The Sun.
London, England, 1853-11-17 00:00:00

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LONDON, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1853,

It is important that every intelligent English-
man should understand correctly the precise
situation of the belligerent forces now struggling
furiously for the mastery in the heart of Moldo-
Wallachia. Unfortunately, however, it must be
admitted, that this is in reality scarcely less diffi-
cult than it is important. Under ordinary circum-
stances it is barely possible to place reliance upon
the accounts received from the seat of war—gar-
bled as those accounts naturally and almost invari-
ably are by the contending influences of antipathy
and prepossession. Despatches from a battle-field
are seldom, consequently, perused without a cer-
tain degree of suspicion. Bulletins, even when
coming from the most truth-loving and GoD-serv-
ing Commander, are accepted, for the most part—
cum, grano salis, due allowance being made for the
reasonable solicitude of every Captain to make the
best of everything in his communications to his
Government. These considerations, we repeat,
are nearly inevitable, even under ordinary circum-
stances. How much more so, therefore, at a crisis
such as this now involving affairs for the time in
embarrassing, if not absolutely bewildering, confu-
sion ! Yet the very difficulty of the task of
detecting the actual progress of occurrences
in the East should be regarded as an additional
incentive to quickness of inquiry and vigilance of
observation. It were preposterous, however, for
even the shrewdest observer amongst us to dream
for an instant of unravelling the tangled skein of
contemporary history by any other aid than -Li

of the most minute, and painstaking, and unin-
terrupted investigation. Nothing, indeed, for
the time being should be regarded as matter of
insignificance. Everything in the way of detail
and particularity should be accepted at its right
value, as tending ultimately towards the popular
enlightenment. Having watched the sequence of
events with peculiar anxiety, during the past eight
months especially, we may venture without much
temerity, we presume, to direct the notice of the
public at large from day to day to what we can-
not but regard as the deductions alone to
be drawn from the consecutive fragments of
information. Without arrogating too much
importance to our opinions, moreover, we may
surely be permitted to assume a certain right to
pronounce those opinions in a manner, so to speak,
authoritatively knowing well, as our readers
must do by this time, how correctly we have
hitherto judged as to the result of our protracted
and fruitless negotiations.
Let it be 'remembered, for example, that we
insisted from 41,
outset upon the necessity of our
Cabinet adopting energetic
measures instead of
" trimming" nervously between anxiety to keep
on good terms with the G
Government of St. Peters-
burg, and a desire to
support the assaulted rights
of the Government of Constantinople. We
asserted that no advantage could possibly accrue
from those timorous attempts at conciliation. We
maintained that the only course to be
adopted
with a probability of benefit to Europe
would be a course at once energetic and
temperate, a course serviceable to the interests
of justice, and creditable to the character of our
Administration. Have not occurrences, let us
ask, now fully justified every one of those decla-
rations? If we predicted (as we did) that the
Vienna Conference would in the end come to no-
thing, and prove altogether unsuccessful, have not
our words been made good to the letter by the
utter failure of that unfortunate Note, and the

A religious body, by its public dissensions, and
buto the other day by its appearance in a Chancery
suit, has attracted to itself more than ordinary
attention. Were most of our readers informed
that amongst the numerous voluntary sects in this
country, one of the largest—the largest in England
itself—had the most absolute ecclesiastical go-
vernment in Christendom, not excluding Popery
itself, they would probably be greatly surprised.
Such, however, is the fact. Voluntaryism is by
no means necessarily connected, as some suppose,
with ecclesiastical freedom. The monastic orders,
indeed, in their way, have furnished ample proof
of this, while the supreme authority of the Pope,
and the delegated absolute authority of the
Roman Priesthood, are cheerfully supported by
millions of willing contributors in the British
Isles. Protestantism, with its doctrine of the
right of private judgment and its freedom of dis-
cussion, particularly when combined with the
Anglo-Saxon's sturdy partiality for self-govern-
ment, would seem to be especially unfavorable
to anything similar ; and most of all when, being
unsupported by the State, a hierarchy would be
prostrate in an instant if its spiritual subjects
withdrew their pecuniary support. Yet within
the last century WESLEYAN METHODISM has
attained its present magnitude and nume-
rical importance. The Birstal case recently
decided by Vice-Chancellor WOOD has es-
tablished afresh the legal prerogatives of the body
called the Wesleyan Conference, prerogatives
transcending, we believe, those claimed by his
Holiness of Rome ; indeed, comprehending the
entire powers exercised jointly by him and all his
clergy of every grade. It is indeed a curious
question how such vast numbers of Englishmen
have been induced to place themselves spiritually
I under a form of government which even the high
Tories amongst us would scout in politics. The
political effect of their doing so is indeed apparent
in the fact of the universal Toryism of the Con-
ference ministers,
and the prevalence of similar
1 political views amongst
the electors belonging to
the body. It is Toryism, too, in the very ranks of
society which are naturally the very strongholds
of Liberalism and Radicalism, and is one of the in-
numerable illustrations of the reciprocal effect on
now candidly acknowledged incapacity of the con- each other of religious and political principles.
Lulting diplomatists? If we foretold (as wo did) I We share with the majority a resortable per-

