The Sun.
London, England, 1832-01-21 00:00:00

1-PUT OF THE 1-CBLIC JOURNALS.

Some important views with regard to the
manner of distributing the representation of the
United Kingdom under the Bill now before
Parliament have opened themselves, upon a
closer inquiry into the around- of the pretensions
first set up by the mischievous O'Connell fac-
tion, and since enforced by Irish Members of
great respectability and talent. It has been said
that Ireland ought to claim more Members than
have been assigned to her by the Bill, because
Scotland has been favoured with an addition of
eight to forty-five, while Ireland has gained but
five upon one hundred. Now we agree with
Mr. Stanley that Irish gentlemen have no sort of
right to draw comparisons between their country
and Scotland, founded upon a reference to their
respective Unions. Scotland formed her union
with England one hundred and thirty years ago
—has for many years been completely incorpo-
rated with her, in substance as well as name—
and both together have long since constituted,
not England and Scotland, but " Great Britain,"
with which country, as a whole, not with
England and Scotland separately, did Ire-
land form the Union of 1800. In re-
assigning representatives, therefore, to the dif-
ferent portions of Great Britain, whatever
changes take place in the old system ought fairly
to be looked upon as mere internal movements
between the parts of the same country, whereby
pre-existing irregularities in the relation of re-
presentative and constituent are rectified, and
which cannot furnish any more defensible right
of demand or complaint on the part of Ireland,
by reason of a transfer of franchises from one
side of the Tweed to the other, than if the said
franchises were interchanged between opposite
banks of the Trent, the Humber, the Severn,
or the Thames. We repeat, that whatever
grounds of dissatisfaction,—and we do not say,
but rather deny, that there exist any of much
consequence between northern parts and southern,
eastern and western, of Great Britain only, be-
cause of clumsy or ill-considered arrangements
in the giving or taking away of representatives,
—lreland, speaking on behalf of her own local
views and interests, has no shadow of pretence
for meddling with any such questions, so long
as she continues to possess the same sum-total
of Members for which she had stipulated by the
terms of her union with this country. We do not
deny that disproportioned privileges as between
the several parts of Ireland herself might, and may
afford just reasons for murmuring to thoseportions
or classes of her inhabitants upon whom such
mal-arrangement operates as a grievance. It is
not, tor instance, very obvious why Trinity Col-
lege, Dublin, should have a second representa-
tive, or why the privilege of voting in that uni-
versity should be confined to the Fellows and
Scholars,—to professed or novitiate monks,—
Instead of being extended, as at Oxford and
Cambridge, to Ministers of Arts living in so-
ciety, and familiar with its interests and progress.
So, perhaps, in the choice of towns, on which
the ambiguous benefit of a second representa-
tive may have lighted, it is just possible that the
selection might in one or two cases have been
more discreetly made ; and that is a question
with which no reasonable man could blame the
politicians of Ireland for directly and actively in-
terfering. If some half dozen of the smaller
class of boroughs, as Midhurst, Petersfield, &c.,
which Mr. Sheil has made the subject of his mo-
tion for replacing in schedule A, should be with-
drawn from it, the people of England, perhaps,
would not think it worth while to quarrel with
tie donation to Ireland of the twelve members
thus left disposable, should Parliament so apply
them, though even here England might fairly
expect them to be given to some of her great
towns. But, at all events, as a matter of
sight, how stands the question of addi-
tional representatives ? Had it been resolved by
Ministers to adhere punctiliously to the propor-
i:nis existing since the Union between British
representatives and Irish, would Irish gentlemen
have had any reason to complain ? Now Scot-
land obtains eight new Members ; but how ?
Are they in augmentation of the whole number
of Members returned by Great Britain ? Does
Great Britain henceforth elect 566 Members,
instead of 558, and reduce the Irish quota to
95 ? No such thing. There were at the period
of the liish Union, 558 British Members, there
are now to lie hereafter but 553 ; and what be-
comes of the five thus lost to Great Britain
Are they extinguished ! Even so, the relative
proportion of Irish representatives would have
been greater than by the terms of the Union ;
and were England as petulant and perverse as
her neighbour, the complaint might have been
on her side. • But it is otherwise. The five
Members which Britain loses she has made over
to Ireland ; who thus secures a positive as well
as negative profit ; and what is the return
which she makes for this boon? Her faction yells,
and her gentlemen insist that she ought to rob
Great Britain of 20 or 25 Members instead of 5 !
This may be a sort of provincial patriotism, but
it is not common justice. Come then to another
consideration. Irishmen tell us that they have
not, speaking abstractee'l , an equitable share in
the total representation of the empire. The
population of the whole united kingdom is to that
of Ireland as 3 1-7 to 1 ; the taxes of the whole
united kingdom are as about 12 to 1; take the
mean between these taro proportions, as a corn
pound basis for representation, and the number
of Irish Members tot he whole House of Com-
mons is about 2.151,,, or less than 88, instead
of 105. if taxation, representing property were
to be the basis, the proportion of Member,
would be something less than 55 ! So much
for Irish grievance. Then, reverting to the con-
ditions of the Union itself, and the relative
claims of the two islands to representation, founded
on the progress of each in wealth and numbers,
—of wealth we will say nothing, that speaks
for itself,—but even in numbers, as appears b)
the census of each decennial period since the
Union, Great Britain, more especially England.
has made greater progress on the whole than
Ireland ; and therefore, if a difference in the
Union scale were to be made, Great Britain, not
Ireland, ought to be the gainer. We have taken
throughout this article the data adopted by the
Irish advocates for our guides, but deeply di
we condemn and deprecate a resort to such, it
our judgment, false and vicious grounds of cal-
culation as those which proceed upon the prin
ciple that any thing exists like a collision of in-
terests between these islands. There is no more
disposition in Englishmen to raise an adverse
question on tile part of England against Ireland;
than on that of Mre
hiddlesex against Yorkshire.
Would that our Iris bthren could feel on thLn
subject in the same spirit. Does it never occu'
to them that an Englishman, acting in the spirit
of their factions, [night take so invidious a view
the-advantages exclusively given to the Iris'.
h
no oh Catholic 01
a, a tiatioii (Naare not spea •

