The Sun.
London, England, 1837-06-13 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Church-rate Bill for the present was last night
formally abandoned in the House of Commons—Lord
John Russell, in moving " for the appointment of a
Select Committee to inquire into the mode of grant-
ing and renewing leases on the landed and other ec-
clesiastical bodies in England and Wales, and into the
probable amount of any increased value which might
be obtained by an improved management, with a due
consideration to the interests of the Established
Church, and the ,present lessees of Church property,"
stated that it would be vain to expect to carry the Mi-
nisterial plan into law in the present Sesiion, with so
small a majority as approved of it in the House of
Commons. Thus one of the most important mea-
sures of the Session, and beyond question that which
evinced the greatest ability • in its preparation, and
was most eminently adapted, not only to protect but
to promote existing interests, is shelved for another
twelvemonths. For another year shall parochial
feuds be kept alive, and the Church desecrated by
being made the scene of conflict between the supporters
and opponents of this vexatious and iniquitous assess-
ment—for another year must the Dissenters and the
Liberal members of the dominant Church, who refuse
to be parties to its oppressions, endeavour to effect in
the Vestries the relief which has been denied them in
the Senate. The greatest enemy of the Established
Church could not have devised a more certain mode of
aggravating the animosity which its undue exactions are
every where exciting against it, then delaying the set-
tlement of this exasperating question. Church-rates
in England, like Tithes in Ireland, will serve to orga-
nize the recusants into an impassable resistance ; and
having attained a knowledge of their power, and ex-
perienced the advantage of the voluntary principle in
one instance, they will be the better prepared and the
more inclined, to extend its operation to others. If
the. Legislature do not improve its pace, and accelerate
its movements, so far as Tithes and Church-rates are
concerned, it will have little more to do than expunge
from the statute-book laws already rendered obsolete
by the force of public opinion. This procrastinating
system, however objectionable in other respects, is the
most effective possible mode of instructing the people
in the science of democracy, and stimulating them to
its application. Lord John Russell, in the course of
a very able and luminous speech, distinctively im-
pressed upon the House that he did not ask for the
Committee in order to consider whether Church-rates
ought to be abolished, but to inquire into the present
manner of leasing Church property. It needs no
Committee to consider the question of abolishing
Church-rates ; it is already decided by the country and
its Representatives in the affirmative. The question
for scrutiny is the mode of providing a substitute, and
fortunate may the Church esteem itself if it obtain
one so efficient as that which its infatuated friends
have rejected on its behalf. As to public opinion,
the country would be well pleased to sec Parliament
recognise the abolition of the rates, and leave the
providing of a substitute to the ingenuity of the
Churchmen themselves. They have ample funds already
in their possession, and they might better employ
their clerical leisure in seeing to the maintenance
of the fabric by which they live, than in concocting
forgeries on the doctrines of the Roman Catholic
Church, writing inflammatory pamphlets, or indulg-
ing in incendiary declamation at Exeter Hill. Justly
dreading the effects of inquiry, the Tories strenu-
ously opposed the appointment of the Committee.
Mr. Goulburn, Colonel Sibthorp, and Sir Robert
Peel flung themselves into the breach, and inflicted
upon the House a terrific amount of jargon and false
assertion. One denied that any increase of revenue
could be derived from the better management of
Church lands, but with a laudable foresight insisted
that if any increase should take place that it should
be applied exclusively to the purposes of the Church.
Another impugned the accuracy of all the Minis-
terial calculations, but prudently opposed the appoint-
ment of the Committee, which would furnish the best
test of the truth or falsehood of conflicting state-
ments. Like men arguing against their convictions,
the Tory speakers committed all manner of inconsist-
encies, of which it would be a waste of our readers'
time and our own to dwell on the exposure. From
recent proceedings in the House of Commons, it would
appear as if that assembly were disposed to lighten the
burden of the Lords, by becoming a participator in the
odium which the conduct of the latter has now almost
universally excited, and dividing the responsibility of
rendering the Session abortive of all practical result.
Some Members, whom, looking to the manner in
which business is conducted in the House, We can
scarcely censure, have paired off for the rest of the
Session. We know not if this retirement from legis-
lative labour have proceeded from disgust or indolence,
or if June be the usual pairing season with the senato-
rial tribe ; but it is high time that the people should
institute a searching investigation into the causes to
which the failure of the Session is attributable, and
guard against a similar occurrence, by preparing a due
penalty for all defaulters, when the general suffrag,e be
next appealed to for its verdict.—Morning Advertiser.
It was but yesterday morning that we stated our
conviction, that, whatever might be the petty interrup-
tions to their progress, the direction of affairs was
clear and decided. Well, last night's division has
come. What a blow to the Tories'l How has the
majority of five been dinned in our ears by the gentle-
men who found it a very convenient and pleasant thing,
notwithstanding, to govern without any majority at all!
We did say something, to be sure, with a charitable
intent of dulling the severity of coming disappoint-
ment. We did venture to talk of present accidents,
and to whisper something of future divisions. But
no ; the case was clear. There was—that especial
favourite at the Carbon Club—a reaction : yes, for the
nineteen hundredth time, there was a violent reaction.
The majority of five was speedily to degenerate into
no majority at all—signs and symptoms were abroad—
miracles, such as a smile on Mr. Trevor's countenance,
were seen—the reign of the saints upon earth, of the
pure and the spotless, of the borough-corruption-hating
followers of Peel, was nigh at hand. Blessed
period ! How unfortunate it is for us—delusive,
like the enchanted islands of the Mediterranean, you
vanish for ever as we approach you ! Lord Lynd-
hurst, for he is the real hero of Tory fable, is to be
once more in power ; the thing is settled, decided ;
the oracle of Printing-house-square has scattered am-
biguous words ; the Morning Post has mysteriously
repeated them. But no, as surely as the prediction
is made, so surely arrives some untoward vote that
upsets it. Cassandra uttered true things that were
never believed ; " the Old Lady" is the very reverse
of Cassandra ! Last night's debate was remarkable,
not for Mr. Palmer's speech, though he does quote
Burke, and threaten us with a place where Satan is
presumed to take up his abode—not for Mr. Goul-
burn's speech, poor good soul ; his vapid violence
was just what it is in general. No ; last night's
debate was remarkable for Sir R. Peel's speech, and
the division that followed upon it. " A Committee," said
Sir R. Peel, " a Committee to inquire into the ma-
nagement of Church property I why, it is the very worst
of all the bad things that possibly can happen ;" and
saying this, he turned round, as he usually does when
he means to be impressive, to Mr. Plumptre, or Mr.
Hardy, or Mr. Charles Ross, who are always, of
course, ready to raise their pious voices into a cheer
on the right occasion. Well, the House is called
upon to decide whether it will consent to what Sir
Robert Peel, in all the pomp of wisdom, declares to
be the worst of all bad things ; and the House laughs
at Sir Robert Peel, and votes by a majority of-83
against him. For that is the point : Sir Robert is
as strongly pledged against the Committee which is
now carried by a majority of 83, as he was pledged
against the abolition of Church-rates that was carried
only by a majority of 5 : and Mr. Goulburn might just
as well have omitted his precious amendment ; for,
after all, even if carried, it did not mend the case of his
party. Against that party would still have been the
little majority of 83, which neither Mr. Goulburn's
nor Mr. Hardy's splendid eloquence, such is the hard-
ness of men's hearts, seems likely to vanquish. Mr.
Goulburn's proposal, however, which was to have re-
stricted the use of any surplus (if there is no surplus,
by-the-by, why so earnest about restricting it ?), was
lost ; and lost, not by a majority of five this time, but
by a majority of '26. So that there vanish all the
brilliant prospects of the majority of five. Mr. Spring

