The Sun.
London, England, 1838-11-14 00:00:00

SPIg.IT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

It will not be said that in our allusions to the Marquis of
Headfort, as the propounder of schemes for the destruc-
tion of the Church Establishment, we have dealt unfairly
by him. Lord Headfort's own words, delivered at a pub-
lic Meeting, were the evidence on which we had accused him
of compassing the destruction of Church and State. In-
deed, the Noble Lord has long, ere now, supplied from his
own lips or pen abundant materials for his reprobation by
every virtuous man in society ; but of that hereafter. It
will hardly be asserted by any one who knows Lord Head-
fort's history, that in speaking contemptuously of that
personage as a " vicious creature," we have gone an inch
beyond what justice warranted. Nor will it, on the other
hand, be said that in urging Lord Melbourne, the head sir*
the Queen's Government, to dismiss from a hie, and dis-
tinguished office in her Majesty's houselee an individual
who ought never, under any circumstsences, to have had ac-
cess thither, we behaved othserwise than discreetly and
delicately towards the delinquent Marquis, towards
Lord Melbourne, :sod towards the Sovereign her-
self, when we furrs'ished the Prime Minister, who is also,
par excellence., not merely arbiter deliciarzon within the
Palace wall, but magister nzorum of the Court circle, ma-
terials fea getting rid of such an encumbrance as the
Mareeuis of Headfort, drawn from political considerations,
and., from them alone. In better times any public function-
ary who had dared, under the mask of exercising the
" right of petition," to fly in the face of the Government
which employed him, to aim at the subversion of that sys-
tem of policy which such Government had deliberately
adopted and proclaimed as " final" not six months before,
to attempt the undisguised abolition of the Protestant
Established o.hurch, which tlie Sovereign at her Corona-
tion had sworn solemnly to protect and foster, and which
he, the conspirator against it, had pledged himself by oath
to maintain in its revenues, rights, and privileges—we say,
that in better times than these an official culprit of that
descriptien. would have been dismissed on the spot,
and without waiting for an appeal to public opinion, or
to the honour of Ministers, or their sense of shame.
Our purpose in denouncing Lord Headfort, on political
grounds, exclusive of all others, was, we repeat, kind
both towards him and towards Lord Melbourne. It was a
memento to the latter that Lord Headfort was a man not
fit to be intrusted with executive power, rear worthy of being
admitted near the Royal person, asea a hint to the Noble
Viscount that he should not compel us to resort to argu-
ments of a more caustic end painful nature. Lord Mel-
bourne, therefore, earniot complain of having been taken un-
awares in the sequel of this discussion. He has forced it
on us by hie utter disregard for this last fortnight of our
address to his principles as a counsellor of the Crown, and
a swes-n adherent and protector of the British monarchy.
We now admonish Lord Melbourne, as chosen companion
of the Queen of England, supreme governor of the Royal
household, and responsible for the composition of that
select and cherished community, on fresh and more urgent
grounds. Who is the Marquis of Headfort ? and what are
hiequalifieationsfor Lord of the Bedchamber t o a youthful and
innocent Queen? When Lord Melbourne was taxed by Lord
Winchilsea in the Hou:e of Peers with the nsmination of
a certain Mr. Turton to a public office in North America,
be denied all knowledge of such an appointment, and ex-
pressed both " concern and surprise" that Lord Durham
Lad so bestowed his patronage. We believe that there was
not a man or woman in England, with the slightest sense
of rectitude or decency, who was not shocked by that nomi-
nation. Bu: what, again, is the Marquis of Headfort ?
He is, and has been ever since the accession of Queen
Victoria to the Crown, a Lord of the Bedchamber to her
Majesty. Will Lord Melbourne dare to plead ignorance
of the appointment of the Noble Marquis to that house-
hold office? Will he, as in the case of Mr. Turton, dis-
claim all participation in it, or responsibility for it ? Will
be, finally, pretend that he knows nothing of the history
of Lord Headfort, or of the events of a life some passages
of which must have too deeply offended a mind so pure
and a moral taste so spotless, as that of Lord Melbourne
to be soon effaced from his recol2ection ?—Times.
