The Sun.
London, England, 1840-12-01 00:00:00

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LONDON:
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1840.

Some of the petty fooleries of the Morning
Herald, which:are called leaders, are truly astonish-
ing. On Saturday it abused the Whigs and the
economists, such as Mr. HUME, because impress-
ment has not been done away and there was a
report that it was to be revived. Now, for many
years the economists, particularly Mr. HUME, sup-
ported, at least when the Whigs were out of office,
by many Whigs, laboured frequently and assidu-
ously, to :procure the abolition of impressment.
Nay, they demanded the abolition of the horrid
practice on:the score of economy. The parties who
have always opposed the abolition-of impressment,
in office and ouCof office, were the Tories, whose
brutal principle and brutal, policy it is that the mul-
titude must be cudgelled, dragooned, impressed,
into doing what seems good in the eyes of the said
Tories. All the Liberal party, and the party of the
economists, with their journals, such as the Edin-
burgh Review and the Morning Chronicle, have
taken a decided part against impressment, have
pointed out its enormities, and have proved that it
might be abolished to the advantage of the country.
It is miserably puerile then in the Herald, mere
paltry, petty, party, foolery, to ascribe that odious
practice, which does not now exist, and which has
not existed under the Whig Administration, to the
Ministers and the economists.
At the same time the principle laid down by the
Herald, that the seamen ought to be paid adequate
wages to induce them to serve voluntarily, is quite
correct, but it has been over and over again advo-
cated by the Whigs and the economists. To our
certain knowledge they embraced and recommended
that principle more than twenty years ago. In
peace they have in fact acted on it, for the wages
now paid in her Majesty's ships are nearly com-
mensurate to what are obtained in the merchant
service, and, with other advantages, do suffice to
procure men, though slowly, for the fleet. W,
advocate, however, paying them still better, and
making the Royal Navy the most advantageous,
and even delightful, sea service in the whole world.
Yesterday the Herald perpetrated another similar
but more solemn piece of trifling. At present,
thank GOD ! and thank the progress of civilization
—but no thanks to the priesthood, who are just as
persecuting at this day as ever they were, men are
not condemned " to the fiery ordeal of the stake
and blazing faggots" on account of a difference of
religion. The priests are no longer allowed to
burn their fellow-creatures in the name of the GOD
of mercy and love ; nor are they, any more than
the general race of despots in Europe, allowed to
torture the humble people. They share in the
general characteristic of the age, and seek power
and gratification by exacting wealth. They are
ecclesiastical financiers, who screw all they can out
of the public. Subjects cannot now in general
complain of cruel tyranny in Governments, but they
complain chiefly of extortion in the shape of taxation.
If they meant to resist the Government, they could
probably only resist its taxation. In like manner
those who now wish to show their conscientious op-
position to the demands of the priesthood, enforced
by means of Ecclesiastical Courts, can only do it
by resisting extortion. They are never now sen-
tenced to be burned. The priesthood are not
allowed to practice any other crime than that of ex-
acting the property of others. Totally overlooking
this singular and advantageous change in society,
the Herald of yesterday published a long column
to ridicule the Church-rate martyrs, because their
resistance to priestly extortion is supposed to benefit
their own pockets, and because they are only
plundered and not burned.
Such a mode of treating the question of Church-
rates, to resist which THOROGOOD and BAINES
have cheerfully submitted to imprisonment, is sadly
disrespectful to the feelings of large classes of
conscientious, honest, and benevolent men. That
it is unwarranted, is plain from the fact, that, in
proportion to their means, the Dissenters are cha-
ritable and benevolent—cheerfully sacrificing their
money in any good.or noble public cause—far beyond
the more opulent Churchmen. It is not, therefore,
from a regard to the paltry sum of ss. 6d., or 2/.
55., that these men submit to imprisonment and
oppose the authorities, but because they have an
honest and conscientious conviction that Church-
rates are unjust. They are reproached with seek-
ing notoriety, or the approbation of their fellow-
sufferers, by braving the penalties of the law ; but
it is very seldom that any other motive than a de-
sire for that approbation, when the question is
carefully examined, can be discovered for the most