The Sun.
London, England, 1839-12-05 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1839.

should have been decreed that no Cabinet Minis- I
ter, no Privy Councillor, no Member of the
House of Commons, should be of any
other religion than that of the Church
of England. In truth, the consistent men of the
Revolution of 1688 found that settled to their
hands, but the necessity which has arisen in our
time to abrogate the exclusions formerly imposed is
a decisive proof of the inutility, not to say folly,
of preserving that minor restriction as to the Queen
or the King, which is so carefully but uselessly
provided in the Bill of Rights and the Act of Set-
tlement. To hold up such a lifeless skeleton as a
Catholic King as a bugbear to the people, while
all substantial power is fled from the Crown, is quite
consistent with the deceptive and humbugging po-
licy which the Tories have always pursued, to the
injury of the country and their own debasement.

We are not sorry on other accounts to have the
public attention directed to the celebrated Bill of
Rights. Its declaration that the Sovereign should
forfeit the allegiance of the people by ever contract-
ing a matrimonial alliance with a Catholic, is said
by Mr. HALLAM to go as far as the Parliament
dared in declaring the bounds of allegiance. We
' have no doubt that the Whig Statesmen of that
day meant well ;
but it is obvious that this cele-
brated Bill was adapted only to the temporary
exigency of the occasion. Suspending the laws,
and endeavouring to restore Catholicism, were
the principal offences of JAMES, which had startled
and disgusted the nation, and against these the
Bill of Rights provided. But every one who reads
it now must be at once struck with the one-sided-
ness, the narrowness, the shallow insufficiency of
this Bill of Rights, absolving the nation of its
allegiance to the Sovereign on the single ground of
not belonging to one sect of Christians, while it does
not lay down any of those great principles, nor refer
to those gigantic grievances (such as were felt
in the reign of the first CHARLES, and such as had
driven the United Provinces to separate from Spain)
which prompt people to take up arms and justify
rebellion. The worse than insufficiency of this
celebrated Bill of Rights, becomes glaring when
we recollect that at present the Monarch who
is to forfeit the allegiance of his subjects for em-
bracing Roman Catholicism is the Sovereign of at
least eight million Catholics, and that sect of which
he must be a member, now appears to he a minority
of his whole people. Enough has been said of this
Bill of Rights to show that it must at all times have
been inadequate as a general law, unworthy of its
name, and wholly adapted to a temporary exi-
gency, while the change of circumstances since it was
enacted have reduced it to be something worse than an
unmeaning form. As it is now, and has been, perverted
by the Tories, it seems to us to resemble those
shifting points on railways, which, when the watch-
men neglect, or place them improperly, instead of
guiding the carriages successfully across any breaks
and difficulties, hurl them off the track, and hurry
carriages and passengers to destruction. So the
Tories would now misplace the Bill of Rights, and
force the nation, if they could, off the railroad of
improvement, to be buried in the quagmire of re-
ligious contention.

We yesterday made a few observations to show
that ever since the Tories have been known as a
party, they have opposed the improvement of so-
ciety, and have been disloyal to every sovereign
who has been the sign and symbol of improvement.
Their opposition to the present plans for the im-
provement of the people, their fierce hostility to
education except under the control of such, Church-
men as HENRY EXETER, their equally fierce ad-
vocacy of the Starvation Laws, are so continually
forced on the public attention that it is only neces-
sary for us to menti•n them to complete their cha-
racter. If they were not to patronise ignorance and
starvation they would not be Tories. If they were
not to uphold the arrogance of the priesthood, and
humiliate the people, they would act incon-
sistently with their principles. They are sensible
that knowledge would strip off' their garb of patri-
otism, and expos. them as selfish public enemies ;
and that prosperity would make the people impa-
tient of their yoke, and therefore they conspire, and
therefore they labour, to keep the people ignorant
and impoverished. Being out of office, we
can only judge of what their policy in office
would be by their professions in opposition.
Without one single exception they have thwarted
and opposed every plan for extending the liberties
and reducing the burdens of the people, and with-
out losing a single opportunity they have professed
an unbounded veneration for the priesthood, and a
profound contempt for the people. They demand
more rewards for the former and more coercion for
the latter. For them the Whigs neither give
enough to the priests, nor are severe enough for the
people. We have always been of opinion that the
Whigs have deferred a great deal too much to the
priests, and have had too little confidence in the
people ; and we can but look on the Tories, who
on both those points go much farther on the wrong
side than the Whigs, to be the worst enemies of so-
ciety. Such has ever been and still is the character
of the Tories.

