The Sun.
London, England, 1853-06-01 00:00:00

ROYAL SURREY ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS.

- - -
THIS EVENING, Gigantic Panorama of the BAY and FORTS
of CHUSAN. Splendid Menagerie, including Six Elephants, Fon.
Lions, Two Tigers,Two Giraffes, Camels, Leopards, Llamas, &c. Grand
Military Band, Conducted by Mr. Godfrey.—Vocal and Instrumen-
tal Concert ; Two Songs by Miss Cecily Nott ; Solo Clarionet,
Mons. Wuille, and Cornet A Piston, Mr. Phillips; Brilliant Dis-
play of Fireworks ; Feat of Lanterns ; Attack on the British Fleet;
Explosion of Ckinese Fireshipg ; Grand Tableaux. Doors open from
9in the morning. Feeding the Animals at 5. Concert 6. Fire-
works half-past 9. Admisson Is.

HIGH 'WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
Tali DST Morning 0 min. after 10 I Evening 32 min.aft. 10
To-goaßov.—Roruing 1 min. after 11 Evening 29 miu.aft. 11

THE WEATHER.—Styx OFFICE, JUNE 1.
THERMOMETER, IN THE SHADE.
64—highest since noon yesterday.
52—lowest this morning and during the night.
53 this day at noon.

BAROMETER, 30'03.
WIND, N N.E. to E.N.E.—Light breeze, and cloudy
weather.

))\-:
Zeb g

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1, 1853.

In the olden time England was an oath-swear-
ing nation ; men were not only invited, but abso-
lutely required to appeal to the DEITY on
numerous occasions and under the most trivial
pretexts. Not only were oaths administered in
the appointment to any office, but at the mere
will and pleasure of any person who desired to
put the law in operation. We had test oaths,
promissory oaths, and fiscal oaths ; and even a
conscientious refusal to take an oath explanatory
of the conscientious opinioas of the party was
visited not only with civil disabilities, but
with the most stringent penalties. Even death
itself was but too frequently inflicted for a refusal
to subscribe the required tests or to acknowledge
the supremacy of the CROWN in matters of re-
ligion, which was construed into an act of high
treason against the Sovereign for the time being.

The cruel persecution to which the Covenanters
were exposed—the massacre of Glencoe, perpe-
trated against the inhabitants of an entire dis-
trict, helpless females and innocent children
being included in the bloodshed, because phy-
sical obstacles prevented the arrival of the
Chiefs of the Clan to take the oaths on
the very day indicated, and the blood of the
best and bravest poured forth like water on the
scaffold, but too unequivocally attested the. fear-
ful importance attached to the submission of the
people to " the ordeal by swearing."
When those brutal enactments were to a certain
extent repealed, and the deepest portion of the
scandalous blot erased from the national statute-
book, other very objectionable provisions were
still retaiited. Our fiscal code was founded on a
system of affidavits. The smallest article could
not be imported in to the country without a series
of oaths being required from the parties interested,
the Legislature appearing to place greater confi-
dence in the efficacy of these oaths than of the
preventive forces employed to guard our shores.
It is almost unnecessary to allude to the demorali-
sation that prevailed so extensively under the
circumstances. It is now a matter of history.
Suffice it to say that there was an organised sys-
tem of smuggling, with ramifications spreading
through the entire kingdom, and that the
inefficacy of " ijustom-house Oaths," and
the habitual disregstrd of such obligations, became
matters of too painful notoriety. The truth of
the adage, that c'' too much 'familiarity breeds
contempt," received another and a very powerful
illustration. It was clearly proved that the so-
called obligations wore worse than uselessas a pro-
tection to the revenue, their only effect being the
inducement to dispense with the other and more
efficient checks ; mnd they were at length virtually,
abolished with the concurrence, and at the unani-
mous desire, of the entire community.
But although fitical swearing was thus practi-
cally got rid of, p olitical swearing still flourished
in rank luxuriance.. It is true that the stake or
the scaffold was no longer resorted to as gentle
remedies for non-conformity—we had still civil
disabilities to open ate as penalties for disagree-
ment with the Stat€ religion. Men were excluded
from situations of b_onour and emolument, because
they worshipped their CREATOR in the manner
which in their soul and conscience they be-
lieved to be most acceptable to the DEITY.
And even the v eteran who had well and
faithfully served :his country in the hour of
enlergency, found ti he payment of his half-pay or
pension withheld if he refused to do that which
his
be 4380-71 s, convicA ions induced him to believe to
least
an....nirziofusorbirlden by the Gospel, or to be at
A. Wiser, a morrcte. (3., tck.ery.
oierant, and, in every respect,
a more politic coircse
was deemed expedient and at length adopted. It
and just that the Dissenters
and Roman Cothollies shoothided no longer be excluded
nikl.
from corporation z
in Parliament, on account of r officethei from seats
r religious opi-
nions. The Test sand Corporation Acts Were re-
pealed, Roman Oath olio Emancipation
civil and religious freedom conceded, carried,
atied, and
:
of exclusion or disability for conscience sake
came a leadin
g principle of the British Constitu
tion ; and these great acts of justice were •wi -
thin
a few years followed. by a further recognition
"I Nu, s 1 i'Nfithe freedom of opinion, by the Acts (4 Wm.
cap. 49 and 82), which enabled Quakers, Mora-
vla s and Separatists to make their so •
cases of c nivil or
lem affir-
lnation in lieu of an oath in
• 4,
erality which was
le ."4 criminal procedure,P an act of lib
xv, (1833) by the
foj "wed in the very same year
eption of an affirmation by Mr. PEASE (a
AL a 2!member of the Society of Friends),
in place of the
vaths ordered to be
taken by a Member of the
'House of Commons. Too much gratuitous and
Nuntecessary "wearing) however, still remained,