Rice made a very able and spirited speech in reply to'
Sir Robert Peel, and showed up the absurdity of all
that wit which wasted itself in calling a Committee " a
cabinet," and sneering at a Cabinet Committee as a
ridiculous and incompetent tribunal for examining
facts. But Sir Robert Peel has such a short memory!
He had forgotten all the Committees he had
ever granted for examining into facts. What, in
the name of common sense, can Committees more
properly inquire into than facts ? Then, there
was that direful error the Government had committed !
The motion for the Committee contained a proviso for
protecting the interests of the Church. " Was there
ever anything so atrocious ?" said Sir Robert—" a
proviso for protecting the Church that testifies, evi-
dently, a design to destroy it I" " What would the
Right Hon. Baronet have said," observed Mr. Spring
Rice, "if there had been no such proviso ?" Ah
what, indeed ! There is, in fact, no way of pleasing
men who cannot by any device creep into the smallest
majority ; but are always pushed further than ever from
office at the very moment when they think they have
just attained it. Mr. Harvey's motion was, as he said,
for "an abstract principle." It is a little too hard
upon the House, when they have been dealing practi-
cally with a question for five nights, to bring it upon
them again in the shape of "an abstract princi-
ple." That Church-rates should be abolished is the
first part of a great proposition—that they should be
abolished in a certain manner, and with a certain sub-
stitute, is the second, and perhaps, considering its
difficulty, the most important of that proposition.
Well, the House dealt with the two parts—decided
that Church-rates should be abolished, and decided in
what manner and with what substitute this should
take place ; and, when it had gone thus far, Mr. Har-
vey, by way of advancing the matter, hallooos back
over the old ground, and starts again at the very
point which the House had some 'weeks since started
from and travelled *over, setting forth as an especial
merit that he does this, not, indeed, in any practical
or useful manner, but as an abstract proposition.
Mr. Hume, Mr. O'Connsll, and many of the most
intelligent of the Radical Members voted against Mr.
Harvey.—Morniug Chronicle.
A curious specimen of what is technically called
splitting has just been furnished by Archdeacon Ba-
thurst, whose sacerdotal wrath against the Whig dis-
pensers of mitres and mischief, having been some years
in the gathering, is at length bursting in heavy drops
upon Lord Melbourne's head, as the precursors of a
more terrible outpouring, which, it seems, is presently
to follow.- The object of the Archdeacon's letter to
the Premier, as disclosed in in his own quiet and diffi-
dent way, is to rouse the indignation of the country,
because the Whigs, not having appointed him to one
or another of the vacant bishoprics which have been so
rife lately, have at once falsified their promises, and
shamefully neglected the most 'meritorious clergyman
in England. With regard to the gross unseemliness
of their recent episcopal nominations, the opinion of
this modest censor of theirs is pretty much the same as
our own. Contrasted with the unrequited services
which be himself has rendered to the cause of Whig
partisanship, the claims and qualifications of the new
Whig Bishops are treated by him with perhaps fully
more irreverence " than pi jest beseems." The Rev.
Liberal declares that—
" The appointment just made to the see of Norwich is
(without meaning any disrespect to the individuals alluded
to) like that of Mr. Denison to Salisbury, extraordinary
and improper, because, without any adequate cause, it
makes, as it were, a captain over the head of long standing
generals, and gives a slap in the face (which Lord John
Russell's goodnature,-no doubt, n ished it do) to all the dig-
nitaries of the Church, as if they were unfit ; and it is par-
ticularly insulting to me to have a private clergyman of no
extraordinary fame put over the hezd of an archdeacon,
who had at feast.fait/rfully served the cause, and with
far more distinction, though not with more vehemence, than
Mr. Stanley ; and that archdeacon, the son of Dr. Bath-
hurst, the late Bishop of Norwich—and at least Mr. Stan-
ley's equal in professional attainments."
The worthy Archdeacon, being a thorough Church
reformer, naturally thought that it was incumbent upon
hirn to give a practical exemplification of his prin-
ciples ; and having been (as he informs us) in diffi-
culties, the ingenious idea occurred to him that if he
could get his twofold preferment exchanged for some
