The Sun.
London, England, 1866-04-25 00:00:00

arisen from what have been called " favourite aver-

sions." A certain class of men, though sensible
enough in ordinary matters, are apt to have anti-
pathies as unaccountable as those on which Shy-
lock remarks. They cannot abide their Papist, or
Dissenter, or Jew, and are willing to keep up a
little bit of legislative tyranny, not because they
really think it will be of use, bat as a kind of stand-
ing protest against such very objectionable persons.
But it is preciselyin these matters that the public
opinion of the country is most advanced. Abso-
lute religious equality and the abrogation of all
that either injures or offends any order of men
are demanded by thinking people of every class,
and it is strange that the leaders of the Con-
servative party have not long since seen that it
is their interest not to withstand this widespread
desire. They have undoubtedly weakened their
position in the State by these tactics ; they
have created a feeling that they are bigoted and
impracticable, with minds that cannot rise above
those sectarian differences which time and know-
ledge tend more and more to obliterate. By re-
sistance on unworthy subjects, when they have
not had the moral support of the country, they
have wasted their real Conservative power, and to
this cause we must attribute their want of success
as a party in spite of their numbers and organiza-
tion and the social position of their members. We
hope we may accept the recent speeches of Lord
Derby as signs that a more liberal spirit, and con-
sequently that a more prudent policy, will prevail.
If it be so, the party will have no cause to regret
it. There is now a good opportunity of placing the
whole system of political Oaths and Declarations
on a more equitable basis. It would, perhaps, do
little harm if in many cases they were swept away
altogether ; but if this be considered revolutionary,
let them be at any rate assimilated to the Parlia-
mentary oath, and confined to a mere profession of
allegiance. Lord Houghton proposes a declaration
in the terms of the Parliamentary oath, and Lord
Derby thinks this a proper settlement. But it
would perhaps be better that Government should
bring in a bill applicable to all persons and offices.
Lord Romilly reminded the House that Protestants
still take one oath when admitted as solicitors, and
Catholics another, and Lord Granville added that
it was the same with magistrates. There evidently
is room for a comprehensive measure on the basis
of the Parliamentary Oaths Bill, which has now so
happily passed both Houses.
HERALD.—With the exception of Mr. Gladstone,
who will stand at bay against a host of powerful
orators, we cannot imagine in whom the Govern-
ment reform bill has a champion left. The whole
tide of parliamentary logic is overflowing it. On
Monday night the last arrow was discharged and
fell blunt upon the floor. By universal agreement
Mr. Bright never made so elaborate an effort with
so little success. His own friends and admirers were
disappointed. But he was under the difficulty which
so many others on his side of the house have felt,
that he proposed to answer Lord Stanley, and found
himself incompetent to the task. This is the re-
markable element in the debate. One Ministerial
speaker after another has risen, declaring himself
ready to dispute Lord Stanley's ground, but has left
the question almost immediately, and diverted him-
self to easy and safe generalities. They resemble
horsemen riding hopelessly round an impregnable
infantry square. Mr. Bright was no exception to
the rule. Indeed, he shrank from taking even the
terms of Lord Grosvenor's amendment firmly in
hand ; he would not discuss the words ; he picked
to pieces a meaning which he thought he found
wrapped up in them. He chose to infer and sus-
pect, and then putting Lord Stanley's argument on
one side, he rose into his usual flight, threatening
the aristocracy, the Administration, the Constitu-
tion at large ; impeaching the Government statis-
tics because they did not suit his purpose, arbitrarily
substituting a new set of his own, and reasoning for
the entire country upon a few and unauthenticated
figures from Burslem and Wakefield, and winding
up, as is his wont, with a strong northern breeze of
menace about overthrown embankments, and " that
terrible abyss" into which he is eternally looking for
the future destinies of England. And he prophesies a
majority for the bill in a house which he declares hates
it; and what more was wanted to justify Mr. White-
side's rebuke that he would firstrender the character of
the house odious and next make its action cowardly?
But all the time he was forgetting Lord Gros-
venor's amendment and Lord Stanley's speech ; he
was forgetting the bill itself. Nevertheless, those
members who think, and who at the same time re-
spect their independence, cannot be expected to
vote with him until they have had their judgments
relieved from the embarrrassment which has been
forced upon them by a scheme dealing with one-
third of, a formidable political question, essentially
and vitally connected with the two other thirds
which are kept absolutely in the dark. They will
not sign blank political cheques, and hence the
exasperation of the Treasury Bench. The point
has not been put, since Lord Stanley's speech, more
clearly, calmly, and effectually, than it was put on
Monday night by Mr. Walpole, whose speech,
almost erasing as it did that of Mr. Bright from the
memory of the house, brought back the subject
within its proper limits. Parliament, he said, had
been presented with the fragment of a legislative
proposal, upon which other legislation, immediately
consequent, must depend, and had been required to
accept the part, in complete ignorance of the results
to which it would lead. And for what reasons ?
