The Sun.
London, England, 1838-05-07 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC; JOURNALS.

The recent attempt of Lord J. Rtrsell and his partisans to
eripple the Church of England through a new 'Church-lease
machinery, may looked upon, we suTect, as nearly the
last kick of that restless, worrving, seditious, and fa'ildess
body. the political Dissenters, aitcting to ground their dis-
sent on religious motives, who are the open prompters of the
Melbourne Miiiistry in their indefatigable attacks upon the
Church, being likewise their all but ecknowledeed masters.
Mr. Joseph Home, a At and chosen " operative" in such a
avuOit, asks whether it is rieht that members of the Esta•
blislii tt Churclt " should put their hands into the pockets of
the Disgenteol to stippett ?" The plain answer is, that the
lbeelv.ts of the Dissenters are never visited by the hands of
Churchmen, save only to recover such Church pro; err),
al tray be found in those depositories of stolen goods.
To the case of Church rates we adverted last Saturday,
poit,4ug out the unquestionable fact, that no Dissenter
is c:ll, upon to pay one shilling towards that revenue in
ail other c!sarnter but as occupier of lands or houses
a: *Pady rateable, before he ever came into possession of them.
Th • Dissenters," quoth Joseph, "have never robbed the
Church, but the Church has robbed the Dissenters." Pray
bow? we beg to ask the luminous Joseph. When the whole
property of the realm was subject to the maintenance of the
Church, for centuries before the first growl or squall of dis-
ellt was ever heard of—when tithes were for centuries, and
ate :tell. Ihe oldest property known to the law of England,
dissent being a spurious and recent by-blow from the Re-
formation, eligicating in regard less to principles than to
sottris—when Le! the property inherited or possessed by
any winister of the Church, which they did not derive
from the Ancient and genera! law of England,' has enured to
them by virtue': of deedsor testaments, the fruit of individual
piety, earnest in its desire to extend and perpetuate the blessings
eif religious instruction throughout society, how can it be
said by the most impudent ,;f Inert (far no wise or conscien-
tious m has ever said it), that a ;7raple and regular exercise
ei ;he rights of property thus handed ~.1^7.11 was a robbery
conellitted upon a class of persons weose sole stinction
that teey.have of their own accord withdrawn themselves !rOlll
A full share of the benefits to be enjoyed under such legal
dispensations. Lord John Russell has been sore and shy in
intimating (for he has not attempted to specify) the nature of
his new scheme of depredation upon the Church ; but he has
Not succeeded in concealing from Parliament, that the rela-
t!ous of landlord and tenant are to be disturbed, the rights of
both very seriously encroached upon, and the end to be at-
tained ;hereby nothing else but a transfer of Church
property fors.the relief of clamorous Dissenters from the dis-
charge , 'Of theft' debts, while millions of our fellow
Christians, members' of our own communion, are hourly
exhibiting a demand for the comforts and blessings of
spiritual instruction far beyoad whet the resources of the esta-
blished ,Church will satisfy. Mr. Goulburn reminded the
House on Thursday that the Commission of " Inquiry into Ec-
clesiastical Revenues was appointed by Sir Robert Peel—that
the Right Hon. Baronet did from the first contemplate,
through the instrumentality of this Commission, an nmeaded
diseeibution of Church property, and a transfer of superfluities I
for the supply of wants within the bosom of the Church her-
self, and for the benefit of her own Members, and did so con-
stitute his ;I:ommission with a view to remedy those enor-
mous evils whieb were admitted to prevail throughout the
kingdom—namely id the disproportion between the du-
ties performed and the remuneration received for them,
and the total want of pastoral instruction in many parts
of the country." Lord John Russell, in the studied
vagueness and mistiness wherewith he habitually expresses
himself on these Church questions, labours hard to make
it appear that he has the good of the Church for his
object because he would employ whatever surplus he
could pinch out its revenues in the purchase of "instruc-
tion for the people." Now, if his Lordship means by this
phrase, " the instruction" of that vast body of the people
who, being members of the Church Establishment, are frcm
their own accumulating numbers destitute of all means of im-
provement in religious knowledge, we would humbly repre-
sent to the noble mutilator of the Church, and tool of the
Dissenters, that the soundest and most valuable of all religious
instruction is that which would be imparted to our Protestant
Episcopal congregations by our own parochial clergy, and
that the best school-houses which could be obtained would be
those built in the form, to the Wes effected, and with the
facilities afforded, by a multiplication of Protestant churches,
to be served by ministers paid out of any surplus which could
by honest means be raised out of the existing lands of the Church,
instead of leaving the poor of our Establishment to shift for
themselves, while the out-door enemy was fattening on their
spoliation, and sharpening, at their expense, his hos-
tile weapons. The scheme of Lord John Russell goes con-
fesse4'ry to despoil the Church and its members of whatever
advantages might be drawn from the improvement of their
own property, and to hand over the fruits of that improvement
to strangers. Supposing, as Mr. Goulburn remarked, that
the Government of Elizabeth or Henry VIII. had acted as
the official tools of the Dissenters now propose to act, and
had said—" We are friends of the Church, but we will ma-
nage that its income shall rever have the slightest share of be-
nefit from the possible improvement of the times; its present
amount shall never be exceeded, let the growth of the popula-
tion be hereafter whit it will"—what, we ask; would have been
the present state of the Church, and of the people of Eng-
land, with reference to the means of religious knowledge,
bad the property never improved from the end of the
sixteenth century ? The scheme of the Lord seeks not
even what it professes. It professes to leave the revenue
of the Church where it is; but it weakens the security
of that lavenue by converting a proprietor into a mere rent-
charger. In another respect, as Sir Robert Peel rightly
affirms, ad, eeption is practised by the Ministers. They pre-
tend to relieve the Dissenters from an impost; but it is not
the Dissenters who pay that impost, it is the great Lody of
la,ided proprietors throughout the kingdom—themselves chiefly
men, seers of the Church Establishment, who are to be relieved
from ti., obligation under which they acquired their estates,
no matter whether by descent or purchase—viz., that of keep-
ing up the l'ehries of the Churches. However, we need not
speculate on wiett Ministers really mean. They mean really
to do (according td custom) nothing. The present system of
managing Church prene:ty had been fouad untenable so long
ago as in November, 1834 Why have three years and a half
since passed without anything being done or seriously at-
tempted ? In 1834 Lord Grey's Government, of which Lord
Althorp was the organ, propo.sed that the Church-rates shall
be paid by " the State." Why was that proposal abandoned ?
