The Sun.
London, England, 1845-06-25 00:00:00

Otcening

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25, 1845.

The House of Lords net at Five o'clock.
The Earl of CHARLEVILLE informed the House that
Lord GARDNER had neglected to attend the Committee
on the Glasgow Bridge Bill.

The Duke of RICHMOND moved that another Member
be appointed in his Lordship's place, and that Lord
GARDNER be summoned to attend in his place on
Thursday, and state his reasons for his neglect.

Lord BROUGHAM said that the attendance of Peers on
Committees was compulsory, and that there was an in.
stance on record in which a Peer had been fined 1001
for non•attendance on a Committee.

After a short discussion, the motion was agreed to.
A similar complaint was made of the non-attendance
of Lord ORMOND on the Aberdeen Committee.

The Noble Lord explained that he was out of town
when the notice was left at his house, and did not re-
ceive it in time to attend.

Lord CAMPBELL, after a short explanatory speech,
re-introduced the Common Law Process Bills, which were
read a first time.

Some conversation then ensued on the subject of the
treatment of Dr. KALLEI by the Portuguese authorities
of Madeira, after which a long discussion arose on the
motion for the second reading of the Tenants' Compen-
sation (Ireland) Bill, which, however, was at length
agreed to, and their Lordships adjourned at a quarter
past twelve.

The House of Commons met at Four o'clock.

The Oxford, Worcester, and Wolverhampton Railway
Bill was read a third time and passed, after a short dis-
cussion.

The third reading of the Oxford and Rugby Bill was,
after a lengthy discussion, carried by a majority of 37,
the numbers being—Ayes, 132 ; Noes, 95.

The Deodands' Bill was read a second time.

Mr. HUTT then brought forward his motion respecting
the slave trade, and a discussion ensued, which was in-
terrupted by the House being counted, when, there not
being 40 Members present, the debate terminated, and
the House adjourned.