Protestant, but of Ireland generally), to the de-
triment of the English producer and English
tax-payer, that what are called the rights of Ire-
land on this occasion would be rejected by ge-

neral acclamation ? But we forbear,
as we have already- stated, we wish- England and
Ireland to be considered as one whole, consist-

ing of harmonious, not discordant, parts.—
Times.

Mr. Cobbett, in his Register of this day,

has a long letter to Mr. O'Connell on the sub-
ject of his speech against Poor Laws. It is
somewhat caustic for a friendly expostulation ;
but, upon the whole, we think Mr. Cobbett has
greatly the better of the argument. Before en-
tering on the subject of the Poor Laws, Mr.
Cobbett deals rather disingenuously with Mr.
O'Connell, in commenting upon his assertion
that for three or four centuries the people of
England had been making beggars of the Irish :

"What, however (says Mr. Cobbett), even going back
to the Conquest, have the English people done to make
the Irish poor ! Conquered the country, and parcelled
nut its lands amongst Englishmen. There ! Take it in
its fullest extent ; and what have they done to the Irish
to a tenth part of the amount of what the Normans did to
them? Yet they have survived it; they have overcome
conquest by their industry and love of country : they soon
ma !e the conquerors proud to be considered part of them-
selves ; and they never sat brooding in sloth and filth over
the fabulous dignities and splendour and possessions of
their forefathers. It is, therefore, not perverseness, hut
sheer nonsense, to talk of wrongs which the Irish
experienced from that cause. The English imposed
the Protestant Hierarchy upon the Irish. 'Very unjust,
but having no tendency to make them poor, any more than
the same imposition upon themselves; and it has
been heavier upon themselves ; for they have always
had to yield greater tithes than the Irish. They forbade
the open profession of their religion, on pain of exclusion
from civil and political power. Unjust as well as foolish ;
hut the same is done to the Quakers everywhere; and
that does not make them poor and rugged ; and now,
when the Irish have civil and political power, they are
poorer than ever ! Hays the English people ever taxed
the Irish ? We will see about that by-and -by, when we
coma to talk of the Reform that you are seeking. How
then have the ' English people' made the Irish people
poor ? They have, indeed, suffered thetn to be made
poor, by not compelling the owners of land in Ireland
to pay poor-rates. This is their great sin towards the
Irish people: and now, when they seem resolved to do
ri tht in this respect, and to make reparation for the
wrong, as far as they can, you step in with erroneous
facts and fallacious arguments to induce the Irish to be-
li,ve that the long-withheld good is an evil ! The fact
is, however, that the English people have never had any
hand in causing the wrongs and misery endured by the
Irish people. The wrongs and this misery, as far as they
have been caused by misrule, have been ii.flicted by that
band of oligarchs,' to whom you have so often, so re-
cently, and so justly ascribed them, and amongst whom
your native oligarchs have been the very, very worst."

In tie first place, the Norman conquest isnot
analogous to the conquest of Ireland. The Duke
of Normandy might defeat the King of England,
and divide a great part of the land among his
followers ; but the Normans could not retain so
large a country as England in subjugation by
Norman means ; and even before the separation
of the two countries, it became necessary for the
Norman gentry in England to provide for their
security by English means. The great supe-
riority of England enabled the conquerors of
