The Sun.
London, England, 1832-02-03 00:00:00

Cabinet, who attempted to sacrifice the na
tion would tias With infamy to his grave.
We Low that very emmingly--devised view
have been entertained; hut Maehiavel himsel
could not snti;estlully realise them. The last
hope of the country is in the union, stability, and
success of Lord Grey's Cabinet. Lord Gre\
represents the flower of the British Aristocracy ;
Lord Althorp possesses the confidence of the
popular party_ anti out of the House of Com
mons. The country owed them a large debt of
gratitude, and repaid them with a noble and de-
voted support. These two Noblemen are awfull
responsible to the British nation. Anarchy in
this country ivould be the dissolution of the bod'
politic ; the,7 well know it and the country demand-
wisdom and energy in their councils. If they
have the means of dissipating the cruel and
fruitful expense of the nation, it is their solemn
duty to state those means. If they have not
those means, let them look to their characters,
and at least allow the people the mournful hope
they may again be called to the possession of
power in time to avert the impending storm.
N'Ve make all due allowance for their difficulties
and the character of the Cabinet, but they are
the responsible directors of the councils of the
King. Power not exerted in action ever attracts
suspicion, mistrust; and contempt. Peers must be
made, and when made will terminate the contest of

the few against the many. In the meanwhile the
Government has a right to the unflinching support
of the real representatives of the people ; the oppo-
sition of the horoughmogers is natural. We see no
real cause or instability in the Cabinet provided it
is supported heartily by the House of Commons,
and where Reform ought to be the sole question.
Ministers may justly demand great forbearance.
They have been left in extraordinary diplomatic
and financial difficulties by their predecessors.
They have to contend against official persons
everywhere opposed to their Government. The
party strife of the Reform question necessarily
absorbs attention, which will be hereafter given
to the national interests. Two hundred oppo-
sition Members are arrayed against them, dis-
ciplined and old tacticians, fighting for their very
political existence, and ready to vote any way so
that it is to vote out the Ministry, and, with the
Ministry, Reform. if the Reformers say true
of the present constitution of the House of
Commons, its imbecile and inferior character
should be credited to the difficulties of Lord

Althorp. Party management is dissolved, the
cement of patronage is nobly disdained, the
present House of Commons is particularly raw
Surely at such a time men like Mr. Hume

,hou1:1 uphold Ministers to the utmost. If the
Cabinet can and will create Peers, and manfully
declare the fact to the country, the opposition
will be blasted, the Government will be extri-
cated from all its difficulties, the nation will be
saved. If Peers are not created, and will not be
—in the dying words of Mr. Fox, " What, will
Reform be torn from you in blood and revolu-
tion !"—Morning Chronicle.
The tragic termination of the political excite-
ment at Nottingham has followed close upon that
of Bristol. At the latter place four, at the former
three, misguided individuals have atoned with
their blood for the offences which, there can be
no doubt, the violent appeals to popular passions
that were poured forth incessantly some time ago,
from the more intemperate portion of the Mini-

sterial Press, mainly instigated them to commit.
Here the people may read a useful as well as
an " awful lesson," of the sort of reliance which
ought to be placed upon the sincerity of fierce
and truculent advisers. No doubt our own en-
deavours to moderate the passionate excitement
upon Reform into the sobriety of reason, and
the judicious energy of constitutional exertion,
was regarded by many as the result of a less de-
termined devotion and attachment to the cause
than that which actuated the Reform writers,
who daily thundered forth the argument of in-
timidation, and saved themselves the trouble of
reasoning by placing the ultima ratio of Reform
in the resistless fury of revolutionary force. Now
the people have cause to see and understand
who were their sincere and honest advisers, and
who were not. Their experience is bitter, but
they may derive from it some salutary instruc-
tion. They now find that the Journals that were
the most vehement in creating a Reform
phrenzy were the first to leave their misguided
victims to perish in it ; nay, the wretched
men, who, having been taught to be-
lieve that physical force would be sanctified
by its application to so holy a cause as that
of Reform, were ensnared into the meshes
of legal vengeance, heard, from the same quarter
from which the instigation to violence came, a
voice crying aloud for their destruction, and in-
yoking " upon their necks the sharpest edge of
the axe of the law !" Having stood—as we
did at all times since this question of Reform
was agitated, but more especially when the cry
was for revolutionary conventions and armed as-
sociations—between public order and the vio-
lence which threatened it—between rational
liberty and a devastating licentiousness—we did
not think it the less our duty to plead for mercy
to those deluded men, who, though they had
not followed our advice, by confining their efforts
for Reform within the prescribed limits of the
Constitution, yet were deserving of commisera-
tion, from their offences being the effect of po-
litical delusion rather than of any deliberate ma-
lignity of heart ; for no men in their condition
of life bore better characters than most of the
men selected for execution did, up to the time of
the sudden excitement into which they were so
fatally betrayed. But in the case of the Not-
tingham rioters we preferred an additional plea
for the extension to four of them of the mer-
ciful consideration of the Crown. That plea
rested upon the doubtful and inconclusive na-
ture of their guilt. Two of them only were re-
prieved, and now, we believe, there is no reasonable
person who doubts that one of the other two
suffered innocently—we mean Armstrong—and
that the guilt of the other was by no means clearly
established. As to the fifth, he had admitted his
guilt, but expressed a hope that his youth
might be considered an extenuation of the
offence. Nothing could surpass, accordiMg to
the accounts, the fearless and calm fortitude with
which Armstrong and Beck met their dreadful
and pitied fate. Who is not touched with the
deepest sympathy when he reads the melancholy
narrative which states that Hearson, who, not
having the resolution of the others, wished the
executioner to bandage his eyes, that he might
not be appalled at the sight of the instrument
of destruction, was dissuaded from it by Arm-
strong, who " exhorted him to meet his fate
with the resignation of a Christian ?" And
then, again, how moving are the words of the
same sufferer to Hearson, who was waving his
cap, and indulging in other frantic gesticulations
on the scaffold—" None of that, George—it is
not sense. I must say that I am innocent be-
cause I am so, but I'll have none of this." How
emphatic the manner in which he expressed his