The Sun.
London, England, 1839-12-23 00:00:00

A CHARTIST MANCEU'VR.E.

A curious scene was exhibited in the Coffee House
Assembly Room, in this city, on Monday evening last.
A Rev. Mr. Rogers, the Agent of a Society in London,
which has taken upon itself to supply the wmts caused
by the non-passing of Sir Andrew Agnew's Sabbath-
day Observance Bill, visited this city last we ek for the
purpose of extending the operations of the Society which
pays him for attention to its concerns. On Sunday he
preached in St. Cuthbert's Church in favour of the
object of the Society ; and, on Monday, it was :In nounced
a public meeting would be held in the CoTee! House
Assembly 'Room, for the purpose of prop noting a
.‘ better observance of the Lord's Day."
On Monday evening a meeting was held aceoP-dingly ;
but, evidently to the dismay of Mr. Rogers and others,
the meeting was attended most numerously by tl iat very
class for whose benefit the Society affects most .concern,
the working men. Before the hour appointed far taking
the chair, the room was almost entirely filled by work-
ing men—principally weavers; and amongst them was
discovered the redoubtable Dr. John Taylor, Mr.
George Julian Harney, and Mr. Cardo, all late mem-
bers of the National Convention, and other leaders of
the Chartist body. It was soon whispered abou t that
Dr. Taylor intended to address the meeting, and many
persons were foolish enough to expect there wouhl he a
row. In consequence of this, a number of ladiet, who
were present, made a speedy retreat, and some gentle-
men were anxious enough to follow their example.
The persons who had called the meeting took their
places on the platform ; and soon afterwards proceeded
with the business of the evening. The, first thing, of
course, was to elect a chairman ; and T. H. Graham,
Esq., of Edmond Castle, was proposed to fill that
office. The Chartists, however, were determined to
have a Chairman of their own ; and they accoreingly
proposed Mr. Wm. Hall, a letter-press printer, and
carried him by an immense majority. The promoters
of the meeting then proceeded with their statements,
without the slightest interruption ; but they broLglit
forward no resolutions. The meeting was then .id-
dresscd by Mr. Armstrong, (a weaver) Dr. Tayor,
Harney, and Cardo, and resolutions carried totally op-
posed to the objects for which the meeting had been
called, and then, to crown the whole, persons were sta-
tioned at the door by the Chartists to make a collec-
tion for the defence of Mr. Frost charged with high
treason at Newport
When we see the rich relieving their household ser-
vants from all labour on the Sunday,—making their
own fires, cooking their own victuals, and walking in-
stead of riding to church, we shall believe that they
are sincere in wishing to see a strict observance of the
Sabbath.—Carlisle Journal.

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

FROM THE MORNING PAPERS OF THIS DAT.
(From the Mornins. Chronicle.)
The grapes are sour ! The Standard condescends
to prepare the Tories—who have been getting up the
steam for Sir Robert Peel, by appeals to the lowest
prejudices, by libelling the Queen, and by incitements
to agitate for a repeal of the Emancipation Act—for
the knowledge that they have laboured in Bain, as the
great Tory leader does not deem the conjunction fa-
vourable for a dash at Downing-street. The great Con-
servative meetings have been wasting their sweetness on
the desert air.

" Sir Robert," quoth the Standard, " has shown that
he will answer his country's call ; but we may be sure that
he will not precipitate or even invite it, and that he will
even wait until his obedience shall, to his own sound judg-
ment, be beat to his country% advantage. Short govern-
ments are always injurious to public interests—
' Non parcit populis regnum breve.'
Sir Robert Peel will be sure of a durable Conservative
Administration before he will expose the country to the
inconvenience necessarily attendant upon all Ministerial
changes."
And we have a most edifying reminifcmce of the kill-
ing work Sir Robert went through to no purpose
in 1835. It remains to be seen how this announcement
will be stomached by the host of rabid speechifiers who
have been labouring so hard to serve Sir Robert, as they
supposed. if the Right Honourable Baronet had acted
in a more manly manner, and discountenanced the mad
pranks of the ultra-Tories in the outset, he might have
obtained credit for the moderation he. now affects ; as it
is, his hesitation will be attributed to a less honourable
cause. Honesty is as often the best policy in politics
as it is in affairs of ordinary life. We must say this in
favour of the deluded Conservatives who have been
toiling, as they thought, for Sir Robert—that it was his
duty, as a public man, to set them right at once with
regard to his own sentiments, if he disapproved of the
course they were pursuing. To lie by and see a parcel
of fanatics scatter firebrands about the country, and
then come forward at the twelfth hour, and avail himself of
the mystery in which he has shrouded himself to disclaim
his allies is, to say the least of it, paltry in the extreme.
However, this is not our affair, but that of the Tories
whom he has befooled.