Ireland to treat that country in a harsher man-
ner ; and when, in the course of a generation
or two, the conquerors had become Irish, a
fresh inroad of English adventurers plunii7ed the
country again into confusion. Neither is it
true that the people of England, as distinguished
from the oligarchs, are not chargeable ,Aith

much of the —misery of the Irish. The people
of England, engaged in trade and manufactures
down to our own times, looked with great jea-
lousy on the growth of trade and manufactures
in Ireland, and were incessant in their applica-
tions to the Legislature to put down one branch
of industry after another. In one single book,
" Smith's History of the Wool Trade," there is
unfortunately but too much evidence of the suc-
cess of the endeavours of the English manufac-
turers in their interference with the Government

to destroy their Irish rivals. We must no

therefore lay the flattering unction to our souls
that the people of England are free from blame
as regards the Irish. Mr. Cobbett successfully
exposes the notion, that in a country well stocked
with labourers, it will ever be in their power by
savings to dispense altogether with aid, when no
longer able to work :
" Are all the labouring people (he says) able in youth
to lay by something for old age? It is the decree of God
that the human race should be sustained by labour ; nine-
tenths of labour is painful in some degree ; very few of
the human race will encounter pain but from necessit,i ;
and none will, therefore, seldom encounter more of this
pain than is demanded by their present wants. To c,ll
upon men who are engaged in putsuits not bodily painful,
to ley by, in their youth, for the days of old age, is rea-
sonable and just ; but to call upon the hard,working man
to do this is neither. If he do it—(and, in England, be,
to a great extent, does it, in five cases out of six, after
ell)—if be do it, where is the tongue or pen to speak the
praise that is his due? But if he have not, from what-
ever came, been able to do it, r have not done it, he has
a clear right to a provision in old age : he has spent his
:ife and worn out his strength in the service of the com-
munity ; and that reluctance which every man naturally
'eels to ask another for something, is a sufficient securi,y
against his being lezy and prodigal in his youth, upon a
cool calculation of the benefit of parochial provision in
his old age. With regard to your second objec•ion,
namely, that by making a provision for old age, you de-
prive the indigent parents of the aid of th,ir children,
who, seeing the 'naked cell' provided for them, will
let them go to it ; with regard to this matter, you I
ippear to regard the Irish people as being capable
settinz at defiance, and as likely to set at defiance,
not only the laws of nature, but also the express and a
hundred-times-repeated laws of God, No very high com-
At/lent to your countrymen! No very strong proof of
,tie sincerity of your belief in that t generosity,' that
active and practical compassion for the poor,' and that
deep sense of religion' which we shall preen•ly see you
tscribiog to them ! But you, as a lawyer, might have
,old them one thing, and since you did not do it, I will;
and that is, that if neither the laws of nature nor those of
God could induce th.-in so far to honour their father and
their mother as to keep them front the poor house, the
poor laws would compel them to do it, they having the
befits ; and if they have not the ability, how can poor-
laws deprive the parents of their aid? As a lawyer,
you aught to have known that those poor-laws which you
io vehemently decry, compel all persons, being able to
to it, to maintain their indigent fathers, mothers,

