The Sun.
London, England, 1837-12-27 00:00:00

of the rents—not that the tenant in the long run
would be a gainer, but because the collection
would be less expensive, and the stnaller te-
nants would be saved from a great annoyance. It is
also objectionable—nav, absurd--to omit taking into
account the fine paid by the tenant for his house or
farm ; but in our humble opinion all these detail
might be satisfactorily arranged in Committee. Both
landlord and tenant will be benefitted by the Tithe
Bill and the Poor Law Bill. In the first, the charge
is to be thrown on the laNdlords, and if they consider
that as a disadvantage, they may naturally say why
should not the tenants be called upon to pay at least
a share of the rates imposed by the second ? This is
the great—the paramount objection of Mr. O'CON-
NELL to the Bill, and by far the best answer to it is
given by himself:—
" Thus the Ministry contradict themselves, and whilst they
advocate the placing other burdens on the rent and landlords,
they now insist upon throwing this burden on the occupiers
and residents.
4' Why should the Ministry violate their own principles, and
in this instance act in a way directly the reverse of that which
they pump, on other occasions ? I have no doubt that One
reason is, because, unless, they conciliated the landlords, they
would have no chance of passing the Bill through the House
of Lords." _ _

In other words, if the Government did not introduce
such a clause, we should never get a Poor Law for
Ireland, and while the parties were squabbling about
tl►e payment, the poor would be starving of cold and
hunger.

A public meeting in aid of the Polish Refugees was
held a few days since at Devonport, when many of the
speakers made forcible appeals to the benevolence of
their countrymen ; and implored them to stretch forth
a saving arm to those heroic exiles who are now
perishing from cold and famine in the streets, the
hopeless victims of the most atrocious tyranny that
ever disgraced humanity. Lord DUDLEY STEWA RT,
from whom Mr. LITTLE read a letter, said, " It
is my belief that some of the Poles have ac-
tually perished in this country from want—not,
perhaps, from want of a bit of bread on any
given day ; but from want of proper food, they

have fallen into a state of ill health, which has proved
irrecoverable. Many hare died of broken hearts ;
and I could, I lament to say, name several who, over-

powered by their misfortunes, public and private, have
lost their reason. It is positively the fact, that many
are working on the rail-roads ; many more, I may add,
would work upon them, if they could get put on.
I myself have seen men of education, a colonel, a
major, and others, at work on the Great Western
line." If this be not a case to call forth all
the strongest sympathies of Englishmen, we know

not what is. The poor snfreters, be it observcd, hare
been reduced to this deplorable condition from no
fault of their own ; they are not paying the penalty of
misconduct, but of au ardent, disinterested, high-
minded love of liberty—that passion which has
made England what she now is. Are they

not, then, the fittest possible subjects for our
active benevolence ? In fighting their own bat-
tles, they have in truth been assisting and
exalting the cause of freedom throughout Europe ;
and as we, abOve all nations, boast of the de-
termined stand we have always made against the
encroachments of despotism, we should look on the
poor Poles, not as Lord LYNIMIURST looks on
Irishmen, as foreigners and aliens, but as a band of
brothers, whose cause has ever been the same as ours.

Several distinguished members of the legal profes-
sion having given it as their opinion that Lord
13Ro0cunm erred in. asserting that the Duchy of
Lancaster is the political, not the natural, inheritance
of the Sovereign, and, thenfore, properly within the
jurisdiction of Parliament, we deem it of importance
to offer a few brief remarks on a subject in which the
people of England have a deep interest. The Duchy
of Lancaster was created by King EDWARD 111. in
favour of HENRY I'LANTAGENET, previously Earl of
that territory. Upon the death of HENRY. the first
Duke, the dukedom descended, in right of his wife,
HENRY'S only child, to JOHN of GAUNT, the
KING'S third son, who obtained from Parliament
many important privileges for those dwelling within the
County Palatine. HENRY BOLINBROICE, Duke of
Lancaster, son of JOHN of GAUNT, having wrested
the crown from Incif ARD 11., and caused himself to

he proclaimed King, under the title of HENRY IV.,
refused to merge his dukedom in the inheritance of the
Crown, because l►e knew that having no claim to
the possession of tl►e Throne but what he de-
rived from usurpation, he must lose all, should
lie be deprived of the Royal dignity. He there-

fore, in the first year of his reign, caused an
Act of Parliament to be passed, ordai►►ing that the
Duchy of Lancaster with all its royalties and f►an-
chises should remain to him and his heirs fur ever, in
Ike manner as he never had been acln►owledged King
of England. His son and grandson, HENRY V. and
HENRY VI. held, and administered the affairs of ti►e
Duchy under this tenure ; but the latter beii►g at.
tainted of treason by EDWARD IV., another Act of
Parliament was passed declaring the Duchy forfeited
to the Crown, and vesting it with all its rights and im-

