The Sun.
London, England, 1841-07-19 00:00:00

LONDON
MONDAY, JULY 19, 1841.

From the political course lately pursued by
the Spectator, we feel no surprise, but much re-
gret at finding that Journal, on Saturday, de-
precating the proposed conference of Dissenting
ministers on the Corn-law. We do not question
our Contemporary's motives, but we demur to
his principles and his conclusions. Having on a
former occasion praised the intention of the mi-
nisters, we shall now endeavour to justify our
praise and their conduct.
First, as to the general principle laid down by
the Spectator, " that the expediency of the
clergy taking an active and prominent part in
secular politics, is more than questionable," we
must remark that this, if correct as an abstract
proposition, does not apply to our society. We
live under a Protestant Government. The QuilE,
has a coronation oath imposed on her by the
priesthood to_maintain the Protestant Church at
all hazards; our domestic policy and laws are of
o hme
a sectarian character, and intended to subserve
the purposes of the priesthood more tha- -
interests of the community. Several pr.-*.tests,. .ht
seats in Parliament ; they are sca4.:tered in every
parish of the empire, and 11:Lorionsly use their
pulpits and their influenie to disseminate politi-
cal principles. The-people are denied education,
nnddenied many civil rights, at the instigation and
forthe int‘,rest of the priesthood. Our clergy
-are aut:norised by the law to take •an active and
prOtninent part in secular politics; they are in-
corporated with the State, which is too often
guided by their influence and authority. It is
rather one-sided, therefore, and somewhat late,
in our Contemporary to broach the principle, when
Dissenting ministers begin to moot the Corn-law
question, " that it is questionable whether the
clergy should take an active and prominent part
in secular politics."
In Ireland every political question is coupled
'with or even based on religious considerations.
The land and the law there are Protestant, the
people are Catholics. There are comparatively
few Catholic gentlemen, and the people have no
other leaders than the priests. To extend the
Spectator's doctrine to Ireland, is to hand over
the disorganized atoms of the suffering Irish
population to the unopposed tyranny of
the disfranchising and X terminating- Pro-
testant landlords. The Catholic priests are
driven, by the necessities of their condition, to
take an active part in secular politics, and by
their exertions they have combined, and they only could combine, the Catholic peasantry into
an organised body, capable of keeping in check
the otherwise unmitigated tyranny of the Pro.
testant landlords. Let no Liberal now seek to
put an end to their exertions and encourage
Tory insolence, by declaring against clergymen
interfering with politics.
In England, too, what means would the Dis-
titlk.iteei_a
Chu , did
harveehforresisting the aggressions of the
thei kad6. not their ministers, who'are
l Ge an active part in secular
nera 81
iv speakingtakepoities?
the nobility and

