The Sun.
London, England, 1839-12-07 00:00:00

attack, looks almost as ridiculous as making it. Never-
theless to this folly we are driven whenever we notice
1 the charges of the Hanoverian Opposition. But
really we cannot disgrace ourselves in this manner
much longer. Can those persons who consult our co-
lumns be long content with seeing them taken up with
elaborate reasonings to prove that Lord Lansdowne
is not an infidel because he says that no supernatural
being will spare us the trouble of providing a shheine
of national education ; or that Prince Albert is not
a Catholic because certain words, altogether unne-
cessary, were omitted in the Queen's announce-
ment to the Privy Council, though they hap-
pened to have been used by George the Third on a
similar occasion ? Our readers, we are sure, will ab-
solve us from any more of this humiliating penance ; and
we will content ourselves with commenting upon the
general tendency of the tactics and
metelanguage employed
by our Tory contemporaries. Of course is, their
eleventh hour, when all other schemes have failed, it is
high time to raise the good Church cries; of course, there-
fore, misrepresentation must not be spared, nor language
the most inflammatory and the most exasperating.
Of course, first and foremost, the " No Popery"
banner must be unfurled ; and of course it must be
entrusted to the especial protection of the paper and the
priest, that to the most plentiful qualifications of viru-
lence and unscrupulousness add the peculiar charm
of being the most deeply compromised and most
marked renegades. This is a very natural commence-
ment, but it is to the end of all this that we wish to
direct the thoughts of those who have at heart the
peace and prosperity of their country. The history
of every nation—and unhappily our own as emphati-
cally as any—teaches that the agitation of religious
questions is conducted with more violence, and more
danger, than that of the wildest or widest organic
changes ever contemplated even by Chartism. Are
we then, after all this experience, to embark again
on this frightful struggle ? We are on the brink of
it. The Tories are hallooing on to it. There is no
disguise about them. Some openly declare for the repeal
of the Catholic Emancipation Act. Others, somewhat
more moderate, would be content that it should remain
a law ; but would insist on the Catholics deriving no
benefit from it. And all this for what ? Because Mr.
Sheil is made a Privy Councillor, and because it was
proposed that Catholics should be permitted to read
their own version of the Scriptures at a Normal school.
Now, supposing Mr. Sheil were animated with all the
malignant spirit of a Phillpots, what harm could lie do
Does any man of sense suppose that he would turn
the Privy Council into a monastery, or that in his
capacity of Vice-President of the Board of Trade he
could facilitate exports of Protestantism and imports of
Popery ? Yet such arc the necessities of the Tories,
that unless they do believe all this, their outcry is as
unmeaning as it is false.
(From the Courier.)
Certain articles have appeared of late, it seems, in
some hitherto unheard-of periodical, called the Church
of England Magazine, the tenor of which has been to
malign that loyal and irreproachable body of our fellow
countrymen, the followers of John Wesley, generally
known as Methodists. The object of the calumniator
has evidently been to achieve a discreditable notoriety
for this last of several speculative abortions of the press,
in the unenviable pursuit of which he has been hailed
and helped with all the congenial sympathy and
ardour of those Ministerial hirelings who have re-
cently rendered themselves so disgracefully conspicuous
by their skulking slanders, amongst the rest, of that
illustrious personage the Duke of Wellington, the man
who, beyond all others, whether in his private or public
life, has realised the eulogy of Bayard, as one sans pcnr
et sans reproche. The base intent of these profligate
compatriots, if not collaborateurs, of the Paul Prys and
other vermin of the streets, is doubtless, since they can
find so little to exalt in the characters of their own pa-
trons, to drag down all above them to the level of the
filth of their own kennel. It is in this sense, and with
these views, that this miscellany of envy, hatred, and
malice, to which the title Church of England Magazine
is affixed, by way of desecrating the Church we presume,
has been eagerly dragged from its obscurity, and with
evident obliquity of purpose paraded and upheld, as the
authorized representative of the Church, by which it is
repudiated equally with the same pity and contempt with
which the habitual defamers of the national, as of all re-
ligion, among the Ministerial press, are themselves re-
garded. When the heads of that venerable Church shall
have rewarded with preferments and distinguished with
dignities the scurrilous libellers of Methodism, it will
be time enough to challenge the unknown magazine
as their organ ; upon the same principle that the pub-
lication of a periodical of the Newport school of trea-
son might be accepted as the special organ and confes•
sion of faith of Lord John Russell, who invested Frost,
the teacher in chief, with authority and honour—that
unhappy criminal whose death-warrant Lord John may
come to sign himself with the same hand which ratified
his former elevation to the magistracy.
(From the Standard.)
