The Sun.
London, England, 1870-01-22 00:00:00

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SPIRIT OF TEE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Saturday Review considers that Mr. Forster's speech
at Bradford was the complement and corrective of Mr.
Bright's speech at Birmingham. Mr. Forster, of course,
spoke of Ireland. No Minister could at the present
Moment speak at all and not speak of Ireland. We wish
we could agree with him in his interpretation of the
present sad state of things. He pronounces himself to be
one of those who believes that this state of things is duo
to the influence of agitators, who see that the good and
wise measures of Mr. Gladstone are going to cut the ground
from under them, and who are therefore obliged to agitate
fiercely now, because they see that they will only be able
.to agitate for a very short time. It needs to be a Minister
or a very ardent Ministerialist, to accept this interpreta-
tion of Irish affairs. We really do not see one single sign or
symptom to corroborate it. The gravity of the present crisis
consists precisely in this, that it is not apparently the
work of a few agitators. If by these agitators the leading
Fenian advisers are meant, it is notorious that they are
entreating the people to hold back, not to come into
lollision with the soldiery, and to rest in confidence
that the attitude of a nation in passive despair and
lisloyalty will do slurs to overcome the resistance of
:3ngland than any amount of physical strength. The
state of Ireland is to all appearance the state of a people
Tho have suddenly conceived wild hopes, who think they
eau get anything they want by clamouring for it, who try
lay by day how much they can defy the law, and who

every day find the power of the law fading away before
them. This is nit the work of agitators ;it is the conse-
quence of a wise policy being misapprehended by an igno-
rant people, and of that leniency in administration which
civilised people prize so highly and so justly, being, for
reasons not without great weight, applied in the case of a
semi-barbarous, reckless, and lawless population, The
greatest danger we have to fear is that the Ministry
should shut their eyes and say there is peace in Ireland
when there is no peace. We can only trust that they will
be firm in future, and not allow a great measure of jus-
tice to be thwarted by the arising of one of those occasions
when the fury and alarm of Englishmen sweep away all
before them.

The Spectator thinks that from their point of view, tne
French Ministry are in the right in the prosecution of M.
Rochefort. That satirist is not in himself quite so bad as
it is the fashion in England to believe him, but he is
avowedly an active Republican, and he did distinctly call
on the workmen of Paris to establish a Republic by force.
Opinions may differ as to his character, but no honestman
can doubt that he tries to overthrow the Imperial Throne,
that no form of constitutionalism will content him, and
that in his effort to realise his ideas he has broken a just
law. We say the course of events may be against the
Ministry, but we do not feel by any means so sure as the
Times does that it will be against them. Like everybody
else, we suppose, competent to form an opinion, we hear,
or think we hear, that sound in Pails as of shingle grind-
ing in the surf, that low fierce roar of hate which hitherto
has preceded revolution. The long tyranny, the sudlen
liberty, the grand scandal close by the thrcne, the •
tendency to riot, the disposition to display cavalry, the
shower of pamphlets, the foaming excitement, the laurel
crown flung on an insignificant head, because its mouth is
full of venom, the rush to an insane economy as a cure
for more insane extravagance, every sign which has hereto-
fore portended the fall of dynasties is visibly present in
the French situation, but the signs may, nevertheless, de-
ceive. History rarely repeats itself. The peculiarity of
the situation as distinct from every one which has pre-
ceded it is that the wish of Vergniaud has been realised,
that the gripe of the provinces is at last on the throat of
Paris. The army which is not Parisian will apparently
shoot down the populace which is. Wo cannot believe in
the longevity in France of a system without lcgic, of a
Throne without authority, or of a republic without ac-
knowledgment ; but if liberty and order are alike secured,
oven Frenchmen can wait. The brutal epigram of the
Mtn seillaise is the strongest defence for M. 011ivier.
" Death is on the side of the Republic."

In commenting on the allocution of the Bishop of
London the John B I'll declares that it can never acquiesce
in, or cease to reprobate the abnegation of all Catholic
principle contained in this deplorable Allocution. The
Church of England has rested her Episcopate since the
Reformation on primitive Christianity. Her principle has
been, in Hooker's words, the King places but does not make
bishops. While rendering to Casar the things that are
Ccesar's, she has repudiated with all hermight the calumny
of Papists and Puritans, that she fails to reserve for God
the things that are God's. This calumny the Archbishop
of Canterbury, by the mouth of the Bishop of London, has
now publicly accepted as the law to which his obedience
and our own is due. Trampling alike on canons, protests.
and arguments, these prelates have imposed on a
particular Statute a private interpretation abhorrent to
the fundamental notion of an apostolical succession. The
very Statute which was enacted to release the Church
from an uncanonical usurpation by a foreign Patriarch,
they have adjudged. on no authority lrat their• own
to create an absolutely unchristian supremacy,
in the House of Commons. An Act which requires the
chapter to elect, the Metropolitan to confirm, and the
Bishops to consecrate "with all duo circumstances,"—
every ono of those processes being a well-known step in
the canonical appointment of a Bishop—these two Pre-
lates, on the advice of some unknown lawyers, in the
teeth of nine protesting or refusing Comprovincials, have
interpreted to repeal all Ecclesiastical power whatever,
and create in its place a succession of shams odious to
every lover of truth. They have asserted for the Prime
Minister an authority which Henry VIII. and Queen
Elizabeth thought it unchristian to claim for the anointed
Monarch. The Statute is bad enough, the new interpre-
tation is intolerable. We have always maintained the
bark of the law:to be worse than its bite. A Dean with
a little more backbone in his Puritanism, and a Chapter
less Cla,dstonised than was discovered at Exeter, would
have braved the snap with perfect impunity. But the
Allocution in the Jerusalem Chamber gees to the bone,
and is full of poison. If its deadly fangs cannot be
extracted when Convocation meets in the same place next
month—actum est :