The Sun.
London, England, 1839-07-10 00:00:00

colonial timber, being 10s. per load, and on
foreign timber 555., are calculated to give to the
colonies the supply of that article. For the benefit
of the jobbers of land in the colonies, who would
have hurried us into a war about Maine, and the
shipowners of England—for they alone profit by
these duties—a tax is levied on the people, as Mr.
VILLIERS proved, of at least 1,500,0001. a-year,
or which has amounted, as Sir HENRY PAR-
NELL says, to 30,000,000/. in twenty years.
To say nothing of the many other disastrous
consequences of these duties, we confine ourselves
now to the single circumstance of their levying
1,500,000/. annually on one class of the people
for the benefit of another. Taking corn-laws,
coal duties, sugar duties, bank monopoly,
timber duties,: &c., into consideration, we shall
scarcely err if we conclude, that half the annual
revenue of the community is distributed by law,
or taken from one class and given to another. It
is not one class exclusively, however, who are de-
predators. The landlord preys on the shipowner,
the shipowner on the sugar-grower, the sugar-
grower on the coal-dealer and owner, the coal-
dealer on the bank-stock owner, and the bank-
stock owner on the landlord. One preys on the
other. Dog will not eat dog ; but what the Ame-
ricans call Humans, in our country at least, eat
each other, and rejoice in the feast. The action
of the Government, too, when we thus see its
effects cumulated, becomes strikingly absurd. It is
constituted to protect the property of each and all, and

here we find it to the amount of half the annual
income of the community, distributing property by
law, and regulating a magnificent scheme of mutual
and general plunder.
We were not surprised, however much we re-
gretted to see, that Mr. VILLIERS had few auditors.
It did not please the Members of the House of
Commons to hear their fraud exposed. They kept
away. One man, but only one, stood up unblushingly
to advocate that system of plunder. The rest heard of
it in silence, but indifference. Alderman THOMP-
SON was not ashamed to justify it. The account
of such proceedings goes forth to the world ; the
nature of such monopolies is well known to the
majority of the nation ; and the consequence
is, as might be expected, that the Parliament
falls into utter and irretrievable contempt. Jobbers
try to make use of it for their own purposes, but
honest and reflecting men ask, with fear and tremb-
ling, what can come of this ? We know not, but
the Chartists throughout the country know and
say, that it is to support this general system of
plunder that they are oppressed and sacrificed.

About a hundred years ago the greatest writer o
the age described the Clergy of the Church of
England in the following words :

The crowd confess
The Reverend Flamen in his lengthened dress.
Around him wide a sable army stand,
A low-born, cell-bred, selfish, servile band ;
Prompt or to guard or stab, to saint or damn ;
Heaven's Swiss, who fight for any god or man.
This picture, it must be confessed, is not very flat-
tering. That it was correctly drawn there is no reason
to doubt, but every reason to believe, for Bishop
Warburton, in commenting upon it, satisfied him-
self with exempting, from the- condemnation which
it conveys, those of the priestly order who con-
fined themselves strictly to the duties of their
calling. These have never been very numerous, and
it is, we are sorry to say, no libel on the priesthood
to assert that they are much less numerous at the
present time than ever they were at any former
period. The likeness traced by the inimitable hand
of the great master may, therefore, be said to have
been improved by time, and that to such a degree
as to leave little, if any, room for further pro-
gress towards perfection.

