The Sun.
London, England, 1862-08-08 00:00:00

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THE SUN.

LONDON, FRIDAY, AUGUST 8, 1862.

" Conspicuous by its absence," is one topic in her
:MAJESTY'S Speech—that of Parliamentary Reform.
Equally conspicuous, for these days, we might say,
is the absence of another topic—that of Ecclesiastical
Reform. In other language not a sentence was there
indicating that anything had been done in the
cause of either civil or religious liberty.
_ wis it that we take so quietly this sort of
thing ? Are
we really content with the last
patching and
repairing of our venerable constitu-
tion ? Does the nation really believe that its civil
and religious liberties are perfected, or so near per-
fection, that a whole a ss,
e on may be spent without
them. As to " reaction,"
any at tempt t. 0 amer)d
tl,lO Tories laugh at the idea
the more sensibie of
Halt A hat there
themselves, may be, bat we should
like to see the result of some --tempt to repeal in
whole or in part any of the franchises
gained by the
Reform Act, or by any of the acts -which followed
upon it. No party dares to bring any such
proposition before Parliament or the count,, gut
that with the advent to power of Lord PALmEit.
:3ToN this time, all measures for the furtherance of
civil and religious liberty, have come to a stand, is
perfectly true, and the QUEEN'S Speeches, both at
the commencement arid the close of Parliament,
have borne NNitness to the fact. Her advisers had
no inclination to propose anything themselves,
orner3 know it to be useless to repeat their former
proposals, even those which had been sanctioned by
both the great parties, and therefore her MAJESTY
has nothing of the kind on which to congratulate
" My Lords and Gentlemen" when she takes her
leave of them.

We must confess that, for all this, we think
the character of the Premier has most to answer
for. The universal opinion of such a political vete-
zan can hardly be a wrong one. For a large part
of his life, he was thought, being absorbed in
Foreign policy, to be pretty much indifferent to
g'l'sti°" of Political Reform. If he could but steer
our course abroad, he was content to let the Rim--
SELLS and GREys, in their Reforming days, do
pretty much as they please. Of late, advance, in
Tears, and wealth is pretty correctly believed to
have changed indifference to aversion, and though
from necessity of position a professed Liberal,
he is regarded neither on the Treasury benches, nor
on those of the opposition, as a friend to any single,
much less to any comprehensive measure for libe-
raJibing the Representation. It is held to be per-

feotly certain that he will not back either the ma-
jority, or the whole of his party, in any movement,
however slight, in the direction of Parliamentary
Reform. lie might not vote against them, except,
indeed, on the question of enabling every man to do
his own, instead of his landlords, voting; but all
reformers well know that he would insist on
nothing. However welcome to them might be a
ten pound franchise in counties, or a six pound one
in boroughs, or some bona fide preventive clauses
in the " Elections Corruption Prevention Bill"—
all who wished to do little or much in this line
knew that they were a nuisance to Lord PALMER-
STON, and that even what he could hardly disap-
prove, he would " damn by faint praise," or by
secret intimations to his friends that they would not
annoy him, but rather the contrary, by "making
themselves scarce" at divisions.

Conveniently concurrent with his hardly con-
cealed aversion to the measures he took office to
carry, were his war measures. Under the name
of Defence ho adopted a thorough war policy
in time of peace. He kept the country cleverly
alive with the notion of danger, till he got it into a
position, in which it not only need fear no danger,
but one which enabled him to speak with authority
in the councils of Europe. This we believe was
his real, though not his avowed, object. We cannot
imagine that he, of all men, was ever weak enough
t to believe that France would commence a perfectly
gratuitous attack on our coasts for the very equivo-
cal honour of a temporary success in an unexpected
raid. But he, so long a foreign Minister, natu-
rally thinks it the highest honour to any nation
that all others shall regard it as the one supreme in
naval and military strength. That supremacy he
desired to confer on his country. He regarded doing
so as patriotism. He knew that we should not be
content to pay income-tax and thirty millions a
year to attain it, so he very cleverly kept up a series
of alarms, which enabled him to accomplish his pur-
pose, ti usting that when he had once placed us at the
head of Europe, our pride would make us willing to
bear the cost of keeping there. Admirably has all
this seemed to divert the nation's mind from political
reforms. It had quite enough to do to raise the
motley demanded by the Premier, and to keep its
eye on the French Dock-yards as a greater danger
than corrupt boroughs and servile counties.
An Ecclesiastical Liberal we believe Lord PAL-
MERSTON to be, at heart ; we question whether it
would grieve Mm to repeal the Act of Uniformity.
He does not believe in being " righteous overmuch;'
and, if it could be managed we imagine that there
is none of our prominent Whigs or Tories whose
disposition would more prompt him to accept Lord
STANLEY'S watchword " Religious Equality." We
do not believe that his backwardness to support
energetically measures of Religious Liberty arose
from personal feeling, but entirely from 4olitical
position. He would like to see Church Rites abo-
lished the Marriage Law amended in respect to the old
canon made binding by the Bishop of LONDON'S Act
on those who rej ct it, parish burial grounds open on
equal terms to all parishioners,clergymen free to give
up their profession, by giving up its emoluments
and Nonconformists held to be men sufficiently
" religious " to act ae trustees of Grammar Schools,
whose trust deeds mention no special creed. We
believe Lord PAL3IERSTON, whatever he has been
accused of, has never been charged with bigotry,
nor has he ever been suspected even of being a High
or a stiff Churchman.

