The Sun.
London, England, 1868-06-19 00:00:00

SPIRIT OP THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Times is very severe on the Ministry for having
'severed the Redistribution Clauses from the Irish
Reform Bill. The most malignant demon, it says, could
not have devised a greater humiliation than that which
this unfortunate Ministry have voluntarily taken upon
themselves. They fought with the greatest vehemence
and with perfect justice against the Franchise Bill of Lord
Russell's Administration, because it was impossible that
Parliament could assent to a measure which dealt with
only one-half, and that the less important half, of the pro-
blem of Reform. They were successful. They brought
in a bill of their own. It was framed with strict regard to
constitutional principles. It was such a measure
as a constitutional party could approve, and none
but a constitutional party could frame. Its.
leading features which might have been care-
lessly forgotten by a nation not sufficiently alive to the
strictly scientific and historical character of its construc-
tion, were pointed out with
.great care by Mr. Disraeli
at Edinburgh last autumn, and reproduced with impru-
dent emphasis by the same great statesman at the com-
mencement of this session. Alas for his foresight ! Mr.
Disraeli must have known, when he penned his first
letter correcting Lord Russell; that every principle upon
which he dwelt with so much satisfaction would be violated
at his own instance before the session was over, yet he
rushed into print as if his sole object were to impress on
the nation the ease with which he could abandon his
principles. The Scotch and Irish Reform Bills have
scattered to the winds all the maxims he professed to hold
as essential. Last night saw the last pretence of constitu-
tional consistency flung aside. "The franchise must be
based on rating ;" the Scotch county franchise has, without
a division, been settled on another basis. "No centre of
representation should be abolished ;" seven English
boroughs have entirely disappeared, and it was proposed
that some five or six Irish boroughs should be similarly
suppressed. " There must be a real Boundary Commis-
sion;" the elaborate recommendations of the Boundary
Commissioners have been rejected, and in the.case of all
the boroughs where the rectification of boundaries was
material no alteration whatever has been sanctioned. But
the settlement of the Irish Reform Bill has conclusively
disposed not only of these glorious principles, but of much
more, It was declared to be essential that the county
representation should be considerably increased; no
alteration in the county representation of Ireland has
been adopted. The first and greatest principle of all
upon which the educators of the Constitutional party
insisted was that the measure of Reform sanctioned by
Parliament must be complete. This was the gist of
Lord Stanley's " unanswerable " speech. This was
the secret of the accession of the present Government
to power. Last night—on the anniversary of its
success—it was c,.ntemptuously set aside. The
Irish Reform Bill is now confessedly incomplete. The
redistribution clause is postponed to a more fitting oppor-
tunity. The Government which obtained office because
it had a just sense of the necessity of completeness in legis-
lation, the Government whose chief boasted on Wednesday
that it had achieved the science of Reform much as the
Abbe Sieyes had achieved la science e'e la politique, has
formally confessed its inability to overcome so small a diffi-
culty as the redistribution of the Irish seats, and has
withdrawn its redistribution proposals because they were
so inadequate that they gave satisfaction to nobody.
The Irish Reform Bill is settled. The Scotch
Reform Bill was last night read a third time. The
Boundary Bill is 'settled. Nothing remains but the
Corrupt Practices Bill to complete the work of Parlia-
mentary Reform so far as the present Parliament will ever
complete it. The Conservative Ministry, having aban-
doned every part of their cargo piecemeal, and at last cut
away their masts, are getting. into harbour, where their
crazy vessel may be broken up. Everything has been
lost, not excepting honour. It is impossible not to
feel some relief that the end is so near. The Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer declared the other day
that the position of the occupants of the Trea-
sury Bench was not pleasant to themselves, and as
this has been acknowledged, we may ask to whom is it
pleasant? Has any Ministry ever held a similar position?
The most charitable observer can discover no bond of
union between them, except that they entered office at the
same time and are content to draw their salaries together.
This is a spectacle of unity which is instructive, but it is
purchased at a very high price. It is an "awful dispen-
sation" that the Constitutional party should be repre-
sented by a body of gentlemen who build up principles
only to abandon them, and who repudiate with unruffled
composure any professions, however loudly advanced,
which may happen to become inconvenient.
The Daily News asserts that a more singular revelation
than was made to the House last night has seldom amused
our languid legislators in the weariness of a summer
debate. There did not appear to Ministers, Mr. Disraeli
confessed, when the question of Irish Reform came before
them, to be any urgent need for an alteration in the distri-
butien of political power in Ireland. But it was considered,
to say the least of it, uncivil to neglect Ireland
when redistribution favours were in fashion. Ministers
perhaps were afraid that if no attention was paid to
Ireland they should have another Irish grievance on their
hands ; and accordingly Ireland was honoured with a redis-
tribution scheme so unjust, so unreasonable, so radically
bad, that on neither side of the House, not even on the
Treasury bench, was there to be found a single member to
say a word in its favour.

