The Sun.
London, England, 1840-12-25 00:00:00

THE La

should not be trained, as it is, by the predominance
and even exclusiveness of classical study at public
schools and universities, to moral feelings little tic-
(mordant with the professed religion of the country ;
why then the Duke only meant what all the foremost
friends of national education have always meant also.
The Military Oracle and the Episcopal Expounder
have simply blundered into a truism which they
thought they were contradicting. But if the
Duke and the Bishop mean more than this :
it the Duke meant to brand Joseph Lancaster,
v i h his bible and prayers, as anti-religious ; if then, as
afterwards in the House of Lords, he confounded the
Thirty-nine Articles of the Church with Christianity
itself ; and if the Bishop intended the words now to
operate as a battery against any education not controlled
by the clergy, that is to say, against any national educa-
tion at all ; why then they have both blundered into a
fallacy only calculated to perpetuate ignorance, with all
the crime and misery that it engenders, and to transfer
the blame from the clergy and Legislature to human
nature and Divine Providence. Where is the imputed
devilry ? Is it subjective or objective ? In humanity
or in knowledge? It must be in the one or the other
for education to have the effect of " only making so
many more clever devils." For the Duke of Wellington
an obvious excuse, then or now, may be offered, should
he entertain a very low and base opinion of human na-
ture. Its meanness, servility, and devilishness have come
abundantly in his way, and have doubtless left deep
traces on his recollection, however illogical may be the
generalisation, against human nature itself, of his ex-
perience. Our armies are not constituted of the most
moral portion of the community. At St. Sebastian and
Badejos scenes occurred that might savour somewhat
of devilry, whether with or without the cleverness. In
political life, although the Duke might see no wrong
in tha aristocratical conspiracy to crush the genius of
Canning, he could not but despise the base, though
" clever devils" of plebeian Tories, who volunteered as
tools for the insurgent Cabinet. The facility with
which the stoutest anti-Catholic legislators and states-
men obeyed his command " right about, wheel," would
by no means exalt his conception of integrity,
There is a consciousness in the Duke, which on a
memorable occasion he frankly expressed, that his
peculiar talent. does not consist in political guidance.
Vet he sees how the Tories, for purposes of their own,
consecrate even his chance and after-dinner words
upon topics of which he knows least, as if
they bore the manifest stamp of inspiration.
And seeing all this, and seeing through all this, and
knowing that the faction is not deficient in what is
called education ; whe:e is the wonder at his inferring
that education has made them such " clever devils,"
and would make others like them, to the destruction of
many of the selfish objects for which they are associ-
ated ?- But a Bishop ought to know more of the better
side of imumen nature. The Church of England had
preachers once that taught a fairer estimate of its
innate dispositions and tendencies. " The wisest ob-
servers of man's nature," says Dr. Barrow in his" Ex-
position cf the Creed," " have pronounced him to he a
creature gentle and sociable, inclinable and tit for
conversation, apt to keep good order, to observe
rules of justice, to embrace any sort of virtue if
well managed ; if instructed by good discipline ; it
guided by good example ; if living under the in-
fluence of wise laws and virtuous Governess." And
then that profound Divine ascribes to " prejudieate
opinions" the opposite " portraiture of human na-
ture ;" a portraiture corresponding with the ducal
and episcopal theory, in which " all is drawn over with
dusky shades," until we see, instead of " as many men,
so many fiends," or, in the modern phrase, " clever
devils?' To such a libel—which in his d by was the badge
of infidelity, though now that of assumed orthodoxy.—
the preacher opposes his sublime exclamation, "Iletna-
nitil, that very name doth fairly argue for us !" and so
" sufficiently confute the defamers and slanderers of
menleind." If the imputed desilry he not in human
iteture, is it in the knowledge imparted by education?
Whatever impression his connexion with Oxford may
have made on the Duke's mind, he can have derived no
such idea from any sound philosophy of the tendencies
of knowledge. All experience testifies that we have
only to give enough of it and it will he sure to work
wail. " Knowledge is power ;" but not the d: ears
power. And, after all, should the Duke be right, we
should like to ask the Bishop whether a nation ef
" clever devils" would not be a more tolerable state of
secietythan a nation of ignorant devils ?
(From time iforning, Herald.)