'nullities in EDWARD IV. and his heirs, Kings (f
England, for ever ; but under a separate jurisdiction
and management from the other Crown po'sessions.
The usurpation of lIICIIARD 111. having raised some
disputes about the right of inheritance to the Duchy,
HENRY VII. procured an Act of Parliament in the

first year of his reign, confirming the right of the

Crown to the Duchies of Cornwall and LAncaster as a
part of the inheritance of the Sovereign, and his eldest

son as King and Heir Apparent to. the Throne of
England. Since that time the right of the Crown to
the possession of the Duchies has never been dis-
puted; but that the right is solely political is
proved by the fact that at the Revolution of
1688 it was not judged necessaty to enact a law
vesting the revenues and jurisdiction of the Du-
chies of Cornwall and Lancaster in the Prince

of ORANGE and his descendants upon his accession
to the English Throne. JAMES 11. was never im-
peached as Duke of Lancaster, nor Wai his son, the
Prince of WA t. Es, supposed to have the remotest
claim to the Duchy of Cornwall after the abdication
of JAMES, and previous to his own attainder for trea-
son. With the Crown, in the opinion of the ablest
lawyers of that day, was forfeited all right to the
revenues of these Duchies, which were regarded as
legally appertaining to it ; and though a contrary
opinion has since been advanced by legal commentators,
we do not believe that it is entitled to respect—espe-
cially as it is opposed to all precedents on the subject.
The Act of HENRY VII. was simply an Act of
r.sumption, as regarded the Duchy of Lancaster, by
which it was declared, as under EDWARD IV., the
property of HENRY and his descendants—Kings (f
England. That Act has never been repealed, nor
has it once fallen into desuetude during a period of
more than three centuries. There is, therefore, no
grounds, legal or constitutional, for assuming a natural
right in the Sovereign to these Duchies. The right,
as Lord BROUGHAM justly contends, is purely political;
and even that right cagnot he maintained without com-
mitting a fraud upon the House of CummouE) whose
vote of a civil list is accepted by the Crown as an equi-
valent foi whole of the hereditary revenues there-
unto appertaining.
We have thus far confined ourselves to a strictly
teo* yip w Rf this important quest:on. Regarded as a
remnant of feudal hioiha6sm. it is aufi,rising that
I should have so long escaped the attention 'of a he-

formed Pazhament. The Court of the Duchy Chan:-
17,r of Lancaster, and Cie S!armary Court of Cornwall,
c.hibit au iniperium in iniperio, which only serve to
remind us of the weakness and litigiousness of our an-
cestors. An appeal from the. Duke of LANCASTER
to the Sovereign at Westminster—die remedy of the
subject in the event of Experiencing oppression—is an
appeal, not from PHILIP drunk to PHILIP sober, but
from PHILIP the man to PHILIP the monarch. To
retain the jurisdiction of Counties Palatine after the
country around them has become tranquillized, is as
ridiculous as it would be to wear spurs in bed, because
there was a ,time within view of an enemy's camp %%hen
to ride for life might be the buiness of any hour.

