The Sun. — 1841-06-26 (London, England)

ADVERTISER.—It is certainly a matter of the first importance, that the constituencies of the United Kingdom should ponder well and deliberately on the respective merits of the several candidates who may present themselves for their suffrages in the present election. In few, lamentably few, instances, need it be expected that candidates will present themselves qualified in all respects to give faithful and effective representation to the sentiments of the electoral body. The course, therefore, for the latter to pursue, when they cannot find as good a representative as they could wish, is evidently to select the best of those who claim their confidence. A portion of the Chartists, however—a portion fortunately becoming small by degrees, and miserably less—appear resolved to pursue an opposite course, and when they cannot find a candidata cut out in exact precision to their own views, propose to support the worst of those who solicit their sweet voices. It is on this insensate conduct of those who vaunt themselves the elect champions of freedom, that the Tories base their chief hope of triumphing over the public interests. For our own part, being anxious only for the best men to win, we would recommend that the candidates be chosen by the application of a sliding scale, and let him found to stand highest m the public confidence have the undivided voice of the Liberal electors. The Chartist who, influenced by a different and perverse feeling, gives his vote to a Tory, is guilty of an act of political suicide for which no plea nor palliation can be alleged in excuse, save that of temporary insanity. It is not our intention to plead the cause of the Whigs, and wherever better men present themselves these men shall have our support ; but are the Tories better men? This is the question. Are the men 'whose lite has been passed in continual opposition to the claims of the people, better than they who have always advocated at least a gradual concession of these claims, and against whom the chief accusation is a too great tendency to.couciliate the very men to whom the suicidal Chartist would, in his most stupid infatuation, now give a preference ? Before we discard the Whigs, let us be prepared with better men to supply their places ; but above all things, let not the representation be abandoned to the Tories. Po.—Though we do not believe that Lord John Russell harenything like a good chance of getting into Parliament for the City, and do believe, on the contrary, that he stands a very good chance of being, even among the Radical candidates the lowest but one upon the poll, we are still sur. prised that so many men of fair character are willing to give him a vote. People talk of the political " pluck "of the man, and really, if it were a genuine thing, we should be as willing as any one else to give him credit for it. But surely, there is some difference, and very important difference too, between lord J. Russell's conduct and that stout English perseverance, which is described by the short word we have quoted. There is no quality more respectable than that of cheerful constancy to a settled purpose, in spite of checks, and rebuffs, and all sorts of ill fortune, but we cannot find this quality in Lord John Russell. Instead of that quality, we find a careless impudence a complete insensibility to shame, which is no more genuine English " pluck " than the material of Brummagem jewellery is honest gold and silver. Now it is really humiliating and disgraceful to find men of decent character going about and trying to persuade people to vote for this Russell as a friend of the people, and of that noble thing British liberty. We defy any of these men— and that they are, at least some of them, clever men in their way, no one can deny—we say we defy any of them to point oat a single instance in which this Russell has exhibited generoes or manly feeling towards the people. We defy any one to point out, either in his dull books or in his political harangues, the evidence of the possession of a single generous sentiment in public matters, or of the slightest sympathy with the comforts of the common people. No such thing is to be found, but on the contrary a cold supercilious contempt of all homely and kindly feeling, and a preference for certain theories, which are indeed fraught with the affectation of political learning, but which treat the mass of the people as if they were stocks and stones, or mathematical lines, to be regarded by a public man as the insensible elements of abstract science.