The Sun.
London, England, 1832-01-10 00:00:00

,s hose resources arc wielded by Governments
that look with ill-will on the revolution, and are
only restrained from acting towards it as they
acted towards Spain and Italy by prudential con-
isiderations. Many of the French, besides, begin
to distrust the good faith of Louis Philip.
He is even charged with having betrayed
the interests of his country for the sake
of his relative, the King of Naples. There are
Carlists within the kingdom, and no real friends
without. Under such circumstances, it is hardly
to be wondered at that they should be sensitive.
We should not have objected to our contempo-
rary's statement of the fact, and of what it indi-
cated, had it not been stated in a form implying
praise to ourselves and censure to the French,
both perhaps equally undeserved. A man who
thoroughly confides in his wife may be indiffe-
rent to railery on a certain subject, hut not so
the man who suspects he has cause for jealousy.
A sense of danger is always restless, and often
leads to harshness. Frederick of Prussia, with
the confidence which 200,000 bayonets gave,
in times when revolutions did not find their way
into armies, allowed all manner of insulting libels
against himself to be posted up against the very
walls of his palace, without giving himself a
moment's concern about them. But when was
Bishop Horsley's expression used ? At a time
when the whole nation was anti-jacobinically
mad—when Mr. Fox had about as many mem-
bers to vote with him as Mr. Hume had when
he first began to attack the expenditure of the
Government in detail. At that time Dr. Priestly
could hardly find an inhabitant householder
in this great metropolis with courage to shelter
him, and Mr. Whitbread required protection
from the mob on his way to Parliament. There
was fever enough, as all who lived in those periods
well remember. The French Revolution struck a
terror into the aristocracy of this country ; and
during the existence of that terror, they were
cruel and jealous, as most people are under the
influence of fear. When the Edinburgh Review
first appeared, the fever had begun to subside ;
but even then the approaches to liberal discus-
sion were made with caution and apprehension.
In ordinary times, the English aristocracy are not
jealous or irritable, for the best of all reasons—
because they are confident in their strength. If,
however, any calamity should overthrow the pre-
sent Ministers, and the aristocracy should in
.the struggle succeed in replacing the yoke on
the necks of the people, we should then, pro-
bably, have some experience of the irritability
of a Government jealous of the people, because
afraid of them, and trembling for their own ex-
istence. There is little analogy between the
situations of the English and French. The French
are a democracy of yesterday with a Monar-
chical head. The English are an old Aris-
tocracy with a Monarchical head, and just as
much of democracy as serves to allow the voice
of the people to find an entrance into the
House of Commons. The fights in the English
Parliament have been conducted hitherto, for the
most part, by men who, on a few points, were
hostile to each other, but in a great number of
points had a common interest to maintain against
the people. We think the French quite justified
in making their stand against the very first en-
croachment on the principles of their revolution.
The maxim, obsta principiis, is always appli-
cable in constitutional matters. There is no
harm in erring on the safe side. If General
Jackson were, in any of his Messages to Con-
gress, to deviate from the practice of his prede-
cessors, and to use an expression implyinc, inde-
pendence of the people of whom he is the head,
he would instantly be called to severe account.
The Minister of Public Instruction, if he had
inadvertently sinned in a matter respecting
which the French are known to be peculiarly
jealous, ought at once to have apologised. The
persisting in the phrase left the Opposition no
alternative.—Morning Chronicle.
None who were acquainted with King Wil-
liam's character, or had observed his direct and
resolute, as well as conscientious and discrimi-
nating policy, since he came to the British throne,
could doubt that he would prove himself equal
to that crisis which the strange conduct of certain
IPeers, constituting on one important occasion a
majority of their illustrious House, had inflicted
upon his Majesty and on the nation. The crisis
thus unhappily produced, has been met and pro-
vided for by the King of England, in a manner
worthy of a humane and patriotic Sovereign ;
for lie has determined to employ an authority
contained within the Constitution, and recog-
nized by it, to protect the State against an
extrinsic and tumultuary, but resistless force,
by the intrusion of which all forms of law and
precedent known to Englishmen must have been
overturned, and freedom--that is good govern-
ment--purchased by the entire sacrifice of one
estate of the realm, and a necessary re-model-
ling of the others. The prerogative which the
King now deems it expedient to put in action is
that whereby his Majesty has been empowered,
when he sees fit, to reinforce a minority of
wise and upright Peers, that they may no longer
be out-voted by a majority equally upright, as
themselves declare, but of wisdom somewhat, in
his Majesty's opinion, less apparent. The King
and his counsellors are attacked by those whose
schemes of personal aggrandizement this great
measure threatens to crush, on the ground that
such an exertion of prerogative is " unconstitu-
tional." Who shall judge this question ? And
what ought the Sovereign to do ? The Tories
contend that the King and people ought to sur-
render blindly their own conviction of what the
public safety requires to the will of a portion of
the nobility. This might do at Venice, where
the people were slaves and the Prince a puppet,
and a ruthless and bloody oligarchy trampled on
both in the name of the State and Constitution.
The people of England cry out unanimously,
that divers unconstitutional powers and privileges
have been usurped by certain parties, at the ex-
pense and to the overthrow of English liberty.
The King heartily concurs. The usurpers
league together for the maintenance of these
usurpations, which the Constitution repudiates
and the law distinctly condemns; and when
his Majesty proposes, by the exercise of his own
acknowledged and unquestionable right, to se-
cure a redress for these revolting grievances, and
to aid the body of his injured subjects in com-
pelling the wrong-doers to disgorge their plunder
dear ! it is quite monstrous and " im-
peachable." We well remember that when
Lord Grey's Ministry, after the factious division
on General Gascoyne's motion, was about to
dissolve the Parliament of that day, some county
Members, who did not relish so speedy a ren-
contre with their constituents, exclaimed that the
dissolution was, yea verily, <, an act of treason !"
What, we beg leave to ask, ought to be the
course adopted by his Majesty ? Must he sub-
mit to the majority of the Peers, whom lie thinks
in the wrong, and tell the bulk of the nation,
whom he himself thinks right, that " there is no
help for it ?” There are two answers to such