The Sun.
London, England, 1849-06-07 00:00:00

stowing Members on Birmingham and on Manchester?
The absurdity is almost as striking as any that could
have been adduced in the olden time, " when GEORGE
the THIRD was King," and when the mere mention
of reform was regarded as but little better than a
species of treason, that should be repudiated with
indignation by overwhelming majorities in both
Howes of Parliament, if any rash wight should have
the hardihood to mention a subject " so distasteful to
ears polite."
In consequence, too, of the limited number of elec-
tors in the smaller boroughs, local influences still
prevail in no less than 42 of the number sending no
less than 69 Members to Parliament. It is true that
the representation may not be openly sold in the
market without shame or disguise, that there must be
at least some appearance of consulting the wishes
of the nominal electors, but still there are
boroughmongers who can bring into the Le-
gislature partizans bound to act in obedience
to their wishes, to vote in accordance with the
instructions they may from time to time receive, and
who must resign their seats if they waver for a
moment, or exhibit symptoms of insubordination, or
even hesitate to carry out the directions of their
" Patron." If large additions were made to these
still " rotten boroughs" from the surrounding dis-
tricts, this unconstitutional influence would be neu-
tralised and deprived of its worst features. We
should not hear of Noble Lords " doing
what they will with their own," or superciliously re-
jecting all appeals to their reason and justice.

Although we must still deplore the largeness of the
majority by which the just and reasonable demands
of the people were rejected on the present occasion,
there are still some encouraging circumstances
perceptible that afford reasonable grounds for
hope as to its future progress. Last year,
when Mr. HUME brought forward the sub-
ject for the first time, no less than 351
recorded their votes against the motion. On
Tuesday no less than 83 of these Honourable Gen-
tlemen were absent from the division. If they had
not sufficiently made up their minds to join the
popular ranks, or to vote with the staunch and
thoroughgoing reformers of Parliamentary abuses,
they at least deemed it prudent to stay away, and to
remain neutral on the subject. This may eventually
prove a discreet and judicious course for these parties,
by which they may be enabled to appear with better
grace on the hustings. The nation will, however,
recollect the names of these who were faithful from
the beginning, who supported the popular side ere yet
it was taken up by the aspirants for office of any
party. Their names will be chronicled in the hearts
and enshrined in the memories of their countrymen,
and we shall find various constituencies con-
tending for the honour of being represented
by men who' were among the earliest and most
energetic supporters of the four great points of
legislative reform. The large and overwhelming
majorities that at first wee 6 recorded against the
annual motion of the Hon. CHARLES PELHAM VIL-
LIERS, the honest and enthusiastic advocate of free
and unrestricted trade, must not be forgotten.
At first that distinguished patriut could scarcely
obtain a patient and attentive audience, but
gradually he enforced his views on the Government.
Where underlings were in the former instance per-
mitted to take the burden of the debate on them-
selves, the leaders of the Ministry were at length
compelled to come forward, and to exhibit all their
skill in answer to the simple truths which he enun-
ciated with such force and power. In the present
instance we find the Premier and the Home Secre-
tary coming forward, and treating the subject
as one worthy of their most strenuous
exertions. This again affords good grounds of en-
couragement, and evinces a reasonable hope, that we
shall within a few years find the cause of Parliamen-
tary Reform attaining a triumph as complete and
unequivocal, as that which, in 1846, attended the
free-trade agitation for the repeal of the obnoxious
taxes on a nation's food.

