The Sun.
London, England, 1840-11-05 00:00:00

Anew religious sect, from the United States,
calling themselves " Latter-day Saints," or " Mor-
monitcs," have just pitched their tents in Glouces-
tershire, for the purpose of plundering the ignorant
people in the neighbourhood of the palaces and ca-
thedral of the Bishop of that diocese ; and, from all
accounts, they have been but too successful. These
Mormonites are twelve ix number, like the Apostles.
They have a Bible of their own (or rather a second
edition of that Bible handed down to us by the
Patriarchs and Apostles), in which it is declared
that they are the Apostles and Prophets of the
Church of the latter days, the only true and living
Church on the face of the earth, and as such they
tell the flocks of the learned clergy of the diocese of
Gloucester and 13ristol, that God has not revealed
in the Bible all that is sufficient to salvation, and
that they are commissioned to declare to them a new
revelation, wherein is the fulness of the Gospel. This
tale has been eagerly swallowed by the ignorant
multitude. Captain D. L. St. Clair, a gentleman of
the neighbourhood, who has for some time been
performing tile Work which ought to have been
done by the clergy, and attempting to reclaim them
from the most degraded condition of human beings,
gives this account of the success of the Mormo-
nites :—." From my own knowledge," says he, in a
little tract addressed to these deluded people, " they
have plundered three families in Herefordshire, and
left them in a state of most abject poverty ; one, a
respectable farmer, has paid to them 200/., and two
families in the parish of Bosley hare given them
every shilling they possessed, and will probably be
obliged to go into the Union House, having nothing,
left but the clothes on their backs. In corrobora-
tion of this statement have they not obtained money
from you, and what becomes of the money, some-
times amounting to 101. a night, collected at their
gatherings ?" We thought the followers of South-
cote, and Irving, and Thorn were the most deluded
of human beings, but it appears they arc surpassed
in ignorance and folly by the men of Gloucester,
who believe in this new Bible, who give away their
property to these false Apostles, who are baptized
anew in the hope that they shall live with
Christ on the banks of the Mississippi, in
glory and happiness, for a thousand years !
We do not rest tins statement, however, on the
evidence of a layman. One of the clergymen of the
district has come forward in the vain hope of un-
deceiving these benighted men, whom the bishops
and clergy call Christians and Protestants. Mr.
Morris!), pastor of Leelbury, thus describes the
ignorance of the people, and the delusion practised
on them
I am well aware of the manner in which you are
led astray. Many of y.,u, I believe, are simple-minded
Christians, really anxious about the salvation of your
souls, but at the same time you are not sufficiently
"grounded in the faith ;"—you are unstable and waver-
ing, and therefore you run after these men, desiring " to
hear some new thing." Well—you attend one of their
meetings, and some one of their preachers gets up—
takes a text from your own Bible to cover his designs,
and pours forth for half an hour a terrent of words,—
text after text,—passage after passage,—talks a little
about baptism,—a little about Christ's second coming,—
and (if there is no one present likely to contradict his
statements) a little about New Jerusalem and America :
he utters all this so rapidly that you are not able to hear,
much less to understand, one half; but you do know that a
great deal of it is taken out of the Bible,and therefore
you go away quite satisfied that all must be true because
it is Scripture."
But this is all rational conduct, compared with
the delusions which Captain St. Clair describes in
another part of his tract. The following account
of this new Bible, and the deplorable ignorance of
the people placed under the immediate wings of
a father of the Church, will be new to most of
our readers, and, though rather long, will be read
with interest and astonishment :-
6' I understand, from the hearers of these preachers,
that they tell different tales of the revelation they have
received, both as to its origin and contents. In some
places, they state the book to have been discovered by
them under a stone, and those who find it are Pro-
phets; but the book itself gives a different account ;
Isometimes their followers are to be conveyed to the
New Jerusalem in a flying strip, to alight en the top of
Coombe Hill, which you all know is 500 feet above Cie
level of the sea : all arc to get into this ship, and on its
departure Gloucestershire is to be burnt up : at other
times, the sea is to divide ; a road, with a brick wall on
one side, and water on the other, is to be formed for
you to pass over to America, the land of promise. Now,
my good friends, you may not know that it is 2,000
miles to America ; and the Atlantic Ocean, through
which you must pass, is four miles deep ; so that
the brick wall will be four miles high ; I hope, for your
sakes, more than one brick thick. They have also or-
dained persons, who can neither read nor write, priests
after the order of Aaron, in direct opposition to that
gospel which they pretend to preach ; and one of these
priests had the folly and presumption to tell a farmer,
an acquaintance of my own, that, if he and his family
did not receive baptism from him, they must all be
damned ; they also say, if all the blood be drawn out of
your veins, and the spirit be poured in, you would be-
come spiritual bodies, and live for a thousand years.
What utter nonsense ! and how contrary to Scripture!
God says, " Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt
ret urn ;" and our Saviour declares " that which is born
of the flesh, is flesh." 1 should have doubted your be-
lieving such lies, had I not known of dozens being bap-
tized, as an evidence of their faith.
" The Book of Mormon, now before me, which I have
hed great difficulty in obtaining, printed by Oliver Cowdry,
at Kirtland, Ohio, a slave settlement, bordering on Ken-
tucky, the land of invention, in America, is said to be
handed down by an angel from God, to Oliver Cowdry,
David Whitener, and Martin Harris, in the presence of
eight other witnesses, Christian Whitener, Jacob Whit-
mer, Peter Whitener, John Whiturer, Hiram Page,
Joseph Smith, Hiram Smith, Samuel H. Smith ; and
5,000 copies of the same were printed. You will ob-
serve, that it is not mentioned where this event hap-
pened, or the residence of these persons. Parts of thil
book are complete nonsense, though written in imita.
tion of Scriptural language, and interlarded with pas.
sages from the Old and New Testaments,—a most dan.
serous work in the hands of those who are not weL
read in the Bible."

