The Sun.
London, England, 1835-10-27 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1835.

of Commons would be a mere duplicate of the latter.
It would, we deny not, be its duplicate to a certain
extent in spirit, in principle, and in feeling ; but then
that is the object sought to be accomplished ; and why
we should reject that which is the object sought for
by all parties with so much just zeal and patriotic
anxiety, simuly because the mode of obtaining it is
straight-forward, and goes to the root of the evil; in-
stead of being circuitous and uncertain, we leave to
the Noble Lord to inform us. Meantime, we take
leave to inform the author that he is egregiously igno-
rant of the state of public feeling, and of the progress
of political opinion, in imagining that the people of
this country are to wait.for six or seven years, or any
other indefinite space of time, until a reform of the
House of Lords shall drop into their laps, like well-
.ripened fruit. They will do no such thing. They
have already, in a reform of the House of Commons,
got possession of all but the citadel ; and, knowing
their power, as they do know it and feel it, that also,
if not surrendered with a good grace and in good time,
will be taken by storm, and its already tottering. towers
and undermined foundation be given to the winds of
Heaven, as a perpetual memorial of the fate cf unjust
usurpation, and obstinate maintenance bf abused privi-
leges and unfounded rights.—Morning Advertiser,
The sketches of our correspondent in the province
of Ulster, besides the information which they afford as
to the real state of the parts of the country which he
is visiting, furnish the strongest corroboration which
we could call for the frequent reference which we have
made to the enormous and disproportionate rents drawn
from that country by an absentee proprietary, and of
the crying necessity which exists for some part of that
rental being appropriated, as is the case in England,
towards the wants and employment of a peasantry now
starving amidst the plenty which the labours of such
of them as can obtain employment produce. Nothing,
indeed, can be more vicious and unnatural than the re-
','ye state of the two countries in this respect. While
-,eel of the whole of the arable land in England
do this time average more than 20s. an acre,
and • . reduction of that is called for, an
averag • ee times that amount is screwed out of
a tenantry, who, to scrape it together on quarter day
for the inexorable agent, are often actually obliged to
refrain themselves from partaking of the produce of
their own capital and industry. Nor is this all. The
labourer, unable to subsist in his own country under a
system which absorbs into one focus the means which
might be otherwise dedicated to his employment, comes
over to swell the ranks of pauperism here—to earn the
money which the English labourer so much wants, and
to be a burden upon that poor-rate in England, which
the mock-philanthropists and sturdy mendicants of his
own country deny him at home. It is very well, too, to
talk of the payment of tithes being resisted in Ireland
on the sole ground of religious objection ; but when we
consider that the great bulk of the land of Ireland
belongs to Protestant landlords, it is not very unrea-
sonable to' conjecture that the enormous rents may
have something to do with it, and that there may be no
great disposition or ability to pay the tithe proctor when
the quarterly visit of the rent-taker sweeps away all
there is. Looking at this subject in all its bearings
(and we here glance but at a few of them), it must be
admitted to be second to none in importance as regards
both parts of the empire. The Irish landlord seems to
stand between the countries as the lawyer in the fable
is represented between two clients—while he devours
the oyster, " a pearly shell" is all that the expectant
litigants acquire. By the system to which we allude
both Ireland and England are impoverished ; and
though session after session of Parliament takes place,
presenting the same melancholy state of things, scarcely
a voice is raised to suggest or enforce the remedy. Thu
time, however, is, we trust, fast approaching when this
view of the matter can be no longer evaded ; and, for
ourselves, we trust that we cannot better accelerate the
justice so long, though hitherto ineffectually, called for,
than by displaying in the language of truth the real
state to which Ireland is reduced by the dissimilarity
which exists in the laws which apply to different por-
tions of what is called a " United Kingdom."—Morn-
ing Herald.
It would be difficult to offer a better illustration of
the character of the present Administration than is
presented to the British public in the boast of its re-
tainers, a beast which forms of necessity the staple
material of their public eddresses, of the advantages
which, they have procured for the country, and espe-
cially for their own party, by their Bill (for they have
still the assurance to call it theirs) of Municipal Cor-
poration Reform. The single important Act of the
session was undoubtedly that for the Reform
of Municipal Corporations, and this is the sub-
ject upon which every Ministerial braggart must
declaim, when he has the good fortune to collect
around him a fit assemblage of gullible dupes, or
he content to stare upon them in stupid and silent
vacuity. The alternative would be painful to men
who respected their auditors 'or themselves, but, f 0..-
tunately for the Ministerial braggarts, they respect nei-
ther. This Municipal Corporation Bill may or may
not turn out in practice to be a beneficial measure.
