The Press.
London, England, 1858-10-02 00:00:00

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and twenty years ago), has been to defy all law I
except that which he invented, and adapted to
the particular matter in hand ; for if, even con-
temporaneously, two separate matters appeared to
require two directly opposite laws to be pro-
pounded, in order (as he vainly thought) to
obtain a special advantage in each, he had no
scruple in proclaiming contradictory laws. That
our readers may not think we are making an un-
tenable assertion, we advise them to compare
Lord PALMERSTON'S speech, in 1850, on the
second night of the Don Pacifico debate, with his
despatch to Austria quoted by Lord Jouri.
RUSSELL on the following evening.
By this course, frequently repeated, Lord PAL-
mEns-mx so managed as to deprive this country
of all moral weight in its dealings with
surrounding nations.
Now, our principle is, that, if the physical
force of Great Britain be backed by moral
influence, she will be almost irresistible for good
throughout the world ; and we affirm that Lord
PALMERSTON neutralized England's power, more
one-half, because he deprived her phy-
strength of the moral support, which a
nation derives from adherence to law and
We want 0....ae.e,
—swat we are confident
I.6lllmarbar

I delicate

Now, one of the Inv,.
affairs with which Lord Dzoweia
--
has had to deal has been the complication, in
which the proceedings of Lord PALmxits•rox's
Government had involved our relations with the
vast empire of Chins. -Lord Dimity, when out
of office, had denouricedwith indignant eloquence
the unjustifiable proceedings of the British au-
thorities at Canton. A very large minority of
the House of Lords had censured those proceed-
ings at his instigation, and his party in the House
of Commons had aided in carrying a resolution
condemning them. Notwithstanding, however,this
censure, the late Government persevered, and that
without further Parliamentary opposition, in back-
ing British authorities at Canton in their hostile
measures, and thus they committed the nation,in the
eyes of the Chinese, to what was equivalent to an
affirmation that, in the quarrel, justice was on the
side of England.
A more difficult position for a Government to
have been placed in cannot well be imagined •
for, much as its members might have disapproved
of the conduct of the former Ministers, we appre-
hend that no one will be of opinion that it would
have been either safe, or wise, or just, to have
marked that disapprobation by adopting the
same steps which they would have adopted in
the first instance, before the country had been
pledged to a totally different course. No Admi-
nistration, indeed, can honestly repudiate the
acts of its predecessors, done in the name of the
nation, however wrong and however impolitic,
in their judgment, those acts may be. The in-
justice of such a course, to say nothing of the
uncertainty and confusion which it would pro-
duce in all international affairs, is self-evident.
In this state of things there was only one path
which statesmen, situated as the present Govern-
ment were, could safely and honestly pursue ;
and that was to endeavour to bring the war to
a 8 speedy a conclusion as possible, asking nothing
of China beyond what one independent nation
has a right to requirIf of another, accoring to
the law of nations. any advantage were to
be
taken to extort terms from the Chinese, such as
a nation that has been injured by another has a

_ knew—what,
at all acquainted with the opinions of foreign na-
tions must also have known—that, from one end of
the world to the other, the name of Great Britain
was hated and feared, because, under Lord
PALNIERSTON'S guidance, for selfish ends, she
set at nought the great principles of international
law,which her statesmen had been used to proclaim,
and to the maintenanee of which, through good
report and through evil report, they had pledged
the good faith of their country.
To the honour and praise of the present
administrators of our Foreign Policy, it can truly
be said, that there is beginning to arise through-
out Europe a very different feeling towards this
nation from that which unhappily has so long
prevailed. A belief is spreading that deference.
to international law again sways the councils of
Britain ; and something like confidence in the
honour and honesty of British rulers is beginning
to be felt by both governments, and peoples. We
appeal to every impartial Englishman who during
this holiday season has travelled on the Conti-
nent, if the truth of what we now state he not
in conformity with their own personal expe-
rience.
We hail, therefore, this dawn of better days :
for we hold—and this we proclaim as the grand
fundamental principle which we shall take as our
standard, whereby to test the merits of each act
of our Foreign Policy—that the real secret of
England's strength lies in her moral rectitude,--
to shown in a clnsistent adherence to the
principles which she has proclaimed, regardless
whether, in the particular instance to which they
may be applied, they may prove advantageous or
disadvantageous to her interests—and in an
obedience to the law of nations, as laid down by
her own celebrated jurists,—so that the world
may judge before-hand the course that she will
take on any given point, by ascertaining what that
law prescribes.
The policy of Lord PALMERSTON, from the day
he first went to the Foreign-office (some eight
LAT EST EDITION.

