The Sun.
London, England, 1870-06-22 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, WE EVENING JUNE 22. 1870.

OPERAS, THEATRES, AND AMUSEMENTS.

ROYAL ITALIAN OPERA, Covent-garden.—Le Nozze di Figaro,
8.30 p.m.
HAYBIARIKET—At Seven, Married Life. Home. Family Jars.
A DELPIII—At Seven, The Robust Invalid. Free Labour
PRINCE OF WALEs's—At 7.30. Quito by Accident. M.P. Dearest
Mamma.
LYCEUM—At 7.30, His Own Rival, Breaking the Spell. At 8.80,
Little Faust.
OLYMPIC -At Seven, Music hath Charms. At 8, Mary Warner.
Ile 'Varsity Boat Race.
GAIETY—At Seven, First Night The Princess of Trobizonde.
QUEEN'S—At Seven, My Wife's Dentist: 'Twist Axe and Crown.
VAUDEVILLE—Cupboard Love. Two Roses. Don Carlos.
ST. JAMES'S—At Seven, Paul Pry. La Belle Sauvage
WOODIN'S CARPET-BAG AND SKETCH Ilf,( K. Egyptian Hall, Pie
cadilly, every hivening (except Saturday), at 8; Saturday Morn
tugs at 3. Admission is, 2s, 3s.
CHRISTY MINSTRELS, St. James's Hall, Every Night, at 8 ; Wed-
nesdays and Saturdays, at 3 and 8 all the year round.
Zo LOGICAL GARDENS, Regent's-park. Open daily .except Sun-
days). Admission, Is.; on Mondays, 6d. Children under
twelve, 6d.
lIAIIAME TUSSAUD'S EXHIBITION, Baker-street, from 11 a.m. till
3.0 p.m., and from 7 till 10 p.m. Admission, Is.; extra
6d.

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EVENING EDITION.

or another to guarantee that their rolling stock
will under no circumstances whatever give way. Nor
does it follow that the breaking of the axle should
necessarily involve the transference of the whole train
to the wrong line. Even the old moral
against excursion trains is hardly to be
enforced in this case, for the carriages which
were-dragged into the mass of goods waggons might
have been filled themselves with goods or with ordi-
nary passengers. The tact that the train was of an
irregular character seems to have been in no way the'
cause of the calamity. Nevertheless it is true that an ac-
cident to these excursion trains is in vari ably,fro m their
crowded state, productive of the most fatal results;
they are intruders upon the line ; they hamper and
endanger the ordinary traffic; and undoubtedly the
railway policy of the future will be wisely directed
to getting rid of them altogether, and substituting
lower fares.

