The Sun.
London, England, 1854-10-25 00:00:00

out for assistance—some at Montreal WV, to'
watch for a searQliiAg party, in the direction of
the Great Fish River., and others at Point Sir
Charles Ogle, in the direction of the Coppermine
River. FRANKLIN evidently followed out his in-
structions to the letter, and as evidently looked
for help in the direction it should have been
made. How strange, then—how utterly unaccount-
able—hew perfectly inexplicable it is that the
" Effort in Search" should have been in every
direction but the right, and, more strange still,
mostly in the direction that it should not have
been. In fact, the " effort " has been made upon
the assumption he had gone contrary, and not
according, to orders. We conclude, not only with
the words of a contemporary—" Thus have the
permanent officials of the Admiralty prevented
FRANKLIN from being saved—his blood, and the
blood of his brave compauions is on their heads "
—but with the addition that just so much must
be borne by Earl GREY as Colonial Secretary.

The next session is three good months distant
—even the press has not yet begun to speak of it ;
it is not to be wondered at, therefore, that states-
men should be chary of committing themselves.
The great Liberal Leader in the Cabinet has just
spoken at Bedford, but—made no sign ; and the
great Leader of the Commons Opposition has been
about as cautious. The former, indeed, asserted
the conservative value of religious and civil free-
dom, and the latter coquetted with—or, we should
rather say, did not repel—the advances of political
Protestantism ; but neither dropped a word which
could commit them. Some of our contemporaries
have indeed laughed or lectured, according to their
turn, over Mr. Disiumf s encouragement of
Protestantism, in the Exeter Hall or Orange sense
of the word. Except, however, as Protestantism
means the principle of private judgment, we
shall not easily believe that Mr. DISRAELI
will undertake its advocacy. He, of all our poli-
ticians, will never become the Parliamentary tool
of any bigotted priesthood. If he could conde-
scend to that, we confess it would be a falsification
of his literary character, which we cannot think
he would be guilty of,—not . even to be again
Chancellor of the Exchequer. If, however, he
did make use of any influential portion of the
Church of England as a means of obtaining poli-
tical power, few of his predecessors could throw
the first stone at him, the recent speaker at Bed-
ford least of all. No one has more inconsistently
canvassed for episcopal favour, or sacrificed poli-
tico-religious principles to ward off the opposition
of Churchmen than Lord JOHN RUSSELL. They,
however, have shown but little love in return.
They knew that they were more wanted than
liked, and they have given but cold support to the
great Whig Statesman.
At Bedford he was, for an advocate of religious
liberty, in rather a striking position. Having
gone the round of the ordinary causes of the fall
of states and empires, and showed that they did
not exist in our happy country, he laid much
stress upon freedom, and religious freedom espe-
cially, as the great security of national existence
and progress. The proximity of the site of JOHN
BUNYAN'S gaol reminded him of an "immortal
work," and the persecution amid which it was
penned. That was a Protestant persecution of
those who dissented more widely from Rome than
does the Church of the noble speaker. But a not
distant locality must have reminded him of an-
other persecution—of a persecution of Catholics
for adhering 'co the religious views of their fathers;
and the monument of that persecution was still
remaining—a splendid Roman Catholic estate and
abbey, bestowed on the RUSSELLS who, at that
time, practised the religious liberty of rejecting
the creed from which Church estates were taken,
and of espousing that to which they were given.
Probably, however, his Lordship holds that
Church property is so truly the property of the
State, that to withdraw it, even in favour of in-
dividuals, is no attack on religious liberty.
Lord Jour{ is, notwithstanding the breadth
of his views, fond rather of a crotchet and a
seeming inconsistency. We have sometimes
thought that he takes a real pleasure in making
his own friends feel the rein. A. particular
demand of perhaps the largest portion of his
supporters may be pressed upon him. All con-
sistency, all fidelity to them would seem to require
him to comply, and gladly too. But, no ; this is
just the case for showing how he can do without
them. The Tories are sure to be with him when
he wants to snub his followers. They like, of
course, baulking the advanced Liberals, and espe-
cially through their own leader ; and like quite as
much the accumulating unpopularity which they
know will soon drive him from office.

The Ballot and Church Rates are just illustra-
tions of this crotchetiness or wilfulness. We hardly
know which to assign his conduct to. On the
former question a considerable majority of his
followers votes against him, and on the latter the
majority is overwhelming. Yet there he stands
in the House, coolly reiterating the oldest and
most hackneyed arguments, not deigning to enliven
his refusal by any show of mental vigour, seeming
rather to take a pleasure in refusing for refusal's
sake. Not all the freshness of illustration which
Mr. GRA.NTLEY BERKELEY contrived to bring to
the debate, not all the profound reasoning of Sir
W. MOLESWORTH could move Lord JOHN to more
than the most nonchalant commonplaces in op-
posing his own party. And so on the Church
Rate question—the entire Liberal majority of the
country, and all the better part of the Conserva-
tives, with Lord DERBY and his son at their head,
are anxious to abolish them—the division gave him
but a mere official majority. Yet what should
Lord JOHN do but coolly rake up High-Tory ar-
guments on the necessity of Church Rates to the
Church, of the Church to the Crown, and by such
logic the necessity of Church Rates to the very
existence of our glorious Constitution! He fought
for this remnant of ecclesiastical injustice as vigo-
rously as he did for an eight shilling duty, just
before he was compelled by the League to write
his well-known letter.

We said he made no sign. We know not that
we are justified in regarding as such his
declaration that " the only true freedom
is that which is complete and universal."
Words these which give him as much
political scope as PEEL allowed himself
when he proclaimed to the landlords who had just
put him in power, the right of every man to
huy in the cheapest market and to sell in the
dearest. Complete fr&:dorn would certainly in-
clude freedom from landlord intimidation and
mob intimidation, and therefore the Ballot. .Uni-
versal freedom sounds very much like Universal
Suffrage, and would ill comport with another
Reform Bill which obstinately interposed every
obstacle to the acquisition of a vote by a working
man. We are hardly to suppose his Lordship
intended to justify his abortive effort of last ses-
sion, an effort which failed chiefly because it was
so incomplete as to leave the franchise a curse to
most rather than a boon, and so far from
universal, that it left out vast masses of
the people.• Perhaps the Noble Lord's stan-
dard of liberty is peculiar. He declared,
for instance, that our religious institu-
tions leave entire freedom to conscience. His
Hon. Friend, JOHN BRIGHT; of Manchester, will
hardly agree with him. He does not think his
conscience quite free when, because he deems it
sinful to pay ecclesiastical taxes, his goods are dis-
trained for a twopenny 'Church Rate ; and JOHN,
the Quaker, has, too, more who think with him
than the Lord can boast. Lord JOHN cannot, of
course, mean that conscience is free because the
penalty cannot touch it—because the body, or the
property alone, are touched. He would not have
mentioned JOHN BUNYAN, whose " immortal
work" showed the freedom of his conscience, if he
had not held that, suffering in person or property
for conscience' sake, is the very notion of persecu-
tion. We shall, however, leave Lord JOHN and
JOHN BRIGHT to settle this next session. •

A journal of a, French officer at Balaklava states, under
date of Oct. 4, that a Zouave prisoner, escaped from
Sebastopol, reported that 60 English and French pri-
soners, who had lagged behind to plunder after the
battle of Alma, and so been taken, had refused to work
at the fortifications, and had therefore been sent up the
country. A Russian officer, disguised as a Turk, had
been captured in the camp.