andfathers, grandmothers, children, and grandchildren.
rills is what you ought to have told your Dub-
in audience, though it might have cost you the loss of some
,f thole valuable cheers, which you obtained by this sup-

ire‘tion of the truth, and by supplying its place with the
• naked cell,' existing nowhere but in your imagination.

Either you did not know the law as to this matter, or you
lid know it. If the former, you ought to have known it
efore you made this speech ; and if the latter, I decline to
,haracteriza your conduct.
" But, Sir, in your anxious haste to narrow the effect
poor•laws, you forgot that, besides the sick, the maimed,
nil the aged, there were some other partiea who are, how-
ver, by no means overlooked in that Holy Writ, for not
a,lieving in which we shall presently find, you condemn-
ng the ' intidei' to be dealt with in a way to supersede
Il legal punishment ;' namely, the widow, the orphan,
aid the stranger. In your comprehensive scheme of ac-
-ive and practical compassion fur the poor,' you will make
io provision for these ! The English Poor Laws, which
lo not cry, ' Lord, Lord!' but which do Lis will, make
,ifovision for them all ; and well, indee 1, is it that they
10, or thousands upon thousands of Irishmen would, at
his very moment, be dying and lying dead from starva-
ion ; and that, too, if your doctrine be sound, without
aving the hula lest ground for accusing the English of
~justice or cruelty."
_

Cobbett pays Mr. O'Connell back hand,
(Andy, in his own coin, All the following pay

sage, in which he comments on his description
of the effects of the Poor Laws :

" I now come to your sweeping assertions relative to
the effects of the Poor Laws, and to the picture whicli
ou give us of the ;people of the two countries, so much
in favour of the Irish. You told your cheering audience,
that the Poor Laws made slav'es of the'English working
people; that it completely destroyed their character for
independence ; that you preferred the wild merriment of
the Irishman to the half-sulky, half-miserable tones of the
English slave to the Poor Laws ; that the Irishman cer-
tainly had his distress (indeed !), but then lie had his
hopes (of what?) ; he endured much misery, but then he
entertained expectation of redress ! Here, it seems, there
was great cheering;' and well there might, if the mat-
ter conveyed surprise as agreeable to your audience as it
does to me. Well, then, here you wipe away the heavy
charge of our poor half-sulky, half-miaera'lle' slaves
having made the Irish poor. And if this really be the state
of the Irish people (and who can doubt it since you say it
is ?) ; if they have those cheering hopes and flowery ex-
pectations; if they save in youth wherewithal to sup-
port them in age ; if they have disperisaries in all the
♦illages, and hospitals in all the county towns ; and if
they be (as under such happy chcinnstances they natu-
rally must be) wild in merriment ; this being (as we know
it is) their state, then, upon my word, if they still
come here to mock with their mirth our poor,
sulky' souls, I shall be for givinz their hides a little fink-
ing, a la Shrewsbury ; for ' United Kingdom' here, or
United Kingdom' there, they ate not to come here with
their wild merriment,' and taunt us with our half
miserable' tones! However, when I get upon the same
floor with you, we will soon make an equit,,ble adjustment
as to this matter at any rate. You shall move and I will
second a Bill, which, when it become a law, shall be called
the Act of reciprocity, giving you power to whip all the
half-miserable' English slaves that go to Ireland, and me
power to whip ail the youths of wild merriment' that
come to England. This would set all to rights in a trice;
you would preserve your 'green island' from the contagion
of the sulks ; and if f did not clear ours of the wild
merriment,' there should be neither whalebone nor whip-
cord left in England."
The English Poor Laws have been abused
occasionally ; but, after all, there is great exag-
geration in the accounts of the extent to which
the abuse has been carried. Let us only consi-
der that there are fourteen millions of inhabitants