We learn, in addition, that so late as the 29th
of last month, ten poor persons were baptized in
the parish of Boddington ; and that upwards of
five hundred in the neighbouring parishes have
joined these Saints, and this, too, within from two
to eight miles of the Cathedral of Gloucester, whose
Bishop has now two palaces to reside in, besides a
prebendal house at Westminster, in Dean's-yard,
and two rcctorages, in all about 9,0001. a year.
Has this Bishop, so Well paid for attending to the
flock, done anything to abate this ignorance ? Is
it not the fact that there are not fewer than eighty
non-resident clergy under him—that there are
eighty-six in the commission of the peace—that,
until lately, the Chairman of the Quarter Sessions
was a Reverend Doctor—that the neglect of
the clergy is proverbial—that at Quarter Ses-
sions there ire frequently more clergy than laity
at the dinner table ; and that ignorance is so
great, that not one adult in fifty of the rural
population can read ? Can we wonder that these
unfortunate creatures are led away by every " wind
of doctrine," and that the, gaols and mad-houses
are.•filled with the victims of ignorance and super-
stition ? The IVlormonites were wise in their ge-
titration in squatting upon this diocese, and in all
probability their next remove will be to the diocese
of Canterbury, the land of the Thomites, cele
brated for the number of its clergy, the vast income
of its Prelate, and the ignorance of its Christian
population.

SETTLEMENT OF NEW PLYMOUTH, IN
NEW ZEALAND.—We aro requested to correct an error
in the date of an advertisement which appeared in the
Devonport Independent, of Saturday last, for " Sale of
Lands to Colonists. " Instead of " 30th October," read
August 31st, 1540," to which period the terms of the
adv,rtisement specifically refer. Devonportlndependent.
ENGLISH OPERA.---We are pleased to perceive
that the Promenade Concerts given at this theatre begin
to draw more favourably on public attention. On Monday
and Tuesday the audience was both numerous and respect-
able, and seemed to be much gratified with the entertain-
ment, that was afforded them. In the second part of the
performance a solo was beautifully executed on the violin,
by Mr. Thirlwall, and with great success. This
gentle-
man plays with an intensity, and, at the some time,with
a
delicacy of feeling rarely to be met with, and
his
acquire-
ments, we trust, will insure for him a leading position
amongst our Englishviolinists. The band at this theatre
may
rea-
sonably to sustain its high character, and
w
t
hope that these concerts, for the rest theofehe h
seasaoyne,
success than
m:y be attended with better
hitherto experienced.

