The Sun.
London, England, 1870-05-30 00:00:00

LONDON, MONDAY, MAY 30, 1870.

England never appears to greater advantage than
when repairing a great wrong of her own commit-
ting. The abolition, one after another, of the detes-
table penal laws, the Emancipation of the Negroes
from the curse of Slavery, and the paying down
for their emancipation of the magnificent sum of
£20,000,000; these and similar records inscribed
upon her statute book shine as resplendently in her
annals as the names of her most glorious victories by
sea and land, as those even of Agincourt or of

Trafalgar. Second only to these conspicuous and
supreme evidences of her magnanimity are those
incidents in her Parliamentary history in which
England displays her readiness upon occasion
to rectify a mistake or to correct a blunder
into which, being merely a human power,
she may have been misled, under circumstances
of more than ordinary excitement. An incident
precisely of this character is being enacted, now, in
this session of 1870 and will happily be recorded on its
full completion in the current pages of Hansard.
Nineteen years ago, under the designation of " The
Ecclesiastical Titles Act," there was passed in 1851 a
law which has ever since then remained a mere
brutunz fulmen among the statutes of the realm. It

has never once to this moment been called into

operation. The penalties threatened by it have
never once been imposed. The Act is a dead letter,
and as such requires, for the honour of England, but
one sequel—its abrogation. Wisely, therefore, and
most judiciously, the Government have intro-
duced, this year, and laid before Parliament,
a Bill for the repeal at last of the " Eccle-
siastical Titles Act" as one the utterly ineffec-
tual presence of which any longer upon the sta-
tute book is derogatory to the dignity of the
Crown, and prejudicial to the influence, at once, of
the Legislature and of the Executive. It is curious to
reflect, now, when we come to look back at that

last No Popery outbreak of 1851, which seemed to
revive the spirit of 1780, when Lord GEORGE
GORDON, for one brief interval, was in the ascendant—
it is curious, we say, when we come to look back
across the nineteen years intervening between the
proposal of. the Act, in 1851, by Lord JOHN
RUSSELL, and the proposal now, in 1870,
by Lord KIMBERLEY, for its immediate abroga-
tion, to remember that there was a distinct clause in
the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, which, if it
means anything at all, implies, in the very wording
of it, a complete justification of what the Act of
1851 has ever since then so loudly, but so ineffec-
tually reprehended and denounced. In the
Emancipation Act of 1829, there is a clause
which prohibits the usurpation of any title
held by a Bishop of the Established Church
—implying that any other title might be lawfully
assumed, that any other title was, at any rate, in no
way prohibited ! And the very course pursued by
the SOVEREIGN PONTIFF in 1850, when establishing
the Roman Catholic Hierarchy in England, suffi-
ciently indicated that that was the deduction drawn
from the Act of 1829 by the Papal authority :
" special care was taken," said the Lord Privy Seal
on Friday last in the House of Lords, " and that jus-
tice," he added, " must be done to the POPE— special
care was taken, when the Roman Catholic Hierarchy
was established in 1850, not to infringe the clause of
1829 by conferring titles of sees identical with
those of the Established Church." Under any cir-
cumstances, the Act of 1851 is useless. Wherefore
—away with it ! It is worse than useless —it is an
impotent source of irritation. Besides which, on
the other side of St. George's Channel, as Lord
KI3IBERLEY—WhO knows something, we may pre-
sume, of the sister island, having there won the
coronet of his earldom by his wise and
conciliatory policy as Lord Lieutenant--took
occasion to remark in the House of Peers on
Friday evening—" The result of the Act has been
most prejudicial to the Government of Ireland "

that alone, as the noble lord insisted, making its
repeal, at last, expedient. Lord RUSSELL, the author
of the Act in question—et palmanz qui meruit ferat—
Lord RUSSELL demands loudly now the emendation
in Committee of the Bill for its repeal. The Second
Reading, at any rate, has been passed without
going through the formality of a division. The
Committee will see to itself. And, in any case, there
is at length a fair and reasonable prospect before
Parliament that an enactment very much like the
Shaksperean tale told by an idiot, " fall of sound
and fury signifying nothing," will at last be
erased and utterly obliterated from the statute book
of England.

"ADULTERATION is only a form of competition ;"
we assert this on the high authority of the President
of the Board of Trade. But so is theft. The man
who competes with others in the race for wealth
without labouring for it finds it necessary to take the
property of other men. Nevertheless we punish the
thief. Unfortunately we don't punish the adulterator.
Most certainly we ought to punish him. We can in
great measure guard against his fellow-sinner. We can
button up our pockets and lock up our houses, but
we cannot protect ourselves against alum, lime,
brick dust, strychnia, coculus indicus, chromate
of lead and the excrement of silk-worms. These
thieves who rob us of our health come to us
in disguise—in the garb of friends in the
shape of food, bread, milk, beer, tea, and the
rest. If we give a feast, and adorn our
table with confectionery, it is poisoned ; the
ordinary food that we eat ourselves and give our
little ones is equally poisoned. They sicken, and we
know not why. They die, and the doctors tell ue
that the cause of death is gastric fever. But what is
the cause of gastric fever ? Some of them know; the
Paris doctors know, and they have traced the malady
to the coffee which is drunk by the poor. In fact
there is nothing safe from adulteration except meat,
and that is diseased; and eggs, and they are rotten.
Undoubtedly the tradesman is not wholly in fault.
It is partly, and in no small measure, the purchaser,
who is to blame. The passion for cheapness
independent of quality, in a manner forces the originally
honest tradesman to adulterate. He begins by
offering genuine goods ; a rival sets up in the same
street, and offers goods at a lower price, though the first
was selling at the lowest figure which could give him
any profit; there is no help for him but either to
follow his rival and sell inferior articles at a reduced
figure, or to close his shop, which means ruin. If
poor and even middle class housekeepers would but
understand the first principles of political
economy, the very simplest axioms of the trade--
that, for instance, it Is impossible for a tradesman to

