The Sun.
London, England, 1862-06-17 00:00:00

Slave Trade, it has done to aid the war, to secure
the Border States for the North, and to punish the
South, At the bottom both sides are equally
wrong-minded, and the union of the two wrongs
would never result in one right.

Four gentlemen, utterly unknown to us, and
probably to all our readers, except the few who
may have personal dealings with them, have sent
us, and we presume our contemporaries also, a copy
of a petition respecting a crotchet of their own. If
this very long sermon on pew-rents had been sent
as an advertisement, of course we should have had
no right to decline insertion of what any English-
man was willing to pay for, provided it did not
violate the rules of public morality. Had it been
an intelligent attack upon any opinions we had
ever expressed, we should have printed it with the
greatest pleasure, but a long, heavy, dry, half
legal, half popular argument in a petition against
pew-rents, as we are sure no one would read it, so
we must decline to fill up our space with it.
There is a sort of a grievance, no doubt, in some
parish churches, where enclosed pews have become
the private property of families to an undesirable
extent. We cannot, however, say that is a subject
in which we feel much interest. The Bishops and
the parishes, and the clergyman, and the eccie'
siastical courts must settle it all as best they can.
But what strikes us on the face of the documents
sent us is that they are redolent of cant—of that
silly cant which affects to regard the parish
churches as the chosen resort of the poor. The
nonsense of the poor man's church is at the
bottom of it all. Whereas, every employer
of servants knows that if he has one of a
peculiarly religious turn, the man or the girl is
sure to be an attendant at the Methodist chapel ;
perhaps one of the stipulations on hiring is that
some evening in the week permission shall be given
to " attend class," a permission generally-accorded
by a prudent master, seeing that the managers of
these: classes have an interest, for their own credit's
sake, ie giving good advice to servants, and being
near their own level, are generally listened to by
them much more than a gentleman instructor
would be. The "Poor Man's Church" we take to
be priestly cant for—save me Church-rates ; and
when we read of pew rents as a " great national
sin,' to be not only " amended" but "atoned for,"
we leave our readers to conjecture the ecclesiastical
quality of the four gentlemen who ask them to sign
their petition.
The whole truth we take to be this—Church-
rates are in danger. Our opinion, as our readers
well know, is, that by this time they ought to be
out of danger—that they ought long ago to have
breathed their lust and gone to the eternal home of
all religious impositions. To meet their loss Sir
G. C. LEWIS and Mr. ESTCOVRT, too, propose to
enable the churchwardens to make a small charge
on the occupiers of pews, for the repair of the
church in which they hold them. What on earth
can be more fair P All other places of public atten-
dance in which seats are required meet their expenses
by a charge, greater or smaller, for their seats. As
to the poor it is notorious that they never object to
paying for their seats according to their means.
We have even penny theatres, as well as theatres
with guinea boxes ; and there are plenty we believe
of penny seats in chapels which the poor, in their
love of honourable independence, prefer to gratui-
tous accomodation. The truth is, the poor like other
people do not grudge what they can afford, if what
is offered them is worth paying for—and if the
parish church offer them spiritual fare as adapted to
their taste as that at Bethesda or Zion, the seats
at the church will be paid for as willingly.
We object therefore to an attack upon the pew
system as a whole. That any individuals, without

payment, should appropriate public property to

themselves is of course wrong enough, but to
attempt to relieve the regular occupants of seats
ih a parish church from paying the costs of what
they take the seats to enjoy, is dishonest. It in-
volves, in some way, making other people pay for
the relieved seat-holders. Like one apostle, to whom
no successors are desired, we do not believe these
anti-pew rent men care aught for the poor—they
care to keep Church rates, that is they care to keep
up their own worship at the cost of other people.

" Dilly, dilly : come and be killed !" Sir HUGH
CAIRNS had not the slightest hostile feeling against
the Land Transfer Bill, but—at the same time—he
sorely wanted last evsning to have it referred to a
Select Committee. About this exceedingly cool pro-
fosition of the ex-Solicitor General's under Lord
DERBY'S Government there was a pretty warm dis-
cussion, in the which Mr. COLLIER, and Mr. WAL-
POLE, and Mr. MALINS, and others among the big-
wigs, or, at any rate, we may say confidently,
among the future big s igs, took part. According
to the opinion of the hon. and learned gentleman
the member for Plymouth, the reference of the bill
to a Select Committee, as proposed by the hon. and
learned gentleman the member for Belfast, would
certainly tend to shelve the measure for this session.
Nor is such the opinion by any means of Mr.
COLLIER alone. Others had already come to pre-
cisely the same conclusion. In effect who can
seriously think for a single moment other-
wise P Particularly at this late _ period of a
sluggish and nearly exhausted session ! Now
that the Lord Chancellor's Bill has actually
passed all its stages in the House of Peers, and,
having come down thence to the Commons, has
there in due and proper sequence been read a first
and a sennd time, it does appear particularly
tantalizing to think of the mere chance of its having
been denied the possibility of being taken clause by
clause into consideration in the regular course of
things in Committee. Anything of that kind
would have been the cruellest case of cushioning
that could well have been imagined! Happily the
House last night recognized the folly of attempting
to do anything so insensate and ill-considered.
Even the siren-voice of the right hon. member for
the University of Cambridge was raised all in vain
when he dulcifiuously assured the House that—
(surely the height of effrontery, this, in Mr. WAL-
POLED—the reference of the bill to a Select Committee
as proposed by Sir HUGH CAIRNS would save ine
(save—the mark!) and " ensure the pssing of the
Bill" through the House ! The oddest way of bring-
ing about both these desirable results—the saving of
time and the passing of the measure—one may
safely aver, that ever yet perhaps has been seriously
projected. A non sequitur in its way, the whole force
of which is as extravagant as the moss " outré"
and " bizarre" ever yet imagined by Lord DUN-
DREARY. One, in fact, that is only comparable to
the JOE MILLER reply of the raw 'recruit to the
prostrate Frenchman crying " Quarter !" " I can't
stop to quarter thee ; but I'll cut thee head off."
Precisely in the same benign spirit of concession to
his legal rivals—and as he appears erroneously to
imagine them also, his legal antagonists in the
endeavour, if
practicable in any way, to reform
the laws relating to
—Sir HUGH CAIRNS the transfer of land
of assenting quietly to the Lord Chancellor's bill
being considered at onco promptly
cannot possibly think
by the House of
Commons in committee, but •
Is quite willing, to
4; save time" and to " ensure the Passing of
the bill,"
by referring it—to a select committee ! The sugges-
tion of such a course as that could hardly be called