The Sun.
London, England, 1839-06-12 00:00:00

LONDON :
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 12, 139.

In the House of Lords last night an interesting and
instructive conversation took place on the two circulars
lately issued by the Government for placing arms in
the hands of one particclar class of persons, and for
preventing another class from training and drilling.
The Duke of BEAUFORT properly said that the circulars
bad been misunderstood,and that he had discountenanced
the applications which had been made to him by certain
parties to have arms. The Noble Duke referred to
the applications made by the Chartists of Salford and
Bath ter arms, as illustrative of the working of the
circular.

Viscount MELBOURNE explained under what circum-
stances the circular had been issued, and so expressed
himself as to give rise to an opinion that he did not ap-
prove of the circular offering arms to one class of the
people.

The Duke of WELLINGTON made the inconve-
niences of the circular more apparent, by stating that a
Chartist Mayor of Bath this year might require arms
for the people, and a Tory Mayor next year ; and so
the factions might be armed against each other at the
expense of the State.

Lord ELLENBOROUGH contrasted the two circulars,
and showed that while one invited some persons to arm,
.the other excited the Magistrates to have
them apprehended, if they learnt how to use
the arms. In fact, a case has occurred at Barns-
ley, in Yorkshire, in which some persons, not Chartists,
have been held to bail for training and drilling. The
conversation ended by Lord MELBOURNE consenting to
lay the circulars on the table of the House.
The Report on the Sale of Beer Act Repeal Bill was
received with some amendments, and the Bill ordered to
be read a third time. Lord BROUGHAM seems con-
fident of carrying it, and hurries it on.
In the Commons, Mr. PROTISEROE, who has rup-
tured some of the muscles of his leg, was excused from
attending the Carlow Election Committee, which is to
proceed without him.
A good deal of business was postponed, and amongst
th I•tr• O'CONNELL'S motioa for allowing a Roman Ca-
15lie to be Lord Chancellor of Ireland. We rather regret
"
"St as we should like to see that question debated. At
Present the Master of the Rolls, Sir M. O'Lootttubt, is by
Common consent admitted to be a very fit man to hold the
Irish seals, but he cannot, because he is a Catholic.
The best mao, therefore, for the office, and the man
who would best please the majority of his countrymen,
cannot have the office in deference to the members
of the Church of England, which, as far as
Ireland is concerned, is governing the country
by a minority, and for its advantage. The ridicu-
lous theory, then, of excluding men from public offices on
account of their religion, upsets all the principles of a
Representative Government, and has a tendency to in-
troduce anarchy into society.
Lord JOHN RUSSELL, in answer to Sir JAMES
GRAHAM, stated that he meant to incorporate a limited
number of persons, including the Moderator of the
General Assembly, to have the privilege of printing the
authorised version of the Scriptures in Scotland.
Mr. WILLIAMS complained that a petition which the
House had ordered to he printed was not printed. It
was answered that the petition was a political pamphlet,
which Mr. WELLS, the writer, had taken this means to
get printed. On a division, the order for printing it
was rescinded.

Mr. WAKLEY'S motion conePrning the petition of the
Glasgow spinners, complaining of Mr. STUART, was
postponed.
After Mr. MACKINNON had obtained leave to bring
in a Bill to amend th© laws regirding turnpike trusts,
the House was counted out at Half-past Seven o'Clock.

The Bishop of LONDON, on Monday, said the
claim to the general education of the people had
never been made by the clergy. They claimed the
right to the exclusive education of the children be-
longing to the Church of England, and Loin that
right, with GOD'S assistance, they never would re-
cede. If this is all that the Church requires, what
becomes of the very first resolution agreed to at
Willis's Rooms—,, That every system of educa-
tion intended for the people at large should be un-
der the superintendence of the clergy, and in con-
formity with the doctrines of the Church of this
realm, as the recognised teacher of religion." This
is widely different from the claim put forth by the
pious Prelate in the House of Lords, yet this reso-
lution did the same individual second at the
meeting of the National Society for Pro-
moting the Education of the Poor. This resolu-
tion, assented to by sixteen Prelates, by many
of the Nobility and Members of the House
of Commons, belonging to one psrty, pro-
claims that millions of Dissenters shall be ex-
cluded from that system of education which the
Bench of Bishops, supported by the House of
Lords, will alone sanction. This uncharitable
resolution, coupled with the perverse opposition
made by certain of the Dissenting clergy to the
liberal, Christian, and, we may add, Protestant
plan proposed by the Government, has sunk deep
into the hearts of all who are anxious to save the
poor, who " are destroyed for lack of knowledge,"
snd threatens the fulfilment of the curse—" There
shall be like people, like priests." Many persons
are beginning to despair of this righteous cause,
when they see the very men who are shut out by
the Church joining with that Church in defeating
a plan which was conscientiously intended for the
secular, moral, and religious education of all classes.
We confidently trust, however, with the writer of
the following incontrovertible arguments on this great
question, that they have taken too gloomy a view
of our future prospects—that bigotry and ignorance
will gradually disappear before the light of truth,
and that as the Church has already followed,
though slowly, in the track of the friends of general
education, by adopting the plans of the Lancas-
terian schools and Normal schools, she will still
continua to follow, till that only rational and only
possible system of general education, which includes
all classes, shall be adopted. The following extracts
are from the A/hence/tin of last Saturday
" In matters of faith there are but two possible princi-
ples for adoption—the le:Ivo-Aim of a creed by absolute
authority, or an acknowledgment of the unbounded right
of every man (as co,f,,s.:edly alone answerable for the con-
I sequences of his ov,.n decision) to jute for himself. The
former is Popery. the latter Protestantism ; and between
them there is no mezzo termine no grounds for Jesuitical
distinctions. One min has, on the Protestant principle,
as good a right to private judgment as another, and has an
equal right to have that judgment respected in all its le-
gitimate consequences. To impugn this right by restric-

