The Sun.
London, England, 1855-09-05 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, WEDNESDAY EvENING, SEPTEMBER 5 1855:

! usefully active, and really addressing herself to the work
before her, must take their choice between advising com-
pliance -with s 6 reasonabre- a petition as that j ast pre-
sented to the Queen, and bearing the responsibility of
continiing the evils that now so loudly call for remedial
measures. It is idle to talk of the necessary reforms
being effected by Parliament. The offices of the Church
cannot be altered by Parliamentary statute alone. The
Church only can alter them. Parliament may tamper
with the Prayer-book, but it cannot bind the conscience
of the clergy. They are bound in foro conscientice to the
present Prayer-book, and no power on earth can absolve
them but that of the Church, by representation.
Bat unsatisfactory as Sir George Grey's decision is,
Churchmen must beware of attaching too much import-
ance to it, or supposing it to have a significance which
really does not belong to it. What it does show is Sir
G. Grey's animus towards, or rather against, the Church.
It shows that he is not anxious for the effective discip-
line of the clergy ; that he has no wish to see the or-
ganic extension of the Church ; and does not feel the
want of those modifications of the services for occasional
use which are so generally experienced both by clergy
and laity.

This is all it shows ; and when it is remembered that
Sir George Grey—so far as he professes anything
at all—is a Presbyterian, it is not surprising that he
should exhibit no great zeal for the Church of Eng-
land, and very little comprehension of her difficul-
ties. But this decision is no exponent of. the feeling of
the Government towards the Church. Still less does it
offer any ground for complaining of the constitutional
relations between Church and State. The petition is
not refused. It is simply not granted, But if from
time to time renewed, it may be granted befora very
long. Other members of the Government may support
it, and better counsels may prevail. There is a strong
practical feeling pervading the Government, and we may
trust to this to pave the way for a practical solution of
the synodical difficulty. When it becomes more generally
seen that Convocation is the only organic action by which
the ends proposed can be achieved ; and, also that the
only choice of Statesmen lies between these things being
done by Convocation, or not done at all, while yet the
necessity for doing them is absolute and incontestible—
the most resolute stickler for a fettered church, or the
wildest impugner of episcopacy will be constrained to
yield. For that not distant period Churchmen may well
be content to wait with patience, taking good heed in
the meantime to secure an indisputable title to confi-
dence and approbation, by the zeal and energy, modera-
tion and charity, with which they prosecute their glorious
work, notwithstanding the impediments to free action
which, in the course of a century and a half—during the
abeyance of convocation—have, from various cause?,
accumulated about them.

At the ♦ery least there remains this consoling reflec-
tion, that the leaving the functions of Convocation in
abeyance is virtually a recognition of their existence,
and the practical result is a continuance to the Church of
the identical condition—in all essential points—in which
her former Convocations left her : while there are many
powers of deliberation and much useful action left, which
do not require the sanction of the Crown, and with which
the Government has shown no disposition to interfere.
These, we firmly believe, may be so efficiently exercised
as to constitute, after a time, a safe title to the desired
license, founded upon their utility and exemplary
success.

STAIVLEY'SDISCOUI?SE OF PARLIAMENT,

cleansing for every little Peddlington or petty village must
be settled by a, "committee up stairs," The whole fere-
peons of all the members are occupied with railways,
steam-boats, canals, gas, shipping companies, water com-
panies, private, provincial and parochial conce:ns of every
sort. Do the members of the H.‘use of Commons manage
that department as well as a responsible Executive Go-
verntuent would ? Look at the results. While, on the Con-
tinent of Europe, without any Parliament at all the whole
of the joint-stock or large mercantile undertakings are
cheaply started, honestly conducted, and remunerative,
those of England find their subscribed capital eaten up
with Parliamentary expenses for acts under which the
working is so bad that none of them pay a dividend an-
swering to the fair expectations of profit, while most of
them are a disaster, cheat, and swindle from beginning
to end. These concerns, in fact, become a great source
of Parliamentary corruption, and fill the Senate with
sordid jobbers who bribe, or needy adventurers who are
bribed, not to mention those dirty fellows in both houses
who screw large prices out of companies for their land,
houses, or other property, as a fee for not putting the
promoters to the expense of an opposition. Nothing
can be more obvious than that such work is Lot the
office of a deliberative assembly, but solely of an
executive department, to be armed with the necessary
functions. The whole of the private business of Parlia-
ment should at once be handed over to the Home De-
partment, the Board of Trade, and other institutions
cognate to the particular work to be done. Let these
departments be responsible to Parliament as " com-
mittees up stairs " are now, and thus a very large pro-
/Thrtion of the whole task now set to Parliament would
be removed from its cognisance entirely. One effect of
such a change would be that that large class of jobbers
who spend their money lavishly in bribing constituen-
cies to return them, in the view of getting it back with a
handsome profit from Parliament in the shape of jobs,
would trouble the national counsels no more ; and that if
we had fewer contractors, Railway and Jokt Stock
Company directors, Water and Gas Company chairmen,
and " rising men at the bar" to assi-t us with " their
wisdoms," we would also offer fewer attractions for cor-
ruption and self-seeking, and a better object of laudable
ambition or disinterested patriotism to the honest, re-
flective, and high-minded citizen. The utter disrepute in
which the very institution itself is held at present by the
nation, the distrust with which it is regarded by the
people, and the too well-founded reasons presented by
its recent conduct for the worst execrations of its greatest
enemies, ought to satisfy all who are desirous of main-
taining the fabric of the State in the form of its existing
architecture, that the Parliamentary form of govern-
ment can only sustain itself in being by a thorough re-
construction of its internal machinery.

THE LONDON GAZETTE OF LAST NIGHT.

FOREIGN OFFICE, Auc. 12.
The Queen has been graciously pleased 'to appoint Spenser
St. John, Esq., now Acting Consul-General, to be her Ma-
jesty's Consul-General in the Island of Borneo.
FOREIGN OFFICE, SEPT. 1.

The Queen has been pleased to approve of Senhor Manoel
Joaquin Soares, as Consul at Sydney, in Australia, for the
King of Portugal.
The Queen has also been pleased to approve of Mr. Henry
Chapman as Consul at n tre al for the King of Prussia.