The Sun.
London, England, 1853-06-04 00:00:00

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LONDON, SATURDAY, JUNE 4, 1853.

Sir CHARLES WOOD last night introduced the
anxiously-looked-for bill for the future Government
of the Anglo-Indian empire, in a speech of great
prolixity, protracted during five mortal hours.
The audience, never very numerous, grew " small
by degrees and beautifully less," until at length
the Ministerial proposition, about which so deep an
interest had been excited, was detailed to " a beg-
garly account of empty benches." Few gentlemen,
whether friends or opponents of the Government,
or neutrals, watching for a favourable opportunity
either of inflicting a blow upon, or lending accept-
able aid to, the dispensers of " the loaves and
fishes," could withstand the soporific influences
of the scene. Members of all parties were
compelled to seek safety in flight, remaining
within an easy distance, so as to be readily accessi-
ble in the event of their votes being required by the
whipper-in on either side. Never was any unfor-
tunate gentleman more sincerely commiserated
than the Speaker. Not all the honours and emolu-
ments of his exalted position could render him
other than an object of sincere pity, when it was
considered that that position involved the ne-
cessity of listening, or appearing to listen, to the
dreary harangue of which every other member
could shirk, at least, a considerable portion. Never
was there a greater contrast presented than in the
appearance of the House list night, and on the
delivery of the DISRAELI and the GLADSTONE
Budgets. The subjects were in each case
of paramount importance, very probably in-
volving the fate of the Government of
which the person making the statement was
a prominent Member. The orations in each case
were of the approved length—five hours' attention
being the weighty demands on the patience of the
House. But, in the former cases, the brilliancy of
the imagination—the fervour of the eloquence—the
grace of the diction of both the Right Hon. Gen-
tlemen succeeded, notwithstanding the prosaic
nature of the subject, in commanding the attention
of the auditors, and preventing the weariness that
would otherwise naturally follow so protracted an
audience. But Sir CHARLES WOOD had no such
powerful auxiliaries at his command. There was
nothing to relieve the tedium of a subject rendered
more tedious by the manner in which it was treated.
The Right Hon. Baronet set forth a powerful mag-
netic influence, which speedily placed those who had
the hardihood to attempt to hear out the long-
drawn narrative en rapport, exercising a similar
control to that which the " Ancient Mariner" did
over the belated wedding guest. Nor was the pre-
vailing somnolency in any degree dispelled by the
monotonous hum which arose from the thinly occu-
pied benches, analogous to that which might be
heard on any sunshiny day in the vicinity of a hive
of busy and industrious bees.

The speech and the measure itself were worthy
of the quondam reputation of the Right Honourable
Baronet. They were such as might have been
anticipated from Sir CHARLES WOOD. The
former, dull, vapid, and uninteresting; the lat-
ter unstatesmanlike and inefficient a dreary
attempt to prop up a falling house to sus-
tain, by infinitesimal alterations (we cannot call
them improvements) a system which has long since
been unequivocally condemned by every unpreju-
diced and disinterested person—which has producal
fruits utterly damnatory of the source from whence
they sprung. The greater portion of the prolonged
harangue—more than four mortal hours--was con-
sumed in proving the excellence of the existing
system and the groundlessness of the complaints—
frivolous and vexatious the Right Honourable
Baronet clearly considered them—which more than
one hundred millions of natives, and ninety-nine
out of a hundred of those who, unconnected with
the East India Company, have thought it worth
while to reflect on the subject, have so unreasonably
preferred against the mal-administration and mis-
government of nearly one-sixth of the human race.
Sir CHARLES WOOD is manifestly a disciple of the
great " PANoLoss," an unflinching optimist, who
thinks " everything that is is best!' According to
pin, there is nothing to be desired, either with re-
EPect to the administration of justice, the absence
of public works, or the tenure of land ; and all the
eare
etateinrit; that have been preferred on thesepoints
Re
eertainlinfound.ed on fact, and unwarrantable.
scarcely leaduadmittedo—what his speech would
of India vf same he infer—that " the Government
assametht? best that could be devised 1"
but at the
Indian Governtaentil' asserting that the Anglo-
eve was not bad or inefficient"--
a matter on which lithe most credulous member
of the gallant corps
lit
easiness of belief has
passed into a proverb, raj
trove sceptical.
Under these eircumstgancewsell en, the Right
further
Hon. Baronet rejects the applicatt•
from the
inquiries that have been put forward fors
upon the different Presidencies—insists
of the existing materials for permanent leuctilitelicY
and positively refuses the delay or postponement
so temperately, but so earnestly, requested. From
the excessive praises so lavishly bestowed on the
existing system, it may easily be imagined that the
double government is to be retained—that the
Board of Control and Board of Directors are still
to exercise their varied functions, mutually reliev-
ing each other of the responsibility that might
otherwise be cast upon them. There is, how-
ever as a slight concession to the popu-

