The Sun.
London, England, 1870-01-11 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

The Times, in commenting on M. 011ivier's first appear-
ance on the Ministerial bench, observes that he deemed it
expedient to make a new declaration of strictly constitu-
tional principles. Sure of the confidence of the Sovereign,
the Administration, he said, must solicit that of the
Chamber. They will rely on the majority for support,
but they will also profit by the lessons of the Opposition,
and on the day in which the Opposition shall become a
majority the minority will allow their adversaries to take
their places. National sovereignty could not be based
n fairer or more intelligible terms. But the new Ministers
can hardly estimate their power until they have a Cham-
ber of their own. Little would the cause of constitutional
freedom have gained if, by venturing on too hazardous an
experiment and attempting impossibilities, the Ministers
should provoke a division which would compel them to
"hand over to others the burden of public business."
The test of the good disposition of the Emperor, and of
the real capabilities of the country for a more liberal rule,
lies in a reform of the electoral law, and in its application
iz a general election. It will not, of course, be easy to
avoid all dangerous topics, or to adjourn all premature dis-
cussions. With the Emperor's cordial co-operation much
will be possible, because personal rule is, as yet, only
nominally abdicated, and there is hardly any limit to
chick its ascendancy may not be exercised either for good
.r evil. But hitherto it is only in the abstract and pro-
pectively that the nation has been intrusted with self-
government. It is only at the polls that the people can be
expected to recover the use of their sovereign rights. The
Ministers deserve the greatest credit for their eagerness
to signalise the new era bya variety of Liberal administra-
tive measures. Suspicion as to their honesty and good
will can enter no man's mind; nor can there be any
reasonable doubt of the Emperor's readinesss to second them
in their course. Still they must bear in mind that their
strength must lie in the Chamber, and that it may possibly
be good policy to attempt as little as possible until they
can rely on the support of a truly popular Legislature.
We are well aware of the obstruction every deliberative
Cody instinctively throws in the way of its own dissolution;
and to any sufficient scheme of reform considerable oppo-
sition may be confidently anticipated. Still, it is impor-
tant for M. 011ivier and his colleagues to see how far they
can venture to go hand-in-hand with M. de Forcade's
Chamber. They will scarcely stand on safe ground till
they have made a direct appeal to the country, and such
should be their most earnest and immediate object.
If the proposals of the Birmingham Education League
are adopted, says the Pall Mall Gazette, the country will
be burdened, not only with the cost of supplementing
existing schools, but with a large additional expenditure
incurred for the purpose of superseding existing schools,
and this difficulty is likely to have considerable weight
with the public. Here is ample school accommodation,
and no hardship to child or parent in making use of it.
But because, under different circumstances, hard-
ships might arise, all this accommodation must
count for nothing, and new schools be built for
children every one of whom is already receiving a suffi-
cient education. Even if there are neither Dissenters, nor
Roman Catholics, nor Secularists in a given parish, the
School Board will still be obliged to build another school
for the education of the children—all of whom belong
to the Church of England—unless the managers of the
existing school will consent to provide for the possible
advent of Dissenting scholars. We do not say that the
League is wrong in this. To make the imposition of
conscience clause dependent on the presence in
the district of children whose case is not met by
any of the existing denominational schools would
be to minister to the tyranny of school managers,
by giving them a motive for coercing parents over whom
they Lave influence into falsely declaring themselves of
the same religion with the parson, or the squire, or the

,reat manufacturer. A very large expenditure of public
money would be justified if it were indispensable to the
redress of a grievance, even though the actual sufferers
under it might be few. But the League will do well to
uear in mind that a much smaller outlay will be plausibly
objected to if the object of incurring it be simply to ensure
the theoretical completeness of an undenominational
scheme.

The Daily News thinks Professor Huxley has rendered a
service not only to the education of Englishmen, but to
the good government of Ireland, in the lecture which he
has lately delivered on "The Forefathers and Forerunners
of the English People." Though he speaks of the English
people, he is thinking equally of the Irish, whom, indeed,
he does not admit to be ethnologically different. This
is not the common view. Religious prejudice no
longer interferes with the fair treatment of Ire-
land. In the lecture to which we have referred
Mr. Huxley combats the fact that the Irish
nation differs from the English as Celt from Saxon. Both
countries are inhabited by a mixed population, and a popu-
lation mixed of the same ingredients, but in diverse pro-
portions. These proportions vary, not in the two islands
only, but in the different parts of each island. We need
not follow Mr. Huxley through the learned argument in
which ho contends that between the Celt and the Teuten
there is no recognisable difference besides that of language.
It is sufficient for the political moral which he is anxious
to draw that no differences exist which wero not due to
physical and political causes, and which, therefore, do not
admit of being removed by counter-agencies of the
same order as those which have produced them. There is
no order of quacks more noxious than than the political
empirics who abuse an ignorance even greater than their
own when they appeal to "Anglo-Saxon" pride in a
fancied superiority over the " Celt," and declaim on the
ineradicable aversion of the Irish to law and order. This
charlatanry would receive its death-blow from Professor
Huxley if, unfortunately, it were not capable of living
without the brains which have been knocked out almost
as comfortably as it did with them.

