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 a
£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
brutum 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 i equires, 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
tare was taken, when the Roman Catholic Hierarchy
was established in 1850, not to infringe the clause of
i 829 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 a❑
impotent source of irritation. Besides which, on
the other side of St. George's Channel, as Lord
KIMBERLEY—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 palmam qui meruit feral—
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 auy case, there
is at length a fair and reasonable prospect before
Parliament that an enactment very much like the
Shakeperean tale told by an idiot, " full 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 us
that the cause of death is gastric foyer. 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 ; El rival sets up in the same
street, and offers goods at a lower price, though the first
waft selling at the lowest figure which could give him
any profit; there is no help for him hut 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 ypry simplest axioms of the trade--1
that? for instance 4 is impossible for a tradesman to