gentry are members of the Church of England,
aid it is only lately, and now rarely, that a Dis-
senter finds his way into either House of Pq.rlia-,
ment. Accordingly, ever since we recollect any-
thing about politics, the Ministers of the Three
Denominations have been conspicuous for their ac-
tive interposition in politics. Whenever the great
principles of civil and religious liberty were
brought into question, those men were sure to
appear by petition before the Houses of Parlia-
ment. Wherever there is a State Church and
toleration the ministers of religion must, what-
ever sect they may belong to, be politicians, and
mingle in the battles of parties for the protection
of their own rights and interests. That may be
a good argument against a State Church, but
while the State interferes with religion the pas-
tors of Dissent must be politicians.
Our practice is quite in conformity with this
theory. The Dissen ting ministers took an active
part in procuring a repeal of the Test Act, and
the clergy of all denominations have interested
themselves, pro or con., on the question of Ca-
tholic emancipation. For the abolition of slavery
the Methodist ministers, and the ministers of
other Dissenting bodies, much to their honour,
were most zealous and active. It is plain, from
the mode in which petitions against the abolition
of the Corn-laws are sent to Parliament from all
the remote parishes of the empire, that the
clergy of the Established Church have been bu-
sily at work to support the Corn-laws. At not a
few public meetings they have avowed their de-
termination to maintain them as long as possible.
With all these facts the Spectator is well ac-
quainted, and but for that peculiarity in its
course which has latterly distinguished it from all
the journals of the empire, we should have been
astonished to find it seizing the occasion of some
Dissenting ministers taking part against the
Corn-laws to deprecate the interference of the
ministers of religion with secular politics. Be-
fore it preached such a sermon to them it should
have severed the State from the Church, and have
raised the State clergy, from being parts of a po-
litical system, to the condition of the chosen and
voluntarily paid guides, teachers, and friends of
the people. Whatever may be proper in the ab-
stract for that class Of men who are set apart to
remind us of our duties, it is perfectly clear that
wherever the laws are made in subserviency to
some sectarian principles that the ministers of
religion must, as a rule, occasionally take a pro-
minent part in politics.
Now there is nothing in the Corn-laws, to come
to the particular case, which should make it unad-
visable for the Dissenting ministers to take an ac-
tive part against them. They do not concern the
Whigs or the Tories--they have no particular
relation to the ladies of the Court, or the com-
mand of the army—they do not apply to distant
Canada or to more distant New South Wales, all
of which are secular politics that Dissenting
ministers may with propriety neglect; but these
laws concern the food of the people of their own
flocks and congregations. They are not abstruse
matters of expediency either, like establishing
one bank of issue or coining an ounce of gold
into something less than four sovereigns,
on which questions we should certainly place
little reliance on the judgment of Dissenting mi-
nisters, but plain matters ofright and wrong. The
Corn-laws have been complicated and mystified
by a vast variety of statements about foreign
prices and tariffs of other countries, which gen-
tlemen, much more ingenious than wise, have
connected with them ; but for men of common
sense, such as Dissenting ministers, they are a
moral question, like highway robbery or pick-
ing pockets. At the one end is the Legislature
composed of landlords, levying a tax on the
people's bread to enrich themselves, and placing
impediments in the way of commerce; and, at
the other, exemplifying the consequences of this
most immoral and unjust law, is a multitude of
people wanting food, and annually starved out of
existence. Gravely to tell the ministers of reli-
gion that they are not to take an active part to
procure the abolition of such iniquitous laws,
is to tell them to forget their functions and
look on crimes with indifference. It is to tell
them more, for laws are the expression of the
public will, and he who does not remonstrate
against a criminal enactment lends it his sanc-
tion. The Dissenting ministers have taken a
noble and a wise resolution. They are sensible
that to make the law an instrument of plunder-
ing the people is to bring the law into contempt,
and endanger all the interests which depend on
it. They mean, therefore, we are happy to
learn, to exert themselves, and use all the in-
fluence of their situation and calling to put an
end to the Corn-laws.

They have a strong interest, too, in performing
this duty. If there were no Corn-laws, tithes
would be paid out of the rent, as they ought to be,
of the land. The Corn-laws levy the tithes on the
consumers and throw on them, relieving the
landowners, the burden of supporting the Church,
of which the aristocracy dispose of all the
revenue and have all the advantages. To make
the Dissenters, not being landlords, pay in this
roundabout way for the maintenance of th
Church, is a gross violation of their religious
liberty. As honest and consistent men, the Dis-
senters are bound to resist this double
trickery on the part of the Church of England
landlords, and their ministers will be wanting
to themselves if they do not energetically fel-
low out the scheme suggested by Mr. THOMP-
SON, or take some other means to bring the
whole force of the Dissenting body to bear against
the Corn-laws.
Our Contemporary is unnecessarily alart:ied lest
" the introduction of the religious ele:inent into a
4 its settlement.
secular controversy" should dela-
Let him still his fears. It 7'.:11 not be introduced
Established Churel•
by the Dissenting
Min;_ilters. The clergy of the
have already introduced it.
too, t'
Already, have used all their power and
influence f.,0 uphold the Corn-laws. They have
drive-
, their last dependent to the poll, and can
de forced to no greater exertions by the appear..
ance of the Dissenting ministers in the arena.
They have left nothing, in their power to do,
undone to resist the progress of Corn-law re-
peal. Supineness on the part of Dissenting mi-
nisters, if that should be encouraged or caused
by the homily. of the Spectator, would
only add to their arrogance, and ensure
the continuance
of as great an iniquity
as ever disgraced- the commercial legis-
lation of a Christian
people. It was considered
a great enormity in Spain to forbid, in the seven-
teenth century, the cultivation of the olive and
the vine in her colonies, but that is a far less
enormity than for the
Legislature of commercial
England to impede aneprohibit, in the nine-
teenth century, the importation of
food, which
her starving people could easily and readily pur-
chase. An impartial posterity will decide that
the landlords of England were more deservini, of
execration in the, nineteenth than the Council of
the Indies in the seventeenth century; and from
that reproach the Dissenting ministers will be as
anxious to rescue their country as they were
to rescue i t from the stigma of encouraging slavery.

