The Sun.
London, England, 1836-07-18 00:00:00

C JOURNAL,.

It has been well 'remarked in a recent pamphlet on
the Irish Church 'Bill (" by a Disciple of Selden")
that " there is the same connection between a law for
:adjusting Irish tithes, and one for appropriating the
surplus to general education as subsists in all bargains,
between price and -purchase, between money which
can buy, and the article which is to be bought."
Nothing, however, is more common than the desire to
possess a thing and the strongest repugnance to pay
the price of it, and the very familiar business of the
Old Bailey is all referrable to the various ingenious
contrivances for avoiding the quid pro quo in ex-
change. To a vast number of minds the connection
to which -we have adverted is imperceptible, and they
act upon the conviction that the thing will be every
whit as -useful to them without being paid for. The man
who separates the possession of a horse from the very
disagreeable question of the price of it, by the
quiet process of picking the stable lock and
mounting himself without more ado, reasons correctly,
that the beast -will trot and gallop under him just as
well as if a price had been given for it. The Tories
take the sa,,ne view of the Irish Church Bill. The
offer of thn settlement of tithes they are ready to accept,
but they say, " What has the price got to do with it ?
We have no insuperable objection to anything you
propose, but the paying for it ; our consciences will
never allow us to consent to that. We are just and
reasonable men : we are accommodating enough to
take what we want and you offer, if you will only
separate that offensive question of price for it." The
question, however, has ceased to be merely whether
the Tories are to have an unmixed boon or not ? The
ques'tion is whether they are to have a boon which
woyald prove to them
" Like Dead-sea fruits that tempt the eye,
And turn to ashes on the lips ;"
and which would in no degree abate the present hos-
tility of the Catholics to the Protestant Establishment
in Ireland, and only change the recusancy to a more
dangerous ground ? For if the demands of the
Church were, in the present state of popular feeling,
to be covered by rent, can we doubt that rent would
be endangered by the odium so mixed with it ? The
rent-charge, to be safely established, must be accom-,
panied with a propitiatory sacrifice,, the grace of which._
may keep it clear of the odium of the impost it super-
aecfes: It the tithe demon instantly `pass into it, the
last resource for the adjustment of the question is.
destroyed. It is admitted on all sides that things
cannot .remain •as they- are. The present Bill is
proposed, as it were, for the renewal of the Church
Establishment lease, the appropriation being the
fine on such renewal, and a very moderate fine
it is. " But will it give a perpetuity ?" cry the
Tories. This is not a question which reasonable
slier, will stop to consider when a house is falling
alrout their ears. We are not to neglect the repairs
necessary for present safety, because a doubt is raised
-whether they will last for ever. The building to be
saved from instant ruin must be relieved of a weight
too much for its rotten foundation. The Tories, in
objecting to what is expedient at the present time,
because it may not be a final settlement, are like Swift's
seriant, who refused to clean his master's boots, be-
ea use they might be dirty again ; and the Dean's an-
swer is applicable to them, " that their meals, by the
same reasoning, should be useless, because hunger will
return again. The Legislature has to deal with an
institution intolerable to seven millions of people. To
make it bearable is the present task. It is sinking.
How is it to be made to swim ? The vessel is foun-
dering, and some of the lading must be thrown over-
board. " This is spoliation—robbery !" cries the
supercargo. No, it is lightening the vessel to save
her—it is abandoning a part to save the rest. In the
present trim all would go down and perish together ;
and in the present case, the load of which the
labouring vessel is relieved is oil thrown upon the
troubled waters to calm them. " The waves," cry
the Tories, " may rise agp„in." They may---there is
no providing against such possibilities ; but are we to
let the vessel sink at the present juncture, because, if
lightened and saved stow, she may have to buffet with
a future storm ? To borrow a memorable saying from
the Times, " there is too much church in Ireland,"
and the question of its existence is the question of re-
duction. It. must fall if left in its present top-heavy
state, and all that statesmen can do is to put it in the
best condition by abating its undue proportions. Those
who anticipate its ruin, after an arrangement most
favourable to its stability, should a fortiori see the
impossibility of supporting it in its present most of-
fensive exorbitancy. VVhat strength, what hold upon,
the country, can it be conceived to derive from the
excess which it is proposed to retrench and to convert
into a peace offering, making it the instrument of
moral improvement instead of the constant subject
of hostility ? The troubles into which Ireland would
be plunged if the Bill be rejected may be matter of
small concern to the Tories ; but in those troubles,
the Church, already mendicant, which they pretend
so vast an anxiety to uphold, would surely perish.--
Morning Chronicle.