sons the belief that JOHN WESLEY was an honest
and a much-needed Reformer. A drowsy clergy
and their dozing flocks required to be aroused
from their slumbers ; and the most sceptical will
not deny that WESLEY, and as an orator his far
greater friend WHITFIELD, did awaken a religious
earnestness, which has spread, in many respects
with happy results, to all other denomina-
tions, the Established Church itself par-
taking most largely, perhaps, ultimately,
in the new religious zeal. Fully acknowledging
this, we are not bound to render like homage to
the ecclesiastical system devised by WESLEY, which
must be held by every friend of civil and religious
liberty to be equally hostile and dangerous to
both. Lord Joint RUSSELL has declared as much
in stronger language in his printed works, and we
must concur with him. During life, WESLEY
governed the whole body he had gathered toge-
ther, as an autocrat ; before his death, he assigned
its government to one hundred ministers, nomi-
nated by himself, but afterwards to fill up itself
all vacancies in its own body. The Conference
starts, therefore, with the objectionable principle
of self-election. With marvellous tact and adroit-
ness, as a patient perusal of documents assures us,
and not without many ruptures and separations,
the Conference has gradually managed to get
everything pertaining to Methodism into its own
hands. Nearly every portion of Wesleyan pro-
perty, estimated now by millions, is in its posses-
sion, while yet the trustees of the properties, not
the Conference, are responsible for the enormous
connexional debt. The Conference nominates all
the ministers, the ministers in reality all the offi-
cers down to the humblest. It is needless to add,
that, with unimportant exceptions, the immense an-
nual funds are at its absolute disposal. No officer,
down to the humblest, can continue in office if
thought by the preachers to be disloyal ; not only
can the preacher withhold. at discretion the ticket,
I which is the evidence of membership, and thus
place him at once outside the pale of the body,
but even if the disaffected man obtains a trial,
the ultimate appeal of the excommunicating minis-
ter is to a court of his fellow-ministers ! Legisla-
tion, pulpit instruction, a kind of police supervi-
sion of each circuit, and the whole executive are
in the same hands. The Conference minister is
virtually accuser, judge, and jury ; he can examine
the accused himself, by the far-famed " brotherly
questions" which amused the world rather pain-
fully some years ago, and compel him to criminate
himself. Indeed, within the domain of Method-
ism, the Conference minister is far more absolute
than any civil or ecclesiastical despot in Europe.
The Methodist layman is delivered over to the
Methodist minister, bound hand and foot. No
man is so completely at the mercy of his priest
as lie.

Such is the system. Of course, numbers will
always be better than any system under which
they live ; still it must be owned that of late years,
especially since the great disruption, the system
itself has been unsparingly, and we fear cruelly,
worked. One of the most objectionable features
of the public proceedings has been the dogged op-
position of Conference to all free discussion. They
prohibit by law debating anything new in the
various circuits unless permitted by Conference.
The crime of the three ministers whose expulsion
commenced the present great disruption was, not
answering " brotherly questions" as to the author-
ship of pamphlets which inculpated some of the
Dons of Conference. At the very last Conference
they expelled one of their most popular and re-
spected ministers, because he wished, if he re-
mained with them, for liberty to discuss in a
pamphlet the Scripturalness of Methodist laws
and usages ! If such measure is dealt out to such
men, it is obvious enough what must be the fate
of the private man who dares to think for him-
self, or at least to speak as he thinks. In fact,
there cannot be greater efforts made in Austria,
Tuscany, or Rome, to exclude the Bible, than are
made in Wesleyan Methodism to hinder the com-
parison of its principles with those of the Sacred
Scriptures.
It is not to be wondered at that with the grow-
ing intelligence of the masses, and their desire for
civil and political freedom, such a system should
become unpopular. It is in direct antagonism to
the principles which outside of it they are ex-
pected and inclined to cherish. In quiet times
the absolute power of the Conference is not ob-
served ; and it is peculiar to the system of Wes-
leyanism that it gives every member something to
do, or at least something to say, provided it be
but Methodistical saying or doing. This kind of
limited activity within the chair is identified by
the mass with real liberty, till something invites
attention to the system as a whole. When this is
the case, the more bold and inquiring desert by
thousands. We are informed that Conference up
to last year estimated the diminution of its mem-
bers at from sixty to seventy thousand, and this
year at ten thousand. All persons who wish well
to Methodism as one of the most zealous instruc-
tors of the working classes, can but wish that its
leaders should wisely read the signs of the times.
Laymen in the Church of England itself are be-
coming conscious of their rights ; in Scotland they '
have always had their due share in the Assembly.
Amongst other dissenters they have all power in
their hands ; and it would seem rather unwise
conduct, to say nothing harsher, for the least
educated body of ministers in the kingdom to con-
tend perversely for power, in opposition to the
spirit of the age, to which their superiors in
position lay no claim.

