The Sun.
London, England, 1835-06-17 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURN

Theological hatreds were, during some ages,of__the_
world, deemed to be the most acrimonious and the
most unrelenting to which the passions of men could----'
give birth. Those symptoms of depravity must yield
in our time to hatreds of a political character—to Tory
hatreds—to the unmanly jealousies, the ever-toiling
envy, the fiendish despair of a conquered faction, that
knows no remorse, and defies every impulse of shame.
Lord John Russell was lately the Noble game which
these wolves attempted to destroy—not by open con-
test, but by incessant tracking—by treacherous assault
from behind---by scaling the fold at the hour when the
shepherd is at his rest—by every vile and fraudulent
system of persecution that shuns the day. Lord Pal-
merston has been the next object marked out by this
base confederacy for their victim. "He was a man of
no talent." That would not do, for few men have
" He was a man who had served under dif-
'erent Administrations." That failed, for he has not
swerved from his recorded political principles. He
quitted office with Mr. Huskisson and Mr. Charles
Grant, when the Duke of Wellington and Mr. Peel
took their stand against liberal principles in the case
of East Retford. He was " a great Yahoo !" That
was the discharge of a ball that fatally rebounded
on the head of the low ruffian who used it. At
length, when all other calumnies proved innocuous,
the Noble Lord had become " a stock-jobber !"
Nothing has occurre.l within our experience, which
approaches so nearly to the realization of the
classic description of " Rumour," with her hundred
tongues, as the stories which have been for some days
in circulation upon this subject. Within a few hours
after its first invention, it extended all over the City,
it was the only topic at the West end, it was the
whisper of every group at every window of the Clubs,
of every man who stopped his friend's cab in the
streets. Every particular was known, down to the
very farthing of the defalcation, the day it was dis-
covered, the time of the day it was made known
to the jobber, the expression of countenance with
which he received the dreadful tidings, the words
which he used, the very number of groans which he
uttered. And then the narrator went on to paint
a picture of mental agony worthy of the Laocoon.
This act of the drama concluded, then came the
scence of the reimbursement, the efforts at con-
cealment, the petrifying wildness of friends, the just
joy of enemies, the ambiguous closing of the account,
which, of course, must put an end to the Noble
Lord's career, not only in public, but in private life.
The forests of America, the Thames, or the pistol, had
become his only alternatives. We refer to our King's
Bench report for the answer to this enormous tide of
slander. We shall not injure the mild simplicity of
the language in which that answer is conveyed by any
commentary of ours. The letter of the calumniator
will be read with disgust and shame everywhere except
at the Carlton club. It is a stigma upon the London
press, that one who can add insult to crime, and glory
in his double guilt, should be found even among the
lowest of those connected with it. When we add to
that Letter the following article published in the Al-
bion of yesterday, we shall take our leave of him, satis-
fied that all good men must hold in execration the
course which he has pursued.
(From the Albion.)
" We arc authorized and requested, with reference to an
article which appeared in this Paper on the Bth instant, on the
subject of an alleged discovery of a Noble Lord's connection
with certain Stock-jobbing speculations,' to state that the con-
tents of such article, and the whole of the insinuations con-
tained in it, if considered as meant to apply to Lord Palmer-
ston, are wholly destitute of foundation.
" It has been demanded of us to say something more upon
this subject, but we have declined to do so. We have been
asked to express regret which we do not feel, and to acknow-
ledge an injustice which we have not committed. W 'have
done Lord Palmerston no injury—we do not desire to do him
any. We have given all the explanation of our former para-
graph which he himself desires to be given, and we will not
add to it Ids expression of our feelings."—Morning Chronicle.

1110 TC.

The prosecution instituted yesterday in the Court
of Kin; 's Bench against an evening contemporary, by
Lord Palmerston, for the vindication of his Lordship's
character, cannot fail to attract much public attention.
It will be seen that the grave imputation which the
Noble Lord supposed to have been cast upon him by
our contemporary, has been repelled by an allegation
proceeding from his Lordship, as distinct in its terms
and as awful, from the sanction by which it is accom-
panied, as it is possible to conceive. With a view to
the rescue of his own reputation, the Noble Lord, it
is evident, has done all that it is in his power to do.
Whatever he may do more than this, will naturally be
ascribed to other motives than a laudable anxiety to
vindicate his character from what he regards as an un-