There is now before us a Parliamentary paper, pur-
porting to be " a return stating the manner in which
the 1,000,000/. voted for the Irish clergy has been
appropriated, specifying the name and residence of
each borrower, the sum advanced, the amount of
tithe alleged at the time to be in arrear, and whether
for more than one year, the estimated yearly value
of the borrower's preferment, whether the same is
held with any other, and whether the duty of one or
both preferments is discharged in person, with the
name and title of the impropriator." Now, let any-
body read the above title, and recollecting for what
purposes the million was confessedly granted, for whose
-use, for whose relief, and what sacred functions it was
destined to secure and fac:Alitate the discharge of
such reader then turn to the report itself, and see how
iniquitously, and, all things considered, how inhu-
manly towards the 'clergy, the fund voted by Parlia-
ment for their benefit, and as an indemnifica-
tion to them alone, has been teal-appropriated. We
have to state, then, that, according to custom, the
wolves have made their way into the sheepfold.
The landlords, great and small, from the duke to the
squireen, have broken in upon the unfortunate clergy,
and carried off a large proportion of that loan which
was destined ostensibly to their subsistence, and of
which the clergy have borne the exclusive credit of
entailing as a debt upon the community. There are among these lay depredators Whig
names and
Tory—Protestants and (proh pudor !) Papists--
Lords and Commoners—all joined in one league of
plunder from the Church, and in the extortion of
those tithes, the payment of which in any shape,
or under any pretext, your Itiomiall revolutionists call
heaven and the opposite region to witness ought to
be resisted, as unla:wful and abominable. We find
in this list of exemplary lay-patriots the name of
Barron, the -name of Sheil, the name of Lawler,
the name of Ronayne, with a catalogue of noble (?)
tither.s., who sweep up the very scourings of the
a Rarrear, and pocket—viz., the Lord *Sorttlitvell,
oman Catholic absentee, 35/. ; the Whig absentee,
Lord *Essex, 82/. ; the absentee Leviathan
Whig, the
Duke of *Devonshire, 3,4401., with Lords *Head-
fort, * Ormonde, Downshire, Norbury, *Shannon, *Meath,
g *Donouhmore, De Vesci, *Lismore,
*Carew, *Dillon, &c. We have remarked the noble
supporters of the Whig-Radical anti-Protestant Mi-
nistry in Italics, and there are 11 of them in the ex-
tract supplied by a Contemporary Journal, who make
a merit of attacking and browbeating the clergy, for
endeavouring, by lawful means, to recover their tithe,
Which is all that the greater number of those reverend
persons have to exist upon, and is the sole worldly
reward of their professional labour. That Conserva-
tive impropriators should take their tithe where they
find it, is nothing blameable, nor inconsistent ; inas-
much as they have brought no charge against the clergy
for P.. similar vindication of their rights ; nor do they
7:aischievously and hypocritically swell the clamour
Against the tithe system, ready though they are to re-
form it. But the conduct of the others we want words
to describe. We do earnestly hope that it will be
held up within the walls of the Commons itself to
just reprehension, and that the contemptuous obloquy
which it well deserves may spread through every part
of the empire. It is pretty clear that they are so
prompt to snap up that equivalent for tithe which was
designed expressly for the clergy exposed to destitu-

tion, and thereby disqualified from the fulfilment of
their sacred functions—would with as much alacrity, if
the occasion offered, call in the police and army to
assist them in levying it by coercive means from the
people—but, although O'Connell designates the
Whigs in general by the epithets " brutal," " bloody,"
&c., we have never heard of his abusing the lay lin-
propriators of that faction for the crime of collecting
their tithe so often as they are able. This cruel fraud
and robbery of the clergy demands, we repeat, the
most signal exposure.—Times.