tions, civil or religious, in any particular, is, to that ex.
tent, despotism, or Popery. In point of fact, Protestan.
tism is as much directed against an assumption, on the
part of the State, of a control over the creed of the people,
as against the Pope for imposing one particular creed.
The Scotch Protestants successfully rebelled against this
usurpation, while the struggle against it in England has
been the cause of two revolutions.

" But in the present state of the public mind, it may be
most useful to touch on the practical consequences of this
system of exclusion. Its chief advocates profess an ardent
desire to see the people educated ; but he who really de-
sires an end, should desire the means essential to its ac-
complishment : it is tibsurd to profess to seek an object,
and at the same time insist on a sine qua non condition,
which renders that object unattainable. In education,
there must be two parties, the teacher and the pupil. It
is to no purpose that the former is willing to instruct, if the
latter will not come in to his tuition,—under such circum-
stances, education is impossible. To place the clergy of
any one sect at the head of national education, is to de-
cree that there shall be no education at all. Each and
every sect has a perfect right to think its own the only
true faith ; but, in the present position of the world, they
cermet act on the thought ; for the Catholics will not be-
hove the P. otestants, nor Protestants the Catholics ; and
the East Kent Baptists have told the Established Church
that their truth is " a pernicious heresy," to be abhorred.
If such be the overreaching character of religious zeal,
then eduertion must be placed upon some ground which
shall be neutral to all. The Bishop of London has very
feelingly lamented that thousands of neglected children
are wandering through the streets, "in danger of perish-
ing eternally, for want of education." Will this evil be
lessened by affixing unpalatable conditions to tuition ? or
can the Right Reverend Divine imagine that an educated
man, however taught, is further off from the chances of vital
Christianity, than the wandering disciples of police dis-
cipline ? Lord Abinger also, professing himself no
enemy to toleration, protests against the nation giving
other education than that of the established religion. We
cannot but ask him, why ? The pretence to a right of
preventing any man from educating his own children in
his own way, is solemnly abjured : but what avails the ac-
knowledgment of the abstract proposition, when the privi-
lege is practically confined to him only who can pay for it?
If every man could educate his own child, national educa-
tion by the State would be a useless and an absurd interfe-
rence with private rights. It is because the,poor cannot
discharge this paramount duty, that the State inter-
feres. If, then, the State confines education within the
pale of the Establishment, it practically denies the religi-
ous rights of the D:ssenting pauper, while it as assuredly
defeats its on proposed end in undertaking the business.
Would any one dare to refuse bread to all but conforming
paupers ? Or is the bread of intellectual life less an inde-
feasible right, than that material daily bread for which we
are divinely taught to pray ?
" But while opinion is forming on this point, is secular
education to remain as it is? Is nothing to be done till
Whigs and Tories, Churchmen and Dissenters, can com-
pose their differences, and remember that they are men ?
We know that many who have hitherto warmly advo-
cated a public endowment of national schools, are be-
ginning to waver, and to fancy that such institutions are
suited only to despotic states, where the absolute will of
one master can enforce universal obedience and subjugate
sectarian jealousies. We, however, bate no jot of heart or
hope : our faith is unshaken in the ultimate establishment
of truth and of justice, in defiance of all opposition : we
look on the progress of the last- thirty years, and we
cannot doubt of its influences on the generations which are
to come."

