The Sun.
London, England, 1835-01-08 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

Runnymede and Magna Charta for ever 1 The citizens of
London, to whom we owe that palladium of English liberty
which has been the star of hope to the people in the worst of
times, and the sweetest note in their song of victory in the
best, have done nobly—gallantly—triumphantly. They have
raised themselves high in the sight, not only of every liberal
man in these kingdoms, but in that of liberal men all the
world over. The four Reform Candidates for the city—
Wood, Grote, Pattison, and Crawford—have been elected by
one of the most triumphant majorities that ever did honour to
a noble cause. If we take the highest numbers that were
polled by each side, 6518 for Alderman Wood, the venerable
Reformer, and 4671 for Mr. Lyall, the least objectionable
Tory, we have a majority of 1847 ; and if we compare the
lowest on each side, we have a majority for the liberal side of
1562. Taking the mean of these, we have an average majo-
rity—for; the liberal cause—of rather more than seventeen
hundred, which is at least 36 per cent. in favour of
liberal principles. And, be it remembered, that on this
occasion it was the Tories who made the extraordinary exer-
tions. It was they who brought Sir Robert Peel and his tail
to feast and flourish at the Mansion-house ; and it was they
that got up the Address to the King, signed dozen deep by the
same individuals ; and which, had it not been for the manly
conduct of Mr. Grote and his compatriots, would have been
used to abuse the ear of the King, and mislead his subjects all
over the islands. But the British metropolis is not to be taken
by the small arms of such miserable bush-fighters. The spirit
of man is in it—the spirit of that noble British freeman of the
olden time, Caractacus, before whom, even in his fetters, the
tyrant of Rome trembled, while in command and surrounded
by his accursed mercenaries. And do not the minor tyrants
of modern tyranny—those pitiful panders to some power be-
hind the Throne—who, in the intoxication of their folly,
have supposed that they can get their feet upon the necks
of men, and Englishmen—do not, they tremble at the
result of this glorious day—one of the brightest days in the
annals of the city of London, since the time that her citizens
made King John sign and ratify the Great Charter, to which
allusion has been made ? We may say that this victory, for
the best cause for which a victory ever was gained, has been
gained in spite of the most powerful opposition which its ene-
mies could by possibility muster. They have been defeated
on their own 'vantage ground ; and the Liberal electors of
London may say to those throughout the country, " Go and
do likewise !" But they do not need to say it, for honest men
all throughout the united kingdom are actuated by one
spirit ; and the result of the London election will have to
act only as a " God-speed" all over the country, except in the
case of those poor and miserable tools of the Tories who
can be bought and sold like rotten sheep at small prices,
yet not cheap. In all the metropolitan boroughs there are the
brightest hopes for the good cause. Southwark is over.
, Lambeth, Mary-le-bone, the Tower Hamlets, and we have no
• doubt, Westminster, are safe. There are but very slender
doubts of Finsbury, notwithstanding the purse and " palaver"
that have been opened by Mr. Sergeant Spankie. Then,
again, when we look at the country, we find the prospect as
cheering as the best hopes of honest men could desire it to be.
The people must not mind those small boroughs in the agri-
cultural counties, of which the corn-dealers have the sole
command, because, until the corn laws shall be repealed,
these persons have, and can have, no voice of their own. But
look at all places which have the means or the materia3s of
thinking. SGuthwark, the first to take the field, has done
nobly ; Notting;,:tm has returned a brace of stanch and
tried Reformers ; St. Alban's and Ashburton have been
true to the cause ; and .11t Hertford, Mr. Cowper has
beaten Lord Ingestrie in w:.,lt may be considered as
his own den. At Portsmouth, ,;here there is much
Government influence, two Reformers stand highest on
the poll ; Hastings and Deal are' in the same ,state ; and,
indeed, wherever we look, unless we look into the fact,, s':'f cor-
ruption itself, which is, fortunately, now rather a rare spec—
tacle in England, there are the most cheering hopes for all
those who wish well to the cause of liberty and of man, and
man's best interests. There is not a great deal of stimulus
wanted ; but we are sure that when the people all over the
country shall hear of what has been done in London, they will
be far more careful as to whom they send to the House of
Commons, and what instruction they give them as to their
conduct when they are there. The Duke and Sir Robert, or
rather Sir Robert only (for the Duke has never had any
means of knowing what freemen are) will have the satisfac-
tion of finding that, in the dissolution of the late House of
Commons, they have prepared for themselves a bed of thorns,
but the preparation is their own voluntary act, and let them
enjoy it during their brief and miserable career.—Motniny
Advertiser.

