The Sun.
London, England, 1840-01-27 00:00:00

Win 'aln.

LONDON :
MONDAY, JANUARY 27, Is4o.

Parliament has now sat eight days, the Tories
are in opposition, and it is generally from the oppo-
sition that the people expect assistance to obtain a
redress of grievances. What, then, have the
Tories done in those eight days, or what have they
announced as intending to do, for the public advan-
tage ? On the first day of the Session the Tory
Lords insisted on adding the epithet " Protestant,
in their Address, to the name of Prince ALBERT,
and one of them, very ignorant, apparently, of the
tenets of Mr. OWEN and the Socialists, used his
senatorial privilege to denounce a body of his
countrymen and the Prime Minister, for introducing
their leader to the QUEEN. Since then, one of
the Tory Lords, " the Tribunes of the poor," has
delivered a speech on our financial difficulties,
which went to recommend immediate additional
taxation ; and a Bishop, a professed teacher of
Gospel love and blessed charity, has invoked the
terrors of the law against the S'ocialists. Follow-
ing up that most mischievous policy, on which the
Tories out of doors have acted for the last two
years, of attacking different orders of men, and of
adding theological strife, about things unseen and
unknown, to the terrible contentious which have
grown up between the hard material interests of
society, embittelint,g the great dispute betwixt capi-
tal anti labour by the :aricour of religious dissen-
sions, the Bishop of EXF,TER, on Friday night,
abused the privilege of Parliament, and delivered
a truculent and virulent lecture against Socialism.
He ought to have challenged Mr. OWEN to meet
him at Exeter Hall, and then there might have been
fair play. In the Peers ail the talk was on one
side. At the same time the Bishop described the
Socialists as a numerous and a growing sect, and
his remedy—the Church and Tory remedy--for the
great contentions which now afflict society, is to
commence an additional one, to increase the mili-
tary and police force, and put down Socialism by
the sword. Such is the redress of grievances
which the Tory Peers offer to the people.
In the Commons they have questioned the date
of a diplomatic note ; they have presented several
petitions for more Church ; they have endeavoured
to throw dirt on the Penny-postage, because they
feel some little inconvenience in sending off letters
at an earlier, and receiving them at a later, hour
than usual ; and have given notices of a motion to
turn out the Ministers. Not one gracious or kind
measure have they announced, and not one do they
propose. They are intently anxious to get hold of
office—the public welfare is no matter for their con-
sideration. In the country at large the Tories
have been for many months past brewing discord.
Heretofore political warfare has been generally
confined to rival monarchs and their followers, to
Ministers and their partizans, but the Tories have
set the example of inflaming the passions of class
against class, and sect against sect, as the means of
obtaining office for themselves. In Parliament they are
following out the practices they have inculcated out
of Parliament ; and Sir JOHN YARDE BULLIrR'S
motion is intended to float the Tories into office at
the head of the waters of sectarian strife. What
may be the ruinous consequences of such conduct to
the nation they care not, but we must briefly advert
to them.
A cry has gone forth amongst the Chartists of
down with the Whigs and up with the Tories. Why?
The Chartists expect from the rule of the Tories
new measures of coercion, and they foresee a quar-
rel between them and the Catholics. From the
accession of the Tories to office there is sure to be
more discontent, and a great increase in the power
of the Chartists to effect their own objects. The
Tories have proclaimed an extension of the Church,
an increase in the nuinber and in the revenues of
the Priesthood, a more severe execution of the law,
however uniust and barberous it may be, still fur-
ther restraints on the liberty of meeting publicly,
and on the press, the repeal of the Catholic
Emancipation Act, the curtailment of the " abo-
minable Reform Act, as the means by which
they contemplate giving peace to the empire. Such
a policy would at once strengthen and embitter the
numerous and increasing enemies of the Church
and the present Constitution, and hasten the ruin
which impends over our present political organization.
n g repeala nodf theata r
vaicncgu rtsheed
wCnorriini-nla7w s
From the Tories there could be no hopes of a
i
which, by stint.
classes, and setting
them an example of one class enriching itself at
expensetbhyephyaphysical
al woafn
tan moral
a another by
influence, ndn
ala werei , s them, both
overturn the
existing Constitution. The Tories, consisting mainly