A curious case was goes ":r consideration in the Insolvent
Court yesterday. Tine facts elicited throw a curious light
on certain kinds of wholesale swindling, which are carried
on in Lon, desa. The case to which we allude is that of a
person emo figured recently as a " Director" in a sham
" &linkable Loan Company." The imposture was soon
?eetected, and the more active members of the gang would
appear to have absconded, before they succeeded in doing
much mischief. But although the swindlers who ar-
ranged the scheme of the " London Equitable Loan
Company" have failed in the attempt to realise wealth by
their knavery, it is impossible to look around, without
witnessing the success of other projects, quite as delusive
as this notable " loan" fraud. How many " bubble" com-
panies have, within these three years past, rewarded their
originators with •Liches—riches, wrung from people of small
incomes, wArom the pressure of the times has induced to
gamble, in the hope of augmenting their resources! For
ausc.,•'nt that appears to the contrary, indeed, nothing pre-
vented the complete success of the " London Equitable
Loan Company," excepting the miserable poverty of its
projectors. Had these fellows, instead of being unable, as
they proved to be, to pay their clerks' salaries, possessed
the command of a few thousand pounds—why, they might,
perhaps, soon have contrived, like other schemers not more
honest than themselves, to coin the public gullibility into
large fortunes. Some means of estimating the extent of
that gullibility are furnished by the fact, that men without
even a shilling to maintain appearances, venture now-a-
days, boldly to organise extensive schemes of robbery un-
der false pretences. It might be well, perhaps, if not a
few of our wonder-promising joint stock companies were
suliected to police supervision of a somewhat searching
character.—Morning Herald.
The Roman Catholic priesthood have been accused of a
secret hostility to education in every shape, as adverse to
their influence and mastery over the understandings of
men ; and of late years the clergy of the Protestant Esta-
blished Church had betrayed a desire to thwart and oppose
the only plans of popular instruction which they must know
in their hearts to be practicable or acceptable to the people.
In Ireland, more particularly, it seems to be the unanimous
wish of the ministers of the Establishment to keep the mul-
titude in a state of total ignorance, unless upon conditions
which they are perfectly aware can never be acceded to.
They insist upon religious instruction being communicated
to children professing a different creed from their own,
according to the strict rules which they prescribe ;
for such is the obvious and undeniable tenor of their
demand for the whole volume of the Scriptures, as
the indispensable concomitant of every other branch
of knowledge. What is this, in fact, but to insist that
the poor shall continue wholly unenlightened, destitute
of all instruction, unable to read or to reason,
and thus shut out froen receiving or examining the
truths which these would-be " leaders of the blind" are so
anxious to place before them ? Hitherto the opposition of
the Irish Clergy to the education of the people has been
confined to the instruction of the lower classes ; for they
have never exposed themselves to the ridicule which would
inevitably follow an attempt to fetter the education of the
opulent by restrictions which happily they have not the
power to enforce. Many of them, on the contrary, who
are schoolmasters by profession, are in the habit of pursuing
towards their own pupils, the very system which they de-
nounce as anti-Christian when it is applied to the children
of the poor. We have before us the advertisement of a
diocesan classical school, such schools being endowed by
the annual contributions of all the beneficed clergymen in
each diocese, in which is set forth, tolidem verbis, as an
inducement to parents to entrust the care of their chil-
dren to the master, that a practice which is framed upon
the identical principle of the national school system is pur-
sued there :—" Archdeacon Maunsell lectures the Pro-
testant pupils on the Scriptures every Saturday at one
o'clock. The Roman Catholic pupils are instructed in
their religious duties by assistants of their own persuasion."
This is the system in one of the first classical schools in
Ireland—the diocesan school of Limerick, a school sup-
ported by the Protestant Clergy, and especially patronised
by the Bishops of Limerick and Killaloe, by the Lord
Chancellor, and by several Professors of the University.
Doctor Charles Elrington, the Regius Professor of Divi-
nity, we believe, amongst the rest. Nor is it peculiar to
that establishment alone. The same method is pursued
wherever the children of Protestants and Roman Catholics
are brought up together ; and we have no doubt that
the great gun of war, Doctor Mortimer O'Sullivan him.
self, who was a schoolmaster for many years, followed pre-
cisely the same system ; that is to say, that he put the Bible
into the hand of his Protestant boys, and left te Catholics
instruction as they might best imbibe
to such Divine
from the lips of a Popish usher andthe priest.senseview of the
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the same rule with the rich and the poor indifferently,
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excluding all from an approach to h
who refuse to take the key from themselves.in his
is the-
party represented by the Rev. Mr. Gregg i
paper, the Statesman, which fearlessly declares aeeainiastletrhe-
spread of information, as the one thing not needful
Ire-
land. The reader is probably aware that a project
is on foot for the establishment of provincial
colleges in Ireland, for the purpose of render::
a sound practical education, and an acquaintance with those
liberal arts which soften:and civilise the manners, accessible
to persons of moderate means. Numbers of noblemen