The Sun.
London, England, 1862-07-11 00:00:00

of this Eastern hemisphere, of the ravings
of the brutalised and brutalising Pere Du-
dome, Women as well as men, the veriest
patriarchs and the veriest striplings, maidens and
matrons, little children of both sexes, mothers
with their infants in their arms and others
as yet but enceinte, are described as having been
thus promiscuously huddled together as the victims
of those execrable ruffians—those dear friends and
allies of ours, the Chinese ! Those dreadful bar-
barians, deemisg all the rest of the world unci-
vilised but themselves! And whose Imperial forces
we are expected to assist ri et armis, by land
and by sea, in putting down the Taeping revolu-
tionists !

Why, after the merest momentary glance at the
simple record here given of these proceedings in
regard to the treatment of these Taeping pri-
soners, we are disposed to read Lord PALMERSTON'S
expressions of horror and disgust, a night or two
back, quite the other way. We should, in obedience
to this natural revulsion of feeling, be even disposed
to bestow our sympathy upon the Taepings, but
that we know only too well that the latter are
nearly of the same blood and temperament them-
selves. Colonel KNOX will do well, therefore, we
repeat, in thinking twice before he again champions
in the British House of Commons the cause of the
Taeping revolutionists. But Lord PALMERSTON
will do better still if As keeps somewhat more
within check his overweening sympathy for the
butchers of these Taepings, those wretched mis-
creants, their Chinese executioners. If anything in
the wide world can induce Lord PALMERSTON to
alter his views upon any subject, it must certainly be
this hideous and overwhelming testimony
against
the Chinese, penned by the hand of an eye-witness,
and that eye-witness an Englishman.

Lord RUSSELL and GABIBALDI appear, after all,
to be very much of a mind. No means by which
two such different men could express their senti-
ments can well be more diverse, yet they substan-
tially concur. The generous hearted popular hero
addresses the citizens of Palermo from a balcony ;
the cold aristocrat writes to a cold brother aristo-
crat in Foreign-office despatches to an ambassa-
dor. Yet what it all comes to is that Louis NAPO-
LEON and the POPE are the two greatest enemies
of Italy.

The hero, in the city where he made the first
step towards Italian unity, warns Italians against
Bourbonism, ill requiting, as it does, the leniency
with which it has been treated ; against Muratism,
because it is essentially despotism, and still more be-
cause the relative of MURAT still " keeps the cancer
in the heart of Italy at Rome." "I must tell you,"
he says, " this truth—NAPOLEON, the autocrat, the
powerful tyrant of France, is not our friend. No.
My words contain a disillusion, but the people of
Italy must be undeceived. Ido not speak to you
of the French people. Like ourselves they have need
of liberty ; to-day, unfortunately, they are dragged
down by despotism ; but they are our brethren,
and you must learn to distinguish between oppressor
and oppressed, The people of France, the people of
Germany, the people everywhere are our brethren."
And next with a difference he comes to the capital
of Italy and its Temporal Prince—" A third evil I
pointed out long since to the people of Naples; to-
day I point it out to the people of Palermo : it is the
POPE. Look to it that you distinguish true rriests
from false. The monks of the Gancia and other
priests of Palermo, for example, who fought with us
upon the barricades—note how they differ from the
priests who surround the POPE in Rome. The first
are the ministers of GOD, the second are the minis-
ters of the DEVIL." GARIBALDI is a Catholic, but
not a Roman Catholic—a believer in a first Bishop,
but neither a Papist nor a political Ultramontanist.
We now come to the English Foreign Secretary ;
adverting to a plan discussed in the Debate, of a
mixed French and Italian garrison, his Lordship
suggests, as better than that, that the French
should with the POPE occupy, as a temporary ar-
rangement, the Vatican or ecclesiastical side of the
city, and the King of ITALY the Civil City on the
other side of the Tiber. In this position he thought
time and circumstances would compel an amicable
understanding. M. THOUTENEL half jesuitically
replies that the plan, he feared, would be accepted
by neither party—the POPE would be obstinate,
and the Italian Government would accept nothing
less than Rome for the capital of Italy. "The ut-
most that can be expected of us (says M. THOIIVENEL)
would be the restoration of Rome to the .Romans."