founded aspersion. We do not hesitate to say that
Lord Palmerston cannot proceed further in this pro-
secution without incurring the imputation of vindic-
tiveness or caprice. His Lordship's Counsel made a
merit, in the Court of King's Bench, of his forbear-
ance, on the ground that he had offered the defendant
to abstain from legal proceedings, upon condition that
the latter would insert in his journal a paragraph which
was read at the bar. This paragraph the defendant
did insert, with the exception of a few words, the omis-
sion of which will scarcely be regarded by the world as
sufficient to justify a criminal information against the
publisher of a newspaper, on the part of one of his
Majesty's principal Secretaries of State. The ques-
tion between Lord Palmerston and the publisher of
the Albion, has been reduced by his Lordship's Coun-
sel in the Court of King's Bench to a question as to
the value of the words which the defendant did not
choose to insert in his paper at the suggestion of the
Noble prosecutor. We refer to our King's Bench re-
port for the words on the insertion of which Lord Pal-
merston especially insisted, and quote here the spirited
and becoming language in which the Albion announces
and explains their rejection :
" It has been demanded of us to say something more upon
this subject, but we have declined to do so. We have been
asked to express regret which we do not feel, and to acknow-
ledge al, injustice which we have not committed. We have
done Lord Palmerston no injury—we do not desire to do him
any. We have given all the explanation of our former para-
graph which he himself desires to be given, and we will not
add to it his expression of our feelings."
Should this prosecution be carried further, it will
afford a new and very striking illustration of the re-
spect and attachment of our Whig-Radical Govern-
ment to the liberty of the Press.—Morning Post.
It is to us a subject of unfeigned and hearty felici-
tation to our countrymen, that the Bill for Municipal
Reform has been so well received by Parliament ; and
still more do we rejoice that in its principle it so well
deserves the favourable reception given to it. The main
principle of the Bill is the substitution of popular elec-
tron for that odious abuse of self-election, by which the
local government of so many towns in England has
heretofore been as complete a monopoly in the hands
of those who already possessed it, as Old Sarum had
been, politically speaking, under the dominion of the
Messrs. Alexander, before the Reform Bill passed.
It is true that the Bill for reforming the consti-
tuency greatly contributed to draw the tusks and to
pare the claws of the old Corporations, in so far as
concerned the manufacture of vicious and base elec-
tors. The town franchise became uniform through-
out the kingdom, and the old freemen, whose vested
interests were preserved to them, formed the only class
of voters to be found, not qualified upon that uniform
system which had been adopted under the Bill of 1832.
Certainly the experience we have had of that old body
of freemen voters has not served to recommend the
admission of others, resembling them in poverty, igno-
rance and liability to corruption, for any civic privi-
leges the exercise of which was likely to be much af-
fected by undue influence. The poor and dependent
condition of such voters has been a temptation to the
practice of bribery which few candidates would have
virtue to resist, and this was the grand defect in our re-
presentative system which the Reform Bill left nnpro-
vided for. However, after the Reform Bill had passed,
and indeed occasionally and earnestly during its pro-
gress, our readers will do us the justice to recollect
that we strove to hnpress upon them and on the Go-
vernment the necessity of a reform in the local admi-
nistration of our corporate bodies—a reform in the ma-
nagement of their fund, of their patronage, of their po-
lice, and of their charitable establishments, as no less im-
portant to the interests and public morals of our muni-
cipal institutions, than the great Reform Bill itself had
been to the purification of Parliament, and to the
control exerted over it by the people. Not regarding

the present bill as a politica: 3Llii . It,
One calculated for the promotion of mere party inte-
rests, it has had our friendly wishes from the first.
It is plain that Sir Robert Peel, Load Stanley, and
other liberal Conservatives, or Conservative Whigs,
have not considered the Corporate Reform bill with
the eyes of party men. Lord Stanley and Sir Robert
Peel both supported the rate-paying franchise, quali-
fied and guarded by a three years' residence, with
a three years' regular payment of rates, and adduced
some arguments worth notice for preferring such a mode
of qualification to that of the political or 101. franchise,
the chief of which seemed to be the prudence of divest-
ing local interests and contests of the political
association which would be affixed to them, were the

