The Press. — London, England, 1858-11-20 00:00:00

1132 THE WEEK. THE Bishop of RIPON in Exeter-hall, and Dr. Cummixo, in his own church, have this week refreshed our memories with ancient but not yet forgotten recollections, and warmed our hearts with seasonable and pre cious truths. The Bishop viewed the subject rather in its doctrinal, and the Scottish Presbyter in its national, aspect. The lecture of the former was strictly theological, that of the latter economic and social. The field traversed by the one was the Bible and the Church, the seed and the sower—the goal aimed at by the other was " England, as created by Pro testant truth, and Italy, as debased and degenerate under the incubus of Papal tyranny." England three hundred years ago was benighted. impo verished, and demoralized. The Romish superstition darkened her sky and chilled her soil, and crushed at the same time every effort at self regeneration. Her Ministers were priests, her schoolmasters monks, her law canon law, her maidens kneeling at the confession-box, civil liberty a crime and religious liberty heresy, and the Tiber absorbing the Thames. A few noble bishops and priests recognized the true religion, and felt that in it alone was the panacea for their country's evils and the spring of those living streams which they believed would make glad the " City of Goo." MARY and Cardinal POLE and his colleagues collected the fag ots and qt , applied their Pontifical, or rather Lucifer, matches ' • but they discovered, even when they would not own it, that no fire can burn out truth, and no policy build up a lie. The fires of Smithfield cast their radiance on the principles of the martyrs, and revealed in all their nakedness the falsehoods of their murderers. In November, 1558, ELIZABETH ascended the throne of these realms. The nation rose and stood upright. A new era dawned. SHAKESPEARE and SPENSER, HooKEn and BACON, became the vanguard of an army of illustrious men. Protestant exiles returned to enrich and benefit their country—fraud and force were crushed by the vigorous policy of the Maiden Queen—the Roman Bull and the Spanish Armada were sent back to their proper quarters. England began, on that 17th Novem • ber three hawked years ago, a career that, often resisted by her enemies, and oftener injured by her friends, has not slackened in speed or been shorn of splendour to the present day. It was with equal propriety as Protestant and patriot that Dr. CUMMING concluded his morning lecture in these words : " A woman's reign closed the darkest and most sanguinary era of our history. A woman's reign began the most brilliant chapter in its annals. A woman's reign—l need not say whose—with none of the defects and with vastly more than the popularity and splendour of EuzAßErn, is our now ascendant noon—a noon for whose Sun we pray there may be no setting. God save our Queen ! May she long reign over a free, a loyal, and a Protestant nation !" We see that reference is this week made in a morning contemporary to a literary quarrel, some rumour of which must have come to the ears of all persons in any way connected with literature or the drama. In London the thing is, of course, notorious; and we have only abstained front com ment on it hitherto, because we felt that it redounded very little to the credit of literature, from whatever point of view it was regarded. A great literary man has acted foolishly, and a small literary man has acted imper tinently, and we wish we could say " there's an end on't." But unhappily we cannot. It is now some months ago since in a weekly periodical known as Town Talk a sketch of Mr. THACKERAY appeared evidently written by a gentleman who had been in Mr. THACKERAY'S company, and wao knew how to make the most of that advantage. In this article Mr. THACKERAY was spoken of in terms which, had they been used by a stranger, would have been perfectly legitimate, and not, on the whole, unpolite ; but representing, as Mr. THACKERAY considered, a species of traffic in that intimacy which most gentlemen hold sacred, he felt himself bound to resent it, and to demand that the club to which they both belonged should adopt his view as their own. This they agreed to do, and the result was that Mr. YATES, the author of the article in question, was requested to apologize or to withdraw from the club. He declined to do either, and was then forcibly prevented from entering. The consequence is that Mr. YATES brings an action against the club for a restitution of convivial rights, on the ground that he is entitled to the attendance of servants and the use of rooms for which he has paid his money. The cause, therefore, of " Yates v. the Garrick Club " has now a purely legal aspect. But we fancy the club will have some difficulty in establishing their right of expulsion. We recollect the case of a gentleman who belonged to four different clubs, and stole the forks and spoons from each ; but it was derided that the clubs could not proceed against him criminally, as each club represented a partnership. However this may be, the whole affair is a sad literary scandal. And to the public at large the question of Mr. YATF.S'S original offence is doubtless the more interesting of the two. We must confess we are not disposed to judge it very rigorously. Honestly we think it a pity that Mr. THACKERAY took anv notice at all of the matter. His only excuse is. that his indignation was directed against the system rather than the individual, and the system certainly is as bad as bad can be. Publi cations now abound in London which almost subsist on this wretched small tittle-tattle : 1 found him :lose with Swift.