The Sun.
London, England, 1840-12-16 00:00:00

(From the Courier.)

The esencerns of the State, as such, is with the educa-
tion of the people, so far chiefly as the mean!, and as an
elementary process for the more easy communication
and diffusion of religions instruction. Call or
ton it has none to induct into the arts and sciences
other than by the iniatory aids of plain rea -ling sad
writing, which are the necessary preliminer:es, end
should be the dependent ediuncis of religious training.
The whole and sole dety of the State is limited to the
removal of any ioipediments which may exist to
the acquisition of science or superior education for
those inquiring and aspiring minds, whose natural thirst
after knowledge-has been ro'reshed and invigorated by the
tiret draught at the spririg instead of being quenched
like that of the masses. The buoyant genius of such,
and the number is never iew, will ever rise to its
proper level by the slow but healthy vigour of its own
powers and Mural heat, without the more rapid and ad-
ventitious etroulatiou of hot-house forcing, by which
the plant, hardy when of native growth and capable of de-
fling the inclemency of the seasons, precociously ripened
into artificial fulness, withers at the first breath of adverse
winds. A government travels out of the circle of its
attributes which assumes to do more than provide for
the religious instruction and material well-being
of the people. In the one else the Church is the
natural instrument of superintendence, and iii the other
wise legislation, by which every man is protected in his
~wn, and the industry of all equally encouraged. It would
be just as rational and justifiable an undertaking to feed all
the people without calling upon them to work, as to at-
tempt to coerce them into mathematicians, poets, philoso-
phers, painters, or musicians, quand mine. Ne sutor ul-
tra crepidam is an antiquated adage, but not the worse for
wear, nor, as a guide-post, undeserving even the notice of
the Government.
(From the Standard.)
Tile press is said to have some power—probably the
amount of power is exaggerated—but whatever possesses
power, be it more or less, cannot be an object of indif-
ference to a free people. Our own opinion is, that it is
only when well directed and decently conducted, that any
merely moral ir.strument can have an important influence
upon Englishmen, and by consequence, that the press and
the people have a common, if not an equal interest, in
the character and demeanour of newspapers. This is our
apology for so frequently calling attention to what might
at first sight appear to he a matter affecting only a particu-
lar trade. We have already spoken of the disposition of
too great a portion of the aristocracy to fix in a rank of
degradation all persons connected with the public press,
but we have hitherto alluded only to chat may be re-
garded as a negative course of injustice. This morning,
however, we are disagreeably reminded of an injury which
is not merely negative, but which, though doubtless not
not so designed, acts as a positive and very efficient means
of debasing the class to which we belong—we mean the
employment and encouragement by the aristocracy of
a description of persons mean in talents and educa-
tion, and low and servile in their habits of think-
ing, as newspaper writers. if they who employ and
encourage such persons as we speak of, wished to fix us
is a degraded rank, they certainly could not employ
a policy more effectual for that purpose. We will
do them justice, however : we believe that they de
not look beyond the convenience of having abjectly
submissive tools ; and such they can hope to find
only among persons fitted for low service by the
want of that becoming self-respect which any con.
sciousness of ability and education inspires—which is,
indeed, found universally among Englishmen every-
where, except in the servants' halls of the worse.
regulated mansions of the great. The effect to us
is, however, the same, whatever the motive of those
who quarter their menial dependants upon the press.
It is told that an eccentric British nobleman,
wishing to insult the Consular establishment of
Napoleon, during the short peace, dressed all his
footmen in the uniform of the Marshals of France—
a proceeding for which lie was summarily dismissed
from Paris; and more recently, about the time when cigar-
smoking became fAshionable, a noble descendant of the
Stuarts, inheriting the first James's antipathy to tobacco,
sought to put down the practice by parading his liveried at-
tendants through St. James's-street and Pall-mall, each pro-
vided with a cigar. It is thus the privilege of rank and
wealth to insult and, in some sort, control inferiors by the
agency of those menials, whom, in their pride, they
place on a level with all but themselves. After this pre.
face, we shall at once proceed to lay before our readers
the following introduction of an article of this day's
Morning Post, extending to two columns :—" The
chastisement which we have inflicted upon the Herald
and Standard for their base and unprincipled efforts,
as members of a foul conspiracy, having for its
avowed purpose the political destruction of the
Member for the University of Dublin, has been administer-
ed by us, not, as our readers will readily believe, on ac-
count of any pleasure we could derive &cm the execution
of so revolting a task, not from the expectation that
we could reap either glory or advantage from its
performance, not from the supposition that the odious
exposures which we should have to lay before our
readers in the discharge of this duty could be either
gratifying or useful to them—but simply because we felt
that to do as we have done was a duty to the Conservative
cause of the greatest importance and the most indispen-
sable obligation—one which was peculiarly ours, as the
oldest and most steady of Conservative Journals—a duty,
in a word, from which we could not shrink without in
some degree partaking the -infamy of that conduct which
we neglected to reprehend." We are happy in the belief
that there is but one journal in the British empire that
could wiite in this strain ; but our gratification is alloyed
by the reflection that this one journal lives only by the
patronage of a part of the aristocracy : it is melancholy to
think that noblemen, and gentlemen can admit it into their
houses even for the use of servaras.

ARRIVAL OF THE ORIENTAL.—This splendid
steam-ship, commanded by Captain Soy, which left Alex-
aiu!ria on the 26th ult., Malta en the Ist, and Gibraltar on
tith instant, reached Falmouth on Friday afternoon,
where she landA her mails, which were unusually heavy.
Sl:e then proceeded on Ler voy,;,te to this port, at which
she arrived oa Saturday, at midnight. She went to moor-
ings at the Quarantine Ground, where she must lie until
an order comes from London for her liberation. It is
worthy of espcoial remark, that the Oriental arrived here
before the letters she had landed at Falmouth, those letters
not having reached our Pont-effic::!. overland from that port
so late as six o'clock last evening. A few letters by her
frqm India and Egypt were received, however, through
Mr. Waghern's agency, via Marseilles, on Wednesday and
Thursday last.—Liverpool Albion.
Lady Caroline Lino Fox has arrived at her
faller's, Lord liarew;md, near Leeds.