The Standard says that the now Bishop of Exeter, what-
ever other qualifications he may have for his office, shews
himself to be possessed of a most alarming gift of speech.
He has delivered himself already of some dozen sot
orations in various parts of his diocese. At public dinners,
at schools of science, at working men's institutes, he is
most indefatigable, and, if a bishop could be justified by
talking alone, there can be no doubt that Dr. Temple
has established already a good claim to epis-
copacy. There is not much in these speeches beyond the
staple of the common Radical platitudes of the
day; nor is there much novelty in this combination of
broad politics with dull Evangelicism. If it is the Bishop
of Exeter's object to make us forget the passage in his
literary career for which he is indebted for all his celeb-
rity, and probably for his appointment, we admit that
there is a certain cleverness in his present policy. It is
difficult for people to believe that this profuse
and emotional orator, who is so fluent upon
the commonplaces of Christianity, and so full
of " goody " counsel to working men and to im-
perfect humrnity at large, can be the heresiarch
that his enemies have painted. One thing we have to
say, however, of Dr. Temple, and it is this. Up to the
present time, although he has made a great many appear-•
ances in public, and delivered numerous speeches, he has
not yet uttered one word by way of disclaimer of his past
doctrines and former associates. He has spoken on every
subject but this. He has not even fulfilled the kind
of pledge which he made to some of his corres-
pondents, that after his elevation to the bishopric he
would offer some explanation as to the religious opinions
which he advocated in " Essays and Reviews." He has
been assiduous in cultivating the working men, and in
making himself generally popular in his diocese, but he
has carefully avoided all utterance upon the one point in
which the Church has a right to be curious. Therefore,
all all that has been said against his appointment still
holds good, nor has the Bishop of Exeter yet justified either
himself or his creators.

The Telegraph declares that in these days the celebra-
tions of mechanics' institutes, and the prize distributions
of science and art schools, have become events of the most
commonplace kind; but every now and then we have a
bright example, to teach us e converse how such occasions
of popular pleasure and enlightment are too often
thrown away. On Saturday evening Dr. Temple
handed the prizes of the season to the Ply-
mouth School of Science and Art, and he im-
proved the opportunity by preaching one of those
lay sermons which emphatically and efficiently proclaim
" the religion of common life." Catching the humour of
his audience by some pleasant if familiar jocularities on
the fondness of Englishmen for grumbling at themselves,
their customs and institutions, the Bishop of Exeter pro-
ceeded to affirm that English grumbling was invariably
the prelude to action and reform; and he applied
the conclusiOn to shew the groundless character of
the recent fear, that Belgian and French products
would, in certain branches of industry, drive us
out of the world's markets. Dr. Temple's assurance
is, that, having had our grumble out, we have ever applied
ourselves with all our might to make good the defects for
which we censured ourselves ; so that, in the end, we havo
recovered any lee-way that might be lost by an accidental
laggardness in the march of improvement. Never-
theless,
there is ample room for the Bishop's
consequent warning, to guard against the causes of our
transient defeat by so perfecting the education
of our artisans that they shall be not merely
mechanical and restricted parts in a huge labour-machine,
but each a self-acting and self-adjusting power, with an
independent and yet a collective action, in which
economy of force shall be the first principle. Dr.
Temple admirably expresses the industrial need of
the day in the terse Saxon formula, that a man

" should thoroughly master principles; that, when he is
at work, he should know not only what to do, but why
is done." Yet, practical and worldly as the advice

may seem, it is also in the highest sense religious ; for
does it not simply apply to the time the old and high in-
junction," Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with
all thy might?;' The new Bishop excellently began his
work as "overseer "—Episcopus—by his strong, clear
pounsels to the workpooplo of Plymouth on the daily
business of their lives; for least of all men is he blind to
the fact that the action of influences between religious
belief and daily bliaineaa to not all from above) dowa-
waNts.