The Sun.
London, England, 1862-02-12 00:00:00

when the majority of these all-essential " forty"
perhaps are drowsed long since under the soporific
influence of all kinds of tedious discussions. How
often has it not come to pass, for example, that the
expenditure of some great and vital department
of the Government has been smuggled through
the House while almost every one has
been away at dinner--certain that the matter
in question would not come on for two or three
hours afterwards. Superficially considered, there-
fore, it must be obvious remembering the facts we i
have been recalling to recollection that 7 there was
something alluring in,the root-idea of Mr. WHITE'S
motion yesterday, By getting rid of the uncer-
tainty there has hitherto been in regard to
the consideration of the estimates two nights a week
during the session until they are gradually worked
through with more or less regularity and precision ;
by getting rid of this uncertainty, and exchanging
the two dubious nights a week for one night that
should be devoted to the consideration of the esti-
mates with certainty and exclusively, the mem-
ber for Brighton would seem doubtless, to our ob-
servant eyes, to have hit upon the juste milieu, and
for once to have deserved well of the house, if not of
his country. But—alas! when the motion comes to be
placed in the tlrucible of debate all the vapoury
good in it begins to evaporate, and there is a residue
of doubt left at last that is quietly set aside for
possible consideration afterwards, and that moreover
not by the. House collectively, but by the individual
Minister of State who may be regarded
as in some measure responsible for the
proper guidance of the house to a wise
decision in this particular. Observe, for a mo-
ment, the course taken by the discussion yesterday in
regard to the suggestion of the member for Brighton.
Mr. WHITE'S ingenious proposition is seconded by
the member for Dumfries ; and thereupon the House
is nominally addressed, not merely by subordinate
members, like Mr. PAULL, Mr. WILLIAMS,
and Mr. BAILLIE, but by Ministers and
ex •Ministers as important as Sir GEORGE GREY
and Sir GEORGE LEWIS, as Mr. WALPOLE, Mr.
DISRAELI, and Lord PALMERSTON. The upshot of
it all being that the motion—when all has been
said—is withdrawn. The House of Commons, and
the public who look to the House of Commons for
its usual half-year's labour in the way of legis-
lation, must now alike wait as patiently as
may be for the suggestion half promised last
evening by the right hon. baronet the Secretary of
State for the Home Department—the well-consi-
dered and duly-deliberated official proposition Sir
GEORGE GREY may, upon reflection, feel encouraged
to submit to the consideration of the House, for the
better economy of the public time in future, and the
more careful regulation, and the more judicious
organisation of the whole scheme of Public
Business.

The manifest objection visible upon the
very surface of the motion brought forward
yesterday by the member for Brighton is
this—that it would interfere with that prero-
gative of free speaking which the House of Com-
mons itself guards the most jealously. True,
there is much to be desiderated in the way
of economising the time of the house, in the way of
regulating more systematically the business of the
session, in the way (above all things) of rendering
the consideration of the Estimates more and more
matter of certainty and of deliberation. But while
striving to attain this triple advantage, the House
of Commons must guard against the danger of
depriving itself even partially of one of its most
cherished privileges, that of discussing always—
upon these very evenings—every subject in the
wide world that any M.P. out of the six hundred
and odd may choose to bring under the scrutiny of
the popular branch of the Legislature; It is the
reconciliation of these two hitherto somewhat con-
flicting difficulties that the member for Brighton,
laudably enough, bat vainly enough, as
the result showed, strove once more yes-
terday to effect by means of his well-inten-
tioned, but abortive proposition. Let us
yet hope that something more practical and
more to the purpose to that end may come of the
Secretary of State's reconsideration of the same
old, old, tedious, hitherto insoluble problem—How
to economize the time in the House of Commons
without interfering with the perfect freedom of dis-
cussion, how to regulate with more certainty
during the session the consideration of the estimates
without depriving members generally of their long-
treasured privilege of desultory motions upon going
into Committee of Supply !

