The Sun.
London, England, 1854-07-26 00:00:00

ROYAL HIGIILAND SCIIOOI, SOCIETY.

On Saturday last the Rev. Alexander Fletcher, D.D.,
accompanied by Mr. Mackie, secretary, had the honour
of a conference with the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury,
at Addington-park.
The Lord Archbishop having been educated at the
same college as the secretary, and other pleasing remi-
niscences, rendered the visit highly interesting, while
his grace's reception of the venerable chaplain was no
less cordial. But the chief object of the visit was to
present the most grateful thanks of the society for his
grace's late pious advocacy of one of the oldest mis-
sionary and educational institutions in the kingdom,
having been incorporated by Royal charter in 1709 ; and
to represent the many difficulties which, through his
grace's kindness and condescension, had been so happily
removed. Public dinners having become no longer a
profitable medium fpr working a public benevolence,
the secretary had endeavoured to propitiate the advo-
cacy of the ministers of the gospel. Some, whose place
it was to respond to his repeated solicitations, having
declined, lie appealed to his grace, and, through his be-
nign example, several worthy clergymen have since
readily consented to preach in behalf of the charity.
The excellent prelate returned a most gracious answer,
and the party retired, highly delighted with their re-
ception.

Another clergyman, a visitor of Dr. Fletcher, was
present at the interview, who was much moved by the
courtesy and condescension of the highest dignitary in
the Church, whose ui banity of manners has become
a proverb in this country. On Sunday the Rev. A.
Fletcher, D.D., preached in behalf of the institution in
the Rev. R. Redpath's chapel, Wells•street, Oxford-
street, in the forenoon, to a highly respectable and
attentive auditory, selecting for his text Proverbs xix.
2 " That the soul be without knowledge it is not good."
In the course of his sermon be expatiated on the infinite
worth of the soul, and the sublime importance of Bible
education.

He compared all the riches and treasures of the world,
the wonders of creative genius, and the vast stores of
wealth, all brought together, to the value of the soul of
a ragged babe on the breast of a beggar; and he de-
clared that all the wealth of the world could not be
taken in exchange fur that single soul.
The Highland School Society had more than 12,000
juvenile immortals under their daily care, besides adult
and Sabbath schools. From these had been sent out
hundreds to every corner of the world, who bad been
useful members of society.
He drew no uncommon picture in mountain life when
he described the joy of grandfathers, fathers, and other
old people listening to the juvenile missionary reading
the word of Divine Ttuth. The eloquent sermon of the
worthy Doctor was followed by the Rev. Ranald Mac-
pherson, the minister of the Scots Church, Swallo
street. who only a week or two since delivered two ser-
mons for the same benevolent purpose.
Being a native of the Highlands, he gave a most in-
teresting account of the country. He compared other
charitable institutions which fed, clothed,
.and educated
children whose parents were in comfortable circum-
stances, many above the middle ranks, and those poor
suffering children in the Highlands who were educated
for less than ss. a-year. He deprecated the practice of
converting those charities which were founded for the
poor into seminaries for the rich, woo were sheltered in
the asylums which rightfully belong to the`children of
penury, who are left to wander about in rags, friendless,
and destitute of any means of subsistence except by
beggsry and theft. He had no wish to conceal such
disgraceful facts. On whatever plea of custom, or of
civil law, this perversion of the stream of charity is
sought to be justified, it is, in reality, nothing better
than a downright spoliation of the truly necessitous.
It was the meanest and most atrocious crime that ever
was perpetrated coolly and deliberately by men who
were ceded by the name of Him who voluntarily became
poor that by his poverty the needy might be enriched.
He drew a line of demarcation betwixt such charities as
the one for which be pleaded ; the smallness of the ex-
pense of education ; the poorly-paid but well-educated
schoolmasters, whose salary averaged from 181. to 201.;
and the provision for superannuated teachers, who, by age
or infirmity, were incapable—the old men about 101.,
and the women about 81.
But we cannot follow the rev, speaker at present ;
it is probable his sermon will be preserved with that of
Dr. Fletcher's by the secretary, as one of the many tri-
unaphs he has obtained over the secret enemies of this
excellent society, if any such there be.

- ARRIVALS FROM A UST R LIA. --The Blackfriars, from
Sydney, and the British Isles, from Hobart Town, are
announced, but their quantity of gold, if any, has not
yet been ascertained.

PUBLIo•HOTASES ACT IN. ,SCOTLAND—TIII?EAT
lENE!) ASS.-11r1,T ON THE .MoRAT, FREEDOM
OF THE CITIZEN IN ANGLAND..