The Standard notes that the changes the Government
proposed would disfranchise some half-dozen boroughs,
which, certainly, was applying the principle adopted with
regard to English boroughs to be disfranchised ; but then
their extinction as centres of representation, and the
transfer of the seats to the counties, which alone, upon
this same principle of numbers, could claim them, would
have reduced the already comparatively small proportion
of the Irish boroughs to the county representation,
and created an active dissatisfaction not compensated
for by any enthusiasm for the change. Certainly the
Irish borough representation is not, as the right
honourable gentleman said, of a robust character,
and it seems a pity to allow a village. like Portar-
lington to return a member to Parliament whilst the
transfer of seats proposed by the Government would have
given an increase of power to districts which, from their
population, intelligence, and wealth were entitled to it.
But then there was this patent difficulty—the reform was,
indeed, a good one ; but nobody in Ireland, or, indeed,
out of that country, cared for it ; whilst for different rea-
sons it encountered a good deal of opposition. No doubt
this repugnance of the House of Commons for its work
cannot be justified, but it may certainly be excused. The
member most anxious to do his duty may well have
desired to be relieved from the temptation to shirk atten-
dance When that attendance implied sitting in this glorious
weather in a hot, drafty, ill-ventilated room—no fault of
Dr. Percy's—whilst floods of Irish eloquence sweep over
him, and Irish disputes deny the ordinary refuge of
sleep. There was evidently a great sense of relief through
the House when Mr. Disraeli thus confirmed the hopes of
honourable members.

Mr. Disraeli, the Telegraph says, has removed the
chief difficulty which stood in the way of the Irish Reform
Bill, by giving notice that he would strike out the clauses
respecting the distribution of seats. When the measure
came before the House on Monday night, that part met
with emphatic condemnation from both sides of the
House. Mr. Sandford, speaking as a Conservative,
advised the Government in peremptory terms to have
done with it ; the advice was echoed on the Liberal side ;
and the Prime Minister has announced that he had
listened to his counsellors. That intimation might have
been expected to close the mouths of the dissentients ;
but it did not. Mr. Pim and other Irish members
had speeches in their pockets. They were determined to
pour forth declamations on the " wrongs of Ireland ;"
and they tried hard to do it. Mr. Pim wished to disfran-
chise the borough of Portarlington ; to take from Down-
patrick, Dinigamto t, Mallow, Kinsale, and Bandon their
present privilege of each returning a member; and to make
those towns part of a group of boroughs. Mr. Pim knew
that his amendment would not be carried ; nay, after hear-
ing Mr. Disraeli's announcement, he said that he would
withdraw it ; yet be persisted in wasting time with what
was meant to be a long and elaborate speech. Of course
nobody listened. The cries of "Divide " were incessant.
Every one of Mr. Pim's " points" was greeted, not with
applause, but with derision. Nevertheless, he persisted
in the futile task of talking in the air. Fortunately, few
members followed his pernicious example, and the Irish
Reform Bill was allowed to proceed through committee.
Thui the House of Commons has nearly finished_ the
work which had to be done before an appeal could be male
to the new constituencies. With the Registration Bill
and the Bribery Bill the House has still to grapphs. When.
these measures shall be got out of hand the wort; of the
Commons will be done. That of the Lords is only begin-
ning ; but, so far as the Reform Bills are concerned, it
cannot last long.

The Pal?, coin:milting upon the excessive drought, raises
tie question %• 11:_t1 .:r a system of irrigation might not Le
devised which co dd secure us against the effects of at
Last too fine a s,:ison. Practically regarded, the whole
question is merely a question of money. Would not the
irrigation works suggested cost less, in mere cash, in the
long run, than the loss of the crops which they would
obviate—not to mention the human sufferings and priva-
tions which would he averted, and which cannot be
measured in mere money at all? The means of bringing
water in case of need from the nearest river, or canal,
or well, through suitable channels hnd aqueducts (not
to mention sinking wells and making canals where they
are wanting, would be exceedingly simple and reasonably
cheap, and when once the works were complete they would
be of a nature to endure for an indefinite length of time;
their cost, therefore, would be a vanishing quantity, con-
tinually growing "small by degrees and beautifully less,"
while the loss incidental to the failure of the harvest
through drought is a fixed quantity, the average varying
hardly at a'.l betwe,-n-oue decade and another.