The Sun.
London, England, 1831-08-02 00:00:00

`'.:PIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

We have devoted a considerable portion of our
-.;olumns to-day to an account of the splendid cere-
mony of yesterday,—we mean the opening of
London-bridge. Those who were present at the
.
scene will require no apology for any minuteness of
description by which we attempt to r:ev
ivcits en-
chanting recollections, while those who were not
will need more aid than any description of ours can
supply to impress their imar;'mations with the full
effect of its magnificence, Neither the interest at-
tached to the occasion, nor the magnitude of the
gorgeousness of the river
preparations,—nor the
covered with hats and bags,—nor the splendour of
the Royal party and of the aquatic parade, were of an
ordinary kind. Another magnificent structure, destined
to announce to future ages our progress in the arts, and
our advance in commercial wealth, had been added
to the ornaments and conveniences of our great city
—a popular Monarch, with the grape! retinue of
Isis Court, his Ministers, and the majority of his
Parliament, had proceeded, in splendid parade, along
the bosom of that river whose banks the new struc-
ture connected, to open it for the public benefit—
and half the population of this immense metropolis
had rushed from its most distant streets and squares
to witness the exhibition, of which they themselves
constituted not the least interesting portion,—clus-
tering on all the bridges,—occupying all the quays,
all the windows of the houses, from their founda-
tion to their roofs, arid swarming on long lints of
gay barges, yachts, or steam-boats moored in the
stream, and decorated with innumerable flags and
streamers. The spectacle Cron. the new London-
bridge on the approach of the Royal party, will
not soon be effaced from the memory of those
who witnessed it. Perhaps no scene, at once
so rich and so imposing, and yet so gay and enliven-
ing, could be presented to the eye by any capital in
Europe, or in the world, on any occasion of pomp,
ceremony, or festivity. The union of so much mag-
nificence with the celebration of an object of almost
pure utility, was enough to make an Englishman
proud of his country, of his capital, and his Sove•
reign.—Times.

The Tory prints are for ever taunting Ministers
with the numerical amount of the Opposition in the
House of Commons as to the Reform Bill. " Was
ever any Ministry known," say the Tories," to stand
against such an Opposition ?" Had a minority,
equal in numbers to the present, been favourable to
Reform, and a majority not exceeding that now pos-
sessed by Ministers, been adverse to it, every body
knows that the Government could not have survived
the first week of the session. The real and only
force of a minority is its hold over the national
sympathies. A popular minority has, ere now, suc-
ceeded in ousting an obnoxious Ministry, though
backed by a majority of votes within doors ; but
how a❑ Opposition, odious to the people, and
out-voted at the same time within the walls of Par-
liament, can manage to defeat a Government which
has both a large excess of Parliamentary votes and
the unanimous suffrages of the people with it, is a
problem yet remaining to be aclved. The ma-
terials constituting the present Opposition will be a
recorded curiosity for future ages. It is a minority
excluding from among its Members all, or nearly all
the representatives of the people of England,
and including none, or almost none, but those
who sit as delegates of a power not acknow-
ledged by the Constitution, and through the
prevalence of practices which the law of Eng-
land designates as crimes. If the majority
of the House of Commons had been so composed,
the country could have had no prospect of redress
but by leaguing with a patriotic minority, and by
petitions to the Crown and denunciations of the
public enemy, and fresh " declarations of right,"
rom every quarter of the kingdom. If, unhappily,
'a whole House of Commons bad consisted of
Members for rotten or nomination boroughs, what
would—nay, what must—have happened ? The
petitions for Reform being contemptuously rejected,
the people would have said, these men are not
delegated by us, we have no Parliament, they
are but the slaves of ten or a dozen lords;
the constitution by which they attempt to govern
us, is a violent or fraudulent usurpation of ail
political, natural, and moral right--it regards no in-
terests but those of our oppressors and plunderers;
we will choose representatives for ourselves; we
will have a real Parliament in spite of those who
have erected themselves into a sham Parliament.
They, no doubt, will call it a revolution—but falsely
—for it is a restoration. Front this tremendous,
but, in such a case, unavoidable enterprise on the
part of the British nation, we have been saved by a
majority who speak the national will. A spirit has
got abroad which will not suffer itself to be tampered
with—which will not brook evasion or delay. It
already whispers from the Clyde and the Forth,
and swells into murmurs more audible, though not
more awful, on the shores of the Thames and Severn.
We speak it with a belief in circumstances, which
has wrought upon us a conviction of the general
fact, that if the country feel but a suspicion
of ultimate disappointment to its hopes upon this
great question, north, south, east, and west, will act
like one man in a resolute effort to bring back the
Parliament, or the Ministers, or both, to a sense of
the duty which is threatened with abandonment,
and to ensure a broad, and searching, and effectual
Reform. The value of all the Tory fallacies about
diversified principles and modes of representation,
is not badly shown up by a letter from our friend
" Radical," who proves pretty clearly, by a cata-
logue of the names of those who voted in the mi-
nority on the second reading, that however varied
may be the description of franchise, there is an
edifying and luminous uniformity of motive through-
out the list of Anti-Reforming Members, no single
instance having yet occurred in which the hostility
to the Bill may not (so far as our correspondent
has yet gone in the alphabet) be traced to some
direct personal interest in the party voting, or in the
party nominating ; for the accuracy of which state-
ment we refer the public to the names brought
forward in succession by" Radical ;" and we leave
it as an honourable key to the nature and integrity,
as well as the nationality, of the opposition displayed
against the

