The Sun.
London, England, 1841-11-27 00:00:00

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LONDON:
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1841.

For a considerable time past the faction, which
would starve others and fatten themselves, have
been depreciating manufactures, and exalting
agriculture, as the most proper and most healthy
employment for the people. They have de-
scribed manufacturing towns as sinks of moral
and physical corruption, in which both soul and
body are destroyed. It would now appear, from
an account which a Correspondent has sent us of
the proceedings of certain Chartists at Halifax,
that they have eagerly adopted the opinions of
the Starvationists. A Chartist missionary at the
meeting declared that his " object was to per-
suade the manufacturing population not to allow
the country to be made the workshop of
the world." A large portion of the meeting
held up their hands for the Charter, and for
stopping the progress of manufacturing industry.
" Triumph, glorious triumph !" will exclaim the
landlords; " they are considerate and natural men,
not to be led away by the ' lies' and inflam-
matory speeches of the Anti-Corn-law League.
We knew we could trust the good sense of the
people."
Not quite so fast, good landlords. The Chartists
are in love with your Arcadian pictures, and
anxious to realise them. You have inspired
them with a taste for rural enjoyments, which
they will call on you to gratify. They are "to
direct their efforts to OBTAINING POSSESSION OF
THE LAND IN PORTIONS OF FIVE OR SIX ACRES A
PIECE," to which end they are to obtain the
Charter, and then they will be able to divide the
suil. The Tories have taught them to ad-
mire a rural life, and the profit of the Chart-
ists on it is, that they will have an agrarian re-
public.
This is another of those almost spontaneous
effusions of the public mind, arising from circum-
stances, of which the blame cannot be laid on
the Anti-Corn-law Press. It has taught no agra-
rian doctrine. It has advocated the progress of
manufactures; it has implored, conjured, and
supplicated the landlords to allow the population
to flow into the towns, by allowing the manufac-
turers to find food and employment for them.
The landlords have been deaf to remonstrance and
reason, and have stopped the growth of the towns,
by stopping the supply of food. In Parliament,
and out of Parliament, they have vaunted the
beauties and the superiority of an agricultural
life, and would on no account allow, much less '
encourage, the extension of manufactures.

They are likely to see their wishes realized ;
the people will not make England the workshop
of the world, but they will cultivate the land for
their own happiness. How beautiful will it look
to see the goodly domains of Stowe, the nice
grounds of Drayton Manor, the undulating hills of
Goodwood, the stately walks of Belvoir, all laid
out in nice plots of ground of five acres each,
with a hut, a garden, and a rosy-cheeked fa-
mily on every one—and all cultivated by
the spade, and by the cheerful owners, compared
to the dingy shops of Manchester and Bolton.
The Chartists have planned out a very paradise
for England, and their scheme of agrarian feli-
city does justice to that love of the beautiful in
their teachers with which the Tories always boast
their writings exclusively abound. The clergy,
too, will be delighted with the prospect of again
reigning over a true agricultural flute-blowing
population, having no neighbours with more than
five acres to draw off the attention of their flocks
from heaven by any display of worldly magni-
ficence.

The Chartists are resolute men, as well as do-
cile pupils. They will endeavour to carry the
lessons of their teachers into effect. Every man
is entitled to live, they have been told, in the
country; and as they are not allowed to live by
manufactures, they naturally fall back on the
land, the only other resource. They are good,
practical logicians, and do great honour to their
Tory teachers. They will soon realise the beau
ideal of the landlords, and spread a happy rural
population over the empire. At the period of the
next Census, the Arcadians will have the un-
speakable satisfaction of knowing that the in-
crease in the agricultural has been much greater
than the increase in the manufacturing popu-
lation.

Perhaps the condition of England may then
approximate to that of Ireland, before the
clearing process began, when squatters and sub-
tenants divided the land into portions of one or
two acres, and the nominal landowners lived
abroad because it was not safe to live at home.
Should the landlords catch a glimpse at that
possibility (and how they will reduce to ser-
vility the people whom they will not allow to
get an honest living, we cannot tell) they will,
perhaps, begin to suspect that they have in
themselves much worse enemies than in
the Anti-Corn-law League, and that a condi-
tion of society infinitely more offensive to them
than would follow the repeal of the Bread-tax,
may be the consequence of maintaining the law.
If they will not allow England to be made the
workshop of the world, they may live to see
their, estates divided, on the Chartist plan, into
five-acre farms.
Thi

