The Sun.
London, England, 1838-03-06 00:00:00

'.'essing moderate of the day will—for the sake of
office—lend himself to the party which he, by na-1
turc, education, and position, most abhors. Am-
bition, like poverty, makes men acquainted with strange
bed-fellows, when it thrusts Sir WILLIAM MOLESWOP.TH
and Sir ROBERT PEEL into the same crib. A lust. of
power like love equals all conditions, and degrades a PEEL
to be the present instrument of a SIBTHORP and a MOLES-
WORTH.

The present conduct of a few of the ultra-Radicals will
not tend to remove the suspicion which a certain portion of
the public entertain of their motives, nor dispel that want
of confidence which the apostacy of many bye-gone patriots
has excited ia- the minds of real and practical Reformers.
The more violent of that party have been put down as mad-
nv'n or knaves, and unfortunately, for the I:onour of human
nature, the history of BULDETT, and Coanwrr, and HUNT,
and other public characters, dead or alive, who might he
named, warrants the conclusion, that the great majority be-
long to the latter class. One who started in public life
as a republican poet was afterwards selected to sing the
praises of Royalty. Another republican in youth had the
haracter afterwards of being the chief adviser of the Duke
f CUMBERLAMD, that seemed more anxious to damage the
Reform Bill than either WETHERELL or CROKEP.
COBBETT towards the close of his career was vcrg-
ag rapidly to Toryism, and BeNnETT, imitating
the example of his fellow-labourer in this school of violent
politics, has identified himself with the party whom he for-
merlY denounced as oppressors and public plunderers. The
'reflecting part of the community, and more particular),
those who are desirous of cheap and good Government, are
not to blame, after such instances of apostacy, in looking
with extreme distrust on the political virtue of THOMPSON,
and Roaauca, and MOLESWORTH. Mr. ROEBUCK is as
good a resemblance as ever SOUTHEY or COPLEY was ;
Colonel THOMPSON, while professing 'he utmost hatred of
PEEL'S party, had been the willing instrument in returning
a Tory for Marylebone; and Sir WTM. MOLESWORTH, pro-
fessing the same hatred, is doing all he can in his way to
bring Sir ROBERT PEEL back to office. They are, in fact,
doing for the Tories what the Tories could not do for them-
selves. For the last three years they have played into the
hands of the Aristocratical party. While advocating ex-
treme and impracticable measures, they sat and voted with
the Whigs ; they thus made the more timid Reformers be-
lieve that the Government and they were in unison, and
drove many of that class into the ranks of the Conserva-
tives; and now that the two great parties in the House are
nearly balanced, they throw their small weight into the
Conservative scale. We can judge of men only from their
actions, and must therefore come to the conclusion, that
though they allege other motives, they are playing the game
of all the apostates from SOUTHEY to BURDETT. To talk of
bringing matters to an extremity is the height of absur-
dity. They have seen what the public think of their extreme
policy as regards Canada, and they had much more rea-
son for believing that rational men would join them when
advocating the independence of that' colony, than they
have for supposing that any considerable portion of the
community would support them in exciting a convulsion in
this Aristocratic country in favour of extreme Radicalism,
or Republicanism. Great Reforms have been effected by
peaceable means—all rational Reformers are confident that
much will yet be done in the same way ; and all men who
have anything to lose by a convulsion, or anything to gain
by peaceful industry, would, in case of such a crisis, sup-
port the two great parties in the State, who are alike op-
posed to the " extremities" of MoaEswoant and TROMP-
The exertions made by this journal in the cause of
Reform, and its independence of any sect or party, ought
to be some guarantee for our candour in asserting, that the
extreme opinions of a few individuals throw the greatest
obstacles in the way of improvement ; that they benefit
those only to whom all good Reformers have ever been
opposed; and that in every possible view of their present
policy we can attribute it only to something worse than
folly.