Our readers will find under the proper head an
account of the ceremony by which the opening of
the new London Bridge was distinguished. It is
not often that we select occasions of parade and
pomp for any thing like serious comment, but the
peculiar circumstances of the ;present day appear to
us to take this meeting of the King and his people
out of the province of the Court newsman, and to
give it a political importance which otherwise it
would not possess. At all events we are certain that
if any gloom, even from the skies, had hung over
the day's amusements, the journals of the borough-
mongers would have seized the omen to rejoice in
the anticipated defeat of the Reform Bill. There
is, therefore, no good reason that we can see, why,
as honest journalists, we should not express our se-
tisfaction at the absence of every sign and symptom
which the most perverse ingenuity could torture to
such a purpose. Never, perhaps, was so much en-
thusiasm evinced at any meeting between Sovereign
and subject as on the occasion we allude to. It is
impossible not to connect this fact with the state of
the great question now occupying all men's minds,
and proceeding, though slowly, yet surely, to
the overthrow of corruption. Had there been
any indication of shyness on the part of his
Majes.y, or of coldness on the part of the vast
multitude, who might be said with more propriety
to represent all England than the mere city of Lon-
don, we should have heard of it from certain quar-
ters before the evening had drawn to its close.
Even as it is, we shall, probably, hear that the dig_
pity of a Sovereign is somewhat compromised by
such condescension as uniformly marks the deport-
ment of William the Fourth. This, we know, is
the opinion of the Tories, and therefore will serve
as a text for the Tory supporters. But different
people entertain different notions ofolgny,
as the condescension of Kings has a direct tendency
to strengthen their government in the affections oh

the people, it is gratifying fo us, and to th.oe ivho
think with us, to reflect, that, So fir as dignity is
connected with strengths, she conduct of the British
Monarch is calculated rather to promote than to
diminith the deference which the Crown of this
country ought always to command—the manly de-
ference of freemen. We refer to our account of
the day's proceedings for the particul.rm by which
this notice was suggested, and wt: titke leave, at the
same time, to ask of those who an constantly al-
luding to the !anger which threatens the monarchy,
whether, after the experience of such a day, they
do not think it is a danger from which the Monarch
has nothing to fear P—Morning Herald.

A crack-brained French etthusiast, named Simon,
whom his followstre;ol)parently more in ridicule than
in earnest) haVe canonized into Saint Simon, is the
author, it seems, of an absurd scheme for the divi-
sion of property, and for the establiAment of some
Utopian scheme of tiovitrnment) not only for his
own countty) but for the world, which have this
merit over all their predecessors of the same class
and genus—that they are there absurd and imprac-
ticable, and less attractive, than any that ever issued
from the pigeon-holes of any modern Constitution-
maker; in short, are such as none but a Simon
Pure could originate, and the veriest blockheads
adopt or follow. Yet, on the developement of this
still-born lifeless project, the last nutnber of the
Qmarterip Review has bestowed a dull dissertation
of between forty and Ilfty pages, under the joint
heads of " Doctrine de St. Simon," and " New
Distribution of Property." Of the system itself
we should be inclined to say " none but itself can
be its parallel," except that) in one respect, the Re-
viewer appeers to have rivalled his text book—viz.,
in those somnolent qualities which set readers a doz-
ing, or, if they can keep awake, in wondering how any
Tian can spend his tins% or occupy theirs, on a sub-
yet so utterly .barmitss, tasteless, and uninteresting.
The object of the Quarterly Review in bringing
forward till§ subject, however, cannot be misunder-
stood—indeed, is pretty candidly avowed. That
object is to throw disrepute upon the cause of Re-
form, by making its readers believe that its accom-
plishment will he the first, and that a pretty wide
step, towards a breaking up of all the elements of
society, and the accomplishment of the insane pro-
jects of this St. Simon and his followers. The
Anti-Reformers must believe the majority of man-
kind to have what arc called very " wide swallows,"
to gulp any proposition so egregious as this. It
may be pardonable, perhaps, in the boroughmongers,
by way of a last grasp at their darling possessions, to
lay hold of a twig as fragile and as hopeless as this;
but that the conductors of one of the most talented
Journals in existence should lend its pages and
its influence to the propagation of such fallacy,
through the medium of such trash, is what we
cannot but condemn as wholly unjustifiable.
Il
The truth is that it is the resistance to, not the
' accomplishment of Reform, which is calculated
to bring about, not the accomplishment of the pro-
jects of the Saint Simonites, for they are too absurd
to be seriously thought or talked of, bet to bring
about that breaking up of ancient institutions which
nothing but their better adaptation to their original
object, as well as to the spirit of the age, can safely
maintain. Even admitting that the Ministerial plan
of Reform goes farther than more moderate re-
formers would have counselled, or may think safe,
does it follow that no Reform Auld have been pre-
ferable ? On the contrary, is it not morally certain
without Parliamentary Reform issome shape, the
most frightful results were to be apprehended ?
How utterly uncandid and unjust, then, is it in those
whose resistance to all Reform has at length inevi-
tably produced the measure they now deprecate,
not only to persist in an opposition which they
know must be fruitless, but, instead of endeavour-
leg to lend their aid in perfecting it, thus to raise up
bugbears which, they must well know, have no re-
ference to the subject, and, at all events, could only
be the result of their own evil counsels being at-
tended to.—Morning Herald.

