The Sun.
London, England, 1839-05-28 00:00:00

taxers. Does Sir ROBERT PEEL—do the Tories mean
to oppose this grant—and do they mean to patronise
ignorance that they may continue oppression ?
We believe they do, because Sir ROBERT himself
is as completely Priest-ridden as any habitual frequenter
of the confessional, who finds relief and consolation from
the forgiveness of Father SLATTERY, or any other
Catholic priest. The House did no other business.
To-morrow Mr. SHAW LEFEVRE will be presented at
the bar of the House of Lords to receive her MAJESTY'S
approbation.

Mr. SHAW LEFEVRE was yesterday elected
Speaker by such a majority as must convince
every one that the Government can undertake
nothing decisive in the way of legislation. Any
measure it might propose, which should offend
half a dozen of its followers, would again de-
stroy it. We did not, indeed, look for any
accession of strength to have accrued during
the holidays, nor do we know where it is now to
be immediately collected. It is only by operating on
the opinions of the public, by accumulating and con-
centrating the public demands on someone point, that
we can now hope to procure any further legislative
improvement. We must defeat the Tories in the coun-
try before we can conquer them in Parliament, and to
accomplish this object, the Liberal Ministry, the
Liberal Members of the House of Commons, and
the Liberal Press, must now direct its efforts.
Nothing, we repeat, can be done for Reform in a
House of Commons of which upwards of 300 are
Tories.

A system of active and malignant hostility, sus-
tained by unscrupulous falsehood, is levelled by all
he engines of the Tory party against the attempt,
imited and inadequate as it is, to initiate a system
of National Education in these countries. Because
the plan, in order to be universal, liberates the
children of Dissenters from the necessity of re-
ceiving lessons in a faith they disavow, from pastors
whose authority they disclaim, and supplies them
with the means of instruction according to the
religious tenets they conscientiously acknowledge,
from pastors whose authority they respect, the
plan is stigmatized as irreligious, and the nor-
mal school, proposed to be established for the
due instruction of teachers, is declared to be a
" nest of free-thinkers."
This was to be expected. Short-sighted, indeed,
must he be who, looking at the Tory faction,
could have hoped that any plan of ge-
neral education which would not violate
the consciences of Dissenters, could ever
be made acceptable to such a party.
Exclusive alike in politics and religion—fearful of
the advance of knowledge, as thieves dread the
approach of day—maintaining its power by repress-
ing public intelligence—coercing public opinion by
closing the avenues of instruction, through which
nations are enlightened and taught to value the
blessing of freedom, it is inherent in the nature of
such a party to oppose a desperate resistance to any
plan having the objects which are avowed in the
project now proposed.
The contrast between Great Britain and other
nations of Europe, with less pretension to an ad-
vanced state of civilization, has become too humili-
ating, and the general cry for a system of National
Education has consequently become too loud and
imperious to be safely resisted by those to whom,
secretly, such a measure is repugnant. Consequently
there is no party who will now venture openly to
oppose a general proposition for national instruc-
tion. But what they dare not openly and avowedly
resist, they artfully endeavour to thwart and
render abortive, by combining with it conditions
which they well know it will be impossible to ful-
fil. The condition on which they propose that
the child of the Dissenter shall be educated at the
national expense is, that that child shall at the
same time he instructed in a creed which its
parents disavow ; that it shall read a version of
the Scriptures which its parents disclaim ; and
that it shall be instructed by ministers, whose
authority its parents deny, in doctrines which its
parents abhor. The price to be exacted for educa-
tion is, therefore, apostacy. It is obvious that a
grant for National Education, subject to such a
condition, would be practically a grant for the
education of the communicants of the Church of
England only.
Unless the principle of religious intolerance be
admitted, unless the right of private judgment,
so prominently sustained and established at the
Reformation be abrogated, it is impossible to
defend the proposition that that portion of the
national revenues, to be applied by Parliament
to the instruction of the people, shall be
strictly limited to the instruction of those
who will consent to accept the doctrines of the
Church of England. The Dissenters and the Ro-
man Catholics contribute to the national revenue
by payment of taxes equally with the members of
the Established Church ; they equally contribute
to the support of the Establishment itself by the
payment of tithes ; they equally supply our army
and navy ; and are equally called on to discharge all
the duties of citizenship—in juries, in municipal
affairs, in the militia, in electoral constituencies.
They are part and parcel of the people at large, and
entitled to the consideration of the Legislature in a
degree and to an extent proportionate to their
numerical weight, by their contributions to wealth,
by their stake in the commercial, agricultural, and
manufacturing interests, and by their industry and
intelligence. Is it, then, consistent with any ge-
neral principles of equity, or with the spirit of
our Liberal Constitution, that so large a sec-
tion of the people should be held responsi-
ble for the fulfilment of the duties and obliga-
tions of citizens, and yet be excluded from the
benefits of legislation on one of the most vitally im-
portant subjects within the province of legislation ?
Is it compatible even with the most vulgar notions
of justice that money should be exacted from Wes-
leyans and Catholics, from Unitarians, Socinians
and Jews, indiscriminately, to be expended for the
special advantage of the education of the members
of the Established Church, under the fraudulen

title of a national grant as a means for advancing
the general improvement and civilization of the
people ? It is at present proposed to make a grant
of public money for the construction of Railways
through Ireland. What would be thought of him
who would propose as the condition of such a grant
that none but members of the Established Church
should be permitted to travel upon such Railways,
or enjoy the advantage of intercommunication which
they would afford ? And if this be admitted to be
a monstrous and ridiculous stretch of despotism in
reference to a Railway, how much more monstrous
and more indefensible must a similar condition be
in reference to the moral and intellectual improve-
ment of the people ?
In short, what is wanted, and what cannot long
he withheld, is some adequate and efficient means
of universal instruction, available for the whole po-
pulation of this great nation, proportionate to the
position among civilized countries which England
has assumed—that amount of knowledge which is
the right of a free people, that amount of in-
struction which is necessary for the wholesome
exercise of those political rights which such a
people enjoy, and that instruction must be sup-
plied and administered in a manner compatible
with perfect freedom of conscience in religion.

The fanatical party in the Church of Scotland
are now
.beginning to feel the effects of their rash
and stupid interference with the civil power. They
are compelled, by the recent decision of the A uch-
terarder case in the House of Lords, to retrace
their steps, and this they are loath, very loath to
do. Dr. COOK, a man of learning, and possessing
that which is far better than learning, a great store
of good sense, proposed that the Church, having
been defeated in her late ungrateful attack upon her
creator, the State, should retire at once to the safe
position which she occupied before the commence-
ment of hostilities. This was sound advice,
but it was too humiliating to the pride of
the sticklers for the independence (!) of
ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The men who had
boasted that the General Assembly of the
Cl.urch of Scotland was amenable for its acts to no
earthly tribunal, had no head but JESUS CHRIST,
and, in dealing with the interests of patrons, pa-
rishioners, and licentiates, might do just what it liked
with its own—the men who had put forth and acted
upon these high pretensions, found an inexpressible
awkwardness in acknowledging that they had been
all the while labouring. under a delusion of their
own imagination, which had vanished before the
decision of the House of Lords. It was a practical
exemplification of the bathos, painful beyond mea-
sure to those aspiring spirits to whom " descent and
fall is adverse." Yet how to escape from the dilem-
ma in which their headstrong folly had placed them,
without appearing, on the one hand, to set the now I