The Sun.
London, England, 1841-08-14 00:00:00

PRICE 5d

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

FROM THE MOANING PAYERS OF THIS DAY.

CHRONICLE.—Without entering on the question
what proportion the Dissenters bear to the members of
the Church of England, we object to the late election
being taken as a test either of the strength of Re-
formers of :ill creeds, or of the strength of the professors
of any particular creeds. " While the larger proportion
of the British empire," says the Times, " have shown
themselves so favourable to Church establishments as
to have elected a House of Commons resolved to
maintain the on their ancient foundations, the en-
tire aggregate of violent Dissenting voluntaries, all
of whom voted for Whig Candidates, have been ut-
terly unable, even with the ill-judged co-operation
of multitudes of Church Liberals, to secure the con-
tinuance of a congenial Whig Cabinet.. The elec-
tions, therefore, have clearly demonstrated the nu-
merical weakness of your noisy political Dissenters." It
would be every whit as correct to say that the elections
which preceded the Reform Bill and took place imme-
diately after it, were a proof of the numerical weakness
of the Church of England, as the clergy of that Church
were, with very few exceptions, strenuous opponents of
the Reform Bill. But party distinctions were broken
down' at the late election. .It is notorious that the land-
owners as a body (there were many distinguished excep-
tions no doebt) were bitterly opposed to any change in
the Corn-laws ; that the county electors are exclusively
in the hands of the landowners ; and that the towns, in
agricultural districts, were overawed by the tenants and
other retainers of the landowners. The election turned,
not upon the attachment to particular political prin-
ciples, but on the question whether a fixed duty on
corn should be substituted for the present sliding scale.
In the counties there are numerous Dissenters and
Liberals who were as much coerced as the old Irish
forty-shilling freeholders used to be before the Eman-
cipation Bill. But we pass to the towns in agricultural
districts, and take one as a specimen—Reading- In
Reading, in ordinary times, the Reformers constitute a
majority. Why Tories were returned at the last elec-
tion is pointed out in a letter in this day's Chronicle,
headed " Reading Intimidation." The " owners and oc-
cupiers of land " in the neighbourhood issued a mani-
festo, addressed " to the electors of Reading, especially
those engaged in trade," to which the names of 160
landowners and farmers were ,attached, and which was
diligently circulated as a placard. Adverting to the
Ministerial proposition for the admission of foreign corn
at a fixed duty, they say :
"We are far from desiring to interfere with the opi-
nions of any man, but as a dissolution of Parliament is
about to take place on this question, and this question
alone, we have no hesitation in urging you to lay aside
all other considerations, and to support those candidates
only who declare themselves favourable to the mainte-
nance of the present protective system. In ordinary
times, we should not have adopted this course ; but when
we see our property, our station in society, and the welfare
of all dependent on us at stake, we are sure you will ad-
mit that we are amply justified. Although we might
urge your own identity of interests with ours, as per-
sons with whom we expend incomes, amounting in the
aggregate to many thousands per annum, we prefer ap-
pealing to you, as neighbours and friends, and to ask,
as a personal favour, that you will support those candidates
at the ensuing election who will maintain that cause in which
we are all most deeply engaged."
It appears by an analysis subjoined to this document,
that the effect of this appeal was the neutralising 107
avowed Reformers, and the inducing 80 professing Re—
formers to record their votes in favour of the Tory can-
didates. Under any 'other circumstances the Reform
candidates would have had a great majority. Reading
may be taken as a fair sample of all boroughs similarly
circumstanced. The Dissenters were not one whit more
determined than other electors ; and it is a notorious
fact in many places the use of Dissenting meeting-houses
was positively refused for meetings of the adherents of
the anti-monopolist candidates.
lIERALD.—In the afternoon of yesterday it was con-
fidently asserted in the City by generally well informed
and most respectable merchants, that five ships of war
had been ordered to proceed immediately to the coast of
the United States, and that they were there to be joined
by ten other vessels of her Majesty's navy from foreign
stations. The object of the alleged mission of this arma-
ment to the American shores, it was added, was to re•
ceive Mr. Fox, should the refusal of the renewed demand
for the release, which it is said he is instructed to make,
of Mr. M'Leod, compel the British representative to
withdraw from Washington, and afterwards to adopt
such hostile proceedings, as may be deemed indispensable
for the vindication of the honour of the British Crown,
which has been so wilfully and wantonly attacked by
the American people and Government in the person
of its subject—Alexander M'Leod. It is our duty as
journalists to record the intelligence of the day, and, in "
pursuance of that obligation we have stated the rumour
which we have reason to believe proceeded from no in-
terested, excited, or prejudiced source. In thus giving
to it publicity, however probable we may think it, we
add no voucher for its absolute truth. It cannot, how-
ever, be denied that the state of our relations with the
United States are most unsatisfactory, and that the con-
tinuance of peace between England and the Republic is
an event en which no certain dependence can be
placed. The British Representative has formally de-
