The Sun.
London, England, 1870-05-25 00:00:00

of their crimes. So far as we know, however, the
shepherds were murdered before, not after the troops
pursued them, and it is the:,f!'worsqpart of the charge
against the Greek authorities that their anxiety to
apprehend the criminals completely overpowered
their desire to avert the crime.

The debate in the Upper House on Monday even-
ing would have taken a dderent turn, could yester-
day's intelligence have been anticipated. It was as
well, however, that it should have taken place when
it did, since it proved that Englishmen, however
deeply and painfully moved by personal
sorrow or by national feeling, are not to
be betrayed into a forgetfulness of their con-
stitutional and characteristic fairness and moderation.
There is a heavy indictment against the Greek au-
thorities, but as Englishmen we can only desire to
let them have fair play. They must be allowed the
fullest opportunity to explain their conduct, to prove,
if possible, that there existed no complicity between
their subsidiary agents and the brigand chiefs, to
exhibit beyond the possibility of contradiction, that
political machinations and considerations had nothing
to do with the culpable supineness and the still more
culpable activity which produced this disastrous
tragedy. At the same time when this is done, when
full opportunity has been given for self-
defence and for national exoneration, the
matter must not be allowed to end. If the
Greeks be indeed all that they represent,
they can have no more hearty desire than for the im-
mediate and total extirpation of the brigandage
which disgraces their country. if they are insin-
cere they will have no right to protest if the Powers,
to whose fostering care they owe their very existence
as a nation, should refuse to protect assassins. if
the other Powers hesitate to fulfil so obvious a duty,
England, at least, can no longer shelter udder her
flag men who can trifle with the fundamental laws
which regulate civilisation.

THERE was a strong contrast between, the debates
in the two Houses of Parliament on Monday night.
The Lords were engaged on the melancholy, and
unhappily fruitless, topic of the Greek murders : the
Commons were doing such a good night's work as
had not been accomplished for many a day
before. A month ago we were all in
despair—Ministers, private M.P.'s, journalists, and
the public generally, at the block of parliamen-
tary business. It seemed as if every subject would
have to give way to the Land Bill, and as if even
that would have to be divided over two sessions. But on
Monday this bill, entire and complete, passed through
committee with a chorus cf rejoicing in which, pro-
bably, most Conservative M.P.'s joined at heart,
if not in tongue ; and the University Tests Bill,
become for the first time a Ministerial measure, was
passed by a large majority with much jubilant
shouting, and a groan from Mr. Newdegate that only
made the rejoicing more emphatic, just as a
skilful musician will sometimes strike a discord
to set off his perfect harmonies. Nor was this all.
a promise of good things to come was made by the
Premier. The Education Bill is to be brought on after
all, and when Whitsuntide is over the Commons
will have an opportunity of settling another
of the great social problems of the age,
and of adding fresh lustre to this the
first of the people's Parliaments. But before that by
way of recruiting their strength and giving them
new energy for the great work before them, 11I.P.'s
are to have a holiday, beginning, if all goes well, on
the eve of the Derby, and lasting for something
over a week. Hard work all this, but then
it is work; it will be something achieved
and settled, not merely palavered about, and when
the time for the shooting of birds is come, M.P.'s
will be able to enjoy the slaughter because they will
feel that having done so well for their own race they
have earned the right to exterminate another.
Referring to the principal debate of Monday night
it is impossible not to feel some amount of
sympathy with men like Mr. Walpole, Mr. Mowbray,
and Mr. Hardy. They are advocates of an old
order, which has been for some years .past yielding
place to new, and being by the nature of their mind at,
tached to ancient traditions, and incapable of realis-
ing the possibility of conserving all that is really
good even in the midst of sweeping changes—fearing
that to reform the universities is to destroythem—these
university M.P.'s resist with all their might
alterations which they believe will be fatal to some
of the noblest institutions established in this
land of just and old renown. It is superfluous
to say that we and all those who support the Univer-
sisty Tests Bill would resist it no less if we shared
their fears. We do not share them. We believe that
religious teaching will not cease even though com-
pulsory attendance at chapel should be
abolished. We hold that, on the con-
trary, such compulsory attendance is a serious
impediment to real religion. Nor is there any
reason to fear that the presence of Dissenters on the
governing bodies of the colleges will tend to irreli-
gion. It must be remembered that dissent implies a
positive relation towards religion, which connection
with any State Church does not necessarily imply,
No one will take the trouble to dissent
unless he has some definite views about
religion. On the other hand (as the experience of
the last century, especially in the Universities,
abundantly shews), conformity to the Established
Church is consistent with the most utter indiffe-
rence to what is termed vital religion. That
state of spiritual death is past, at all events
for a time, and the commingling and co-operation
of Dissenters and Churchmen, and the wholesome and
healthy rivalry which is not born of envy and strife,
but which is the child of zeal and earnestness, will
serve to infuse fresh religious life into the Univer-
sities, even though it destroy some of the old
forms.