THE House of Commons had the opportunity of
hearing during the early portion of Monday night's
sitting two remarkable speeches. They were alike
in earnestness and eloquence, but they were as much
unlike in principle as the speakers were unlike in
their antecedents. There is no abler representative
of nonconformity in the House than Mr.
HENRY RICHARD ; there is no more thorough
representative of the great bulk of English
churchmen than Mr. GATHORNE HARDY. The
two have had widely different careers. The first was
brought up as a Dissenting Minister, and followed
that vocation until a very recent date, when in con-
sequence of his gift of speech and undeniable ability
in other ways, he was chosen by the populous con-
stituency of Merthyr Tydfil, in preference to the
HOME SECRETARY. The second is and has long
been a country gentleman. Representing at first a
little agricultural borough, he has for the last five
years been the member for the most distinguished
constituency in the world, and during that
time has advanced with rapid steps to the foremost
rank in Parliament, and is now in fact, though not
as yet in name, the leader of the Conservative party
in the Lower House. But on Monday night the
position ordinarily taken by the two parties was re-
versed. Mr. RICHARD, who, as a Nonconformist,
should have been unhesitatingly in favour of religious
liberty, delivered a long argument against it.
Mr. HARDY, who belongs to a party not con-
spicuous for its attachment to that prin-
ciple, made an appeal on behalf of it
so powerful that, henceforth, he must rank among
the very foremost orators of the day. Nor did Mr.
RICHARD'S speech want eloquence, awl, granting his
premisses, a considerable amount of logical force.
But it was vitiated throughout by one fallacy, the
assumption that in aiding schools where religion is
taught, the State teaches religion. This is the error
held by many Dissenters, and yet if there is
any truth in it at all, the State must not give any aid
to education whatsoever, because in . doing so it
indirectly teaches religion. A. child cannot read a
catechism or the Bible before it is taught to read,
and therefore in giving money to enable the child
to be taught reading, the State is really aiding the
teaching of the Scriptures, or, it may be. the catechism
of Pope Pius. It cannot be too, clearly
understood that under the new system—the system
of a time table conscience clause, and undenomina-
tional inspection, the State will not teach religion,
or be responsible for it in any way. Religion may
be taught, but the .Government grant will be given
irrespectively of the religion, and all that the state
does is to see that no child shall be deprived of
education on account of religious differences.
Beyond this it dares not go—it cannot go.
It is satisfactory to find that Mr. RICHARD does not
get all the support in this matter which he might
have expected. With some hardihood he quoted the
opinions of Mr. BAINES against denominational
education, and, of course, drew down npon
him the retort that Mr. BAINEs had
recanted those opinions. Mr. SAMUEL MonLEY
is another leading Nonconformist who has no sym-
pathy with the new alliance between Dissent and
Secularism. He hit the right mark when he ex-
pressed his extreme dislike of any interference with
the freedom to teach religion. The idea of forcibly
driving forth religion from the fifteen thousand
schools which religion had mainly established was
repugnant to him. It was well to hear those words,
coming from the Liberal benches. Of late it has
seemed as if the advocacy of the first principles of
civil and religious liberty rested with the Conserva-
tive party. It is, perhaps, not difficult to understand
why this should be. We forbear to say that we may
not increase the evil. But one thing is clear, that if
private antipathies or class jealousies are allowed to
obstruct the progress of the Education Bill this year
the scandal will be deplorable, and the responsibility
of those who cause it will be grave indeed.
It is satisfactory to find that the Government have
decided upon two points : they will not undertake
the trouble of inventing a religion that shall please
everybody and displease no one, and they will not
not consent to further changes in their bill. The
first task would be like that of weaving ropes of
sand. If the League chooses to object, it can make
out everything to be sectarian teaching. If the
League holds its peace there is no difficulty in the
matter. Theoretically the religious difficulty
is insurmountable, for the New Testament
is a denominational formula, to the Jew and the
whole bible is a denominational formula to the
infidel. Theoretically the schoolmaster cannot even
refer to our LORD'S history without inculcating
dogma, because, exclude creeds and catechisms as
carefully as we may, we must come at last to the
fundamental question is CHRIST GOD or only
man ? Practically the religious difficulty does
not exist. They say this who have the best
reason for knowing what they say, the teachers
and the managers of the schools who have been
labouring for a generation, for scores of years before
the Birmingham League, in the plentitude of its
wealth, and in its eagerness for notoriety,
began to agitate for secular education. Finding that
the nation is all against them, the League has changed
the demand to " unsectarian" education, knowing
well that though they have changed the word in order
to catch the Nonconformists, they mean the same
thing, and that thing is what they will not get, the
veto of the State upon all religious teaching in
schools aided by the State. •

In the House of Lords the Married Women's
Property Bill, after being read a third time, was re-
ferred to a Select Committee. In the House of
Commons Mr. Miall resumed the debate on
the Educationll. He denounced the ac-
tion of the Government as moral coercion.
11Ir. Vernon Harcourt strenuously opposed it.
At seven o'clock the debate was adjourned on
the Motion of INlr. Dixon. Mr. Somerset Beaumont
asked leave to bring in a bill to relieve Bishops from
attendance in Parliament. Mr. Gladstone opposed
the motion, which, on a division, was lost by a majo-
rity of 158 to 102.