-ne Morning Chronicle found out yesterday
that a large loan to promote emigration is not
just at present so very desirable. It will take,
according to our Contemporary, 400,0001. to send
60,000 emigrants to Canada, and 1,200,0001. to
send the same number to New South Wales.
Such a sum abstracted from the resources
of the people—for the nominal land fund
is nothing more than advances made by
some parties here—for so trifling a relief, and
to be unproductive for twelve or eighteen months;
would, in reality, add
,to the national distress.
The people east of Temple-bar, not being jobbers
in colonial lands, begin to count the cost of the
project, and they hint to their West-end friends
that they must not allow themselves to be de-
ceived by interested representations.
The gentlemen of the City, who have taken
up the subject, are actively at work, areeaansdes a
to
s
meet on Monday to fix on such measures
may be deemed necessary to promote the emi-
gration project. We infer their interestedness
from their partiality. If we are correctly in-
formed, they included only Canada and the
colonies of the Southern Ocean in the benefits
of their scheme, till they were informed that, for
the sake dr decency, they must include the
whole of our colonies.

Considering the long connection which has
existed between the corruptionists east of
Temple-bar and the Tories, we can readily
credit a Correspondent who informs us that they
are concoeting.this scheme in common. The Mi-

nistry embraced it with great delight, as a means
of neutralizing many a staunch Whig in the City,
and of diverting public attention from the pre-
vailing distress. To have the fingering of
20,000,0001., extracted by hook or by crook from
the pockets of the public, would be a prodigious
pleasure to all the underlings of office, and
all the jobbers of the City ; and, when they can
hide their rapacity under the mask of pa-
triotism, they will unhesitatingly sacrifice the
people to their own purposes. We have,
however, now got a powerful auxiliary
in warning them that mischief is intended, and
that those whose duty it is to provide for their
security and happiness at home, contemplate
transporting them in order to stifle their com-
plaints. Emigration, we must again remind our
readers, of itself may be a good thing, but
emigration as a remedy for distress, caused by
Corn and similar laws, will add to the existing
injustice, and aggravate the existing evil.

The public lately saw with pleasure two new
Equity Judges appointed, and praised the en-
deavours of the Legislature to procure for the
people a speedy settlement of their disputes.
We always characterised the scheme as a mere
bait by which solicitors and barristers would
catch more causes, by a promise, no more to be
fulfilled hereafter than heretofore, of quickly
deciding them. Those gentlemen can file bills
merely to take advantage of the delay, and in-
stitute suits never intended to be prosecuted, but
to be suspended in terroron. The evil is not
caused by any want of Judges, but by the two
large bodies of men in whose hands exclusively
the whole business is placed—who claim it by a
sort of Divine right, having an overwhelming
pecuniary interest in hanging up causes as
long as possible. Whether conscious of it or
not, they are biassed in favour of delay,
and delay they produce. That barristers
and solicitors protract suits by their negligence,
was shown by none of them being in Court on
Thursday, the last day of term, so that the Court
felt itself insulted, and declared the term at an
end, while there was still business to be done and
time to do it. If a surgeon causes damage to
his patients by his want of skill or attention, the
lawyers will punish him; and they ought, by the
same rule, to be punished for the damage they
may cause their clients by their negligence.
Some council of discipline, or some special
Court, should be instituted to punish, by heavy
fines, those solicitors and barristers who neglect
the interest of their clients; and unless that be
done—unless it be made their interest to bring
causes to a quick settlement, the multiplication
of Judges and Courts will only multiply litigation,
and prevent justice being done to litigants.

