The Sun.
London, England, 1857-04-08 00:00:00

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 8, 1857.

The Ministerial triumphs in the Boroughs are
remarkable enough in themselves, but the Mini-
sterial successes among the County conlitituencies
are something quite extraordinary. They are
worth examining in detail—these gains to the cause
of Liberalism among the Agriculturists. Let us
take them one by one, as so many political tid-
bits—mumbling each in turn as a bonne bouche
worth the relishing !
There is Berkshire with a little over 5,000
registered electors out of a population of 170,000 !
And Berkshire has summarily thrown overboard
Viscount BARRINGTON, Conservative, Ant i-May-
noothite, and, once upon a time, Protectionist,
electing in his stead a Liberal and Reformer in
the person of the Hon. E. P. BODVERIE.
There is Cambridgeshire with about 7,000
registered electors out of a population of 186,000 !
And Cambridgeshire has discarded Lord GEORGE
MANNERS (ditto, ditto, ditto, namely, Conserva-
tive, Anti-Maynoothite, and, once upon a time,
Protectionist), choosing in lieu of him Mr. H. J.
ADEANE—a Reformer, so far as a Liberal Con-

servative can be !
There is South Derbyshire with 7,000 registered
electors out of a population of 166,000—where
Mr. WILLIAM MuNDy (ditto, ditto, ditto) has
given place to Mr. T. W. EVANS—a Liberal,
and, therefore, a Ministerialist.
There is Glamorganshire—having 6,500 elec-
tors and a population of 232,000—where Sir
GEORGE TYLER (ditto, ditty, ditto) has made way
for a second Liberal representative in the place
of Mr. H. H. VivrAN-, now the congenial col-
league of Mr. CHRISTOPHER TALBOT.
There is Hertfordshire—having some 5,300
registered electors and a population of 167,300—...

where Sir HENRY MEUX refusing b sacrifice him-
self for the sake of his Party, and Mr. ADEL SMITH
proving a trifle more magnanimous, Mr. CHRISTO-
PHER PULLEN", the Liberal candidat,?, has walked
over the course—to the end that one more might
be added to the County gains of the IVliniste-
rialists !

Huntingdonshire, again, with nearly 3,000
regibtered electors and nearly 65,000 as the
tottle " of its population—Has it not added to
the same list another Liberal in the person of
Mr. S. M. HEATHCOTE ?

And North Lincolnshire—with upwards of
11,000 registered electors and a population of
more than 221,000—Have not the Pal,nerstonians
gained Sir M. CHOLIIELIVE there, while the Derby-
ites have simultmeously lost a " great gun" in
their once Chancellor of the Dachy of Lancaster,
the Right Hon. ROBERT CHRISTO.EIIER ?

Meanwhile in East Norfolk the ;ains are ac-
tually doubled : a clear majority out of 8,000
registered electors, in a population of 250,000,
having thrown aside the two old members (Con-
servatives, Protectionists and all that sort of thing)
—Mr. EDMUND WODEIIOUSE and Mr. N. BuR-
ROUGHS-t0 select in their place a Liberal and a
Liberal Conservative, Sir E. N. BUXTON and the
Gallant Major-General WINDHAM !
In West Norfolk—with nearly 8,000 regis-
tered electors, and a population of over 192,000
—Mr. BAGGE has got the sack, vacating his seat
for Mr. BRAMPTON GURDON, a Liberal, and there-
fore a Ministerialist

In South Northamptonshire—with 4,500 re-
gistered electors, and a population of more than
115,000—Mr. RAINALD KNIGITTLEY has found
a new colleague in the aristocratic but liberal per-
son of Lord ALTHOUP, the heir to the Earldom of
Spencer !

In North Nottinghamshire, with 4,000
regis-
tered electors, and 190,000 as the number of iti
population—Mr. J. E. DENISON, a Liberal, and
therefore a Ministerialist, has taken the post for-
merly occupied by Lord HENRY BENTINCK, ultra
Conservative and ultra Protectionist !

In West Surrey, with nearly 4,000 registered
electors, and a population of nearly 103,000

Mr. W. J. EVELYN has yielded the palm to Mr.
J. BRISCOE, the reforming candidate.
In East Sussex—with 5,000 and odd registered
electors, and a population over 225,000—Mr. J.
DODSON, the Liberal, is the colleague of Viscount
PETENSEY, the Conservative.
In Argyllshire the Ministerialists have gained
one through Mr. A. FINLAY, the Liberal substi-
tute for Sir ARCHIBALD ISLAY CAMPBELL, pre-
viously the Conservative Representative of a Con-
stituency of little more than 2,000 registered
electors out of a population having an aggregate
of more than 89,000 !

Ayrshire, with nearly 4,000 registered electois,
in a population of some 190,000, has, by electing
Lord JAMES STUART, the Liberal candidate, given
on• more to the Ministerialists.

