The Sun.
London, England, 1835-02-12 00:00:00

PIRIT OF Ti.IE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

A comfortable prospect is afforded the old friends of
the British, constitution as to the blessings which await
us from' the ever-quickening march of democracy, in
the attempts of the busier portion of electors through-
out the country to browbeat their Representatives into
a vote for Mr. Abercromby as Speaker, to the exclu-
sion of Sir Charles M. Sutton. The previous inter-
meddling of a constituency with the act of its Mem-
ber, and the dictation to him how he shall give his
vote, is barely and doubtfully tolerated by the consti-
tution of England. A petition to the House of Com-
mons, in its aggregate character, is the regular course
of proceeding. A specific instruction upon any especial
matter, transmitted by electors to the object of their
choice, cannot indeed be fairly murmured at, where
the question is-Ist, one of peculiar local interest, in-
volving the immediate welfare of the county, city, or
borough, from which the instruction or recommenda-
tion emanates ; 24, where the question is one of such
paramount and universal importance, that no section or
subdivision of the community, however minute, can be
supposed to escape its pressure, but that every village
throughout the kingdom is, through the national inte-
rest or honour, substantially, though not directly,
affected by its decision. But we should be glad if any
of our liberal contemporaries would inform us on what
ground,
or through what process of remote or contin-
gent operation, for direct or immediate none is so much
as pretended, can the interests of the several constituen-
cies throughout the kingdom be concerned in the choice
of that officer of the House of Commons who merely
presides to maintain the formality of its proceedings,
whose chief business is to take care that the several
stages of each measure follow each other in a fit
and recognized succession, and that the members de
mean themselves towards each other and towards the
House with so much deference and so much dignity,
as shall ensure the prevalence of order, and prevent the
waste of time in irregular discussion or unseemly al-
tercation. The Speaker may have other duties, but
they are only occasional or incidental. He hardly ever
speaks to the merits of any question—he hardly ever
votes—he takes less part in carrying or defeating .a
public measure then any other representative of the
people in Parliament. He is essentially the officer and
servant of the }LIM when constituted—not of those
who send up as their representatives the several Com-
ponent parts of it. When the constituencies through-
out the kingdom obtrude themselves upon such a tran-
saction by menaces, dictation, or even by advices, they
meddle with that which is the exclusive business of
their representatives, whom, in effect, they pro tanto
endeavour to unseat. When we hear, therefore, of
self-constituted election committees meeting and draw-
ing up resolutions, and transmitting them to their
members, prescrib:ng to them what candidate they shall
raise to the chair of the House of Commons, our next
expectation is that they will point out the person who
in their judgment shall be best qualified for the office
of chairman of committees—nay, the members of all
select committees with their several chairmen. Never
was there exhibited in this kingdom a more alarming
specimen of passion run wild, or of popular tyranny
insatiable in its encroachments on the Constitution.
With respect to this present question of the Speaker-
ship, it has been treated under two points of view-
-Ist, as regards persons : 2d, as regards principles. In
touching on the personal division of the subject, we
challenge any of our antagonists in the discussion to
point out a singi.n passage of all that we, have written
where the slightest allusion to. Mr. Abercromhy per-
sonally fell front us of an ividious, disparaging, or
offensive nature. The single point of his poli-
tical career on which we offered a syllable of corn-
inent, was forced upon us by the repeated extra-
vagance of his supporters in the present contest,
who attempted to deduce from it the materials of high
panegyric—viz., the Right Hon. gentleman's acces-
sion
to a Judge's place, which and the whole
party of which he was a member, had long before con-
demned as a uscle,s sinecure, and his acceptance after-
wards of a considernVe pension for resigning it. On
this topic we hay,: riclid enough to illustrate our own
sense of the faits as they stand recorded, and more
than gave us an gratification. But a far graver and
more interesting argument to dispose of is that by
which Lord Ruseell, as it appears, overcame the sent-
pies of Mr. A:)crcromby—namely, that the Right
Hon. Gentleman's election to the Chair would be the
" vindication of el great public principle." A letter
which we publish in to=day's Times, and which we
need not. describe to our readers as an able one, signed
" An • Old Member," places this fiction of
" a great principle" on its proper footing. The
writer there makes out and enforces—in a manner
so striking as must arrest the deep attention of
every one who reads him, that the only principle which
can be vindicated or served by the triumph of the
Whig-Radical faction, is the principle of Repeal of
the Union—by throwing into the hands of that un-
principled cheat and liar, O'Connell, the great bulk
of the power which would he exercised in the name of
the joint Government of Radicals and Whigs. It is
plain that the Ultra-Radicals being the most numerous
as well as the most active, energetic, and overbearing,
of the whole partnership, would throw aside the lan-
guid and vacillating Whigs. With that indiscretion
which hangs upon vicious cunning—as his rattle be-
trays the poisonous serpent ere he bites—O'Con-
nell has made within the last week, in the course of
a speech which proved how mortally the Times had
wounded him—by a farrago of outrageous falsehood
and absurdity against persons whom he assumed to be
connected with this journal—he made, we say, the
impudent but not useless avowal, that he would sus-
pend his machinations for a repeal of the union only
so long as the Conservatives should be in power, and
renew them the very first moment that he should suc-
ceed in restoring the Whig party to office I There is
in this at least 'no fraud ; there may be inconsistency
by reason that there is no dishonesty ; but dishonesty
there is none. He fccels his repeal of the Union—that
is, the breaking up of the British empire--to be a
desperate game—to be a pure chimera—;so long as the
Government of Sir Robert Peel shall be at its post to
defeat him ; but the hour that the Conservative Go-
vernment falls, and that any thing under the name of
Whig shall usurp the place of it, in that hour every
difficulty disappears from before the destructive power
—O'Connell triumphs, and old England falls. Can
any thing be more obvious than this whole category,
or more edifying to the people of England than the
lesson thus held out to them ? Are not cause
and consequence—are not act and motive—are not
premises and conclusion clear enough to satisfy all
doubts—to rouse every wise man to precaution, and to
animate every patriot with eager courage, and honest
hatred of the sworn enemies of Great Britain ? It is
above our humble intellect to conceive a combination
of reasons more powerful, more terrible, than those
we have now briefly indicated, and which our corre-
spondent has developed with far more skill and force,
for deciding every man in this country, who can see
an inch before him, to , resist at the very outset a
scheme of Parliamentary manoeuvres, of which the
object, on the part of its most effective promoters, is,
under the mask of a mere change of Ministry, to
wrest Ireland from the hand that wields the British
sceptre, or to retain her at the cost of an immediate
civil war.—Times.

The question of Church Reform naturally excites
very great and general interest. 'We have proofs of the
feeling that pervades society, and the spirit of inquiry
that is abroad, in the number of communications which
we receive upon the subject, but few of which we have
it in our power to lay before the public, consistently
with supplying the demands that other important ques-
tions make upon our columns. From a mass of those
communications we have selected one to-day, to which
we would direct the attention of our readers. It is
signed " A Conservative." The writer, as his signa-
ture implies, is one who would preserve the sacred
edifice of the Church against the violence of its enemies,
but not spare its abuses. His letter is well written—
of liberal, as distinguished from destructive sentiments
—and marked with good feeling and good sense. This
letter relates more especially to the subject of Church
Reform as bearing upon cathedral and collegiate
churches. 'We expressed our own opinion on this
part of, the question the other day. Our correspondent
baying adverted to our t;entiments, proceeds to say, "you
would first of all provide, and that amply, for the preser-