We rejoice to learn, from the complaints made
by the advocates and defenders of the plunderers by
means of the bread-tax, that the Anti-Corn-law
League is effecting great good. The Poll-tax men
are dreadfully alarmed. Lecturers are their abhor-
' rence ; cheap publications fill them with dread ;
they are apprehensive of nothing so much as the
people getting accurate knowledge ; and they are
calling for subscriptions and devising means to
keep up ignorance and delusion. They are worthy
allies of the clergy, engaged like them in a crusade
against knowledge and honesty. Fortunately for us,
the only means they can possibly have recourse
to, that of sending forth counteracting cheap publi-
cations, and rival lecturers, will the more provoke
discussion, and the more rapidly bring their mono-
poly to an end. It is as impossible that the gigan-
tic system of plunder by law, which is instituted
for the exclusive benefit of the idle, do-nothing
landlords, and the do-mischief tithe-Lords can be con-
tinued, when the eyes of the nation are opened to
its true nature and consequences, as that the nation
should tolerate a gigantic system of Burking.
The horrible proposition of MARCUS was at once
seen through and abominated ; and whenever the
more horrible scheme of the landlords is seen through,
as it must be by the light of knowledge, it
will be dissolved. We say more horrible, because
that was the painless extinction of those who had
never known pleasure, while this is the painful ex-
tinction by a slow and lingering process of those
who are sensibly alive to all the pangs of want and
hunger. Whenever the scheme of the land-
lords to enrich themselves at the expense of
starving the people shall be properly appreciated,
it will be, like the abortive scheme of MAR-
cus, stifled by the execrations of the people.
That end must be promoted by discussion, and thus
the Corn-law advocates, by proposing to counter-
act the Anti-Corn-law League, will but hasten, the
inevitable doom. Even such rows as they kicked
up at Huntingdon and Cambridge cannot serve
them, though a repetition of such conduct will add
to their disgrace.

We have more than once called the public at-
tention to the fact that a great contest is going on
throughout Europe between the ecclesiastical and
secular authorities. The dispute between the
Archbishops of COLOGNE and POSEN on the one
side, and the King of PRUSSIA on the other; and
between the Scotch Church and the Law Tribunals,
are only parts of this general contest. Our
squabbles about education belong to the same
extensive strife. Nominally it is the Clergy
and their deluded followers against the Whigs,
but effectively it is the priesthood against the
secular power. The attempt of the Privy Council
to assume a controul over education, by under-
taking to improve it, and so removing it from under
the special dominion of the priesthood, is what
excites the latter to resistance and sedition. In

this great quarrel the Tories are traitors to the
secular power, and they would creep into office as
the tools of its opponents. They are parties to
the universal conspiracy of the priesthood, to usurp
or maintain influence over the mind, and to gratify
their own ambition, they are willing to betray the
best interests of mankind, and place them in mental
slavery.
__......._

The public will rejoice to see by an advertisement
from the Post-office that steps have been taken to
accelerate and increase the communication between
England and Ireland. Every such proof of activity
in the Post-office, however, only excites in us hopes
of further improvement. According to the arrange-
ments proposed, Dublin—and of course all Ireland
will share in the advantage—will receive two mails from
London per day, at the convenient hours of seven in
the morning and seven in the evening; and we hope
that departures from Ireland will secure a similar
advantage to London. At present the delay in
delivering letters after the day mails arrive is
so great, that a considerable portion of the ad-
vantages for which the additional expense
is incurred is lost to the inhabitants of

the metropolis. The public offices may receive
their despatches as soon as the mail arrives, and the
Treasury may not, therefore, be acquainted with
the delay ; but, from our own experience, we can
affirm that the letters which reach London by the
day mails are not delivered for two or three hours
after the arrival of the mails. Due diligence
seems not to he used in sorting the letters ; and we
must again recommend the authorities to have this
great metropolis divided into districts, and have
the letters so far sorted in provincial places as to
come here almost prepared for delivery. By this
and other means which the authorities may adopt,
the delivery of letters will be greatly facilitated.
We are afraid, too, unless some other ar-
rangements are adopted than those which at
present exist, and which are proposed, that the
time at which the second mail is to leave Dublin
will prevent it reaching the metropolis so as to be of
much advantage to men of business. It is now pro-
posed that the two packets which are to pass between
Dublin and Liverpool, and which will enable the
two capitals to communicate with each other in
twenty-four hours, shall leave Dublin at 5 30
P M., and at 11 30 P.m., with only an interval of
six hours between them. That arrangement may
be useful to the north-west of England, but for the
metropolis it would, we believe, be more advan-
tageous that the which now leaves Dublin at
eight o'clock in the morning for Holyhead should
come by Liverpool, and so bring by the shortest
conveyance all the intelligence which reaches
Dublin by the morning mails. By not send-
ing a mail off for Liverpool in the morning,
ee news which may reach Dublin from
the other parts of Ireland in the morning, being
sent only by the Holyhead packet, will not reach
London for thirty-six hours, when it might come
hither in twenty-four. There may be difficulties
in the way of what we propose of which we are not
aware, and some objects may be contemplated by
the arrangements proposed that are not apparent on
tile face of them, but at present they seem to us not

exactly calculated to satisfy the inhabitants of
London.

