The Sun.
London, England, 1868-09-30 00:00:00

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LONDON, WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 30,. 1868.

Among the old and tried members of the House
of Commons, the men who have won for themselves
a European reputation as conspicuous members of

the British Parliament, JOHN ARTHUR ROEBUCK

must assuredly be numbered. He has not always
been on the popular side, though the Liberal ranks

have no more fearless and uncompromising soldier.
He has sometimes been manifestly mistaken, espe-

cially in matters relating to questions of foreign
policy ; but there has never been a doubt of his
honesty, his straightforwardness, or his patriotism.
He has made enemies enough, and given and taken

offence with a liberal hand, and reticence and mode-

ration of language are certainly not to be classed

among his qualities, as he himself said at the Shef-
field banquet given to the new American Minister
the other day, when, by the way, his zeal outran
his discretion in speaking of the elements of dis-

cord in the United States, he has never been re-

markable for prudence. He has learned, he tells
us, many lessons of toleration, and humanity, and
patience in the long course of his political life, but
his opinions and convictions on all essential points
are unchanged, as he stands preparing to enter on a
fresh campaign. Throughout his whole life he has

. _
been an earnest and consistent advocate of Parlia-
mentary Reform, being one of the few who really
were more anxious about the end than about the
means, more desirous that a good Reform Bill

should be carried than eager to keep a popular
question open for the benefit of his own party. He

had none of the dog-in-the-manger spirit that
characterised some prominent professing Refor-

mers, and his trenchant sentences did the Govern-
ment good service in the Commons, by exposing in
its true light the secret opposition to the Reform
Bill. It is not likely that a man of this cha-
racter would ever be distinguished as a parti-
san, and it is still less likely that he would
find favour with those politicians—and they are
not a few--who hold the interests and advantage
of one particular party as paramount to all other
considerations. Mr. ROEBUCK, however, has sue.
ceeded in provoking the hostility of more un-
scrupulous opponents, and the opposition now
being organised against him in the town with
which he has been so long connected has for its
object nothing less than his expulsion from Parlia-
ment. 7he reason for this seemingly extraordinary
conduct is not difficult to discover. It does not
find its origin in any of Mr. ROEBUCK'S political
views ; even the vexed question of the Irish
Church has nothing to do with it. It arises
from Mr. RoKBUCK'S fearless and spirited
discharge of an important public duty. The
member for Sheffield was also a member
of the Royal Commission which brought to
light the crimes of BROADHEAD and CROOKES, and
investigated the mysteries of the Sheffield Trades'
Unions. For this offence it was resolved if possible
to oust him from the representation of the town.
Men who are in the habit of putting gunpowder
down their neighbours' chimneys, and regulating
the prices to be charged for robbery, maiming, and
murdering, are not likely to think much of turning
a man out of Parliament. In fact, Mr. ROEBUCK
may esteem himself very fortunate in escaping with
so mild an evidence of their displeasure. The
Trades' Unions of Sheffield, as we know,

form a pretty strong organisation, and their
secretaries are now busy marshalling their
forces against the common foe. The interests of
the unions must come first; political honesty, long
service, established reputation, count as nothing in
the balance. It is no secret that such an organi-
sation exists, and happily it seems likely to defeat
itself, for the more respectable electors of all parties
are impelled by indignation at the system to give
their votes to Mr. ROEBUCK. Those who have
hitherto opposed him on political grounds are now
eager to return him as member, because they feel
that such a system of intimidation and oppres-
sion should not be sanctioned by any right-
thinking man. The Trade Unionists are the
tyrants of the working man. Mr. ROEBUCK is the
unflinching opponent of all tyranny, therefore he
is their enemy. Mr. ROEBUCK has laboured all his
life to secure civil and religious liberty and political
emancipation for the masses. It is not very likely
that he will give his countenance to a system of
terrorism and intimidation whose aim, instead of
" levelling up," is to " level down,"—to clip the
wings of the ambitious, to cramp the energies of
the aspiring, to clog the abilities of the talented,
and cheek the progress of the persevering ; encou-
raging laziness and thriftlessness, and the living
upon other men's labours, to say nothing of those
darker stories of murder and assault which have
been only too surely proved to have their founda•
tion in fact. The Trade Secretaries of Sheffield
are endeavouring to obtain from every Union a
resolution pledging its members to oppose Mr.
ROEBUCK at the poll, simply on the grounds of his
conduct as member of the Royal Commission.
Here is the end then of the boasted desire to come
before the public, the loud professions of indigna-
tion at the crimes of those individuals who were
actually convicted. So far from denouncing the
exceptional horrorslwhich we were told formed no
part of the system, and thoroughly remodelling
the whole framework of the society, the leaders
of these Unions are virtually countenancing them,
by their bitter antagonism to a political candidate
simply because he was a member of the Royal
Commission. If they had no secrets they need
fear to make known, a formal inquiry could do
them no harm. On the contrary,had their system
been w holly blameless they would rather have courted
inquiry, to prove that the stigma should rest upon
individual offenders alone, not upon the whole
system of the Unions. The truth cannot be tco
widely known and understood at this crisis that these
Unions are based upon a false and dangerous foun-
dation—the power of man over man. While we
are toiling and struggling against difficulties of all
kinds to enfranchise and to elevate the working
man from the fetters of old prejudices and byegone
evils, let us take care that we do not sanction his
enslaving himself anew to a tyrant of his own crea-
tion, which leaves him neither mental freedom nor
moral independence, which controls his political
conduct as no landowner would dare to do, which
fetters his rights of labour in a manner undreamt of
by the most exacting capitalist. Tyranny is none
the lighter because it is many-headed. The Council
of Ten was as oppressive to the people as any single
despot. Let the working men of Sheffield be wise
in time.

No one who has watched the course of events in
Spain will be surprised at the last news that has
reached us from there. Indeed, all that has trans-
pired has prepared one for the information that
Madrid has shown manifest symptoms of disaffec-
tion. The force under General NOVALICIIES has
been repulsed near Cordova, and as soon as the
news was known in the capital the greatest corn-