The Sun.
London, England, 1847-04-19 00:00:00

ottotniag

LONDON, MONDAY, APRIL 19, 1847.

At a moment when the subject of national educa
tion is occupying so large a space in the public mind,
it is reasonable that we should revert not merely to
the general neglect of which we have been guilty
towards the nation at large in regard to its intellec-
tual culture, but likewilie to every act of positive
injustice that can be laid to our charge in relation to
this important topic. And, perhaps, there is no point
upon which the British Legislature could nowa-
days be more prominently and successfully assailed,
for not having acted up to the requirements of an
enlightened age, than that presented by the refusal it
has continuously given during the last seventeen;
years to sanction the admission of Dissenters into our
Universities. That the Parliament, previous to the
Relief Bill of 1829, should have maintained the pro-
hibition, as enforced by the Universities, against the
Roman Catholics and Dissenters, is not so much a
matter of astonishment ; but its perseverance in the
same course, after the Roman Catholics had beer
admitted to a participation in the highest civil privi-
leges in the State, and after the passing of the
Reform Bill, which caused its spirit of improve-
ment to light upon all the corporate bodies
of the empire, the Universities excepted, redounds
neither to its honour, wisdom, justice, nor
liberality. Owing to the right which was claimed
on behalf of the State to impose civil disabilities
upon subjects whose religious tenets differed, in par-
ticular forms, from those of the Established Church,
and Owing to the apprehension entertained that to
abandon this right would weaken, if not subvert, the
religion of the State, the Relief Bill was kept in
agitation for half a century before it became the law
of the land; but, although opposed to the opinion of the
Legislature, public opinion continued steadily to
rise, till at length its full tide set in, and forcibly
swept away the main barriers of religious persecu-
_,4 ton. Without troubling them selves to deny it in the
- bstilmt, the people at
fjustlyw forward as
that
the right, rhich had been p
as being in
berent in-the State, had, in the nineteenthr century,
~it
d in respect to the Roman Catholics, Practically
warn/ iota itppolitic and unjust ezer4,se-of

' power, and they generously repudiated the notion that,
by opening the portals of the Constitution to millions
of their fellow-countrymen, against whom they had
so long been closed, the religicus welfare of the com-
munity would be in any wise affected. And
thus was a great advance made in the cause
lof religious liberty. The idle fear which
was suffered to infect the mind of the Legisla-
ture, that the people could not be intrusted
1 with a large increase of political power, without en-
dangering the balance of the Constitution, unjustly
deprived the middle classes for half a century of
i those rights and privileges which, it may almost be
said, were wrested from the aristocracy to be finally
embodied in the Reform Bill. Our modern Magna
Charta and the Relief Bill owe their success entirely
to the " pressure from without." .As Lord MEL-
BOURNE said, in 1837, " every institution is unwilling
to reform itself ;" and this remark is peculiarly ap-
plicable to the Universities. Nevertheless we are
persuaded that the same external influence which
' secured the two great measures to which we have
adverted will, whether the Legislature shall choose to
act promptly and judiciously or not, suffice before
long to induce Parliament to take into its own hands
the reformation and improvement which is so much
needed in the leading Universities of the empire.
The House of Commons will this week have an
opportunity of reconsidering the whole question, and
of determining whether it is right to permit the system
to continue of excluding Dissenters from the honours
and privileges which Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin
are empowered to confer. On Thursday next Mr.
CHRISTIE will re-open the discussion. We heartily
wish him success. He ought, and, no doubt, will
feel emboldened in persevering with an object which,
for its benevolence and enlightenment, entitles him to
a large share of public gratitude, when he remembers
that the present Prime Minister and other
eminent statesmen have seconded his past exertions
for rendering our ancient and influential seats of
learning really worthy of the British nation. Cer-
tainly, at no time so much as the present, could the
undoubted grievances of the Dissenters, so far as
sound policy is concerned, be more opportunely re-
moved. Rightly, or wrongly, the Dissenters are just
now strongly excepting to the Government plan of
education, and mainly on the ground that the
patronage to be created by it will not be inconsider-
able, and that the Church will come in for the lion's
share. Whether, under all the circumstances by
which the vexata qucestio of national education is
environed, the objections to Lord LANSDOWNE'S
scheme be well or ill-founded, yet, seeing how un-
justly the Dissenters have been treated by the Univer-
sities, whose authority is wielded almost entirely by
clerical members of the Established Church, and
seeing also how much the Dissenters have done for
education, despite of °the frowns of power and
the existence of miserable and narrow-minded
prejudices, it assuredly is not unnatural, to say the
least, that they should look with no favourable eye
upon any plan of education of which they conceive
the tendency would be to impart additional strength
to an institution that has hitherto proved itself so
inimical to the progression and development of their
civil and religious liberties. Neither is it to be ex-
pected that this feeling of hostility will abate till full
justice shall have been meted out to the influential
religious communities that exist in this country with-
out the pale of the Church. Our Universities should
be forwith re-organised, and have their laws re-
modelled in accordance with the rights of con-
science and principles of religious freedom.