That Parliament is pledged. If there has been a
fallacy in the debate from first to last it is this. Mr.
Whiteside had shattered that pretence by a series
of evidence ; but Mr. Walpole disposed of it in a
breath. The pledge was given by Lord Russell
in 1860 ; it was distinctly withdrawn and repu-
diated by Sir George Grey, on the part of Lord
Russell, in 1865 ; and, if not, was it less valid
in 1861, 1862, 1863, 1864, and 1865, than in
1866 ? We really hope that we have heard
the last of this unworthy quibble ; or else
that politicians who make use of it will have
the honesty and candour to admit that it pro-
mised a measure of statesmanship to settle a large
public question, and not a mere tinkering with a
single detail of it. Ministers, holding that pledge
between their teeth, have suited their own conve-.
nience about fulfilling it, and now ask the House of
Commons to fulfil it for them, in order, as Mr.
Bright frankly avows, that Lord Russell may be
retained in office. The second supposed necessity
for change to which Mr. Walpole referred was the
advantage to be derived from including a larger
number of the working classes within the pale of the
franchise. Here the cue was given by Mr. Glad-
stone and Mr. Bright, long before Lord Elcho ex-
tracted from local registers, through official machi-
nery, the statistics upon which the Government bill
is based. The figures having been amassed and
collated, Ministers proceeded to legislate upon
them ; but the House of Commons then learned for
the first time that the working class grievance so
long alleged and harped upon was an empty fiction.
Instead of being unrepresented, that one class
commanded more than a fourth of the borough
constituencies throughout the realm. Mr. Glad-
stone took the facts as he could not help finding
them, and framed his measure boldly so as to in-
crease one-fourth to upwards of one-half. But Mr.
Bright takes a different course ; he will not have
facts if they are against him ; he is like the
traveller who would not be guided because he
objected to the name of the person who published
his map. So he spins a calculation of his own,
and appeals upon the strength of that to the
justice of the House of Commons. Admitting for
an instant that the matter was relevant, which it
is not, because nothing can be relevant to this
debate until Lord Grosvenor's amendment has
been impugned on principle, and Lord Stanley's
argument answered, could Mr. Bright expect
the house would act upon hi▪ s two paltry
scraps of statistical guesswork from two small
localities in Yorkshire, when Government have
introduced a bill upon the strength and credit of
returns furnished by themselves. Assume, how-
ever, as Mr. Walpole argued, that he may be right
and-Mr. Gladstone wrong. Then we are more
hopelessly in the dark and more peri▪ lously adrift at
sea than ever, and no more overpowering reason
could be given against hasty legislation. We had
before us the author of the bill and the instigator
of the bill, and they contrdaict one another as em-
phatically upon the grounds which are said to jus-
tify the bill as though they were the most inveterate
political opponents. Was ever a case made out
more substantially for reflection and delay ? We
are not assuming that the Ministerial statistics are
accurate, although it would be ridiculous to weigh
the arithmetical odds and ends of Birmingham
against them'; but viewing the question in the
fairest light, if we are so bewildered by the infor-
mation we have, we ought to verify it, or obtain
better before we hurry into legislation, the effects
of which may be felt through all times. We are
glad, however, that Mr. Walpole kept the question
mainly within the channel marked by the amend-
ment and the confessedly unanswered speech of
Lord Stanley ; for it is through this that the wisdom
and the conscience of the House of Commons
must be reached. The bill is avowedly partial ; its
structure has been regulated by no principle of the
Constitution ; it unsettles everything and settles
nothing ; and yet the Opposition is assailed, as re-
fusing to consider the subject when its emphatic
e
declaration is that it desires to consider the subject,
not piecemeal, but as a whole. And Mr. Walpole
drew attention to another evil tendency of the
measure, which not only convicts it as an attempt
to infringe our constitutional law, but also scatters
to the winds a great and misused shibboleth of the
Liberal party. In its headlong downward action it
commits the cardinal sin and disconnectsrepresenta-
tion from taxation ; it entirely destroys the connec-