, at least, of
arms and ammunition sent from the arsenals of Great
Britain to Spain, the greater part of which is now
safely in the possession of Don Carlos, there will
never, it is plain, be an acceunt day, unless an army
of some kind or other, French or British, be sent to
assist in the settlement. Hesitation there may be, and '
no doubt there is, at the Tuileries ; but with Lord Pal-
merston, our readers may be assured,, there is none. ,
He is much too . deeply committed for that. His
Lordship cannot fight the battle of the pure and vir-
tuous Queen-Regent of Spain without the concurrence 1
of France ; but should that not be withheld he will
certainly fight a l' outrance, that is, to the utmost that
British blood, not his own, and British treasure, i
not his own, will allow. So far as Great Britain is 1
concerned the position of Lord Palmerston solves
every doubt as to the promptitude and vigour with