(From the Times.)
We have long been aware of the strength which,
though slumbering, lived, and yet lives, unimpaired, in
the Protestant people of England ; but we own, that,
until we received the intelligence which, during the last
few days, the Whigs have been good enough to promul-

gate for the information and actmonition of mankind, we
had no notion that this power was at all equal- to
the results now anticipated and announced from it. Ve
leap!, however, upon this high authority, that the ex-
mission of the pro-Popery Ministers is sought by the
Protestants—the wanton, the wild, the insolent, the in-
sulting, the intolerant, the inaolerable Protestants—for
Cie purpose of making another revolution in the frame
of the empire, and effecting the repeal of the Catholic
Relief Bill. Whether this repeal is to precede or to fol-
!ow the announced attempt at t he deposition of her Ma-
Foy, we are not yet accurately informed. Nor, to speak
seriously, can we well make up our minds which of
these two allegations—whether the charge of a design
upon the religious constitution of the country, or the I
cuarge of a design upon the person of its Sovereign--
is the more false, gross, impudent, and infamous. 'But,
t'or mischievous effect, the suggestion about the Relief
Bill unquestionably bears away the palm, because there
probably may be people foolish enough to believe that
some of the Tory leaders are actually seeking that
change ; whereas a removal of the Sovereign is a spe-
culation which nobody is so stupid as really to suppose
that any human being entertains. That the Roman
Catholic Relief Act has been made the instrument of
considerable evils, will be disputed by few who are at
all acquainted with the present working of the Irish
franchise ; but even if those evils were the natural fruits
of the measure, instead of being, as they are, the con-
sequences of its perversion and abuse by an unprincipled
Ministry, still the repeal of the Relief Act would now
be as hopeless in practice as it would be useless in prin-
ciple ; and this is so well known to public men of all
denominations, that it would not be easy to find
in either House of Parliament even so much as one
couple of enthusiasts to propose and second the attempt.
There may be, here and there, a provincial skirmisher
or two who fancy that such a revolution would be of
service ; but the great mass of the Conservative party,
including the whole of its intelligence, would as soon
propose the enactment of Mr. Owen's " social system."
Even those who charge all our evils upon the enact-
ment of the Emancipation are fully aware that those
evils will not now be removed by its repeal ; for, as Mr.
Canning said to a man who proposed the return to pa-
per money by way of cure for the inconveniences occa-
sioned by the adoption of the metallic medium, " It does
not follow, that because you broke my leg by throwing
me out of the window, you will make it whole by throwiog-
nsein again." Nor is this moderation of sentiment confined
to the more temperate, intellectual, and influential of
4hia, Tories. - The most ardent-ottiretr lio4y, the Pretes-
t/Eiji of Ireland, have shown themselves ready to sacri-
fice their naturally strong prejudices to the advice of their
leaders and general temper of the times. We need
only appeal to the readiness with which the Orange-
men, the extreme champions of the anti-Popish party,
disbanded their lodges, and renounced their combina-
tions, on the mere suggestion of their Sovereign. If
there had been a design among the Protestants to re-
peal the Relief Bill, why should they have deferred that
object till their restoration to government ? For it is not
pretended that the wish of repeal exists among those
individuals of the party who are likely to be the holders
of office ; on the contrary, the allegation is, that they,
and especially Sir R. Peel, so far from aiding the design
by their official influence, will be forced into it, most
reluctantly, by the pressure of their supporters from
without. If this pressure will be so potent then, why
has it so little operation now ? 'Why do not the Duke
and Sir Robert Peel at once obey their fate? A thou-
sand restraints would fetter them in office from
which in opposition they are free. How is it that
all " the Protestant bigots" do not avail themselves
of this immediate advantage? For this simple reason,
that the design imputed to them has no existence but
in the fables of the Popish Radicals. It may be very
true, that if the Papists had powers of mischief com-
mensurate with their inclin,s.tion for it, they would pre-
sently disfranchise and proscribe the whole race of Pro-
testants. But though that be the Popish, it is not
the Protestant spirit ; the Protestants desire no restraint
upon their neighbours but for the simple purpose of their
own protection. As soon as the law shall have reco-
vered its supremacy in Ireland—as soon as there shall
be an end to the impression produced by Whig misrule,
that the institutions of the State,:the endowment of the
Church, and the safety of person and property, arc va-
lueless to the Government, except as the subjects of sacri-
fice and barterin the compact forPopish support, there will
be little to fear from the movements of the Roman Catho-
lics. Until the Whigs came into office, the affairs of Ireland
were working with perfect safety under the Relief Bill,
inasmuch that in the following season, in the year 1830,
as we reminded our readers the other day, the Duke of
Wellington, then first Minister of the Crown, was
enabled very greatly to reduce the military force sta-
tioned in that kingdom. We at the same time reminded
our readers, that Major Warburton, who for many
years was Inspector of Connaught, and afterwards De-
puty Inspector-General of the whole Irish constabulary,
and whose means of knowledge were therefore accurate
