The Sun.
London, England, 1855-03-14 00:00:00

enemy.
On this point Lord Rani RUSSELL cannot hesi-
tate. His acceptance of the Colonial-office ren-
dered it indispensable that he should speedily be
prepared to discharge its important duties. If a
representative of Prussia were admitted, we might
rest assured that, not merely days but months,
perhaps years, would be wasted in unprofitable
discussions, while Russia would be encouraged to
continue an obstinate resistance, in the expecta-
tion of benefits anticipated from the friendly in-
terference of Prussia !

It will take a long time to lay the demon of
intolerance even in this land of boasted light and
liberty. Clergymen are fond of ringing changes
in our ears on the " mild and tolerant spirit of
our Church," and the happy difference in this
respect between Protestant and Papal countries.
We wish the difference were much plainer. The
nation is tolerant to a large extent, but no one
can now pretend that the Church of England is
the nation, or the nation the
,Church of England.
Her clergymen dare not hazard another common-
wealth, and if they dare, the nation, represented
by its Parliament, will not let them. The spirit, ,
however, which roused the country to overthrow
the Church two hundred years ago is by no means
dormant in all her present clergy. There are
those among them who would, doubtless, rejoice
in a Star Chamber, and in slitting noses and clip-
ping ears, and praising GOD for such sentences in
the orthodox ST. LAUD style, if only society would
let them. Nothing is plainer than that no class
of mortals on earth are more disposed to use
power cruelly than ecclesiastics ; and nothing is
more obviously the duty of the State than to de-
prive them of all legal means of annoying those
who differ from them. A Czar is not snore re-
lentless thiaa a bigot. Indeed the bigotry of the
majority of modern despots has quite equalled
their tyranny. The odious quality is essentially
the same, but now it shows itself in the civilian,
now in the ecclesiastic. The latter is far the
more hateful of the two, since the Great Head of
the Church came to unteach men the love of rule
and to teach them humility.
Our readers were probably many of them led
to generalise in this sort yesterday by the report
in our columns of another case of burial intole- ,
rance. It came before one of our metropolitan
magistrates at Clerkenwell, Mr. CORRIE. Two
Irishmen were summoned for a row, and that on
consecrated ground. They or some one non
inventus had knocked the book out of s the clergy-
M LOA A.a. .. 1......... a, 3,...,1.--z—a 4.1... /.....11. ....r 11..., 1ay.n.i...,• a ,
and rendered his last services superfluous ; and of
course for hustling a Doctor of Divinity, and lay-
ing profane hands on a holypickaxeand spade, they
were taken into custody. The dignity of the law
and the dignity of a D.D. demanded no less. But
what had the D.D. done ? He had only pitted
Anglican and educated bigotry against Popish and
illiterate bigotry. He considered the Burial Ser-
vice of his prayer-book thionly and the indispens-
able one for every body which sought repose in
his churchyard. His Catholic parishioners deemed
the service already performel by their own priest
the only and the indispensable one, and no doubt
feared injury, to the departed from what they held
to be an heretical service. The priest had judi-
ciously advised his people to request the Protestant
to abstain from the objectionable service, and if
he persisted, to withdraw and leave him with his
sexton and clerk. The poor men, however, would
fight against a faith when obtruded upon them,
even contrary to orders. They did not know that
the physical force of law enabled a clergyman to
perform over the dead the abhorred service, or
they would not have resorted to the physical forte
of wild Irish passion.
The magistrate considerately gave the repre-
sentatives of the Church opportunity to behave as
their Lord and Master would have done. He
sent the Doctor of Divinity to the Lord Bishop
of London. He suggested that the bishop might
permit the omission of a servico over Catholico
which the surviving Catholic relatives deemed a
desecration. The civilian could not conceive at
first sight why a ceremony should be forced upon
people who did not want it, merely because by
locality they were obliged to bury in a particular
churchyard. The bishop, however, soon rebuked
the impious suggestion. It was, ho informed him,
a right of the Church to read her service over all
bodies interred in her churchyards, and the right
must be sustained. The magistrate bowed to the
bishop. Not being an ecclesiastic, however, he
pitied the ignorance of the poor men, fined them
only ss. each, bat prudently threatened that,
if the offence were repeated, they must smart for
it to the heart's content of Bishops and Doctors of
Divinity.

Now, we humbly think that while ignorant
Irishmen must be kept from rows, it would have
been more creditable to the magistrate to have
lectured the bishop and his subordinate in the
spirit of his first suggestion. They in our opinion
occupy a much more disgraceful position than the
Irishmen. We hear everlasting homilies on the
liberalising tendency of education, but if such un-
meaning bigotry as that displayed by these church-
men is to be the result of it, we may as well shut
up our schools. Here are a pair of college-bred
gentlemen fighting with illiterate Irishmen over
the corpses of poor Catholics, contending as a
right for what could not benefit tho dead, while it
was revolting, indeed most irritating, to the
living ! It is but recently Lord SHAFTESBURY
and his friends were declaiming, and justly,
against the Spanish intolerance which denied a
thuermiftl
-Oground to Protestants ; or, if it granted
refused permission to celebrate publicly
the Protestant service. Bigotry enough, to be
sure, and the worse, as in all such cases, for in-
sulting the deepest and most sacred
sorrows of the
living. For the latitude of London, however, we
theurnersmO
ry we have just described quite as
who could in
enlightened
bt ha
di n. k t
Th eh
ebiiigl oe
nt
England
thrust a hated religions service on
for the dead would in Spain assuredly not have
hesitated to consign Protestant bodies to the
stable-yard, or to low-water mark. Our ecclesias-
tics should know that no bigotry is more revolt-