But in either case it is not the measure of the Ad-
ministration ; and fleet they and their partisans should
now claim merit, as they do, on account of it, is only a
proof of the wretched state of penury in which they
find themselves, when it becomes necessary for them
to parade their pretensions to public gratitude and fa-
vour. If they had any single achievement of theirs to
mention that would constitute a real claim to the ap-
plause of the nation for their legislative talent and
success during the last session, there needs no ghost
to tell us that Ministers and their advocates would
never recur, as they perpetually do, to a measure
which they accepted from the reforming and cor-
recting hands of their political opponents with
manifest angd
with thoiasfvoitwmheepd reluctance and hesitation.
important measure ishe d O'Connell
iupon Adminis-
trationth the
whole, one of the meanest and most disreputable
transactions that ever stained the character of any
body of men pretending to ca I themselves statesmen.
In consequence of the amendments introduced by the
House of Lords into' this Bill, amounting, in fact, to
little less than its entire re-construction, what cla-
mour did we not hear about the defeat of the Munici-
pal Corporation Reform ? Were we not assured, clay
after day, by the most confidential organs of the Ad-
ministration, that Ministers would disdain to rear the
changeling that had been forced upon them? Did
not the Prime Minister himself, in his place in the
House of Lords, expressly and distinctly suggest this
language to the Ministerial press ? Did he not pro-
ceed even further than this, and hold out a revolution-
ary menace to their Lordships, if they persisted in
alterations which are now embodied in the Act
of Parliament ? Have not the most able and power-
full supporters of Ministers, the supporters whom
Ministers most unreservedly trust, cherish, con-
sult, and obey, filled the order-book of the
House of Commons with notices of motion for
next Session, threatening the independence and
the existence even of the House of Lords, chiefly
on account of the manner in which the Conser-
vatives in that Noble Assembly remodelled the
Corporation Bill ? • Have not Mr. O'Connell, the
'mainspring, and other persons, auxiliary springs, of
the Administration, been vituperating, with all their
vast powers of vituperation, the Peerage of England,
stimulated confessedly to these outpourings of coarse
and ribald abuse by the Lords' Amendments of
the Municipal Corporations Bill? Did not Lord John
Russell apologize for its acceptance by the pretence
that it was only an instalment, thus labouring to the
extent of his puny faculties to render it unsatisfactory
and unsuccessful ? All these questions must be an-
swered in the affirmative. What right, then, we ask, have
the present Ministers of the Crown to claim the merit,
•if merit there be, of the Municipal Corporation
Bill ? Are they, in virtue of their character of Re-
volutionists, to be indulged in the privilege of blowing
hot and cold at their pleasure ? Is a measure to be
"productive of consequences which we shall all have
, occasion to regret," as Lord Melbourne said to , the
I' House of Lords ; is it to be an unsatisfactory instal-
i'ment, as Lord John Russell said to the House of
dornmons ; is it to be an adequate cause forTreforming,
revolutionizing, or abolishing the Upper House of
Parliament, as Mr. O'Connell and other partisans of
Ministers have said to the whole world ; and, in ad-
dition to all these things, is it to be a theme of glory

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to Ministers, the measure by which they are to sustain
their popularity from one session to another, the mag-
nificent and,supreme result of their legislative labour
for a whole session, the single monument of their
efficacy—their solitary claim to national gratitude and
support ? We venture to think that the people of
England will not adopt these contradictory and irrecon-
cileable propositions. All the eloquence of Mr.
O'Connell, with the no-eloquence of Lord Melbourne
and Lord John Russell to boot, will be insufficient to
convince them that the Municipal Corporation Bill, as
re-constructed by the House of Lords, is a bad Bill,
when the purpose is to discredit and overthrow that
part of the Constitution, and a good one when the pur-
pose io to extol Mr. O'Connell and his subordinates in
power, Lord John Russell and Lord Melbourne. An
attempt has been made, certainly without much suc-
cess, to palm this absurdity upon the people of Eng-
land. But we will take the character of that people
altogether if they will satisfy themselves by the con-
temptuous rejection merely of this flagrant absurdity.
The attempt is pregnant with inferences which a re-
flecting nation will not fail to draw. It is an attempt
which could only have been made by Ministers dex-
terous and zealous in Revolutionary enterprises, reck-
less or unskilled in the business of Legislation.—
Morning Post.