Amen ! says Lord RUSSELL. I never expected
that the POPE would give way; he never has given
way in times past to the most reasonable proposals;
and any Italian Minister must hesitate or even re-
fuse, if asked to part with any portion of the capi-
tal of Italy. Even Lord COWLEY knew, without
referring home, that England would be pleased with
any arrangement which left "the Romans masters
of their own destinies." In the following interview
on the 28th March, M. THOUVENEL questioned
the claims of the Italians on Venetia, and talked
of the temporal rights of the POPE and of inter-
national law, on which matters Lord COWLEY found
it not difficult apparently to silence him. What he
could not alter was the stubborn will of him whom
GARIBALDI terms the " autocrat and powerful
despot of France." Re saw little hope, and he ex-
presses his regret at seeing it, of " modifying by
discussion or remonstrance the course which the
EMPEROR'S Government is resolved to pursue."
To this Lord RUSSELL replies, pointing out with
spirit the despotism, the violation of international
law, and the anarchical consequences of the Ea/-
pEßou's wilfulness :—" Setting aside," he ob-
serves, "all difference between a Protestant and
Roman Catholic Sovereigns, it is manifest that
the principle thus upheld is at variance with the
principles maintained everywhere else by France as
well as by Great Britain. Rome is foreign terri-
tory ; the Romans are to have nothing, and foreign
troops everything, to say to the form of its govern-
ment. This system can hardly be of long duration,
it is too directly opposed to the maxims of inter-
national law and the wishes of the Italian people."
What follows is a lesson for the Marquis of NOR-
mA.I4" as well as for the " Autocrat and powerful
despot."
" The French Government," says Lord
RUSSELL,
" must not make it a reproach to the
Government of Italy that the Southern provinces
are not in a state of tranquillity, while the French
flag protects the Poi%
in maintaining a sanctuary
where every chief of
brigands can find a refuge,
and prepare his band for future incursions on
peaceful provinces."

Thus we have two such widely different men
one in their opinion of the EmPEßonand the POPE
One must speak with the restraint of diplomatic
courtesy, the other speaks with the frankness
of
patriotic and generous indignation. The popE is
the very core of Italian evils. Did no such anti_
christian monstrosity exist as a professed successor
of a hum'ole Apostle and representative of a humble
SAVIOUR, who himself lived on charity and had not
where to lay his head, arrogating to himself
despotic rule over an indignant people, supporting
that despotism by foreign bayonets—did not this
monstrosity exist, Italy would be politically at
ease, and her provinces free from papal cut-throats,
Equal in guilt, because the upholder of this religious
and political barbarism, is the Emperor of the

FRENC,'_ll—he it is who " tyrannically intervenes in
a city where he has no more right to be than in
London itself. Nothing can excuse the wrong. If
he has political difficulties at home, that is no
excuse for his saddling the Romans with a Go-
vernment they detest, to suit his purposes. We
only hope the issue may be a lasting severance
between Italians and the Papacy they so justly
detest.

Mr. PEABODY'S reception yesterday in the City
of London was all that could possibly have been
desired. It was as cordial and unaffected as it
deserved to be. It did honour at once to the muni-
cipal body who bestowed it, and to the benevolent
gentleman who was itsrecipient. The munificence of
this merchant pr ince was of a nature so exceptional
that it necessitated something exceptional in the
manner of its recognition. Not every day, not even
in every century is it, that a prosperous man of the
world can be found with a heart large enough and
a purse long enough to vindicate in a manner
so resplendent his ardour as a philanthropist. If
there have been " provident emmets" in the human
form, like old ELWES or like JEMMY WOOD of
Gloucester, who have starved themselves to hoard
up treasures that have at last accumulated to use-
less millions sterling—by a beneficent compensa-
tion, reconciling us to our own race (caricatured in
the persons of those misers who are of all men
among the most miserable) there are other men,
men of a very different type and character, men
whose very names, instead of being exposed to the
world's ridicule, are, on the contrary, held tenderly
and lovingly in the world's grateful remembrance.
Such a benefactor of his fellow-creatures was that
good old Tar, Captain CORAM, the Captain CORAM
whose portrait HOGARTH painted, the Founder of
our Foundling Hospital. Such another was that
benignant and open-handed merchant, ROBERT
COLSTONE of Bristol, whose schools and
hospitals still flourish down in his native city, and
up here also in the ocenes of his residence during
his long passed lifetiCte, in our ewn metropolis.
Happily for the charaeer of our age we have
still recognizable among the merchant princes
of the present generation, two noble-hearted
men not unworthy of having their names enrolled
in the same category with those of Captain CORAM
and Mr. COLSTONE. There is INTILLIAM BROWN,
of Liverpool ! And—American though the other
is by birth, we may claim him as an English-
man by adoption—there is GEORGE T?EABODY of
London ! They are men—these noble-so `sled con-
temporaries—whom Princes might be pi 'ond to
honour. They are men at any rate whom a whole
people have learnt to respect and admire. The
monuments of Mr. BROWN'S magnificent generos'lty
are already conspicuous among the glories of that
seat of commerce in England, the world's empo-
rium, the great seaport of Liverpool. As to the
monument of Mr. PEABODY'S munificence, we all
know what that is—we all recognise in the thought I
that suggested it the amplitude of his goodwill to
his fellow-creatures. For this gift of £150,000
to the very poor of London, the City of London had
yesterday the opportunity of expressing its grati-
tude to Mr. PEABODY, by the bestowal upon him of
the honorary freedom of the Corporation in a gold
box of the value of a hundred guineas, and by his
reception afterwards at a superb civic entertain-
ment.

