The Sun.
London, England, 1854-04-24 00:00:00

would be again employed in the mercantile marine,
and would render available for war services 'an
equal number of seamen, who would at once be
taken in their place. On either ground, then,
we could hardly consent to the unconditional dis-
charge of those parties. But there is another
ground why we should keep those parties. We
cannot hope that we ourselves should be exempted
from the ordinary " fortune of war," that we
should not lose vessels, and have British subjects
taken into captivity, from whence they will not
be released until exchanged for others. We may
then require these men, as the means of obtaining
the liberation of our own countrymen.
But although we may be compelled to detain
these parties, there is no reason why they should be
treated with harshness or severity. It, is no case for
hulks or prisons. The incarceration of the parties is
by no means required. They should, on the con-
trary, be allowed the utmost degree of liberty, con-
sistent with their safe keeping, arid a fair allow-
ance for their support and maintenance. By per-
mitting them to move about, and to acquire
some idea of the manners and customs of the
English people, to see the working of free insti-
tutions, and at the same time inspiring a feeling
of gratitude for unexpected kindness, we would
render immense service to the cause of liberty.
These people would speedily compare. their pre-
vious condition with that of others living under
a Constitutional Monarchy. They would dis-
cover the vast disadvantages of despotic power,
and on return.* home would communicate to their
friends and neighbours the nature and extent of
the blessings from which they were debarred. Each
man would thus become an apostle of civilisation,
enlightening the minds of their benighted brethren.
A spirit of inquiry would be excited—an enthu-
siasm awakened which it would be impossible to
suppreis, and which would strike at the very root
of the principle of autocracy—a principle which
only subsists on the besotted ignorance of its fol-
lowers. The question of what we shall do with
our prisoners of war becomes one of vast impor-
tance, and should not be disposed of on any trivial
or insufficient grounds, or until all the elements
of the calculation aro fully and maturely con-
sidered.

Our late remarks on the Colonial Clergy Disa-
bilities Bill were fully sustained by; the debate in
committee on the 10th. The whole matter is in
a false position, and, consequently, the confusion
and misunderstanding were inevitable and incur-
able. The Solicitor-General, clear-headed and
straightforward man as he is, through submitting
himself to the ingenious and subtle ecclesiastical
tutelage of Mr. GLADSTONE, has only succeeded
in mystifying and perplexing the whole house.
We, and all ordinary mortals, may well spare our-
selves any painful•study of a measure which even
Mr. ELLICE (the Member for Coventry) declared
" he did not understand," which, to such a man as
Sir G. GREY, was " legislating in the dark," and
which Mr. NAPIER, and Mr. HENLEY also, like
Mr. ELLICE, " could not understand." When
sueh lawyers and politicians are at fault, it may
well be conceived that the country at large
must be much more in the dark than Sir
G. GREY. Indeed, it is puzzling enough to the
general reader to find Sir. RICHARD BETHEL',
whom, turning to his faithful DOD, he finds to be
not only Solicitor-General, but " Queen's Counsel,
Vice-Chancellor of the County Palatine of Lan-
caster, and Counsel to the University of Oxford ;"
and Mr. J. G. PHILLIMORE, who, as he learns
from the same authority, is Doctor of Civil Law,
Chancellor of Worcester, Oxford, Bristol, &c.,—
actually differing point blank on the ,question of
the supremacy of the Crown in the Ecclesiastical
government of the Colonies ! We may reasonably,
therefore, inquire whether even the shadow of a
necessity exists for a bill so likely, according to
Mr. ELLicE, a statesman of so much Colonial ex-
periene-e, to produce heartburningd and ill-will in
the Colonies. •