Toe return of a Liberal Member for the county
of Banff, which we received on Saturday, Com-
pletes the Scotch elections, and honourable is
the result to the people of Scotland. Twenty-one
burghs out of twenty-three have returned staunch
Liberal Members, and these two were lost by
mismanagement or foul play. We confess we
had faint hopes of the return of Mr. STEUART for
Haddington, and Mr. GILLoN lost his scat by
something worse than mismanagement, which
will be cleared up in due time. But the return
for the counties is still more creditable. Not-
withstanding the violent denunciations made by
the Tories against. the Government for daring to
interfere with the Corn-laws, to the ruin, as they
hypocritically say, of landlords and tenants,
three counties have been rescued from the mo-
nopolists, and five counties represented by Libe-
rals in last Parliament have returned Tories,
making the loss in the counties only two. Could 1

r there be a better proof that the intelligent Scotch
farmers regard the boasted advantage of the
Corn-laws as sheer humbug ? They know, as
the Marquis of TWEEDDALE emphatically de-
clared at a meeting of the English Agricultural
Association, that they must trust for remunera-
tion to their skill and industry, and not to the
miserable delusion of averages, and sliding scales,
and protecting duties. It is a remakable
fact, in confirmation of this statement,
that the ten counties that have returned
Liberal Members are nearly all agricul-
tural. Taking them alphabetically, they
stand thus Banff, Caithness, Fife, Forfar,
Kinross, Kirkcudbright, Renfrew, Shetland and
Orkney, Sutherland, Wigtown. With the ex-
ception of Renfrew, the staple productions are
all derived from the soil ; and five of them—
namely, Banff, Fife, Forfar, Kirkcudbright, and
Wigtown, can boast of thu best farmers in the
world. Had these men looked at the Corn-laws,
we will not say as the hope of their safety, but
as any protection whatsoever, would they have
been mad enough to vote against their own inte-
rests? They know from experience that, on the
contrary, the restrictions on the corn trade de-
range periodically the whole system of com-
merce, ruin the manufacturers, their best cus-
tomers, and raise up in the foreign markets
rivals alike dangerous to farmer and ma-
nufacturer. The three counties which the
Liberals have gained, form noble proofs of
the intelligence of the agricultural class in
Scotland, and the five which' they have lost do
not at all detract from their merit. Argyll goes
with the Duke, and as the present retainer of
the title has thought fit to abjure the political
principles so long held by this ancient and
gallant family, all the Campbells, of course,
follow in his train. The loss of Stirling and
Dumbarton we cannot account for ; Edin-
burgh was lost by the disgraceful system
adopted by the Tories of creating paper votes;
and had Roxburgh been fairly contested, a
Liberal would have been returned. Though de-
serted by their late representative, opposed by
the Liberal Duke of ROX BURG n, and intimidated
by the agents of the SCOTTS of Buccleuch arid
Harden, the electors fought manfully with-
out a leader, and sustained a defeat more glo-
rious than a victory. A curse has befallen the
house of ELLIOT, so honoured by the gallant
HEATH FIELD. Two of the name have made it a
bye-word in the East fur poltroonery, and a
third, Roxburghshire, has, by his conduct,
pronounced the decision just. Scotland, however,
has nobly done her duty, and her example will
not be without its fruits. Though the Liberal
party had to contend against the Church, the
Tories, and all those interested in the three great
monopolies, Corn, Sugar, and Timber, they have
defeated the monopolists united, by returning
thirty-one Members, while the old and young
Tories have returned only twenty-two.

