The Sun.
London, England, 1841-11-08 00:00:00

MORNING SUN

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS

FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF SATURDAY.
STANDARD.—The Rev. R. W. Sibthorp, one of
the Fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford, and minister
of St. James's Chapel, Ryde, has quitted the Church
of England, to seek for new ordination in the Papal
communion. Those who have been aware of the
symptoms which have recently manifested themselves
in St. James's Chapel—the bowings, crossings, using
several different parts of the church to read the
service from, and, it is said, even the introduction
of incense—will not be much surprised at this
melancholy close of the whole course of mental aber-
ration ; melancholy, we mean, for the unhappy man
himself. For the Church, we regard the separation
as an event rather fortunate than otherwise. And
we hope—we earnestly hope—that this secession will
prove hut the first of several. Happy, indeed, would
it be for the cause of truth and religion, if the pre-
sent year were to witness some imitators of Mr.
Sibthorp. The danger, the real danger, under which
the Church now suffers, is not that of losing the
services of men of Mr. Sibthorp's mied, but of
retaining them. Let us find all Romanists at
heart under their own proper banner, and we shall
know where and how to meet them. It is when
they hide themselves among our own men that
they' excite a real and well-founded alarm.
We are well aware that the number of those who,
in the main, agree with Mr. S.bthorp, although small, is
greater than could be wished. Were the error con-
fined to but one or two individuals, it would not have
excited the admonitions, within the lost few months, of
the various Prelates who have made the topic a promi-
nent one in their charges, among whom we remember
the Bishops of Ripon, Durham, Chester, Gloucester,
Winchester, and Exeter. Nor has Mr. Sibthorp been
at all the foremost in the mischief. His prece-
dence in the final step is probably owing to the
greater honesty and straightforwardness of his charac-
ter. We trust, however, that those who secretly think
with him will quickly evince the manliness to act with
him also. Their own language, in their quarterly organ,
is, "It is impossible to stop where we are." With
honest men it ought to be impossible. The equivoca-
tions, of " No. 90" do not look like the workings of an
honest mind. The event will shortly show whether we
do its author an injustice.
GLOBE.—The tergiversation of the Times is with-
out parallel in the history of the public Press. On
eery imaginable topic within the wide range of poli-
tical or polemical discussion it has, alternately, sup-
ported the most diametrically opposite opinions.
Every public man has, in his turn, been the god
of its idolatry, and the subject of its virulent
abuse every line of public policy, domestic, co-
lonial, foreign, has been advocated or condemned,
according as the madness of patty ruled the
hour, and prompted the language of praise or condem-
nation. From being the indiscriminate calumniator
of the Irish Roman Catholics—the reckless libeller of
their clergy, whom it accused of every crime against
society—of their religion, to which it attributed the
physical and moral calamities which they suffer—and
of their loyalty, which it impeached and denied—we
find the Times assuming the tone of moderation ; de-
nouncing in others the course which it only recently
pursued ; and coming forth from the extreme regions
of blind partizanship and infuriated bigotry, to en-
force the duties of moderation, and to expatiate on
the advantages of unity and peace ! We are
furnished with a clue to this sudden and striking
transformation in the following passage : " The
days arc gone when the state of warfare pro-
duced by Orange domination can be considered in any
more favourable view than an enormous evil." To be
sure they are! Tr e Tinics is an expert discerner of
what is suitable for the changed position of its party,
to which, with wonderful facility, it moulds its ad-
vocacy—and becomes the counsellor of the very course
which, hut a few days, and even hours, before, it re-
presented as fraught with danker, and to be contem-
plated only with dismay. When the Whigs were in
power, moderation toward Ireland was stigmatized as
giving encouragement to Popery, to discourage and
eventually suppress which was enforced as the impera-
tive duty of the Government ; and the Protestants were
invoked, by the reverence and love they professed for
their religion, to combine to overturn a Government
which had entered into covenant with Popery, and was
encouraging its claims by conferring place and patronage
on its professors. But " the days are gone by " when
the tocsin of alarm, sounded in the cause of party
without reason and without the slightest ground for
belief that any alarm existed, can serf e the cause of
party. The Whigs have been succeeded in the Go-
vernment by the Tories ; and the raised hopes of the
Ultras, that the days of Orange domination were to
return with the advent of Sir Robert Peel, are to be
damped, and even extinguished, by the very organ which
aided in calling them forth, and fed them to the full.
COURlER—Without subscribing to the full cor-
rectness of the estimate given by a Morning Contempo-
rary of the sayiugs and doings of the people that con-
gregate in Exeter Hall on each returning anniveriary of
the Gunpowder Plot, vie must, however, enter our protest
against all such exhibitions as being unsuited to the times
in which we live, and to the circumstances by which we
are surrounded, and as being most eminently calculated
to damage, by dishonouring, the cause which those
who meet to hear and be heard on such occa-
sions affect to have so much at he irt. We may concede
to them that " Popery" is the monster-evil they delight
to paint it—that its eradication from the British em-
pire is a consummation most devoutly to bo wished ;
but even with this mrasure of ample concession we
cannot reconcile the tone and temper that charac•
terise their addresses, either to the reverence due to
the sacred subject of religion or to those feelings of cha-
rity and forbearance which should distinguish the really
sincere Christian. Surely the parties who attend there
either for the purpose of denouncing a large portion
of their fellow-subjects, or of hearing them denounced
by others in terms as grossly offensive as violent!), in-
tolerant, cannot be guilty of the extravagant folly of
supposing that the work of conversion can be promoted
by such agencies, or that such language can have any
other effect than that of disgusting all sober-minded
people, and of confirming in their errors those against
whose faith and religious principles it has been fulmi-
nated. A state of perfect religious equality has been
established, whether wisely or not is now too late to
discuss, in every portion of the British empire. A Minis-
try has succeeded to office determined fairly and fully to
recognise and act upon the principle, not alone of tolera-
tion, but of equality, adopted by the Legislature; disposed
as pledged to the maintenance of the Established Church
in unimpaired rigour—to the enlargement in every possi-
ble way of the sphere of its influence, and to the support
of all those time-tested institutions encompassing it. And
yet this is the time selected by hot-headed zealots for
a display of coarse and offensive intolerance, unchari-
table in its nature and mischievous in its results.

