The Sun.
London, England, 1866-01-06 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—Mr. Bright has indicated a strategy for Re-
form with an openness which we know not whether
to ascribe to an honest zeal or a factious indepen-
' deuce. Is it to serve Lord Russell, or to put a spoke
in his wheel ? Is it to encourage Reformers that he
points out the road to victory, or is it to rouse the
vigilance of the foe? What Mr. Bright invites to
is not a single struggle, the work of a single ses-
sion, but a whole period of ParliaMentary recon-
struction. It is a work which he and we should
probably have to bequeath to our successors in as
unfinished a state as our metropolitan improvements.
No doubt he would himself prefer to make that work
short indeed, but three campaigns, at the least, are
described, each extending over the natural life of a
Parliament, each including such minor successes as
the victor must stop to pick up by the way, and
altogether comprising a period of perhaps 20 years,
when a perfect House of Commons would find itself
in a position to deal with the other estates of the
realm and the other institutions of the empire. For
the present, says Mr. Bright, dismiss from your
thoughts all other reforms. Do one thing at once
—the true secret of business. First reduce the quali-
fication—in the counties to £lO a year, in the towns
to £5. Never fear for the rest. A House of Com-
mons so elected may be trusted to give its electors
the ballot. That is all which is necessary for the
second act in the drama ; and the house may rest
and be thankful, if it pleases, for six years more.
The second Parliament returned under such safe
and happy auspices will finish up the work with a
redistribution of seats and a rearrangement of our
electoral districts. So advises Mr. Bright, and the
advice, for its purpose, is so politic and so wise that
we wonder to see it lavished on a multitude. We
could understand it if we found ourselves behind
the scenes and heard Lord Russell tendering it
to a perfectly harmonious and confidential
circle of colleagues. But its proclamation to all
the world is another affair. The Conservatives
are peculiarly sensitive about trifles—not that this
is a trifle—which seem to involve any logical or
practical consequences. They see the point of the
wedge in everything. But Mr. Bright does not
leave this to their nerves or their just suspicions.
He says plainly " this is the point of the wedge."
He spreads the net and promises certain destruction.
It is evident from his tone that Mr. Bright has been
taken into the Ministerial confidence, and is ready
to support the intended measure, as an instalment,
and as far as it goes. Possibly Lord Russell may
be ready to lower the county franchise to £2O, and
the town to £7 or £B, leaving other questions to
future Parliaments. The only difference between
Lord Russell and Mr. Bright would *then be a ques-
tion of degree. The move would be right in prin-
ciple as the proper way of opening the war, but Mr.
Bright would doubt its " prolific energy," to use
words he has quoted from Burke. He probably
does not think that so moderate a reduction would
carry the franchise sufficiently out of its present
proprietorship, or introduce a sufficient number of
the working classes. Indeed he evidently considers
that no nominal rent or rating will answer the pur-
pose, unless by supplementary enactments provision
be made for the very large part of our working
population who occupy tenements or lodgings at a
weekly rent and have nothing to do with rates. He
insists, in fact, upon the nearest practical approach
to a liberal household suffrage. If there is such a
divergence between Mr. Bright and the Ministerial
measure, and no more, then we may leave Mr.
Bright to fight his own battles as he thinks best, and
confine ourselves io the measure apparently looming
before us. Is Lord Russell indeed about to merge
this long controversy—so long a controversy that it
has had time to fall asleep several times, and only
just to escape final interment—in a moderate re-
duction of the franchise, town and county —nothing
more ? Is that all, be it little or be it much ? If
the Conservatives will agree to such a reduction,
then it is very true that Lord Russell will be tolerably
safe of a sufficient majority, at any important divi-
sion, for the next six sessions, if he live as long. The
reduced franchises may make no great difference in
the members returned, but the difference, whatever
it is, would be in favour of Liberal candidates. The
only question is whether the Conservatives will agree
to anything in which they can see the first step of a
glissade, the course of which will be beyond their
control, and the termination of which will be
ruinous beyond all conception. The measure ap-
parently indicated by these revelations has a feature
which must create a just prejudice against it in this
country. As soon as it had passed into an Act,
there would be a great temptation to carry matters
with a high hand, under the threat of dissolution,
and upon that dissolution the country would be
invited to return a new House of Commons which
would virtually be a sort of Constituent Assembly.
It would be elected by a constituency suddenly in-
creased by the admission of many new to the fran-
chise, and its very first business would be to pro-
ceed with the Reform, to divide the country anew,
and redistribute the seats. Thus new electors
would return new representatives, not for ordinary
business, but for a new work—viz., the reconstruc-
tion of Parliament. A House so elected would be
almost as much a Constituent Assembly as that
which eighteen years ago found France in a Revo-
lution, and handed it over to an Empire. Whether
the reduction of the franchise be great or little,
whether Mr. Bright's or Lord Russell's, there
would be still this ill look, perhaps this real dan-
ger, in a measure which, by its incompleteness,
professed to be nothing more than an instalment of
Reform. If we could think that the two great
parties in the Legislature could agree to a moderate
reduction of the franchise, say to £2O and to £7
or £B, and mutually bind themselves to defend that
finality for a generation at least,
so w
thenell
laid.we Butshould is
be
spectre
tor secure ? True,
suchglad enougha an
understandingpossiblethe country did come to an understanding thirty-four
years since, and for many years there was not a
word about Parliamentary Reform. But here is
the difference between that measure and this which
is now threatened. That was a comprehensive
measure ; this, if Mr. Bright be correctly informed,
is only the first step to a period of change. The
ancmalies it affects to cure are by no means the
most crying or the most serious. What is the
loudest complaint? Surely not that the town con-
stituencies are not numerous enough. They go
down low enough in the social scale, as every can-
didate finds to his cost. The complaint that is
loudest and strongest, and that will make itself
heard, whatever is done with the qualification, is
the unequal division of the national constituency—
that is, the constituencies that count by scores and
that count by scores of thousands. If the franchise
is touched, the measure, to be final, must also deal
with this complaint. So what we want is a mode-
rate but comprehensive measure not a mere
" beginning of the end." ,