Our readers will find, in another column, a letter
addressed by Bishop Doyle to Lord Farnham, on
the subject of a speech of the latter in the House of
Lords. It is a production which cannot fail to
produce a very great sensation in both islands. Lord
Farnham, and all those who, like him, promote the
circulation of the Scriptures in Ireland, while they
claim for the Church the possession of her present
enormous revenues, are in what may be called a false
position. The first conclusion which a reader of the
Bible must draw is, that no man who takes the New
Testament as the rule of his conduct, can possibly
wish to uphold the Church of Ireland. They who are
indifferent to religion may think that it is of little
consequence what gives the title to the possession of
wealth. But a reader of the New Testament, who
everywhere sees the possession of wealth stigmatised
as excluding from the kingdom of Heaven,cannot pos
sibly believe that that is generous Christianity which
excludes all the Heads of the Church from the
kingdom of Heaven, for they are all enormously
rich. The inevitable conclusion drawn by every
Bible reader, therefore, is, that the Church of Ire.-
land cannot be a Christian Church ; and Lord Farn-
ham, and those who act with him, are the great
enemies of the Church, by promoting the differences
of Christianity. An acute opponent like Dr. Doyle,
cannot be supposed to overlook the inconsistency of
the Evangelical School. " Dal God or Christ
(says the eloquent Bishop) ever will and command
that there should be sinecures in his Church ?
. Can Heaven, my Lord, witness, or the earth
endure anything more opposed to feeling and justice,
than a man professing to be the Minister of him
who, being rich, became poor for our sake'—
the teacher of his Gospel, the follower of his
law, taking the blanket from the bed of sick-
ness—the ragged apparel from the limbs of the
pauper, and sell it by auction for the payment of
tithe ? Who, with patience, can bear or behold the hun-
dreds of starving peasants assembled before theseat of
justice (Oh, justice, how thy name is profaned !), to
await the decree of some heartless lawyer, consigning
their persons (for property they have scarcely what
deserves the name) to ruin or imprisonment for
arrears of tithe ? In this group of harassed, hungry,
and afflicted paupers, you, my Lord, could recognise
the widowed mother and the orphan child—the
naked youth, whom individual charity had just
clothed—and the common mendicant, whose cabin
and rood of earth could not supply them with food
' and shelter for one half the year. But to view
this assemblage of human misery, which I so
often have beheld, and reflect that perhaps a
moiety of them were the very objects for whose
relief or comfort tithes were consigned by our
fathers to clerical trust—that these paupers were the
legal claimants on the funds now extorted from them
under the very colour of law—to consider all this,
and that the religion of him who claimed this tithe,
was a religion unknown to them—that the Priest
who fleeced them, never prayed with them, never
consoled them, never ministered for them to Al-
mighty God ;—to reflect on all this, and yet be
silent and unmoved, should not be expected, unless
of some Atheist, whose god was his belly ; or of
some fanatic, whose heart was hardened, and whose
sense was reprobate. These are the exhibitions, my
Lord, which I have seen and touched, and which
led me, as they have led the best men that Ireland
ever saw—not to conspire against tithes—but to de-
nounce them as unjust in principle, destructive of
true religion, and subversive of the peace and hap-
piness of our native land." In this manner Dr.
Doyle tramples on Lord Farnham, and all those who
contend for tithes. In proportion as men become
more versant in the Scriptures, they will be disposed
to put an end to tithes, because, though tithes may
not be at variance with religion (the religion of
Alexander the coppersmith), they are clearly
at variance with the Christianity of the New
Testament. Bishop Doyle, however, is not
content with proving that tithes are Anti-Chris-
tian ; he exposes the sophistry of the " self-
interested knaves or their advocates, who know
well as he does, that churchmen are
not propriietor,
yet represent them as sent to create alarm
minds of real owners of property, who are lend th'ye