Lanarkshire, with 3,500 registered electors and
a population of 530,000, having done precisely
the same thing by the selection_ of Sir E. COLE-
BROOKE as its Liberal Representative I
Ministerial gains altogether Seventeen in the
County constituencies ! A tolerable catalogue, we
take it, all things considered ! But even beyond
these Seventeen positive " gains," Ministers
have had other triumphs of a rather notable
kind among the remaining County constituencies.
Not the least remarkable of these triumphs to
the cause of Liberalism and Reform being the one
recently gained against apparently very long odds
in North Devonshire ! There, thanks to the
indomitable pluck, the unflinching resolution, and
the sustained and contagious enthusiasm of the
Liberal possessors of the franchise, Sir STRATFORD
NORTHCOTE, the " great card" of the Conserva-
tives, was again ignominiously defeated. Again
defeated we say advisedly, for, had he not been
already summarily expelled from Dudley by an
" unknown" Liberal, Mr. HENRY SHERIDAN ?
Well—the true-hearted electors of North Devon
have reiterated the rejection already recorded by
Dudley against Sir S. NORTHCOTE ! And they
have not only thereby sternly spurned Conserva-
tism, but they have chosen a worthy representative
of Liberalism, in the person of Mr. J. W. BULLER,
placing him at the top of the poll—and thus most
satisfactorily equipoising the Family Interest in
their own good county of Devonshire.
Dod will have a strange tale to tell when the
Returns shall (now in a very few days) have been
completed. Bansard will indirectly tell the same
tale all over again, piecemeal and at intervals. A
tale of unexpected successes to new candidates,
and of most bitter disappointments to old and
ignominiously rejected representatives. The les-
son conveyed by the General Election, after ail,
is a very wholesome one—and we trust that it
may be laid to heart, not merely by the success-
ful and defeated candidates,!but by the constitu-
encies themselves.

Mr. SIDNEY HERBERT tells us that the New
Parliament is to be composed of ANABAPTISTS !
" We have all," he twice told the electors of
South Wilts, " been redipped in a general elec-
tion." The Right Hon. Gentleman has not
listened in vain to Mr. SPORGEON, at the Surrey
Gardens Music Hail ; and if he be right we
shall have, ere lex,. x sufficiently zealous band
of neophytes in the'walls of St. Stephen's. In
many placee's we have noted that the catechu-
mens at swered well ; in some they were
put through our Candidates' Catechism en-
tire ; in others they were tested by im-
portant questions from it, and. we are bound
to say that many not only knew the Creed
and the Ten Commandments, but some had almost
mastered the eleventh ; being willing to do to
electors and to non-electors as they would that
they should do unto them. And assuredly
liberal politics are fully mastered when the cate-
chumen understands the political application of
the great, the oft-quoted, but always evaded,
command.
Mr. S. HERBERT is surely right. It is a
long time since Hon. Members have been im-
mersed in such a flood of Reform questionings.
In 1852 the contest turned on the funeral or re-
surrection of free trade ; and I.ord. DERBY
boasted, and not without reason, that he had
checked the onward march of democracy. He
gave it something else than the suffrage to con-
tend for. This time, though our adroit Premier
meant us to discuss China, YETI, the Arrow, and all
that, and to leave reform till a more con-
venient season, we thought the present
the best time for demanding reform. We all saw
that China had settled the China question itself.
We refused, as Lord JoHN said, to be divided
into Yehites and Bowringites—indeed the Yehites
were scarcely discoverable. Everywhere candidates
were deluged with questions on the Ballot, on the
Suffrage, on LOCKE KING'S motion, on Church
Rates, or on Administrative Reform. Many a can-
didate proffered a little propitiatory talk, or a
little self-recommendatory talk, on the China
question, according as he was guilty or
innocent on the awful third of March ;
bi 4 we question whether any electors once
asked, spontaneously, about the China business.
No ; the grand thing to get through at the huF-t-
-ings was the Reform questions ; even Mr.
DISRAELI had to reason, as best he might, on the
Ballot and extension of the Suffrage.

What, then, shall we do with our re-dipped
members ? We answer, take good care that they
do not apostatise. The great Ministerial organ,
giving Lord PALMERSTON some very prudent
advice about finding work for his large majority,
exhorts him to set them at once about a Divorce
Bill and a Joint Stock Bank 3 Bill ! Great measures
certainly for a great majority ; measures, however,
which we should have thought needed rather a
few honest lawyers than an overwhelming majority
of non-professional men. Indeed, so far as these
measures need a Ministerial majority, that majo-
rity will be more secure if it be a vigorously
liberal majority. The great and practical object
of Liberals should Le to secure their hold
on their renovated old members, and their
untried new ones. The country should re-
member
that Lord PALMERSTON and Mr. HAY-
TER have the advantage. They have all the mem-
bers before them. They cant hint, cajole, ad-
monish, persuade as the case may require, and
the numerous new Members, one hundred and
fifty of them, perhaps, will have had no expe-
rience of the wiles of the tempter. They say
nothing so mach preserves the morals of youths
coming here from the country as frequent cor-
respondence with the homes they have left, and
we can assure electors that a similar correspond-
ence between constituencies and their Members is
remarkably favourable to political and Parlia-
mentary fidelity.

Suppose Mr. SIDNEY HERBERT'S Anabaptists
were each furnished with a petition or two on the
subjects on which they had been questioned.
Why, indeed, sh►ould not every member of Par-
liament have some proof of that kind in his hands
that his supporters, many of them at least, are
in earnest, and expect him to act up to his
professions ? We have abundant reason to be
satisfied, thus far, with the successful way
in which the Candidates' Catechism was worked,

but to follow it up is the grand thing. Viet lry
is too often succeeded by over-confidence and fata'

inaction. The country has conquered reform at