THE " ANGLO-AMERICAN TIMES" ON THE Po-
LITICAL DIFFICULTY IN AMERICA.—We give to-
day a large portion of our space to the im-
portant political news from the United States.
There has been scarcely as exciting a mail since the
breaking out of the rebellion as that which brings
us the intelligence of a conflict between the Repub-
licans in Congress and the President, with regard
to the reconstruction of the Southern States. We
propose in this article to notice, as briefly and as
intelligibly as possible, the points of difference be-
tween Congress and the Executive. And, first, let
us examine the position of the Radical wing
of the Republican party. It is claimed by
the Republicans, and admitted on all hands,
that the Slaveholders of the South, while
in power in the National Government, plotted
to destroy that Government, and did nearly succeed
in destroying it. Long before the actual outbreak
of the rebellion treason was hatched in Congress,
in the President's mansion, in the different depart-
ments, all over the South. Men who wore the livery
and took the pay of the Government used their
places and their money to destroy their benefactor.

Officers of the Army and the Navy fled in open day,
breaking their oaths and staining their swords. The
. .

national ships had been sent to foreign stations that
they might not be used in the national defence.
. .

Orders to anticipate the danger could not be given
from Washington without notice in advance being
conveyed to the traitors at Richmond and
Charleston. In fact, the whole machinery of the
Government, including a portion of the Supreme
Court itself, was so poisoned and prostituted that
nothing but the final awakening of the people saved
the Republic from instant and inevitable death.
The people of the North went to war to preserve
their country. Throughout four years of a conflict
unprecedented in the world's history, they kept two
objects steadily and constantly in view—the pre-
servation of the Union, and the emancipation of
the slave. These were the grand and holy
principles that actuated them the pillar of
fire by night and the pillar of cloud by day
which led them through the wilderness. They
gave up the lives of their best beloved to secure
these objects ; and now, after all these years
of blood and peril, they find their principles
triumphant and their cause secured. But, say they,
" eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." Those
same men who plotted against the Republic, having
appealed to the sword and having been conquered,
now present themselves at the door of Congress
and ask to be readmitted into that body. Of those
Southern applicants for admission into Congress
nearly all of them are traitors and rebels. Once
admit them and the old role will be re-enacted.

Amalgamating with the "copperheads" of the
North, they will soon control Congress, and again
mount to political power. And so the war will
have been fought in vain. There can be no
question that there is a show of reason in
thin argument men who have once proved

themselves traitors cannot complain if the
people refuse to trust them a second time. If the
pardoned rebels of the South are again permitted to
take their places among the law-makers of the Re-
public, what security have the people against a repe-
tition of those crimes which have deluged the land
with blood ? And so, is Mr. Thaddeus Stevens
unreasonable when he declares that the States lately
in rebellion ought never to be counted as valid
States " until the Constitution shall have been so
amended as to secure a perpetual ascendancy to the
party of the Union, and so as to render Repub-
lican government firm and stable forever ?"
The position of President Johnson is, however,
more popular, if not more reasonable, than that of
the Radicals in Congress. He believes that the
Southerners, having laid down their arms and
renewed their allegiance to the Government, should
have their political status in the Union restored,
not as a matter of right exactly, but rather in pur-
suance of a policy of mercy and conciliation.
In this belief he is sustained by General
Grant, and by nearly all the respectability
and intelligence of the country. General Grant,
who has recently made a tour through the South,
seems to place considerable reliance upon the
Southern professions of loyalty and submission to
the national authority. "I am satisfied (he says)
that the mass of the thinking men of the South
accept the present situation of affairs in
good faith. The questions which have
heretofore divided the sentiments of the
people of the two sections—slavery and
State rights, or the right of a State to secede from
the Union—they regard as having been settled for
ever by the highest tribunal (arms) that men can
resort to. I was pleased to learn from the leading
men whom I met that they not only accepted the
decision arrived at as final, but now that the
smoke of battle has cleared away, and time has
been given for reflection, this decision has been a
fortunate one for the whole country, they receiving
the like benefits from it with those who opposed
them in the field and in the council." We
have no hesitation, then, in giving our un-
qualified adhesion to the reconstruction policy of
President Johnson. The war was not waged to
secure the ascendancy of any party, but to defend
the Union against those who would destroy it.
That Union is strong enough and powerful enough
to defend itself against all assailants, whether they
come from the North or the South. If the rebels
have not seen the error of their ways, if they
are not now willing to accept Without reser-
vation the generous forgiveness of their Govern-
ment, they ' are at least powerless to inflict
further injury upon it. We believe they desire
nothing more than that their great political error
should be buried in oblivion, and that hereafter
they will be found among the firmest and staunchest
supporters of the national authority. But if the
Government trusts them too far, it has always the
means to defend itself. It has nothing to fear. It
can afford to be generous. Monarchies, based ou
aristocracy and in violation of public right, must
put down rebellion with a strong hand—Republics,
like that of the United States, have nothing to fear
from an intelligent, patriotic, and Christian people.