Star.
London, England, 1831-05-28 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE JOURNALS.

TI MES.—lt is difficult for any nun in his sober senses to conjecture
whenca came the folly of imagining that the House of Lords would be
capable of opposing the Reform Bill, when all the world must be so
well aware how impossible that august body would find it, to make
their opposition effectual. We do not now speak of the state of feeling
into which respectable noblemen would be thrown, when, from enjoying
the esteem and confidence of their several neighbourhoods, and of the
nation generally, they had rendered themselves, by a single vote in
Parliament, the objects of universal suspicion or dislike. That
is not the argument we now seek to address to them. No; but
we ask those of their Lordships who may have been indulg-
ing some beautiful dream, as to the practicability of beating the King's ,
slinisters, on the second reading of the Bill, what do they mean to do '
ofterteards fi Do they fancy that Lord Grey and his friends would
continue Ministers after the Reform Bill had been thrown out? They
might as well talk of a human body performing all the vital functions
After the breath was out of it. No ; Lord Grey retires instantly on the
Bill being rejected. And who comes in ?—not the Duke of Wellington,
;,or Sir Robert Peel. They know too well what they are doing. They
xcil know that there is a majority of more than one hundred
in favour of the Bill, and only sir county members against
it. Then how could an anti-reform, or • mock reform Mi.
nistry—a Newcastle, Wetherell, or Lowther Cabinet—go on against
such a House of Commons? How could they appeal against such a
House of Commons, because of its reform spirit, to a nation which
returned it for the sake of that very spirit, and for the purpose of carry-
ing the Bill ? A dissolution would give a more thoroughly reforming
House of Commons, in which there would neither be a chance
of Lord Chandos, nor of any one other anti-reformist, sitting as
a County Member. Would such a Parliament put supplies for
the public service into the hands of a Tory Cabinet so constituted as
above ? What, in that case, would be the duration of such a Cabi-
net? and what the power of resisting reform for another month?—
POST. —A pamphlet has just made its appearance, which is sup-
po,ecl to speak the sentiments of his Majesty's ministers, and bears
MlOll,l internal evidence that it has proceeded from the pen of the most
practised political writer of their body. This pamphlet bears the title
of Friendly Advice to the Lords on the Reform Bill,' and we cannot
more accurately characterize it than as an undisguised at-
tempt,—an attempt as audacious and revolutionary, as it will un-
doubtedly prove vain and fruitless.—in order to bully and intimidate
that Estate of the Realm into a complete and unreserved
abdication of the whole of its constitutional functions—a whole-
tale surrender of its rights, its powers, and its duties, as a deliberative
assembly, whose concurrence is necessary to the completion of every
kzislative act. The Jacobin incendiary who has perpetrated this out.
rage—for such, whatever be his rank, we take leave to pronounce him—
after assuming, gratuitously, as we suppose he will presently discover, that
the House of Lords will not venture to express an opinion hostile to the
reform bill, in the shape of an amendment to the address, goes on to sur-
mise that instead of this direct mode of attack upon the bill, that illus.
trions Assembly will labour to throw out the Reforming Ministers,
by means of a systematic opposition to all their other measures—.
that they will oppose the Chancellor's law reforms, Lord Melbourne's
Subletting Act, and whatever else they can hope to defeat. 44 But,"
proceeds the Revolutionist and the bu.lly, "let the Lords beware of all
such tricks, for tricks they are. All of their manceuvres mean only
one thing—hostility to the Reform Bill. The meaning of every thing
the Opposition will say is, " throw out the Bill'—the meaning of
every question they will put is, throw out the bill'—the meaning of
every vote they will give is throw out the bill." The meaning of this
is sufficiently intelligible. The House of Lords, and by parity of rea-
soning the House of Commons also, are to be precluded from dis-
cussing, amending, or rejecting, any measure his Majesty's ministers
may think fit to propose, or those bodies are to lie under the imputation
of striving to get rid, by a side wind, of a measure which they dare not
openly and directly resist. The pamphleteer, and his patrons or col-
leagues, will find themselves grievously mistaken, if they expect that
the House of Lords will be deterred, by any such jacobinical de-
nunciations.
T I MES.—We cannot conceive a more difficult question than as to
the precise policy which ought to be employed towards our West India
possessions. It is not that the views to be taken of the subject are so
numerous, regarded in their superficial divisions of commercial, poli-
tical, and moral, but that these several interests are really so mixed and
complicated, that there seems to be no chance of disentangling them to
any useful end. The diminished number of the Degrees in our
sugar colonies (a circumstance stated so positively that it can
hardly be unfounded),—we mean of those negroes retained
in bondage, while the free negroes have followed implicitly
the general law of population operating in all free commu-
nities, and have much increased,—is to us, we acknowledge, the
great staggering fact as to the treatment experienced by those help.
less beings. If, therefore, it should tura out on examination,—and
perhaps the case has been already examined with sufficient diligence,
but if it should turn out to be an undoubted truth,—that in er to
make negroes cultivate sugar at all so as to produce a profit to the
master, you must tax their physical constitution so oppressively as to
work a certain, though induect reduction, or even stagnation of their
numbers, the commercial argument and he moral come at once into
open collision ; and it is not a very perplexing question by what prin-
ciple a Christian Society ought to be governed, whatever prudence and
precaution meat be observed in conducting the application of the
principle.
HERALD.—Whatever share political or religious systems may
have had in producing the evils under which Ireland labours, and
which render the peasantry of a fertile country the most wretched on
the face of the earth, it is certain that the poor people, whose calls for
relief are now so urgent, are the victims, not the authors, of the calami-
ties which they endure. The first dutyof Christian feeling is to affordthan
the assistance of which they stand in so much need, and when that is dune
there will be leisure to enquire into the best means of preventing the
recurrence of such desolating misery. Religion without charity, says
the most eloquent of the apostles, is but a "sounding brass and a tink-
ling cymbal " And certainly the angry disputants who brought the
meeting convened at Exeter-hall, on Thursday, for the starving Irish,
to a violent termination, by turning it Into an arena of religious contro-
versy, displayed more of' the "sounding brass" of outward piety,
than the vital spirit of genuine religion, in their speeches and their
actions.