The Sun.
London, England, 1835-06-20 00:00:00

iLIGENCE

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNA

Our anticipations with regard to Ipswich have been
realized. Messrs. Morrison and Wason, as- our
readers will perceive from our account, have been re-
turned by a great majority. The numbers at the final
close of the poll, yesterday, were—
)
Morrison
Wason
Broke
Holmes 435
Colonel Broke said " they must admit that they had
ben well beaten ; but he was sure they would admit
that it was a fair battle, carried on with good humour
and courtesy." Colonel Broke possesses much local
influence, and he no doubt polled more voters than
Messrs. Dundas and Kelly would have obtained at the
IPlte election, but for the industrious circulation.of their
piper parcels. At the last election, Mr. Dundas, the
highest on the Tory side, had 545 votes, and Mr.
Wason had 521 ; so that the number that polled
amounted to 1,066. This time it was only 997 ;
so that 67 voters remain to be accounted for. In
this number are probably included men of high
notions of electoral dignity, who without a fair
price would deem it disgraceful to proceed to
the poll. The Report of the House of Commons
and the commitments to Newgate have wrought
Wonders. Mr. Morrison observed, that on the present
Occasion " they had a majority of unbiassed votes, dif-
ferent from those who formed the subject of the inves-
tigation in the House of Commons, in consequence of
bribery, He considered the present election as deciding
the question whether the Blues or the Yellows had a
majority in that town ; and it was pretty evident that
the Blues had no chance in that borough if they fought
fairly." There is no resisting Mr. Morrison's conclu-
sion. Messrs. Dundas and Kelly did not fight fairly ;
they obtained their return through hard bribing. We
believe that if the Tories at the last eleCtion had
not very generally had recourse to the same means,
they would have been much less formidable in
Parliament. On a future occasion the lesson read
by the Ipswich Committee may not be lost on
the borough ; and it was not without reason, we
think, that Mr. Morrison expressed himself sa-
tisfied " that the exposure which had taken
place had been attended with incalculable ad-
vantages to other places as well as Ipswich."
We quite agree with Mr. Morrison in think-
ing that, if punishments are to be awarded according
to the crimes committed, as the greatest criminals are
they who found the money, they ought at least to be
harder dwelt with than the humbler instruments through
whom the corruption was effected. That Messrs.
Dundas and Kelly should, after the disclosures in the
Committee, have dared to make their appearance at all
in Ipswich, is really a high piece of assurance ; but we
can hardly find words sufficiently strong to mark our
reprobation or the language used by these men in that
borough. Their conduct is an insult to the nation.
Bribery, we know, was general before the passing of the
Reform Bill : it was known that members were net
returned by the independent suffrages of electors, but by
the favour of patrons, or through their purses. But
the object of the Reform Bill was to put an end
to so disgraceful a state of things. It is most,abSurd,
therefore, to refer to the bribery practiced pre-
vious to the passing of the Reform Bill. Bribery
was then the rule, and independent suffrage the
exception. Indeed it was better, perhaps, for the na-
tion that Members should have been returned through
bribery than through the favour of a patron, because
the representatives of patrons were bound to yield a
blind obedience to their wishes. But it was intended
that a new era should commence with the Reform
Bill ; that the constituencies should be identical with
the nation, with regard to interests ; and bribery,
which disturbs this order of things, and allows men to
enter Parliament surreptitiously, is treason against the
nation. The principle of the Reform Bill demands
that a termination be put to this noxious state of
things. Let us look at the consequence of the bribery
in the case of Ipswich. These two individuals, as Mr.
Morrison stated, sat nearly five months in Parliament,
and that at a time when a difference of only four votes
would have turned the scale in favour of a Tory Go-
vernment. Hence the paramount importance of se-
curing the independent exercise of the suffrages of
electors. Bribery and intimidation arc at variance
with the spirit of the Reform Bill, and must be got rid
of. We cannot conclude without observing, that the
people of England are greatly indebted to Messrs.
Morrison and Wason for the ability and zeal and in-
dustry with which they have conducted the inquiry
which has had so fortunate a termination.—Morning
Chronicle.

