The Sun.
London, England, 1835-12-29 00:00:00

sPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

Municipal Reform, as it is displayed in the results
of the Saturday elections, has filled the Tory camps
with well-founded alarm and dismay. The recent
co elections in Englandthe luck of the Tories
in it seats which became vacant happening to be in
districts of paramount Conservative " influence"—
buoyed them up with ludicrous notions of a " re-
action" of public 2pinion, and they idly dreamed that
• their appeals to religious prejudices, and untiring
abuse of O'Connell, would yield their sinking cause a
temporary succour. • But the Tories find to their cost
that the Reformers " come again," and that when the
.united strength and political energies of the people are
put forth in a national conflict with Toryism, there
is not the slightest chance of their return to power.
Vainly they endeavour, by vapouring and lying, to
hide from the public the intensity of their present
political affliction. We know that some of their
metropolitan leaders and active partisans are abso-
lutely paralyzed with fear. Their " managing men"
—their Holmeses and Bonhams—know that 260
Menibers are returned by corporate cities and boroughs ;
that the Tory Corporations have alone given them
the greater portion of the town representation in. Pa-
r ; that this great " organic change," this mu-
nicipal revolution in local government, is death to their
party. The Liberals have not spiked the guns of
their opponents, but they have captured them, and
loaded and turned them against 'the enemy who so
long and exclusively occupied the Tory-garrisoned
Town-halls. Yesterday we recorded the storming of
the close Corporations of Liverpool, Leicester, Cam-
bridge, Leeds, and Coventry, where, with some few
lives saved, the entire Tory cliques were put hors de
combat. In Norwich we stated the majority of the
Reformers, to which were added similar triumphs in
Portsmouth, Bury Et. Edmunds, High Wycombe, and
Windsor. This day we add to the number of com-
plete victories the populous and opulent communities
of Bristol—yes, Bristol,—Hull, Plymouth, Bath, Lin-
coln, Wigan, Boston, Macclesfield, Carmarthen, Sud-
bury, Maldon, Newport in Monmouthshire, Stock-
port, Banbury, Colchester, Sandwich, Canterbury,
Maidstone, Bridgwater, Gravesend, Faversham, Ips-
wich, Newark, and we hope Warwick—Rochester
being a " tie," and Dover the only known loos.
In some of these towns every vestige of a Tory
Corporator has been obliterated. Not an old member
of the deceased bodies has been re-elected--all have
been indignantly rejected. In Liverpocl only two of
the old Tory Self-Elect have succeeded in re-entering
the Capitol. Hull, it will be seen, has repudiated
nearly all the old," public servants," as the late close
bodies used farcically to designate their service of
" themselves and patrons. Our report of Banbury states,
that in this borough not even " the fractional part of
a Tory" was allowed to enter the Town Council. Do
the Tory Journals seriously mean to gull their deluded
readers with the idiotic pretext that this signal demon-
stration of public opinion does not reflect the sense of
the property, intelligence, and intellectual power of the
. mass of the_ electors of the respective communities?
If the Municipal constituency, recently created in
England and Wales, is not the test of public senti-
ment what is ? The Hereditary Peers, fearing that
sentiment, did their best to mutilate the Bill. Although
they did not alter the original franchise proposed they
did dilute its power, by the .deleterious section in
the Act (section 40), which, placing in the hands
of Barristers selected by Tory Judges the appoint-
ment of the Ward Councillors, dizected those Bar-
risters to " have regard as well to the number
of persons rated to the relief of the poor in each
Ward as to the an,reeate amount of the sums at