down
demnit:
for the
by deeds,
mons reco
were deeds
" no satisfac

We
earnestly

LONDON SATURDAY, 0 cfroBER 2, 1858. STAMPED
PE....SIXPENCE.
UNSTAMD..FIVEPENCE.

fair right to require as a set-off for such injury,
then would the present Government have dealt
unjustly by China, and their proceedings ought
to be fearlessly condemned.
But, looking at the new Treaty, and comparing
its stipulations with the acknowledged law of
nations, we are bound to confess that we sec
nothing in it which one independent State has
not a fair right to ask of another independent
State, against which it has no cause of complaint.
What has been required by Lord Ei.on ix the
Treaty, might have been fairly required from the
Chinese Plenipotentiaries had no dispute what-
ever arisen at Canton. Moreover, there are
stipulations against smuggling renewed in this
Treaty, which must be very satisfactory to the
Chinese, if only they are as honestly carried out,
by our present rulers, as similar stipulations in
the former Treaty were systematically and delibe-
rately violated by those who preceded them.
We may therefore congratulate our readers on
the wise, just, and skilful policy whereby this
country has been extricated with credit ant
honour from a most embarrassing position; atii'
if ever the real history of these tramsednin"
should be recorded, and if the instruclims*Vilb
which Lord Etont was originally fausWinginligt

our present
sanction
appears

us might nave justuleam,
have dishonoured us as a nation to have intilleir
on, could we only have, based our demands on
the plea that we werialk, Injured party at
Canton—a plea which a#4loo=ded resolution
.11
of the House of Commons' hat kuthoritatiiely
repudiated.
And here we would gladly close our observa-
tions ; and truly rejoiced should we be if the
Treaty itself, on which we have been comment-
ing, closed the whole transaction. Would that
there was no " separate article" to shock our
sense of justice. Would that we could expunge the
words that provide an indemnity for "the losses •
" sustained by British subjects through the mis-
" conduct of the Chinese authorities at Canton "
Would that we could expunge the words which
provide an indemnity to us "on account of the
expenses of the war." We shall look most
anxiously for an official explanation of this
separate article. Prima facie, it seems to us
quite inconsistent with the other acts of the
statesman who prescribed the terms in the body
of the Treaty.
The war stands condemned by a vote of the
house of Commons. The authorities who corn-
menced the hostilities at Canton did not, accord-
ing to that vote, " establish satisfactory grounds
" for the violent measures resorted to at Canton"
—measures of extreme violence, destroying great
numbers of lives, and a vast amount of Chinese
property : and for the losses, in the way of
r-
reta-
liation,' authdrities thus b

1

of complaint, we held it up as a bad characteristic throw
of the age, that the generality of statesmen PALM
than
would profess one principle at one moment and
a directly contrary one at another, in order to
Frest
justify their inconsistent condi' Amon* the juatie
statesmen who is eourse of bare we id
furnished the most striking iieddelkl4lPßOws With
inconsistency of principle, the late Preinier, No
Lord PALMERRTON, stands conspicuous. It was for affair
this reason specially, above others, that we prayed has h
for his overthrow. We knew—what those who are whicl
. • _ _ anv‘

ty ; auu un iiiG avaa...,-, Asa ......., .._J
which the British authdrities thus brotht
upon their countrymen a pecuniary m-
ty has been exacted, and also an indemnity
e expenses of a war, which was provoked
)(,,c4Z
!ds, respecting which the House of Com-
records its deliberate opinion
deeds of "violence," for wipic t ,
...
atisfactory grounds" ! U. ("14. - ~/
shall anxiously wait fore . ..
1 . ' it,
itly do we hope that it O. 11.,,,-i., :q;;
ilb co
)resent Ministry have lie • ; ? ~.11...,:;71-, ri° *CI,
on to a demand which, .. +. 4, .
.1i . i. ..,
P 4
rs to us quite indefensible. :,,Aa A4:7 %'4
•.,-,,
e" II N.‘ Tl 4

946

THE DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE OF
CONFESSION.