The Times yesterday, with that eagerness to
vilify the Admiralty, which has of late brought it
into two or three scrapes, published, after the Ship.
ping Gazelle, a memorial of certain shipwrights of
Sheerness, setting forth a case of apparent hard-
ship. We are happy to inform the Times that if
it had waited for another post, and if the ship-
wrights had waited for an answer from the Admi-
ralty, before communicating their memorial to the
public,
both would have found that Whig econo-
my was agreeable to the wishes and complaints of
the shipwrights. They state in their memorial that
they were engaged on the .3th of September to ex-
pedite the fitting of the Monarch by working extra
hours, but that after so working, they had not, up
to the 30th of October, been paid the wages they
had been promised, and which Sir John Hill had
guaranteed to them. They have now been paid ; at
least orders, we understand, have been sent to pay
them. The delay arose in this wav : Whenever a
ship is to be repaired, an estimate is' sent to the Ad-
miralty of the probable expense. After the repairs
of the Monarch were completed, a discrepancy be-
tween the actual expense and the estimate gave rise
to a suspicion that there was some mistake, and that
more work had been charged for than had actually
been done. An investigation was accordingly
instituted into the accounts, and a little error was
detected. Till that investigation was completed,
the arrears due to the men were withheld ; and, as
they are paid, we believe, in part, by the job, the
supposition of an error was a good reason for hav-
ing that cleared up before the wages were paid.
It has been cleared up ; and had the memorial of
the shipwrights not been published before the an.
swer of the Admiralty had reached them, it would
most probably have nsver seen the light, and the
Times would have wanted another occasion for a
fling at « ‘Vhig economy and justice."
-iVe have been at the trouble of endeavouring
to ascertain the facts of the case, because we
know the shipwrights to be a most valuable body
of men, whose services cannot be dispensed with,
and whose zeal it is of the utmost importance to
encourage. From what we have above stated, we
are convinced that economy was not more studied
than is necessary, and that neither slight nor injus-
tice was intended to them. Whenever they receive
such injustice, our pages shall be open to defend
them ; but they will allow us to suggest that it is
scarcely decorous to the Board they memorialise to
publish, or allow their complaints to be published,
before those complaints have been answered, and
before they know whether they are to receive re•
dress or not. An appeal always lies to the public,
when redress is denied ; and before that is the case,
the public should not be appealed to. We hope
the shipwrights, or any other class, will not be led
by the tirades of the Tories into making querulous
and unfounded appeals to the public, which can
only injure themselves.
We are strenuous advocates for paying this valu-
able class of workmen well. By giving a reason-
able remuneration, and not a very large one, to
policemen, the authorities have the choice of the
whole of the unskilled labourers of the country for
that service. 'There are far mere candidates to

enter the force than can receive places. In like
manner we would have the wages of shipwrights so
high in her Majesty's dockyards that it should be
considered a favour to get a berth in them. The
certainty of employment there, the certainty of a su-
perannuation provision, and other little privileges,
make it necessary only to give as good wages in
her Majesty's dockyards as are given in the mer-
chants' yards, to obtain as many shipwrights as are
required. Iligher wages than this are not warranted,
and the Admiralty would neglect their duty to the
country if they gave them. From what we have
heard we believe that the wages now given
in her Majesty's yards are on the whole better
than the wages in merchants' yards, and sufficient
to induce men to leave the latter for the former.
Owing to our timber duties, according to the Re-
port of the Import Duties Committee, the ship-
building trade is very fast declining in this country.
Our merchants have their ships built in the colo-
nies. There is comparatively little, or certainly
not a brisk demand for shipwrights in the mer-
chants' yards ; and when the Government lately
offered to take on more in her Majesty's yards,
contrary to what has been stated in some papers it
obtained as many, we have heard, as it chose to
employ. In fact, it did not take all who offered,
but selected men of the best character. The ship-
wrights will know better than we do whether these
statements be correct ; but if they be, it will surely
only be prudent in them, while they stthmit to no
injustice, not to make the newspapers the vehicles
for publishing unansweredand unfounded complaints.

