PETITIONS.
On the subject of petitions to Parliament, the Standard of last night says- " we are unwilling, for various reasons, to invite recollections of the unhappy year 18:i9 ; but when petitions are talked of as decisive of the zeal of the people for the Reform Bill, we must remind those who now employ this argument, that they themselves, not three years ago, laughed loud and long at the notion that the sense of the people could be so ob- tained. When we hear of petitions from Edinburgh with 36,000 signa- tures, and petitions Irons Liverpool with nearly as many, we cannot ab- stain from replyiac., that all the petitions yet presented do not equal in amount of signatures the one London petition presented by Lord Eldon, with its HUNDRED AND THMTEEN THOUSAND DRIDeS collected in four days."
We think, after the exposure of the miserable humbug of the
mile-long petition," and its supporters, Mr. JOHN HALCOMB and Company, the Standard would only have consulted the interest of :he "Country Party" to say nothing about it. Of all the re- colleci ions of tlie ",unhappy year," it is the one which brings with it the least conu'ort to the Lilt: a Tories.
The Reformers, we must observe, have never argued for the Bill on the gr:tml of petitions merely—what they say is, "look to the elections !" Peftions are only one, and not time most popular, mode of manifesting ptiVie opinion : time l'ilorement gives thousands and more impi Itamit imuli,:milimmns of its existence. In the case of the Catholic queAieu—opos,d as the clergy Were to it, and easy as it was for an organized body like them to get up a. paper with any number of signatures, m an ocele,iastcal affair only very indirectly gilding time i e interests of the signers—it is only surprising they did not get more. But the question is, what can they produce now against Reform ? The fact is, that the people cared little about the subject of Catholic Emancipation, and showed no discontent when the prayer of their petitions was rejected : is it ever the case that the earnest demand of an individual, much less of a large body of people, is refused, and lie or they make no. sign?
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