There is no political news of interest in the French
Journals of Thursday, and the papers of Friday, received
by Extraordinary Express, are for the most part occu-
pied with the riots at Toulouse, of which the latest intel-
ligence will be found in another column. A telegraphic
despatch, from London, officially announces the re-entry
of France into the great European Alliance, but the cir-
cumstance, though condemned by the opposition jour-
nals, was expected, and therefore excites no popular at-
tention.

The Moniteur states that the amount of indirect taxes
for the first half of the current year is 341,989,000 francs,
being an increase on the previous half year of 8,272,000
francs, and on the year as compared with 1839 of
28,241,000 francs.

The Levant mail is expected to reach Paris this day.
The dates are—from Constantinople and Alexandria e
the 27th, and from Smyrna of the 29th ult. It is too soon
yet to expect any overland news from China of, nature
to gratify public curiosity.
Count Toreno and family are just ar-:ived in Paris from
their tour in Italy, and alighted at the Hotel Bristol, Place
Vendome.

.t letter from Athens, of
"die 27th ult., says—" Al. Pis-
catory has left, on alt . jourr,e_y into the interior. He will be
said that the French squadron, com-
ambasnendetda
bmyoAntdhm.
iral Lasusse, which is expected here, has al-
readyM. off Hydra. The Didon frigate, -which brought
p ibs
ieme
tno
rs,ee,n
is still at Salamis. The English ship of the line
s at anchor in the roadstead of Phalerum."
Be—nb°:he Gazette de France says :—" Ministers held a Coun-
cil; at one o'clock yesterday, at the hotel of Marshal Soult. In
consequence of the alarming accounts from Toulouse, Ville-
franche, Saint-Gaudens, and other towns in the Haute-Ga-
ronne, it has been resolved, it is said, to send an extraordinary
Government Commissioner into that district."
According to the Dutch Journals, the last accounts from
Batavia state that, after the disturbances had broken out in
February in the upper part of the territory of Padang, as was
previously mentioned, the insurgents made simultaneousattacks
upon three forts, one only of which was taken by them. On
-the ?6th February Colonel Miehiels, commandant of the wes-
tern !rift of Sumatra, marched with a considerable force to
the relief of the two forts which held out, and, after several
combats with the insurgents, succeeded by the 4th March in
subduing them, taking possession of their head-quarters, and
making their leader pri,oner. All has remained quiet since.
This news has produced a favourable effect at Amsterdam,
causing the funds and other quotations on the Money Market
to rise.