"The annexed Address of his Holiness the POPE,
delivered at a Consistory, held at Rome on the 10:h
inst., to inquire into the merits of the dispute between
the King of Puusst A and the Archbishop of Co-
LooN a, will not fail to produce a powerful sensation
on the Continent. The personal character of the
Sovereign Pontiff, who is noted for the extreme mode-
ration of his views, and the liberality of his sentiments,
will have great weight, even with those who entertain
the greatest jealousy of the influence of the Holy See.
The POPE charges the King of PRUSSIA with vio-
lating the spirit of the Apostolical Letters of Pope
Pius VIII., dated the sth of March, 1830, rela-
tive to mixed marriages, and thereby attempting to
overthrow the " inflexible principles of the Catholic
Church"—with persecuting a distinguishd Prelate,
guilty of no offence but that of adhering to the Holy
See's interpretation of its own acts, Tx hick interpreta-
tion had previously been communicated to the Prus-
sian Government—and with insulting the Court of
Rome, by notifying officially an intention to remove the
Archbishop from his See ten days after his removal
had taken place. What answer Prussia will make to
these charges we cannot tell ; but however the question
may be determined, the Papal address will make a
deep impression on the Catholic inhabitants of the
Rhenish provinces, as well as upon the Catholic priest-
hood of the adjoining States. One of the greatest er-
rors of the Prussian Government is that it meddles too
much with the religion of the people. The KING
imagines that it is as much his duty to re-
gulate the religious creeds of his subjects as
it is to dictate the uniforms to be ‘vorn by
the army ; but finding that it is a more difficult
matter to dragoon consciences than to direct army
clothiers, he has recourse to every means, short
of the exercise of arbitrary power, to make proselytes
to the religion of the State. This proceeds not so
much from the KING'S attachment to the doctrines of
•‘ Evangelical Lutheranism "—the name by which the
tenets of the Pt ussiau Protestant Church are distin-
guished—as from a mistaken idea that difference cf
religion weakens the authority of time Civil Magistrate,
and strongly tends to the subversion of the Monar-
chical form of Government
" Venerable Brethren,—Placed in a position where it is
not sufficient to deplore evil, we are oscrwhelmed with sad
tress by the melancholy state of the affrirs of the Catholic
Church. Whilst applying our thoughts to the remedy of these
plagues of Israel, according to the power received by us from
God, a new cause of grief has started up, and from a quarter,
too, where it was least expected. You are not ignorant of
this, nor of the cause which brings us together this day. It
is no obscure event, learned by private accounts ; it has been,
on the contrary, officially communicated. We complain of the
_rave injury committed against the venerable Archbishop of
Cologne, who has been deprived of his pastoral jurisdiction by
order of the King, been driven from his scat by the force of
arms, and sent out of his diocese. Such is the calamity which has
fallen upon this prelate, however anxious he has been to render
to Caesar the things which be Caesar's, though not at the sane
time forgetting his duty in preserving the doctrine and disci-
pline of the church. He sought to observe no other rule in
the matter of mixed marris,g, s than that contained in the
epostolieal letters addressed to the prelates of Western
Prussia by Pius VIII., our predecessor, of happy memory,
bearing date the 25th of March, 1830. And yet in those letters
the Holy See carried indulgence to the extreme limit. You
are ignorant that our predecessor was brought to these conces-
sions with regret, and solely from the necessity of saving the
Catholic clergy of thwe couotries from the too certain evils
with which they were menaced. Who would have foreseer,
that this pontifical declaration, indulgent as it was, and
assented to by the Kiog's Envoy at Rota', would be exe-
cuted in a manner to overthrow the inflexible principles
of the Catholic Church, and contrary to the intention
of the Holy See ? Yet this very thing, impossible, to
imagine or believe, and to suspect whicb would have been
a crime, has been done by the artful influence of the secular
power. No sooner had we been warned of this than we sent
remonstrances, declaring that our apostolical mission obliged
us to tell the faithful not to consider a rule to proceed from
the Holy See which held in horror. We received fer answer
that our complaints were without foun.lation. and tt the
same time came a letter from a Bishop of Liege, who, at
the point of death, and about to render an account be-
fore the Supreme Judgn, declared tin-A the instruction
addressed to tits Bishops, and subscribed by them
at the instigation of the Civil Government, would be
the occasion of great evils, and would infringe the holy
canons. Enlightened by the Di% ine intelligence, Tie ac-
knowledged his error, and of his owe accori retracted
his edhesion. Immediately we sent this to the King,
and stated how we dissapproved of the interpretation
put upon the letters of our pr,.decessor, which, though
accepted by the Bishops, were e,tirely opposed to the prin-
ciples and laws of the Church. Yoa may thus see, venerable
brethren, that we have neglected nothing in this affair. Never-
theless, we say it feelings of the most profound horror, whilst
we were waiting the answer to our remonstrance, it was sig-
nified to the Archbishop of Cologne that he must conform
himself to the interpret rtion of the late Pope's letter con-
corning mixed marriages, of which we disapproved ; or,
if he refused, that he must abandon his pastoral func-
tions. If he resisted, a decree of the Goveroment would
interdict him from his ejscodal jurisdiction. The Arch-
bishop resisting:, in accordance with his duty, those me-
ortces were fulfilled. Aed mark the conduct observed to.
wards us the Prussian Charge d'Apirts warned us
of
the event as about to take place on the ist of the fallowing
month, whilst it was, in rrality, perpetrated ten days sooner.
In this occurrence, ven,rable brethren, we owe to God, the
Church, and ourselves, to raise our apostolic voice against this
i lation of ecelesiasti..al liberty, this usurpation of a sacred
jurisdiction, this out age againct the Holt' See, Let us not
either forget to give to a Prelate endowed with so maty vir-
tues the praise due for Iris domtio.i to the cause of religion
and to his many sacrifices. Since the occasion offers, we pub-
licly and solemnly deelere that we entirely disapprove of the
practice which prevails in the kingdom of Prussia, contrary
to the declaration Vim( predecessor respecting mixed vimrriages.