COMMON sense has not, we verily believe, a more
desperate antagonist than the heat of theological
controversy. Was ever trumpery equal to that
elicited by the Commissioners who sat on the
Boyn-hill case with all the gravity of men exer-
cising judicial authority by delegation from a
successor of the Apostles ?
On the foreground of the stage, in this inte-
resting drama, appears—as prima donna, 'shall
we say, or as corpus delicti ?—a married woman
of eleven years matrimonial standing, the
mother of eight children ; who by her own
showing cohabited at one period of her life with
two men at once, her lawful husband being one
of the two, and who, with regard to one of her
children, at least, not only cannot take upon her-
self to decide to which of those two the honour of
paternity belongs, but declines to state whether
others besides them might not have as fair a
claim. This woman, it appears, is, notwith-
standing the somewhat startling character of
her antecedents, of so innocent a turn of mind
that she has absolutely no idea what such terms
as "fornication" or "adultery" can possibly
mean ; and, what is still more wonderful, not
only has her intellect remained in this state of
charming innocence of the meaning of naughty
words, but her feelings have retained so delicate
a sense of all but virgin modesty, that any allu-
sion to the sins prohibited by the Seventh Com-
mandment is most distressing to her, in fact, to
use her own phraseology, quite upsets her."
Here is a study, if ever there was one, for psycho-
logists
The cure of this innocent, sensitive soul, it
seems, devolved in due course of time upon a
clergyman endowed with a scrupulous conscience,
quite as extraordinary in its way as is the inno-
cence and modesty of his fur parishioner. He
has scanned the field, and scrutinized the extent
and the limits, of his clerical duty with an excess
of conscientiousness with which, It is to be hoped,
not many of his brethren are chargeable. On a
former occasion he found himself utterly unable
to thank Heaven for the happy delivery of her
Majesty, because the form of words for doing so,
though prepared by the Archbishops and Bishops,
according to immemorial custom, had reached
him through the profane hands of the printer to
the Privy Council. On his entrance upon his
new charge, his attention appears to have been
specially attracted towards the directions con-
tained in the Prayer-book for dealing with sick
parishioners. He finds that he is called upon to
" examine them whether they repent them truly
" of their sins," and, further, to "move them to
" make a special confession of their sins, if they
" feel their conscience troubled with any weighty
" matter." From these general directions he
infers that an exact performance of his duty in
this respect requires him to provide himself with
a "systematic course" of questioning. Full of
the symmetry of his "systematic course," he
proceeds to catechise his frail female parish-
ioner as to the strict propriety of her feelings
towards the other sex, and deems it necessary to
apprise her of the sinfulness of a wanton eye.
Her notorious antecedents might, we should
think, have justified some pretty strong admo-
nitions, without any technical discussion on the
nature or the degrees of the sin in question, but
our precise Curate felt it his duty to proceed
secundum artem.

Unluckily for him, there are two kinds of
Gospel within the district of Boyn-hill. While
he himself is a tolerably fair representative of the
one sort, we find the other personified in a zealous
and energetic lady of the genus somewhat un-
gallantly designated "busybodies." With that
singular keenness of olfactory which religious
partizans have in common with bloodhounds, she
scents the heterodox tendencies of the over-
precise Curate afar off, and she follows the trail
with an eagerness worthy of a better cause.
Having extracted from the pattern of female
sensibility on whom the Curate had practised his
" systematic course " such a version of his cate-
chetical exercise on the Seventh Commandment
as suited her peculiar views of that branch of the
pastoral office—and, truth to say, she could have
found little difficulty in doing se, as her informant
eeetued as willing to share her favours between
Vuseyite and Evangelical, as she had formerly
done between ARNOLD and Krunits,—the self-
constituted guardian of the faith of the parish