manded the release of Mr. M'Leod, on grounds which
the American Secretary of State has admitted to be suf-
ficient, and that British subject is now only incar-
cerated because the Supreme Government of the United
States is deficient in power to enforce his release from
a subordinate State. With this deficiency of power Eng-
land has nothing to do; she can take no snore cognizance
of the State of New York than she can of the meanest
citizen of the republic ; to the Supreme Government
alone she looks for compliance with her demand, and de-
lay in that compliance from inadequacy of power is tan-
tamount to a refusal. The quiescence of Mr. Fox, sub-
sequent to the demand, is sufficiently objectionable ; but
submission to further appeals to American Courts of
Law would be intolerable. Great Britain has amply
shown the United States that she seeks no rupture; it
now remains for her to declare that she will not pur-
chase amity by dishonour. It is idle, it is wicked, to
conceal the fact, that unless Mr. M'Leod be immediately
released, the honour of this country is deeply tarnished;
the ties that bind her North American colonies to her are
loosened, and another precedent has been established for
the destruction of national rights.
ADVERTISER—The Times is better than our fears
upon the question of Church extension. Knowing, as
we do, the almost unlimited drafts which the Tories have,
from time to time, made upon the public Treasury, to
augment the revenues of the clergy, we were justified in
anticipating that the claims which the Times made upcn
the proximate Conservative Government, on behalf of
the Church, would be followed, as a matter of course' by
some impudent proposition for an addition to those Par-
liamentary grants of money, by which the insatiable ava-
rice of the clergy has been already and so frequently illus-
trated. But the Times has at length been made to under-
stand something of the spirit and temper of the age,
and to perceive what has long been obvious to all the
rest. of the world, namely, that any augmentation of the
.Church revenues, by an appropriation of the public mo-
ney, rinlessit be upein special grounds, and under parti-
cular circumstances, involves a principle which may be
'turiled to a very fearful account against the Church
itself. The Times admits the miserable inadequacy, of
Church accommodation, and of the means of religious
instruction by the agency of the Church's ministers ;
but it will not consent to any application to Parliament
for a grant of public money to supply the deficiency,
until after all the internal resources of the Church
itself have been put into requisition and exhausted.
This is something gained to the popular cause ;
and if the Conservatives are as discreet as they seem
to be under the victory they have just achieved for their
party, they will in this matter adopt the course
ineftepdoloineyt.
which the Times has so judiciously and ably N
As the Times rests the propriety of augmenting the re-
venues of the Church by an allocation of the public
money upon the ascertained inadequacy of herowninter-
nal resources to meet the demands made u r ser-
vices, it becomes of some importance to ascertain
the real
extent of those resources, as they are available for the
enjoyment of the clergy. And this inquiry becomes the
more desirable and necessary, inasmuch as the clerical
body has in this matter managed to impose most egregi-
ously upon the public through the instrumentality of the
Ecclesiastical Commission, which was created in 1831.
POST.,--Upon the supposition of the statesmen who
have with them the Parliamentary majority, being called
to the helm of Administration, we have spoken, of the
difficulties with which they will
have to contend, owing
to the neglect and mismanagement of public affairs for
some years past by the present Ministry. Let us now
look at Conservative prospects in a different aspect, and
consider what advantages they will have over the Whig-
Radical conductors of affairs; Among these, the first
and greatest is, in the character of the force which the
Conservative leaders will direct. Whatever Whig-
Radical advocates may Say as to one vote, or any given
number of votes, being, of the same importance whether
they be of one cliiss or another—whether they be
Mr. O'Connell's nominees or the representatives of
independent British yeomen—they know very well
that much depends upon the character of any Par-
liamentary party as well as upon its number. We
consider,--and even our opponents must in this agree
with us, whatever they may pretend—that the high cha-
racter of the Conservative majority is of far more
im-
portance than its numerical amount. Abusive words are
easily uttered, and the Whig-Radicals may, and will,
indulge their malignant nature and their impotent spite
in imputing all sorts of bad motives to the Conservative
majority. But all this railing will notzet rid of the fact
that the great bulk of the Conservative Parliamentary
force is composed of men of independent fortune and
un-
impeachable character. Men who have a very large per-
sonal interest in the prosperity of the country—men to
whom no temporary advantage could be a sufficient com-
pensation for consenting to measures which they believed
likely to lower the national character, the national secu-
rity, or the national prosperity of Great Britain. Nor is
it at all likely, that any amount of abuse and vituperation
should materially shako the natural public) inference
from this fact, that in troubled and perilous times it is
far safer to be under the guidance of a majority com-
posed of such men, than under that of such a disreput-
able band—such a conflata improborum manus—as formed
the bulk of the Whig-Radical majority since the be-
ginning of 1835. If the present Ministers had been
capable of shame, which they neither were nor are, it
might have made them almost sink into the earth Week