The Sun.
London, England, 1837-03-10 00:00:00

on ecclesiastical persons in the letting of their lands.
Nobody but Lord Ashburton entertains a doubt of
that ; and if the Legislature thinks fit to remove
those restrictions which it formerly created, what
wonder that an improved rental must necessarily
be the result. Sir Robert Inglis understands the
question much better than Lord Ashburton : he
does not deny the certainty of a great increase, but he
would keep it all for the Bishops ; or if he could not
save it from them, it would cost him a less severe pang
to see it bestowed on new endowments. The lessees,
on the other hand, think this surplus belongs to them
at least as much as to the Bishops. Another party is
not slow to say that the whole is the property of the
State, and may be applied to any purpose for which the
State needs money. Ministers think that the property
of the Church cannot be better employed than in root-
ing out a scandal from the Church, and by an equal and
intermediate course they combine private benefit with the
public good. Nor should the lessees forget what their
real condition is. They may talk, indeed, loudly of te-
nant right, and moral obligation ; but have they never
heard of such things as concurrent leases ? Do they
not know that therc is a growing disposition among
Bishops and Chapters to grant harder terms, and run
their lives against their lessees, which nobody can
dispute their power to do. Every penny which the
Church realises in this manner is lost irrecoverably to
the lessees ; to whatever purpose the surplus revenues
in the hands of the Church may at any time be des-
tined, it is certain that nobody will think of restoring
anything to them. We could mention an instance of
one collegiate body, among others, which in the course
of the last twelve years has increased many of its re-
served rents eight-fold, with a laudable regard to the
interests of their successors, but with little com-
miseration for the diminished security of their tenants.
The children of this generation are wiser than the
children of light, and it is well known that " Simon of
Gloucester and Leoline the Monk," however they may
dispute among themselves, have come to a common
resolution not to allow themselves any longer to be
hoodwinked. We leave the application of these re-
marks to those whom it may concern.—Morning
Chronicle.

We are not very rash in asserting that the mass of
trickery, robbery, and absurdity, known by the name
of the Anti-Church-rate Bill, received yesterday its
quietus in the Upper House of Parliament. Nothing
could be more complete, nothing more picturesque,
than the proceeding by which it is quite clear to us
that the above consummation has been effected. The
Archbishop of Canterbury took the opportunity of pre-
senting a petition against the abolition of Church-rates
to deliver briefly, though pointedly and manfully, his
senthnente on that important subject. His Grace de-
clared that it was a Bill against the Church—a Bill
against the poor, who were perishing for want of
religious instruction—a Bill of spoliation upon the
rights of property—the commencement of a succession
of outrages npon the existence of the Church of
England—that it never should have his consent—
that, he spoke in the name and on behalf of fif-
teen Bishops, (all, or nearly all, who were now in
London), and who had unanimously expressed their
hostility to the Bill, and their determination to re-
by every lawful and justifiable method. But
that., is not the most curious part of the business,
lor ,:ht happiest illustration of those upright and
Jionotferible expedients to which the Melbourne Minis-
ters ,are prone to resort, when pinched by the cruel
emergencies of a position from which the people of
England would be unfeignedly happy to relieve them.