Mr. MONCBTON MILNES has obtained leave to '
bring in once more the bill to render legal certain
marriages of affinity. 'What marriages these are,
thanks to the customary ecclesiastical perversity of
certain lords, our readers but too well know. May
i we hope that this year, which Lord DERBY has de-
dicated to pclitical peace, will also be one of political
concession on a question which, at the bottom, is
neither more nor less than one of religious liberty.
'though our opinions of the religious aspect of the
case cannot well be clearer, we confess we are tired
of the theological discussion. Such discussions are
as inappropriate to a daily paper as they are to Par-
liament itself, and we must, except when driven to
them by any peculiar necessity, utterly decline them.
We have only to do with the broad facts of the case,
which involve the equal religious liberties of all
subjects, and in defence of them our best efforts
will never be wanting. We are strenuously in
favour of Mr. MILNES' bill, because we think it as
essential to complete religious liberty in regard to
marriage, as was the modification of the oath re-
quired of members of Parliament, to the complete
political liberty of Jews.
In one respect the two questions stand in a very
similar position. The appal is not to any exten-
sive agitation which can be got up out of doors, nor
is it made on behalf, so far as the individuals
directly affected are concerned, of large numbers—
the appeal is on behalf of a considerable number
practically wronged; on behalf of, we believe, a
majority of the nation, wronged by unjust treat-
ment of their religious opinions; and it is
made not to any party or political feel-
ing, but to the sense of right and justice in the
bosom of our Legislators. This appeal triumphed,
at last, in the case of the Jews ; is it too much to
hope that it will triumph in the case of the vast
numbers who believe the marriages in question to
be lawful and right—of the important number whom
the late decision of the Heuse of Lords has placed
in a peculiarly painful legal, not social, position—
and of the considerable number who are debarred by
fear of legal consequences from acting on inclina-
tions which they are certain enjoy the sanction of
religion, of reason, and of prudence.
As journalists for the public we place in the
fore front of our argument that, in regard to these
marriages, there is a pronounced difference of reli-
gious Opinion. We have nothing, properly, to do
with the grounds of
d
Ourse opinionsbusiness,
liketheh
y t area t theo
concern of individuals.
f
the statesman, is to see to it that, so far as in us lies,
no man is damaged in his
civil relations on account
of his religious opinions, Thia must be the case
when the opinions of one class are made the foun-
dation of laws and Acts of Parliament, and those
of the opposed class visited by civil disabilities, or

of
the Now,
Christian
it i
penalties—fornotorious t
hat disabilities g
la
large
e
are
proportionpenalties.
population of the British empire—we really believe
much tho larger portion of it—believe that to con-
tract marriage with a deceased wife's sister is not
only innocent and lawful, but, under many
circumstances, frequently commendable. A
large body, chiefly warm " Angiicans,' in
deference to a canon of the Church of England
by Act of Parliament established, holds the con-
trary opinion. Nearly all Dissenters from the
Church of the Prayer-book and canons naturally
hold the first opinion, and it is singular that a con-
siderable number of the Church by Law established
agrees with these Dissenters. Great names in
theology may perhaps be produced in favour of
what seems to us an ascetic prohibition ; but it will
be allowed on all hands that a vastly greater num-
ber of names which stand highest in the ranks of
theologians, ancient and modern, are in favour of
liberty on this question.
This then is our point. We think it ought to
settle the question at a time when no man will
venture to deny the right of all subjects to _Religious
Equality. All Mr. MILNES will ask is that the
civil rights of those who dissent from the doctrine
of the canon of the Episcopal Church, may not be
visited with civil penalties if they disobey it. Con-
formity to the dogmas of the Church of England is
not, now, compulsory in any other respect, that
we are aware of—why should it be made
compulsory on this point. We fully re-
spect the scruples of such Churchmen as the
Bishops of EXETER and OXFORD—whatever we
think of their validity, all we ask is, that they shall
not make their scruples binding on those who not
only know nothing of them, but think them baseless,
or even immoral and anti-Christian. There is, in-
deed, a practical indecency, had the Bishops but
good taste to perceive it, in their interfering in this
matter at all—as legislators we mean. It is really
somewhat shabby to use their good fortune of being
able to vote in the House of Lords for the purpose
of riveting the yoke of their own Church canons
on the necks of Nonconformists. No one can hin-
der them from interfering; but a feeling of fairness
ought to check them. As theirs is a Law Church
they might with some shadow of consistency, con-
tend for binding their own members by law—though
we should strongly object to this—but we cannot
comprehend that they should not blush to coeroe
all the Nonconformists and all the Catholics of the
kingdom to submit to their opinions.