Not only his own acts, but the acts of his oppressors
and enemies, would seem to conspire to make a great
man of Louis Alibaud. He does not need in fact, the
aid of the last adventitious circumstances to become so.
He is, or was—we naturally use the present tense,
for such men are immortal in the annals of the world,
arid their characters are the property of history—
decidedly the greatest man that has appeared upon the
stage of the world since the brilliant galaxy of great
men which arose from the first stormy clouds of the
French Revolution. Louis Alibaud was a great man ;
and his greatness becomes perfectly colossal in compa-
rison with the pigmies, including Louis Philippe and
his satellites, who have endeavoured to defame his
character, and to depreciate his motives—to burke his
defence and defeat his example. Our readers by this
time arc fully aware of all the superior points of
Alibaud's character. They have by' this time
drawn an accurate inference from the.- publications
in this paper of his memoir—of his suppressed
defence---of the calm and untroubled talent which
he showed upon his trial—and of the more than Ro-
man fortitude which he exhibited at his death. Our
read,Jrs by this time know that Alibaud might have
!axed his life by only admitting to the King's aide-
de-camp, who visited him in the prison for the especial
purpose, that he was wrong in his attempt, and that
he regretted it. The repeated assertion. of Alibaud
that the only thing he regretted was his failure, was
wormwood to the slavish faction, to the apostates and
middlemen, who now with tottering and ~vindictive
hands grasp the transitory and departing sceptre of the
barricades. Louis Alibaud spurned the offer with
contempt, and preferred death. We should' .be glad
to know what Romdfi stoic, 'condemned by tyrknny-7,-. ,„
.f
h' d i 4 th
, what martyr W, `cause
,o, the' peop e,-.an e
eternal prindiples of •patriotism—could- have. done padre
'than Louis Alibaud ?. We pause-for- ieply: :We
defy the exhibition .of a superior example .$126.
annals . history. This. A
.itierf,e,c_ity. trne e*lta:
,
if Alibaud were rnima sincere view
of the duties of patriotism. He was equally a
great man and a great genius. But the absolutist
faction who, with loud cries and with clamorous efforts,
attempt to put down even the memory of his example
and defence, and the " hushers-up" who are always
ready to " prophecy smooth things" to those that
are in power, will have some difficulty in proving that
he was mistaken in applying the principle asserted and
maintained by Brutus to modern practice. They
will have the difficult task of expunging the most bril-
liant pages from the works of ancient or modern times ;
they will have the more difficult task of subjecting the
Jurists—the very expounders of all laws, natural, so-
cial, or national—to the expurgation or exclusion of
their new censorship. The right is undoubted. No
proof has yet been adduced that Alibaud was mistaken
in its application to Louis Philippe. On the contrary,
that infatuated man and his parasites seem bent on
exhibiting, in their own persons, and by their own
acts, that he was not mistaken in the application. The
suppression of truth at the trial, and since the trial,
appears to be their great aim. The light of truth is
too painful for eyes congenial only with the dark
shadows of bigotry and tyranny; and their sole object
is to put out the light. They may be addressed in the
words of Campbell :
" Ye that the rising morn invidious mark,
And bate the light because your deeds are dark,
• Perhaps your little, souls presume to scan
The march of freedom and the powers of man ;
Perhaps ye watch at Power's unhallowed shrine,
Her victims newly slain, and thus divine :
Here shall thy triumphs, genius, cease; and here
Truth, virtue, freedom, end your short career I' "
—Morning Advertiser.