lar clamour —to be a slight change in the
constitution of the Leadenhall-street Board
which, in place of 24 elected members, is to consist'
of 18 only, 12 of whom are to be elected by the
Proprietors of India Stock, and six nominated by
the Government. At first, however, fifteen of those
now in the direction are to be retained, an equal
number, viz.—the remainder of the 21, and of the
6 out in rotation to be thrown overboard, and the
three earliest vacancies to be supplied by Govern-
ment nominees. One-third of the Board thus con-
stituted to go out of office in rotation every seventh
year, but to be eligible for re-election. The new
Directors are to receive each 5001., and the Chair-
man, and Deputy-Chairman 1,0001. This increase
1 of pay is to be given in consequence of the curtailment
of patronage. Haileybury College is to be thrown
open to unlimited competition, and the nomination
to writerships given, not by favour, but according
to merit, and merit only. The same principle is to
be adopted with reference to the scientific military
branch at Adiscombe, and to medical appointments.
These are unquestionable improvements, and we
shall not withhold the approbation which they de-
serve ; but they are the redeeming features in the
plan. All else is " flat and unprofitable." The
military appointments are to be made according to
the present system, in the hands of the Directors,
to be bartered for votes, or given as the Leaden-
hall-street magnates may deem expedient.
The other changes proposed are the separation
of the Governorship of Bengal from the Governor-
Generalship of India, and the power of appointing a
new Presidency for the Districts on the Banks of
the Indus ; and the addition of two judges to the
Legislature. These are the chief features of the
measure, on which the extraordinary length of
our Parliamentary report prevents us from com-
menting at any length this day ; but we are greatly
mistaken if it will be an acceptable gift to the
United Kingdom, or to India. And if it will not
prove very prejudicial to the Cabinet which en-
trusted so important and so onerous a duty to the
person who has proved the Marplot of every Ad-
ministration with which he has been connected—
the cause of its decline and ultimate fall.