in England and Wales ; that the whole of the
sum expended on the poor is a little more than
six millions and a half ; that out of this sum are
maintained the aged and infirm poor, widows,
orphans, lunatics, idiots, &c. &c. ; that no small
portion of it is expended on large towns where
there are few abuses, and we must be satisfied
that the payment of wages out of rates is con-
fined to comparatively few districts, of no great
extent. We hear of parishes in the Wealds of
Kent and Sussex, in which the poor rates are
255. and even 30s. in the pound ; but even in
Sussex, in which the poor rates are higher than
in any other county in England, the real pro-
perty assessed in 1815 was 915,3481., and the
sum expended on the poor for the year ending
Easter, 1830, was 358,461/., or about seven
shillings and tenpence in the pound. We are
no advocates for these abuses; but we would

take the poor laws with all possible abuses a hun-
dred times, rather than the miserable state of
things in Ireland, where the landlord has all the
powers of a slave-owner, without the responsi-
bility. In the following contrast, the English-
man certainly has the advantage, and it would be
well for Irishmen, before they make the abuses of
the English poor laws a ground for leaving the
Irish poor at the mercy of their landlords, to re-
flect how few are the grievances suffered by the
Englishman compared with the Irishman :

"You have, if you do speak the truth, the advantage
over us in climate and soil; and you have, you say, a
peaple brave, patient, generous, hardy, good-humoured,
laborious, and intelligent.' Yet look at the difference in
the people, and particularly the working people, of the
two countries ! Look at it; consider it well ; here, in-
deed, is matter for an Irish Legislator to think, muse,
and meditate upon. When did you or any body else ever
see or hear of Englishmen prowling about in bands of
half•naked beggars in any country upon earth; when did
you ever hear of the necessity of taking them op by force,
and carrying them like malefactors, and tossing them
back upon their native shores ; when did you ever hear of
them being an incumbrance to any people amongst whom
they went ; when, since you talk of their hovels, did you
see s:r hear of English labourers being in hovels, in com-
pany with the pig, the flesh of which they were destined
*ever to taste, both feeding on the same root, at the same
board, warmed by the same chitnneyless fire, and both
blackened by the same smoke : when, since you talk of
the naked cells' of the poor-house, did you ever hear of
thousands of them living on stinking shell fish, sea-weed,
and nettles, and of thousands at a time receiving the last
offices of religion as preparatory to death from starvation:
when, since you call them slaves, did you ever hear of one
of them applying the cringing and fawning appellation of
your harmer' to any human being, much less to any-
thing, though groom or footman, from whom they expected
to coax a farthing or a mouthful of bread; when did you
ever hear of English labourers who needed, or who
would contentedly suffer, an employer to stand over them
at their work : when did you ever hear of their dwellings
bring destitute of every mark of cleanliness and of decent
reserve, having about them no traces of huma❑ existence
within, except the feculent heap at the door, which nature
herself would call upon them to hide : when did you ever
see or ever hear talk of one of their rural habitations, nut
having about it (unless rendered impossible by local circum-
stances) gooseberry and currant bushes, beds of parsley
and other herbs, plants of wall-flower and biennial stock,
clumps of polyanthuses, daisies, and bulbs, and other
il,wers, and, where possible, plants of roses and honey_
suckles, trained round their windows, or over their doors,
with the greatest care, and the greatest taste, of all which,
together with apple-trees grafted by their own hands, and
together also with stalls of bees, the result of their own
care ; there are more in a circuit, embracing ten rural pa-
rishes in England, than there are to be found in posses-
sion of all the millions of labourers that inhabit the lovely
land ;' when, lastly (not to suffer the pi ovocation to urge
me further), did you ever see or hear of au ' En;li•h slave'
disowning the country of his birth, and wherever found,
and under whatever circumstances, not forward to proclaim
himself an Englishman, and to boast of the honour• of the
❑ame ?