The effects of the clerical character upon the
people must be considerable in a country like this,
in which the Clergy, unhappily for both par-
ties, are endowed with so much wealth, and
enjoy so many privileges. As the only State-
accredited expounders of Christianity and guar-
dians of morality, their example cannot fail
to exercise a great influence on the faith
and practice of the nation. When one considers
the extensive range of priestly power, and also the
innumerable minute ramifications through which the
priesthood have the means of insinuating their in-
fluence over the minds of men of all classes, it is
not wonderful that they should have been, by gene-
ral consent, held responsible for much of the evil
which exists in every department of society. Will
any man venture to say, that if the Clergy
had really been, what they pretend to be,
the successors of the Apostles, if they
had been instant, in season and out of
season, not only to inculcate upon the people by
their teaching, but to exemplify in their conduct,
the holy precepts of the Gospel—the humility, the
meekness, the self-denial, the disinterestedness, the
purity, and, above all, the charity, which form the
sum and substance of the religion taught by
CHRIST and his Apostles, and which shine forth
as the actuating principles of their lives—will any
believer in the truth of Christianity say that if
the English priesthood, with the opportunities
of influence which they possess, had acted thus,
society would have presented to the eye of
the philanthropist the sad, discouraging, and in
some respects appalling, spectacle which it does
at the present moment ?
Yet the Clergy, to whom this state of things is
mainly to be attributed, are the loudest in their cla-
mours about it. Like the pickpocket who hopes to
elude his pursuers by calling "stop thief," they think
to screen their delinquency by railing against Popery,
infidelity, and dissent. Now, with respect to Po-
pery, why, it may be asked, should it be so over-
whelming an object of terror to the Church of Eng-
land ? It has not its five or six millions a-year of
State endowment, with which to back its pretensions;
it can appeal to no civil authority to enforce its ec-
clesiastical decisions, and rivet its chains on the
reluctant conscience ; "the weapons of its war-
fare are not carnal," its arguments are alto-
gether of a spiritual nature, and are ad-
dressed to the spiritual man—to the reason,
and the conscience. If such arguments pre-
vail, they are equally open to the Protestant
Clergy. Why do they not use them ? Do they
doubt their efficacy ? Then they confess that
they have a bad cause—then they confess the in-
nate superiority of the Roman Catholic system of
faith, even when shorn of all its temporal adjuncts,
over their own, though strengthened by all the
influence that worldly pomp and power can confer.
Are they afraid of the greater diligence, persever-
ance, devotedness to their sacred duties, of the Ca-
tholic priesthood ? Let them blush to acknow.
ledge it.
The same reasoning applies to Dissent. It has
been said that the blood of, the martyrs is the
seed of the Church, and it may at least, with
equal truth, be said, that the vices of the Clergy
have been the seed of Dissent. That they
are the main cause of that infidelity which
it is so much the fashion for the priests to mix
up with Dissent, for the purpose of bringing
odium upon the Dissenters, there is no thinking
person who entertains a shadow of doubt. The
Clergy are in reality the worst of infidels, inasmuch
as practical is worse than speculative infidelity.
They tell the people that the Scriptures are a reve-
lation from Goia which it is the bounden duty of
every man not only to believe, but to take as the
rule of his life and conversation. How are the
people, the great mass of the working classes, who
are cruelly denied the means of education by the
Clergy, and who can at best spare but little time
for such inquiries, were they able to enter into
t
m— rn w are they to know whether there be
evidencesuf-
ficient to prove the truth of Christianity ?
They must of necessity take their faith at secondhand.
They very naturally conclude that if what their
" pastors and masters ' tell them be true, they—the
pastors and masters—who are learned men, capable
of understanding the principles and rules of evidence,
and who, moreover, claim to be the lineal suc-
cessors of the first promulgators of the Chris-
tian religion,
must be better convinced of the
truth than any other persons can be, and, as
a necessary consequence, must prove this convic-
tion to the world by the strict and undeviating con-
formity of their conduct, to all the requirements of
the Gospel. When, therefore, the people see the
priests of the self-styled Apostolic Church, the
sole State-recognized interpreters of the Scriptures,
setting at defiance, in their practice,
and precept contained in those
Scriptures, their
a shaken.r,ot
faith in the Christian religion is
process of reason-
every maxim
can it be otherwise ? By
though not quite legitimate
unnatural,How
j,;(g, they judge of the system
by its profes-
sors, wficri they ought to try it by its own merits.
In their circumstances, however, this is impossible,

and well, therefore, may they retort upon the
priesthood—" You are the real unbelievers, you
are the practical infidels ; for while you profess to
believe the Scriptures, and tell us to believe them,
your conduct gives the lie to your professions—
' your practice is at war with your preaching. If you,
who have all knowledge,' show us by your
example, by your acts, that you disbelieve the
Scriptures, with what face can you blame us, un-
learned men, who have no other test of their truth
than those acts, for disbelieving them also ? If we
are infidels, you, and you alone, are to blame."