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN,

Sur,—Some short time back, one Forbes Mackenzie.
then in Parliament as one of the members for Liverpool,
but afterwards deprived of his seat on account of illegal
practices at the election —i. e., bribing the electors with
short drink—was successful in carrying through the House
of Commons a bill which, among other.most oppressive
enactments, closed against the public ail houses of enter-
taniment where beer or spirits are sold throughout the
whole of Sunday. That a person so insignificant was
able to effectuate such tyranny I should think surprised
everybody—and must have surprised himself. I now
notice that three members of the House of Commons,
designated as Mr. Wilson Patten, Mr. Henley, arid Mr.
Sotheron, have introduced into the branch of the Legis-
lature of which they are members a bill of much the
same description, and that at the fag-end of the session.
Several measures of great importance, announced in the
speech of the Sovereign at the opening of Parliament,
as the plan. for extending the franchise—a measure of
transparent equity—have been abandoned or defeated.
The restrictive, oppressive, and most insulting legisla-
tion•of the trio just named may,- however, be successful.
Those parties I never, to my knowledge, heard of before ;
buteven feebleness and unpopularity may work wonders in
a case like the present. You may recollect that I addressed
to you a denunciatory letter before the Mackenzie affair
was perpetrated. Ido so again before Messrs. Patten
[ and Co. have had time to earn the same success, and be
crowned with the laurels of the same virtue as the ex-
M.P. for Liverpool. The people of England are not so
ready to submit to fanaticism as my countrymen, I am
sorry to say, are ; and I trust that on this occasion they
will stand forth to vindicate their fair fame as the steady
supporters of civil and moral liberty. That the limited
right existing at preient to procure refreshments such as
beer on the Sabbath may be abused, and is abused, in a
moral sense, I am sorry to be obliged to avow ; but the
idea of punishing the community for the faults of some
of its members is monstrous, and exemplified in any
other case would at once arouse indignant opposition.
The law, by an extreme stretch of its- power, punishes
drunkenness ; it very properly arms the magistrates
with authority to deprive of license publicans allowing,
drunkenness on their premises ; it closes houses of
entertainment during canonical hours on Sunday. Pre-
caution has, therefore, been carried to its extreme limits,
and homage done to the public services of our holy reli-
gion.' Surely, in reason, this is quite enough. To de-
prive the poor man of, the means of refreshment on the
Sabbath because some get drunk, is a piece of prepos-
terous tyranny, and should at once be resisted in every
constitutional way.
Such legislation is extreme and unusual, and is utterly
unwarranted by the mild, wise, and generous spirit Gf
the Christian faith. In this country for many years
every approach to sumptuary laws has most properly
been avoided. What we shall eat or drink, or where-
withal we shall be clothed, has been wisely left to the
individual conscience and to personal choice. Sump-
tuary laws are the parent of hand and hypocrisy, and
tend to demoralise those more immediately employed in
carrying out their provisions. In no country of the
world was the Sabbath more rigidly observed than in
Scotland; but during ages of that piety and virtue which,
right or wrong, called forth the admiration of other na-
tions, such a thing was not thought of as preventing,
under certain regulations, the sale on the Sabbath of the
ordinary beverages of the country—so often employed
even as cordials or adjuncts in numerous forms of ill-
ne,s. This transaction, indeed, was regarded as quite
different from the traffic or cotntnerce which, lawful on
other days, was forbidden on the day of rest.
Laws of the kind under notice proceed on principles
dangerous to the peace and welfare of society. If some
crochetty, prejudiced, or hypocritical persons, without
sympathy with the feelings or situation of others, be al-
lowed to add the force arid sanction of law to their va-
g.ines the dearest rights of the citizen are perilled. At
a former period tyranny was directed against religious
liberty; its work is now against moral freedom, and it can
here operate most successfully. Such evil ordinations tend
to prejudice the citizen against the laws of his country-,
to render the administration of public justice obnoxious
—or, as before suggested, depraved. Either the statutes
which are of such a character are not enforced, and are,
therefore, held to be null and void by an authority lower
than that by which they were passed, or, being carried
out, are likely to attract public sympathy towards the
offender, and that from persons otherwise excellent citi-
zens and loyal subjects. This is a bad, an unhappy
state of matters, and statesmen and senators should
eschew what causes the impressions and convictions to
which it is owing.
Let the people of England recollect, too, that if the
bill by which they are now menaced be passed into law
it will remain unalterable. In cases of the kind, unlike
what Obtains in [natters of a political or religious nature,
there cannot be secured such a pressure from without
as will secure the repeal of even a most unjust and
oppressive statute. A large number of the people are
timid, and cannot encounter the invectives of fanaticism;
numbers conceal their real sentiments on such subjects ;
and many well-meaning persons, substantially impressed
with the sentiment that the opposite of wrong is right,
are willing to allow of certain severities in order to ex-
tinguish obvious evils ; forgetting all the while that the
vice they deplore may only be more secretly and more
dangerously practical, while great social rights may be
invaded or overthrown altogether. There are other
good things to be seeured besides sobriety, and other
evils to be dreaded besides drunkenness. It is not the
abuse, but the use, of moral liberty which here and else
where is to be reasoned from.
Since the passing of Forbes Mackenzie's bill we have
had strange work here. The police, of course, are con-
verted into a set of spies on the licensed victuallers, and
one poor woman, who keeps a public-house at Porto-
bello, a watering place, about two wiles from the city of,
Edinburgh, is under prosecution for selling some liquor
to two persons who came from a distance, and alleged
they were travellers. Numerous prosecutions have been
directed against publicans for contraventions of the sta-
tute. Hotels, as well as humbler places' of entertain.
ment, are open to the inroads of the police. A citizen
without family cannot even get a dinner in an inn as
before. In Aberdeen, however, the police commissioners
refuse to allow their constables to be transformed into
teetotal spies, and the new law is, in the meantime, at a
stand still'in the "city of bon accord." In some places
the abstainers have formed committees of vigilance, to
see that the law is enforced. One of those impudent
harpies entered a public-house in Dumbarton, along
with a local policeman. He was very properly ordered
to leave the premises by the landlord. He refused, and
an attempt was made to eject him, but so violently did
this man of temperance conduct himself even before the
officer that the life of the publican was placed in peril.
This outrage is to become the subject of a trial in the
jury court here, the damages being laid at a heavy sum.
Of course the partizans of the bill are loud in its praise,
and some of our journals merely pander to the views of