CABINET COUNCIL.-A Cabinet Council was held
yesterday afternoon, at the Foreign-office. The Mi-
nisters present were—the Earl of Aberdeen, Lord
John Russell, the Lord Chancellor, Earl Granville,
the Marquis of Lansdowne, the Duke of Argyll,
Viscount Palmerston, the Earl of Clarendon, the
Duke of Newcastle, the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
Sir James Graham, Sir Charles Wood, the Right
Hon. Sydney Herbert, and Sir William Molesworth.
The Council sat two hours and a half.

The proceedings at the Free-Trade Freehold Land
Society will be read with much interest by all true
reformers. The society seems to prosper at a railroad
pace ; and those who wish well to their country cannot
do better than to follow such a very promising ex-
ample by instituting similar associations.
DEPARTURE OF AMERICAN STEAM-SHlPS.—Yesterday
forenoon the United States mail steam-ship Atlantic,
Captain West, sailed from the Mersey for New York
with the usual mails for the United States, and British
North American provinces, 100 passengers, and a large
cargo of valuable merchandise on freight. About the
same hour the British and North American screw steam-
ship Andes, Captain Moodie, sailed from the Mersey for
Boston and New York, with a very valuable cargo of
merchandise on freight.
POULTRY SHOW.—We understand that the annual
winter poultry show of the Surrey Zoological Gardens
will take place in the Christmas Cattle Show week, at
the Great Central Horse and Carriage Repository, oppo-
site the Elephant and Castle, Newington. This magni-
ficent building being but newly established, is but little
known to the general public, and an inspection of the
place alone will amply repay the visitor. Large, elegant,
substantial, and commodious, within a mile of any of the
bridges, with omnibuses every four minutes, and posses-
sing every accommodatian for the purposes intended, it
presents advantages which no other site possesses, and
cannot fail to prove highly attractive.
SUNDERLAND.—It is reported at Sunderland that on
the meeting of Parliament Mr. Hudson will apply for
the stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds, with a view
to retire from the representation of that borough. The
Conservatives speak of Mr. Duncan Dunbar as his
successor.

ENGLISH VERSUS YANKEE CLIPPERS. —The Chry-
solite, Captain Enright, one of the China clippers about
whose passages so much interest has been excited,
arrived in the Mersey yesterday forenoon. It will be
remembered that on the 31st ult. the English clipper
Stornoway arrived at Liverpool with the first cargo of
new teas, although the Yankee clipper Challenge sailed
for London two days previously. The latter ship having
been leaky, had put into Fayal, and has not yet reached
these shores. The Chrysolite sailed from Hong Kong
on the Ist of August (13 days after the Challenge), and
from Anger on the Ist September. On the 28th of the
same month she rounded the Cape of Good Hope ; she
made St. Helena, Oct. 7; Ascension Island, Oct. 11 ;
and the Azores, Nov. 2. From that time up to the sth
inst., she encountered violent gales from the N. to
N.N.W., with a tremendous sea. She sighted Mizen
Head on the 12th inst. ; she has thus made the passage
from Hong Kong in 108 days, being six more than her
former voyage.
THE LATE MURDER AT GUERNSEY.—The inquiry re-
lative to the murder and partial burning of the body of
Mrs. Elizabeth Saujon (of which some particulars have
already appeared in this journal) had formally closed on
the 2d inst., when the local magistrates drew up an act
of accusation, constituting John Charles Tapner, lately
clerk in the Ordnance Department at Fort George, a
prisoner in the common goal. This proceeding is
synonymous to the Engli2ll form of final committal for
trial,