sell at and below cost price, that if he did so he would
have nothing wherewith to pay his rent and taxes
and to keep himself—there would be some hope for
the honest retailer. But the chance of saving a half-
penny puts to flight all considerations of this kind
even with persons to whom a half-penny is
is a trifle not worth considering, much more with
the very poor who have to think of every farthing.
This false economy is irresistible. It has been told,
for instance, that when the experiment was made by
a philanthropist of selling pure milk at cost price in
a poor district of London; the people preferred
to buy at the old shops where the price was
a little lower, although the water was mixed with
the milk before their very eyes. Such being the
case, how can we greatly blame the tradesman for
adulteration, provided al ways that it be harmless,
and not poisonous ? He does not know Latin, or he
would reply to all expostulation "Populus vult decipi
et decipiatur.

The question of short weights, though less
injurious to the public health, is more heinous
from the moral point of view. If the
purchaser is foolish enough to buy tea at a
price below that which it costs before leaving China,
he must know that the article he gets is not tea, but
some other article which the tradesman can
afford to sell at the sum he gets for it.
In such a case the purchaser is robbed
with his eyes open. It is otherwise with
short weights. We imagine that we get
full quantity; but we do not get it, and we cannot
get it. It may be said, why not check the weight
with your own scales ? Let those who have tried
the experiment say how it has answered. They will
confess that they have been in danger,
of starvation, that the tradesmen keep aloof from
them, neglect to deliver the articles ordered,
so that the unfortunate householder comes down to
breakfast in the morning, and finds that the baker has
"forgotten" to deliver the bread, and the milkman
has been equally oblivious about the milk.
What is to be done ? Something, undoubtedly;
but adulteration is not to be put down in a day, even
by Act of Parliament. In the first place the inspection
of weights and measures and the analysis of articles
sold should be no longer permissive, but compulsory.
It is easy to imagine the amount of vigour which
will be used in putting these permissive precautions
into operation when it is rememberedthat those with
whom the motive power rests are themselves the
offenders. The inspector and the analyst must be
11 Government officers, not parochial. They should be con-
stantly at work. A public prosecutor should prosecute
offenders. On conviction the names of the rascals
should be published in the London Gazette and in the
local papers, and they should be compelled to post
in their own shops the record of their offence.
It may be- said that it would be hard to
punish a retail tradesman for the adulteration
of the wholesale, or the wholesale for the adultera-
tiort of the export agent. The answer to this objec-
tion is that there is no supply without a demand—
that adulterated goods would not be sent unless they
were ordered. Besides, the tradesman can always
protect himself by analysis. Finally, the matter is
greatly in the hands of the consumer. If he expects
to get a pound of tea for the pri.le of half-a-pound,
he will get only a quarter-of-a-pound, the rest will
be offal and poison.

THE Birmingham League is not satisfied with Mr.
Forster's amendments. We are sorry for it. We
shall be still more sorry if it should turn out that
the League is a true representative of the Dissenters
in this matter. The position of the latter is
this, they are religious, or they have no
raison d'être. They desire to see the children of
this country brought up in the knowledge of reli-
gion, but they ask that the children shall not be
taught any distinctive dogmas. Mr. Forster has
granted them what they have asked, and more:
By proposing the time-table conscience clause he
has placed it in the power of any parent
to withdraw his children from all religious
teaching without placing them in an invidious and
painful position. This teaching is to be either at the
beginning or at the end of the day's lessons, or at both;
and it is but for a child to go a quarter of an hour later,
or to come away a half an hour earlier than the rest, in
order to be saved from the peril of false doctrine.
In other words, Mr. Forster, having to choose
between two arrangements, one of which would have
presumed that religion was excluded from the ordi-
nary teaching, the other that it was included therein,
has preferred the latter. Henceforth it is to be under
stood that religion does form part of the English
child's education. At the same time it is
not a compulsory part. The infidel's con-
scientious convictions are respected as much as
the Churchman's. But, as we said, the League
wants more : it wants to prevent any distinctive religious
formulary from being taught in any school supported
by Government money, even though the school-board
wishes to teach it. The reason for this
demand hitherto has been that the League is afraid
of the social influence of the squire and the parson, and
thinks that these persons will generally be able to
get a school-board after their own mind. But Mr.
Forster now proposes that the boards shall
be elected by ballot, so that this ground
of complaint is taken away. Nevertheless
it would seem as if the League were determined to
press the point ; and whereas it was held that Go-
vernment had no right to interfere actively
in religious teaching, it now holds that it
ought to interpose with a prohibition. This
theory is utterly irreconcilable with the principle
that religious teaching should be left to the decision
of priy4te persons. To forbid religious teaching

is as hostile to that principle as the enforcement oi
religious teaching is. If the Dissenters do not see this,

it will show that they have very little confidence in
their own hold over the people, even though they claim
half of them as their adherents. It will indicate, more-
over, that they are moved less by religious zeal for
the nation than by religious jealousy of the Church.
We shall not believe that they will adopt this course
of policy until belief is forced upon us by facts.