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

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 or_e 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.

Second on the list of notices of motion last even-
ing in the House of Commons was this : —" Mr. W.
Fowler r 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

" Thee Acts, which were muggled 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 di4ease 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 hi 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, 'mown 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 and 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 Comer, 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 advance 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 as a 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
aims and the preservation of our liberties (!), is a piece of
hypocrisy which will inevitably receive its reward. National
mimes 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. Those
who spoke during the absence of the reporters
were Mr. Fowler, Dr. Playfair, Mr. Henley, Mr.
Secretaty 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
debate, 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 %Vales, 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
Established 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-
tion of tye Speaker to the presence of " strangers,"
and the surprise which was manifested by the House