The two great domestic reformers of our times are
neither Father MATHEW nor ROBERT OWEN, nor
Chartist leaders, nor Chairmen of Temperance Socie-
ties. There is no indispensable necessity for men to
drink ardent spirits ; there is no Act of Parliament to
compel them to forego their use. Men may pass
through existence without once becoming cnndidates for
a right of " common" in New Harmony, or a
Lanarkshire parallelogram ; and it is quite pos-
sible for people to " eat, drink, and be merry,"
to exercise the rights of freemen, and even: delude
themselves into the notion that they are comfortable citi-
zens, without once informing themselves about the seven
points of " the" Charter. Where there is so much indif-
ference about which of the two alternatives we shall
adopt, there is not enough of moral resistance to either,
to make a reformer. Reforms exist only in virtue of
resistance ; for without this principle what would there be
for reform to work upon ? If porters and journeymen give
up dram drinking, " by way of a change," it is possible
they may derive so much comfort from the experiment
as habitually to persevere in the practice. A reform
in the habit of dram drinking, generally to make itself
felt, sensible, obnoxious, must operate upon a sort of
league among a large community of the public to drink
the greatest possible amount of drams in the most
public manner possible. The venerable Father
MATtinw himself cannot reach the vice he would
put down, so long as it is diffused through five
hundred thousand private channels without being
concentrated in any. Now, unhappily, lands and edifices
which do not happen to be in that state of improve-
ment that comes up to certain arbitrary standards, pro-
posed by certain arbitrary authorities, are immobilia,
which are always present and ready objects for the re-
forming operation. They cannot run away from the
process. They can exercise no option whether they will
be repressed, the one by fencing, cultivation, and
drainage, the other by quaint devices, decoration, pull-
ing down on one side and building up on the other.
Now, in respect of these two great elements of social
property, your most untameable reformers are certainly
Mr. BARRY and the Earl of LINCOLN. In our morning
impression of Monday we published an announcement
which has not yet received any contradiction, and to
which we think ourselves bound to refer. Most of our
readers will remember Mr. BARRY'S modest proposition
for the reform of Westminster-bridge, in order to ac-
complish two objects, or rather to reform two
defects. Mr. BARRY found that the span of the
arches of the existing bridge was altoge-
ther too large, for the effect of the diminutive
arches of his own new Houses of Parliament. It never
occurred to him that the radical vita of these was, that
for the very extended frontage of the river terrace they
were altogether too small. It never occurred to him
that since capacious arches to a capacious bridge thrown
over a capacious river are necessary, as well as con-
venient for an extensive traffic between the Court
end of the metropolis and ono of its most
important suburbs, and between the frontiers of
two metropolitan counties ; therefore it might be of
less consequence that his arches should look too small,
than that the arches of the bridge should be too small.
2dly, Mr. BARRY proposed, if he could succeed in per-
suading Parliament to remove the present bridge, to
build another, in which he would " reform" the incon-
gruity of a Roman-like looking approach to a Gothic
edifice, by making the arches of the pointed mediaeval
style, and keeping down their span to dimensions
more approximate to his own loop-hole porches. This
was all very pleasant, but, fortunately, it was too prepos-
terous for the gullibility of those facile authorities—
Commissioners, or howsoever named—who had already
permitted him to indulge such extravagant vagaries as
the infringing, we know not how many scores of feet,
upon the waterway of the river, and the blocking up
two arches of the bridge on the Westminster shore. Iu
the same spirit, and with far greater success, he has "re-
formed," as we have over and again remarked, the de-
signs he was bound to follow, after being settled and
sanctioned by a Committee of Parliament, by adding a
new gallery, to the utter spoiling of his own original
design, and at a cost of somewhere between 100,0001-
and 200,000 L to the public.
The Earl of LINCOLN, a reformer of lands as they are,
cannot away with commons nor waste lands, nor
rights of common and manor. He is for inclosing them
wherever he can find them—and all, wonderful to state,
with no other object than to benefit the poor. He would
take from them the power of recreation and healthful
amusement—all for their good, poor souls ! He would
preclude the toil-worn artisan, the laborious smith, the
loom-wearied weaver, from all chance of an occasional
revel in fresh air and invigorating exercise, in order to
reform their habits of enjoyment, we pi eauine. Yet still,
the Noble Lord may err honestly—he may be mistaken.
He may purpose disinterestedly that which his reform-
ing legislation will accomplish oppressively. No such
plea surely can Mr._ BARRY set up for some of his ca-
prices. He might as well plead bis modesty as his excuse
for them. And this brings us back to the paragraph
with a notice of which we set out. We will repeat it.

" WESTMINSTER HALL..—Scaffolding has been erected for
some time against the gable of this ancient building in Old
Palace-yard, for the purpose, it is said, of removing it alto-
gether ; and, of course, along with it the magnificent gothic
window so universally admired."
Can this be true, even of Mr. BARRY ? If it be, may
cramp seize his sacrilegious hands who first dares to
remove a stone of that venerable gable. Remove that
noble window, through whose sculptured casement the
light; of nearly eight centuries has streamed into the
noblest Ball to be found in Europe, hallowed by all the
grandest:associations of the Norman and Saxon Chivalry,
which rallied round the peerless model of true Knight-
hood, the much maligned Rufus. That very window
which has witnessed so many regal and baronial
pageants, where the elevated dais ran imme-
diately under it in by-gone ages of fierce wars and
faithful loves, " when high-born beauty smiled" on the
festal throng of heroes, who had fought at Cressy or at
Agincourt, or on occasions of more masculine and stern
solemnity, the aspiring eye of a scion of Lancaster glared
defiance through his steel-barred vizor at a son of York—
where Plantagenets have judged, and Tudors have feasted !
But let Mr. BARRY experimentalise on the patience of the
Lords and the Commons,— the forbearance of the one and •
the ppurse;-strings of the other—as long e.s they will
permithim. He must not be permitted to indulge his i
yglidalisui, his presumption ; sntl, Ws rum= be