The argument respecting the intentions of founders
is one that can scarcely be put forward with any
seriousness now. Sir John Coleridge answered it by
anticipation. Parliament has from the earliest times,
and with the most unmistakeable emphasis,
asserted its right to deal with property held in
mortmain and by corporations, and Parliament
has acted on that assertion over and over again. It
has been repeatedly pointed out that all the pre-
Reformation endowments, and they form a large
majority at both Universities, were taken from the
Roman Catholic and given to the Reformed Church
300 years ago ; or rather that the State, having
always held them to be national pro-
perty, removed them from the religious control
of a Church which the State abjured, and put them
under the religious control of a Church which the
State was establishing. What has been done once
may be done again. The answer that the Reformed
Church was the old original Church, and the
Roman Catholic a Church dissenting from that is
nothing to the purpose. It is undeniable that many
of the colleges were founded by Roman Catholics, and
that they intended theßomanCatholic faith to be taught
therein. If they were not members of the National
Church at that time (and it would be hard to shew
what other Church was the National Church), they
were, as Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice in his able speech
pointed out, Dissenters; and then the argument runs, if
the S; ate has taken colleges from Dissenters
it may surely restore to Dissenters at least a share in

the government of the colleges. The fact is we
only perplex ourselves when we enter upon these
points. The universities are, and always were, na-
tional institutions. The colleges also are as much
under the control of the nation as any other charita-
ble institutions, and the nation has a right, there-
fore to declare them open to all persons without regard
to religion. To suppose that the Church of England
will lose its influence there so soon as its exclusive
authority is taken away is a poor compliment to the
Church, all the poorer because the question at issue
has now narrowed itself to one of pounds, shillings,
and pence. We have allowed Dissenters to
be educated ; we have allowed Dissenters to
graduate ; we cannot in any decency forbid Dis-
senters to share the emoluments. The late Sir
Robert Peel was shrewd enough to see that the first
step involved the last. He resisted the first ; but it
was taken. Is there anyone bold enough to say that
we can or that we ought to retrace it ? If there is
not, to go forward is inevitable.

EVEN strong-minded persons may feel nervous on
reading the account of the Denham murder. We
thought we had reached the climax of horrors when
the bodies of Mr. Huelin and his housekeeper were
discovered. But this new crime surpasses the
other both in the number of its victims and
the mystery of its perpetration. In London
no ore knows anything about his next door neigh-
bour, and it is quite possible for an old man to be
got rid of without his absence being observed.
But that in a small village a whole household
should be dispatched, and that eight-and-forty or
sixty hours should pass before the awful deed is
discovered—that in a place small enough for every
face to be known, the action of every individual to
be common property, seven persons should be beaten
and battered to death, and no one to be the wiser is,
indeed, appalling. Surely children do not die
without a cry. Surely full grown men and women
do not suffer massacre without a strenuous struggle
and a shout for help. Yet here in this village on the
borders of Buckinghamshire and Middlesex three
women and three children were murdered in one house,
and the man who bore to the other victims the relations
of son, husband, brother-in-law, and father, was also
beaten to death in another building, his own work-
shop; and no one knew it. In fact there was no
reason why the massacre should have been known
even now but for the fact that the day after its
discovery was to have been the wedding day
of one of the victims, and that the person who
brought the wedding dress could not obtain admis-
sion, and gave the alarm. Terrible .was the dis-
covery. Instead of a bride they found
a bruised and bloody corpse, and they
who were to have been her wedding guests
lay by her side cold and stiff in the bonds of the
same cruel death. The bridal dress gives place to a
shroud, the wedding to a seven-fold funeral, and the
festival of villagers with its joy, wherein no stranger
would have intermeddled, becomes a tragedy of
blood, upon which an empire gazes with horror and
dismay.

Seconl on the list of notices of motion last even-
ing in the House of Commons was this :,—" Mr. W.
Fowler : Bill to repeal the Contagious Diseases Acts
1866-1869." Of the Acts which the member for
Cambridge thus evidenced his desire to sweep from
the statute-book of the realm, one of the youngest of
our contemporaries, the thoughtful little weekly
called Charles's Wain, yesterday spoke thus em-
patically