Talk as we may about the advisability of pre-
venting the corruption of our populous cities by the
poisonous systems of intermural interment, of ne-
glected drainage, and of forgotten ventilation, there
are other causes of corruption--of social and moral
corruption—which call yet more loudly for a legisla-
tive interference. Sanatory measures, however corn-
prehensive, cannot affect these causes. National
education, however liberal in its distribution of
knowledge, cannot sufficiently counteract their bane-
ful influences. Poor-laws, however generously de-
vised, cannot tend to their eradication or even their
abatement. We mean, of course, the brood from
which come juvenile offenders—those swarms of
young creatures which infest the rookeries of
this vast metropolis—children in years, but aged
in wretchedness, and poverty, and ignorance,
and vice, and degradation. You may see them

blessed sunshine and warm air, misery itself will
sing, dashing in and out of these closes, careering
over the open ground, engaged in their rude games,
arrayed in hying drapery, here a leg out and there
arm." " Their thin faces," continues the same
writer—one who has watched the brood with a
heart melting in his bosom with compassion, "their
thin faces," he says, " tell how ill they are fed ; their
fearful oaths tell how ill they are reared; and yet
the merry laugh, and hearty shout, and scream of
delight, as some unfortunate urchin, at leap-frog,
measures his length upon the ground, also tell that
GOD made childhood to be happy, and that in the
buoyancy of youth even misery will forget itself."
The name of this deplorable class is Legion. Visit
the poorest districts of any large town, but especially
of the capital, and you will see this crowd of chil-
dren—the spawn of poverty and vice—sprawling in the
gutters, crouched on the doorsteps, clustered in the car-
riage road, and scattered over the pavement. They are
bloated with unwholesome living ; they are emaci-
ated with want ; they are ugly, sallow, dirty, ragged,
wretched, sickly, despicable. Here is one of them,
taken at random, and sketched with the truthful
pencil •of the benevolent writer we have already
quoted :—" Poor fellow ! it is a bitter day ; he has
neither shoes nor stockings ; his naked feet are red,
-wullen, cracked, ulcerated with the cold; a thin
thread-worn jacket, with its gaping rents, is all that
protects his breast ; beneath his shaggy bush of hair
he shows a face sharp with want, yet sharp also with
intelligence beyond his years." That is no in-
dividual portrait, it is the portrait of an
entire species—it a faithful delineation of
those deplorable atoms of humanity that are
warmed into life in the foulest corners of
our larger municipalities. They are as plants that
sprout up into noxious and poisonous brambles if
neglected—but which, if transplrnted and tended,
would flourish, would bloom, would give a whole-
some and abundant fruitage.
What we have here remarked is applicable
o England, to Wales, to Scotland. How
:mmeasurably more applicable, therefore, must
It be to the famishing and miserable millions
~f Ireland. When it is proved by statistical
evidence that such is the multiplicity of those
abandoned children, can we be amazed at the fre-
quency of crime, at the crowded state of our penal
,ettlements, at the thriving trade in justice carried on
in our criminal courts, at the busy occupation of
our turnkeys, and the practised skill of our hang-
men ? With such plentiful supplies of seed strewn
so lavishly over such a congenial soil, can we be in
any manner surprised at the extent and frequency of
the harvests ? Alas ! it is the parable of the tares
and the thistles again—neglected in the spring-time,
and torn up only when they have effectually choked
the barley.

For the diminution of evils which are at length re-
cognised to be so enormous, strenuous efforts are now
being made by every earnest and practical philan-
thropist. Ragged schools are starting into existence
in many despised localities, and, honour to those
fentle and intrepid women, honour to those ardent
and self-denying men, who for the sake of our com-
mon humanity brave all the filth, all the stench, all
the noise, all the suffocating and sickening in-
fluences of those wretched dens where the forlorn and
callow young are gathered under the wings of a
benignant knowledge! Reformatory establishments are
rising into life simultaneously, and still wiser and still
better establishments (if that be possible) are distribut-
ing blessings among the poverty-stricken of Glasgow
and Dundee, in the shape of those Industrial Schools,
where the outcast children receive bodily as well as
mental nourishment. These advantage-s have been
and are still being effected by private and
unassisted enterprise; they are springing spon-
t ,neously from the charity of the popular
heart. Beautiful as the endeavours are therefore,
they are necessarily weak and, to a very considerable
extent, ineffective. It requires the potent and con-
centrated impulse of Government to give efficacy to ,
these struggles against ignorance. There is a ne-
cOoity • for the stretching forth of the trna of the

