The Sun.
London, England, 1832-05-29 00:00:00

Grey suspended his Ministerial functions und,r
a temporary inalatfto'carry the Reform Bid,
and successors were immediately appointed in
the persons of Sergeants Taddy and Merewc-
ther, who did not think it necessary to resign,
now that the Ministry to which they were op-
posed has resumed its station. This is indeed
most singular. How gladly would the people
of England love their Queen ! and of how much
more value is their love, than the sordid and
selfish adherence of the sycophants who advise
these silly flouting displays of feminine petu-
lance ! Her Majesty knows the attachment of
the people to their Bill ; she knows she cannot
resist it. Why, then, does she listen to the ad-
vice which prompts her to offer wanton insult
even to popular prejudice, if it were such ? She
ought to know, also, what best becomes a woman
and a wife in state affairs, and at periods of great
excitement.— Times.

It is needless to remind our readers of the
quantities of jargon which the last six months
hare let loose upon them, against the creation
of Peers'as a measure " unlawful," " unconsti-
tutional," " revolutionary," &c. Those who
could apply such epithets to the exercise of a
prerogative inherent in the Crown, and on an
occasion when it appeared to be the only effec-
tual and practicable remedy known to the law of
England for a collision between the two Houses
of Parliament, which, if suffered to continue,
must have caused a dissolution of all Govern-
ment,—those, we say, who could employ such
language must have mistaken the meaning of
their own words, or been impervious to the
clearest reasoning upon them. The members of
the Anti-Reform faction who exclaimed against
the creation of Peers as an attack upon the
" independence" of that body, ought to have
used another term. They ought to have said
that the " supremacy" or " despotism" of the
House of Peers would be curtailed by an acces-
sion to the Peerage. No rational man, we be-
lieve, can point out any difference between a
Peerage not susceptible of increase, and a Peer-
age altogether uncontrolled. Is the King to be
fettered by money-bills, and the Commons by a
dissolution of Parliament, and is no prerogative
of the Crown to be available against the arbitrary
power of a factious majority in the Upper
House of Parliament ? Is the Peerage to be a
perpetual monopoly against both Crown and
people—riding both, oppressing both—reducing
the Monarch to a Doge-puppet, and the bulk
of the nation to miserable slaves ? But we forgot:
these men will hear no remonstrance except from
lips of high authority. Authority, therefore,
we give them—that of their own idol, the cham-
pion of Courts, and Peers, and aristocracy—
one who understood wherein Monarchy consisted
—wherein legitimate power,—who could discern

beyond most of his contemporaries the point at
which order ended and anarchy began,—who
reverenced law, and held revolution in abhor-
rence. It was Edmund Burke who thus forcibly
defends the Royal prerogative of making Peers
as essential to the maintenance of the Consti-
tution :

Extract from Mr. Burke's speech on the Regency Bill,
delivered in the House of Commons, February, 1789.
" He (Mr. Burke) severely reprobated the idea of re-
stricting the Regent from creating Peers, us likely to be
attended with the most dangerous consequences. To shut
the House of Lords, he said, was to ruin the people. The
people possessed the power of controlling the Commons
by their influence over their representatives : they had also
the power of controlling the Crown, because if the Crown
should refuse to listen to their just demands, their repre-
sentatives bad the means of compelling it to attend to them
by refining the supplies. The Crown had the power of
controlling the Peers, by adding to them a sufficient num-
ber of new Members to break any faction they might at-
tempt to form. Thus the people, according to the general
principles of the Constitution, possessed that control which

they ought to possess over the whole Legislature. They
could control their own representatives in the first instance;
by means of their representatives they could control the
Crown, and, through the Crown, the House of Lords ;
but if the Crown was deprived of the power of controlling
the House of Lords by overruling any confederacy that
might be formed there, the people would no longer have
any means of restraining them ; for they had no voice in
electing Peers, as they had in electing the House of Com-
mons, and no means of redress would remain but an ab-
solute dissolution of Government. If, therefore, they
shut up the House of Peers, so that it could not again be
opened, except by their own consent, they betrayed the
dearest and most valuable rights of the people."— Times.

The principle on which the Duke of \Vel
lington and his party have seceded from the
House of Lords, since the return of Lord
Grey's Administration, would imply a more
lofty regard for character on the part of those
Noble persons than the public seem disposed to
give them credit for. The principle on which
their Lordships seceded was, according to their
own account of it, to keep clear of all contact
with the dreaded revolutionary Bill, when they
found that it was no longer in their power to
defeat it either by fraud or by force. It is true
there vas something like over-refinement in de-
clining to breathe the same air with the Bill and

its authors, even for the purpose of counter-
acting their noxious effects by attempting to
modify some of the details in Committee ; it
is true there was something like over-excitement
in implying that' the Bill was too bad even to
be opposed; but high minds are occasionally
prone to extreme courses, and while poor
plain hard-working common sense is for main-
taining its post, and doing its duty at all times,
and under all circumstances, those lofty ebulli-
tions of spirit, which sometimes carry great men
away, have been known before now to sacrifice prac-
tical objects to a false and visionary, but still
elevated, sentiment of pride. Unhappily for the
Duke and his party, they did not secede in time
to entitle them to the benefit of this construction.
Had they taken their determination before Lord
Lyndhurst, with the craft of a special pleader,
endeavoured to cheat the people of Reform, and
before the Duke of Wellington, with the pliancy
of a place-hunter, exhibited a disposition to
grant it, despite of speeches and protests, in
which he denounced it as fatal to the monarchy
—had this been done there would have been
still character enough among the party to gain
them credit with some politicians for being in-
fluenced by notions the error of which was
partly compensated by their romance. But,
after the expose which the Noble Duke and
the Noble Baron have made of themselves
and their friends, the public, who have a
strong propensity to judge fro'n facts rather than
from professions, seem to hesitate about asso-
ciating the idea of dignity with their retirement.
It cannot be from a lofty disdain of the Bill,
for the Duke would have stooped from that dis-
dain to offer the same Bill with his own hand to
the people. It cannot be from a proud objec-
tion to the means by which the Bill was saved,
for the Noble Baron had tried a trick to defeat

it, in comparison of which all other expedients
are respectable. It could not be for either of
those reasons that the party seceded ; at least so
think the public, in the midst of their satisfaction
and good humour at the result. Shame, vexa-
tion, and disappointment, may have contributed
to their voluntary exile from Parliament ; but it
is impossible to affix a high motive to a transac-
tion accompanied with grovelling circumstances.