The speech of Mr. Roebuck, on Monday night, has
put the Times on its mettle. Our contemporary will
not be outdone in that peculiar strain, and from the
emulation which inspires it, and the powers of the
same kind displayed by the other party, we may ex-
pect an effect the very opposite to that produced by
the rivalry of a pair of nightingales. The Times is
not a Journal that will see dirt thrown without show-
ing that two can play at that sport, and it takes up
the matter with the spirit of Lucy in the Beggar's
Opera—" Let's try who best can spatter." The
styles arc different, and it is hard to conjecture which
will have the advantage. Mr. Roebuck shoots out at
once on the contents of a cart, as it were. The Times
flings garbage from a well furnished dunghill. Mr.
Roebuck talks of the immorality and degradation of
the press ; says a despotism is a trifle compared with
its tyranny ; describes its conductors from highest to
lowest, as a set of base hirelings, cowardly as base,
concealing their names, and assassinating characters
in the dark ; and sums up by characterizing the news-
paper press as a mass of cowardice, blackguardism,
corruption, and treachery, and praying the destruction
of the vile crew. The Times retorts with " rabid lit-
tle reviler ;" " puppet and pensioned of Papineau ;"
" the created of the canaille ;" " a sort of sucking
Carlile, with the same dogged dulness, though with
less power of ratiocination." The Times says that,
Avoiding all competition with the regular press of the
country, he has entered the field against the much-persecuted
unstamped,' in the hope, we suppose, of swamping The Poor
Man's Guardian, or of pelting The People's Police Gazette
out of the market. But even so, he has undertaken an enter-
prise in which his very slender abilities promise not the most -
remote possibility of success."
It describes him as inferior in versatility to Hether-
ington ; of much less energy than Benbow : and it adds
that, for variety of intellectual resources, no one will
think of naming him in the same day with the late. little
Mr. Waddington. the " eminent" bill-sticker. In-
deed, it cannot call to mind one, even among the lowest
and the least of the " unstamped," with whom he is
capable of measuring weapons. His destiny is thus
foretold by our polite Contemporary :
" Like Carlile, ho will sink again into the mud of his own
insignificance, out of which he is now trying to tiptoe himself,
unless any one should be found so senseless as to prosecute
him once or twice, and get him sent to rusticate in Coldbath-
fields, or to indulge in the exercise of the treadmill at Brixton."
As to his publication just started, the expectations
of the Times are high-wrought :
With regard to the editor, if his morality be at all like
his politics, the publication which the three may be expected
to bring forth, will outdo in beastliness the vilest books which
might be produced by ransacking the literature of the most pro-
fligate French Court for moral, and the literature of the first
French revolution fbr political knowledge."
So much, and of such quality, in vindication of the
decency and respectability of the press. The cause
has rather a bad champion, it must be confessed. If
this quarrel be carried on as it has commenced on both
sides, it promises to exhaust all the resources of
vilifi-
cation. Mr. Roebuck gave the Times an advantage
at the outset, by attributing its faults to all the rest of
the press, of which it will not fail to avail itself. So-
lomon observes, that there is a class of people who
shoot their bolts too soon. There. is this difference
)etavcen Mr. Roebuck and the Times. Mr. Roe-
` nel: is what is called an ill-conditioned man ; it must
ilwitys cost him a great effort not to be offensive ; he
)erliaps wishes to discover the truth and to support it,
hough from his unhappy temperament he will always
injure any cause which he advocates. The Times has
not the merit of even intending to be honest. It
coolly calculates on mischief ; an7l abuse is not with it
the ebullition of an unhealthy, jaundiced state of
mind, but of malice prepense. We could have wished
to avoid noticing Mr. Roebuck, whom we look on as
au. object deserving of our pity, lathes than of our in-
lign Chronicle.
Lord Stanley's letter to Sir T. D. Hesketla, relative