—lndeed? No dou'A (Cries prating Ftalbuil something will come out. And we do sincerely hope that this expression of feeling on Mr. TitAcKE RAY'S part may possibly have the one good effect of checking this odious practice. The fact is, as things arc conducted now, there is nothing to prevent John Jones, contributor to " The City Dustman," and Michael Smith, musical critic to the " Surrey Trombone," combining together to puff oue another into notoriety. A precedent is established by the puWi- THE PRESS, NOVEMBER 20, 1858. cation of personal details about men in whom the public is really interested and then, forsooth, every man who has ever penn e d a paragraph is to hav e one penned about himself! Like the dozen plump s t raw b err i es on the top of a pottle, the big men are introduced first, and, under cover of these, any poor creature may establish a reputation to which he has nothing on earth to entitle him. iVe think it undignified in Mr. THACKERAY to have acted as he has done; yet it is, perhaps, ungrateful . in us to say so , ant i c i pating , as we do, that good may result to the public from the line of cond uct b e has adopted. The unceasing zeal of the Church of Rome, and its anxiety to make perverts, was never more demonstrated than in the disclosures made within the last few days at Dublin in the case of " The o . 3lalleys, Minors." On last Saturday, and again on Monday, the Court of Chan cery was crowded to suffocation. The spectacle so often seen in Ireland of two contending bodies of fellow-subjects animated by the strongest religious antagonism, and mutually resolved to cry "No surrender," was presented to the eye. Eager-eyed priests from Connaught were to be observed in earnest converse, or listening to the resounding harangues of Chancery barristers stimulated to unwonted fervour by the presence of a numerous audience. Scarcely a passive countenance was to be seen except on the Bench, where the Chancellor exhibited even more than the usual serenity and profound thoughtfulness of aspect which mark the laurelled brow of Ireland's greatest jurist. As the facts of the case were elucidated by the various counsel one obtained a near view of a singular " interior' in which a religious drama was enacted. It was a scene worthy of being studied with care, and we shall explain it to our readers. JOHN O'MALLEY was a policeman resident at Tuam, in the west of Ireland. He had been married to ELLEN JAMESON, and had six children, the eldest of whom was twelve years of age. In 1857 O'MALLEY died. He had been a Roman Catholic, and his wife was a Protestant. During the lifetime of JOHN O'MALLEY his children (both sons and daughters) were educated in the Protestant faith, and received instruction in the Scriptures at the Protestant school of Tuam, which is specially supported by Lord PLUNKET the Bishop of Tuam. When O'MALLEY was dying, he expressed a wish to his wife that his children should be brought up Protestants. After the policeman died the widow and the children had to go into the workhouse, and then a new scene commenced. Mrs. O'MALLEY, the policeman's wife, died in the workhouse, and her sister, JANE ROBINSON, applied to the Guardians of the workhouse for the children, in order that she might bring them up and educate them. WILLIAM O'MALLEY, the paternal uncle of the children, also applied for the children, and wished that they should be given to him, and the Tuam Guardians passed an order giving them to O'MALLEY, by whom they were taken. The children were then brought up as Roman Catholics by their uncle, and at the present time three of the daughters are in the schools of the " Sisters of Mercy." Who cannot help pitying the condition of these unfortunate orphans ? Their father and mother are no more, their relatives are at war with each other, and it is now a question to whom they are to be assigned. The case seems to us to have been essentially one of defence of the liberty of conscience on the part of the Protestant authorities at Tuam. The Church of Ireland has often been reproached for its supineness in the last century, and we rejoice that its pastors have became active, and that they are ready to toy the encroachments of the priests. On the seat where Lord Chan cellor NAPIER now dispenses justice there formerly sat Lord PLUNKET, and we think that reverence for the prodigious services rendered by that great orator to the Roman Catholics ought to have taught more decorum to the zealous counsel for the priests. How would the late Lord PLUNKET be pained, if his spirit could revisit this " dim spot which men call earth," and witness the attempts to cast obloquy on his own kindred, because they stood by brethren of their own communion, and because they declined to yield to an ascendancy of sectarianism ! Lord PLUNKET was a main agent in overthrowing the Protestant ascendancy oflreland ;" and it is matter of congratulation that those of his name and lineage should now come forward, in spite of local censure and priestly an athema, to oppose the ascendancy of that Church, which, through the lips , , of its energetic advocate, .talks of children "condemned to Protestantism' . The once celebrated man who has this week passed from amongst us has probably been but a mere name to our readers for the last twenty years. Some few particulars, therefore, about one who once filled so con siderable a space in men's thoughts, and whom kings and philosophers re garded with interest, may not be unacceptable. ROBERT OWEN was bor n at Newport, in Montgomeryshire, on the 14th of May, 1771. His father was a saddler, whom one of his friends subsequently discovered to be de scended from a Welsh prince, but he seems to have been in easy circum stances, and to have given his children as good an education as the neigh bourhood afforded. OWEN tells us that in his childhood he was fond of music, was the best dancer at the school he frequented, and that he read with avidity all the standard novels. Even so early as nine years old it appears that his religious views were unsettled, but this precocious infi delity was nipped in the bud b his early i n t ro duction to the real business of life. At ten years of age he was apprenticed to a Mr. MAC (too, a linendraper, at Stamford, and used to walk about linrleigh Park reading Seneca. It was during his sojourn at Stamford, that, again becoming moved by his early developed religious earnestness, he addressed a letter to Mr. Purr on the neglect of the Sabbath, which, by a curious coincidence, was followed in a few days by a proclamation enjoin ing its better observance—an event which OWEN at the time, and even his employers too, .attributed to the effect of his epistle. lie next obtained,a, situation wide 1 Messrs. FLINT and P.u.xiLli, who kept a shop on i