Ourexcellent correspondent " Zeta" establishes upon
grounds which, if not the strongest that can be con-
ceived, are such, at least, as his Majesty's MiniSters
are most disqualified to impugn, the duty which those
Ministers owe to the peaceable, loyal, and well-dis-
posed portion of their fellow-subjects on the occasion
of Mr. O'Connell's new attempt to usurp all social
and political authority in Ireland by means of a
factious and unprincipled association. Those grounds
are no other than the solemn and reiterated declara-
tions of the present Ministers of the Crown on an
occasion in every respect similar to that which now
demands their attention. Nothing would seem to be
more clear than the demonstration afforded by our
able correspondent, that if Ministers intend to show
any respect for the peace and welfare of Ireland, any
reverence for Government or law, any regard even for
their own honour or consistency, they must instantly
apply to the Legislature for the means of putting
down Mr. O'Connell's new scheme of agitation.
Yet there is one thing more clear and certain than
even this. It is that Ministers will not dare, in the
present instance, to discharge their duty to their peace-
able and loyal fellow-subjects ; that so far from at-
tempting to suppress the new project of turbulence,
discord, and strife, they will patronise and encourage
it to the utmost of their power ; that they will be re-
negades from their own proclaimed principles of honour
and duty, false to the tranquillity and welfare of so-
ciety, traitors to the wholesome authority of law and
Government which they are sworn to administer, and
true only to the wicked and flagitious compact which
gave them not power, but place, and not an ally, but
a master, in one whom they had recently denounced as
the most active, bitter, and unrelenting enemy of the
State. Lord Grey and his colleagues had enough of
sense, virtue, and courage to hold Mr. O'Connell in
check. Lord Melbourne and his colleagues have so
little of these qualities that Mr. O'Connell holds them
in chains. Such an alliance as that which unites the pre-
sent Ministers of the Crown with the systematic insti-
gators of turbulence and crime in Ireland could not,
indeed, be expected to produce to the former any other
fruit than that of the most humiliating and hitter de-
gradation—a degradation destined, in the natural order
and progression of affairs, to become deeper and deeper
the longer the infamous confederacy endures. What is
the share of advantage obtained by Lord Melbourne
and his colleagues from the base and disgraceful con-
spiracy to which they have descended ? It may be
summed up in the words " place and pay"--place,
without any portion of that power which should exalt
and ennoble it ; pay, the sordid wages of menials obey-
ing a master who is the more imperious and despotic
that his authority is clandestine and illegitimate. Can
anything be imagined more mean and beggarly than
this side of the account ? But let us look to the
other side, and what a contrast is presented to our
view ! Mr. O'Connell gets by virtue of this con-
federacy a privilege invaluable to him, whether it be
regarded as a means of gratifying pride and malevo-
lence, or as a source of power and of pelf--the privi-
lence of convulsing Ireland, without the least appre-
hension of chastisement or restraint. Is there any
semblance of equality in such a bargain ? Nor is this
all ; for this would afford a very inadequate idea of the
advantages reaped by Mr. O'Connell and the faction
which he leads, by their compact with Ministers. The
unlimited scope for agitation which has been virtually
conceded to them would lose more than half its value,
if regarded apart from the specific objects to which
the agitation is to be directed or separated from
the consideration that these are objects which Go-
vernment and the agitators pursue in -'.'common.
The establishment by law, in all the principal towns
of Ireland, of " normal schools," of anti-Protestant
and anti-British agitation, under the nickname of
corporations, is one of the objects to which the ap-
proving stamp and attestation of the British Govern-
ment have been affixed, and in favour of which, with
all the advantages incident to so high a sanction, in-
termediate agitation is to proceed undaunted and un-
restrained. Can Lord Melbourne and his colleagues
show improvement of their position, political,
social,
any
or moral—can they show anything, in a word,
but place and pay, to compensate them for this in-
calculable advantage which they have thrown into the
hands of a man whom but the other day theydenouncd
as the implacable and deadly enemy of ifie. ,State ?