The recently published pamphlet by Mr. HURTER
GORDON, of Lincoln's Inn,* on the subject of the Irish
Colleges, furnishes an ample justification, if any
such were needed, of the all but unanimous determi-
nation of the citizens of the Roman Republic never
again to submit to that sacerdotal domination from
which they have emancipated themselves. It is im-
possible to read this narrative of the proceedings of
the spiritual governors of the Roman Catholic Church,
who were, until the recent revolution, also temporal
governors of the Roman people, without being con-
vinced that an assemblage of men more unfitted to be
entrusted with the administration of affairs the inge-
nuity of man could not devise than this same College
of Cardinals, to whom it has pleased successive Popes
to confide for some ages past the excise of the
pontifical power, spiritual and temporal.
Our readers, no doubt, recollect the outcry with
which Sir ROBERT PEEL'S well considered proposal
for establishing colleges for the benefit of seven mil-
lions of our Roman Catholic fellow-subjects in Ire-
land, who had up to that period been destitute of
academic education, was received by the bigots of all
parties. That Sir ROBERT INGLIS should denounce
it as a gigantic system of Godless education, could
have been a matter of surprise to no one who was
acquainted with the tactics which Sir ROBERT IN-
GLIS has adopted since the day when he became the
chosen representative of the rampant bigotry of Ox-
ford. He, as the representative of that ancient
University, considered every proposition for found-
ing any other academic establishment as an
encroachment upon her monopoly —an attempt
to set up an opposition shop, which would
force her to reform her whole system, or
deprive her of her students, and as to the term " God-
less," that in the vocabulary of Sir ROBERT INGLIS is
merely synonimous with Church of England-less, the
Right Hon. Baronet, believing that none who do not
subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles can be other than
Godless. At the opposition of Sir R. INGLIS no one
therefore was surprised, but every right-thinking
person of every sect was not only surprised, but dis-
gusted, at the unseemly and indecent opposition with
which the proposal was met by certain firebrand pre-
lates of the Irish Roman Catholic Church. For some
time the public was at a loss to account for this force
opposition to a scheme, the principle of which had
been admitted by those very Prelates in the
case of the national schools for the poor.
Mr. HUNTER GORDON, however, has enabled us by the
well-timed publication of his pamphlet, to ascertain
the fons et origo mall. These prelates are them-
selves interestedin seminaries, from whichthe proposed
new colleges would drain off the lay, and conse-
quently paying students. "It cannot be doubted,"
says Mr. Tlnwrzu GORDON, "that the Anti-College
warfare, now raging in Ireland, is mainly prompted
by
collethgees adprparienhetnhseioirn
set
inthaerießsi.shoTphs,
elest,Prelates
theelatenew
s are
frightened at the prospect of competition with superior
institutions." Hence the hostility of the Ma-Islas and
OTTIGGINsEs to these academic institutions, and their
determination to use the thunders of the Vatican in
order to scare the superstitious from giving support to
the Government academies. Mr. GORDON thus describes
the motives which induced Dr. WHALE and his sup-
porters to evoke the question to Rome, and the man-
ner in which it was dealt with by those persons to
whom the Fors has confided the administration of his
affairs

------- -
" The motives which determined the malcontent pre-
lates to this course was very powerful, and to unscrupu-
lous minds, probably irresistible. The College of Pro-
paganda is the department to which the spiritual affairs
of Ireland belong in the Pontifical Administration.
There is a considerable body of Irish priests at Rome,
holding official and other influential situations, both in
Propaganda and in other colleges : and of these, all,
with hardly an exception, have long been, and still. are,
either openly and notoriously of the faction of Dr.
McHale, or so passively submissive to his sway, as to be
equally subservient to his purposes. Now, it was from
this body of priests that the Roman authorities, who are
in daily contact with them, derive whatever knowledge
they possess of the social and political condition of Ire-
land; the Irish priests stand before the cardinals as the
representatives of the Irish hierarchy; the only authen-
tic and infallible expositors of the internal concerns of
Ireland. Dr. Mcllale was well aware, that by these means
he bad an unbounded sway over the Council of Propa-
ganda, and could, as it were, with his own hand, work that
forcible engine against the Government. On
the other hand, from their being no English minister at
the court of Rome (a chasm in our diplomacy which
has been regretted by some of the most eminent English
statesmen, both by Mr. Canning and Lord Brougham),