One class, it was found, were still excluded, not
designedly, but from the insertion of the words
which constituted no part of the substance of the
oath, and which were merely directed against
Roman Catholics ; but which, after the Eman-
cipation Act had removed the cause that
led to their introduction, were found to

affect by a side-wind another and a very
different body. Other complaints were put
forward with much reason. One high-

minded and conscientious nobleman, a staunch

Protestant, an undoubted Member of the Church
of England for many years, refused to take his
seat in the House of Lords, inasmuch as he could
not conscientiously swear that no foreign Prince,
Prelate, or Potentate had any jurisdiction, power,
superiority, pre-eminence, or authority, ecclesias-
tical or spiritual, within this realm—when he
not only saw a numerous and influential body of
our fellow-subjects recognising the spiritual autho-
rity of the Vatican, and the nomination of
Roman Catholic Bishops by the POPE, which
Bishops were afterwards recognised in the United
Kingdom. It is quite clear that our Legislators
are required to swear that which is not the truth,
and which can only be got over by a degree
of mental reservation on the part of those
high-minded and conscientious Protestants, equal
to anything to which they so loudly objected on
the part of the Roman Catholics. They could
clearly perceive the mote in their brother's eye,
while ignorant or indifferent as to the beam in
their own.
The Oath of Supremacy, then, is positively
wrong—that of abjuration would be simply ridi-
culous were it not in express violation of the first
Commandment, a taking of the name of the
LORD in vain, which should be carefully eschewed,
not merely by every professing Christian, but by
every one who believed in the existence of the
CREATOR of the Universe, the Omniscient, Omni-
present, and All-powerful GOD. The person
taking the oath is required to deny the title of
the descendants of the late PRETENDER—and to
abjure all obedience to them in the most solemn
and impressive language, while it is notorious
that there are no such persons iu existence, nor
is there any possibility of any such again coming
forward. What can this be deemed but an impious
mockery—a contemptuous calling of the DEITY to
witness—on a matter of no meaning—a wilful
breach of the first article of the Sacred Code, de-
livered amidst fire and smoke on Mount Sinai.
Lord LYNDHURST desires to remove these
anomalies to prevent the recurrence of these
flagrant evils. The Noble and Learned Lord
last night brought forward, in a speech of
most persuasive eloquence and convincing argu-
ment, a measure calculated to achieve this de-
sideratum. It is to be regretted that the Noble
Lord, in opposition to his own better judg-
ment, continued the words that operate so in-
juriously in the exclusion of our Jewish brethren.
He did so avowedly, because he would not endea-
vour to obtain by a side-wind that which should
have been carried by a direct and positive enact-
ment—emphatically declaring, however, that he
did so " ex necessitate, and as entirely against his
decided convictions on the subject." We trust
that this statement will not be forgotten when the
amendments of the Commons House of Parliament
come under consideration, but that it will ponder
deeply upon the unequivocal expression of feeling
by one of its most aged, most respected, and most
eloquent members, and give full effect to his en-
'ightened views.

