The Sun.
London, England, 1840-06-09 00:00:00

interests which prompt the actions of the peo• i the du
ple—the Government is completely the creature
of one class, the servant of one interest, and the
slave of one series of the conflicting passions and
desires which are neither very enlightened nor very
honourable. The millions have, therefore, ceased
to place any confidence in it, and seek to overthrow
it. That evil which, born in our day, scarcely has
as yet the lineaments of life, will grow to a ter-
rible neaturity in future, unless the wise and the
good, persons with influence and leisure—call them
the priesthood—interpose, and assuage, if they
cannot extinguish, our intestine conflicts. The
class passions, interests, and desires to which the
Government owes its birth, make it unfit to per-
form that office ; and the conflicting desires it will,
and must, seek to suppress, should it interfere fur-
ther betwixt property and no property, betwixt ca-
pital and labour, betwixt rent and food, will
only the more speedily shake 'it to piecee.
No reflecting man can now wi:ir to see
the operations of Government enlarged, set in mo-
tion and controlled as the machine is by factious
mobs struggling for mastery. At the ;IM: time
this new-born evil must be speedily checked, or it
will destroy our internal peace and our imperial great-
nees ; and we are not aware of any means by which
that can be accomplished except by some such
mediation as we have suggested.
Let us inform the ruling classes, if they' are igno-
rant of the fact, which we can scarcely believe, that
no persons ever yet attained influence or power
in society but as the instruments of gratifying some
general wants, and never retained it but on some
principle of great public utility. Itis good to honour
the itinnense talent and boundless resources of NA-
:'O LEO N,hut had not millions of Frenchmen shared in
.4;11e. sentiment that France having cast down her old
monarchy, and having thereby alarmed, insulted,
and outraged all the monarchies of Europe, re-
quired great military power and reputation as a
means of security, he never could have reached his
vast pre-eminence. His Imperial greatness grew
from the impassioned want of national indepen-
dence in thirty millions of human beings. The
power of all his Marshals rested on the same basis.
That is a modern and a striking instance of the
general truth we have stated ; but history abounds
with similar illustrations. We shall content our-
selves with referring to two which touch more im-
mediately the matter in hand—the influence of our
nobility and the clergy.
he'l power of our aristocracy was originally
founded on their utility, when mankind consisted
of conflicting tribes, as leaders in war and judges
in peace. In both these functions they have been
euperseded, and both war and the administration of
the law have become settled trades, leading to all
the honours of the aristocracy. Land was the ori-
ginal sign of the aristocrat's power, and the reward
of his virtue; and those who, by the practice of
skill useful to society, or by industry, acquire wealth
and purchase land, have now become the heirs of
the power and influence of the original aristocracy.
Utility—the gratification of some conspicuous
wants in society—was the foundation of the power
of the landed aristocracy, and as they have ceased
to be useful, their power has declined, and they
have been superseded by other more useful men.
The clergy will deceive themselves if they sup-
pose that they differ from the aristocracy, and owe
their power to any other source than gratifying
some wants of society. The first missionaries of
the Christian religion, whether in Britain or the
Sandwich Islands, came from a more to a less civi-
lized country, and imparted a knowledge of useful
arts with Christianity. On the breaking up of the
Roman empire many noble Romans took refuge in
the Church, which became the depository of all the
learning of the ancient world. The power of the
Roman Catholic priesthood in the dark and the
middle ages was the :power of knowledge over ig-
norance. A craving for knowledge—a yearning
after something to rest on, is as much a part of
man as a craving for food or for protection ; and
this craving for knowledge, this yearning after
something tangible, was gratified by the clergy of
the dark ages, and became to them a source of
power. Gradually other men acquired all the
knowledge possessed by the priesthood. Printing
and rapid communication weakened their power, by
diffusing through all the knowledge which was
before confined to one order of men.

Moreover, as time has gradually unfolded the
order of nature, and established in the mind a con-
viction of its stability ; as a knowledge of the're-
gularity, uniformity, and harmony of the material
world, supplanted the fitful gleams of its magnifi-
cent order, which burst, as it were, by inspiration,
on. untutored savages ; as experience explained
(that is, referred to general laws) many facts
which ignorance regarded as miraculous produc-
tions, the craving for knowledge has been gra.
tified, or taught an appropriate means of
gratification by due inquiry, and the yearn-
ing after something tangible, on which to
rest belief and hope, has become feeble. he
gradual substitution in the mind of civilized man,
of the ideas of order, regularity, uniformity, and
harmony, which is the result of the progress of
knowledge, for the obscure perceptions of only
isolated phenomena, which was
_all that was
vouchsafed to the savage, must weaken those
apprehensions and that desire on which the power
of any and every priestlmod is founded. The
woke of the Itomish Hierarchy, the most powe!fu
and best organised that ever existed,was thus broken
by the Reformation, and has ever since been crum•
tiling to dust. In like manner, the further pro-
gess of knowledge has weakened the power and
influence of the Protestant clergy, though states-
men, from a theoretical notion that priestcraft is the
cement of society, still strive all they can to in-
crease and maintain that by laws and gifts to
which nature has decreed a termination. A power
which is decayed or extinguished in men's hearts
cannot be revived by legislation ; and the present
efforts to extend the Church are rather proofs of a
consciousness of the decrepitude of age seeking to
lengthen life by art, than of that confidence of
youth which never questions its OW4I inherent

vigour.

If, then, no men or body of men can long pre-
serve power and influence in a community unless
they minister to some great social wants ; if the
priesthood, by the nature of things, are getting gra-
dually squeezed out of society, while they desire. to
keep station in it they ought to look on the present
circumstances and condition of the community,
and adapt their measures thereto. It was by so
doing, and not by endeavouring to carry society
'back to the past, that their Roman Catholic pre-
decessors established their power. By appearing
now in the field as mediators between
the con_
tending clas2e.s, instead of bending their doctrines to
snit a purpose, and allying themselves with one
class against
the other, they may make them-
selves, as it seems
to us, eminently useful, and pre-
serve a station in society. To remain conspieunns
in the land they must minister to some social want,
not a little artificial craving, created by themselves.
Such a want now is that of mediation. The hard
money-gettingononey-making,money-cravingclasses
now rub gratingly on one another, and it is no ig-
noble office we call on the priesthood to fill, though
it be not the impelling power, not the main spring,
nor the revolving wheel, when we ask titian to lessen
instead of increasing the friction, and contribute to

smooth

rability of the machine by making
ly and easily.