The Sun.
London, England, 1839-12-06 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

YROH THE I:FINING PAPERS OF TIETERDAF.

(From the Globe.)
Were we required to specify any one act of the legisla-
ture more imperatively necessary for the social im-
provement of the nation, and in which all classes of
the community were likely to concur in opinion respect-
ing its necessity and to agree in complying with its
provisions, the Act for the better Registration of
Births, Marriages, and Deaths in England and Wales
would be selected by us. The parochial registries were
notoriously ill-kept and insecure. Entrusted as they
were generally in country parishes to the custody of
the parish elerk, often in no higher walk of life than
an agricultural labourer, ignorance or neglect fre-
quently caused inaccuracies or omissions fatal to the
very purposes for which the registry was required.
How often in courts of law has the rightful heir to pro-
perty been defeated in a suit to recover his right by some
omission or inaccuracy in the registry, which, if kept with
care and preserved with vigilance, would have esta-
blished his identity, and confirmed his claim ! Nor were
the cases few in which forgery was practised with the
registry to support false or to defeat valid claims. The
rrds of our courts of law abound with instances of
si frauds, the detection of which illustrated the evil
and established the necessity of providing for the records
of births, marriages, and deaths by an uniform
and secure system, which should at once supply what
had never before been attained, certainty in the entry,
correctness in its dates and other particulars, and
security against the possibility of any fraud by the alte-
rations or interpolations to which parish registries were
liable, and were known to have extensively undergone.
The institution of a new system of registration contem-
plated still higher objects. The solution of many
questions depending on the duration of human life, and
the assistance which correct population returns would
afford to the physician, the philanthropist, and the le-
gislator, in their respective efforts to apply remedies for
the physical, moral, and social maladies of the popula-
tion, rendered the introduction of a new system an im-
important era in statistical annals, and hid supplied what
nothing but legislative authority could have obtained.
One circumstance has damped the satisfaction which other-
wise, would have been universal. The clergy, in many
instances, have set themselves to impede the benevo-
lent design of the State. Instead of explaining its
objects, and using their highly favourable position in
their respective parishes to induce a compliance with the
requisitions of the law, they allowed unworthy jea-
lousies of what they considered an interference by the
State with the functions of the Church to operate.

(From the Courier.) -
A Correspondent inquires whether flag transfer of
Lord John Russell from the Hom• to the Colonial
Office vacates the Noble Lord's seat in the House of
Commons? Without expressing any opinion on the
question of whether such a change of office ought to
render it necessary for the Government functionary to
appeal to his constituents for a confirmation of their
previous election of him as their representative in Par-
liament, we believe that the constitutional rule of the
House of Commons does not operate in the present
case. The appointment of the Secretaries of State by
the Crown does not distingush the separate duties of the
three Secretaries ; that is a matter of arrange-
ment among themselves. The warrant of the Crown
invests the individual with the rank and duties of one of
" Her Majesty's Secretaries of State." Custom and the
multiplicity of affairs have assigned to these Secretaries
of the Crown the distinct offices of Home, Colo-
nial, and Foreign Affairs : but the appointment of the
three remains still in it's entirety as an appoint-
ment of one or more for a single duty—that of the
Secretarial department of the Queen's Government.
We apprehend, therefore, that the assumption by one
of the Secretaries of State of the particular duties per-
formed by another of the three, does not come with-
in the Parliamentary rule to which we have before
adverted, which causes the vacation of his seat by a
Member on his appointment to certain offices
under the Crown. In the present case Lord
John Russell is not appointed by the Crown to the
office of Secretary for Colonial Affairs ; he has already
been appointed to the Department which includes the
affairs of the Colonies within its functions. Whether
it is expedient that the Department of the Secretaries
of State should be thus exempt from the rule of Par-
liament applicable to other appointments, is quite
another question, which we do not consider it neces-
sary at this moment, to discuss. Our present object is
to state the facts of the case for the information of our
readers.

(From the Standard.)
On Tuesday we cited the conduct of Ministers and
of their press towards the Church and the agricul-
tural interest, as proofs of the treachery of those
Ministers who, with the words of friendship on their
lips, prompted their underlings to the most bitter
hostility. Our purpose was, as we stated at the
time, to warn all classes against the perfidy of the
men in office, by an exposure of their practice in the only
cases in which perfidy seems to promise to them any
present advantage. This was asserting no other con
nection between the Church and the agricultural inte-
rest than must always exist between the parties exposed
to a common danger—a danger so common that we
warned all classes against it, by showing how it threatened
the immediate objects of attack. In a word, we sought to
show to our countrymen that the Ministers are false and
' treacherous in all their professions, by showing how they
act by the classes which only they can at present
deceive and betray with advantage to themselves.
These two classes happen to be the Church and the
agricultural interest. If there is wrong in placing
these classes together, the wrong begins not with us,
but with the Ministerial Journals, which fill their
columns day after day with attacks upon the one and
the other—and with the Ministers, who, while they
prompt these attacks by their press, would associate the
two classes as the victims of an impartial treachery.
So much it is proper for us to say in reply to the
attempt of a Ministerial journal to fix upon us the
blame (whatever it is) of having identified the cause
of the Church with the cause of British agriculture.
We never identified those causes : we used the con-
duct of Ministers merely as one would use the evi-
dence that a reputed thief had picked first the
pocket of A., then of 8., then of C., to establish
the justice of his reputation, as such evidence
would, though A., 8., and C. were total strangers to one
another. It was impossible for any one who was not blind,
and who weaned honestly, to take any other view of our
argument. The party with whom we have to deal, how-
ever, labours under the twofold malady of dimsightedness
anddishonesty, diseases more sociable than many think,as,
happily for mankind, clear heads are commonly accom-
panied by honest dispositions ; or, to put the proposi-
tion in a more just and useful form, the honest disposi-
tion has a powerful influence in making the head clear.