The Sun.
London, England, 1857-05-27 00:00:00

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, MAY 27, len

Mr. COBDEN has spoken, and Mr. BRIGHT has
spoken. Perhaps it ought rather to be m-re ac-
curately observed that they have both written,
very recently their opinions 11 politic a affairs
having but
generally--having opportunity for
"sneaking" those poor Eminent Unfortunates
At any rate by word of hand if not by word of
mouth, they have each of them somehow given
utterance to their views upon the present situation
—the ex-Member for the West Riding, the re-
jected of Huddersfield, and the once popular fa-
vourite, the now ignominiously discarded re_
presentative of the great liberal constituency of
Manchester.

And those Opinions, those Views, those Senti-
ments—what about them ? Why, anyone Who
b.apPens to have read either Mr. BRIGIIT'S letter,
or Mr. COBDEN'S lettec, cau see at a glance how
very sore they are, how exquisitely they are

smarting under the Stroke of Fortune that, falling
upon them both simultaneously, proved to each a
heavy blow and a great discouragement. Evi-
dently each of them regards himself as a sort of a
Political Martyr or Confessor. They are very ill
used, shamefully treated, ungratefully thrown
overboard—or, if not this, merely after all the
-Victims of a Blunder or of a Conspiracy, of some
sudden Surprise, or of some odious Machinations.
Now, distinctly and deliberately, we do here in-
sist that the decision arrived at by the
majority of the liberal electors of Man-
chester and of Huddersfield meant neither
one thing nor the other—neither a sur-
prise nor a conspiracy. The triumph of ACK-
ROYD at Huddersfield, and of PorrEn and TURNER
at Manchester, resulted neither from a blunder on
the part of the defeated candidates, nor from any
insidious machinations on the part of their anta-
gonists. The events we are talking about took
place, recollect, not in a hole in a corner, but
upon a great public arena, in the face of day, under
the vigilant observation of many thousands.
They were decisions pronounced—and so far we
may for once solace ourselves, during the absence
of the Ballot, by drawing an atom of good out of
tons upon tons of evil—they were decisions pro-
nounced, not under the cover of the Ballot-box,
but loudly, bluntly, boldly, vote by vote, at the
various polling-booths erected in that borough of
Huddersfield and in that city of Manchester.
Constituents, observe, at each place knew precisely
what it was they were doing—and they did it.
They did it deliberately and resolutely, in one
case by hundreds, and in the other 'by thou-
sands. They preferred Mr. ACKROYD to
Mr. COBDEN. They chose to send Sir
JOHN POTTER and Mr. TURNER to the House
of Commons rather than either Mr. JOHN
BRIGHT or Mr. MILNER GIBSON. Why ? Not
because they were ungrateful—not because they
had forgotten the good services done to the nation
at large years ago by Messrs. COBDEN, BRIGHT,
and GIBSON. Those good services they still re-
member, those goo :3 services we have never ceased

to remember, we cannot very easily cease to re•
member, vividly and with unaffected admiration
No—but the Free Trade advocates were rejected,
were scorned, were thrown overboard, were ex-
pelled from Parliament, Because—years after
Protection had been dead and buried, done away
with, past and almost forgotten, (partly through
their agency—we will even say principally through
their agency)—they shamefully took advan-
tage of the High Position accorded to
them by a grateful community, to bring
the Liberal Party into ridicule by the
championship of Principles at once the
most unpatrio .ic and the most preposter-
ous.

THAT—if you will—is the reason of the recent
lecisiou arrived at by the electors of Manchester
and the electors of Huddersfield ! That—in every
sense of the term—is about the English of it I
Not Ingratitude towards the resolute champions
of Free Trade, observe, but—lndignation at the
advocates of the miserable Peace-at-any-Price
Humbug, those perverse and crotchetty Carica-
turists of Philanthropy
During the last few years Mr. COBDEN
and Mr. BRIGHT and their colleagues have
been talking with an Authority that events
have proved they have really and truly
not possessed. The great Irish Liberator
used to speak, and to speak most accurately, and
with a genuine (and not a merely assumed) autho-
rity not so much as the representative of any
one constituency upon the other side of St.
George's Channel, as literally and positively
the " Member for all Ireland." And he was
so. He was to all intents and purposes
not so much the representative of a few hundreds,
or even of a few thousands, in any particular
locality, as he was, in point of actual fact, the
representative, the organ, the incarnation of eight
millions of that Roman Catholic population ! Mr.
COBDEN and Mr. BRIGHT have been talking arro-
gantly (and, to the more credulous and less dis-
cerning, authoritatively), for some years past—
scarcely so much as the mouth-pieces of the Liberal
party in the Nord]. of England, its actually of the
more liberal-minded of the whole Anglo-S txon
race in both hemispheres. They have been talk-
ing so arrogantly. and so long thus, that at last
when a new General Election affords their consti-
tuents, or would-be constituents, up in the North,
an opportunity of repudiating these preposterous
and extravagant pretentious on their part—lo !
and behold, a sudden silence falls rather ridicu-
lously upon the roaring of these Political Boa-
nerges. This Light of the Nations, everywhere, is
snuffed out—is extinguished. The Manchester
School is what Brother JONATHAN calls " cats-
warnpously chawed up." The Bubble Humbug
of Politics, has burst—sharing the fate of all
other bubbles : in Spenserian language—
‘,. . Like bladder] blowen up with wind,
Which being prickt, do vanish into noughti
Into such utter noughts, in truth, that we should
not have cared thus to "point the moral," and
"adorn the tale" of their disappearance from the
legislative arena, but that the Ghosts of them
evidently want Laying judging
,from the ap-
parition of the " sheeted dead," as recently wit-
nessed by many persons in the public newpapers,
in the "Letters" of Mr. BRIGHT, and Mr. Cos-
DEN. There is but one solitary pleasantry dis-
cernable in either, and that is merely implied ;
but it is implied in both Evidently both Mr.
COBDEN and Mr. BRIGHT " feel " their Downfall,
but each appears, in turn, to console himself like
Mawworm, in the play, by saying " I likes to be
despised ! "

It is rarely indeed that it falls to the lot of the
Prime Minister to discharge the functions of a
subordinate mfficial--it is still more rare to find a
man ably and efficiently fulfilling the duties which
he performed nearly half a century previously.
These phenomena were, however, witnessed in the
House of Commons on Monday evening, when
Lord PALMERSTON, with a degree of tact and
vigour peculiarly his own, brought forward the
Army Estimates, clearly and distinctly explaining
the nature of the changes that had been intro-
duced, and the nature of the principles that
regulated the force to be maintained during the
present year, and generally in times of peace, and
fully justifying many it...ms —we cannot say a 11—...
of the additional expenditure required for the
military establishments. The comparison was
very properly made with the corresponding period
of 1853-4, being the last year before the coin-
menceineut of the Russian war, when there
was general tranquillity, and our forces were on
the Peace Establishment.

No apology was required from the Pre-
mier for undertaking this work. It would,
indeed, be far better if the explanation of
principles should be made, on every occa-
sion, by the Ministerial leader, in the repre-
sentative branch of the Legislature, and that the
support of the various details only devolved on
one who had not a seat in the Cabinet. It is an
unquestionable improvement to find everything
connected with the military expenditure contained
in ihesame set of estimates, so that a synoptical
view may be tsacn by those interested in arriving