The Sun.
London, England, 1835-03-02 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

Some of our•contemporaries appear to regard the
late majorities against the King's Ministers as decisive
of the necessity of their resignation. We are by no
means so sure of that. There is, in the first place, no-
thing unconstitutional, and as little illegal, in a
Minister's continuing to hold the Government confided
to him by his Majesty, even against the expressed de-
sire of the House of Commons that he should resign
his office. Far less can a charge of unconstitutional
proceeding be brought against a Minister before the
House has come to any vote indicative of such a de-
sire. In the case of Mr. Pitt, however, it was an ad-
mitted doctrine, that some specific offence or miscon-
duct ought to be alleged against an Administration, to
justify a vote of want of confidence, as it obviously
must, to give any constitutional or moral validity to a
direct vote of censure. Mr. Pitt had to encounter a
far more decided majority, varying from 30 to 20 votes,
in a much less numerous house, and with a much thin-
ner attendance, during a period moreover of above three
months, and perhaps a dozen divisions. Yet that prudent
as well as resolute Minister never thought of resigning,
nor did he dissolve the Parliament until after he had
put the Opposition so flagrantly wrong, that the coun-
try anticipated the wishes of the Minister, and re-
turned a majority in his favour, which crushed for
years all the hopes of the adverse factions. Mr. Pitt,
too, had, like the present Ministry, to struggle against
a coalition; but it was a coalition of which the elements
were more stable and enduring than those which go to
the formation of the present (hardly to be called) ma-
jority, because that of Mr. Fox and Lord North had
required to put it in motion nothing but a reconcilia-
tion of persons ; there were no fundamental principles
of government or policy to be in that case on either
side surrendered ; or in the wear and tear of the
coalesced parties to run the chance of any fatal col-
lision ; whereas in the confederacy which assails the
existing Government, each section of the alliance is
perpetually pulling or pushing against its nominal
associates, and when the moment of victory ar-
rives—that is, the resignation or dismissal of
the Conservative Government—the Whig-Radical
Itepealers will inevitably prove to all the world
the fragile nature of their momentary league ; and
the greater facility of making arrangements for the suc-
cess of a single object, such as the overthrow of an
Administration, than for that permanent system of in-
tricate and varied measures by which a Government
requires to be carried on, will soon be sufficiently ap-
parent. We suspect that the confidence of the Oppo-
sition received on Saturday something like a check,
from the temperate, dignified, and judicious reply de-
livered by his Majesty to the amended (?) address of
the House of Commons. The most extensive reforms
dwe are far from saying too extensive) that have been
uring these four years proposed by the leaders of the
Whig Ministry have always had for their best recom-
mendation that they were calculated to maintain our
institutions, by improving them. From Lord Grey
downwards such has been invariably the language of
our reforming Whig statesmen, and it has truth and
wisdom for its foundations. His Majesty, therefore,
in adopting the same view of the legitimate purpose of
all constitutional reform, has frustrated every hope to
which the late majority against Ministers might have
given birth, that any misunderstanding could be so
easily created between the advisers of the Crown and
the parties to the present coalition. His Majesty re-
grets that the majority of the House of Commons do
not concur with him as to the policy of the late appeal
to the sense of his people. But we think it might
have been a subject of sincere though perhaps not os-
tensible rejoicing to his Majesty, that the class of
members of parliament to which his Ministers belong
have had their numbers more than doubled by the late
appeal to the electors. It is quite obvious that a dif-
ference of opinion, however solemnly recorded, be-
tween an opposition composing the majority of the
House of Commons, and the advisers of the Crown,
upon an isolated point like that of the dissolution of a
former parliament can never, in common sense, be
made the groundwork of an effectual attack by the
same Opposition upon the future existence of the
Ministry. To dissolve the parliament, is to afford the
constituency an occasion for the revisal of their former
choice of representatives ; and if any considerable
change of representatives be the consequence, it amounts
to a fair apology for the motive of Ministers, if not
entirely so of their information, in resorting to such an
expedient; and to return to an old subject of discus-
sion, the number of individuals in the present House
of Commons, agreeing with the Conservative Minis-
ters in general policy, exceeds that of any one of the
three parties now for a transient object combined in a
league against them by nearly two to one. The whole
tone of the answer, however, is so kindly and so cor-
dial, that it is impossible for any but the most despe-
rate and sinister•minded of the Opposition to be
otherwise than induced by it to meditate upon the
temper of the respective parties with whom they have
to deal, and to watch the movements into which a
thick-and-thin supporter of one of those parties may
betray them. As for another dissolution in the actual
state of things, it is a pure chimera. After a few
days, there will be no need for any such strong mea-
sure of self-defence. We should be among the first
to recommend the most fearless use of the powers
granted by the Constitution, were it really necessary
to hold the Constitution together ; but we shall be
deceived and disappointed if such an emergency
should grow out of present circumstances. It may
be convenient for Lord John Russell to assume the
existence of such rumours as a basis or pretext for
insidious interrogatories to a Minister, but Sir Robert
Peel is not likely to be taken off his guard. He must
not, by an inconsiderate pledge, tie up his own hands
and the lawful authority of his Sovereign, while those
of the Opposition are free. When Mr. Pitt, in Ja-
nuary, 1784, was called upon by an insolent and sel-
fish party to give them some satisfactory assurance
that he would not dissolve the Parliament, the Right
Hon. Gentleman positively refused to comply. He
declared " that he would never compromise the Royal
authority, nor bargain it away in the House of Com-
mons." Our opinion still is that the good sense of
Englishmen wants but time for consideration to come
round to truth, and to see even the most equivocal ob-
jects in their right colour ; yet here there is nothing
equivocal. It is government or no government—it is order
or irremediable misrule. When the organs of faction
insist on the impossibility of the Conservative Mini-
sters carrying on the Government in the full spirit of
measures which at their origin they opposed, we beg
them to look at Lord Aberdeen's conduct relating to
the slave question, and the policy of the late Cabinet
towards the West Indies, and then ask themselves
what difficulty there is in presuming that the whole
system of the public service will be maintained on simi-
lar principles.— Times.
The Speech of his Majesty, in answer to the Ad-
dress of the House of Commons, is a Calm and dignified
expression of the King's sentiments in vindication of
the exercise of his Royal prerogative in appealing to
the people upon the formation of a new Ministry. The
King says—" I never have exercised, and I never will
exercise, any of the prerogatives which I hold, except-
ing for the single purpose of promoting the great end
for which they are intrusted to me—the public good ;
and I confidently trust that nomeasure conducive tothe
general interests will be endangered or interrupted in its
progress by the opportunity which I have afforded my
loyal subjects of expressing their opinions through the
choice of their Representatives in Parliament." What
language could the Sovereign use more in accordance
with the spirit and principles which the British Con-
stitution ? The King' admits that all his prerogatives
are intrusted to him for the public good, which is, in
fact, an admission of that great principle which the ablest
writers on constitutional lawhave laboured to prove, that
" all government is intended for the benefit of the go-
verned." It appears to us, indeed, a strange and novel
proceeding for the Representatives of the people to com-
plain of an appeal to the people ! mere especially when
the result of that appeal has proved that the people
were dissatisfied with a great number of their Repre-
sentatives, whom they accordingly rejected upon this
last appeal. The persons who have lost seats in the
Legislature by the dissolution, may think they have
-lesson to cOnfplain ; but if their constituents did not
think they had cause to complain of them, they would
not have dismissed them. For our own part, we can-
. not regret the untimely. fate which that House of

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