The Sun.
London, England, 1835-04-16 00:00:00

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.

SlR—There never yet happened a political enzeute, how-
ever disastrous were the immediate consequences, that had
not advantages of some kind or other. The gloomy days
of Cromwell, when the " bigots of the iron time" held their
relentless sway over this country, were, nevertheless, ripe in
beneficial results, and served, amid the universal tyranny
that overshadowed the land, to consolidate the indepen-
dence of England. The French Revolution, whose dawn
was so pure, but whose progress was stained with blood,
conveyed a useful lesson, which was practised in the me-
morable " Three Days." The historical reader, by which
I do not mean the mere collector of facts, must have ob-
served that the shocks sustained by enlightened nations
have all conduced in the end to uphold the proper rights of
man ; and in the annals of our own country there is a re-
markable link connecting the various revolutions that from
time to time have broken out, proving liberal principles to
have been without deviation in their course from the earliest
to the present time, undaunted at the sight of danger,
and undazzled by the glitter of Courts. The first great blow
dealt at the Royal prerogative was by the chivalrous barons
of the 13th century, when, in the year 1215 the pusilla-
nimous John was forced to sign in the plains of Runn)mead
the celebrated magna charta. The long reign of his suc-
cessor was signalized by further concessions extorted from
the unwilling hands of the despot. The crimes and feeble
policy of most of the kings in the Plantagenet line caused
the people to be more watchful of their rulers, and these
again to be more wary, if not sincerer, in their conduct.
The monstrous excesses of the Tudors compelled the last
of that arbitrary race to act with greater caution, and to
yield to circumstances, although Elizabeth inherited too
much of her father's disposition to entitle her to great
respect. When James of Scotland, the unworthy son of
an amiable and persecuted mother, ascended the throne,
Englishmen for the first time heard the doctrine of the
divine and indefeasible rights of kings, and then began that
combat between liberty and absolutism which terminated in
the complete triumph of the former. The infatuated Charles
I. lighted up the flames of civil war, and the perverted zeal of
Strafford led to that train of events which ended in the Bill of
Rights, and subsequently by the Act of Settlement. The
Revolution of IbBB was the reward of years of blood and
turmoil. From this period till the atath of George IL, an
interval of nearly a hundred years, England enjoyed in-
ternal peace and prosperity, undisturbed by the wars that
raged on the Continent. The first foreign act that wel-
comed the accession of George the Third, was the partition
of Poland by the Royal tigers, at the head of whom was
the Empress Catherine the Second, who has been appro-
priately styled the Northern Clytemnestra. This cry of
" Havock ! and let slip the dogs of war," was responded to
at home by the oppression of our American Colonies, and
afterwards, by their righteous revolt. An event now took
place, which was destined to throw all others into the
shade : the Rulers of France, in an unguarded moment,
snapped the bow which had been bent for ages ; the dis-
missal of Necker produced a rumbling sensation through-
out the country, similar to what we are told is usually
the precursor of an earthquake, and the shot fired at
the Bastille awoke all the noble and the evil passions of the
mind. But the manumission of millions could not he effected
without danger, and the atrocities of Danton and of Robe-
spierre were the inevitable consequences of ages of servitude
and ignorance. Education, which the Aristocracy and the
Church with their wonted wisdom purposely withheld from
the inferior classes, was unable to offer any barrier to the
overwhelming torrent, and wild beasts in human form wan-
dered about in search of blood and plunder, offering to man-
kind a melancholy instance of the effects of bad government.
It was during these sanguinary commotions that the anti-
national party in England employed all the powers of elo-
quence to magnify the scenes that are passing in France, and
to delude the people. Alarmed and taken by surprise, the
infernal plot succeeded but too well, and in a little time
despotism numbered more victims than it had been able to
boast of in all the preceding centuries together. The
victory of absolute power obtained by the sword, the prison,
and the block was succeeded, after long years of trial
and misery, by a popular triumph, whose only weapons
were the diffusion of knowledge and perseverance in
one grand pursuit. It was reserved for the law of
Hampden and Fox to strike the most fatal blow against
tyranny without shedding a drop of blood. The heads of
the hydra had often been cut off, but always sprung up
again—the immortal REFORM BILL applied the burning
irons to the wound ; it forced an entrance into the obsti-
nately defended fortress of corruption, and planted the
standard of freedom on the highest battlements. It was
hailed with delight by the companions of Silvio Pellico, and
honoured by the loud curses of every breathing tyrant.
This brief and imperfect sketch will suffice to show the

'URSDAY, APRIL 16, 1835.

nature of the great political events which have agitated
England, and indeed the history of our own country is little
else but a recital of struggled between the powerful few and
the oppressed many. With the experience, then; of the
past before us, is it irrational to suppose that we shall con-
tinue in the same policy that has guided us since our exist-
ence as a nation ? Is it improbable that the wider exten-
sion of knowledge will lead to the remedy of abuses ? If
the views of the wise and good were carried into effect, the
world would present the delightful spectacle of a happy
and united family ; and although such a golden age can
only be looked for in the regions of Utopia, we are not,
therefore, to relax in our endeavours to approach to it as
much as possible, any more than, in the moral world, we
ought to cease aiming at that perfection which, however,
we know to be unattainable. To hear some men talk, one '
would suppose that they had just emerged from a cave
whence human forms and human thoughts were alike
banished ; they appear absolutely astounded at the advance
of what they call destructive principles ; they seem to vene-
rate institutions only as they are the more deeply hidden in
obscurity—QUOQUlE MODO INDUCT', ANTIQUITATE DE-
FENDUNTUR. If these short-sighted persons would give
themselves the trouble to read Hallam, or even Hume,
before they again venture to speak on political subjects,
they may possibly save exposing themselves to laughter and
contempt ; they will see that the spirit of resistance against
oppression, so far from being a novelty, has constantly ani-
mated us, and that liberty was understood by our ancestors
when other nations were sunk in utter darkness ; they will
not discover one single instance in which tyranny succeeded
in the long-run ; and then, recalling to mind the recent ex-
pulsion of the Tories from office, their zeal against liberty
may possibly be cooled. When you can drain.our veins of
the red English blood that at present runs through them—
when you shall have compelled us to drink of that silent
stream which makes the past, as the future, a blank—come,
then, and not till then—come and besiege that sacred tem-
ple whose foundations are coeval with the world itself, and
which cannot be overthrown by other than the Divine
hand that raised it.

MILO.