We call the attention of our readers to another
sample of the wisdom and justice of a Metropo-
litan Alagistrate. It will be found in the report
from Hatton-garden Police Court. A respectable
publican is fined 30s. and costs for not expelling by
force two or three respectable tradesmen, who hap-
pened to remain in his house alter twelve o'clock

on Saturday night last. The policemen, who
were the informers, admitted that no house
could be better conducted—no proof was given
that liquor was served out after twelve—there
was no noise, or any one act committed that could
be injurious to the individuals themselves or the
public, yet they arc turned out of the place like
lawless vagabonds, and a fine is inflicted at the ca-
price of the Magistrate. We call it caprice. Other
Magistrates now refuse to fine under such circum-
stances. Witness the case at Bew-street the other
day, and also the just decision of Mr. BURRELL,
of Queen-square, who decided that he could not
punish a man for an act which no law described as
an offence. Why do not respectable publicans and
tradesmen combine against this unjust, illegal, and
tyrannical interference with the privacy of social
life ? It is contrary to law, and even if such a law
existed, it would be the duty of every Englishman
to rise up against an invasion of rights which is not
surpassed in Turkey or Egypt. The publicans are
grievously annoyed and oppressed by these domici-
liary visits and these illegal fines ; yet though they
have an organ of their own, it never sends forth a
blast against Magistrates, paid or unpaid, that de-
light in humbling them to the earth.

We took occasion, a few days ago, in consequence
of a number of convictions before the _Magistrates
at Brentford, to call public attention to the cruel
and scandalous frauds which the smaller class of
dealers are in the habit of practising on the poor,
by means of false weights. It will be seen, by the
proceedings before the Magistrates of the Chelms-
ford district last week, a report of which will be
found in another part of the Paper, that this cry-
ing iniquity is not confined to one district. The
truth is, as we believe, that it is all but universal,
and we hope that both Inspectors and Magistrates
will do their duty in putting it down, the former by
keeping a vigilant eye upon the heartless offenders,
the latter by punishing
them
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The people of this great metropolis are not to
be defeated in their appreciation of public conduct
and public virtue by envious or selfish cliques or

clamourers. The meeting of yesterday at the Lon-
don Coffee-house, to present a testimonial to the
late LORD MAYOR, proves that Mr. Alderman
WILSON iS unquestionably one of the most un-
daunted and persevering Reformers that for many
years have filled the civic chair. We do not use
the term Reformer in a party sense, we use it in
the sense in which it is above all party, in which
it is connected with the public good—with getting
rid of great abuses, whether the same be supported
by a LONDONDERRY 011 the one side, or a LA3IB-
TON on the other—in denouncing corrup-
tion, defying monopoly, and throwing the
shield of office and authority over the
destitute and the helpless, no matter
who may be their assailants or oppressors. In this
respect the late LORD MAYOR is a Reformer—no
matter the political party to which he may attach
himself, if he attach himself to any—a circumstance
which no man could discover by any act of his
Mayoralty. Like the character in MOLIERE, who
found he had been talking prose all his life, without
knowing it, Alderman WILSON has been a Re-
former all his life, without knowing it. One such
practical man is worth a thousand chatterers in
favour of theories, who only illustrate the saying of
BACON that " measures without men are dead
images." It appears, however, that among the
Common Council and Aldermanic patriots, Alder-
man WILSON is by no means a favourite. By his
vigorous and searching exposure of abuses, and de-
nunciation of monopolies, he has disturbed the quiet
and easy way of going through the high office he
held, and set an example which few will have the
nerve to follow, and still fewer the inclination.
Besides, in distributing the hospitality of the Man-
sion House, he did not confine it to a favoured
clique of the City Senate, or invite only their
wives, to the exclusion of many other ladies who,
being comparative strangers to civic feasts, had an
opportunity during his Mayoralty of participating
in the good things of the Mansion House. Really,
these are miserable grounds of opposition to ser-
vices which the gentleman at the London Coffee-
house have recorded and are about to reward.