Some few years hence the Parliament elected in
1869, under the auspices of the Tory CASTOR and
POLLUX, will be reverted to as the Parliament of
bigotry and reaction. It has set its face against the
political reforms which both Whigs and Tories of
former Parliaments had sanctioned, and has espe-
cially delighted in Wednesday musters against
civil and religious liberty. Last Wednesday it
signally maintained its reputation in the second, if
indeed we ought not to call it the first, division of
liberty. Mr. BOUVERIE'S Bill may not apply to a
very large class, though it may be very much
larger than is at present known. But in England
we do not always inquire into the numbers who
suffer under any grievance—if it be a real one, if
the complaint be well founded, and especially if re-
dressing it inflicts no wrong on any one, we are
ready to do justice to a small number or even to a
single individual.

It cannot be denied that, judged by the principles
of religious liberty now acknowledged by all par-
ties, the clergymen whom Mr. BOUVERIE'S Bill
would relieve have a real and a great grievance.
They are subject to civil pains and penalties,
penalties almost involving starvation, for exercising
the plainest right of every Protestant and of every
Englishman. Any of us may change oar opinion
after twenty-two years of age on any reigious sub-
ject we please. We may reject the whole of the
Thirty-nine Articles, though Dr. LIISHINGTON
pronounces that legally they contain all
truth; we may adopt the decrees of the Council of
Trent, or we may deny Christianity itself, yet no
penalty falls upon us. The unfortunate clergyman
alone, who, when scarcely out of his teens, has
subscribed the Articles and Prayer Book as a pass-
port to the Ecclesiastical service of the State, may
never change his opinion, under penalty of being
forbidden to earn his living in any other profession,
and of being liable to prosecution and imprisonment
at the mercy of any informer, if he resign the
wealthiest living in the Church, and officiate as a
clergyman teaching what subsequent inquiries con-
vince him to be true. Now this is surely simply
outrageous. Yet relief from such penalties is so
grudged by Hyper-Churchmen that Sir LAWRENCE
PALK, let not his name be forgotten in the annals
of bigotry, induced 98 Englishmen to refuse it on
Wednesday to their fellow Englishmen.
The proceeding of Sir LAWRENCE and his 98 was
mean, base, and false. The bill had passed not only
the second reading, but that most conservative of
ordeals, a select committee ; it had been considered
in committee of the whole house—several rights of
those in whose behalf it was introduced had been
surrendered to propitiate sheer bigotry and pre-
judice, and after all this, when the third reading
was supposed to be merely a matter of course, this
enlightened Dorsetshire Baronet proposes its rejec-
tion on the third reading when opposition had not
been anticipated. This was the dirty trick of a
political sharper. Then to a trick worthy of the
turf in its worst state, he added what was certainly
an utterly false statement. Sir LAWRENCE, after-
wards, said he had read the bill,—yet he affirmed,
nor did he retract it, that the bill " asked that the
House of Commons should exercise a power never
assumed by the Pope of ROME in the haughtiest
days of the Church—namely, to release priests from
their vows." This is distinctly false ; the bill leaves
untouched the opinion about Holy Orders. The
Church of England and the Seceder may regard
them as indelible or not, as they please, it only pro-
vides that the clergyman who desires to renounce
the service of the Church shall be free from penal-
ties for so
doing. The Romanising Bishops and
county members of our Church may regard the man
as still in Holy Orders, if they like, the bill only
that they
demands
shall not be able to put him in
prison, if he does not think with them. It enables
him to earn his 1- •
iving like any other man. How
characteristic is it of the •
pride of a Church founded
Iby the carpenter's Son, twelve fishermen and a tent-
maker--the latter boasting that he worked at his