" Now, Sir, avoiding, as something too painful to en-
counter, a detailed exhibition of the other side, do I
ascribe the difference to the nature of the Irish people, to
Any inherent vice in them ? By no means. 1 ascribe it
to the difference in the treatment received by the two
people from their rulers. Not to anything dune by Eng-
land to Ireland ; but to the former not baying compelled
the domestic rulers of the latter to treat the Irish working
pedple es the Eng working people have ;ken treated,
during the last two centuries and a half ; and Nen:nisu ly
to its nut having compelled the owners of the land in
Ireland to :eave enough of its preduce in the several
parishes., to provide for the wants of the destitute ; as is
effectually done in England and America by those famous
poor laws, which Blackstone truly says are, founded in
the very principles of civil society ;' but the unspeakable
benefit of which you are nom labouring, though, I trust, •
in vain, to:prevent your ill-treated, unhappy, and ever-
troubled country from receiving."—Morning Chronicle.
We are glad to find that Mr. Hume has given
notice of a motion for the repeal of the Super-
annuation
Act. This Act has been the means,
under different Administrations, of adding to
the number of sinecures, without startling people the sound of so unpopular a name. On the
contrary, there is something ad captandton in
the term superannuation. It fills the mind with
such images as long service, powerful claims,
advanced age, and justice and humanity appear
to sanction the expense whi.-th it has entailed
upon the country. But a little acquaintance
with the mode iu which the Superannuation List
has been worked up to its present amount will
soon dissipate those visions, and exhibit it in
its true light, as a source of favouritism and es.-
t:-ava ga l
and e ea, ( lair)fr(n which,d the poti every principle of
publiceconomy
ought to
be relieved. Without entering into particulars at
present, we shall merely state dwell- known fact,
that many persons have been superannuated be-
fore now, not because they were rendered inca-
pable by infirmity or old age from discharging

their duties, but because it suited the purposes
of men in power to make room for their adhe-
rents and retainers. They could not create new
places for them on the spur of the occasion,
but by superannuating those who held places
the thing was as effectually done. Of late,
indeed, since the practice became too glar-
ing, steps have been taken and resolutions
adopted to keep down the list ; but, for some
cause or other, it has a constant tendency to
enlarge, so that the only effectual mode of deal-
ing with the subject appears to be that which
Mr. Hume has in contemplation, the repeal of
the Act altogether. But the principle itself,
independently of the abuses which have grown
up under it, is, to say the least, of very doubtful
policy. That class of public officers to whom
the principle applies is the class which is least
in need of any such provision. It is not the poor
clerk, who has been fagging all his life at 601. or
701. a year, who is selected by the humanity of
the Government and the Legislature for protec-
Ition against indigence in his old age, but the
chief, who has been receiving hundreds and
even thousands, and who, by the exercise of com-
mon prudence, might have rendered himself in-
dependent before he retired. It would not be
easy to assign any good reason why those men
should be placed above the necessity of econo-
mising like other people. The prospect of such
a provision is an encouragement to extrava-
gance, and has often had the effect of inducing
habits as inconsistent with industry and applica-
tion as with prudence and economy. Besides,
in the present circumstances of the country, the
public require relief. They are one of the
parties to be considered, and it is a strong fea-
ture in their case that the only relief for which
they contend is an exemption from charges,
which they feel in their consciences that they
ought not to be called upon to pay. As the
question is shortly to come before Parliament,
we hope that this fruitful source of extravagance
will not exist another Session.—Morn. Herald.

