TOPICS OF THE DAY.
SHALL EARL GREY OR THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ELECT. THE NEW SPEAKER?
IF the choice' of a Speaker of the Reformed House of Commons rested with the King's Ministers,—if the members for extensive and important cities and counties were to be driven up to Vote for a Government nominee, like the old tools of corruption who sat in former Parliaments,—then we might congratulate the Conserva- tives on their success in bamboozling Earl GREY, and their tri- umph in replacing that firm old Tory Mr. MANNERS SUTTON in the Chair of the House. But wait a little, gentlemen; your 'game is only half played, and by no means won. It would have been more discreet in you not to have thrown your best card on the table, where it is already somewhat soiled, so early in the deal : your opponents may vet trump it with a better, and carry off the stakes, notwithstanding your chuckling. It is bad enough, certainly, that the attempt should be made to vote an old Tory, of the house-of Rutland, into the chair of the first Reformed Parliament. But the mode in which the business is managed—the offer of Ministers to hand over the votes of the Representatives of the People (whose ears are still tingling with professions of perfect independence from those very representa- tives), strikes us as being peculiarly insulting. 'We are informed by the Times, that "Mr. MANNERS SurroN. has accepted the offer of Ministers to secure, as far as their influence, in the House of Commons• can secure, his election to the Speakership. Very gra- cious and condescending, no doubt, in Mr. MANNERS SUTTON. "As, I see, you will not make me a Peer, Why I don't cam if I become Speaker again, to oblige you." So the matter is coinfort- ably arranged—between Mr. MANNERS SUTTON and the Ministry: but not between the Ministry and the Representatives of the People in Parliament assembled; as that Ministry may yet learn to its cost. Why should. the Government interfere, at all in the matter ? They are the paid servants of the People, and not the viceroys over that People's Representatives. The choice of a Speaker is not a measure of the Executive. The Ministry, there- fore, had no right to take the initiative in proposing a person for that office. Their interference betrays an ignorance of the altered state of things, which they have themselves been active agents in producing. They think that they have an old Boroughmongering House to deal with. We trust that they will find themselves mis- taken, and that the very first vote of the Reformed Parliament will show them their mistake in such plain colours as will make them cautious how they attempt to play the dictators in this ge- nuine PITT and CASTLEREAGH style again. We should have imagined that Lord GREY had had enough of promoting political opponents to offices of trust and secure emolu- ment. The conduct of Lord LYNDHURST should have taught him a lasting and profitable lesson. Mr. MANNERS SUTTON is WO shrewd a man to make himself troublesome to a Ministry in whose hands the grant of his retiring pension was placed. But that check is now removed. He is snugly provided for, may retire when he likes, give as much trouble as be can while he remains, and laugh at this most simple of all Premiers while be pockets his quarterly cash. He is irritated, moreover, by the refusal of his Peerage; and if he does not become a thorn in the side of the Ministry, he will be the most singularly conscientious and placable Tory that ever secured a retiring pension.
The Government may . yet be brought out of the scrape by an independent vote of the House and the rejection -of their can- didate.
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