*this alarm to defend the tithe system, regardless of
its injustice, as if it were an outwork necessary to the
security of their own estate..." "It is sufficient,
however," adds the Doctor, " for the guidance of
the public, to know that the State or Legislature has
at all times dealt with Church property as with a
public trust, The holders of this trust, or as the
law language calls them, the tisenfructuarii, are
not the owners of the property of which they have
a life use; and to suppose that any legal modifica-
tion of the property thus held by them, or of the
terms on which they, as trustees, hold it, would
affect even remotely the ordinary titles by wh.ch
men hold their estates, is to confound things as dis-
tinct as light is from darkness." Dr. Doyle says
that the full amount of the Church property in Ire-
land has never yet been ascertained; and that all
the returns made respecting Bishops' lands, and the
rentals of them, are fallacious; that they are sup-
posed to avnount to two-elevenths of the whole king-
dom. Two-elevenths of the lands of the whole
kingdom, besides one-tenth of the gross produce of
the rent, to a sinecure Church ! What Dr. Doyle
says respecting the aversion of the Church to have
their lands surveyed, is deserving of attention. No ;
this state of things cannot continue. Were there
no other brand on the Irish than the existence of
this sinecure Church among them, possessed of two-
elevenths of the lands of the kingdom, and exacting
one-tenth of the gross produce of the remainder,
they would still be the veriest slaves in Europe.--
_Morning Chronicle.

We have endeavoured to do our best to describe
the splendid and emliVening scene of yesterday ; but
no language is equal to the task. The loyalty and
good feeling of the people exhibited itself in a man.
tier never to be forgotten. The King was received,
as a good King ought always to be received, with
bursts of applause, which came from the heat, arid
must have convinced him that no Monarch was ever
so popular as himself. The river presented a most
magnificent scene—a scene which could not have
been exhibited in any other country in the world,
and which must have made the King proud of his
subjects. Flags were waving, and guns firing in
every quarter—the huzzas of the hundreds of thou-
sands, perfectly deafening—and the whole affair,
from beginning to end, characterized by an order,
regularity, and good feeling, which were truly gra-
tifying. A more joyful day, perhaps, has not oc-
curred since the present Royal Family ascended the
throne; and there were few, we believe, who did
not conclude it by drinking " health and happiness to
their Majesties."—Morning Advertiser.

The Committee on the Reform Bill will this even-
ing resume its labours. It belongs to the constitu-
tion of our nature to look with some degree of apathy
and carelessness upon whatever has become familiar
to our contemplation, although at the first view we
may have been indignant at its absurdity, or shocked
by the manifest evil of its consequences. It may
therefore be not unnecessary nor impertinent to re-
call to the minds of Hon. Members of the House
of Commons the momentous nature of the pro-
ceedings in which they are engaged. They involve
no less than a total change in the nature of the Go-
vernment of our country. The power that makes
and maintains the laws, by which property and even
lifo itself are secured, is sought to be radically
changed, and the root and foundation from
which spring all the institutions that govern and
regulate the frame of society is to be torn up, and
something else planted in its place. The notion
that the secondary institutions of the country may
be preserved as they are, while the primary one,
that of the Legislature, is essentially altered, can
only be the dream of a weak imagination. As well
might one suppose that when the roots of a tree are
cut away the vigorous life of its branches and the
graceful ornament of its foliage might still be pre-
served. The Church is already sentenced by acclama-
tion of the revolutionists as the institution which is
to follow the Parliament with accelerated velocity of
destruction ; and one of the Morning Papers of yes-
terday does not shrink from noticing even now the
monstrous evil of large properties in the hands of a
few individuals, and the necessity of their distribu-
tion. We therefore warn those whose exertions
may save the country from the avalanche of calamity
which the tempestuous spirit of the revolutionary
party is driving upon us, that this scheme of Reform
upon which the Parliament is now engaged is but
" the beginning of the end." Religion, property,
distinction of rank, every thing that morally or poli-
tically makes England great or glorious, is at stake,
and when these are at stake, shame be upon the
mart that sleeps at his post. Up, then, and be doing,
every man who can by voice or vote do aught to
serve his country in its hour of peril. If you succeed,
how glorious! If you do not, what consolation is
like the remembrance of having done your duty ?
Morning Post.