We see by the Bombay papers received yester-
day, that the pious pastors of the Anglo-Indian
Established Church in that Presidency, who, like
their brethren in every part of the world, pretend
with as much absolute certainty to an acquaintance
with the inscrutable decrees of the ETERNAL,as do the
seven-and-sixpenny cobbling and tailoring lecturers
in Divinity, who amuse the profane and scandalise
the religious hebdominally in Smithfield, and the
approaches to Hyde Park, have been making the
recent conquest of Cabool by the British army, the
subject of thanksgiving sermons from the pulpit.
This is another of the sad fruits of the so boasted
union between Church and State. To share in
the smiles of the dispensers of rich livings, and
high Ecclesiastical dignities, the professed ser-
vants and followers of the holy and the humble
ONE, whose birth was announced by the angelic
song of peace on earth to the human race, who
taught his disciples to love their enemies, to do
good to all, to offer the left cheek to the smiter upon
the right, and who forbade the shedding of blood un-
der any pretext whatsoever, come forward clothed in
the attributes of Ministers of His word, and from His
very temple impiously and sacriligiously glorify
GOD for the slaughter of an innocent and unoffend-
ing people, and for success in rendering their
country a scene of rapine and bloodshed I A
reader of the New Testament would suppose that
our Churchmen would regard war as they might be
supposed to do duelling, profanity, adultery, or
any other crime against Heaven, which, from the
proneness of human nature to sin, and their own in-
firmity, they found it impossible to eradicate ; that
they would take every occasion to discountenance
it openly, and in secret weep over such a violation
of the law of their Divine Master. But such a
reader, while judging naturally from a true know-
ledge of the duties of the priesthood, would
err most egregiously with respect to their actual
conduct. They are never so eloquent as when
celebrating from the pulpit some " patriotic"
slaughter of the human race. Tattered rags, me-
morials of our contempt for the peaceful doctrines
of the New Testament, ornament the interior of our
churches, where we are content to replace the em-
blems of saintly worship by those of international
enmity and hatred. A blood-stained banner, reminding
us that we ought to hate some neighbouring people,
replaces the image of the VIRGIN and CHILD,
and under this appropriate canopy the Minister of
the Gospel implores us to praise GOD for the pros-
tration of another foe I

This view of this very important subject is not
exclusively confined to this Journal. On the con-
trary, we are happy to find in the Bombay Gazette
the same sentiments expressed in somewhat diffe-

rent language. " For our own part we must con-
tend," says that Journal, alluding to a ser.

mon on the conquest of Cabool, delivered in
the Cathedral Church of Bombay, " that ser-

mons on the results of war, the termination of a

campaign, or the gaining of a victory, all which
transactions have occasioned a vast loss of life,
and brought about a great deal of misery, ought

never to proceed from the bps of those who cal
themselves the messengers of peace. We hold
to be an act of daring impiety to ascribe the suc.

cess that may attend the arms of a ♦ictor to the
favour of GOD ; and it is an insult to the Majesty
of Heaven to give thanks to GOD for enabling us
to slaughter a number of our fellow creatures.

The impiety and insult evinced by this conduc
arise from the rash attempt thereby made to break
into the mysteries of Divine Providence. In the
same way a robber, who has got clear off with
his booty, may thank GOD for his favour, and if
he be often successful in his pursuits, and
escape detection and punishment, he may take
his good luck as a sign of Heaven's approbation."
But no such scandals would be witnessed were
we not blessed with a State Religion ; or, in other
words with a Church whose ministers regard them-
selves as the spiritual staff of the Crown, to whose
countenance they constantly look for the enjoyment
of the lion's share of the spoil. They do not fight
themselves, but, like the Marquis of LONDON-
DERRY, they are to a man ready to prove that red
coats and black coats may march in opposite direc-
tions, and yet arrive simultaneously at the gates of
Paradise. Heaven decides, not by the merits of
redemption and acts, but by the colour of the gar-
ment. But the State priests go even further than
this. They consent to become bottle-holders in
the strife, and to chaunt in the temple of GOD
the praises of the victors who have trangressed his
laws. We are not here speaking of the abstract
question of the existence of wars in the world.