Mr. MILNEs will really propose nothing more
than this—that throughout the British Empire the
civil rights of those who differ on the lawfulness of
marriage with a deceased wife's sister, should be
equal. No man's opinion will be interfered
with, but the present interference with opinion
will be done away. No clergyman will be com-
pelled to celebrate, religiously, a marriage to which
he has a religious objection ; certainly no laymen
will be compelled to contract a marriage to which
his conscience objects—but the vast number of
persons whose consciences have no doubt on the
subject will be left free to act on their own convic-
tion.

With these views we hope the Lords, and those
who agree with them in the Commons will give up
at once and for ever what is nothing better than a
petty hut harrassing ecelesiastical warfare against
the religious convictions and civil rights of more
than half the community. The Bill must and will
be carried at last ; why persist longer in
fighting against so reasonable a proposal
as that of placing all sects and religious
opinions, on this subject, on a level? All
the churches in the enipiro, all its principal parts,
all its colonies, will, be placed by the bill in a more
simple and natural position. A hardship impa-
tiently borne since 1835 will be done away. And
while not an individual will be wronged, thoz-
sands will gain rights of which the law ought
never to have deprived them, and which to them
may be of inestimable practical value.

Already we have learnt one or two very im-
portant and useful lessons through the medium of
this civil war in the United States (that were)—
this grand fratricidal contest betweeen the North
and South, between the Federalists and
the Confederates. For instance, we have ob-
tained a more vivid notion than ever of the
antipathy entertained there, particularly among
the Northerners, the unnatural and intense
antipathy cherished by them in regard to all
that relates to the old mother-country. Yet, at
the same time, we have learnt also the importance
of that antipathy when they are fairly put to it,
when they are brought to recognise the dread alter-
native of War or—c3ncession : of War or—submis-
sion ! Again, we have learnt beyond the chance of
any further misapprehension at all upon the mat-
ter, how idle have been all those doubts so long
entertained in regard to the security of our North
American Colonies, in respect to the loyalty of
the Canadas and the other minor and contiguous
provinces, in relation to the readiness or unreadi-
ness of the colonists there to identify themselves
with the interests and the fortunes of the old father-
land. All these vain fears have now been utterly
and for ever dissipated. The patriotism of
the Canadians, of the New Brunswickers, of
the Nova Scotians, and the rest of them, is no
longer matter of uncertainty. The loyalty of the
citizens of Montreal and Quebec is as assured in
the estimation of all the subjects of the Crown, as the
loyalty of the citizens of Leeds or of Birmingham.
Beyond all this, however, there is another, and—so
far as the future is concerned—a still more impor-
tant lesson learnt of late by England since the
disruption of the Union in America almost simul-
taneously with ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S election to the
Presidency. And that lessen of lesson's to Eng-
land, is the need so long suspected by the more re-
flective of her sons, the sore and urgent need
there is for the regulation, the guidance,
and the encouragement of emigration as a
system. It is calculated, in round numbers,
that since the close of the Great Napoleonian War,
that between 1815 and 1860, more than 5,000,000
of the inhabitants of these islands have quitted
them as emigrants, bent upon finding " room and
verge enough" elsewhere beyond the seas. It is
estimated that of those 5,000,000 no less than
3,000,000 have settled down permanently in the
States of America, formerly the United, now the
Dis-united, States of America—that 1,000,000 have
found homes in Canada and our other North
American possessions—and that the rest,
that is, another million of emigrants have
sought remoter shores, among others
those of the Cape of Good Hope and of Australia.
Considering these round numbers alone, the fact
we are here directing a:-,tention to, is sufficiently
startling and remarkable. But, it is certainly still
more so, when to that plain fact that three
millions of our fellow subjects have found a
home in the American Republic is added some
such consideration as this—" It may be asserted,
without exaggeration, that the three millions which
have gone over to the States have now been multi-
plied by natural increase into double that number
or more, and that, in fact, they compose fully one-
third of the population of the Northern States."'
The reflection thus impressively put before us is