With respect to the appropriation principle, Ministers
have yielded to this man, whom, so long as they could
keep their places, independently of his assistance, they
justly regarded as an enemy to them and to the country,
still greater advantages. They have made this principle
the very tenure by which they hold office. They have given
to any kind or degree of agitation by which this bold and
.wicked man (their own character of him) may seek to
enforce it, the name and character of a Ministerial
rather than of an O'Connel agitation. They have, in'
a word, committed the whole influence and authority of
the Administration, under the absolute direction of
Mr. O'Connell, to constant 'and unmitigated hostilit:
against the peace and prosperity of Ireland, for tile
indefinite, and probably extended, period which may
elapse before this principle, a questionable principle, to
say the least of it, shall have obtained the sanction of
the Legislature. These propositions are undeniable,
and• they amount to no less than this—that, for sake of
place and pay, Ministers have bound themselves to be
the servile tools of Mr. O'Connell. They are as strictly
bound as ever was hired servant to obey the lawful
commands of his master to adhere to the appropriation
principle, to pursue it as paramount to all considerations
whatever of policy or prudence, and to pursue it in what-
ever manner and by whatever means Mr. O'Connell shall
think fit to dictate. Such is the abject condition to which
Ministers have reduced themselves, and such the lofty
eminence they have enabled Mr. O'Connell to reach,
with reference to this vital question. Our readers can
be at no less to determine who is the gainer and who
the losers by the Melbourne-O'Connell alliance. We
cannot conclude without observing, that this appro-
priation principle, which has enthralled the Adminis-
tration in irredeemable bondage to their former, or
rather, we should say, to their actual, enemy, is a
manifest and notorious fraud. It professes to deal
with a determinate surplus of Church revenue, which
cannot be shown to exist, and of which the conspiring
appropriators do not pretend to show the existence, to
any amount which can be regarded as .f the least im-
portance, in a practical point of view. What is the
inevitable conclusion from the intensity of the struggle
maintained for an object -apparently so trivial ? No
Thf''`and 'candtour. affects, or . can affect,
.to doubt, it , The .obj'eet 'Of Mr. O'Connell and
:clearly , other - than thisto get
the, ~-.appropriatiorr. rineiple -established,' with! the
(Freboignitiorr' of 'ah Incottgitlerable surplus, in order
to tiWt'''NiVitter',the':iilifOie revenue of. the Esta
)i,1i5heir.44614,-.,inclielanil,;:or nearly,- the whole
of that revenue as an available surplusefor Roman Ca-
tholic uses. Upon any other supposition the" question
of appropriation, the whole history of its progress, the
position it has actually assumed, the fact that it has
.become the bond of such an alliance as places the Irish
agitator and his Majesty's Ministers in the reciprocal
relation of master and slaves—the whole matter, in
evert possible,view and aspect, would be an inexplica-
ble riddle ; but with this explanation everything be-
comes clear, distinct, and intelligible. The matter, as
it has4ven brought before Parliament, is simply a
fraud ;. and it is a fraud to which every circumstance
of instill:to the legislature is superadded ; for, while
Ministerjnsist before Parliament upon the appropria-
tion of aliretended definite surplus of ecclesiastical re-
venues, all the organs of Ministers and all the organs
of their confederate and master, by his own pen and
tongue, speak,of the principle of appropriation as only
of value with reference to an indefinite and progressively
increasing surplus. It would be difficult to imagine
any more conclusive evidence of actual fraud—any
more explicit intimation of predetermined plunder.—
Morning Post.