Mr. PETER BORTHWICK, of whom the laughter-
loving world appears to be becoming ungratefully
forgetful, has addressed a letter to the Morning
Herald, expressive of his discredit of the Carlist
massacre of the women and children of the town of
14011 in Catalonia, officially proclaimed in the
columns of the Moniteur. PETER is a man of
weight and influence ; and to prove to his Spanish
friends the extent of his devotion to the cause of
the PRETENDER, he boldly opposes a surmise to
an official statement guaranteed by the high cha-
racter of General HA RISPE. This is not the conduct
of an ordinary partizan. Men less sensible of their
claims to national belief than the redoubted PETER,

and less anxious to display the full extent of their zeal,
would have waited for the arrival of some letter or
report, throwing discredit upon an official statement,
before pronouncing it " of no futher importance
than as it illustrates the facility with which inven-

tion can attribute cruelties to those who only suffer

them." But PETER knows and feels that his opinions
are entitled to more credit than facts resting upon
the testimony of any Government, and he seizes the
proper occasion to demand credence for them. Be-
sides, PETER has been in Spain, and, like the tra-
veller in the fable, arrests us with—
" Sir, if my judgment you'll allow,
I've seen, and sure I ought to know."
Thus, with the easy familiarity of a courtier,
who spent upwards of 11, week within sight of the
illustrious Court of Estella, and was permitted for
nearly fifteen minutes together to stand in the
august presence of Don CARLOS—he observes
in his letter to the Herald :

" I should be guilty of a criminal and cowardly deser-
tion of truth, if, after what I have seen and know of the
Ministry, and of the General-in-Chief of the King of
Spain, I hesitated to declare my firm conviction that not
one of those distinguished persons is capable of sanctioning
cruelty or unfair warfare in any shape whatever."
This is surely as conclusive as it is modest.
With a humility truly rare in these times of up-
start pretension, PETER does. not once allude to
what he saw and knew of the " King of Spain,"
but contents himself with vouching for the
humanity of his Majesty's Ministers and
his General-in-Chief. PETER might have
told us if he pleased that he was as familiar with
the PRETENDER as he was with his Ministers ; but

this, with the modesty characteristic of great
minds, he has thought proper to omit. He might
have even gone farther, for he might have added
that he actually saw Don CARLOS, which amounts
to a personal intimacy, denied him in the instance
of some of the Prince's advisers. For the re-
verses experienced by MAROTO, the Carlist apolo-
gist, PETER, reverts to the Spanish career of no
less a General than the Duke of WELLINGTON.
Verily, his Grace may well regard the following
as a left-handed compliment, though proceeding
from a source so worthily Conservative :
" If you think the retrograde movement of Maroto upon
Llodio over Ramales and Guardamino, a movement con-
ducted with equal skill and success, a proof of bad ge-
neralship, then you must condemn all retreats, and the
'• foremost man of the day,"the Duke of Wellington, must
be, in your account, no soldier, because he retreated, leav-
ing his wounded, by-the-bye, from Talavera de la Reyna,
and from Burgos," &c.
It might be argued in favour of the DUKE that
his retreats led to victory—MAßOTO'S to shameful
defeat ; that his Grace never retreated before a
force which his army, under the command of a pre-
decessor, had been able for three years to keep in
check, whereas the conquerors under ZARIATEGUI,
EGUIA, and GOMEZ, were the conquered under
MoßoTo's generalship. But what are plain facts
when opposed to the fancies of Mr. PETER BORTH-
WICK ? Well may iVIARrYro exclaim, if he escape
long enough to receive another flying visit from the
honourable admirer of Parthian tactics in modern

warfare—
" Welcome, thou worthy partner of my laurels
Thou brother of my choice I—a bond more sacred
Than Nature's brittle tie. By holy Friendship I
Glory and Fame stood still for thy arrival :
My soul scem'd wanting of its better half,
And languish'd for thy absence, like a prophet
Who watts the inspiration of his God."

