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

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 com-
pulsory on this point. We fully respect 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 not only on those who know
nothing of them, but on those who think them base-
less, 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 coerce
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 acelesiaatical 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 P All
the churches in the empire, 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, thou-
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—concession : of War or—submis-
sion l 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-
nese 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 red 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
'oyalty 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 lesson 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 1816 and 1860, more than 6,000,000
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
Die-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 attention 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 compost) fully one-
_ _ _

third of the population of the Northern States."
The reflection thus impressively put before us is

penalties—for disabilities are penalties. Now, it is
notorious that a large proportion of the Christian
population of the British empire—we really believe
much the 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 " Anglicans," 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 bo 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