We confess we have our misgivings as to the pro-
posed measure of Church Reform being either so im-
partial or extensive .as the Reports of the Commis-
sioners, or the obvious demands of the subject, had
led us- to expect. Warmly Conservative in our own
principles, we have nevertheless always considered it
not only consistent with,.. but essential to the conti-
nuance and carrying out of those principles, not only
to—set our faces against, but strenuously to advocate
every species of safe and necessary reform. The inte-
rests, the safety, and the strengthening.and extending
the cause of the Established Church, have been ob-
jects which we have never ceased to advocate ; and in
so doing the necessity of a revision and more equal dis-
tribution of its means among the working clergy, has
always struck us as essential and unavoidable. That
such, too, had become the general feeling among the
Conservative party, was sufficiently proved by the
prompt and decisive manner in which Sir Robert
Peel, on coming into office in December, 1834, took
up the subject. Whatever advantage, therefore,
may, and indeed must revert to the established re-
ligion by the appointment of the Church Commission,
let it ever be. borne in mind that it -originated with a
Conservative Administration, and that the great-pro-
fessing but small-performing class of Whig reformers
are only partially carrying out a measure which we
feel persuaded would in the hands of Sir Robert Peel
have been rendered much more effective. Our main
objection to the result of the labours of the Commis-
sioners, as far as they have yet been made known, con-
sists in this, that they have bestowed infinitely more
pains in providing for the higher orders of the Clergy,
and in securing patronage to the Bishops, than in ex-
tending the benefits of religion to the people, by en-
larging Church room and increasing the means of the
great body of the ill-requited parochial Clergy. Nor,
if we are rightly informed, does the Whig Bill even
carry out what are generally understood to be the
measures and intentions of the Commissioners. In
zimmon, we believe, with the generality of the public,
e have been led to suppose that the proposition rela-
tive to the future amounts ofrevenues of the Archbishops
and Bishops, meant that they should be always those
mentioned in the reports, and that in every case the sur-
plus beyond the sums there fixed should go to the fund
for increasing the revenues of the small sees, and those
of small livings. But in the Bill as now passing through
Parliament, such, we are credibly informed, is not the
case ; but that by it the contributions to the fund only
are fixed, leaving the surplus in each case to go in in-
crease of the episcopal income, subject to future revi-
sion. Taking, for instance, the present revenues of
the sees of Canterbury and London at 17,5001., and
12,0001., the contribution in one case will be 2,5001.,
and in the latter 2,0001., though the revenues of those
sees will in process of time become each upwards of
50,0001. per annum. We might here add a word or
two on the mode proposed of dealing with the., patro-
nage of Deans and Chapters ; but this will furnish
amplescope for a separate consideration. But contenting
ourselves for the present with the one 'point to' which
we have referred, we would ask whether. the Whigs are
keeping faith with the country in rendering the mea-
sure of Church reform in this respect such as we have
described it to be ? Why, next year a fine of 30,0001.
or of some other large amount, may fall to the see of
Canterbury ; and, as the law is about to be passed,
every farthing of that sum would go to the possessor
of the see. The present amiable and exemplary Pri-
mate is a man probably who would not take it, but
would hand it over to the fini4. But such an act of
self-denial, honourable as it would be to the individual,
is quite beside the matter. Every one of the old
dioceses is, more or less, in the same situation ; and it
is not therefore, at all unreasonable to conjecture that
from the very outset an average sum of from 10,0001.
to 20,000/. would thus be annually lost to the fund,
and added to incomes which the public has been led
to suppose were to be fixed and unincreasable. Are
we not justified, then, in saying that there is some ap-
parent trick and deception in this ?—that the Whigs,
instead of carrying out Church reform, are under this
head crippling and diminishing it all they can ? And
that in the hands of its author, Sir Robert Peel, it
was much more likely to have been rendered what he
really intended it to be ?—Morning Herald.

.
A gentleman, well-informed on all rural topics,
writes from Caithness as follows :—We have rather dry
weather here, with occasional showers. Crops generally look
well ; hay a fair crop ; pastures middling. I never saw a
better season for laying down turnips, and a great breadth
has been sown—on one property no less than four hundred
acres I So much for the rearing of fat stock for the London
markets. The quantity of bone dust used has been very great.
We have also got some auimalized carbon, and will soon be
able to tell you what are its merits. Feeding has paid well ;
Mr. Wilson, a distinguished agriculturist and rearer of stock
from Berwickshire, has been here, and has got nume-
rous orders for Leicester rams and bulls, of which Caithness
has now a very superior stock, and will give your farmers a
close run at the Highland Society's Show in Inverness in
1839,—Inverness Courier.