The Sun.
London, England, 1870-02-03 00:00:00

TLIE PUBLIC JOURIVALS.

The Times has often expressed the belief that a settle
ent of the Irish Land Question on equitable principles
an and will be effected, nor do we anticipate any for-
midable party opposition to such a bill as Mr. Gladstone
is likely to introduce. But will such a bill satisfy
Ireland, and does not the state of Ireland at this moment
warn us to put no faith in conciliatory measures? Mis-
givings like these will force themselves at times even on
unprejudiced minds, and the most will assuredly be made
of them by enemies of the newxlrish policy. Let it, then
be admittei at once that no bill founded on reason and
justice will satisfy the Fenian or the extreme Orange
party. There are already symptoms of a disposition on
the part of certain popular leaders in Ireland to attempt
this ma,meavre—to secure all that can be obtained from
the Imperial Government, and afterwards to represent it
as worthless, unless the edifice be crowned by national in-
dependence. No land settlement, however comprehensive,
would satisfy these wild aspirations, but it might do much
to check their spread; and, whatever Irish Nationalists
may think, we are firmly persuaded that a goo ..1
Land Bill will help to consolidate the Union.
In the meantime we hold it to be the imperative duty of
Government to crush the agrarian terrorism which, en-
couraged by atrocious articles in the National Press, has
reached so fearful a height during the past year. If the
existing law is found inadequate eitho: to prevent murder
in broad daylight, or to detect the guilv parties, the aid
of Parliament should be invoked. Let us not deceive
ourselves. While the regeneration of Ireland is being
wrought out by the slow operation of social forces, aided
by remedial laws, the Executive Government must be:pre
pared to govern in a sense whieh is scarcely understood in
England. That Parliament will consent to strengthen its
hands, if need be, admits of no doubt whatever; but it is
for the Irish members, above all, to speak out with no
uncertain voice on the necessity of restoring security of
life and property to Ireland. Mr. Gladstone declared on a
famous occasion that he would recognise none as national
spokesmen except the duly-elected representatives of Irish
constituencies, and their silence or equivocal speech in
Irish debates has often done irreparable mischief. Let the
Irish members exhibit a truly patriotic independence it.
Parliament, and Ireland, like Scotland, will- have no
reason to complain of her position in the councils of the
empire.

Tho Daily News observes that a remarkable memorial
has been addressed to Mr. Gladstone upon the subject of
the indelibility of Holy Orders. Between thirty and forty
clergymen unite to point out to the Prime Minister the
hardship under which men labour who have %Icon holy
orders, and who wish to retire from the ministry
of the Church of England for reasons valid to
themselves, "whether they are disinclined to accept its
form of government, or its relation to the State, or its dog-
matic teaching; or whether, from any change in the cir-
cumstances of their lives, they are no longer able conscien-
tiously to discharge the duties of their office." Among
the names appended to the memorial are some
of the most eminent in the scholarship and
in the higher intellectual literature of England
Protestants recognise the mischief and iniquity cf the
doctrine of irrevocable vows. What is the difference in
principle between it and the indelibility of orders in the
English Church ? How is the position of Mr. NV. 0,
Clark, who desires to lay aside his clerical character,
and cannot do so, to be distinguished from that
of Father Hyacinthe, who, do what he will,
cannot cease to be a monk ? In one respect, the
English clergyman is at a disadvantage compared
with the French Carmelite. He is the subject of
disqualification by statute. It is monstrous that.
because Horne Tooke was politically odious to the Govern-
ment of the day, all future clergymen should remain under
civil disabilities. The policy and justice of the demand,
that all clergymen not engaged in the active discharge of
clerical duties should be exempted from disabilities not
imposed on other subjects of the Queen, are evident. We
cannot suppose that a Liberal Parliament and Govern-
ment will allow the grievance to remain unredressed.

The Pall Mall Gazette considers the provisionary reten-
tion of Lord Cairns for the leadership of the Lords to be
the wisest step possible. As between Lord Cairns and
Lord Salisbury, although we think that the first took the
wrong and the last the right course at the crisis of the
Irish Church legislation, we still hold that Lord Cairns is
a more satisfactory depositary of the singular powers
of the Conservative leadership in the Lords than
the nobleman who is supposed to compete with
him for them. If we say that Lord Salisbury has
been greatly over-praised, we merely mean that he has
received a great deal too much of that essentially insolent
eulogy which is poured upon every member of the
aristocracy who gives signs of talent, which really
proceeds upon the assumption that a noble-
man is ordinarily born a fool. Nobody can
doubt that ho is a man of real ability, but it seems extra-
ordinary that anybody who has watched his career should
infer from what has hitherto been its character that he is
remarkable for discretion or self-control. As to the pre-
spnt Lord Derby, it will be time to consider his claims to
the Conservative leadership when experience has shown
that the Conservatives of the House of Lords will follow
him. That his temperament is of a kind which makes bird
a genuine Conservative . of a certain sort, it seems to
U 3 absurd to doubt ;. but the temperament is not that of
the older Conservatives of the present day. and it is emi-
nently not that of the younger men. All a Liberal is
entitled to ask for is that form of prudence which, by
influencing a great hereditary assembly, may save us from
a convulsion ; and there is no Conservative peer in whom
this can be snore readily presumed than in Lord Cairns,
who, as a practitioner at the bar, was above all things dis
tinguished for his good sense and self-command.