Lord PALMERSTON is, however, no enthusiast for
his opinions on these points. He would not risk
the reputation of his Government by making any
of them a Government measure. He could, pro-
bably, have carried some of them had he done so.
He would not vote against his opinions, but he
would not hazard anything for the sake of them.
Politically, in the party view, he might be right.
Yet there are two sides to the question. We do not
believe that the "organised hypocrisy," of which
Mr. DISRAELI forms the centre, can last for long.
What Churchmen, under his pious leadership,
would insist on withholding from their fellow-
citizens, fellow-taxpayers, and fellow subjeots—are
such clear rights or grievances, as we may please
to view them, that the complainants must ulti-
mately prevail. The age is against class privileges
altogether, and most of all against privileges
founded on the assumption, that one class is holier
than another, or more in favour with its MAKER.
The time must be at hand when the universa 1
opinion will be that one man's belief in the Prayer
Book should entitle him to nothing more than
another's belief in the Bible, or another's in the
POPE, or even another's in the philosophy -of
COMPTE. Perhaps Lord PALMERSTON thinks that
what he believes to be the right notion of reli-
gious liberty will not be politically predominant
in his time. Which may be true. Be the reason
what it may, under Lord PALMERSTON, the reli-
gious liberty which we believe he sincerely loves,
makes no more progress than the electoral purity
and extension of the franchise which he sincerely
hates.

The ball is still rolling there in Sicily. But
which colour will gain must still be looked upon as
problematical. While it yet rolls RATAZZI stakes
everything on the game now playing—his adminis-
trative reputation, his political power, his official
portfolio, his premiership, it may be the very crown
and sceptre of his Sovereign. NAPOLEON 111.---
RATAZZI'S instigator—standing half-covertly there
in the back ground, the croupier's rake cleverly
slipped for the time into his hand ready to sweep
together (as he hopes) all the winnings—or at
any rate the very pick of them.

How will matters stand, however, when the
movement, of which we are now witnessing but
the earliest commencement, is drawing towards
its close ? What are the French EMPEROR'S
ideas in regard to the prospects of Italian
Unity, for example ? Well, we all knew them
long ago: They were shown to be very sinister
ideas in the mere preamble of his opening mani-
festo or proclamation, when, first drawing the
sword as Emperor of FRANCE, he declared for Italy
a" against Austria. True that his declaration then

particularly when he had celebrated the
Capture of
famous
but
Capital of Lombardy, by issuing
his
ur4ti:aost deceptive Milan Proclamation
—was in
vo'
,at any rate, in favour of "Italy
for the Italian
that
tn Nay, the French EMPEROR
rn.....aagnificen t , but vague, because
went beyond
hiauncing (still in the Milan
generalised dictu
bilit in entering upon
Proclamation), that
that War was to render
Italy free from the
Alps to the Adriatic!"
But by means of its Unificatio
:lh: c Europe
knows long ago absolutely to
ontrary.
NAPOLEON wished, from the very outset, for the
He mbAiti Austrians
but
-ustrian6 "-
liberation of Italy—fromthae
hardly from the French. to give
Italy back to the Italians, not by means of its
" Unity," but by the device of a " Confederation:,
The Roman peninsula, as rem.;delled by the French
EmPEßon,vvas still to remain a
"geogriphical expres
sion,"according to thephraseof Prince METT ERNICH.
Again and again the French EMPEROR in-
sisted that his HOLINESS was to hold
his own in Central Italy—he himself (NAPO-
LEON) reserving in his own hands what the
Czar NICHOLAS coveted so dearly a " material
guarantee" that his Imperial Will should be carried
,out. The French EmPEROB, holding Rome then