and extensive, told the Lords' Committee of last
Session, that so far from any increase of disturbance,
" there was a decided improvement of public feeling
in the autumn and winter which followed the
Relief Bill." And this is the more remarkable,
because Ireland bad not then obtained the benefit of
the Tithe Commutation Bill, which her selfish enemies
so long withheld from her, in spite of the efforts and
entreaties of the whole Conservative party. Little more
then can be requisite, when the immediate mischief of
the Whig dynasty shall have passed away, than to make
provision against any unfair working of the Constitution
as already by law established. For this purpose—for
the purpose not of rescinding the Relief Bill, but of
fulfilling its spirit—two things seem to be required—tho
one affecting the Roman Catholic representatives, the
other affecting the Roman Catholic constituencies.
What is wanted with respect to the representatives is a
security (if, indeed, there is ingenuity enough in man
to devise any fence which the cunning of the Papists
will not contrive to slip through) against the perver-
sion of the Parliamentary oath, as now taken and broken,
by some perhaps in error, but assuredly by many in wil-
fulness. The other requisite, that which relates to the
electors, is.the provision of some guard, such as we sug-
gested to our readers in the Tinies of the 10th instant,
against that manufacture of fictitious votes, which now
enable the Roman Catholic priests to swamp so many
of the constituencies. The Protestants arc not so feeble
or so faint-hearted as to need, in these days, the assis-
tance of religious penalties or exclusions, or the distur-
bance of the great principles of national settlement.
The Church of Rome may preach the repeal of the
articles of Union ; but the Church of England wants
not the repeal of the Emancipation Act.
(From the Horning Advertiser.)
Lord Melbourne's announcement that it is the de-
termination of Government to bring a Bill into Parlia-
ment, in the approaching Session, for the purpos O
abolishing the civil jurisdiction of the Ecclesiast
Courts, is one which ought to inspire the real friends
of the Church with feelings of the highest gratification.
A measure which would conduce more largely to her
best interests, it were impossible for the warmest ad-
mirer of whom she can boast, to devise. Episcopacy,
as an established religion, has suffered more seriously
from the tyrannical and iniquitous proceedings which, I
certain of her haughty clergy, availing themselves of the
power to do so conferred upon them by these Cour es,
have instituted against Dissenters, than from any other
cause that could be named. Our columns, and the 1.
columns of our Liberal Contemporaries, have for the
last three months borne ample testimony to this fact,
by what has appeared in them relative to the living
martyrdom of a Chelmsford ehairch-rate recusant ;
and it is now, we believe, beyond all doubt that the '
fate of the conscientious confessor alluded to will be
shared, ere a month has elapsed, by Mr. Baines, of
Leicester ; in which case the Church will again bring
on herself, through means of the civil jurisdiction con-
ferred on her by the counts in (pc stion, such a measure
of unpopularity as will endanger her very existence as
an established religion. We bee; to remind the clerical
inquisitors who institute proceeetings against those honest
Dissenters whose consciences wiill not suffer them to pay
Church-rates, that the nineteetb century forms no part
of the dark ages when men looked up to the Church
with a superstitious reverence, ar d submitted without a
murmur, as well as without an attempt at resistance, to
any exaction, however monstrooni in principle and exorbi-
tant in amount, which the priests thought fit to make.
The principles of religious as twell as of civil liberty are
now somewhat better understood than they were in those
days, or even than they wer a for fifty years after the
Reformation. Instead of to king the dictum of the
Church, as delivered by a pampered priesthood—wee
speak of the dignitaries of ou r State religion—men have
DOW learnt the grand secret (of taking all their notions
on ecclesiastical matters fro In the Bible, and from the
Bible alone. If, therefore, our High Church priesthood
imagine that they are to catry out principles which re-
ceive no sanction from Scripture, and which were only
the products of a corrupt ecclesiastical system in the
dark ages, they will soon make the discovery that they
are labouring under a grievous mistake. Finding that
the great bulk of the community have repudiated the
right of the Church to impose taxes on them, the High
Church priesthood may have recourse, as they have al-
ready had recourse in the case of Mr. Thorogood, to
the more stern logic of imprisonments, co-enduring as
to their term with the lives of the individuals incarce-
rated ; but even then they will find their object is as
far from being gained as ever. They will find that so
far from the Dissenters yielding to the fear of
are persons who know not,
imprisonment, they
where conscience is concerned, what the fear of man
or any body ofmen is, and the more the compulsory
applied to them, the more devoted do they
processbecorn is
e in their attachment to their principles, and bold
and resolute in their assertion of them. We speak ad-
visedly when we state, that there are at this moment
numbers of Dissenters in all parts of the country, who,
rather than incur the guilt of paying Church rates, will '
take joyfully the spoiling of their goods, and submit to
be immured within the walls of a dungeon, even should
they enter that dungeon with the probability of its be-
coming their grave. With, then, the knowledge of this
fact, we wait with some impatience to see what course
of action the High Church party will adopt, when Go-
vernment shall bring into Parliament its intended naea-