Committees are nowadays the effectual and
beneficent substitutes for Star Chambers and for
Courts of Inquisition. Wherever an abuse is sus-
pected a Committee is at once organised—a Chair-
man is appointed—witnesses are called up and
examined—and an elaborate, yet, for the most
part, sententious Report is the consequence of the
entire manoeuvre I Is there a suspicion that
something better might be done in regard to
the regulation of the Sugar Duties, so as
to affect beneficially the interests of the West
India Planters ? There is at once a Committee
of Inquiry—toiling through a mass of details that
would have appalled our ancestors, and preparing
the materials for a blue book, certain in time to
be refered back to as a standard authority for all
future Administrators. Is there an inkling that
rather dirtier work than usual has been " doing"
in the Dockyards ? There is another Committee
of Inquiry as to that conjectured abomination—
to sift rumours and to arrive as soon as possible,
if possible, at something like a definitive conclu-
sion. Is there a notion, as our Yankee cousins
might say, that there are ghouls aorongst us nowa-
days arrayed in the surplice or armed with the
grave-digger's mattock ? A Committee is fastened
upon that loathsome object of investigagon to
discover whether it might not be advisable' to
prevent the continuance of the horrors conse'--
quent upon intramural interment. The only
misfortune is, that a Committee is generally
successful solely in exposing abuses in all
their natural, or rather unnatural, deformity.
It fails altogether in the majority of instances
in forcing the need of reform upon the recogni-
tion of the wavering judgment of the Legislature.
The latest illustration of the popular delight in
the appointment of these Committees of Inquiry
is discoverable in the one which began its sittings
yesterday in reference—What to ? To another
controverted election ? To another bribery case,
sacred to the memory of worthies like W. B.
and " the safe man," and the barber FRAIL, and
the lawyer FLEviKER, and the bricklayer MORGAN,
and " the man in drab," C'Wl7l cceteris paribus ?
Nothing of the sort. The Committee, which met
yesterday, had reference to the management of
the National Gallery—it took into account the
condition of the pictures constituting the treasures
of that popular Exhibition. Colonel MURE was
in the chair, and the first witness examined was
Sir CHARLES EASTLAKE. FOr your Committee
is supposed to have a comprehensive genius
for everything in the wide universe. Re-
garding it as an embodiment, it .might be sup-
posed to reason like PLATO, to talk like DEMOS-
, THENES, to comprehend abstract science like
LIEBNTrz, to dance like Cram, to play the violin
like PAGANINI, to sing like MALIBRAN, to act like
,
uARRIcK, to chop logic with WHATELEY, and ingre-
dients for some delectable sauce with SOYER--tO be,
in fact, an Admirable CRICHTON, or a DA VINCI,
or a BuorrAitorn. So that a Committee—the
members of which might have sat the
other day upon some electioneering case of
treating and intimidation —is summarily ap-
pointed by the Lower House of Parliament, and
Colonel MITRE is appropriately placed at the head
of it as Chairman, to examine into the present
condition of the pictures in the National Gallery
and into the working of its present system of
management I
Obviously, of course, the principal good derived
from these Committees of Inquiry may be traced
to the information supplied in evidence. But as
obviously the value of that information is depend-
ant upon the manner in which it is collected.
The answers given by a witness are important or
worthless accordingly as the inquiries are dis-
tinguished by tact or frivolity. Take as an
examination in point, that of Sir CHARLES
EASTLAKE, yesterday, as the first witness
summoned before the Committee on the State of
the Pictures in the National Gallery. Several
hours were consumed in collecting from this wit-
ness a variety of particulars relating to the pro-
cesses of picture-cleaning, with which the public
had long before, for the most part, become
perfectly familiarised. It is certain, there-
fore, that numerous pages, folio or octavo,
as the ease
air eadY fillecria!
of a blue
rate
thing be,
for information. have in this manner been
_ op in. some prospective enormity of
of
so truth
the public at the
a in
regard to
system in vogue
nmowaPtailrn. ounce avoirdupois of
if
possible,
there was no need
whatever
, aSnucic ltic„,
tliat however,syst em is thew e
must submit,
t e ra:itter, and listen
0 all this twaddling
must put a good face
upon the
We
with exemplary forbearance
gossip about smearing pictures with a silk hand-
kerchief, -washing them with 5P
and water,
sponging no. 'theta, SCOUrtag them, ' m er, b-b-g '
spng them'
alidsiiiin' iling them—the latter op ignif
:ration • • • sying

the stripping away of the glazings, or the taking
off the dirty coat of varnish. Hearkening be-
nignly, moreover, to all this with a delightful
presentiment, or rather, we should say, with a
pleasant conviction, that the chief good to be
derived from the whole inquiry will be the compi-
lation of a Report to be ultimately stowed away
with the rest of our lumbering line of blue books
for after consultation.