of country gentlemen. are pledged to maintain tlinp
laws, which, by their gross and palpable inju:itice,
ovokz attacks on property and contempt for
authority. They have done more to unsettle the
respect and weaken the confidence of the people
in the religion and law of the land, than all the
teaching of the Socialists and the Chartists.
Without the Corn-laws they would have been
powerless, and those laws, which are all-powerful
elements of anarchy, the Tories would preserve.
From the reign of the Tories, then, the nation
has nothing to expect but starvation, coercion, re-
bellion, and bloody revolution.
The anarchists, who are by no means few, know
this ; the wildly-ambitious men, who catch only at
power, careless of the cost, know this ; the strong-
willed public writers of the day, whose home is in
the turbid currents and broken waters of pol,tical
contention, know this ; the knavish and pretended
fanatics, who look for the people being released
from the ordinary restraints of law, and turned
from the peaceful paths of cheerful industry
to extend their dominion over the mind, know
this ; all the great host of quacks in religion and
politics, who can only be thrown like scum to the
surface by a great agitation, and who, in times of
peace and calmness are derided and contemned,
know this ; and all these classes swell the loud and
appaling cry of Up with the Tories ; up with the
enemies of progressive social improvement ; up
with the sturdy opponents of all the natural laws
which regulate society, so that anarchy may be sure
to prevail, and we may get wealth and power in the
scramble I

We conclude from the speeches of the Bishops
of EXETER and LONDON on Friday night, that
the Prelates are about to step forward as great po-
litical and moral Reformers. That is a character
which we like to see them in, and we would beg
respectfully to direct their attention to a great vio-
lation of the laws of Nature and GOD, a great
national crime, the source of almost boundless
mischief, which it will become them to denounce,
and which, we beg to inform them, they have the
power to remove. For the opinions of the So-
cialists, be they true or be they false, the Bishops
are not responsible ; but they are in part for every
law which exists. False theories of morality, false
and unworthy notions of the DEITY, they cannot
prevent other men from forming ; unjust laws they
can condemn as hostile to religion, and obtain the
repeal of them. Now there is a law on the
Statute Book, a law of the Bishops enact-
ing in part, for they never protested against it,
a law for which they are responsible—which starves
multitudes of their fellow-creatures out of existence
every year, which inflicts on still greater multitudes
the pains of hunger and sickness, which impedes
the extension of those beneficial commercial rela-
tions between different nations which are the surest
bonds of peace—a law which, by causing hunger
and idleness, and by cutting off intercourse,
nourishes bad passions, both in individuals and
nations, and which sets the baneful example of con-
tinually violating one of the commandments. This
law, if denounced by the assembled Bishops in
Parliament, and by their orders denounced from the
pulpit as contrary to Christianity, contrary to
nature, and contrary to the peace and prosperity
of society, would, we are quite sure, be speedily
repealed. On the Bishops, therefore, and on the
Priesthood, lays the awful responsibility of main-
taining and preserving the anti-Christian, the ac-
cursed Corn-law. While they are denouncing the
Socialists for their speculative errors, the Prelates
of the Church of England are the authors and
abettors of the very worst crimes they predict will
be the consequence of the Socialist theories. Every
monstrous evil which the Bishop of EXETER pre-
tends to dread from the doctrines of the Socialists,
is now inflicted on the land, by laws made by him
and his brethren.

He rails against men for not believing, as he
and his brethren believe ; let us inform him that
they are not bribed as he and his brethren are, to
believe in a peculiar manner. Let him only con-
trive a means to give every man in the land an
income equal to that of the See of Exeter, as the
reward of orthodoxy, and there will not remain one
unbeliever in the empire. Let the lay Peers, too,
only find the means to give every man an income of
1,0001. a year, which is probably less than is en-
joyed by any Peer, and there will not be found in
the wide dominions of her MAJESTY a single man
less attached to the Constitution, both in Church
and State, than Lord WYNFORD or the Earl
of WINCHILsEA. Though the abolition of
the taxes on food would not give the bulk
of the people 1,0001. a-year, and would not
bribe them to orthodoxy by a revenue equal to that
of the See of Exeter, it would enable honest and
industrious men to get a living easily, and would,
if anything now can, which we fear nothing can, re-
store the Law and the Established Religion to the
respect and confidence of the people.