Executive to the help of whatever ragged schools, and
reformatory schools, and industrial schools, have
yet dared to raise their redeeming heads, and to show
forth their plenary benevolence. England present:,
a gigantic field for those Governmental labours—
Ireland, a profound abyss. We want the diminu-
tion of the sources:of our physical contamination, and
GOD knows we are sadly in need of a diminution of
the sources of our moral and social corruption

The Prussian Diet held a short sitting on the
12th, at which it resolved that an address should be
sent in answer to the KING'S speech, and it appointed
a committee to draw it up.

The members of the Prussian Diet were presented
by their marshals to the KING on the 12th, and after-
wards had the honour of dining at the palace with his
MAJESTY and the Princes of the Royal Family. The
Ministers were also present. During the dinner the
KING proposed a toast to the country and the United
Diet, and expressed a hope that the labour of the
assembly would be useful to the nation. The toast
was received with enthusiastic acclamations.

The Post-Ampt Gazette of Frankfort publishes a
letter from Berlin, stating that the effect produced
there by the speech of the King of Paussie, on open-
ing the Diet, was so favourable, that the funds rose
nearly one per cent.
We find in the Augsburgh Gazette a letter dated
the 10th instant, which states that the five great
Powers had instructed their ambassadors in Vienna
to adjust the difference which has arisen between the
Porte and the Greek Government.

Letters from Rome of the Bth instant announce
that Cardinal Gizzi, the Secretary of State, had ten-
dered his resignation on the 6th, but the PorE had
refused to accept it.

Madrid journals of the 11th have arrived.
The Government, it was said, had received positive
assurances that it was not the intention of Queen
CHRISTINA to return to Spain, but that when she
quitted Paris she intended proceeding to Marseilles,
to embark from thence for Naples.
General SERRANO left Madrid on the 11th. Pre-
viously to his departure he was visited by Senor
Ras DE OLANO and by Senor DE LA VEGA, the
private secretary to the QUEEN.

The Carlist Generals Elio and ZAVALA have
entered Navarre and joined General ALzse... The
Carlist insurrection, however, is, it is said, rapidly
dying away.
Senor OLOZAG A was expected in Madrid on the 11th.
He will be speedily followed by General OSORIO, the
friend of ESPARTERO. Osouso has received a full
pardon, and is reinstated in all his honours.

The Madrid mail of the 12th had not arrived in
Paris when the post left on Saturday.

We have received the Paris papers of Friday and
Saturday.

The Journal des Daub announces, in what may

be considered an official form, the appointment of the
Duc DE BROGLIE as Ambassador to the Court of

London.

The Bill authorising the Bank of France to issue
notes of the value of 200 f. has passed the Chamber
of Deputies by a large majority, the amendment of
M. LEON FAUCHER (proposing to authorise the issue
of notes of 100 E) having been previously rejected.
The announcement which appeared in the Paine
of Wednesday, of the execution of the three persons
convicted of rioting at Buzangais,was, it appears, pre-
mature. The execution was to be delayed until
Friday, according to the National. The Siecle ex-
presses a hope that this delay may be favourable to
the convicts. It says—
" The evening journals of Wednesday announced posi-
tively, and one of them, the Patrie, with the most cir-
cumstantial details, the execution of the three unfortunate
persons condemned to death for the affair at Buzancais.
This news has been repeated as certain by most of the
morning journals. The Debate itself, which ()light to
have been better informed, reported that the execution
took place on the 12th, in the public market-place at
Buzancais, amidst a prodigious concourse of people from
the environs, adding that there was a great display of
military force from Bourge, Nevers, and Chtiteauroux.
Notwithstanding all this, the magistrates, who have seats
in the Chamber, and who, by reason of their special posi-
tion, have been called upon to follow all the phases of
this deplorable affair, declared yesterday that the sen-
tence upon the condemned men at Buzancais had not
been executed. We hope that this happy delay, which
has allowed the Government time to appreciate the
unanimous feelings of the public, will save these un-
fortunate men, who certainly were very guilty, and who
would have no claim to pity, if their crime had not, in a
- „
apprehension of famine: —ollllllllZiiiitinTa:l4Vet& our
readers, will conceive, is not to extenuate the crime of
murder, which has been committed. We have respected,
even in all its rigour, the decree of justice. But can the
shedding of blood on the scaffold expiate the blood of the
victim?"

