The Sun.
London, England, 1852-11-24 00:00:00

-
(o.l)gie )14,11,

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1852,

Yesterday the business of the Session may be
said to have really commenced. If for nothing
else, the Hon. CHARLFIS VILLIERS would, in refer-
ence to his motion of last evening, deserve the
thanks of the country at large, for having extorted
from the prolonged silence of the DERBY-DISRAELI
Cabinet the eminently satisfactory amendment
brought forward by the CHANCELLOR of the Ex-
CHEQUER. There can no longer be any hesitation
whatever in the mind of the community as to the
conclusion at length arrived at in reference to the
Free-trade policy by the principal Members of the
present Government. We take last night's amend-
ment to be the veritable epitaph of Protection. In
eliciting that interesting document from the taci-
turnity of his Parliamentary opponent, the Ho-
nourable Member for Wolverhampton reminds us
of the wight in the ballad, who

" Went and told the sexton,
And the sexton tolled the bell."

His voice may with truth be declared to have
sounded the key note for the De Profundisof the
Monopolists. In this manner Mr. VILLIERS has
appropriately crowned his many eminent services
to the population. He has completed in the most
effectual manner the important successes of which
he has been himself throughout one of the most
distinguished, but at the same time one of the
least ostentatious originators. Every one must
have felt last night, on listening to him, how unne-
cessary it was to vindicate himself from the charge
of factious interference i-a bringing forward his mo-
tion in favour of the recognition of the Free-trade
principles. Why we all remember, the House re-
members, the country at large remembers, how
sedulously and perseveringly, for fifteen years,
CHARLES VILLIERS has been the consistent advo-
cate of the measures of unrestricted competition.
From him, therefore, the important resolution of
yesterday came with a very peculiar appropriate-
ness. And however much he may have indulged
in the course of his argument in what Mr.
DISRAELI humorously designated " convenient ge-
neralities," he at any rate succeeded in eliciting
from the lips of that right hon. gentlemen a more
explict announcement of the formal abandonment
of Protection than had hitherto been extorted
fr.."l any one of the members of the Administra-
tion. " In point of fact," as Cousin PIRENIX
nth, the Free-traders could scarcely look for a
more
complete acceptance of the reality of their
humphtrler all the existing circumstances.
to be e has already repeatedly shown himself
crmeat
Of
the h
intricate tactics of debate, the CHAN-
SiDpAy,n the EXCHEQUER has seldom shone—if,
regard to
mere skilfulness—to more
conspicuous advantage. His oration of yesterday
comprehensive retrospect of
the past career of
his
trospect in which scatterede eaies as a
party—a re-
very plentifully
sarcasms and precedent of rhetoric
peael tiway of his h
strewn, as it were, before
th© t
amendment. Throughout the ape
kind of refrain—droller and droller h
with
was a
eivaenrYs,
recurrence—about a certain class of politician
described as parties who had " perpetratedan
enormous mischief." Scarcely any one among the
more distinguished Members on the benches of
the opposition, but was pelted, by him with a
mingled shower of jibes and comp iments. It was
in this manner that Mr. DISRAELI, after eulogis_
ingin eloquent terms and with winning earnestness,
the inclisputaMe consistency of the representa-
tive of 'Wolverhampton spoke of that honourable
yentlern an afterwards as the " Storm Petrel
A: Protection"
—remarkable for making porten-
tous
appearances at particular crises a
person especially noticeable for two things,
"precision of thought and concinnity of expres-
sion." Somewhat in •
a similar mood the Leader
of the Commons referred, in another portion of
his harangue, to the FIRST T•
LORD of the TREASURY
as a statesman not backward in maintaining a