It is impossible for Government not to per-
ceive that public opinion grows continually
stronger against punishments of blood. This is
not merely the result of the improved influence
which the advances of civilization and Christian
knowledge exercises in favour of the interests of
humanity ;—it partly arises from the increased
and increasing conviction of the inefficacy of san-
guinary laws to repress crime by the terror of
examples which do not, and cannot work any
moral reformation. But the growing aversion,
on the part of the public, to the judicial destruc-
tion of life is a gratifying fact to us, who have
laboured long, and sometimes under very adverse
circumstances, to diffuse better notions on this
important subject than our Legislators had en-
deavoured to teach mankind. It has been our task
for some years past to inculcate that reasonable
horror which all Christian societies ought to feel
of divesting human life of the sacredness with
which the Almighty Creator clothed it, and mak-
ing that greatest gift of the Father of the Uni-
verse the cheap and common sacrifice to the
angry spirit of exterminating laws—far it is
only in courtesy we can ever give such a
system the name of justice. If the public feel-
against the infliction death for crimes against
private rights and private property be strong—
still stronger is the feeling against the destruc-
tion of life for political offences. We are not,
therefore, surprised at hearing from our Bristol
correspondent that the petition which was to
have been forwarded on Thursday from that city,
praying for a commutation of the punishment of
the five individuals condemned to the scaffold,
had about 8,000 signatures affixed to it in the
short time which had elapsed between the prepa-
ration of this appeal to the mercy of the Crown
and the day of its transmission to the Secretary
of the. Home Department. If it be denied that
the comes of these five convicts, as well as the
crimes of the other five at Nottingham, are strictly
speaking political offences, inasmuch as, by their
agency, supposing them all to have been rightly
tound guilty, private property was destroyed ;
yet it cannot be denied that, whatever were the
consequences of the riots in which they engaged.
the cause was political excitement—excitement
arising out of the agitation of that measure of
eform which those Ministers introduced whose
duty it is to advise the Crown in the exercise of
its prerogative of mercy. Can the Ministers,
with any propriety, refuse to lay before his Ma-
jesty the petition from so large a number of the
citizens of Bristol, praying for a mitigation of the
punishment of men who were led into criminal
excesses by the temporary phrenzy of a political
crisis—a phrenzy that was chiefly stimulated by
some of the Journals which profess to be the or-
gans of the Government, and which excited the
popular passions on the question of Reform
by those intemperate and furious addresses
despised by all intelligent minds, but which
can exercise, as we have seen, a fatal in
fluence over an ignorant, and, because an igno-
rant,
an easily misguided multitude ? Besides,
are there not higher and greater delinquents,
who have not been even brought to trial for the
share which they had in bringing about the dis-
astrous events at Bristol, of whose original cri-
minality the kind-hearted and lamented Colonel
• Brereton has been the pitied victim ? We do
not designate those persons—for obvious reasons
—but we say the country will not be satisfied if,
in addition to the numbers of the rioters whose
blood was shed by the sabres of the military,
Government advises the execution of the five
men for whose lives so many thousands of their
fellow-citizens now put up their earnest suppli-
cations to the Throne. Surely the humane
heart of William IV. will not be inexorable to
the prayers of so many of his faithful subjects,
if they are only permitted to reach his ear ; and
will any Minister venture to interpose between
the Royal attribute of mercy and the deluded vic-
tims of political infatuation, over whose necks the
sharp axe of the law is now suspended ? What,
we ask, in the case of these five convicts, and
of those awaiting the infliction of a similar sen-
tence at Nottingham (though the guilt ()flour
of the latter has been by no means clearly esta-
blished), is only what we exerted ourselves to
obtain for the ex-Ministers of Charles X., con-
victed, as they were, of the most flagrant acts of
hi ,b treason against the state of which modern
history affords any example. Some of the indi-
viduals who are now Ministers of the British
Crown exerted themselves in the same cause—
and yet how much greater were the crimes of
guilty ambition floated the
than the outrages com-
mitted by the Bristol rioters—who, though they
men,
destroyedf
stitro‘e'eeto
Pari s wihno s
blood, 1i
much property, did not sacrifice the
life of any one of their opponents ? Day after
day we appealed to the French people to spare
the lives of the great and ennobled traitors. The
dreadful machinery of the guillotine was not put
in action either then or since against political
offenders. Will our Ministers proclaim to En-
have not virtue enough to imitate
rope that they