The Sun.
London, England, 1859-05-25 00:00:00

country ; the wholesale profligacy and corruption
which has sought to purchase the public virtue of
constituencies in the mass; and the base intimidation
which would fain have bullied into subjection all
whom it could not buy into silence and subserviency.
It is probable, nay, it is certain, that the Cabinet of
peers, romancists, squires, and rhetoricians who have
with shameless effrontery conspired to set the yoke
of Toryism on this realm for years to come, who
have spared neither violence, nor fraud, nor foreign
intrigues, nor domestic jobbery, nor the pressure of
secret influences, nor complicity with anti-national
and anti-Protestant designs, nor appeals to ignor-
ance, prejudice, and passion, in the hope and expec-
tation of restoring the happy era of the Castlereaghs
and the Sidmouths among Englishmen in the year
of grace 1859, will not survive in the Ministerial
flesh to meet that solemn' inquiry into the electoral
transactions of the last two months which will
assuredly be demanded by the Legislature, as it is
already demanded by the voice of the nation. It
will have passed away—not, indeed, into forgetful-
ness, but into the impotent rage of a malignant
opposition, obstructive ever and aggressive, but
capable of insolence and obstruction only, not of
mischief and disaster. We trust the great Liberal
majority out of doors and the Liberal majority in
Parliament will not suffer so severe a warning to
slip unheeded from their memory. Twice in seven
years they have seen a forsworn but incurable fac-
tion clambering into office by Liberal aid, and after
a term of unexampled forbearance on the one side
and cringing falseness'on the other—after exhaust-
ing all the arts of treachery towards their friends,
and all the resources of trickery towards their foes,
sentenced to ignominious dismissal by a house of
their own creation. These narrow victories are
dearly won when all but the last, and greatest, and
most irreparable consequences of Tory supremacy
are accomplished—when we are trembling on the
verge of war, under the flimsy semblance of a neu-
trality which takes delight in rekindling the worst
passions of the worst times, and grasps at every
pretext for surrounding the monarchy with soldiers,
while it shrinks from entrusting a loyal people with
defensive arms: We do not affect to deny that
there are individual members of a Tory Cabinet
who are as honourable and high-minded gentlemen,
as sincere patriots, and as honest, if not as able,
administrators as any to be found in the ranks of
their rivals ; but as a Cabinet, steeped in the wis-
dom of Tory ancestors, professing the cultus of Tory
traditions, these excellent men are hopelessly and
helplessly the tools of two or three more malignant
plotters, and more unscrupulous confederates. In
quiet times the worse men may do little harm, and
the better men may even do a little good; but let a
Reform Bill in arrear fall due at home—let a war
of principles spring up abroad—and all the heredi-
tary Tory taint comes festering to the surface of
public affairs like transmitted gout in the aristo-
cracy of the pantry.
Thanks to the generous and inspiring emulation
of those eminent men whose names, as liberal chiefs,

should never stand apart, and whose historic repu-
tations, in spite of all shortcomings, must ever and
inseparably be linked with liberal hopes, the knell
of a Government which, Austria-like, has thriven
on the divisions of its adversaries, has sounded—not
an hour too soon. If, without overstepping that
caution which a due sense of responsibility imposes
even on the servants of publicity, we could make
our readers understand the full significance of a
change of Ministry in this country at the present
moment. and the bearings of such a change upon
the vital questions of Reform and Peace, we are per-
suaded that the opening debates in the House of Coin-
msns, the week after next, would be awaited with
more impatience than even the bulletins from the
banks of the Ticino and the Po.
Let one or two considerations suffice for the mo-
ment; we reserve the rest. England—if we do not
strangely misinterpret and misrepresent the feelings
of our countrymen England demands in the
present European crisis that her coasts shall be
unassailable, and invasion not improbable but im-
possible. She demands this, not from a mere blind
instinct of self-preservation, but because she desires
ample leisure and calm security for the internal
develoyment of those precious liberties which make
her the beacon light of civilisation to the world.
Now, it is not the desire of a Tory Government to
enable us to laugh the idea of invasion to scorn. A
Tory Government will double and treble a Channel
fleet, will plant heavy ordnance here, there, and
everywhere ; will screw tighter and tighter the
wooden legs of pensioners, snatch at undersized
recruits for the ranks of the standing army, and
decimate our merchantmen for the service of the
fleet by prodigious bounties; yet it will not allow
the nation to bear arms, for if it did, the invasion
panic would not be worth six months' purchase, and
—no more panic, no more increase to the standing
army, no more seasonable diversions to Reform.
England demands Reform—such a measure of
Reform at least as shall last a generation, and
satisfy the majority of reasoning and responsible
Englishmen. A Tory Government proposes to
" settle" the question by removing it out of harm's
way—in other words, by adapting it to. the conve-
nience of dependent counties and rotten boroughs.
England demands absolute neutrality in the
present European war. But the strange Phonetic
dictionary which that eminent professor of calli-
graphy who still presides over the Foreign-office is
in the habit of consulting, discovers a strange and
ominous novelty in international law. A Tory
Government, inspired by the prudence of a Derby,
guided by the wisdom of a Malmesbury, teaches
us, to our amazement, that there are two sorts of
neutrality, as there are two sorts of warfare and
two sorts of alliance. As there is offensive warfare,
and defensive warfare, offensive alliance and de-
fensive alliance, so, too, it appears there is such
a thing as defensive neutrality, which is the
only sort of neutrality we have hitherto been ac-
quainted with, and such a thing as offensive neu-
trality taught and practised by a Tory Government.
We know what a strictly defensive neutrality
means. It means that England shall resolutely
hold her own all the world over, while despots
fight it out and freedom rushes in through the gap
of armies to vindicate her sacred cause without
raising a hand in aid of the despots, and with all
her heart and soul bidding God speed to freedom
and. the right. Offensive neutrality means a
braggart tone, a menacing attitude, occult dynastic
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ago. It means—but, in a word, if England is to
preserve her strength unimpaired, her liberties un-
corrupted, her commerce free and flourishing, her
religion pure and undefiled, she must lose no time
in gettini, rid of men who plot with the creatures
of the Pope onr the hustings, and who unite with
the Holy Father in prayer for the perpetuation of
temporal and spiritual darkness in Europe.