"These Acts, which were smuggled through Parliament
in disguise, many persons supposing that they concerned
cattle, not women, and even some active Members of Parlia-
ment being ignorant of their scope, are ostensibly designed
to eradicate a disease too loathsome to name, which is the
result of voluntary vice. The advocates of these measures
take two principal lines of argument : the first is addressed
to respectable persons, and the chief points urged in it are,
that it is benevolent to eradicate disease of any kind, whe-
ther or not such may be providentially directed to deter
from vice ; and also that it is a duty to protect wives and
children from disease communicated by immoral h; sbands.
This line of argument is plausible, but unsound; it proceeds
upon a
.proposition by no means capable of proof—that by
subjecting a certain disreputable class of women to medical
inspection and treatment this disease can be stamped out.
The fallacy of such a suggestion is evidenced, not only
by the fact that the disease is still rampant in coun-
tries where these measures have been for years in vigo-
rous operation, but also from the difference of opinion
existing between doctors as to its origin, nature,
and proper treatment ; moreover, to operate upon
one sex alone is absurd, especially where so much secret
vice is now prevalent. Manifestly, to be consistent, the
advocates of these measures ought to insist that all males,
as well as females, known to lead immoral lives should be
inspected, and, if necessary, shut up in hospitals.
" But the argument addressed to respectable persons is,
after all, merely a b ind for the second line of advocacy,
by which it is urged that vice is a necessity; and that
but for the disease in question it would be rather bene-
ficial than otherwi e to the race of man ; such a
theory would simply bring us to the bestial pro-
miscuous herding with which Caesar, whethe justly
or not, stigmatized the ancient Britons ; it is as directly op-
posed to Christianity as anything can be, and those men
who unblushingly advaace such a doctrine should be expelled
from the pale of society. Safety cannot be secured by sin ;
far better for a nation to be without an army than to purchase
that safeguard by accepting vice asa necessary concomitant.
To pass a law which, presuming vice to be a military neces-
sity, places the person of any woman at the mercy of a stupid
or vicious policeman, supported by a credulous magistrate,
and then to offer up public prayers for the success of our
arms and the preservation of our liberties (!), is a piece of
hypocrisy which will inevitably receive its reward. National
crimes meet their punishment in this world; and those
members who, from desire to indulge securely private vices,
from fear of displeasing the family doctor, or from party
motives, lend their sanction to such acts, will have not only
to dread their own consciences, but the future curses of a
fallen nation ; whilst those who are indifferent to conscience
or fame may yet remember that it is hazardous to risk po-
pularity upon the immaculate execution of laws which offer
strong temptations to abuse ; parliamentary cynicism will be
a poor protection against popular indignation, when aroused
by outrages upon falsely-accused women. '
When Mr. Fowler's motion was brought forward
last evening at a quarter past seven it will be seen,
from our parliamentary report, that Mr. Craufurd,
the member for Ayr burghs, had the House cleared,
by order of the Speaker, of all strangers. The ladies
were all of them (two of them very reluctantly)
banished from behind their grille. The Speaker's Gallery
and the stranger's gallery were alike emptied. The
Reporters, to a man, were cleared out of what, par
excellence, is known and spoken of as the Gallery.
For nearly four hours, namely, until eleven o'clock
had struck, the House of Commons discussed
Mr. Fowler's motion with closed doors. lhose
who spoke during the absence of the reporters
were Mr. Fowler, Dr. Playfair, Mr. Henley, Mr.
Secretary Bruce, Major Anson (who moved the ad-
journment of the debate in order that it might
be resumed when the representatives of the
press were present), Mr. Cardwell Mr. New
degate, Mr. Baines, and Sir J. D. Elphinstone :
the result being that, upon a division in a house of
317 members, the debate was adjourned for a month
by a. majority of 141. Upon the return of the re-
porters to their gallery, it is particularly worthy of
note that their appearance was greeted with a cor-
dial outburst of cheers. It was a signal recognition
of the dignity of the Fourth Estate by the Third
Estate of the Realm in Parliament assembled.

In the House of Commons yesterday Mr. Watkin
Williams introduced the subject of the Established
Church in Wales, and moved two resolutions, the
practical effect of which was to declare that the con-
nection between Church and State in the Principa-
lity should cease. The hon. gentleman was remark-
ably temperate in his language, but it was im-
possible to resist the idea that a deeper design
underlay the propositions. Mr, Gladstone indeed
seemed perfectly conscious of the momentous con-
sequences which the affirmation of an abstract prin-
ciple like that involved in the resolutions might pro-
duce, and he did not disguis his conviction that the
Establisbe I Churches of England and Wales were
inseparably connected, and confessed that he was not
prepared to disturb the Church of England. I.he
motion of Mr. Williams was, on a division, lost by a
considerable majority. Shortly after 7 Mr. V. Fowler
was about to ask leave to bring in a bill to repeal the
Contagious Diseases Acts, which have created so
much excitement in different parts of the
country, when Mr. Craufurd adopted a course for the
exclusion of all but the members, which has not been
pursued for very many years. He called the atten-
Ftion of the Speaker to the presence of " strangers,"
and the surprise which was manifested by the House