Though this day may have lost some of its olden
attributes of noise and revelry—though cries for wine
and wassail may not.break so boisterously on the pub•
lie tar as in time by gene time,—we have still around
us a thousand social blessings to make up the sum of
" merry Christmas !" It is in this belief,—with this
keen sense el the
.presence of an enlarged and en-
larging goo:l,—with this conviction of the advance•
ment of the best and Imighest interests et I:wrian life,
1. that grtet our readers with the old, homely, hearty
alutation—" A merry Ch;istinas and a happy Ne,
Year." Ai 11,grIshuncn, xc ma .t azkaowledg, dear
and prcutiar claims upon our gratitude-, our sinecr.st
thankfulness---must confess to many benificent
ences uncrjo)ed by other nations throughout Chris-
tendum. With the whole world in arms against us
our shares have not been polluted by the foot of an
invader ; with slaughter and rapine raging throughout
half Europe, the Englishrnm'e home has been cense-
! crated to bloodless security. In England no conquer-
ing Cossack ever kept his " merry Christmas." Tins
i• high privilege has produced an unpurchescable, an ins-
lienable good in natienal independence,—in the love of
true liberty, based on slf-resnect and consequent re-
spect for otliviy,—iu moral 'dignity, and in the per-
mitted cultivation of that crterpricc and knowledge,
which, while they are ministrant to the commercial
wealth of a people, also elevate and strengthen the
national mined. The liberty enjoyed by the English-
! man this day, the social blessings showered around him,
and the rector:a-lents and luxuries of life—for even the me-
i clianicof to-day may boast of:nu:forts that were not to be
obtained by the noble of two hundred years back—he
owes to time influence of national independence, to the
Providence that has set his country apart, belted it
with the sea from the fatal neighbourhood of other
I.:rfs.:On this day we would have the wealthy English-
man well consider the manifold blessings heaped upon
his hearth ; that from the fulness of his gratitude he
may cast soii.e of the superfluity to his poorer
brethren. We would have him well consider time
commercial greatness of his country—its moral power
—its majestic supremacy opposed to other nations ;
that in his thankfulness to Providence for bovine
bestowed upon him such citizenship, he may feel his
heart epened towards those who, in this time of glad-
ness—this brief pause from the turmoil, and strife, and
selfishness of mortal existence—may still shiver at a
cold hearth, and fast in the very face of uhundance.
We have been blest with a most plenteous har-
vest ; and complaints have from time to time reached
us that there has been no thanksgiving orde"rd for the
blessing—no day set apart in universal acknowledg-
ment of God's bounty. On this day, let every once
who has the value of a cruet to bestow upon his ne-
cessitous fellow-creatures, practically express his grati-
tude for the golden treasures of last autumn. At the
Christmas fireside, let Englishmen give thanks to
God—by bestowing comforts on Lis suffering creatures
—for the glory and ahuadanee of the harvest. From
the members of the Privy Council---,.vho have not
thought it necessary to appoint a more formal act of
acknowledgment—to the smallest shopkeeper, acutely
interested in the price. of bread— all may more or less
declare their gratitude for the bounty of the last har-
vest, by casting something of their store to suffering
want. Now this will be a true thanksgiving—an offer-
ing of the heart—not mere lip-service, performed by au-
tnority, but a genuine outpourinc, of Christian thankful-
ss. Let the poor be reminded of the fulness of the
List harvest, by the gratitude of their richer brethren :
let not the wretched be mocked by the remembrance of
plenty bestowed by God upon the earth—a plenty sel-
fishly hoarded, no sheaf from the abundant fields set
apart for the suffering. " A thanksgiving for the late
abundant harvest I" This may, in unpremeditated
phrase, be uttered at every Christmas fireside ; but ii
the thanksgiving is to he nought but the "sounding
brass" of hollow words, the " tinkling cymbal" of mere.
lip utterance—if it be unaccompanied by a gift to time
poor—an offering, however small, to the destitute—the
prayer is but a wicked mockery, a bold 'deceit,
If words are insufficient to move men to such prac-
tical thanksgiving,—let them take a useful lesson from
the elements. Let the biting air of this present De-
cember teach them st repathy with time thinly clad, time
badly housed, the abject poor, inside poorer still by time
inclement sky. Tnere is no neighbourhood but has its
Objects of misery ; many quietly, resignedly suffering
the pangs of want,—the uncompleining, withering poor.
Let such of our country readers who would show their
thankfulness for time last harvest, seek those abodes of
squalor, or send thither some offering that shall speak
to the pauper of the bounty of the by-gone autumn.
There will be no set thanksgiving in the Chivas ser-
rice of to-day for the late harvest ; but our readers
may whisper their gratitude, and, moreover. may, with
ii:tie exertion, reach the poor's box. In conclusion, we
would plead the cause of the pour with the rich in the
words of tioaz, cornpassionating Ruth :--" Let her
glean even among the sheaves, and reproach her not.
And let Jall also sowe rtf the handials of purpose Joe
her, and leave them that she may glean them, and re-
buke lit r not." In this did not thiaz return best thanks
for the abundance of the harvest ?
(From ths Times.)
We know not ..vhellicr any of cur readers who may
happen to Lase the talent of remembering little thines
will recollect to have heard of a gentleman Llaiiled
Thomas Gibson. We mentioned' ti:e, the other
day as having been one of the orators at the dinner gibe
to the make-believe late Mayor of Manchester ; but
we forgot to add, that on that occasion he seriously an-
nounced himself as a candidate to succeed Mr.' Greg at
the next election of a Member to serve in Parliament
for that unfortunate borough. We since learn from
the Manchester papers, that he eti:l seems quite in
earnest ; and that he last week submitted himself to a
meeting of some nine tailors, constituting n the people,"