The Moniteur publishes a royal ordonnance ap-
pointing in the department of Public Works a
general committee on railways. This committee is
divided into four sections : first, that of lines of di-
rection ; secondly, the working in a scientific point
of view; thirdly, the working in a commercial point
of view ; and, fourthly, the regulations. Each sec-
tion is to be consulted, according to the nature of its
attributions, on such questions as belong to it.
The Speech of the King of PRUSSIA on the opening
of the States-General is the subject of comment in
almost all the Paris papers of Saturday. The Con-
stitutionnel draws the following curious parallel be-
tween the opening of the States-General of France
in 1789, and those of Prussia in 1847:
" Prussia gives at this moment a curious and solemn
spectacle to the rest of Europe. The States-General
have just been opened at Berlin, as the States-General
of France were opened in 1789. There, too, is a King
beloved by the nation, who, influenced by the liberal
movement of his century, takes the initiative of this con-
vocation. The Assembly is also divided, in nobles, who
for the most part believe in equality, and in citizens, who
have the sentiment of their rights. The first questions
propo ed by the royal power are questions of finance ;
but the Assembly seems pre-occupied above all by the
desire to assure and develop the liberties of which it takes
possession. Around the States a nation of writers, of
controversialists, of thinkers, discuss natural and histo-
rical rights, the origin of the powers, and the best con
stitution. These similarities, although they are more
apparent than real, and although there are very profound
differences between the two nations, the two periods,
and the two sovereigns, do not the less appear to have
caused a very profound impression on the mind of
the King of Prussia. The speech which he delivered
on the opening of the States seems altogether inspired
by aversion for liberal French principles, by the ter-
rible remembrance of the Constituents and L,,uis XVI.
The King declares twenty times in his speech, and
with the greatest energy of language, that no power
on earth will be strong eaough to induce him ever to
change the natural relation between the Sovereign and
his people, into a conventional constitutional one, gua-
ranteed by charters, and sealed by oaths.' Never will
he permit that a written sheet shall place itself forcibly
between God and Prussia to g,vern that country with its
paragraphs.' The natural relations between the King and
the people are founded on the royal omnipotence;' and
the people owe obedience, not servile, but dictated by God
and the conscience. The States are instituted in virtue
of the historical German law;' the Deputies represent
neither the people nor opinions;' they exercise their
proper rights, those which they enjoy in vii tue of an-
cient laws, and those which the Crown has recognised;'
the Crown must reign according to the laws of God
and the land, and to its own free will, and not according
emptye
;s ohuen d
complains
yh Kin ipnagr t e xopf e
tcht
es
ps
ra
ed x
aphe d-
to the will of majorities, if Prussia is not soon to be an
Europ
be t e
of Prussian Liberals; he counts on his people, who will
not see the absolute power' of their kings broken,
and who will second him in his struggle against
democratic efforts, and the wicked desires of the cen-
tury. Our readers will understand that we shall not
here discus, these theories, which are so much in con-
tradiction with our ideas in matters of natural right, of
political right, and of liberty. The King of Prussia,
with great warmth, praises the English nation, whose
constitution, he says. is the work of centuries, and of
incomparable hereditary wisdom. It would be easy to
us to show that the English nation, since it founded and
developed its liberty, has never considered royal omni-
potence the basis of constitutional right, that the writ-
ten text of the law reigns supreme over the people and
the Kings of England, that the political institutions 01
Great Britain are guaranteed by charters and scaled by
oaths. But instead of opening 5, useless controversy, we
prefer to follow the King of Prussia and the nation which
he gove'-1:s in each step that they make towards
to applaud their generous sentiments, and honour their
patriotism, even its exclusiveness. When King Frede-
rick William recognises in the Diet the right of voting
the taxes—when he accords to the courts of justice public
and oral trials—when he proclaims liberty of con-
science in religious matters, and the civil character of
marriage—when, in short, he seems to regret that the
laws of the Germanic Confederation do not permit him
to concede the liberty of the press, what matters it
that he has discovered all that in the German historical
law, or that he has involuntarily received the inspiration
of the great principles which the French revolution
promulgated in the world? There is there a movement
towards liberty, and we pardon King Frederick William
for being in his speeches less just towards France than
he appears to desire to be in several of his acts towards
his own country. One thing, however, strikes us in
this speech—the declaration of a sort of rene,al of the
Holy Alliance. Alter having spoken in general terms
of the friendly relations:which exist between Prussia
sad Uer 4eighbourip the Zing fifids j 9 t 4 "r"4",