The Sun.
London, England, 1832-06-25 00:00:00

Usually employed in courting the favour of the people, con-
Sider that, at this rate, your representatives have six years
for offence, and but one for atoncwent.—A death-bed re-
Peutanee seldom reaches to restitution."

To the people of England, then, we say, ill
the language of the same great writer, "tile
inattention or indifference of the nation has con-
tinued too long. You are roused at length to a
sense of your danger. The remedy is in your
Power,"—and the crime and the consequences
will rest with you, if you fail to employ it.
" When you leave the unimpaired hereditary
freehold to your children, you do but half your
duty. Both liberty and property are precarious,
unless the posseasors have sense and spirit
enough to defend them."

We are extremely happy to find that the ad-
mirable letter which appeared in this Journal on

Monday last, with the signature of " Tx LT.

LENSis," has been printed in a separate form,
and has attracted much attention among the
1 Members of the House of Commons. The

author has made considerable additions to it,

which we look upon as great improvements,
particularly the notes, which are very curious.
One of the grounds on which he objects to the

union of Orkney and Zetland is, that their in-
terests are in many points at variance. This he
illustrates in the following manner :
" If it should by any accident happen that a Reformed
Parliament should take it into its head to look into the
corn question, the Member for Orkney and Zetland will

find himself in a very awkward predicament. M Orkney
is a grower, and Zetland a consumer, of corn : it is the
interest of the one to sell clear, of the other to buy cheap.
Whit will the Him. Member do? One half of him is

bound to vote for the producer, the other for the con.
sumer. The only way that the two halves can extricate
themselves front this dilemma is, to pair off and neutralize
each other."

Having proved by arguments which we con-
fess appear to us unanswerable, that Zetland has
a far stronger claim to a separate representative
than either Peebles or Selkirk, whose united po-
pulation when doubled scarcely exceeds that of
Zetland, and having shown that the population
of the latter county is superior to twelve out of
the fourteen districts of boroughs, and four times
as large as some of them, he thus proceeds

" Is not Zetland then entitled to some consideration ?
But these boroughs have representatives through whom,
like the clamorous daughters of the horse-leech, they are
continually crying, 'give, give,' and your Lordship very
good-naturedly give..—all get something in the general
scramble except Zetland ; it it is no representative, and
therefore it is to get none—it is left to fulfil the Scripture,
Tu bins that bath shall be given, and from him that hath
not shall be taken even that which he bath.' "

The author winds up the whole with the fol-
lowing 'powerfully affecting appeal:—
" My Lord, there is a long arrear of justice due from
the British Government to these unfortunate islands, and
now is the time to pay it up. When they were originally
Fled to the Scottish Crown, it was humanely stipulated
their former Sovereign, that they should continue to
enjoy their own free and simple institutions ; and these
institutions stand to this day guaranteed to them by unre-
pealed Acts of the Scottish Parliament. But Scotland, in-
stead of taking them to her maternal bosom, treated them
like a cruel stepmother. She surrendered them into the
hands of a succession of needy and rapacious tyrants, who,
far removed from all control, exercised over the miserable
inhabitants a despotism more cruel, more barbarous, more
unrelentingly savage, than ever was realized on earth—
except in Ireland. The last of these tyrants was Patrick
Stuart, Earl of Orkney, and Lord of Zetland, who
seems to have concentrated in himself the essence of all the
vices of all the Stuarts. Could I describe to your Lord-
chip, as they ought to be described, the deeds of this man,
or rather this fiend in human form, it would make you
shudder with horror. Your Lordship may imagine to
what extent he carried his atrocities, from the fact, that
though a near relative of the reigning Sovereign, and that
Sovereign not proverbially rigorous in punishing provincial
tyranny, he expiated on the scaffold the crimes which he
had committed in Zetland ; and the only defence he made
was, that he bad done no more than his father bad done be-
fore him ! This execrable wretch has long gone to his own
place, and the place of his father. But oppression does
not always die with the oppressor. The Zetland
islands are still suffering from the effects of his de-
linquency; and they will continue to suffer, unless
your Lordship gives them a separate representative.
The Zetlanders have hitherto been excluded from all
share in the representation; but, considering the footing
on which the elective franchise has been hitherto placed,
they have no cause, in my opinion, to regret their
exclusion. If their country is not so liberally provided
with roads and bridges as other parts of Scotland are, they
cannot be accused of having participated in the public
plunder. If they have received no patronage for their
sons, they cannot be charged with the degradation of
having sacrificed on the altar of self•interest those rights
Which are given, and which ought to be exercised only
for the public good. Now, however, when a new era is
commencing, and they are for the first time to be admit.
ted within the pale of the British Constitution, they had
reason to hope that that admission would have conferred
upon them something more than the 'shadow of repre-
sentation. If, however, your Lordship and your illus-
trious colleagues will not grant them this boon, in
mercy leave them as they are. They cannot brook to
be yoked in mockery to the triumphal car of Ork-
ney. This, nay Lord, this is to them the bitterest
drop in that bitter cup which has been their portion
ever since they became the subjects of the Scottish
Crown. With Orkney they have no sympathy, and
they never can have any cordiality ; and although the
words of an Act of Parliament may chain the two pro-
vinces together, yet in every thing that constitutes union,
civil, social, or political, they must ever be, as they have
ever been, utter and entire strangers."
We have no hesitation in saying we think
this as clever a brochure as has issued from the
press for a long time. Independently of the
importance of the question which it discusses,
its literary merits will amply repay perusal.

The Scotch Reformers are very naturally in-
dignant with an obnoxious clause, that appears
to have been slily smuggled into the Reform
Bill for that country, to the effect, that no per-
son, except the eldest son or heir presumptive of
any Peer of Parliament, shall be eligible to re-
present any county or burgh, or district of
burghs in Scotland, who shall not be the pro-
prietor of a landed or heritable estate, in some
part of Great Britain or Ireland, of the value of
six hundred pounds a year for the represen-
tative of a county, and three hundred pounds
a year for the representative of a burgh or
district of burghs. A meeting has already
been held on this subject in Edinburgh,
in which some strong resolutions were pro-
posed and agreed to, and the example will,
we trust, be promptly followed by the whole of
Scotland. Alluding to the clause in question,
the New North Briton observes with much
sense and spirit,

the" There never was a more complete piece of trickery in
dark annals of state trickery. The effect of this
clause would be to confine the choice of the electors of
Scotland to a privileged grade of individuls for their re-
presentatives--the land-owners of the empire—a most
important class of the community, no doubt, but by no
means the sole depositaries of all of the wealth, and worth,
and talent, and intelligence of the country. The pro-
ject in itself is vicious and intolerable ; but the time of its
proposed introduction, and the certain effects of its
adoption, all tend to give it a character of infamy sur-
passing any thing in the vile
practices of the enemies of
Reform during the whole of the
painful discussions
Which have taken place on the Bills. It came upon us here
like a thunder clap. The gist draught of the Scotch
bill contained a qualification for county Members, that
they should be possessed of 500/. of yearly income arising