The excavations in front of St. Gerinp'-,, p
have led to the discovery of a wooden
skeleton in good preservation, Auxerrois
e.,itin, containing a
wrists, and neck.
having n:uns round the ankles,
ti
..We learn from the says the Moniteur Parisicn,
" that a few ays ago, a
young man named Riviere, of the
commune of Villette, was on his way to a meadow, near the
Chateau de Richemont, he saw two wolves, and having sent for
his double-barrelled fowling-piece, followedthem until he came
within gun-shot. He fired, and brought down a she wolf
which had just littered. On going up to her, with the inten-
tion of completing his work, if she was not dead, she flew upon
him, although severely wounded, with fury. The young man
kept her off with his gun, which she seized between her teeth,
and a terrible struggle ensued, in the course of which the gun
broke in two. He then took the stock, and with a blow on the
head put an end to the existence of t
I,:e enraged animal."
The Journal du Havre that the Ville de Bordeaux,
the ship which the Englist
papers have recently mentioned as
having carried off so
'dm British Custom-house officers from
Heldt st Bay, rs. ttstralia, is probably no other than a French
.e
whaler, conur..anded by Captain Largeteau, whose long absence
and operations have already given rise to several sinister ru-
mours, and the condemnation and sale of which, at Sydney,
was noticed in January last.
" The meteoric scone which fell, a few days ago, at Cha-
teau-Renard," says the Moniteur Parisien, "has the appear-
ance of granite of a
light grey colour. Interspi rsed in the
mass are lar',
ght grains of metallic iron which distinguish it
,from the stones of our globe, in which metallic iron has never
'ear.. found, probably on account of the rapidity with which this
.netal passes to a state of oxidation. The surface of the stone
is covered with a crust caused by the heat arising from the
great rate of its passage to the earth, and its contact with our
atmosphere."
—We find the following in the Cologne Gazette, from the
frontiers of Turkey, Ist inst. :—" Accounts from Jassy state
that a conspiracy has been discovered in Moldavia against
Prince Sturdza, the President of Justice, the head of the po-
lice and the Metropolitan. At the head of it were some fa-
milies of Bojards, the Bischkamy, and the Kusas. Several of
the accomplices having been arrested, a tumult ensued, which,
however, was promptly suppressed, and without violence. The
conspirators reproach -the great dignitaries with the com-
mission of various illegal acts. We learn from Nissa in Bul-
garia that the merchants who were arrested there had been set
at liberty a little before the arrival of Yacub Pacha, but the
greater number of persons brought in by the Albanians worn
still in chains. Yacub Pacha, however, will soon release them."
The Dukes of Orleans and Ncmours had a grend stag-
hunt on Tuesday in the forest of Fontainebleau. The game
was roused near the Carrefour du Grand Veneur, and after a
run of an hour and a half, at a very severe pace, crossed the
Seine Opposite Fontaine Port. The Princes with the piqueurs
crossed the ferry with their horses and a division of the hounds,
and resumed the chase on the other side of the river, th,c Count
de Cambis remaining with the rest of the pack in caie'the stag
should be headed back over the water. This, however, did
not occur, for the noble beast kept gallantly on his way till
seven in the evening, when he at last took soil in a pond at
Villefermoy, beyond Melun, where he was taken. Only two
sportsmen besides the Princes were in at the death. After
taking some refreshment, the Princes made their way back to
Fontainebleau, having rode over little, if anything, lets than 30
leagues of ground. They did not reach the palace till eleven.
We are informed that M. Romiguires, formerly At-
torney-General at Toulouse, has been summoned to the
Council, which doubtless wanted his advice. It is certain
that to-day (the 14th) M. Romiguires, who was sitting in the
Court of Cessation, received a letter so pressing, that h 3
quitted the Court while a cause was pleading, and that M.
Portalis, after having suspended the proceedings for a short
time, he resumed them, saying that M. Romiguires had been
called away by business of the Government.—Le Temps.
NEUILLY, JULY 14.—This King has received to-day from
his Majesty the King of Hanover, a letter concerning the death
de-
livered to his 'Majesty by Baron de Stockhausen, Minister of her Majesty the Queen, his consort. This letter was
Re-
sident of the King of Hanover. The King will go into mourn.
ing on this occasion for twenty-one days.
The King has received a letter nom his Royal High-
ness the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg, announcing the mar-
riage of the Princess Caroline Charlotte, his daughter, to the
Prince Royal of Denmark
The superior of a nunnery at Valence, being at Paris on
hu=iness, was, some days ago, passing along the Rue de Clery,
when she saw a woman drop down in convulsions. With the
aid of other persons, she so far recovered the sufferer that she
was able to speak, and, in a low voice, confessed to the nun that
she had poisoned herself. While the Commissary of Police
was coming, the sister endeavoured to give religious consolation
to the dying woman, and presented to her lips a relic, which,
however, was rept lled with marks of terror , and yet, when
the woman afterwards came to be undressed, several conse-
crated wafers were found wrapped in a paper, and placed near
her heart. According to information afterwards obtained, the
poor creature carried on the shameful trade of a prostitute, but
was frequently visited by
of which excesses she had attempted to destroy herself. There
are hors of her recovery. violent feelings of remorse, in one
-- has been ascertained that the young man, who was
killed by his imprudence on the Versailles
and saint Cloud Rail-
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Public
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