The following extract from a private letter from
Gottingen, relative to the expulsion of the Seven Pro-
fessors, and the establishment of military despotism in
llanover, will repay the trouble of a careful perusal.
The channel through which it comes entitles the
statements it contains, to implicit credit :

GOTTINGEN, I)r.c. 16.

It is by this time, I presume, generally known in England,
that seven Gottingen Professors, MM. Dahlmann, Albrecht,
James Grimm, William Grimm, Ewald, Gervinns, and Weber,
protested against the abolition of the Ilanoveri in Constitu-
tion, stating, that having sworn to msint,in it unimpaired, so
far as in them lay, they could not violate their oaths at the
mere bidding of King Ernest. Nothing could be more tem-
perate than the language in which thin protestation was
couched. For this declaration thy have been deprived of
their chairs, and the exptihian is marked by features of hard.
ship liither,o unknown in Hanover. First, the King, during
his late visit to Rothen-Kirche--a royal hunting seat in the
neighbourhood of Gottingen—sent for the Pro-rectcr and
Deacons of the four faculties. Sent fur them !--they did
not, as stated in the Hanover Gazette, go of their own accord.
Then there appeared in the same journal an account of the
interview with his Majesty, in which M. Bergmann, the
Pro-rector, is represented to have said that the seven Professors
had acted rashly and under excitement, but that their opinions
were not shared by any other members of the University.
The natural effect of this speech, of coarse, was to render
general a belief that the University of G..ttingen had, in the
person of its Pro-rector, nublicly disowned the protestation. Will
it be credited that no such speech ever was delivered ?—that
the whole was a fabrication of M. de Schele and his Royal
Master ? This act may be viewed as the crowning baseness
of tho affair, Accordingly, on tith of Dcy,ember, the
following Saturday, NI. Bergmann circulated amongst his
brother Professors the speech actually delivered, in which no
such statements had been made; This act was undoubtedly
samitioned by the Kin,* of !kilos- r. It shows what con-
fidence may be placed' in the statements of the Hanover
Gazette. It farther shows, that whatever security for their
rights the Hanoverian people may nom p()iACSS, that security
rm tp he fpliiid tlut per§ono ellapFi;q of their Sovereign,
or in his possessing the Sentiments and 62clings suited to his
illustrious birth. The falsehood of the statement thus put
into M. Bergmann's mouth, may be inferred from the fact, that
six other Professors, MM. Miiller (author of " The Do.
00041, Bat ,r (the celebrated Listo, ian of philosophy),
• "Kraut, Tithet (b nth l'rUfgsSPrs Oublie b‘ei;neiden.n,
04 De 'S,!utsCli:)haye sent a dechu'atioritoltY Cdfser Gazette,
expressing their entire •cOneurrence with the views of their
Fplleagus. On Thurs,.!ay the seven Professors received each
a lioptl rtitoqt front .1
-10.04i.-,T, All are devriyo4 of their