The Sun.
London, England, 1866-02-06 00:00:00

TimEs.—So even is the tenour of a peaceful and
well-governed country, that its most important
ceremonials are apt to become dull by repetition.
Such novelty of circumstance as there may happen
to be is lost in the uniformity of the pageant. It is
far otherwise to-day. The Parliament is new, and it
is near seven years since the first meeting of its pre-
decessor. About 200 members of the House of
Commons are new to their work, and have to be
initiated in the routine of forms, and the play of
parties indoors. The work before them is new, for
besides the necessity of taking instant measures
with a grievous murrain that will not be stayed,
there is the self-imposed task of Parliamentary Re-
form. The chief personage of this day's spectacle is
new from her great grief and long seclusion, and
there is novelty in the simpler taste which to-day,
and probably henceforth, rules the Royal proces-
sion. There is a novelty, most welcome to all be-
holders, in the Royal pair who will to-day sit next
to the throne, suggesting alternate memories and
forecastings. The House of Commons has to give
its confidence to a new Premier, and accept for itself
a new leader. While many of us are hugging the
past as a long-tried and faithful friend, a younger
generation is springing up that knows it not, except
by hearsay or by duller and scarcely less deceptive
records. The young men who witness the pageant
of to-day were children at the date of the last.
Thus rapidly has all and everything changed since
our political rivals first began to bid for power in
the coinage of reform. The same interval has seen,
indeed, more startling novelties elsewhere. We can-
not pretend to vie with the spectacle of a President,
in the place of a murdered predecessor, opening half
a Congress to deliberate upon the readmission of the
other half ; nor is this the case of a new King meet-
ing an old people reunited after a separation of some
1,300 years. But the fruit of events often swells them
hereafter to an importance beyond the first seeming.
If half the designs of the present hourhave their ful-
filment, the coming age will have good reason to re-
member the day when Queen Victoria for the fifth time
pronounced the doom of that reformed Parliament
with which she had worked successfully for twenty-
nine years. Considering how little appearances are
to be trusted, and the large experience we have now
had of political intentions—when reform is con-
cerned—the most substantial novelty of to-day is
the House of Commons itself. It contains one
hundred and ninety-six members who had no seat
in it last July. This unusual crowd of novices has
been carefully scrutinised by those who wish to
know the quality and temper of the house, and
how far it has been affected by the new mental. The
result of that scrutiny goes some way to explain the
very moderate tone of Reformers. The new Parlia-
ment is said to be characterised by great independ-
ence of feeling, great wealth, and an earnest desire
to do its duty. Its wealth is a thing that can be
computed. Its independence of character may be
inferred from independence of position-. A desire
to do their duty is, at least, natural to the youthful-
ness or new Parliamentary life of two hundred new
members. Of course they have yet to learn what
their duty is, but it is better to have to learn than
to be hampered by party ties and pledges long re-
pented of. The house has suffered lamentable
losses, in one way or another, and in this restless,
expectant age, the mere love of change, after a
period of seven years, has bad its weight with many
constituencies that could give no better reason. But
if the change has not always been for the better, it
is impossible not to see that under the present system
a Parliament can largely recruit itself, and not be
the worse for its raw levies. Indeed, the levies
I are not raw. Every English gentleman is bound
to some form of public business, and has to practise
in his own neighbourhood the qualities that con-
duce most to political efficiency. The present
constituencies, as a general and almost invariable
rule, know a gentleman, and can judge of his quali-
fications for public life. Even the Manchester
Reformers are not able to complain of the actual
selection so much as of the fact that everybody
has not taken part in it. If, then, this be indeed
the last Parliament in the series commenced by that
of 1832, the Reform Act has done its work well.
The fact of an ever-increasing weight, independence,
and patriotism is honourable to the country, and to
the cause of representative government. Instead
of a descent step by step towards democracy, the
Reformed Legislature, maintained by frequent ap-
peals to the people, has risen in the course of 34
years to such a character, and such a hold on the
national confidence, that its unquestionable success
becomes the reason for a fresh experiment. Tho
argument is that we may and ought to have ano-
ther Reform because the first has succeeded, and
because the experience of a whole generation esta-
blishes the absolute safety an eventual wisdom of
fresh extensions of the constituency and acces-
sions of the popular element. With the mighty
task that looms before us, and that impends like a
phrophetic doom over the House of Commons, we
cannot but tremble for the ordinary work to be
done, and which is said to exceed that of any for-
mer Parliament. Will it be possible to satisfy that
portion of the public which has bills to pass, or
laws to be amended, while another portion wishes
to recommence legislation on some entirely new
basis, and with a total change of deliberative
agency ? However, there are matters that cannot
be put off. There is a good deal to be done at
once, and in a few weeks we may begin to under-
stand better than we can now the position in which
we are left by the conflict of political pledges and
actual necessities.

HERALD.—The influential demonstration in fa-
vour of the repeal of the malt tax made yesterday
by a crowded meeting of the farmers and country
gentlemen of England, at the Freemasons' Tavern,
must convince Mr. Gladstone and the rest of her
Majesty's Ministers that this question, too long
in abeyance, must not be trifled with any longer.
Unless the forthcomng Budget shall include some
proposition for the reduction, at least, of this most
obnoxious impost, a strong array of members of
the House of Commons may be combined against it.
The representatives of the agricultural constituencies
were, many of them, returned to Parliament on the
distinct understanding that they would insist on the
abolition of this tax, or on its reduction with a view
to such abolition. Those who were not so pledged
cannot be ignorant of the strong feeling of those
who returne them. Their opponents on the Libe-
ral side, if true to their principles, can only defend
the tax apologetically, and as a matter of present ex-
pediency rather than of principle. Its maintenance
is utterly inconsistent with the theory of free trade,
whose supporters have constantly pronounced them-
selves opposed, to taxes which may act as checks on
native produce,especially on articles destined for the
food of the people. To tax • luxuries rather than
necessaries has been generally the practice of the
so-called Free-trade party. Yet Mr. Gladstone has
made successive reductions in the duties on wine and
tea, which are articles of luxury, leaving beer, which
is the food of the working man as much as his bread,
and malt, which is the staple of beer, and an admir-
able food for cattle, taxed with an excise duty
which amounts to 70 per cent. on the value of
malt, and a far higher per-tentage on the price of
beer. The apostle of free • trade, Mr. Cobden,
admitted that the producers of malt had an equal
claim with the foreign growers of wheat to a re-
mission of taxation. Sir Robert Peel, as Sir Fitzroy.
Kelly reminded his hearers yesterday, " emphati-