The Sun.
London, England, 1837-05-02 00:00:00

"

the Royal Assent shall have been given to it, and from
that at which any one member of the Establishment
shall have breathed his last. The present Bill in an-
other point is an aggravation of the former one. In-
chiding bishops, chapters, and parochial clergy within
its ravages, it acts upon a gross income of, perhaps
500,0001. per annum. It transfers, therefore, at 10
pelt cent., 50,0001., a-year from the Protestant Church
directly into the hands of the Papists—whereas the
sum calculated upon as derivable from the " appropria-
tion surplus" under the former Bill would not at the
end of 43 years have exceeded 30,0001. per annum, if
it amounted to half §o much, as the extortion of the
Papists from the Protestant clergy, by way of a
fund for educating " the people." It is something
worse still, this measure of Lord Morpeth. It is
a robbery, covered by a downright fraud. The pre-
tence is, that by the 28th Henry the Eighth,
each parochial clergyman was enjoined to support
and superintend a school for teaching English to
the poor parishioners—a law which was confirmed
by certain Acts of Elizabeth and William 111., and
therefore that the present Ministers now, after
140 years, from the latest of those Acts of Parlia-
ment, are justified in reviving the original , law of
Henry VIII., and re-establishing, at the cost of the
Protestant incumbent, a school in every parish. But
what is the fact ? The above laws, from that of
Henry downwards, had for their manifest purpose the
cultivation of the English language, the inculcation of
English spmpathies and feelings amongst an alien
people, and the diffusion and prevalence of the Pro-
testant faith. Is there anything approaching to such
objects in the tiew with which Lord Morpeth and the
Melbourne Cabinet have insisted on the revival of the
Act of Henry ? They would establish schools at the
charge of the Protestant Clergymen ; but not to be
superintended by the Protestant Clergymen, not for
making Englishmen of the people, not for
extending the reformed religion, but for the reverse of
all these things. The priest is to be the treasurer, the
auditor, the director, and the teacher ; the pupils are
to imbibe fresh draughts of enmity to England, and of
blind adhesion to Popery, from this fresh plunder of
the Established Church. The new Bill, therefore, is in
such respects more iniquitous and more insulting than
the old. Lords J. Russel and Morpeth, Messrs.
O'Connell and Shiel, have one and all declared, that
in their next attempt upon the Church—meaning the
present one—they must so frame it as to satisfy an
increased measure of animosity in their partizans to-
wards the Protestant Clergy, and of exaction from their
;:roperty. The Noble Lords and the Papist agitators
have carefully kept their word. This Bill is more im-
regnated than any which went before it- with hatred,
robbery, and ruin to the Irish branch of the Church
of England. But it will not speedily find a place
among the laws of the British Empire, and the Minis-
ter 3 know it well. They have obviously planned a
double imposition. With their Radical supporters
tiw; mean to pass it eff for an appropriation clause
more vigorous and perfect than any former. T. thy
Conservatives, on the other hand, they exclaim—
" You cannot call this an indefinite appropriation
clause for general purposes of popular instruction ; it
is iinly a sort of petty larceny scheme, confined within
in.! ;Units of each particular parish ; how can von
think of opposing that which pleads on its own bebop
a precedtmt so applicable, so modern, so very-parallel,
vt,ry pat,- as the 28th of Henry VIII., for teaching
the English tongue to barbarians who knew nothing of
it, and for imbuing with the principles of the reformed
faith a multitude who had in reality no religion."—

-
It is not within our remembrance to have known
such unnecessary and uncalled for attacks as those
-.vhich have been made upon Mr. O'Connell on account
of his opposition to the establishment of Poor-laws in
Ireland. To read the comments which have been
made upon the admirable and unanswerable speech
which he delivered on the subject, a stranger to the
.conduct which he has pursued upon all other ques-
ticus connected with Irish interests, would naturally
infe.- that he opposed a system of Poor-laws because
Poor-laws were as unpopular in Ireland as they arc
unquestionably incapable of eradicating the number-
] ss evils under which that country has laboured so
Jong and so patiently. But the reverse is the fact.
There is a rabid, and we must add, a most foolish
mania among the majority of the people of Ireland
for the introduction into that country of the same sys-
tem of Poor-law relief which exists in this country ;
and it does the highest honour to Mr. O'Connell,
whether right or wrong in his opposition, that he' has
fad the courage to come forward, at the risk of all his
popularity and all his influence, to denounce a measure
which he conceives to be injurious to his country. If
ever, in fact, he deserved great credit for downright
sense and honesty of purpose upon any one occasion
more than upon another, it is upon this question of
Poor Laws. He has braved what we deem to be the
false opinions of his countrymen—he has risked his
popularity and self-interest with them—he has stood
forward single-handed against all, in defence of opi-
nions which we deem to be founded in truth and jus-
tice, and we unhesitatingly declare, notwithstanding
our previous censure of Mr. O'Connell's conduct, that
in this instance he deserves the highest credit for his
opposition. With regard to the question itself it is
now scarcely worth a moment's consideration. It is
determined that it shall be carried, and it would be
useless to waste words in attempting to defeat it. We
beg, however, to record our opposition to it, as a mea-
sure not only incapable of remedying the evils under
which Ireland labours, but as likely to produce a greater
degree of demoralization and misery than that which
now exists. The only, and the cheap remedy is, not
Poor-laws—not emigration—but employment, upon an
extensive and useful scale; and until this remedy be
applied, we despair of any practical and permanent im-
provement in the condition of the people.—Morning,:
Advertiser.
We feel persuaded that it never entered into'in-
tention of any of our law reformers that while they
were framing statutes for the mitigation of the san-
guinary but ineffectual punishments of our penal code,
the country or the accused should therefore lose the be-
nefit of trial by the King's judges. Yet such has now
become the practice, and uninformed country magis-
trates, under the guidance of a chairman, often but little
better. informed than themselves, actually at their dif-