which all the said persons shall he so rated" —thus
giving a most partial and inequitable preponderance to
individual owners of property. And yet, notwith-
standing the " number of Councillors assigned to each
Ward shall be a number divisible by three"—notwith-
standing the lowering -the standard of Wards, and all
the other cunning mutilations of the measure, we find
the Conservatives miserably defeated ! The Standard
carefully protects the nerves of its readers, by not re-
porting the elections, unwilling to di'epel their late
delusions ; and our Contemporary affects to believe
that the ReformerS- have thus acted. from being intoxi-
cated with their newiy,acquired power, and then ar-
rives at the consolatory conclusion that the Liberals
will sober by the time of the next election. Verily
this is most pious resignation, especially when
coupled with the facetious expression of the Jour-
nalist':, opinion, that " the revolting display ylfic-
tious abuse of power in the Town Council elections
must very greatly reinforce the Consetvative inte-
rest at Parliamentary elections." party jugglery
and newspaper imposition can go no further. If our
Contemporary is thus persuaded, it is a pity that
the Lords brought themselves into such disfavour by
opposing a measure which their subservient Corpora-
tiens might have rendered unnecessary by vacating the
Town-halls, and voluntarily surrendering their place to
the Reformers. But no ; the Standard in truth well
knows the full force of the deadly blow which " Coa-
servatism" has just received. The action on popular
opinion—the influence on the conduct and future com-
position of the House of Commons—the pozver of-the
new Town CoUncils, which we are justified in antici-
pating, from what has been already seen in the working;
of those of Scotland—and the vital strength the Eng-
lish municipal election gives to the Melbourne Cabinet
—all this is fully known to the Tory leaders and their
party writers, who are quite aware of the extent of their
loss. They may in vain pretend to shut their eyes to
the results of these Municipal Elections now pouting
in, but they feel and acknowledge among themselves
the inevitable political consequences. Already we
hear of renewed and open-Mouthed execrations of
Sir Robert Peel at the Carlton Club ; that lie finessed
too deeply, and calculated falsely. Among, the most
amusing expressions of Tory surprise,, is the asser-
tion that the Reformers did not know their own
strength, and are themselves astonished at their
triumphs. - The Reformers might, in some cases;
under-estimate their own strength ; but certainly the
Tory journalists knew not the weakness -of their party,
as- the bold and loudly proclaimed anticillation of
success in the Tory papers of every corporate town
completely demonstrates. The Conservatives raw
console themselves -with arraigning the Liberals for
their party spirit, in voting exclusively in favour of
Reformers. Any foreigner would suppose that the
Tories had not so dealt with their party franchise, and
that the old Corporations had exercised the power of
self-election without regard to political opinion. The
Tories are now well repaid for their shameless 6E-
elusive spirit. They rigidly, where able, kept out
every Liberal ; and in vain they denounce the Re-
formers for paying Toryism in its own coin. To-
morrow we do not doubt that we shall add to our
record of the municipal triumphs of the Reform
cause. We may observe, that we have ourselves
received no account of the result of the election in
Chester, so that se cannot say what foundation there
is for the lamentations of the correspondent of the
Standard, on account of the success of the Re-
formers.—Morning Chronicle.
It will be seen by accounts from a variety of quar-
ters, that the municipal registrations in many towns
have been carried by the votes of those who assume to
themselves the exclusive, but, in that sense, prepos-
terous name of " Liberals," and that the " Conserva-
tives" have had the majority against them. There may
be something in the explanation that the Conservatives
have for the most part not regarded the local contests
as of a political character, while their opponents inva-
riably did so consider them, and acted with as much
factious animosity as though the representation of seats
in Parliament had hung upon the issue. We believe
there is much truth in this exposition of the causes
which have led to the local and temporary triumph of
the low democracy of a large number of towns, but it
is not the whole truth. It was natural that the first
flight of newly-fledged power should be in opposition
to its more ancient repositories ; it was inevitable that
the new-(angled burgess should make manifest his sud-
den promotion, and threaten and triumph over those
with whom he found himself now for the first time on
terms of corporate equality. Let us at the same time
admit, that in those corporations which had abused
their privileges by a corrupt application of their funds,-
or by. a tyrannical system of exclusiveness, a strong
feeling of indignation among the new electors was not.
only natural, but morally justifiable. Still there are