" well-regulated party feeling " having a sly
word of allusion to what he facetiously defined
as the noble lord's " amiable cynicism." To-
wards the close of his address the CHANCELLOR of
the EXCHEQUER indignantly scouted the idea of
himself and his colleagues consenting for one
hour to remain in office as "Ministers on suf-
ferance." Nothing, he declared, would induce
them to continue in power, unless the cordial
bearing of the Legislature gave the stability
requisite to consolidate them into a strong Go-
vernment. Having taken a complete survey
of the course pursued by the existing Cabinet,
since its formation in February ; ' having enu-
merated some of the more commendable of its
achievements, such, for example, as the formation
of the Militia, and also the diminution of several
of the abuses in Chancery ; after following their"
movements from the period when they were
gazetted to the dissolution of the late Parliament,
and from the general election in July to the
assembling of the new House of Commons in
November, the Right Hon. Gentleman appealed
in an impassioned peroration to the sense of jus-
tice among the younger representatives, implor-
ing them not to allow themselves to become
" the tools, or the victims of exhausted fac-
tions and obsolete politics." It was immediately
afterwards that Mr. BRIGHT, in one of the
ablest speeches ever delivered by him within
the walls of the Legislature, endeavoured in the
most effectual manner to embarrass the position of
Ministers, by proclaiming the inconsistency of
their position—coolly trotting out in proof of this
the various unfortunates who, during the process of
the recent appeal to the country, had figured upon
the hustings in the deepest colours of the Pro-
tectionists. It cannot for an instant be ques-
tioned by the reflective observers throughout the
United Kingdom that the time had indeed
arrived for some definite conclusion to be arrived
at in this matter of the Free-trade principles
by the present House of Commons, and
in the presence of what was originally, .
of course, a Protectionist Government. Further
hesitation in regard to the permanence of the
commercial policy inaugurated in 1846 by Sir
ROBERT PERT. could not, in truth, be otherwise
than injurious to the interests of the nation, pre-
judicial to the character of the Legislature, and
baneful to the reputation of her Majesty's Govern-
ment. Without some explicit declaration in the
negative or in the affirmative, matters would be
left in a state so painfully dubious and incompre-
hensible that the consequent and inevitable evils
would necessarily prove altogether incalculable.
Aware of this, and conscious of the unassailable
security of that cause which he had himself
cherished years before it was recognised by the
generality, either within or without the walls of
Parliament, Mr. VILLIERS determined at the earliest
available period to submit the exigent problem of
the emergency to the consideration of the popular
representatives. Now that the matter has actually
been brought forward substantially in the Legis-
lative Chamber of the Commons at Westminster,
we cannot, as conscientious Free-traders and
fervent lovers of patriotism, but rejoice that the
question has been formally presented for the ac-
ceptance or the refusal of the Administration. It
would be unfair to all parties implicated in the
transaction not to feel thus in reference to the
important discussion of yesterday. But for the
motion introduced by the Hon. Member for
Wolverhampton the judgments of the multi-
tude might still have been tossed about
upon a sea of conjectures as to what might
be upon the most vital of the political topics of
our age, the real opinions entertained by the
present Government. No such uncertainty can any
longer be felt upon the matter, now that the
country has lying before them the eminently
adroit, but sufficiently explicit, and, indeed, alto-
gether unmistakeable declaration of the CHAN-
CELLOR of the EXCHEQUER. That declaration is
simply, that her MAJESTY' s Ministers do not feel
themselves called upon to attempt any revival
whatsoever of the abandoned principles of Protec-
tion. Mr. DISRAELI' S reminder to the house,
that ever since the passing of the enactment
of 1846, neither he himself, nor any one
of the individuals sympathising with him
in his ideas of a commercial policy, have
endeavoured to bring back the old system through
direct or indirect appeals to the British Parlia-
ment—was the strongest point in the argument
by which he strove to parry the thrusts of his
Free-trade antagonists. Mr. BRIGHT' S reminder
to the House, on the other hand, that if no posi-
tive adventure of the kind—no adventure having
in view the restoration of the laws formerly
passed by the sticklers for monopoly—had been
made in the Commons by the Leaders of the oppo-
site party since the period of Sir ROBERT
PEWS enactment, their followers had un-
questionably, out of the Commons, employed
every imaginable means to forward their in-
terests, and to create a soul under the dead ribs
of Protection—was indisputably the most forcible
and the most rational justification of the motion
submitted to the Legislature, supposing for one
moment that it needed (which we deny) any jus-
tification at all. Although the discussion was, as
might have been alone anticipated, adjourned un-
til Thursday after the speeches of Mr. KER
SEYMER and Mr. FREDERICK PEEL had been
followed by the remarkable address of
Lord PA LMERSTON the resolution proposed
by the representative of Wolverhampton, cannot
but be regarded as already most effectual in re-
moving whatever doubts still existed in regard to
the commercial views of the DERBY-DISRAELI
Cabinet. That Cabinet, as we now take it, is dis-
tinctly pledged to the maintenance—and not only
to the maintenance, hut to the resolute enforce-
ment and continuous development of the Free-
trade system, or as the CHANCELLOR of the Ex-
CHEQUER loves to call it, the system of unrestricted
competition. Henceforth, there can be no pos-
sible misapprehension upon the subject. The
state oracle is no longer dumb. And if, at last,
APOLLO has not spoken from his shrine, the Right
Hon. Gentleman, leaning 4ipon the green box of
office, and addressing himself candidly to the
Free-trade Opposition, has avowed that the
principles of Protection are no longer desired to
be revived by the existing Government.