The finesse of Sir Robert has been subdued by the stubborn
despotism of the Duke; and by the dissolution of the first Re-
formed House of Commons, the Tory Ministry have placed
themselves in open and avowed hostility to the principle of
the Reform Bill. This is a fact which cannot be denied, or
even softened by any explanation. The first and fundamental
operation of that Bill was to send to the House of Commons
men in whom the people had confidence, as being actuated by
the same spirit as themselves,—that is, men disposed to bring
form and and support, aye, and carry in that House, every mea-
sure calculated to promote the public good ; and to oppose and
defeat every measure having a contrary tendency. Some of
the men returned by the people under this Bill may not have
been so deeply learned in parliamentary finesse and trick, as
those under the old and corrupt system, when the members re-
presented private masters, and not be people ; but still
they knew what was most conducive the public
good, each in his own district, and they were return-2d, because
it was •hnount that they would honestly do all in their po.7er to
promote that good. They were of the people, and for the
people ; -and if the House of Commons is not to be composed
of such men, then the Reform Act is a dead letter--a mockery
and an insult to the public, instead of an advantage. And if,
by any such political hallucinations as we do not fear, cer-
tainly—but which must, nevertheless, be guarded against with
the utmost vigilance—a House of Commons shall be returned
of which the Duke of Wellington, or any other leader of what
is called Conservative practices (principles are out of the
question), can command a majority, then from that moment
MI Reform Bill, which was intended to be the instrument
of tl-eedom, will become the most galling link in the whole
chain of our slavery. This is the most important point in
the whole aTumstances of the present time, complicated and
novel as they are ; and, therefore, it is one which we would
impress with the utmost earnestness upon the grave, calm,
and prolonged consideration of every man—especially every
man who has a vote to give. LET EVERY SUCH MAN
BEAR CONSTANTLY IN MIND, THAT HIS IN-
DIVIDUAL VOTE, GIVEN TO THE WRONG
CANDIDATE, OR EVEN WITHHELD FROM THE
RIGHT ONE, MAY BE THE MEANS OF RIVET-
TING THE CHAINS OF DESPOTISM UPON
HIMSELF AND HIS CHILDREN, WITH A FIRM-
NESS NOT TO BE BROKEN, BUT BY THE HOR-
RORS OF REVOLUTION AND CIVIL WAR—BE
THE DESTRUCTION OF ALL THAT IS DEAR
TO HONEST HUMAN NATURE, AND THE
DEGRADATION OF HIS COUNTRY TO THE
VERY BOTTOM OF THE SCALE OF CIVI-
LIZATION! Suppose for a moment that the Tories shall
gain a majority in the House of Commons under the Reform
Act, and—the liberties, of this country will be in a state of
greater abeyance, and every honestly independent man, within
the four seas, in greater peril, both of person and of property,
than in either of the unhappy times which brought the First
Charles to the block, and drove the Second James into exile.
By means of the Reform Bill thus administered, the
Tories will have it in their power to taunt the
people with being the means of their own enslave-
ment ; and if the Tories shall repeal the Habeas
Corpus, annual Magna Charta, or do any other of those
acts of montrous oppression which, as it has been the constant
practice of the party to do, so we must believe that it is
their nature and intention to continue doing, will they not
turn round upon the people and say, and that with some air of
vtruth, "It is the doing—of your own representatives—of the
very then of your choice—of those whom you sent to the
House of Commons ?ti virtue of that Reform Bill, which yon
sought with so much eaC,estness, as the foundation and safe-
.guard of your liberties? No doubt you were right in so
thinking, but you see now tl'at we also were right, and that
;the very men whom you have choen are convinced that we,
and we alone, are fit for the atlministration of public
affairs, and the disposal of the public money ; and that
you, as we have always told you, have really nothing to do
with the laws but obey them, and nothing to do with the pub-
lic money but to drudge as hard as you can in the earning of
it, leaving us to lay it out for the glory of the country, as our
superior wisdom may advise." Such, electors of England,
wfillie the language in which you shall be taunted, ere many
months have passed over your heads—if ye sell your birth-
rights upon the present most momentous, and—if not care-
fully conducted—most fatal crisis in your political history.
Ifyou allow such a majority, you are that moment blotted
out' of the list of freemen, and enrolled in the book of
slavel7—of the most degraded character—men self-enslaved
while in the possession of knowledge and of strength,
sufficient not only to preserve, but to extend, in every neces-
sary direction, anz.i to every wholesome extent, that freedom for
which your fathers have so often and so nobly bled. Do not,
therefore, disgrace " yoor order ;" but recollect that you are
Englishmen—freemen—the lawful heirs of freemen—God's

nobility, in comparison of whom those that Kings can ennoble
are but the worms of the earth. 'Ws? implore every elector, in
what quarter soever of the United King'slom he may have a
vote to give, to consider well what we have s: id, and to act as
. a MAN and a FREEMAN, as he would avoid trh; CURSES
of his POSTERITY THROUGH ALL GE;;TERA-
TIONS, and the curse of the whole world, as having heel; a
perpetrator in quenching the sacred lamp of liberty in her own
chosen land.—Morning Advertiser.

The City election closed yesterday, and as there was reason
to suppose, from the result of the first day's polling, closed
with a considerable majority in favour of Messrs. Wood, Patti-
son, Crawford, and Grote. We by no means wish to under-
rate the importance of this trial to the Radicals. The return
of the four members, by so important a constituency as that
of London, may well exalt the party by whose zeal, or
strength, or contrivance it was accomplished. But, as we
have said all along, the worse the cause of moderate and safe
reform proceeds in any one quarter, the more strenuously
should its friends labour to promote it another. The success
.of radicalism in the City, would, no doubt, serve radicalism
everywhere, for success inspires hope, and hope is always at-
tended with a corresponding degree of energy, if there was
not another and a nobler source of excitement in the pride
which vigorous minds feel at encountering and subduing diffi-
culties. That pride is not likely to meet with more congenial
minds amongst any class of men than the rational, consistent,
constitutional Reformers of this country, as opposed to the
more rash speculative adventurers, who would lay the axe to
the root of every tree, and knockdown every thiug they find