The Morning Post announces that the Tories
in the Lords mean to throw out those parts of the
Irish Municipal Bill on which the Tories were de-
feated in the House of Commons. We presume
they will be successful. The Tories in the House
of Lon's really lord it over the QUEEN and
Commons. The assent of both these parties is
obtained to the details of the Irish Bill, and it is sent
up to the Lords by a very considerable majority. The
moderate men of their own party approve of it,
i
and voted for it against the bigots, whose intole-
rance Lord ELIOT happily exposed. Neverthe-
less, the Tory Lords are to beard the QUEEN, the
Commons, and the moderate men of their own party,
and mutilate the Bill. We can wonder at nothing
they do, after they have carried an Address which
is an infringement of the prerogative, which is a per-
fect mockery, for without any such Address the Lords
can debate by resolution, or otherwise, any question
they please, and which is also in declared opposition
to both the QUEEN, acting by her Ministers, and the
Commons. In fact, while the Bishops are to ap-
proach the Throne to-morrow, supplicating her
MAJESTY not to confirm the appointment of a
Board of Privy Council till they have had an
opportunity to discuss it, the) had already discussed
it and decided against it. The Bishops have excited
the Tory Lords to carry up an insulting, because
hypocritical, if not false, address to her MAJESTY.
Ministers will be wanting to their own dignity and
the dignity of their Royal Mistress, and be want-
ing in what is due to the Throne, united with the
Commons, if they do not to-morrow give the Bishops
and the Tory Lords such a sharp answer as shall
convince them that they are not to trample on the
other two estates of the realm.

It is with great regret, though we confess with
no surprise, that we see the President of the Board
of Trade announced last evening that he had no
measure to propose this session for the prevention
of calamities by the loss of steam-boats. Since the
culpable sacrifice of so many human beings in the
Forfarshire and Northern Yacht, he has had
nearly a year to digest some plan ; he has
had the Report of two gentlemen well qualified
to assist him ; nay, he admits that a Bill is
in preparation, yet he cannot introduce it till next
Session T. Was there ever such trifling with human
life ? The Houses of Parliament, when it suits
their convenience, suspend their Standing Orders,
and pass Bills with amazing rapidity ; yet Mr.
POULETT THOMSON will not attempt this course,
or get out of the jog-trot of lazy legislation, to
carry a measure which concerns the public safety,
about which there could hardly be a party dispute,
and which, according to Captain PRINGLE and Mr.
PARKES, is imperatively called for to protect the lives
of her MAJESTY s subjects against the gross negli-
gence and grasping cupidity of steam-boat owners.
By next Session these gentlemen, or perhaps Co-
roners' Juries, may have to record their opinion
that " several vessels were sent to sea with boilers
and machinery in so leaky and disabled a state, so
ill found, ill equipped, and in so imperfect a condi-
tion, that the fatal catastrophe by which a hundred
human beings miserably perished could excite no
surprise." Will the public admit as an excuse for
such a calamity on the part of the Legislature or of
Mr. POULETT THOMSON, that, after a year's
warning, they had not time to devise any remedy ?
Would that some spirited Member of Parliament
would take up the subject, and see whether the
Legislature are so callous to the interests and safety
of the public, as to risk, even for three months, the
possibility, nay, the probability, of similar disasters !

There is an absolute dearth of political intelligence
in the Morning and Evening Paris Journals of Monday.
The Court of Peers was still sitting, though whether'
from weariness or apathy, or a predetermination to pro-
nounce a particular verdict, its proceedings were con-
ducted with less decorum and less dignity. Though
sitting as Judges, the Peers openly manifested their par-
tiality by receiving copies of the Procureur-General's
speech for the prosecution, printed at the desire of the
Government, which several of them were not ashamed
to read in open Court. But these symptoms of a
determination to find the leaders of the accused guilty
only impel the Opposition journals to the manifestation
of greater zeal on behalf of the accused. They implore
the Government to avoid the fatal error of attempting
to crush political factions by the shedding of blood, and
they enter into lengthened arguments to show that
BARBES cannot be regarded as a greater criminal than
Prince POLIGNAC, whose life was spared in the midst
of the fury of a popular revolution.
The Memorial Bordelais publishes the following pro-
gramme, purporting to be the basis upon which Austria
proposes the pacification of Spain. It is said to have
been communicated by Prince METTERNICH to M.
ZEA BERMUDEZ :

" 1. The marriage of Isabella 11., with the eldest son
of Don Carlos. A supreme council of five members (a
sort of regency) to be consulted in every exercise of the
executive power up to the day of the definitive celebration
of the marriage.-2. A general political amnesty.-3.
The Estatuto Real to be re-established such as it was
founded in April, 1334.-4. Councils-General of depart-
ments or provinces to be created, which shall elect amongst
their members the procuradores of the Cortes. At each
convocation of the Cortes by the Crown, each province to
send three deputies. The councils-general to be renewed
every five years. Their presidents to be named by the
King from a triple list presented by the councils.-5. The
municipal councils to be reinstated as in April 1834,
awaiting a new law which the Crown shall propose to the
cortes.-6. Don Carlos and Queen Christina to receive
pensions for their lives, and to travel abroad."
The Prince DE JOIN VILLE, in the Jupiter, has joined
the French fleet at the mouth of the Dardanelles.