there was nobody to counterwork his machinations: for
the Roman authorities pay no regard to the represents- I
tions of Englishmen, considering Irish affairs to apper-
tain to the Irish only.
" Such were the reasons which induced Dr. Mcllale
to proceed to Rome, to which the cause was now evoked.
To Rome he went ; and then there began a course of
artifice, misrepresentation, concealment, and direct false-
hood, which has certainly not been equalled in the annals
of the Apostolic See, since the time of the solicitations
addressed to Clement VII. for and against the disso-
lution of Henry the Etghtb's marriage with Catherine of
Arragon. In their appeal to the Cardinals, the first
suggestion of Dr. McHale and his colleague was
that to which a conclusive answer has already been
given, that the English Government, in instituting
these colleges, had a covert purpose of pro-
sely tieing the Catholic mass, of erecting so
many colleges of Protestant Propaganda. They
affirmed that the principle of mixed education
was part of the same scheme, and contrived for the
same end; although they had never objected to it until
disappointed in their demands. They assured the Cardi-
nals that this was an attempt on the part of the English
Ministry to introduce into Ireland the same system of
public education which had filled France with scepticism,
Prussia with neology; well knowing all the while, that
no provision is made in the French and German schools
for the religious instruction of students, while one great
object of this measure is to afford them private and do-
mestic education in religion, according to their faith, and
that more effectually tha❑ could be supplied from the
academic chair. They were not content to represent
that portion of their brother prelates who support the
colleges as the firebrands who were scattering divisions
and anarchy in the Irish Church; they went so far as to
describe the provinces and dioceses of these prelates as
the seats of civil war and rebellion; that the bishops thus
acting, had lost all control and authority over their flocks,
while the anti-college dioceses -remained submissive to
their bishops; this statement being made in the face of
the fact that Tipperary, which is within the Cashel Arch-
bishop's district (Dr. Slattery, a most intense anti-college
prelate) was the battle field of the late rebellion. They
studiously concealed the all-important fact that they
themselves had at first recognised the necessity of a
mixed system of education in the colleges, and that
that system had worked well, and in direct antagonism
to irreligion, in the national schools of Ireland during
their twenty years' existence, under far less vigilant and
efficient guarantees for the protection of faith and
morals, than are offered by the improved statutes of the
colleges.
" This mixed tissue of falsehood and absurdity was
indited in a pamphlet in choice Italian, which was dili-
gently circulated both among the ten or twelve Car-
dinals (the Council of Propaganda) the judges of the
case, and among all their advisers, the Irish officials at
Rome. Availing themselves of the panic which pre-
vailed at that period of the civil disorders of Rome, they
fastened on the fears of the Italian prelates, who were
then apprehensive lest the Mammiani faction's threats
to wrest or wring ethication from the Church constituted
authorities should be carried into effect; and thus the
domestic alarms of the Cardinals were easily converted
into a lively sympathy with Ireland threatened with a
like catastrophe! In order to decry mixed education,
which was their main object, Dra. McHa!e and O'Hig-
gins represented the measure of the colleges as a con-
templated experiment about to be made on the Irish
nation, instead of a legislative Act in certain pro-
gress of execution, thus leading the Cardinals to
suppose that their adverse decisions would annihilate
that contingency. Again they assured the Cardinals that
the dioceses of the anti-college bishops were the abodes
of pi-ace, that of the Archbishop Murray the scene of in-
' surreetion. In vain did a deputation from the same part
of the Irish priesthood labour to disabuse the Council of
the Sacred College; in vain did they present to their
Eminences the statutes of the colleges, hearing on the
face of them the refutation of the Archbishop's averments.
The Roman mind, thus cajoled, and at such a crisis,
easily arrived at the conclusion desired by Dr. Mcflele.
' The first rescript, condemnatory of the colleges, issued
in due form, signed by Frenconi, the Cardinal Prefect of
Propaganda. And the Irish Archbishop returned from
the capital of the Christian world to his own desolate
dome in, exulting in his victory not only over his brother
prelates, but over the English Government, and made
his triumphal entry into Tuam, bearing aloft the rescript
which he knew to be the firebrand of discord to his
country.
"A second attempt was subsequently made to satisfy
the Cardinals of the glaring falsehood of some, and the
absolute impossibility of other allegations contained in
that most singular document, on which the rescript
against the colleges issued. They agreed to reconsider
their judgment. In so doing they again said, this is a
lccal matter; we must consult local authorities; they saw
nothing with their own eyes; they knew, and to this
hour they know, nothing of their owe knowledge; they
never sought any batter ground or rationale of decision
than the bare fact that there was a majority of seventeen
bishops to nine against the colleges. A second rescript
followed, adhering to their first judgment. And thus
the matter now stands."

Mr. HUNTER GORDON then goes into a lengthened
argument to prove that these rescripts, having been
obtained by deceit and fraud, by the assertion of di-
rect falsehood and the suppression of truth, are null
and void, according to the canons of the Roman
Catholic Church, and are, therefore, not binding on
Ro man Catholics ; and in our judgment he succeeds
completely in proving his case. With this we, as

Protestants, have nothing to do, but we quote
this case as a proof that these Cardinals are
either so stupidly prejudiced, and so utterly
wanting in discrimination, as to be unable to distin-
guish truth from falsehood, or so bigotted and so
corrupt as knowingly to accept falsehood as truth,
and decide in favour of that which they know to be
false, if they think that such unjust decision will in
any manner tend to their own private advantage. In
either case they are unfit to be entrusted with power,
and yet it is to restore the rule of these men that the
Catholic Powers of Europe are in arms.

