The Sun. — 1839-08-05 (London, England)

PARLIAMENTARY REFORM.  TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN. Sin—When you have a spare corner in The Sun, which eclipses all its contemporary luminaries in fearless denunciations against the infernal Corn-law monopoly, and every other instance of legitimate tyranny, my lucubrations on Ballot, Suffrage, Elections, Registration, &c., may not prove unacceptable to yourself and numerous subscribing readers, ab!e and liberal enough to encourage such an impartial journal by payments in advance, either quarterly, semiannually, or annually at once, particularly, should I be capable of making my remarks from time to time both pithy and brief, to deprecate unseasonable resistance to unseasonable controul. If indigent individuals infringe any law, however iniquitous it may be, and imposed without the real or virtual consent of the great majority of the working people, who are as millions to the other classes of society, our Church and State legislators lose not one day to punish the popular delinquents with death, banishment, captivity, fine, &c., even when forced to pass a new unconstitutional Act to meet the supposed or actual emergency. In cases of treason—nay its simple misprision is deemed a capital. crime the victim to kingeraft, with priestcraft combined, is, or has been, cruelly mutilated, tortured, and butchered in the glorious land of Free Britons ; of course, with the due benefit of clergy, who teach the wretched culprit who has not even t-n minutes to live, to pray fervently through the Lord's Prayer for his daily bread 1 Proclamations offering immense rewards for the miserable sinner's discovery, conviction, and consequent execution, to encourage informers and witnesses of every species to bring the traitor's head to the block, or his neck to the hangman's halter, are issued, appeals that seldom fail to succeed among the devout followers of the merciful Jesus; few of whom would scruple to denounce, discover, or betray, like Judas, any tyrannicide, for a munificent bribe, with a kiss. Let us contrast the horrible fate of the above State criminals, or to descend lower in the scale of homicide, to the Ministerial assassin of Perceval, with the impunity of treachery, fraud, corruption, perjury, liberticide, the lingering murder of the staff of life, starvation committed against the nation by Peers, Prelates, and lordly land proprietors, aided by their stultified fifty-pound tenantry, opulent commoners, a crawling shopecracy, and the whole tribe of venal slaves to luxurious courts. While the foregoing evils exist, while soldiers and sailors are pressed or brutally flagellated, and honest labourers are famished by inadequate hire in every department of industry, our absurd vaunt of " Britannia rules the waves" is a despicable farce, and the actual condition of the country seems the menacing prelude to an awful tragedy, unless averted by more humanity and wisdom than Whig and Tory Cabinets have yet exerted to conciliate the Democracy, long since driven to despair by their innumerable privations, grinding taxation, and onerous duties to perform, in which they have nearly as little interest as mere beasts of burden, with education enough to teach such unrepresented serfs by whom, when, where, how, and why they arc degraded infinitely beneath the rank of freemen; who, without the shelter of the Ballot never will dare vote as they wish, from motives of self-preservation alone, until the whole chicanery of electioneering manceuvres be extirpated by the severity of ignominious pet; naltics and expoure of every person concerned in such dast ,rdlv pursuits, which ought, in justice to the nation, to be b: ended as infamous as perjury, burglary, robbery, forgery, theft, sedition, and similar offences, not at present