The National very felicitously ridicules the extreme
precaution taken by the Prefect of Police to preserve
the peace of the capital, and concludes by observing,
that if ever France erect a temple to Fear, that func-
tionary deserves to be appointed high priest of the pale
goddess.
The letters and papers from Madrid are of the Ist
instant, but the only news they bring is the departure
on that day cf the French Ambassador, the Duke DE
FEZENZAC, for Paris. M. FEUER was to act as
Charge d'Affaires in his absence.
BOURSE.--Paais, MONDAY, JULY 8.

HALF-PAST TIIREE.—The firmness of yesterday at Tor-
toni's has been followed to-day by an improvement in the
French Stocks. For the AeConnt-the Three per Cents.
opened at 791. 50c., declined to 79f. 45c., rose to 79f.
60e., and alter oscillating to 79f. 55c., closed at 79f. 60c.,
a rise of 15 cents. The Five per Cents. opened at 1111.
85c., and closed at Illf. 90c., a rise of 10 cents. For
Money the Three and Five per Cents. are 10c. higher.
The Bank of France Shares are unvaried. The Laflitte
Bank 5,000 f. shares are sf. higher, and those of I,ooof.
have not been quoted. The Belgian Bank Shares are
2f. 50c. better. The Spanish Active isi loiter, having
from 191 declined to 19, and then recovered to the open-
ing price. Should the Chamber of Peers adopt the three
bills which have passed that of the Deputies, some confi-
dence may hereafter revive to a certain extent in Railway
undertakings ; but in the meantime there will not be any
of importance, for the Havre Company, it is evident, will
wind up their concerns, and do nothing more. The efforts
making to induce the Chamber of Deputies to grant the
loan of 5,000,000 f. to the Versailles Left Bank are very
great, and the Shares have in consequence advanced 201.
The Versailles Right Bank have declined 1 Of. The
Havre have advanced 15f., the expense hitherto incurred
being presumed to be small. The St. Germain have not
altered.
First Highest Lowest Last
Price Price. Price. nice.
French 5 per Cents
3 per Cents 79 40 ... 79 45 ... 79 35 ... 79 45
Bank of ',ranee
Laffitte Bark 5,000 f. 8h 5220 ...5220 ...5220 ...5220
Belgian 5 per Cents 102% ... 102 S ... 102% 102%
Bank 765 770 765 ... 770
Spanish Active ... 19 19W
Neapolitan 99 65 99 70 ... 99 63 ... 99 70
Roman
RAILWAY SHAREa.
St. Germain
Versailles, R. B 652 50 ... 655 ... 645 ... 650
LB. 175 ... 183 ... 165 175
Havre
Orleans .
Strasburg to Bale 293 ... 290 ... 290 ... 299

DUTCH FUNDS.—Ammanam, JULY S.
Money. Bills.
% Actual Debt, IN per Cent
Ditto, ditto 5 per cent.
Amen Syndic, 4% percent....... 95% 96%
Ditto, ditto, 3% per cent Bl% 82
Commercial Company, 4%, per cent IBON, MN
Ditto (1822 and 1833) 5 per cent. —
Ditto 1837, 5 per cent.
Loan 1837, 5 leer cent. 96 Si 99%
Exchange on London, One month l2 01
Two months
AUSTRIAN FUNDS.—VIENNA, JUNE 28.
Five per Cents. Metalliques
Four per Cents.
Three per Cents.
Bank Shares 1515%
—4llgemeineZeitung, July 3
PRUSSIAN FUNDS.—BnaList JULY 5.
Al& Money,
St. Schuld. Sch., 4 per cent. ....... ........ 103% 102%
Prussian English Loan, 1830, 4 per cent. 103% 102%
VXchange on Landon, three months ... 6 21
—Prussian State Gazette. July 5.

COAL-PIT ACCIDENT--,Two men were killed
on Wednesday last, and six others se severely injured that
their lives are inimminent danger, by the fire damp, in a
colliery at Leigh, near Bolton.—Preston Observer.