The Sun.
London, England, 1835-11-26 00:00:00

dizabal there is just ground for hoping that the pros-
perity of Spain will at length be permanently secured,
under free institutions and a good Government. e
should strongly recommend her cousin of Portugal to
follow such an admirable example. Monarchies may
still have a long reign ; .but nothing can tend so much
to endanger their existence as Sovereigns capriciously
trifling with the public opinion. A sceptre is a dan-
gerous toy in the hands of a school-girl, and the
young lady of Braganza appears to need a lesson in
the duties of a Sovereign called to preside over a
people acquiring a knowledge of what is due to them-
selves, and eager to establish the rights which Provi-
dence decreed to them.—Morning Advertiser.
A " dead set" (to use a common phrase) appears
to have been lately made at the Revising Barristers,
who, whatever may have bedb the defects and the ab-
surd errors of some of these gentlemen, as a body we
consider have discharged those duties creditably to
themselves, and beneficially to the public. We object
in toto to a universal and sweeping condemnation of a
whole body for the faults of only a smaller portion ;
and we do not at all admit the justice of the Sinonian
maxim, "et crimine ab uno disce omnes." That there
is some truth in the charges made we do not deny—
in fact we have more than once, we might say fre-
quently, during the last two years, taken occasion to call
the attention of the Learned Judges to some of their
appointments, and have endeavoured to point out to
them that they had apparently, in many instances, un-
derrated the quantity both of sound sense and legal
learning requisite for the due discharge of a Revising
Barrister's duties. It is true that the remuneration is
not such as will secure the services of any Barristers
in large business ; but yet we feel confident that it is
sufficiently high to enable the Learned Judges to
obtain the assistance of more competent individuals
than they have clone. This might have been effected
by making the appointments more worthy of accep-
tance, by not appointing so many barristers ; thus at
the same time diminishing the chances both of bad
appointments and of conflicting decisions. That more
barristers have been appointed than were necessary, is
notorious. We particularly allude to cases of two bar-
risters being appointed to a division of a county, and
two more to go over nearly the same ground, with all
the extra expense of post-horses, clerks, &c., for three
or four boroughs in the same division. This subject
attracted the attention of the Registration Committee
during the last Session, and we had expected that such
an evil would not have again occurred. With respect
to the great diversity of decisions which is said to have
been exhibited, it is not greater than might fairly have
been expected, when the large number of barristers
appointed is taken into consideration ; when it is recol-
lected that it is upon a wholly new Act, not very clearly
or skilfully drawn, that these decisions were to be
made ; and that there were few previous judgments to
guide them, save the conclusions which Parliamentary
Election Committees had arrived at, which, we fear,
whatever may have been the good intentions of
the Hon Members who sat upon them, are only cal-
culated to make confusion worse counfounded. 'We
trust ere long, however, that some new regulations with
respect to Election Committees will be made ; many
Hon. Members being at length aware of the danger of
appealing to such a tribunal, to say nothing of the
lamentable display which a Committee represents when
endeavouring to unite the offices of Legislator and
Judge. We have made the above remarks in justice
to a large number of persons, who we consider have
well discharged their duty to the public, and also be-
cause we should regret to see the system of the regis-
tration of voters introduced by the Reform Act at-
tempted to be done away with. Its defects are such
as lie on the surface, and should, and might easily,
have been remedied during the last Session. Its bene-
fits, notwithstanding the expense annually incurred by
it, are great, and amongst them we must mention the
blow which it has given to bribery and corruption by
reducing an election from 15 days to two in counties,
and to one day in boroughs, as was exhibited at De-
vizes yesterday.—Morning Herald.
A thorough contempt for the law of the land, a
rooted aversion to its regular and equal administration,
a decided enmity to the code of manners which has
hitherto been deemed necessary to the existence of ci-
vilized society, and an utter ignorance or oblivion of the
distinctions between selfishness and patriotism, incapa-
city and genius, as these qualities have been exhibited
by contemporary politicians, seem to be essential cha-
racteristics of that class of public writers who arrogate
to themselves at the present day an exclusive title to
the name of " Reformers." Such writers manifest
their attachment to Reform by elaborate attempts to
prove, that Radical vestrymen who violate the spirit
and letter of the Reform Bill by manufacturing a false
registry of voters are proper objects of public sympathy
and favour ; that when the Court of King's Bench has
granted a rule nisi for a criminal information against
any man upon the well-supported charge that he has
falsely imputed treasonable practices to sonic of his fel-
low-subjects the individual thus exposed to the animad-
version of that high tribunal becomes thenceforth enti-
tled to the aid, countenance, and bounty of his neigh-
bours ; that Mr. O'Connell is a more refined and cour-
teous gentleman than Sir F. Burdett ; and (to cap the
climax of absurdity) that Lord Melbourne and Lord
John Russell possess the talents and virtues of states-
men in an equal degree with Sir Robert Peel. Some
striking illustrations of this blind and reckless devotion
to what they deem, no doubt, the interest of their party
were afforded yesterday by our Ministerial contem-
poraries, who seem entirely to forget that no political
party can be effectually or permanently served by the
proof that it has no other stedfast and zealous ad-
herents than such as disregard, for its sake, the laws of
their country, and outrage without scruple the estab-
lished manners and habitual good sense of its inha-
bitants. One of our Ministerial contemporaries ma-
nifests his contempt even for that law which he ought,
in consistency, to deem more worthy of reverence
than any other in our whole code, the Reform Bill
itself, by a tissue of sneers and invectives against
certain individuals, upon the ground, simply, that
they have done what they thought their duty with
a view to bring down legal punishment upon a
knot of persons accused, upon very strong evi-
dence, of conspiring to vitiate the registration of
voters in an important district of the county of
Middlesex. " The Tories of Marylebone," we are
told, " are at their dirty_ work again." We are in-
formed, further, that " Tory attornies cannot be more
congenially employed than in harassing their opponents
by expensive suits at law ; but," it is adted, " they
understand neither the spirit nor the determination of
Reformers, if they suppose that the latter are to be
deterred from their course by threats, or intimidation,
or vexatious indictments for conspiracy." Now, con-
sidering the notorious facts, that a considerable num-
ber of names of " Reformers" were clandestinely and
irregularly placed upon the registry of voters for the
county of Middlesex resident in Marylebone ; that
these names were instantly erased by the Revising
Barrister ; that avowedly the property in consideration
of which these names were inserted in the register,
being parish property, belonged to the whole body of
parishioners of Marylebone, just as much as to the
fortunate " Reformers" who were to have usurped the
votes ; that the names were inserted, not by the over=
seers of the poor, to whom the Reform Bill has en-
trusted this duty, but without their authority or even
their knowledge ; that the book thus illegally corrupted
had been in no other hands than those of the over-
seers (who abjure all privity in the interpolation) and
certain Reforming members of the vestry of St. Maryle-
bone ; and, finally, that the object of the fraudulent
and illegal interpolation was to give votes for the
county of Middlesex to these same Reforming members
of the vestry, and a considerable number of their Re-
forming colleagues in that body—considering, we :,ay,
these notorious and undeniable facts, it does argue a
degree of contempt for the laws in general, for the
Reform Bill in particular, for the right of representa-
tion, for the administration of justice, for candour,
honesty, and truth, greater than we were prepared to
expect, even in an adherent of the Melbourne-O'Con-
nell Government—that it should be called " dirty
work" to attempt to bring such a transaction under the
cognizance of the offended and insulted laws, with a
view to the condign punishment of the offenders, and
that we should be told, in the spirit of insolent bra-
vado, that Reformers are not to be deterred from " their
course"—the course of falsifying public- documents,