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

driven, by the necessities of their condition, to
take an active part in secular politics, and by I i
their exertion's 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-
senters have for resisting the aggressions of the
State Church, did not their ministers, who are
their chief leaders, take an active part in secular
politics? Gerorqllv speaking the nobility and
gentry are members of the Church of England,
and it is only- lately, and now rarely, that a Dis-
senter finds his way into either House of Parlia-,
anent. 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 Houser. 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 Dissentingministers 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 "Cia-
tholie 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 properin 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
Drives :Intl tnriffo b._.—
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 the
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 fol-
low out the scheme suggested by Mr. THOMP-
SON, or take some other means to bring the
whole force of the Dissentingbody to bear against
the Corn-laws.

Our Contemporary isun necessarily alarmed I est
" the introduction of the religious element into a
secular controvers • " should delay its settlement.
.sphsietsidslelcnhtibis:f:ars! It will not be introduced
Lettahibtlini , Ministers. The clergy of the
Established Church have already introduced it,
Already, too, they have used all their power and
influence to uphold the Corn-laws. They have
driven their last dependent to the poll, and can
be 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 colnisvi.edearteldd
a great enormity in Spain to forbid, in the seven-
teenth century, the cultivation of the o
the vine in her colonies, but that is a far less
enormity than for the Legislature of commercial
England to impede and prohibit, in the nine-
teenth century, the importation of
readily
u
food, which
her starving people could easily and
chase. An impartial posterity will decide that
the landlords of England were more deserving 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 it from the stigma of encouraging slavery.

The 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