The Sun.
London, England, 1832-12-26 00:00:00

the spontaneous feelings of the majority of the
electors, has prolonged the influence of Noble-
men, great landed proprietors, and High
Church Clergymen, entirely contrary to its
intention, in every instance in which a Mi-
nisterial retainer or partisan has been de-
feated. There are persons, however, besides
Conservatives, who will rejoice that the Reform
Bill has not wrought out the entire will of its
authors, the numerous class for instance who
are fond of a good Parliamentary debate, and
who are judges of the article, so far at least as to
know that nothing is so essential to the getting
up of a good debate as that the parties to it
should be in earnest. This, however, is nothing
to the Whigs. Earnest debate does not suit
them ; and they are grievously disappointed ac-
cordingly with the working of their own measure.
The organs of the Whigs, so severe is their dis-
appointment, talk of resenting it, by inflicting
upon the Conservatives a further extension of
the suffrage and the vote by ballot. There is,
however, as it appears to us, only a single point
of view, and that not merely independent of'
party considerations, but opposed to them, in
which the Conservatives would have any thing
to fear from the execution of these threats. It

r is an interest of the Tory party, no otherwise
than as it is the general interest of all parties
and of all classes, that the institutions of the State
should assume a stable and stationary character,
and that the nation should be relieved from the
excitement and the apprehension of frequent and
unnecessary fluctuations. To attain as speedily
as possible a final resting-place for the Consti
tution must no doubt be their object ; their ob-
ject, however, not as Tories, but as Englishmen,
deeply solicitous for the repose and welfare and
safety of their country. They will probably,
therefore, think it their duty to adopt the Whig
Reform Bill as this final resting-place ; but, if
they do so, it will be the greatest sacrifice of
party interests ever yet offered in any country
upon the altar of patriotism, for the kind of
franchise and the mode of election which are
established by this Bill are the most detrimental
to their power as a party that can by possibility
be established in Great Britain, and have been
selected expressly because they are so. Uni-
versal suffrage is no threat to them, the vote
by ballot is no threat to them, any further
than as the introduction of either must pro-
long the reign of political agitation, and defer
the establishment of regular and stable govern-
ment. With the return of stable and regular
government, under whatever system of Par-
liamentary representation, there can be no
doubt that the Tory party will gradually re-
gain its political ascendency in the State, simply
because it has a great, manifest, and indestruc-
tible superiority over every rival party, in its
associations with the historical glory of the na-
tion, in its possession of the large masses of
property, and its insuperable connection with
the education, the intelligence, and the respec-
tability of the country. But it is our decided
opinion that neither vote by ballot, nor universal
suffrage, nor both of these combined, would re-
tard this restoration. We think, on the contrary,
that, as compared with the intended and the
probable operation of the Whig Reform Bill,
they would greatly accelerate it, unless, in the
shock of passions and of interests incident to
great constitutional changes, some terrible con-
vulsion were to take place sufficient to alter all
the relations of property, and to obliterate
every trace of national habit, of traditional re-
verence, or of ancient institutions. By the
arbitrary selection of a particular class of the
community, to compose the new constituency
of the towns, the Whigs have contrived that it
shall comprehend all the dissenters from the
Church, and all the pothouse politicians, while
it excludes from effective power the classes
above, and altogether from the right of voting
the classes below this chosen point, none of
whom are to any thing like the same extent as
the three-and-tenpenny voters, either dissenters
from the Church or pothouse politicians. By a
selection, equally arbitrary, of places to be de-
prived of the representative franchise, and to
obtain it, the Whigs have contrived that the 11
property of their known adherents should possess
a degree of local influence in the election of ,

nembers of Parliament at least twice as
in proportion to its extent as the property of
their known opponents. By these means, in
conjunction with what still remains of the Re-
form excitement, the Whigs have procured a
majority in the new Parliament, while the whole
course of the elections shows plainly enough
that the advantages which they have derived
from all their arts can be but temporary, and that,
without the aid of some new excitement, they
must speedily sink into their natural position
of a secondary party and an opposing force in
the State. They may introduce, if they please,
change after change ; they may prolong and
embitter political strife and agitation ; they may,
by these means, succeed in finally producing a
convulsion which will involve themselves and

their political opponents in one common ruin ;
but, unless they subvert the foundations of

property, and unhinge all the relations of so-
ciety, they will strive in vain to prevent the final
and certain ascendancy of the party to which
they have been so long opposed, and by which,
for England's glory and welfare, they have so
often been defeated.—Morning Post.