As long before that time, however, there is just
reason to fear that MAROTO will die the death of
a traitor and a murderer—for he is both—we do
not see that Mr. PETER BORTHWICK could dis-
play his intimate acquaintance with the Court of
Estella to more advantage than in writing epitaphs
for that General, and his colleaczues of the PRE-
TENDER'S Cabinet. Perhaps short memoirs,
after the WALTON fashion, would be still
better, as they would afford space for the
more racy of the countless anecdotes which
so observant a traveller, and so discriminating .:a
judgeof human character as the illustrious PETER
must have picked up during a six weeks' peregri-
nation in the Basques, with no other drawback to
the acquisition of knowledge: but the trifling obsta-
cles arising from an ignorance of the language, the
history, the religion, and the manners of the people,
Bestir thyself, good Master PETER. Thou hast
a marvellous invention, and—as thy letter to the
Herald proves—no lack of assurance. " Don
CARLOS, his Court, and his Ministers, from mate-
rials supplied during a fifteen minutes interview
with the PRINCE, an eight-day residence. in his
capital, and a six weeks' sojourn in Spain, by an
ex-comic performer of Hamlet," will be no bad
title, good Master PETER, for thy book. About
it, then, straight ; it will do more credit to thy
inventive powers than attacking the veracity of
official despatches.

One part of the Tory creed is, that Members
of the House of Commons should disregard their
constituents. They receive power, like the priests,
from a kind of divine mission, and are not responsi-
ble, as they think, for its exercise. They disdain
appeals to the people, and have, in their own en-
lightened convictions, a safer guide than public
opinion. They may vote or not vote, they say,
according to their own judgment; and to be obliged
to act under the dictati on of their constituencies
is to be delegates, -not representatives. Poor
deluded men I if they do not defer to the
constituencies they have other masters. The
service of the Times is not one of perfect
freedom, as that Journal gave the Tory
Members, yesterday-, plainly to understand.
The Tory Members: are admonished that they
have got an unbusintss-like habit of indulging in
dinner society, and they dine when the Times re-
quires them to be at its command. Poor wretches!
even the negro is allowet I to dine—the factory girls
are allowed to dine—btr t the Tory Members must
not dine ; it is contrary to the wish and command
of the Times. Verily, the Tory country gentle-
men who love their east ,—the Tory eldest sons of
Tory Peers—the few wt :althy Tory merchants and
bankers, who sit in the House of Commons, and
even the younger s( ins and mere office and salary
seekers of the part ;y, have given themselves a
hard task-master. They have got a habit of
dining which the 7 'toes undertakes to correct.
Let it empty their put ses, and it will cure them.
Our readers will z r‘o doubt be curious to know
why the task-master nww scolds his dining slaves.
The majority was 34.. The Tories were left in a
considerable minority .„ an d the Times immediately
smacks its cart-whip, and flogs the hides of the
Tory Members. Fort nerly they were admonished
not to frequent gambi jug-houses and balls when
they ought to be at a ti, ivision ; next, for some simi-
lar offence, they were d escribed as half atheists and
infidels; and now they a re reproached with being too
fond of the pleasures of the table. A
JOHN K.Nox
or a ROWLAND Hu; r. never applied the spiritual
scourge more rigoro t isly and dexterously to his
congregation than the Times applies it to the Tory
Members of the Ho- ask of Commons. "H. B.
is very impartial, ar p robably may find an appro-
priate subject for a skes.
ch, in the Times flogging
the Tory Members i ioin the dinner table, with Sir
JAMES GRAHAM, in tin' House of Commons,
talking against time tr, allow the whipped-up Tories
to reach it before th,e.tlivisiori..

The proceedings ha tlie French Chamber of Deputies
on Monday, are concitsive proofs of the little influence
which the Cabinet is, able to exercise over the delibera-
tions of that Assembly. I Nothing can be more inoppor-
tune for the Govercurvantt, at the present moment, than
an unnecessary display of e ympathy for the patriots who
fell during the " tlyre'e en nous days." When, there-
fore, M. Cuaru,,, DE A lONTLAVILLE proposed, on
Monday, that tb., remains; „ of the victors of July should
be collected in- one t( anb fit . the foot of the monument
now in the c ourse of erection, to perpetuate the memory
-.
of that eve's t, M. DL ICIIATEL, Minister of the Interior,
opposed it on the gr, Fund ttati
~ the Government had it
in contemplation to ' bring in a , . Bill upon the anbject.
The Chamber, however, una nit. 10%31Y adopted M. CIIA.
PUIS DE MONTLAV7 ,ILLE'S p, oi, ,siti,en, from whose very
able speech, on th' is occasir ,n, v,,e seL'ect the following
extract :—..

" Tho preservaf ion of the of the heroes who had

~~,