--
LETTER FROM Loup MEL-
BOURNE.

There is one very characteristic letter of our present
Premier (then, in 1820, the Hon. William Lamb), on
the ill-advised prosecution of Queen Caroline ; which,
on account of its admirable good sense, and wise and
practical foresight, we think will be read with interest,
even at the present day :
I see the danger as clearly, and in as strong a light
as you do, but 1 do not see any step that can be taken
with a rational hope or prospect of averting it. I met
Mr. Rumbold, the Member for Yarmouth, in the street
yesterday, who, like all other rational persons, or rather
like all other persons, for I never witnessed so general
an apprehension, is much alarmed ; and he told me
that he had seen you at Lord Carrington's, and that
your idea was, that there should be county meetings,
to petition the Crown and the Parliament to put a stop
to the whole inquiry. However desirable such a course
might have been at the beginning, it is impossible not
to see that there are great difficulties attending upon it
in the present state of the affair, now that the Crown
has already instituted, and the House of Lords is
pledged to prosecute, the investigation. But the
weightiest objection to such a measure appears to me
the extreme uncertainty of the result of such meetings,
and the doubt whether they would not tend to inflame
and excite, rather than to tranquillise discontent and
irritation. Supposing that in some few counties the
influence of the gentlemen, &c., might be sufficient to
procure the adoption of wise and temperate resolutions,
there would be great danger in far the greater number
that other counsels and other feelings would prevail.
A spirit of opposition would be excited ; the same mis-
representations would take plaCe as in the case•of your
motion ; it would be said to be all dune in concert
with, and in subservience to, the views of the Ministry ;
the Queen would be exhorted and encouraged to ac-
cede to nothing ; the whole attempt would be unsuc-
cessful, and leave nothing behind it but more violent
heats and increased unpopularity to the authors of it.
These are considerations which press strongly upon my
mind : But lam conscious that perhaps I am too de-
spairing in matters of this nature, and lean too much to
the side of doing nothing, and awaiting Me course of
events. If there were a fair opening of success, the
object is so great, that it would be trtfh cowardice not
to hazard something for it. I should be most glad to
hear from you upon the subject, and so much do
esteem your opinion, that I shall this night write to
ed wi t
Onet e
too iscomnsousltt
him upon
im
subject,pthreess
pLeorrildoll?
tahcerec,rilsvihs7
misfortune is, that if anything of this sort were advis-
able, it should have been set about long before. There
is now hardly time enough le t fFor effectual measures
of this nature.
There is also a very great difficulty, which attends
all situations as that in which
we are at present placed,
and I cannot but suggest it for your consideration. I
admit that there appears to me to be great danger o
serious popular tumult and insurrection. I admit it to
you, but I should be very loth to admit it generally, or
to persons of whose judgment I had not a high opinion ;
because nothing aggravates danger of this' kind so mach
as confessing fear, It encourages those from whose
the danger proceeds, and may almost be said to
thatno
r
duce the very evil it apprehends.
Supposing then
this whole business were now to be concluded byn the
extraordinary means of an exertion of influence
itnot create
on the
part of the property of the country, would
of the present
in the disaffected an exaggerated n_
ould they not say •
peril, and of their c ? W
own strength
Etc., were sensible
to themselves, the higher
orders,i would have brought
that this trial, if persevered
e,ware
of our strength,
about a revolution ; they
are
such reasoning bring about
they fear it ; and would not
and hasten that struggle to which, it is impossible to
conceal from
in this 's self, everything
pears to tend _
?" erhat such appearanees may be, as ap-
pearances in politics
often are, delusive and fallacious,
is my earnest hope and prayer.—Edinburgh Review.

BADE LIGHT.--In the course of recent experi-
ments
corn-
with this light, the. cost•of its production has been
as to enable it, in point of economy,
poetreewith the other lights of inferior power now in use.
'The material of th•
.Bucle light, which is pure oxygen,
has been hitherto derived from manganese; it is now, we
arc given to understand, obtainable from atmospheric air
or water. ' This is indeed. a most important conquest i
science, as it will allow o. f its general use. Arriegeraents
so
suced
are now in progress for its introduction into severs of the
principal streets and shops of the metropolis.