one benefice "a little above it in rank," he should be
relieved not only from the said difficulties, but from
what was doubtless far more distressing to him—the
pain of being a pluralist. For a time the accomplish-
ment of this trifling piece of Church reform was all
that he pressed for, at least as far as regards England.
But no—the Devil and Lord Melbourne laid their
heads together to defeat it.
" Your own strange conduct (you know what I mean !)
when you were Secretary for the Home Department, has
amounted to a neglect and ingratitude as astonishing as they
will be proved (from your own written admissions of my
father's claims, and of my own deserts and character) to be
unjustifiable, denying me in the hour, as you know, of my
distress, and greater distress to some of my father's family,
even the chance of exchanging a part of my preferment for
some other little above it in rank, and such as would enable
me to answer the end of Church Reform in my case in
haring one piece of preferment, instead of two, and yet
help me in my difficulties—which was all that was pressed
for in England."
What was " pressed for" elsewhere is a wholly dif-
ferent matter, and constitutes, of course, a separate
article of impeachment.
" To avoid complying with my father's wishes, when the
See of Killaloe fell in 1836, you made a sort of ex post
facto law, so as with a show of decency to exclude me, and
you declared that no Englishman should go to the Irish
Bench, though my father was Ireland's martyr, and I am,
on my mother's side, Irish !"
This is hard enough, certainly. But the main dif-
ficulty seems to consist in determining whether the
father or the son has been the greater sufferer. The
latter, in spite of the Bishop's " wishes," and the
A rchdeacon's " deserts," was scurvily refused the bit
of Church Reform which he had " pressed for" in
Ireland : the former, it seems, has actually been made
a martyr of. Of course, the fates of Latimer, Cran-
trier, and Ridley, whose agonies from fire and fagot
endured only for an hour, is not to be compared with
the protracted and tormenting ordeal which the late
Bishop of Norwich underwent at the hands of his
oppressors. For thirty-two years did the venerable
Prelate undergo his exquisite torture of a pair of
palaces, a peerage, and some thousands per annum,
till at last he . sunk under his trials, at the prema-
ture age of ninety. So much bad usage, heaped
upon one family is, we believe, unprecedented.
It appears, however, that Lord Melbourne's apo-
logy for being unable to meet the Archdeacon's
views implied the existence of obstacles in a quarter
which cannot at this moment be alluded to without the
most serious and reverential solicitude. This the Rev.
Gentleman treats as a mere unfounded pretext ; and
then, proceeding on the supposition of its being true,
insinuates very broadly, that if he could not be made a
Bishop of, it was the duty of the Whig Premier to re-
sign. The mortified dignitary asks rather bigly, "If
his Majesty (which I will never believe) be my oppo-
nent, in what terms shall I designate a Minister who
would retain office on condition of a proscription worse
than any of Augustus, Anthony, and Lepidus ?"
Archdeacon Bathurst, to say the truth, is not a whit
behind the chiefest apostles of Whiggery who have
recently been promoted over his head. His claim to a
Bishopric he honestly bases, not on his learning or piety
or any of the Clerical qualifications which an upright
Government always insists on, but simply on the fact
of his having " faithfully served the liberal cause,"
which he knew would be a more powerful recommen-
dation to the Whigs than any other. In one point
only does he appear to have been wrong in his calcu-
lations. As far as regards his assumption that politi-
cal services constitute the only ground on which a
pressing parson can expect promotion from the Whigs,
he was quite right. But in as far as those services
were rendered by him in anticipation of a mitre than in
requital of one, he has made an unfortunate mistake.
The Whigs, having got out of him all they could,
had enough to do with their Church patronage for
enlisting the partisanship of other men. The poor
Archdeacon, like
~a sucked orange, is therefore flung
away. The Tories, after all, are discovered by him to
be the only party in the State whose integrity of pur-
pose can be depended on. According to the admis-
sions which the Rev. Gentleman puts forth from his
locus penitentice, they are the " truest friends." They do
do not make, he says, " the pretence of justice the en-
gine of power and selfishness, nor trample on their prin.

IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.

HOUSE OF LORDS, Jrnue 12.

ciples by cruelty and insincerity towards those who have
most faithfully served them." The late Bishop had
many weaknesses, but he was a man of honour, and of
most amiable qualities. His son, there is no doubt,
inherits the weak qualities of his father, and, we dare
say, the other qualities also; we wish, however, that
his father had another chronicler.— Times.

The LORD CHANCELLOR took his seat on the Woolsack
at Five o'Clock.
The ATarquis of WESTMINSTER brought up tho report
of the Committee on the Chester and Birkenhead Rail-
way Bill.
Mr. BERNAL and other Members of the House of Com-
mons brought up several Private Bills, and the Punishment
by Pillory Abolition Bill.
On the motion of Lord SHAFTESBURY the Pillory
Punishment Abolition Bill was read a first time.
The Duke of WELLINGTON presented a petition
from the freemen of Waterford. against the Irish Municipal

Bill.
On the motion of the Marquis of L ANSDOWNE the
committal of the Public Works (Ireland) Bill was postponed
until to-morrow.
Lord BROUGHAM presented petitions from North-
ampon and Staton against Church-rates ; also a petition
from Ipswich, complaining of the mode of electing muni-
cipal officers, and of the proceedings taken in the Court
of King's Bench in consequence, in reference to that borough.
Mr. BERNAL then appeared at the Bar of the House,
and stated that the Commons desired a Conference with
their Lordships, on the amendments made by their Lord-
ships to the Municipal Act Amendment Bill.
On the motion of Viscount MELBOURNE, the Mes-
senger was informed that Managers for the Lords would
meet those of the Commons, presently, in Committee-room,
No. 5.
On the motion of the Marquis of DO WNSHIRE, the
Belfast Harbour Bill was read a second time.
The Duke of RICHMOND presented a petition against

the Bill.
Lord GLENGALL gave notice, that on Thursday he
would present a petition relative to Irish fisheries, and
would call the attention of their Lordships' House to it.
The Marquis of LONDONDERRY gave notice, that
on to-morrow he would put questions to the Noble Vis-
count relative to the war in Spain, which he considered he
was justified in doing in consequence of the new features
that war had assumed.
Lord PORTMAN moved for an address to his Ma-
jesty for the Nineteenth Report of the Excise Commis-
sioners.
The following Managers were then appointed to meet
those of the Commons in the Conference :—The Lord Pre-
sident, the Lord Privy Seal, the Duke of Richmond, the
Bishop of Ely, Lord Hatherton, Lord Strafford, and Lord
Portman. The Managers then left the House.

On their return,
The Marquis of LANSDOWNE informed the House
that the Commons had agreed to some of the amendments
made by their Lordships to the Municipal Act Amend-
ment Bill, and had disagreed to others.
The Marquis of BUTE presented petitions from Stir-
ling against travelling on the Lord's Day.
The Earl of DEVON moved for a Select Committee to
inquire into the laws which regulate the carriage of passen-
gers for hire on the Thames.—Agreed
On the motion of Lord SHAFTESBURY, the Bristol
Local Rates' Bill was read a second time, and to be com-
mitted to-morrow. Also the London and Birmingham
Railway Act Amendment was read a third time and passed.
The House then adjourned.

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY, JUNE 13, 1837.