Convocation, after a political submersion of a
century and a-half, has begun to exhibit signs of
life ; some galvanic'respirations have unquestion-
ably been made. Whether they will result in a re-
turn of all the vital powers and functions remains
to be seen. A short time back, when it was
rumoured that Lord DERBY, at the instigation of
his High-Church supporters, was about to advise.
her MAJESTY to license Convocation to resume its
long-disused functions, we expressed our incre-
dulity in regard to any statesman being capable of
such unconstitutional conduct. From what has
just occurred, it is very evident that the agitators
may have perplexed the Government for a while
with those legal ingenuities which they openly
brought forward when the Houses met. Unless
there were some doubtful points of this kind be-
fore the Government, we must think, with all the
Liberal press, that they ought at once to have
contradicted the rumour.

Be this as it may, the advocates of Convoca-
tion have now taken a course which will soon call
upon Parliament to interrogate the Government
as to their actual power over the proceedings of
this body, and to legislate, if need be, accordii tgly.
We have had one Papal aggression, and we cannot
now tolerate an Anglican aggression. It can 'lover
be endured that such a nuisance as this long
"suppressed debating club of Church clignits.ries,
should resume action by virtue of some o verlooked
loopholes in an Act of Parliament.
... A ElteP, and, in the opinion of a member of the
Lower Rouse, a step verging upon an eccdosi asti-
cal revolution,
was made by the course whit ;11 \vas
adopted. In the Upper m
Was taken ; namely, House quite new grc, id
TER BU
that the Archbishop ( CUN-
RY had no Power to prorogue the no-ases
without the consent of the other bishoDs ,Tid that
not requisitethey pleased,
to "
though
the QUEEN'S licence was
them to deliberate as long as
confessedly needful to enable them
enact
Lwgel ri
canons. The agitators had fortified th e Reives
with the legal opinion in their favour of Drs.
ADDAmsland PHILLIMORE, and of
“her , JI.JESTY'S

ATTORNEY-GENERAL, and, thus fortified, the
Bishops of OXFORD and EXETER most politely
bearded their too-compromising Archbishop. We
use the term advisedly, because we think the
conduct of the Archbishop has sown the seed of
all the mischief ; he very modestly threw doubt
indeed upon the unofficial opinion of the ATTOR-
NEY-GENERAL, but adjourned, instead of at once
proroguing, the Houses, professing great reluctance
to use his power. Had he boldly put them to the
test at once, had he dared them to carry out their
gentle threat of sitting whether he prorogued
them or not, he would have found himself, with
the British public, in the place of the seven
bishops, and they in that of JAMES 11. By his va-
cillating conduct, he allowed each House to appoint
committees, to prepare petitions to her MAJESTY,
relative to the correction of clerks (we hope the term
legally includes Bishops and Cathedral Chapters),
and to enter into warm discussions respecting in-
cluding, in the usual Address to the QUEEN, a
suggestion of reviving the active powers of Con-
vocation. The Lower House, moreover, had
rather hot debates on appointing a committee to
consider grievances in the Church, and necessary
reformations ; eventually a committee of unde-
niably able men was appointed to take into con-
sideration a long paper on these subjects ; and not
the least notable circumstance respecting it was,
that it was introduced by Dr. SPRY, and seconded
by Archdeacon HARE, of Lewis; the latter gentle-
man avowing as his reason for having joined in
preparing the paper, and for then seconding it, that
he wished practically to correct the erroneous, but
widely diffused mistake, that the High-Church
party was the only one which wished for the re-
vival of Convocation. He referred to Archbishop
WHATELY, as well as himself, in disproof of
the common opinion. It is remarkable, however,
that this paper of grievances enumerates as one,
that power of the Crown by which Dr. HAMPDEN
was installed at Hereford against the will of the
Cathedral authorities, but with the applause of
the whole country, a few bigoted bishops and
clergymen excepted ; and that another grievance
is the very one of the state of Cathedral Chap-
ters, to inquire into which her MAJESTY has al-
ready issued a commission ; she, as the Head of
the Church, having had the vanity to think the
matter as safe in the hands of her commissioners,
as in that of a committee of the Lower House of
Convocation. Perhaps, however, the country
will think that that house had some excuse here ;
the unbridled rapacity of the bishops, and the
facility of the last commission in applying
funds, intended for the augmentation of poor
livings, to building palaces for the wealthy and
luxurious successors of the Apostles, is fresh enough
in the memory of all. As we have said, in chal-
lenging and intimidating the Archbishop—in
getting this last committee especially appointed,
and in prolonging the debate for three days, the
Convocationists have certainly gained an impor-
tant step. This is asserted with a shout of triumph
by their own organ, and assented to by their
opponents. _ _