The University of Oxford is quite in a ferment
on the subject of the late conversions of clergy-
men of the Established Church to the religion of
Rome. Many of the students, it appears, are
shortly expected to declare themselves Catholics;
while not a few of the Professors are suspected
of having secretly reconciled themselves to the
Papal See. To every well-regulated mind, nur-
tured in the principles of the Reformation, such
a state of things in an English University must
be a source of sincere sorrow. Pitying, as we
do, these dupes of their own credulity, it is not
our intention to join issue with our Contempora-
ries in abusing them, or calling in question the
purity of their motives. The agony of mind
which the sincere convert to any creed, if he be
a good man, must feel before he can bring him-
self to renounce the religion of his fathers, of
his childhood, and of his country—before he
can, by implication, denounce as unhallowed by
true faith the temples in which he worshipped—
before he can bring himself to gladden the hearts
of his enemies, and fill with sorrow the breasts
of his friends by renouncing his religious fellow-
ship with them; is at least deserving of Christian
forbearance, if not of pity. Nor is such a man
likely to be moved by revilings for having taken
such a step. The conflict through which he must
have passed must have rendered him indifferent
to what the world thinks or says upon the subject.
But while we are for avoiding everything like
a persecution of the converts to Romanism, it be-
comes a serious question how we are to close the
floodgates which admit the pestilent stream into
our Universities. Unless proper means be taken
to arrest in time the progress of the evil it actu-
ally threatens to overflow this country. Some
of the divines at Oxford are assuming all the
functions of Roman Catholic priests, without
going through any form of conversion, so that
there is a positive danger of the Established
Church being overthrown without the people
knowing any thing about the matter. Thus, for
example, auricular confession has been intro-
duced into the University, and there are persons
in Oxford who can testify to such confessions being
made to, and absolutions for sins given by,
clergymen of the Church of England ! This
may sound monstrously improbable, but we
have, among others, the testimony of the Rev,
BADEN POWELL, Savilian Professor of Geo-
metry in the University of Oxford, that it is
quite true, nevertheless. This distinguished
divine, in a sermon preached on Sunday, the
7th inst., before the Mayor and Corporation of
Oxford, gives the following account of the re-
cent doings of the Professors of Puseyism :
" This system, now so extensively spreading in this
land, finds its main strength in the partial support of
numbers who think it, at least, harmless, and still go
alonc, with its advocates to a certain extent. lam per-
suaded, on the contrary, that the objection lies at its very
foundation. I contend against it from first principles.
But, if practical proofs are wanting to render its true
nature clear, I will advert to one single circumstance
which, I think, alone must afford sufficient evidence.

" Of all the artifices of the Romish system, the most
powerfully efficacious for maintaining the iron despotism
with which she ruled the consciences of men, the prolific
source of the most monstrous of her abuses, the true
working of the mystery of iniquity,' has ever been found
in the maintenance of what is termed auricular confes-
sion,' coupled essentially with the power of the priest to
give absolution. _

" Now (I speak not from loose reports, but from the
testimony of facts which have been brought to my know-
ledge) attempts have been made recently, in this place, by
ministers of the Established Church, to enforce this very
practice on those under their influence."

The Oxford Chronicle confirms this, and adds
that a Protestant clergyman not resident in the
College, has urged the adoption of auricular
confession by his family, male and female; and
that it is quite common among the Newmanites
of the University. Thus seduced by the clergy,
numbers of people are becoming essentially
Roman Catholics without knowing it. The mis-
chief is done, not by the open converts to Roman-
ism, but by pretending Protestants, whose ac-
commodating consciences allow them to eat the
bread of an Establishment which they are
covertly seeking to overthrow. The results to
which Puseyism was leading its professors, was
clearly and explicitly pointed out to the clergy
of the diocese of Chester, by their eminent PI:
late, in his charge of 1838. "Many subjects,'
said Dr. SUMNER, " present themselves, towards
I which I might be tempted to direct your
thoughts. One more especially concerns the
Church at present, because it is daily assuming
a more serious and alarming aspect, and threat-
ens a revival of the worst errors of the Romish
system. Under the specious pretence of defer-
ence to antiquity and respect for primitive
models, the foundations of our Protestant
Church are undermined by men who dwell
within her walls, and those who sit in the Re-
formers' seat are traducing the Reformation.
It is again becoming matter of question whether
the Bible is sufficient to make men wise unto
salvation—the main article of our national con-
fession, justification by faith, is both openly and
covertlya assailed, I
areed,
instructedand the stewards t
to
res
e r ofv e
the
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mys-
teries
o
of G
which they have be
en ordained to dispense, and
to hide under a bushel those doctrines which
the Apostles were commanded
to preach to every
truths
creature."

It is the duty of the priesthood not to lose a
moment in endeavouring to counteractthe efforts
of the Puseyites to restore the spiritual domina-
tion of the Papal See in England. This is only
to be done by labouring to enlighten the people;
by the exercise of constant benevolence and
charity; by vitilajnii leliem in sickness; by re-