We think, however, it is becoming deartto ,the
House that Mr. PHILLIMORE told 'the truth in
describing it as a measure to bring about the
establishment of a convocation with legal powers
in the colonies, doubtless with the understood de-
sign of strengthening the hands of Convocationists
in demanding like powers at home. Whatevei
the secret wishes of Mr. GIA.DSTONE, it was quite
plain, as observed by Mr. T. CHAMBERS, that
" the Bill was a very different thing from what it
was represented to be, for instead of its dealing
with a free and voluntary church in the colo-
nies, which by some accident had been left under
disabilities, it, in point of fact, proposed to relieve
an" Established Church from disabilities under
which it laboured." This is the kernel of the
whole question. If the Colonial Episcopal Church
b. as free and. voluntary as the Wesleyan and
other Churches in the colonies, whose liberties
were so often adverted to, and if, through any
technicalities of law, the Episcopal Church be
more fettered than the other churches, why then,
as Mr. ELLICE and others justly observed, repeal
the statute or statutes, so far as the colonies are
concerned, at once. Declare the Act of lINTELY
VIII., -and any other similar acts, null and void
beyond our own shores, and there the business
will end, and we shall know what we are about.
But if Mr. GLADSTONE really wants to secure
for his pet colonial churches a legal oneness
with the Church of England, and by conse-
quence a legal status and precedence in the
colonies, to say nothing of importing his
Colonial Convocations to the mother country, we
hope we are not mistaken in believing the day for
such interference with Colonial rights past. It
has been settled for the English Church at home,
that if she will be the State Church, she must
bear the yoke of the State ; that if she wants
the liberties of Dissenters, she must purchase it
at the price they pay for them. -No statesman
grudges them their freedom while they decline to
trouble him for special privileges or pay, and no
man ought to know better than Mr. GLADSTONE
that neither the colonies nor the mother country
will, unless cheated by unintelligble bills, tolerate
now any other principle.
We had thought that all sensible men had
agreed that the Canada Clergy Reserves Bill
settled for ever the point that all the Colonial
Churches were henceforth to be independent of the
mother country. 'That a whole colony might
turn Quakers if -they pleased, and dispense with
clergy altogether, or-Rcenan Catholics, and ac-
knowledge the Pope as their religious head. That
whether any church, or what church, should be
supported by the Colonial Government, and to
what extent, wereto be questions for the colonists
themselves to settle. The Anglican Church in
the colonies, on this basis, can retain spiritual
and. ecclesiastical connection with the Mother
Church in this country, as Wesleyan Societies do
with the Wesleyan body here, and Catholics with
Rome itself. More than this no honest advocate
of Colonial Rights will concede for a moment.
We hope this dishonest bill will drop, and wish
Sir R. BETHELL had never put his name on its
back.

Her Majesty and the Prince Consort, accompanied
by the whole of the Royal family, will arrive at Buck-
ingham Palace this afternoon, from Windsor Castle.
The Duke and Duchess of Cleveland and Lady Augusta
Poulett have arrived in St. James's-square, from visiting
Mr. Mark and Lady Augusta Millbanke, at Thorpe Hall,
Yorkshire, where they passed a few days em route from
Baby Castle.
The Duke of Argyll, after attending the Council on
Saturday, returned to the Duke of Sutherland's seat,
Clifden House, near Windsor, where the duchess and
family are staying.
The Duke of Devonshire has recovered from his recent
slight indisposition at his ♦illa at Chiswick, where the
Countess of Carlisle, the Countess Dowager Granville,
and a few other relatives, have been passing the recess
with the noble duke.
Viscount Palmerston arrived in town on Saturday
to attend the Cabinet Council. The noble lord went
back in the evening to Broadlands. Lord and Lady
Palmerston return to town early this week. Her lady-
ship will immediately resume her political reunions on
Saturday evenings.
Lord and Lady hfonteagle have arrived at Trinity
Lodge, Cambridge, from Ashridge, Herts, on a visit to
the Master of Trinity College and Mrs. Whewell.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer and Mrs. Gladstone
have arrived in Downing-street from visiting Lord and
Lady Lyttelton, at Hagley Park, Worcestershire, during
the holidays. The right hon. gentleman will have a
large dinner party to-morrow evening.
The Marquis of Ornionde returned on Thursday from
London to Kilkenny Castle.
The Earl and Countess Granville have arrived in
Pruton•etrcet from Pada,