ale curiosity in the case was specified by the Arch-
!), .hop, who announced, in his customary temperate
and gentle manner, that although his Grace himself,
with three ocher Prelates, was named in the communi-
eat:on made it Ministers to Parliament as a Commis-
e:ioeer under the intended Bill, to execute its provi-
sion, the House of Lords or the country were not
tr, infer from such a false colouring flung over the
Ministerial policy, that the measure was brought for-
ward with the concurrence, or even with the privity, of
'him or any of his Right Rev. Brethren ; for he could
assure their Lordships that he neither concurred in it,
error was privy to it, and that nothing short of the coer-
cive 'po,,ver of an Act. of Parliament should force him
and
.his Right Rev. Colleagues to accept the office of
Onninissioners ! Now, this we take to be a tolerable
specimen of the delicacy, propriety, consideration, and
wisdom, with which these Brummagem Ministers un-
dertake their most " vital" measures. For Lord Mel-
bourne, who professed to feel concern (and we believe
truly) at the eneech of the Archbishop, we ourselves
are really both. grieved and ashamed. The speech of
the Archbishop, it is true, must have been a dose of
wormwood—we might almost have said hemlock—to
the Ministers'; and the only excuse for the indecent
language reported, we hope incorrectly, to have been
used by the Prime Minister in reply to his Grace is,
that Tie must have been thrown by the statement of the
most Reverend Prelate into alternate fits of stupor and
of rage, which betrayed themselves throughout his de-
meanour. That nothing could be snore seasonable,
opportune, or effective than the declaration of the most
Reverend Prelate of his hostility to the Bill, was plain
from the undisguised soreness of the Prime Minister,
who wondered, poor simple gentleman, why the Arch-
bishop had not waited until the Church spoliation bill
should have come formally before the House of Lords,
when he might have discussed it regularly. Now the
motive of his Grace for coming forward thus early, and,
for our parts, it would not have displeased us had he
taken even an earlier occasion to do so, was manifestly
to assist in preventing the Bill from ever entering the
House of Lords at all. His Grace, we think—and all
friends of the Church of England will agree with us—
was, by the influence of his high character and autho-
rity, in conjunction with those of the Right Rev.
Bench, bound to give such a tone to the feelings
and opinions of the country, and to represent the ru-
inous nature of the Bill so forcibly, that the House of
Commons should take the alarm in time, and choke
the monster even at its first coming into existence.
Lord Melbourne found that this task had been effec-
tually performed by the worthy Prelate—hence his
malapert vexation at what he called the Archbishop's
" premature" interference. It would doubtless have
been more convenient to Lord Melbourne, had
the Bill been suffered to pass undisturbed along
—had it met with no Conservatives but those in
the House of Commons to molest it after acquiring a
certain degree of strength, it had by the time of its
approach to the House of Peers become a tougher
and more formidable reptile. Hence, we say, Lord
Melbourne's anger—hence his boisterous assault upon
the Bishops,-as not being, in this instance, what they
ought to be, lovers of peace—hence the tautological
panegyric which he sputtered out upon the church
vobbery bill, that it would prove a means of peace,
tranquillity, harmony, and eoncord—hence, again, his
violent but childish threat that, in spite of the op-
position of the right rev. fathers of the Church of
Englund, nothing should prevent him from carrying
forward this disastrous measure, and pursuing the
course he had begun. The Bishop of London's cool
and stern, but self-possessed, answer to this tirade of
the Prime Minister, was one which the latter personage
will not soon forget. Lord Melbourne had been so foolish
and unmannerly as to charge the Archbishop with such
an imbecility of mind and purpose, as made him liable to
the suspicion of hiving been pushed on to the part
which he had taken by other persons of more guile than
himself. The Bishop of London did, indeed, allow
that they, the Bishops, had been induced to hasten
their announcement of opposition to the Bill by same-
thing which, if not guile, was very like unfair dealing
in certain parties. The Archbishop and Bishop of
London had been members of the Ecclesiastical Commis-
sion, together with Lord Melbourne and others of the
prevent Ministers, and had been charged to examine
the (expediency of some such legerdemain practices with
Church property as are proposed in the Anti-Church-
rate Bi,'l; but for the sake of ascertaining whether a
surplus, if discoverable, over the wants of Bishops and
Chapters, &c., might not be made available towards
increasing the comforts of the poorer Clergy, and
• towards enlarging the means of Church accommo-
dation for the poor. But the Report of that Commis-
sion, so com posed, partly of Whig Ministers, as afore-
seid, was, their such treatment of the Church property
w is both " ire. -cpedient and impracticable,"--inexpe-
diyilt and impracticable for purposes beneficial to the
Cli arch ; whereas it is now declared to be " expe-
dient and practicab.le" (the very same proceeding, be