Mr. Spring Rice brought forward another project. Why was
that abandoned? A Committee was apt:milted by the same
inefficient mountebanks in July, 1837. It de,l, what it was de-
signed to do—viz., nothing. Instead of introdeeing a mea-
sure on this subject at the opening of the sessiOu in last
November, they put it off until the 4th of Mav ; and :hen it
proves to be, not a bill, or even one or more binding resctu-
tions, but a motion for a committee, which is calculated, liks
the last year's committee, to do just nothing at all. The fact is, that 1
Ministers dare not grapple with this question. They dread
the Dissenters : they dread still more. at the bottom of their
hearts, to offend irretrievably the Church of England. They
will not stand up in fair battle against either ; they therefore
shuffle with both. "If ever," says Sir Robert Peel. " there
was a proposal calculated to gull both parties, it is that of
leaving the question in its present unsettled state." There-
lore it is that the question will, so far as depends on Ministers,
be "left in its present unsettled state," and this satisfactory
adjustment of it. and of all other difficulties, will devolve upon
S;r Robert Peel and his Conservative colleagues. Let the
people of England bear this in mind, for we have not deceived
them. The majority of 1 l on 'Thursday last ought to have
been reduced to 2, inasmuch as three Conservative menthes
left ti a H ,use, and six others were prevented from coming
down and r the persuasion that it would be an adjourned de-
bate. Su di are hair-breadth 'scapes of these sub-Radical ad-
venturers.— Tinges. .

In conformity with our promise of Saturday, we proceed to
give a notice somewhat more in detail than we then could give
of Doctor Chalmers' lecture of Thursday. After a brief re-
ference to his lecture of the preceding Tuesday the Rev. Pro-
fessor proceeded to a glowing eulogium of that state of public
affairs when a common sentiment as to that which is good pre-
vails between the Government and the people. Best of all,
it was, he said, when this sentiment was warmed into enthu-
siasm, and a kind of moral jubilee reigned throughout the
land. Such was the case when Sovereign and people, burn-
ing with an equal zeal against the common enemy, overthrew
the Spanish Armada. Such had frequently been the case
when honours were to be paid to the memory of de-
parted warrior= or patriots, and provision made for their
descendants. Such common feeling between the Govern-
ment znd the governed frequently appeared also in
times of public calamity, as, for example, when the miseries
of famine were to be allayed, and governors were found
unlocking the coffers of the State in aid of the subscriptions
of the people. This unanimity of feeling was observed be-
tween Fleury VIII. and his subjects, ruthless despot though
he was, as well as between the people and Henry's son, the
mild and saint-like Edward ; and in later times was created
by the conduct of the imprisoned Bi,hops who were ready to
suffer death, if need had been, in the cause of religious liberty.
When they were set free they were met by the rapturous ac-
tclaims of a grateful and liberated nation. This was the
gt.arious prospect which was presented when the acts of the
governors and the governed proceed together as the pulsations
of oce mighty heart—when the common energies are devoted
to a co.-nmon object, and all jealousy forgotten. Religion has
teen in times of old the subject of this natural unanimity. In
the best periods of the Jewish history the Government and
the people. acted together. Kings and subjects equally
strove for providing the expenses of building the Temple.
But in the present time there is as it were a war between
the State and the people in such matters, as if a contempo-
raneous exertion of both were impossible. There was, how-
.ever, i.o reason thet the legal should supersede the voluntary
with respect to the expenses of Christian teaching, though
that seemed to be a prevailing notion in these days. In Scot-
land, said the Rev. Lecturer, the desire of the friends of
Church extension is that the Churches should be lau,ilt from
voluntary subscriptions, but be endowed by Government for
the support of the Clergy belonging to them. And some
have objected to this division, as if it were an encouragement
raf the principle of the, unhallowed attack on Church-rates, but
it is really not so. The building of Churches is one thing, and
the obligation of the people to maintain them is another.
" For palv part," said the Rev. Lecturer, " I am a disciple of
Cobbctt on the subject of Church rates. I consider
gai'm as a proprietary right over those who by law are
)"agile to pay them." The first Christian Establishment was
that of eonttantine, and it was to this day doubtful
w'rwiter the pie•v or the policy of that Emperor led to
his conversion. If it were from sincere religious feeling it
was the duty of the hehd of an empire, as it would be of the
head of a Tamil", to orcvide a settled system of religious wor-
ship. It was thus that the influence of a Christianised heart
was exhibited. Whether from a Sovereign to his subjects, or