The Bishop of EXETER is as busy just now as a certain
personage is said to be in a high wind, writing long dull
letters in the daily journals, and making still longer and
duller speeches in the House of Lords. Last week be at-
tacked the Liberal Catholic Members en masse; to-day he
spits his venom at Lord Howick ; accusing the former of
having committed perjury, and the latter of having
' avowed himself hostile to the bare existence of the
Established Church in Ireland. The cause of all this
active, bustling virulence at the present moment is
very obvious. The most estimable of English Prelates—
whose uniform consistency of conduct throughout life, is
among the least of his recommendations—fondly imagines
that the fall of the Ministers is at hand ; with the keen
scent of a pointer he " snuffs afar off" the advent of their
successors ; and full of this pleasing delusion, is anxious to
ingratiate himself with them, by a timely show of wondrous
party zeal, which he has the dexterity to veil under the
mask of a pious solicitude to defend the spiritual welfare
of Mother Church. There are few, however, who cannot see
through this disguise, and appreciate the motives which have
induced the long bottled-up wrath of the apostolic diocesan
of Exeter, to effervesce and pop out in the faces of the Ca-
tholic Members and Lord HOWICK, just at the ♦ery mo-
ment when the sanguine Tories were most anxious to damage
Ministers, and all who support them, in public opinion.
The Bishop is a dexterous debater, and has, we willingly
concede, the wish to do mischief ; but his powers are neu-
tralized by his public character, which, ever since his flagran
trimming on the Cathelic question, has been utterly without
moral influence. Let him single out for attack whichever of
the Ministers or their supporters he may, public opinion will
always be sure to side with the objects of his hostility, even
while it does ready justice to the clever malignity that dic-
tated and pointed the assault. In the case of Lord
Howicir, however, the Rev. Prelate's attack has not even
ingenuity to recommend it ; for his letters to the Noble
Lord are merely so many long stories without beginning,
middle, or end—a series of " Much-ado-about-nothing"-
epistles, which leave the case just where they found it,

The Court of Session has just decided a case of great
importance to the Church of Scotland. In 1834 the Ge-
nerale Assembly made a law by which Pr esbyteries were for-
bidden to induct any presentee to whose admission a ma-
jority of the parishioners, being heads of families, should
object. This Act appeared to many Members of the As-
sembly, both lay and clerical, to trench deeply upon the
rights of patrons, and it was, therefore, strenuously op-
posed. The law, however, passed, and though it has
occasioned a good deal of bickering between the different
parties whose interests have been affected by it, the present
is the first case arising out of it that has been decided in a
Court of Justice. The Earl of KINNOUL had, it ap-
pears, as patron of a Lying, presented a clergyman, Ns-
sessing all the requisite qualifications to the vacant benefice ;
a majority of the privileged parishioners objected to the
presentee ; the Presbytery sustaining the objection, re-
fused to ordain him ; and the Patron brings his action
against them for this refusal, as an injury to him in
his civil rights. This is a brief statement of the merits of
Ithe case.

The Judges delivered their opinions at considerable
length, and, with only one dissentient voice, were decidedly
of opinion that it was beyond the power of the General
Assembly to pass the veto Act—that that Act is therefore
a mere nullity—and, consequently, that those Presbyteries
that make it the rule of their proceedings, arc guilty of
breaking the law of the land.
Such is the upshot of this collision bctween the civil and
ecclesiastical powers ; and if it is not exactly agreeable to
the feelings of the clerical body—if it does not bear out
the Scottish Clergy in those high notions of independence
of all temporal authority and controul which they so gene-
rally entertain—hut, on the contrary, clearly demonstrates
that there is somewhere or other a temporal Head to the
Kirk, able and willing to curb any little eccentticities into
which she mly be betrayed in her old age—it must be recol-
lected that this is nothing more than the price which she,
in common with all her allies, must pay for their unscrip-
total connection with the State. She 1.0. v finds in her own
experience the truth of the maxim which she has so often
)reached to others, that "it is impossible to serve Goo
:Ind MAMMON at the same time."

The Paris Journals of Sunday received this morning con-
tain no news of general interest on Saturday. Prince TA,
LEYRAND attended- a mceitn,g of the Vrcrieli Academy, at
which he delivered, viva voce, an eloquent panegyric on M.
REINHART, a veteran diplomatist. The re-appearance of
!he Prince on such a stage, after the world had believed