Popery may thank itself for all its House of
Commons' calamities. The Maynooth Repairs
snubbing, a few nights ago, and the graver division
of more than two to one against Mr. MOORE'S
motion " for a Select Committee to inquire how
far the Ecclesiastical Revenues of Ireland are made
applicable to the benefit of the Irish people," are
equally due to the recent impudence and violence
of the Papal Hierarchy and its advocates. Few,
if any, English politicians are at all in love with
the Irish Church as an ecclesiastical institution.
The present Noble Leader of the Conservative
Opposition was himself the Minister who handled
her episcopal staff in right statesman-like style ;
and Mr. MOORE found it no difficult task to quote
the most strongly-expressed opinions from all
quarters on the monstrosity and absurdity of a
wealthy establishment for one-eighth only of the
people. Neither Mr. MOORE nor his followers pre-
tended that the motion had not for its object the sub-
version of a Church which hardly found a defender.
The entire point of all the replies lay in the present
character of Popery. A large majority of the
country and of the House of Commons is fully pre-
pared, so far as wishes go, to proportion the endow-
ments of the Episcopal Church in Ireland to the
wants of the Episcopalians. Opinion also, to a large
extent amongst statesmen, a few years ago, and to
some extent amongst the people too, was in favour
of handing over to the Catholic priests some of the
superfluous Protestant Church revenues ; but all
such ideas have taken flight now, and taken flight
for this generation at least, as we are inclined to
think, notwithstanding Mr. BRIGHT'S regarding it
as a mere temporary anti-Papal fever. Cardinal
WISEMAN and Irish priests have made Popery more
revolting to Englishmen than it has been for the last
five-and-twenty years. The silly display of robes,
hats, and stockings, fresh from the wardrobe of the
Vatican, we could afford to laugh at, as we do at
the monkey imitations of it all by our own pale-
faced young Anglicans ; but the whole attempt to
set up a territorial hierarchy here by the nomina-
tion of a despised and hated civil and ecclesiastical
foreign despot, the introduction of the Papal canon
law, the odious conspiracy of the priests against the
education of Ireland, the brutal, bullying violence
perpetrated by these ministers of religion at the
late elections—all these things at home, added to
the conspiracy of Popery abroad, with the despots
of Europe against civil and.. religious liberty,
have generated an amount of anti-Papal feeling
which will not soon die away. To English
eyes Ireland exhibits two monstrosities. A right-
hearted Church monstrously endowed, and six
millions or more of the people bound by ignorance
and priestly fetters to a Church whose entire sys-
tem is itself one huge monstrosity. We will not
pretend to discuss how far the latter opinion is
correct or not. We simply state the fact, that this is
English opinion, and that Papists must thank
themselves for its being so. The former monstro-
sity would have been got rid of by this time, or
nearly so, but for the fear of encouraging a
yet greater monstrosity. A monster endow-
ment is regarded as a bad thing, but a
monster organisation against the Bible and
the right of private judgment is held to be still
worse. Endowed Protestantism is at least endowed
mental freedom, but endowed Popery is endowed
mental tyranny and slavery. It was beginning to
be hoped that Popery shared the growing civilisa-
tion of the age, but Cardinal WISEMAN and Dr.
WHALE, the POPE and the Duke of TUSCANY, the
despotism of Austria and the constitutional ing-
dom of Holland, have:dispelled this pleasant vision.
It must serve a fourteen years' apprenticeship, at
least in this country, to good behaviour before it
will improve its social and political position.
It was remarkable, and quite in accordance with
the above remarks, that almost every attack was
loudly oheered, and almost every defence received
with apathy. Popery and extravagant endowments
were both easily assailed. But what could be said for
them ? Lord JOHN was listened to with applause
while reciting how Papal misconduct of late years
had altered his views regarding the endowment of
Popery, andwhile describing it as inimical everywhere
to the liberty and freedom of inquiry, which are the
genius of our nation and Constitution. Mr.
BRIGHT, on the other hand, was as loudly cheered
in his exposure of the Noble Lord's Conservatism,
and in his telling hits against the anti-popular and
illiberal tendencies of English prelacy, dud of all
hierarchies. In one respect, the Irish Church is
now in a peculiarly false position. Lord JOHN
asserted that, bad as it might be, it was necessary
to maintain it, as essential to the support of the
Church of England. True, replies Mr. BRIGHT ;
but what a rotten foundation to build the English
Church upon ! On a Church confessedly unfit to
stand for its own sake. Hence, the claims of the
Irish Church will never be discussed on their
own merits. English Churchmen will be always
secretly thinking of the security of their own
fabric, and all Englishmen of the hated
hierarchy to which they are unwilling to
give a triumph. Papists, on the other hand, will
be dreaming only of revenge, and of laying down
the first stepping-stone to Civil and Ecclesiastical
Supremacy. What will be the issue of the present
state of things no one can divine. It would seem
impossible that the Episcopalians of Ireland can
continue to be endowed at a rate which, if ex-
tended to the whole United Kingdom, would re-
quire not less than 30,000,0001. per annum for
Bishops and Clergy alone ! Yet no one dares pro-
pose either the disendowmeut of the Irish
Church, or the appropriation of its revenues
in part to the support of Popery. Some
think that emigration • itself will withdraw
the benighted Celts, body and soul, from the
Church which keeps them, by keeping them in
ignorance, till Irish Protestants aro as superior in
numbers as they now are in intelligence and indus-
try. Such a resolution of the problem would be
indeed a happy one. America is plainly the land
of Celtic emancipation from the bondage of priest-
craft and idleness ; and it is no want of charity to
wish the great mass of the Irish peasantry a happy
voyage from their pence and hovels to the land of
dollars and log cabins. But how many unforeseen
circumstances may turn this tide ! Mr. BRIGHT
and the Voluntaries could, of course, soon smooth
the whole matter by leaving Protestants and
Catholics alike to shift for themselves. The slight
difficulty in this arrangement is, that the vast mass
of State Churchmen, a somewhat important party
in the case, prefer the present system. Ifwe may
be so unwise as to hazard a political conjecture, we
should surmise that it will issue in some such com-
proraise amongst the Irish sects, now more or less
endowed, as that shadowed forth by Mr. BRIGHT
last year—lrish Church property being sold, life
interests respected, the sects receiving a fair pro-
portion each in fee simple, so to speak, and all
being disconnected from the State. So many are
the contingencies, however, on which any
such result depends, that it is, perhaps, use-
less to speculate. One thing we do regard
as certain, that, as Lord STANLEY tells his
brother Churchmen, the standard of the age is
religious equality, and that the battle will last till
that is attained. Lord JOHN, indeed, in the debate
drew a distinction between religious equality and
ecclesiastic
al equality. Papists, he contended, had
the
inever, f he could help it,
ofyermtheeriabt,ljetr should
transparent so I;,* We wonder no one noticed the
ob vious. ThePtlsin ;. perhaps they thought it too
Ireland, as it ha rival ecclesiastical systems in
only pretext forge'al:e ;e1.37 much alike ; the
wealth, and leaves the ()the- One
till it rolls in
rence between the two _rjetiniless, is the cliff°.
Keligielis. The similar

ecclesiastics of the diverse religions receive pre-
cisely opposite treatment at the hands of the State,
and this his Lordship calls religious equality. We
do not think Lord STANLEY would condescend to
such unworthy sophistry.

GOVERNMENT RESIGNATIONS.-DISSENSIONS

IN THE CABINET.

(From the Times. )

Messrs. Sadleir, Keogh, and Monsell have, as we are
told, tendered their resignations as members of the ex-
isting Administration. The motive for this retirement
must be obvious enough. and we are far from saying
that it reflects any discredit upon the three gentlemen
named. It is, of course, Lord John Russell's declara-
tion upon the Irish Church which has caused these resig-
nations. That three gentlemen who had evinced a
disposition to promote orderly Government in Ireland
should conceive themselves bound to resign is, indeed,
an untoward circumstance ; but, if we must choose
between the loss of their cervices and anything like
coquetry with the Romish priesthood we could not
hesitate for an instant in our decision. We can only
trust that they will carry with them out of office the
same moderation of opinion and the same desire to pro-
mote the cause of good government which induced them
in the first instance to accept office. Surely, if they are
placed in some embarrasment by the declaration of the
Minister upon the Irish Church, they will be placed in
still greater embarrassment by the declarations of Mr.
Lucas upon every conceivable question that may be sub-
mitted to the consideration of Parliament ?