The moral danger with which the Social System
of Mr. ROBERT OWEN and his followers is said
to threaten the country, is not likely to be dimi-
nished by the generally expressed horror with
which the Bishop of EXETER'S exposition of that
system was received on Friday evening last in the
House of Lords. Unhappily the great bulk of the
hLaodrdtsoioii
psmatnoyt
their
rofst
true
efs
to indifference
pay m
much
cf
ht their
iudustrious classes of the United Kingdom have
itnhtee r est
re-
gard to such exhibitions of their zeal for the cause
of virtue and morality. Were the system of Mr.
OwEN intended to add to the dignity and power of
their Lordships, to treble the emoluments of the
State Priesthood, to render the working portion of
the community more dependent, if possible, upon
what are termed the upper classes, there are
few iwho would undertake to say that such
a system would not be hailed by the Bench
of Bishops and the hereditary Aristocracy
as deserving of the greatest encouragement.
It is not when the pure, the divine principles of
Christianity are menaced, that we find the House
of Lords, in a state of virtuous commotion, endea-
vouring to apply some remedy to the evil. It is
not Christianity, but Priestianity, with which the
House of Lords identifies itself. The religion .of
the Redeemer teaches that all men are brethren,
that it is the duty of a follower of the Cross to
forgive his enemies, to retain not a second garment
while a fellow-creature is at hand without one ; but
the religion of the House of Lords teaches that all
men are born unequal, that enemies are not to be
overcome with love, but by the sword, and that the
first duty of a Peer is to maintain his dignity, or, in
other words to fare sumptuously, to possess
immense wealth, and abundance of luxuries, while
thousands of his so-called co-religionists are
perishing for want of a mouthful of bread. The
holy propagators of the Christian religion, from
whom the Bishop of EXETER claims a direct suc-
cession, were commanded to possess neither gold
nor silver ; what their followers had, the Acts of
the Apostles expressly states they enjoyed in com-
mon ; and it was for endeavouring secretly to keep
back part of their goods from the common stock, that
ANANIAS and his wife were struck dead at the
feet of ST. PETER. And yet in the face of these
facts, attested by the authority of the New Testa-
ment, the Bishop of EXETER has the effrontery
to tell the House of Lords, and the Christian people
of England, that to preach a community of goods
is to attack the fundamental principles of Chris-
, tianity I We are not here advocating such a doe-
trine ; we are merely exposing the inconsistency of
the Right Rev. Prelate as a teacher of
Chris-
tianity. Wnat the peculiar tenets of Mr. OWEN s
sect arc, we do not know one-tenth pelt so well
as the right Reverend Prelate appears to do. We
never read the New Moral World, nor any of
the numerous publications for the dissemination of
the doctrines of Socialism ; but, as they have been
thought of importance enough to attract the notice
of the House of Lords, it will become our duty to
make ourselves acquainted with them. But, though
we know nothing of the New Moral World, we are
conversant viith the principles of the religion of
uHRISe, as taught by himself, and preached by
Apostles; and our conviction is, that nothing can
exceed the impolicy of the clerical Peers in in-
voking those sacred principles for the condemnation
of any sect of moralists We must, howevt.r, do the
Bishop of EXETER the justice to state, that he
was sufficiently cautious in his appeals to the Gospel,
! and that he seemed to trust more to the powers of
the ATTORNEY-GENERAL and the vigilance of ,
the Magistracy, than to the innate force o truth,
Having been apprised that the o,.ialists had
.
money-,,that they were in a condition to purchase
estates-, the lordly Prelate saw no way of con.futinei
them so effectual as by setting the myrmidons of
the HONE SECRETARY at theta. This Willno;
do, Eventhe House of Lordswiil' not 1.;,e pgr.