same identical body of citizens, to engage in and
decide both species of questions, and were the
election for a mayor or common-councilnian to
embody and organize against each other pre-
cisely the same bands of antagonists as that for a
member of the House of Commons. It is difficult to
imagine a discussion carried on more in the spirit and
with the temper of statesmen than this was by the
two eminent persons we have named. Sir Robert
Peel's caution against admitting paupers, under the
name of rate-payers, when in fact their rates are paid
for thent by the town, is one to which, from its im-
portance and cogency, due attention will be paid by
Lord John Russell. The suggestions thrown out
upon other points of the Bill (though all were not
touched upon) are of great weight and value. It
is at least well worthy of consideration, whether a
triennial change of the whole body of the council, and
an annual election for one-third of it, must not
have a necessary and a needless tendency to disturb
the quiet of the town, and to multiply and aggravate
personal or party quarrels. If the election be fairly de-
termined by the voice of the majority, we do notperceive
an adequate motive for renewing it, even partially, at
the end of a single year, inasmuch as the popular con-
trol under which the council has been elected will have
been sufficientty vindicated by the result of that election
itself, and mischief instead of benefit must follow
from depriving the members of all self-dependence,
and of much of their solicitude about the success of
their own measures for the good of the community, by
so very hasty a dismissal from their post. Lord 'Stan-
ley's proposition of six years for the extreme duration
of the council, and of an egress of one half triennially,
or of a biennial egress of one-third instead of a yearly
one, appears upon the face of it, to our minds, a more
rational project. So with the distribution of towns
into wards. It is obvious that an election in mass of
councilmen for a town of 24,000 inhabitants must be a
far less equitable and deliberate proceeding than one
wherein the voters are separated. It is surely unjust,
that where there arc perhaps 5,000 voters, divided into
two political bodies of 2,520 and 2,480, the whole of
the Common Council, say 30 persons, shall be chosen
by the first described of those two divisions, and the
large minority of 2,480 shall not have a single repre-
.,:entative. •Nay, the same effect, as is observed by
Lord Stanley, must follow, if there he but a majority of
one. We are much inclined to agree with Mr. Grote,
when he objects that the members of the Cormnon
Council are too numerous. Populous bodies (and
with all deference we do not except the Llouse of
Commons) are almost in proportion to their numbers
unfavourable to the end of calla and wise delibera-
tion. Stir R. Peel thinks, and the country will, we
suspect, be of the same opinion, that the Mayor, who
is a county magistrate, and a high political ;unction-
ary, viz., a returning dicer, shoold possess a quoii-
fication of the same amount or nature as the class of
gentlemen with whom he would have to co-operote,
and whose duties are analogous to his own. The ex-
pediency of by some means controlling the enormous
power vested in the Mayor yeas well pointed out by Sir
R. Peel, who showed, that according to the Bill as
now framed, this worshipful person may return juL3t
whom he pleases as common-councilmen. But we
roust defer to another day some other points which
there is now no time to mention. The power granted
to the Privy Council—exclusive of Parliament—to
cut and carve as may suit a Minister, the wards of a
great town, and to apportion to each ward such a
number of the councilmen as may please the same
authority, is a fearful privilege, and deserves the most
anxious revisal. The reply of Lord J. Russell was
in a conciliatory tone, and though we differ from his
Lordship respecting one or two of his sentiments on
the leading provisions of the Bill, we do not despair of
seeing it completed on principles highly advantageous
to the country.— Times.
The tedious inquiry into the causes of the disturb-
ances at Wolverhampton has been brought to a conclu-
sion ; and, in candour and justice, we must acknow-
ledge that tile conduct of the populace, both previously
to and after reading the Riot Act, has been proved,
upon most respectable evidence, to have been exceed-
iii ly and outrageous. We do not know why
Sir Frederic Roe should have wished to conduct the
inquiry in private. It is now quite evident that it
was not with the intention of favouring the Magistrates
or the military, whose defence against the charges male
by the demagogues of the Political Unions was quite
strong enough to bear the light of day. The case of
both civil and military authorities would have been
seriously prejudiced by a private inquiry, because the
public would have believed that course to have been
adopted for no other purpose than to smother the truth,
whereas the open investigation which Lord John Rus-
sell most properly ordered, has afforded them the op-
portunity of clearing themselves in the eyes of public
opinion as rapidly as the evidence which establishes
their justification could be carried to all parts of the
kingdom on the wings of the press. Considering the
violence displayed by the mob, and the difficulty of
dispersing them after the reading of the Riot Act, it
is a fortunate circumstance that no life was lost, ex-
cept the life of a dragoon horse, which some ruffian
stabbed with a sharp weapon. It was denied that the
mob formed a barricade in the churchyard; but it is
now established beyond all doubt that they converted
the church itself into a fortified post, from the battle-
ments of which a garrison, consisting of 100 to 150
persons showered down stones, and other missiles,
on the heads of the military. The desecration of the
church to such a purpose was, we suppose, quite in
keeping with the religious principles of those ruffian
brawlers for " freedom of election," who pelted or spat
upon, or tore the clothes from the back of every man
who dared to exercise the elective franchise contrary to
their tyrannical dictation I Enemies of liberty and re-
ligion, they drove the former from the election booths
by their violence, and fled to the sanctuary of the church
only to plant there the flag of licentious defiance.
The people, properly so called, do not, we are sure,
make common cause with a rabble whose actions
would disgrace any cause—and on behalf of the peo-
ple, we cannot avoid drawing public attention to a
statement made by Captain Manning in his evidence
to the following effect :—" There is a recent order
• from the Horse Guards, that whenever the soldiers
fire they must load with ball cartridge, and fire at the
people." This we must designate, and we care not
who may be offended by it, as a cruel and sanguinary
order—an order also quite unnecessary, in our opinion,
for the pacification of a turbulent mob—an order
worse than unnecessary, because, if acted upon, it
must inevitably lead to the sacrifice of innocent life,
because it gives no notice, and affords no time for per-
sons casually present in a crowd, or passengers going
about their ordinary business, to get out of the way.
Whenever it is thought necessary to disperse a mob
by the military power—and it should never be done
until it has clearly been proved that the civil force is
unequal to the duty—if the soldiers do not fire in
the first instance with blank cartridge, or direct their
fire over the heads of the crowd, it is highly probable
that the blood of the innocent will be shed for the
crime of the guilty. The boys who were wounded
by the musketry at Wolverhampton, appear to have
had no participation in the riot which caused
the interference of the military. The reading of the
Riot Act, when a great crowd has assembled and when
the uproar is great can be known only to a comparative
few ; but firing with blank cartridge, or firing over the
heads of the multitude, is a warning that all but the
utterly deaf must hear, and gives notice to all who are
merely curious spectators—to all passengers in that
quarter, and to all whose object is not mischief, to get
out of the way. We hope that, upon consideration,
this inhuman order from the Horse Guards will be