The Standard thinks that Lord Granville's recent arswcr
to the Emigrants and Colonists' Aid Corporation, who
prayed for aid from the Government in the shape of grant 3
of land in the colonies, and in other ways, is a capital
illustration of the spirit in which the present Ministry
have interpreted their duties to the people of this king-
dom. It is now pretty nearly manifest that neither by
direct nor indirect means will the Government of Mr. Glad-
stone give any aid to the development of our colonial empire.
Passing from the purely Crown colonies to the ethers, let
ets consider for a moment all the bearings of the extraor-
dinary position laid down by Lord Granville—that, because
the management of the Crown lands has been surrendered
to the colonies, therefore it `is out of the power of the
Imperial Government to interfere in L espect to
these lands. This is the first time such a declara-
has been openly made by any Imperial Minister, and
we venture to say it is the most decisive step
yet taken towards severing the bond between the
mother country and the colonies—in other words, towards
depriving the people of the British empire of their in-
heritance. The doctrine proclaimed by Lord Granvillle
brings us to this somewhat startling conclusion, that
England has no more right to claim a share either
in the Australian continent or it the North American
provinces. There can be no doubt that, in
future, it will require great tact and dexterity
on the part of the Colonial Office to interfere in the
management of the Crown lands in the colonies. But
the task, though it has become difficult in consequence
of our past blunders, is by no means impossible. Tho
position for which we contend is, that the people of the
British empire have never parted with the fee-simple of
their colonial estate—that the waste lands in the colonies
are not the exclusive property of those British subjects
who happen to reside within their bounds, but are the
general property of the whole British people--that there-
fore the Imperial Government in the name of the Crown,
has a right to have a voice in their management, and that
it has never given up that right, and that it ought to exer
else it whenever the public interest shall demand.
If the Bishop of London's Fund has not done all that
was hoped from it by its zealous founder, it has accom-
plished, says the Post, much which he and his successor
and all who have either promoted or aided it, have great
reason to regard with satisfaction. Looking back to the
five years during which the Fund has been in existence,
it shews a result of sixty new parishes created and
provided with churches, sixty new schools esta-
blished, upwards of a hundred clergymen sup-
ported from its resources, and nearly as many
more out of other resources through its agency.
The Bishop of London's Fund is the most recent instanoe
on a scale of magnitude of the extent to which religion
can be subsidised by the zeal of individuals. The creation
of sixty new parishes and schools in five years is a, proof
that the religious sentiment of the nation is sound; and
we may take this opportunity of observing that the re-
sources of the fund are so impartially distributed that the
board of management are often ignorant whether their
grants are subsidising High Church or Low Church.
But the fund has not only been the agent of increased
religious activity directly; it has stimulated the zeal of
persons who had no connection with it, and who are in-
cluded in the acknowledgement of the Bishop and the
committee that there have been several remarkable in-
stances of individual benevolence where gentlemen have
come forward and built churches or schools at their sole
cost, or have largely contributed to the promotion of par-
ticular works. We may reduce all this to the simple
formula that as bad example is contagious, so also is good
example.

The Telegraph, in referring to the alarming report
respecting Dr. Livingstone, observes that just when all
minds were at rest about the safety of the brave explorer
—when we were saying to each other that it could not be
long before we should hear of him upon the Congo, the
Nile, or the Zanzibar coast—the sinister and disheartening
report arrives. Is it true, as the gallant Captain of the
Peterel believes ? Is the dust of the good and God-fearing
explorer now blown by the unconscious wind about some
barbarous village of the African Lake country—his
noble soul gone to its repose, his body reduced to
ashes by fire ? Has he perished, after so many
dangers, when the ultimate secret of the very heart of
Africa lay in his possession; when his eyes had seen and
ids feet traversed the mysterious regions east of the
Tanganyika water, and the map of the dark continent was
et last made complete? In that ease what shall we not
have lost?—and desponding Science answe::s Treasures
which cannot he gathered again. ri3h facts of ,rs:cogya:,7ly and
call-I°lo7y I!tterli a stove of inforulou about
those hidden I)lReea of the earth, which 'vein; loc'etl up
in the knowledge of the murdered traveller,' or their
record dest-royed. along with Lint by tho ferocious
and 'gaurant barbarian: leaves geographers and
learneu,..inen " poor indeed," and postpones for genera-
tion.;iv probably, the civilisation of Central Africa.
For-our own part, we have a better hope ;we refuse to
"give up Livingstone" upon inch dubious hearsays, unless
further particulars shall clear away these many elements
of suspicion, and make it palpably in van to doubt. The
bravo discoverer has been killed so often, and has so often
turned up safe and sound, that we will not despair about
our illustrious wanderer on the strength of a pieco of
gossip from the 'slave sheds on the Congo. It
as possi-
ble, alas ! and the ways of God are not as the wills of men,
yet if over there lived an Englishman on whom we might
thpend not to die before his time, David Livingstone, who
walked always ...in t,40 strength of ..bL- ..,Itrastor," seems to
e that man.