The Sun.
London, England, 1832-07-06 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

The Scotch Reform Bill, as we mentioned
yesterday, will meet with no serious opposition.
The Lord Chancellor characterized, with his
usual spirit, the nature and oFeration of Scotcl.
superiorities, by stating that they had so little
to do with the soil of Scotland, and were so
thoroughly marketable commodities,—or, in-
deed, mere negotiable instruments,—that
nothing would he easier tl•an for some thiry
gentleman capitalists, in Lombard or Thread-
needle-street, to return 30,—that is to say, the
whole body of Scotch county Members, by the
simple possession of the requisite number of
parchment superiorities, without having amongst
the entire 30, a single acre of ground from Ber-
wick-upon-Tweed to the Orkneys. This con-
dition of affairs, under the old Scotch system.
was really enough to make the lips of the
rottenest English borough patron water, and
the eyes most familiar with fiction in these
latitudes, turn up their whites in wonder at
the pro 'ess of the north. According to
Lord Haddington, it is true that a species of
the lex talionis was acknowledged he'ween the
perfections of the Scotch superiority qualifica
Lion, and the beauty of the English rotten bo-
roughs. In revenge, it appears, for the absorp-
tion of so much county patronage beyond the
Tweed, by the thirty sober-minded gentlemen
of Lombard-street, the gentlemen " frae the
North" were not unaccustomed to make their
septennial inroads upon John Bull, and, carrying
the war into the enemy's quarters, to levy black
mail from the pock-pudding Suthron, in the
shape of seats in Parliament for a large portion
of schedule A. This privilege, or perquisite,
or whatever it might have been, was, with
amusing gravity, entered by Lord Haddington
upon the catalogue of good things accruing to
Scotland from the system " now no more," as an
argument whence to conclude that the proportion
of influence to be exercised by Scotland under the
new law, though with an ostensible increase in
the number of her representatives, would be re-
duced below its former level. However, the feu-
dal spirit of the gentlemen " frae the North"
begins to show itself in another form. In lieu
of finding, as they did heretofore, an available
set-off in our condemned schedules, for the mi-
gratory nature of Scotch superiority qualifica-
tions, whereby, as we have said, or as says Lord
Haddington, if Lombard-street spread her claws
across the Tweed, North Britain, on the other
hand, contrived to lay hold of certain Ordnance,
Treasury, and Admiralty boroughs, in lieu of
such advantages, the feudal grandees of Scotland
now threaten to tear a leaf from the old code of
Irish barbarism, and as the law confers inde-
pendence on their tenants, and enables every
occupant under a specific rent and tenure
to vote for whatever representative he pleases.
they have the insolence to talk of resent-
ing, " as a personal insult," an attempt, not li -
censed themselves, to canvass the votes of their
tenantry l Now, even in Ireland, such mons•rous
arrogance has been of late years suppressed as a
common nuisance, and such criminal and vulgar
preteesions totally abandoned. In Ireland,
voiere the small leaseholders are not to be com-
pared with those of Scotland in any of those
qualities which fit men to exercise an en-
lightened judgment upon the merits of public
men, civilization has advanced too far to admit
the continuance of such a ruffian and stupid
practice, as that of shooting a candidate, for
soliciting the suffrages of electors ; but. it
seems the case is Tate different in that
country whose metropolis has been styled " The
modern Athens," whose aristocracy call them-
selves, and whose middle and laborious classes
are among the best educated of their kind,
throughout the empire. Representation by
parchment is in Scotland to be succeeded by
that of the pistol, the claymore, or the dirk 7.
The order of things which has displayed itsefi
in England is . to be reversed by these hyper-
borean patriots. Here ancient violence gra-
dually gave way to corruption ; whereas the
Scotch conservative, forbidden to bribe or cheat,
has recourse at once to murder. But the Scot-
tish tenant holds the remedy in his own keeping.
lie, at least, may vote as he thinks proper. The
lanldord will hardly venture to take his life. The
threat, indeed, is as ludicrous as it is barbarous.
—Times.

We were led in yesterday's article on the case
of Somerville into an erroneous course of argu-
ment upon one branch of the subject, by the
mistake of a single, but very important, fact
In our Parliamentary report of what fell from
Sir J. Hobhouse, it was stated that Somerville
had been tried by a " general " court-marcial,
whereas, it ought to have been a " regimental"
one. This alters the whole complexion of the
case. A regimental court-martial might have
been led astray by hostile feelings towards So-
merville as a politician ; a regimental court-mar-
tial might have shared the resentful spirit im-
puted to Major Wyndham towards the prisoner;
and under these circumstances it is manifest tha.
the necessity for an investigation becomes a thou-
sand times more urgent. Indeed it is now ine-
vitable. We are convinced that no obstacle will
be thrown in the way of a measure essential to
public justice by the present Secretary at War.
than whom it would be difficult to name alt
English gentleman connected with office at an)
period, more direct, or manly, or true to his
principles and professions.—Times.
The subject of tithes in Ireland, which
seems to have been for some time settled
in that country, last night engaged the atten-
tion of the House of Commons. "At this
late period of the Session (said Mr. Stanley, on
opening the subject), on the eve of a dissolu-
tion of Parliament, and after so lung and labo-
rious an attendance on the part of its Members,
he would willingly have refrained from bringing
forward a subject so complicated in its details,
and the discussion of which, however he might
wish to avoid it, must almosl necessarily lead to
warmth, if not to asperity. But looking at the
state of Ireland, at the condition of the clergy of
the Church of England residing there—at the
entire disorganization of society, and at the ab-
sence of power in the law to secure its own exe-
cution, he should be wanting in his duty, and the
other Members of the Government in theirs, if
the present Parliament were suffered to separate.
without knowing the existing state of the Sister
Kingdom, and the mode in which it was pro-
posed to treat the evils of the present systen.
laid before it." This is a somewhat onto.
nous commencement. Mr. Stanley had little
difficulty in proving that the present tithe
system was bad ; but the moment he
proceeded to propose another, he involved him-
self in difficulties of a most serious nature. Mt.
Stanley proposes, in ail, three measures.—Hi-
first Bill is to render the tithe-composition coin
pulsory and rfi4yEtitilittirying only according It
the variation& in 4ie rice of agricultural pro-
duce, okys..l4ord. His second
Bill i ever{ tiiAeta,corpoitition in each dio-
, .
• -.:;—*/
• Irt.,‘,
411:)3.t0,1,07.