The Sun.
London, England, 1861-07-16 00:00:00

THE SUN.
LONDON, TUESDAY, JULY 16, 1881.

What number of humiliations will' be sufficient
for the PALMERSTON Cabinet. It has had one great
and hardly-won party triumph this year. It has
carried Paper Duty Repeal. It had brought the
question into the position that vindication of the
financial rights of the Commons was even more
important than diminishing the injustice of the
Income Tax, and that argument it certainly was
which carried the Repeal, for, beyond all question,
another penny less Income Tax would have done
more for trade, and more towards just taxation,
than removing an unfelt duty. But with this vic-
tory, requisite only to rectify their errors of the
past year, their day of triumph was over. Ever
since, the Opposition has been in the ascendant ;
they have even gained the vote of the Whigs' own
Speaker. On the measure, the only thoroughly
liberal measure of the session, which the principal
'inisters, with one exception, supported; the
Opposition balanced the supporters of Government;
and Mr. SPEAKER sided with the Opposition.
Perhaps it is hardly fair to term the defeats of
Mr. LOCKE KING'S and Mr. BAINES' bills defeats
of the Ministry ; because, though, for decency's
sake, they voted with members who simply took
parts of their own bill, and parts of which, too,
were the very conditions on which they took office,
yet it was well understood that Ministers wished
to commit infanticide when another took charge of
their last year's nurslings, but preferred it should
be done by the hands of others. Still these Wed-
nesday victories of the Opposition proclaimed to
all the world that the Opposition could now largely
oatvote the Ministry on the terms of the Willis's
Rooms Contract, and could so far show that, if the
bond were but fairly insisted on, the two parties
ought to change sides or Ministers to dissolve
Parliament. Ministershave indeed on the Reform
Question been convicted of insincerity. With the
least tincture of that quality in regard to Reform,
with the least sense of honour, they would have
resigned their seats last year or insisted on the
Reform Bill passing both Houses under penalty of
an appaal to the country.

Their weakness and the strength of Toryism were
abundantly shown when they did bring out their
little Bill on Representation—we cannot say on
Reform—to allot the four seats forfeited by the two
delinquent boroughs. The bill itself showed the
white feather. It took members from disfranchised
boroughs, and without more ado gave half of them
to counties. But they were not to be let off so
2asily, The Tories determined to have a majority
of the seats ; they would have three out of four at
least. A vast new metropolitan borough therefore,
with every claim to independent representation,
was refused a member. There was every proba-
bility he wood be a Liberal. They agreed, there-
fore, at a formal Tory council of war, that two
Tory members for Yorkshire were to be insured by
separating the part under the control of the land-
lords from that inhabited by the free sons of manu-
facture and commerce; and thus, with South Lan-
cashire, which now returns two Tories, making
tolerably certain of three more votes for the Opposi-
tion. To be sure, Mr. GLADSTONE, half Tory, half
Liberal, is talked of for South Lancashire. He may
succeed there, or he may not ; but then, on the
other hand, we can be by no means sure that
Birkenhead may not be as Conservative as Liver-
pool, and give Lord DERBY another vote. Even
this triumph was not enough ; but much as the
Government wished for one Yorkshire town for the
new head polling place, the Tories determined to
have another, and succeeded too in their resolve.

Then came the Attorney-Generalship and its in-
cidents. Sir RICHARD BETHELL, of course, must
now take the wcolltick—and then what was to be
done ? The Solicitor-General had unanswerable
claims, but another had, it seems, been thought of.
Would not some infirm judge make way for the
tnernber for Darhain ? Alas ! they all were
comfortable in their seats, and preferred ser-
vlco to penions, earning the public money to
taking it for nothing. So poor Mr. Solicitor-
General, after every effort to shelve him, took
the post which by etiquette belonged to him. But
the capitulation to Toryism was now avowed. -Mr-
ROUNDELL PALltmt was, he told us, sought up by
the Government, for he did not go a wooing to it ;
and he explicitly told those whom by courtesy we
call the electors of Richmond, that he had not
swerved from his w ell-known principles—principles
which had hitherto led him always to -vote in oppo-
sition to the Libe rai party—and that he was not