The Sun.
London, England, 1832-12-26 00:00:00

at the mercy of a despotic landlord, the most
perfect and abject slave ! It is, we repeat, most
monstrous and intolerable, that a class of Eng-
lishmen, in all other respects so much to be
esteemed and looked up to,—men who must
have acquired knowledge and habits of reflec-
tion,—men, moreover, who must have been used
to a course of independent action, which it was
not the interest and therefore not the practice of
their lofty landlords to control,—it is mon-
strous that a new badge of servitude should
have been affixed to the foreheads of men like
these, and thus a real degradation inflicted on a
vast body of the middle classes of England.
It would be infinitely less galling and calamitous
to have the poor, uneducated, and ignorant
Irish or English 40s. freeholders made sub-
ject by circumstances to the will of those
above them, because they might in that case
be guided by judgments superior to their own ;
but to reduce high intelligence and capacity to
a state of bondage, was a strain at once of
cunning and remorseless cruelty, for which we
trust that the name of him who advised it will
go down to after ages unforgotten. Nor was the
hypocrisy of the act less odious than its tyranny.
It was recommended by Lord Chandos, as a
benefit, forsooth, to " a respectable class of
farmers," as a boon to those who nominally re-
ceive the franchise, instead of a grievous impost
to be levied upon them by those who would
infallibly direct its exercise ! And after what
fashion has it worked ? Mr. Western was told
when he voted for the clause, that he would pay
for it one day or other; and he now admits it as
one of the chief causes of his defeat by Baring.
So look at Cheshire, where Mr. Egerton was
brought in for the northern division by the
" new tenant voters of the aristocratical
Tory squires," whose stewards drove them
by hundreds to the poll, like herds of swine to
the slaughter-house. The orders given to these
respectable hut helpless electors were "to plump
for the Tory candidate ;" no entreaties were
listened to—all scruples of conscience were
utterly derided—the only alternative was " Vote
for the Tory candidate, or quit your farm forth-
with." Thus has the return of Mr. E. J.
Stanley for that division of the county of Chester
been neutralized by a Tory colleague, as the re-
turn of two honest Reformers was frustrated in
Essex, and two radical Conservatives saddled
upon the county in their place. The proceedings
at the Shire-hall of Chester, on Friday, were
extremely interesting ; we regret that we have not
space to insert them. It is still some consolation
to know that for nine Liberal Members in
Cheshire, there is but one Conservative. In
Derbyshire, North Shropshire, and South Lan-
cashire, the Tory has sustained a defeat. We
have read with attention a report of the proceed-
ings of North Lancashire, at Preston, where the
ephemeral mob tyranny of Hunt and his party
has been extinguished, and the Reform prin-
ciples supposed to appertain to the family of
Stanley have regained the confidence of the
people. Upon this last subject we cannot re-
frain from expressing, with sincere respect for
Mr. Stanley, and good wishes towards the Mi-
nistry, of which he is a Member, our desire that
the Right Hon. Gentleman would, for his own
sake and theirs, consult his colleagues before he
delivers himself of political sentiments which go
to characterize and fix the future policy of the
Government upon questions which agitate to its
centre the whole United Kingdom. He is a
fine gallant vessel, well built and well rigged
but he carries too much sail and too little bal

last : we hope he may not meet the ordinary fate
of such a disproportion between the moving and
the steadying power, and be capsized and
founder.— Times.
It cannot be said of the present dominant
party in this country, whatever may be its other
merits, that it possesses the peculiar excellence
of bearing its faculties very meekly. From the
rabid fury of its organs, notwithstanding the
extraordinary electioneering success which has
attended it upon the whole, as these organs do
not fail to tell us a great many times every day ;
from the rage and rancour they exhibit in every
instance in which the Conservative candidates
have prevailed against the Whigs, it would
seem to have been the deliberate intent and
expectation of the moderate and liberal party,
not merely that the Reform Bill should pro-
duce a House of Commons the majority of
which would consist of their devoted and un-

compromising adherents, but that the Reformed
House of Commons should be literally filled
with Whigs, to the utter and complete ex-
clusion of every other party in the State.
There can be no doubt that the Whig Mi-
nisters, with the work of Constitution-making
entirely in their own hands, having, for the pur-
pose of obtaining this power, prostrated the
Crown and the Peerage, and the existing House
of Commons at the feet of a deluded and excited
democracy, did the very best they could, in these
favourable i
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impartial observers during the whole progress
of the Reform discussions. But it could hardly
have been supposed that even the Whig Mini-
sters had been capable of forming so extrava-
gant a project or cherishing so insane a hope
as that of securing to themselves an absolute
monopoly of the representation in a country in
which there demonstrably exists one party su-
perior to theirs in property and in past services
to the State, and another superior to it in num-
tiers, had not the secret been now let out by the
indiscreet clamour of the subaltern retainers of
the Ministerial faction whenever this anticipated
monopoly happens to be invaded. The male-
dictions and menaces of the Whig Press, when-
ever it has had to record the election of a Con-

servative Member of
to the Reformed House
Commons, have indeed furnished a ludicrous

illustration of that kind of liberality which is
the permanent characteristic of the party, and
which has always displayed itself in attempts
to degrade and destroy legal and established
authority whenever it thwarted their pur-
poses, and to magnify it into uncontrollable
despotism whenever it chanced to coincide with
them. It is clear, from the language of the
Whig Journals that if the Reform Bill had
worked right the party would have had the
House of Commons entirely to itself; that its
leading Members in Downing-street, or at
Brooks's, for in this case probably the latter
would have been the favourite rendezvous,
would have quietly settled the votes of Parlia-
ment for the next night, and that nothing more
would have been required than for forty of the
inferiors to meet once a day at St. Stephen's, to
hear prayers read by the Chaplain, and to see
by properly re-
decisions of the
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coffee-room. This is abundantly clear ; for, ac-
cording to those high authorities, the Reform
Bill has worked wrong, has failed to exclude
corruption and intimidation, has left no play for