We are merely calling attention to the inconsis-
tency of the professions and the solemn profanity
of a priesthood, who at one moment inculcate the
maxims of the SAVIOUR, and recommend his

example to mankind, and they next set forth that
the " favour of Heaven is unerringly known by
the sharpness of our swords," and that the thunder
of battle, the groans of the dying, and the "steam
of a reeking and gory field " are among the most
pleasing objects of Divine contemplation.

The breaking out of the war in Africa occupies
r
almost exclusively the columns of the French Jour-
nals of Tuesday. Our readers will find, under the
proper
theyin another
supply
par
e
The Sun, all the
information
and unexpected affair. It appears that the conduct
of the war with ABD-EL-KADER is not to he eita
L ofiv to this disastrous
en-
trusted to Marshall VALLEE, notwithstanding the
extreme length of his despaches, detailing the bril-

Among

liant exploits of the Dui,e r)1. ORLEANS,
the candidates for that office we find the name o.
Marshal SOULT, but the King declined to appoint
him, as such a proceeding would break up the
Cabinet.

The ilfoniteur announces the arrest of one indi-
vidual suspected of being concerned in the affair of
the infernal machine explosion. He is stated to
have already made important revelations to the
Government.

SPAIN.—The Eco d'Az ragon of the 27th ult. states,
that the Queen's army continued to occupy the same po-
sition. According to its correspondence from Teruel
of the 21st, 200 men of a battalion of recruits, lately
formed by Cabrera, hail deserted to the Christinos, and
been partly incorporated with the corps of Piqueras,
which was formed at the opening of the campaign, for
the purpose of pursuing the Carlist bands of the pro-
vince. Brigadier Hoyos left Teruel on the 21st for
Valencia with four battalions ; and General Aspiroz, at
the head of eleven others,iwas at Alpuente. As he had
with him a large park of artillery, it was supposed that
be intended to lay siege to some strong place.
It may be remembered that M. Lerminier, the lec-
turer on comparative legislation, had been long pre-
vented from delivering hi 3 course at the College de
France by the opposition of the students, who regard
him as a renegade and lioninze vendu. On Monday M.
Lerminier attempted to commence his lectures, but was
again successfully put down by the hissing of 400 stu-
dents. A Commissioner of Police, with a picquet of
infantry and a detachment of the Municipal Guard, was
called in to clear the amphitheatre, which was done
without resorting to any violence. The Moniteur Pa-
risien announces that the Professor's lectures are pro-
visionally suspended.
The Marquis of Crouy Chenel and the Count Crouy
Chenel, his nephew, arrested on a suspicion of a Bona-
partist conspiracy, one object of which, it was said, was
to carry off Louis Philippe from the Chateau d'Eu, are
now definitively in prison for trial.
The Roman Government published an edict last
month, modifying its tariff in some respects. Mixed
stuffs pay the same now as silk. Woollen stuffs, in-
stead of from 40 to 60 scud' the 100 pounds, are to pay
but 30 scudi. Cotton stuffs, which paid 15 bayocchi
the pound, are to pay 12. The duty on linen and lace
is increased.

THE _MARKETS-, DAY.)

HUNGERFORD MARKET.
There were fair supplies to-day of most kinds, and there
was a good trade. Fish rather cheaper. Turbot Bs. to 30s.
Cod 3s. 6d. to 12s. Soles 9d. to 3s. 6d. per pair. Lobsters
10d. to 4s. Beef 7d. to gild. Veal Bd. to 9d. Pork 7d. to
Bd. Mutton 7d. to Bd. per lb. Prices of Vegetables were
rather looking up.