There may be found in the collected works of Swift
" a Treatise upon Political Lying," generally ascribed to
Dr. Arbuthnot, though it is supposedto have been revised
by the Dean. This work seems to be the constant study
of Lord Melbourne's retainers. The writer of the treatise,
classes the proper kinds of lies to be employed upon
particular occasions, and it would be extremely easy
to illustrate each class by examples taken from
the Whig-Radical Newpapers of the present day,
for instance, " the enormous lie," or, as Ar-
buthnot calls it, ', the proof lie." " A proof
lie" is like a proof charge for a piece oP
ordnance to try a standard credulity. Of such a
nature he takes transubstantion to be in the Church of
Rome—a proof article which, if any one swallows, they
are sure he will digest everything else, therefore the
Whig party do wisely to try the credulity of the
people, sometimes by swingers, that they may be
able to judge to what height they may charge them
afterwards : of " such swingers," the " Hanover lie"
at the Queen's accession, and the lie that the Duke of
Wellington and Sir Robert Peel, meant to poison the
Queen—a lie only a few months old—are specimens such
as Arbuthnot or Swift could scarcely have conceived.
Swift, however, in other parts of his works confesses
that mere lying will not serve all the purposes of a
faction, observing that ingenious misrepresentation
is often the most efficacious form of pseudology—
of misrepresentation he gives many examples to
show that, either by subtle construction or metapho-
rical application, or a transposition of letters such as
the Cabalists call Gematria, any words may be
made to afford any meaning ; we may mention " our
brother Tom, &c.," where a communication of a kins-
man's malady is made to constitute a confession of
a treasonable plot. The best known example is, how-
ever, the " Key to the Lock," proving beyond all
contradiction the dangerous tendency of the poem
called " The Rape of the Lock" to government and
religion. We need scarcely remind any one that
this key clearly proves that Belinda means Great Bri-
tain or Queen Anne, the Lock " the Barrier treaty,"
the Baron who cuts off the Lock, Harley, Earl of Ox-
ford, Clarissa, Lady Masham, Thalestris,Sarah Duchess
of Marlborough, Sir Plume, Prince Eugene, &c., &c.
Our Contemporary the Morning Chronicle has this day
an article upon Mr. Roby's letter in yesterday's
Standard, which clearly proves the Whig-Radical
writers are no less adepts in the subtle construction
and in Gematria, by which words are bent from their
plain meaning, than in the use of " the proof lie."

ANOTHER FEMALE SA ILOR.—The following
romance of low life is given by the Journal du Havre :
Josephine Fleury, a native of Brettiville, has been
recently committed to prison at Cherbourg for having
robbed her master and mistress at M.ontaign-le-Bois.
At sixteen she assumed male attire, and hired herself
as a servant at Cerences, but in the summer left this
employment, and embarked at Granville as a sailor in
a vessel engaged in the Newfoundland cod fishery. For
sixteen years she led the same life, being alter-
nately a servant in winter and a sailor in sum-
mer. She at length became tired of this mode
of living, and lived for four years as a servant at
Brehat. From thence she engaged herself as a wood-
cutter in the forest of Gavray. In a quarrel in a public-
house she wounded a man severely, and, being brought
in consequence before the Correctional Tribunal, was
sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment. During her
confinement her sex was discovered. On her discharge,
a year and a half ago, she hired herself to do day's
work at Montaign-les-Bois, where she has fallen into
hor present scrape. Josephine's complexion is com-
pletely bronzed by exposure to all weathers, and she has
small whiskers."
BIRMINGHAM, DEC. 2.-- CAPTURE OF
EIGHTY-FOUR DOG-FIGHTERS BY THE BIRMINGHAM
POLICE AND THE OFFICERS OF THE ANIMALS'
FRIEND SOClETY.—lnformation having been obtained
that a dog-fight was to take place this day, at the pit
in Fox-street, precautionary measures were taken by
the Animals' Friend Society's agent and the Birming-
ham Secretary, to secure the aid of the police ; and it
having been ascertained that the fighting had corn-
' menced this morning, a strong party of police, under
the direction of Mr. Shaw, the Superintendent, and
several inspectors, &c., were marched to the scene of
action. Having obtained admission the whole of the
parties present were apprehended, and having been
secured by handcuffs, two-and-tvvo, and a long rope
passed between the whole, they were marched to the
police-office, where the Mayor and Magistrates were
sitting. The two principals, John Strotton, file-cutter,
and George Hyam, were brought up and charged with
the offence, which being proved, they were fined 20s.
each, and Bs. 6d. costs each, and in default of payment
sentenced to fourteen days' hard labour in the House
of Correction. John Statham and Hughes were
also charged with being present ; the former had been
repeatedly charged with the same offence, and once con-
victed
bad
Birmingham,tedigner-baitnz but the record of his conviction
for'
in Staffordshire could not, on so
short a notice, be produced. The other prisoner
Hughes had been twice convicted for cruelty to animals,
but as it did not appear that the prisoners had, in this
instance, taken any active part in the business, Statham
was fined only 20s. and costs, and Hughes was dis-
t missed with a caution for the future.