The Sun.
London, England, 1859-11-23 00:00:00

SUN, LONDON', WEDNESDAY EVENING; NOVEMQpit: 23, moo

dered an invasion of this country necessary to his
purposes. It is, therefore, with much satisfaction
that we see the ready and liberal spirit in which
many high-minded and patriotic individuals have
contributed to the necessary funds, and the an-
nouncement of many heads of large establishments
that they will provide such of their employes as
desiie to join the Volunteer Rifle movement with the
necessary equipment. At a dinner given on Monday
at Abingdon, Capt. VEEN ON, M.P., made an excellent
speech on this subject. He said the Rifle move-
ment was a great fact, and would have a great
moral effect abroad, and added, with truth, that in
the event of a war with France we had no cause
for apprehension. The present NAPOLEON was not
so great as his uncle, the hero of a hundred fights,
and allowing that the French soldiers of the pre-
sent day are equal to the victors of Marengo and
Austerlitz, we need not hesitate to meet them. We
were better men then, and we are better men now.
We quote the following passage from Captain VER-
NON'S spirited speech, as the true expression of Eng-
lish feeling at the present moment :

" I believe that three thousand in this quarrel—'for
thrice is he armed who bath his quarrel just'—would equal
double the number of foreigners. I believe that our fleet
and our sailors, would never suffer a French soldier's foot to
touch the soil of. England. I believe that if we permitted
the French army to land—such is the military spirit per-
vading England—it would be no war, it would be a crusade.
The country would rise as one man, and not a Frenchman
would live to see his native land again. I have no fear of
France; still we do well to be on our guard. It does not
befit a great people to be taken unawares. That country
is most certain of peace which is best prepared for war.
Well, we are prepared. I have it from the highest mili-
tary and scientific authority in the land that our coast
defences are hourly becoming.more formidable. Our navy
is the finest in the world—our artillery matchless. Ido
not believe Louis Napoleon has any direct intention of his
own mere motive against England, but the more I study
his political career, the more do I see that, like an adven-
turer he is the sport of fortune, driven hither and thither
by the circumstances of the moment. Already he has lost
half his power in his country by the defection of the priest-
hood ; he now depends entirely on the army. War is ne-
cessary to them► Turbulent, excitable, and vain-glorious,
they.may compel Napoleon to take steps against his better
judgment. They say they have a Waterloo to revenge.
We have no defeats to revenge ; from Cressy to Waterloo
we can contemplate our encounters with the French with
great complacency. It needs not the gift of prophecy to
reason on past events, and I venture to predict that if the
present genration attempts by invasion of England to re-
venge Waterloo, they will bequeath to their posterity the
task of revenging a defeat more complete, more disastrous,
and more decisive."
We feel.convineed that these sentiments will find
an echo in every patriotic heart, and if England,
through the turbulence of foreign ambition, is
drawn into the contest, it will only be to add new
histre to her ancient triumphs.

When we read the speech of Mr. BERKELEY, at
Bristol, we thought the unwearied opponent of the
Ballot would not fail to pervert it. And surely
enough, having commented on the hon. mem-
ber's after-dinner facetiousness one day, it recol-
lected,. the next, that it had overlooked the oppor-
tunity of having a fling at the Ballot in the person
of the Parliamentary leader on that question. A
column and a half on the Saturday atoned for the
oversight of the Friday, and Mr. BERKELEY was
paraded as shelving the Ballot. We did not believe
he meant to be guilty of such inconsistency when
we read his remarks, but we saw they were liable
to such a perversion ; we, therefore, ought to be
thankful to our contemporary for affording Mr.
BERKELEY the opportunity of putting himself
straight with the Reform party—for the Reform
party is really the Ballot party—as the hon. gentle-
man did in his letter, which we inserted yesterday.
We have now Mr. BERKELEY'S written declaration
that what he meant was that he would not allow
himself to be made a catspaw of to frustrate any sub-
stantial measure of reform which her IWIAJEST-ea
Government might bring forward. He thinks with
those Radicals, COBDEN and BRIGHT, that if we
can get an extension of the suffrage we ought to
take it, although we cannot get the Ballot with it;
but just because he believes the Ballot will be more
easily obtained through an extended suffrage. The
opinion may be correct or not, but it is, we must
confess, a widely different thing from shelving the
Ballot. It is rather, in the view of those who hold

it, constructing a more efficient machinery to carry
the Ballot. Small consolation this for those most
inconsistent of politicians, anti-ballot Reformers !

Amongst the other conclusions of our contempo-
rary is this—and it it one on which he lays great
stress, and with which he seems not a little enam-
oured—that the Ballot is "not really" a question
of publicity ; it is only a question of the hour ; it
only concerns the comfort of the elector who may
wish to keep his vote secret for twenty-four hours
before the act of polling, and two or three hours
after. The question of "the hour !" Be it so. We
admit that in mvny cases it is so. Lay the em-
phasis rightly, and the assertion would express a
weighty truth indeed. It is a question of " the
hour." The hour of temptation ; the hour of cor-
ruption ; the hour of seduction ; the hour of com-
pliance with degrading solicitations ; the hour of
bending to almost irresistible intimidation ; the
hour in which the act of self-dishonour is perpe-
trated, hardly to be recalled by any repentance.
Mr. DISRAELI lately insisted, at Manchester,
with no little eloquence, on tho view that " every
man had his opportunity." Is not the converse
equally true ? Has not every man his hour of temp-
tation also ? Not, we mean, of course, his hour of
ordinary temptation, of such temptations as, alas,
we all yield to, and yet do not feel that we
have brought a life-blot on our character. We have
our hour of temptation, sooner or later, to accept
some great apparent advantage, to escape some
great apparent danger, the thought of which would
always be painful to ourselves, while the
that others knew of our fall:would always be re-
membered with mortification in their presence. To
be sure the Times tells us' that the bribed and
bribing class think nothing of it afterwards;
CHARLEY chuckles to TOMMY over his five or .ten
pound ♦ote. Thanks to the open voting of our
contemporary this is too true. But it is just be-
cause open voting has trained electors and candi-
dates to moral obtuseness. CHARLEY and TOMMY
are Englishmen after all. They did not in the first
instance chuckle over the sale of their independence.
No ; nor did the poor tenant-at-will, who at times
blasters about his loyalty to his landlord, in order
to appease his conscience, look up with forced cheer-
fulness after his forced vote. All this chuckling, and
this loyalty, to those whom men dare not resist, is the
effect of a lung demoralising training. It is often,
it is true, inherited corruption ; the sons follow the
fathers; but, i❑ the majority of instances, the fact
is that the elector was consciously overcome by
vicious allurement or cruel terrors, and sold for ever
his political self-respect when it was " the question
of the hour."

We shall have, perhaps, in reply, a homily on
the necessity of inuring men to temptation, of there
being no virtue or heroism when there is nothing
to resist. But there is an Authority to which we
all defer, by which we are taught daily to pray,
" Deliver us from temptation." And can we after-
wards be guilty of the hypocrisy of putting gratuit-
ous temptation in our neighbour's way ? We main-
tain that open voting is proved—proved at Glouces-
ter, at Wakefield, at Norwich—proved in ten
thousand cases to be a temptation which demoralises
its hundreds and its thousands. We believe that
it is one which overpowers the majority of every
county constituency—constituencies which would