THE FRENCH REPUBLIC.

We have received the Paris papers of yesterday.
The delivery of the Message of the PRESIDENT has
been again postponed, and this postponement has
tended to induce persons to give credit to the rumours
which have been circulated of a split in the Cabinet.
It is supposed that General CHANGkRNIER, General
RULHIERES, and M. DE FALLoux will go out of office.
In the Legislative Assembly on Tuesday, General
CAVAIGNAC elected to sit for the department of the
Lot, and M. DUFAURE for that of the Charente In-
ferieure, two additional vacancies are in consequence
created in the representation of Paris.
A discussion then arose on the validity of the
election for the department of the Yonne, in which
it was said the election had been influenced by M.
LEON FAUCHER'S dispatch which had been sent,
there countersigned by M. FREMY, the chef de
Cabinet of M. LEON FAUCHER, and who was himself
a candidate for the representation. After MM. LEON
FAUCHER and CEEMIEUI had spoken the debate was
adjourned.

M. DE LESSEPS arrived in Paris yesterday morning.
There is no doubt whatever as to the state of the
mind of the unfortunate gentleman.
It is said that orders have been sent to General
OUDINOT to enter Rome at all risks, and even to
bombard the city, should it be necessary. It is said
that as soon as he shall be in possession of the city
he is to appoint a Governmental Committee, composed
of Romans, but placed under the protection of France
(it is not said how the members are to be selected),
under whose auspices a Constituent Assembly, elected
by universal suffrage, will be convoked, which will
have to determine whether the Roman Government
is to be a republic or a monarchy, and whether the
POPE is to be recalled, and upon what terms. There
can be no doubt that an Assembly chosen under
French protection will adopt French views ; so that
this mode of leaving the affair to the choice of the
people is a mere delLaion.
We read in l' Ordre :—" A report was current yes-
terday, and accredited that, in pursuance of recent
orders sent to General OUDINOT, the French troops
had made an assault upon Rome and entered the
city after a strong resistance. If this news bad come
officially, as was ;said, by a telegraph dispatch, the
Chamber would, no doubt, have been made acquainted
with it. Although therefore, this news is by no
means improbable, we are not able to guarantee it.
Other reports as to the attitude which the Austrian
army was seeking to assume in Piedmont, and which
are alarming for us, were also propagated yesterday,
ineebut,ir sttarwiones
ttt.bhain t It,
our tbe
appears,
ey h
envoy
vsoyou
at should
Rome,nbfeorl
ti sut ne namteed.l
ytFo,
zwtßoiDt extremelhNbAeN more
p B
LESSEPS, whether from fatigue, the influence of the
aclibmraaitne,foovreargiintatthioon
mo
idms
ti nodf,
hhi
sa s
obffeoernt s a tt toa c
fkueldfi w
his
ti hs
arduous mission."

With respect to the hostile attitude
at it has
that
assumedth by
Austria, the Assemblee Nationale: says,
the
learnt with sorrow, but without- surprise,
Cabinet of Vienna insists on the young King of
SAR-
DINIA giving up to it the possession of the forts of
Coni, of Pas-de• Seze, and even of Genoa, under pre-
text of a possible invasion of Italy by the French. It
adds, "We do not know if the pretext be true, but
in any case France cannot suffer an occupation so near
to her frontiers."
It was considered among the best-informed in the
political circles of Paris, that a war with Austria WAS
imminent and inevitable.
PROUDHON was arrested on Tuesday evening
at eight o'clock, just after his arrival by the Northern
Railroad. Ile was recognised the m.moment he left the
carriage, and was followed by a police agent until he
came opposite the barrack in the Faubourg Poisson-
niere. The officer then declared to M. YROUDHON
that he was his prisoner, and invited him to enter the
barrack quietly, in order to avoid an arrest in the
public street. N. PROUDHON, perceiving that all re-
sistance would be useless, at once yielded, and a
hackney coach being called, he entered it, accom-
panied by the agent, an adjutant belonging to the
barrack, and two non-commissioned officers.
P ROUDHON was then taken to the Prefecture of Po-
lice, where he was placed in the hands of N. CARLLER.
The ZiOniteUr contains a decree from the ran.