We hardly think they will be allowed to make
good another step. They have the political
chances before them of a Low-Church Government
and a more thoroughly reformed Parliament, and
they have to encounter the laity—generally averse
to their claim—and the reasonable prudence of
statesmen. What have ecclesiastical synods done
of late years for this country ? The two most not-
able examples of them are, that of the established
Presbyterian Church in Scotland, and that of the
unestablished Wesleyan Church in England. Each
of them has generated an extensive and bitter
disruption of the respective bodies. Each has
originated an immense secession claiming to be
the true representatives of the respective Churches
—the Residuary Church and the secession in each
case hating each other with a bitterer hatred than
that of even Roman Catholics towards Protestants.
Yet each of these bodies rested their belief on
self-consistent creeds. No deep-seated internal
difference of faith sustained an irreconcileable
difference. In the Church of England, on
the contrary, this can never be. Original
Acts of Parliament, the modern decisions
of courts of justice, the opinion of every
honest man, and the parties now dividing
the Establishment, show that the Episcopal Church
is the Church of a compromise, and the Church
of comprehension. The Articles admit Mr. HUGH
STOWELL, and the Liturgy is the boast of Archdea-
con PE.NISON. The former conciliates the followers
of the great Reformer of Geneva ; the latter re-
tains those who, but for emoluments, would prefer
the entire journey to Rome. A statesman of the
slightest prescience of consequences will never
hazard the mutual friction of such a box of Lu-
cifers.

Suppose, however, these ecclesiastics to be ga-
thered together in council, and suppose them under
the strong repression of the public gaze to be pre-
vented from exploding, and suppose them, in virtue
of the deliberative powers they now claim as their
unconditional right to agree upon certain schemes,
or memorials, and to lay them before the Govern-
ment, and eventually before the Parliament ;
how would such clerical propositions be regarded?
What would the assembly of laymen—the uncon-
secrated, the unsanctified creatures, whose pre-
sence Mr. DENISON would deem a pollution of
Jerusalem Chamber—what would they say to
them? We think the tone of lay feeling is plainly
such as would hazard the rejection of the most
reasonable proposals, not to say ensure contempt
of all that savoured of ecclesiastical ambition and
selfishness.

To meet this danger (and from their own
Church principles also), Archdeacon HARE, and
other men of the better class, urged the
Convocation to a distinct acknowledgment of the
right of laymen to form part of any Convoca-
tion. Of course, it was promptly rejected ;
but it was justly observed, that such a
proposition would tend most decidedly to
the separation of Church and State ; since it would
constitute two bodies of laymen—the Houses
of Parliament and the Convocation—legislators
for the Church—" There would be a representa-
tive body of the clergy and laity apart from the
national representation."

hNoawtieovnealr, clearv—ernamNenatti.onall
It must
must n One
haveiaet i as,
bear the spiritual disadvantages as well as enjoy
the temporal advantages of its position. The
Government of this country is now composed,
like the country itself, of men of every variety
of religious belief. They find amongst the institu-
tions of the country one Christian denomination,
larger than any other taken singly, adopted by
the nation as the Church which it
supports ;
but they find also that its bishops are taken into
the higher branch of the Legislature, and all
power in the Church confided to the Supreme
Magistrate of the Kingdom, and to the grand
Council of the Nation. This acceptance of sup-
port, and this surrender of power they have
always deemed correlative, and indispensable to
the carrying on of government. In that opinion
all history and all experience has confirmed the laity
of England. The dissenting portion of the com-
munity would not endure, for a single Session, a
self-governed sect in the possession of national
revenues to the amount, taking everything into con-
sideration, of nearly ten millions a-year. States-
men would never tolerate such a corporation.
Half the Episcopalian laity would themselves re-
volt, and the consummation of Convocational in-
dependence would certainly prove the utter ruin
of the Establishment.

RUMOURED BETROTHMENT OF THE PRINCESS ROYAL.
—The report gains consistency that Prince Frederick
William, the heir of the Prussian crown, is betrothed to
the Princess Royal of England. The Princess of Prussia,
mother of the prince, will make another visit to England
next spring.—Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung. [Prince
Frederick William, eldest son of the Prince of Prussia,
and nephew of the reigninc, monarch, was born October
18, 1831. The Princess Royal was born Nov. 21, 1840.]
HER MAJESTY'S OPPOSITION.—The character of the
present strange combination of political men, which
calls itself an Opposition, is strikingly un-English and
unfair. The one weapon made use of is deception. It
is used with considerable adroitness, and every variety
of fence, but still it is the same—deception.—Morning
Herald. _ _

THE SIX-MILE-BRIDGE AFFAIL—In the Court of
Queen's Bench, Dublin, yesterday, the Judges of the
Court of Queen's Bench unanimously rejected the motion
of the Attorney-General to quash the coroner's inquisi-
tion at Six-mile-bridge.