fetent sessions hold gaol deliveries, at which they try
nearly every species of offence heretofore consigned to
' the judges of assize. We have so frequently pointed
out the evil arising from city judges in the metropolis
doing the same thing, that we would advert to it here
as forming part and parcel of a system calculated to
defeat the ends of justice, by undermining the respect,
the confidence, and the awe with which the country
has been used to look up to the learning, the independ-
ence, and integrity which surrounded the ermine of the
Judge. The Bills now before Parliament for the still
further mitigation of the penal code, are calculated

greatly to increase this evil, unless some one has the
%courage to interpose, and insist upon some general
evactment, whereby the powers of unlettered judges
shall be circumscribed, and heinous and complicated
ofrences, as heretofore, handed over to the competent
and responsible Judges of Westminster Hall. There is,
indeed, a Bill now passing through the House of Com-
mons (called, we believe, by the singular designation
of the " Judges' Opinions Bill,"), which at once ac-
knowledges the evil, and professes in some degree to
remedy it. By this Bill, if the point in any criminal
case tried at the Quarter Sessions be too knotty for the
Chairman to, decide, he may, in case of conviction, ar-
rest the judgment till the opinion of the last-going
Judge of Assize can be taken ; or, if the latter think
the point doubtful, and important enough, till lie has
referred it to the whole body. We want no better ar-
gument in favour of the view which we arc taking, and
of the necessity of Judges being competent to their
duty in the first instance, than the manifest acknow-
ledgment of incompetency in which their measure
is founded. In every case the Judge should be
equal to his business, and, among other things,
competent to cope with the bar, especially under
the enlarged powers which the Prisoners' Council
Bill has assigned to the latter ; nor is it any im-
peachment of their credit or understanding, to as-
sume that there is scarcely one Chairman of Sessions in
20 who can have had the education which qualifies
Jinn for his pest, as its duties are now increased, or
ambles him to sift the truth from the subtilty of the
,raAised pleader. For this undesirable state of things

two remedies exist—the one, that of confining the
Sessions to the trial of minor offences as heretofore—
the other by appointing competent paid Chairmen to
do the duty, if the Judges (which is by no means
certain) are unable to perform it. We wish we could
see some of the many lawyers, who are now in both
Houses of Parliament, take up this subject on the
high constitutional grounds which its importance de-
mands. Their not doing so is one proof among many
of their inutility in one, at least, of those assemblies.
We are not without hopes, however, that the evil is
arriving at a point at which it will cure itself, and that
the self-acknowledged absurtiity of seeing the highest
functions of the law consigned to persons who are
avowedly ignorant of it, cannot long disgrace an age
and a community, so enlightened as ours.—Morning
Herald.

For a very considerable period it has been known,
and, indeed, we announced the fact very distinctly
nearly a year ago, that Ministers, with the consent of
their Roman Catholic supporters, had made up their
minds to give up the appropriation principle at the
earliest possible opportunity. We believe that it was
seriously in contemplation to renounce the principle at
the period to which we allude, and that the step was
only delayed by the painful consciousness that the
public recollection of the means by which Ministers
had forced themselves into office was yet too fresh to
admit the hope that such an example of profligate ter-
giversation would be patiently endured. Ministers and
their Roman Catholic confederates have, accordingly,
for many months been coquetting with a principle
which, when it opened the way to place, was deemed
of so much importance that a resolution of the House
of Commons was obtained, after a solemn and pro-
tracted debate, pronouncing it a sine qua non of any
settlement of the tithe question in Ireland. In the
meanwhile the anti-tithe war in Ireland has proceeded,
with no other check or impediment than that in-
terposed by honest and upright Judges, administer-
ing the law with fearless fidelity, in spite of the
frowns and discouragements of the executive power ;
in the meanwhile religious animosity and civil discord
have spread throughout the land, the law has been re-
sisted, and in many instances overpowered and de-
graded, and murders of the most appalling barbarity
have been committed, merely because, as it now seems,
Ministers did not feel that a decent interval had elapsed
between the assertion of the unjust and inadmissible
principle by means of which they had crawled into
place, and the final abandonment of that principle. If
will be a source of satisfaction, however, to all the
friends of the Protestant Church, and of the peace and
welfare of Ireland, that Ministers have at length found
courage to come forward, and say that the recognition
of the principle of appropriating part of the revenues
of the Church to secular purposes is no longer an es-
sential part of any adjustment of the question of Irish
Tithe. That this is now the opinion of Ministers we
collect, and it is nearly all that we can collect, from
the confused and unintelligible speech delivered by Lord
MOrpetli last night to the House of Commons in
Committee, on introducing a resolution to the effect

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY, MAY 2, 1837.