The Sun.
London, England, 1832-02-04 00:00:00

to confine the controul over the public purse to those
who are deputed for that purpose by the people.
Such a Reform will not destroy inequalities of pro-
perty, but it will prevent a body of men from ap-
propriating to themselves the properties of others at
discretion. They who wish to possess the controul
over the public purse can only hope to attain that
end through the favourable opinion of them enter-
tained by the people. To evince a disposition to
plunder the people will not be the best means of
obtaining their favour. But though we admit that
there will always be inequalities of property, it does
not follow that there will be such inequalities of

property as now exist among us, or that such ine-
qualities are beneficial. When once the public Re-
venue is economically expended, the means now
possessed by the Aristocracy of quartering their chil-
dren on the public purse.will be materially abridged.
As the higher ranks will continue to have families,
these families must be maintained, and the increased

expenditure from their own private resources will
tend to curtail overgrown fortunes. But this will be
no evil ; on the contrary, it will be a positive good.
The great incomes of the Aristocracy cause the sa-
laries of public men to be fixed, according to a scale
not determined by what is necessary, but by what
is expended by those with whom they associate.
A Lord keeps twenty servants in livery.' This
becomes the standard, to which all are looking con-
stantly up. What harm would there be if the in-
comes at the top were not so high, and those
at the bottom not so low ? The excessive luxury of

the high does not add to their happiness ; and the
extravagant expenditure of all public functionaries,
who take their notions from the high, is oppres-
sively felt by ►hose at the bottom of the scale.
The constant straining of the middle classes to
have the appearance of wealth in their style of
living, deprives them of many sources of liberal en-
joyment, and is anything but conducive to happi-
ness. But whatever changes may take place must
be founded in justice. If, without robbing others,
the Aristocracy can preserve their overgrown estates
undiminished, so be it. But, should it be otherwise,
we really do not see that it would be a heavy na-
tional calamity, if where twenty horses are kept by
an individual, six were to be kept, and where twenty
servants, five. John de 'Witt, when he ruled Hof-
land, kept but one servant, and did not keep a
coach. But at that time the Fine Arts flourished
more among the frugal Dutch than they have ever
flourished among the extravagant English. With all
our supposed wealth, there are several countries in
Europe which publish a greater number of expen-
sive works, in all departments of science, literature,
and art, than can be published here. But the in-
habitants spend less in idle show, and in imitation of
the wasteful habits of an overgrown Aristocracy.-
21forhing Chron.'ee.

The scene in the House of Commons on Thurs-
day evening cannot fail to have excited the disgust
of every person who knows what is due from an in-
dividual to the deliberative assembly of which he
forms a part—from an English gentleman to the
society in which he moves—or from a Member of
Parliament to the people. We allude distinctly to
Sir Henry Hardinge, whose demeanour on that
evening has been compared (and, indeed, it re-
sembles nothing else on record) to that of a certain
class of professional fire-eaters in the old Parliament
of Ireland—men who were brought forward by the
Government of that well-ruled country to put down,
when practicable, any independent representative of
the people, whose propositions, while speaking the
language of his constituents, admitted of no answer
but from the pistol's mouth. Lord Ebrington, a
courteous, but manly and high-spirited Nobleman,
representing the great county of Devon, most properly
urged it as an argument in favour of expediting the
progress of the Reform Bill, that the nation out of
doors were disappointed and impatient, and ex-
claimed against further delay. Was there any thing
unparliamentary in this ?—any thing unconstitu-
tional ?—any thing unaccustomed, or not perfectly
familiar, to the ears of those who call them-
selves our representatives? What do Members of
Parliament profess to represent ? Is it not the
" people out of doors ?" What is the right of
petition, but the right to make the wishes of the
people " out of doors" known to the Members
within, and the further right to have those wishes
weighed by them and treated with respectful atten-
tion ? Lord Ebrington did literally nothing more
than adduce the evidence of " public opinion," in
support of his remonstrance against continued pro-
crastination,—that public opinion to which the
Sovereign himself has so often appealed, against
the selfish wickedness of a corrupt and borough-
ridden portion of the House of Commons. And
how was he met by Sir Henry Hardinge ? He was
assailed by violent reproof. He ixas called the organ
of a section of the London mob. Ministers were
charged with a conscious intention of carrying the
Reform Bill through the mob alone ! although
three-fourths of the property and education of
Great Britain had addressed the Crown and
Parliament in its favour. Now it is quite
intelligible how an inveterate enemy to all
Reform should get furious when he hears the
least allusion to a power out of doors, which lies
beyond the pale of borough patrons, or of civil or
ecclesiastical corporations; but it is not sufferable
that his rage should render him insensible to the re-
straints imposed by a community far removed from
the savage state upon the passions of its least civi-
heed members. It is, we say, not endurable that
when a gentleman like Lord Ebrington repels indig-
nantly a flagrant public attack on his character, the
wrong should be repeated in terms which aggravate
its original coarseness, the aggressor declaring that
he would not retract an iota of his offensive words,
and that, as an atonement for his fierce invective,
he, forsooth, is ready to fight the man whom he has
so deeply offended ! Sir Henry Hardinge has the
reputation, no doubt well deserved, of being a reso-
lute soldier, but others are every whit as brave as
he. Sir George Murray's courage, for example,
is "as keen, but it is also as polished, as his
sword." The Duke of Wellington, we suppose,
will be allowed to be brave, and knows how
to protect himself from insult ; but did any
auditor of a debate in Parliament ever hear a
syllable from either of those distinguished warriors,
which could be quoted as lowering to the majesty of
the Legislature, as personally disrespectful to him
against whom it was pointed, or unbecoming the
dignity of him who uttered it ? The age of duellists
in the House of Commons has gone by. We ac-
knowledge that a gallant man and a gentleman may
once, and for a moment, be betrayed by heat of
temper, into unworthy language, and on this ground
the House may and did forgive the intemperate
ebullition, but the forfeiture of both these titles to
esteem would soon follow the habit of so offend-
ing. Sir Henry Ilardinge's experience ought also,
by this time, to have made him sensible, that an
outrage to common courtesy, in either House of
Parliament, is universally looked upon as a sort of
from
o np forrnc
proceeding
iannt
ye r ffearretnhceer oa
npdr,e
tviei
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fn rmate;
whom it ought to be excused. How can a brave
supplication for official interference to prevent mat-
ters from proceeding any farther ; and, therefore,
t Fhast') lafi
soldier by profession is the last man living in
and high-spirited man suffer himself to appear totally
destitute of self-controul.—Times.
Sir James Graham postponed last night till Tues-
day the motion of which he had before given no-
tice; for the introduction of " a Bill to amend the
Laws relating to the Business of the Civil Depart-
ments of the Navy, and to make other Regulations
for more effectually carrying on the Duties of the
same." The postponement of this measure was
understood to be in consequence of Sir James hav-
ing received an intimation that his Bill would meet
with decided opposition from all those Members of
the House who had at different periods held high
appointments in the Naval Departments, and who
front long experience are better qualified than the
present First Lord of the Admiralty can be to judge
of the pernicious consequences of the main object
of the intended Bill, namely, to abolish the Navy,
Navy Pay, and Victualling Offices, and transfer
their duties to the Admiralty. The desire to over-
throw, one by one, the ancient institutions of the