MONEY
MARKET alai CITY NEWS.
FROM TUE MORNING PAPERS OF SATURDAY.
TIMES.—The examinationsb. of Messrs. Rapallo and
E. B. Smith have no means tended to alleviate the
uneasiness of the holders of spurious Exchequer bills, as
to their final indeaLfication. T
The confession of Mr.
'Smith to Mr. Malik,'
givento
the Solicitor to the reasury, that
many bills were Mr. Rapalle with the numbers
only, and without the signature, is very alarming, since,
as far as those bills are concerned, it is doubtful whether
of
they would afford .a chancethe
actiongnlnrly
against
issued
across
the
Go-
vernment, never having been re
counter, but only acquiring the of circulation in
the hands of the party out of doors who might have
added the signature. ()n the other hand, those parties
who took the bills some months
theyto the Treasury, and
were then distinctly informed thatto
officialperlor to the holders
con-
ceive that they are in a position s were good,
mi,,ht informationi
in general, and that by such
comprloamveisehdeen Mr.
withstanding the informant (not-
Smith himself) the Government is
certainly does seem hard that parties, against whom no
neglect can be charged, but who, onar the
exhi-
bited more than ordinary diligence, should contrary,
after having taken the only steps that were in their power.
It is not impossible that this proceeding on the part of
f
a
few holders may divide the holders generally into two
classes—one of which would stand in a different position
to the other with regard to a claim against Government.
A fact has transpired lately which is calculated to in-
crease the alarm in the Money Market, and to deprive
many holders of Exchequer bills of the consolation of a
belief that their bills were genuine. The general impres-
sion has been for some time that none of the spurious
bills were ever sold, but merely lodged as a deposit for
loans, so that, notwithstanding the general panic, the boon
fide purchasers felt that they at least could not be losers.
To-day, however, it has transpired that some of the bad
bills have actually been sold, and therefore every holder
is in a state of uncertainty.
There is a very general impression to-day in the City,
that the only way out of this affair by which the monied
interest can be satisfied, and the credit of the Govern-
ment maintained, is by the appointment of a Commis-
:ion to inquire into the situation of the respective holders
f spurious bills, and to protect those who appear
Clearly
to have become possessed of them without
the
~.,or least cognizance or suspicion of the original fraud.
/ this purpose there should undoubtedly be selected
Wren well acquainted with commercial practice, for
there appears
_wee to most people a very strong analogy be
administration
what cccurs in this case, and the practice in the
of the bankrupt laws, in which innocent
holders, whatever may be the origin of the docu-
ments theoylliold, are uniformly protected. What would
he the n
, citbe tly,
ai:. satisfaction therefore in this matter,
would
appointment, say of two eminent bankers
for the ml two for the west-end of the town, who
pow
should have power to decide or. all claims of the Govern-
ment, arising out
fiaull
of these spurious transactions. No
mixture of official
persons, or others connected with the
Government, w)answer the purpose. If this is to be
the course determined
upon,it is obvious that the action
ought to be a prompt
of the Government as one—we mean, as well for the sake
the
suffering parties, for it is ob-
vious that the Exchequer
bill market is in a most
critical se
connected to
th the ported
entirely by the demand
funding, and though parties who
want them- fpr that purpose
are compelled to pay a
premiuiiiill-e. or 85., thrPoejsoebbers who deal in them for
the sake of selling themhaigsain to the public will not
This purchase them at par. '
a mercantile feeling which will may
be termed, perhaps,
subside in a few days by
the operation of self-interest ; but the Government will
evince great ignorance of the nature of credit generally