these men. All manner of stories are put afloat through
the press, and strange theories suggested as to the effect
of the new legislation, and the walls are posted over with
abstinence placards of the type common to the school.
Some "Alliance," too, is mentioned, and a " Maine
Liquor Law" is urged and lectured about. What the
Absta.ners lack in number they labour to make up by
activity and forwardnehs. There is not wanting, also,
a sufficient stock of impudence on the part of their allies
of the journals I might ask the managers of the Eng-
lish restrictive and penal bill this question—Has any
Scotsman, Forbes Mackenzie. or a limb of the law, a
noted Teetotaller in Edinbu, gh, had communication with
you, or leave others of the same class and aims interfered,

or have abstinence people in England urged you to your
present enterprise ? The interpellation is important, for
in the bill under notice we may have but the result of a
factious intermeddling with the conscience and the rights
of others.

if they had the power, would shut up the
persons
onneesd scarcely
who,say to you, sir, that here there are
highways on the Sabbath, and exclude the citizens from
the green fields—and prevent a journey even of necessity
or mercy on the Christian•day of rejoicing and of rest. I
may tell you we have some very high purists in the
Town Council of the city, to whom the bill of the afore-
named Forbes Mckenzie was highly acceptable. The
Provost (or mayor), a cold-hearted canting member of
one of our strictest sects, is at great pains (somewhat un-
necessarily) to prove what he wyrisiders the issues of that
wild:and tyrannous measure. Well, a proposal was made
in the Council to open the Botanical Gardens near the
city— be it recollected when—only after FOUR in the
afternoon of the Sabbath ! This measure of concession
was resisted by the Lord Provost, and also by others of
the voluntary school, who, hostile to the powers of the
civil niagistvate in matters of religion, have no Brea; ob-
jection to exercise a part of the obnoxious prerbgative
so that it embodies itself in their own carcases. The
motion was defeated by a majority of 13 against 9, one
member declining to vote. So much for the bland
liberality of the Edinburgh Town Council. I may men-
tion that in Glasgow, containing a larger population
than Edinburgh, and numbering vastly more of .the
sons of toil, the Botanical Gardens are shut through-
out the whole of the Sabbath ; and, were it in the
power of some parties, a cordon would be drawn
around Glasgow Green. I am deeply anxious
that all able should attend the services of our holy reli-
gion. Rightly understood, the ways of Christianity are
pleasantness, and her paths are peace. But I see nothing
to hinder a man's recreation on the Christian jubi-
lee—nor, the sin. of drunkenness strictly avoided, the
refreshment of the body by means of a moderate quan-
tity of the ordinary beverages of the country. lam not
the less confident in these views, from knowing that the
ferocious zeal which characterises certain parties against
what is called Sabbath-breaking and drain-drinking at
times exemplifies itself in those whose small stock of
religion is made up of little else than this furor. I could
tell you strange stories as to this part of my subject, but
rather choose to forbear. More than I could do the
same. I will not at present draw mere largely on your
indulgence ; but trustn:g that the people of England will
now as hitherto guard and protect their moral as well as
civil rights, I beg to subscribe myself, Sir, your obliged
and obedient servant,
SAUNDERS FITZSAIJNDERS,
Edinburgh, July.
P.S. May I respectfully beg that the editors of other
journals
iito theirNoVtil(, on
Cloiun
n püblics.
ed at
this let-
teract—however humble and imperfect the communication
—than would avow their feelings of approval and sym-
pathy.

MADAME TUSSAUD'S EXHIBITION.--ThiB popular ex-
hibition has ju t had an important addition—it is a nor-
-trait model of hcr Majesty the Queen of Spain, and in
consequence of the stirring events' from day to day
passing in her kingdom, great curiosity is felt and ex-
pressed by the numerous visitors who crowd this most
excellent place of instruction and amusement.