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

of certain of the undergraduates it vtas thougth
would weigh heavily upon the spirits of those in no
way implicated in it themselves. Happily, however,
the counteracting influence of Lord Salisbury's
inauguration as Chancellor, cleared away any fear
upon the matter, and the whole day passed off with
what Mrs. Brown (as if it were a crab she were talk-
ing of would call " a claw, as the sayin' is," or with
what Mr. l3raham, the vocalist, used to speak of
as " entuzimuzzy." This • year, not the man in
the, white bat but the man in the white coat, was
the object of the undergraduates' abhorence. " Yah !
Turn him out ! Take it off ! Go out, sir ! Go away !
Will some one kindly lead that man out ? White
coat, yah ! Will you go out, sir ? Now's
your chanee, sir ! They're making way for you !
You must go out, you know ! " and so forth, indi-
cated the execration with which the arch offender
was regarded. Every instrument almost in the or-
chestra was imitated noisily. Three groans were
given to Blackwood— derision to Beales—
the heartiest applause to Ruskin—hisses
to the Prince of Wales, and the
loudest . cheers to the Princes. , Then came the
enrollment of the scarlet-gowned D. C.L.'s,
among whom were especially noticeable the Duke
of Argyll, Gen€ral Peel, Sir Edwin Landseer, Sir
William Armstrong, Sir Francis Grant, and Mr.
Matthew Arnold. Altogether the day passed off
gloriously—Oxford sustaining its reputation to the
full.

"BLACKWOOD " AND THE " STANDARD."

There must be something wrong in the inner con-
stitution of the Tory party when such savage
antagonism is displayed between the leading Tory
magazine and the leading Tory newspaper. The
war between the Standard and Blackwood is 'scarcely
kept within the limits of decency. It all arose
out of the famous review of " Lothair " in Black-
wood. This criticism excited the vehement wrath
of the journal. The magazine, in its note just pub-
lished, makes a bitter retort, sneering at the
Standard's bad English. The Standard replies that
the note is obviously a .were trade advertisement—
resorted to with a view of impressing upon the public
that Blackwood's Magazine, by reason of its brilliant
review of Mr. Disraeli's book, has attained to the
unwonted honour of a second edition—and is
marked with all the coarseness, flippancy, and scur-
rility of the original article, There cannot be the
slightest doubt that the note and the article are pre-
cisely in the same spirit, and that therefore the at-
tack upon Mr. Disraeli must have been deliberately
planned. The Standard is careful to show that the
party generally has no sympathy with such an assault
in a political sense, :—" If it is possible to suppose
that there are any good Conservatives who are wear)
of Mr. Disraeli as a leader we are certain there are
none so base as to conceive the idea of getting rid of
him by traducing his character and deriding hit
talents. What Mr. Disraeli is, he was be•
fore he led the Conservative party. His defects,
his weaknesses, his peculiarities of genius and o
temperament, were known before he wrote
Lothair.' Nothing in that book can be said to have
rendered him unworthy of the confidence of the
party. Whatever be his literary merits, it is a
work which does not lower but rather heighten
Mr. Disraeli's political reputation. Nor is there
any justification whatever, either literary or
political, for the foul blow which has been dealt
at the author by those who, only a short time ago,
when Mr. Disraeli was at the height of power,
were impressed with a profound admiration of his
character."

against society on the part of the press cannot be
restrained by law."

UNORDAINED MINISTERS.

In formally admitting a layman to the office of
"reader," the Bishop of Peterborough has set a rare
example. It sometimes happens that laymen take
part in the ceremonies of the Church. Occa-
sionally the lessons are read by a clergyman's
unordained son, and sometimes any other
leading member of the congregation may render that
amount of assistance. , But by this formal act Dr.
Magee gives a definite sanction to a practice which
has never gained much acceptance. What was
formerly done on the clergyman's own responsibility
may now be done under the recognition of Cie head of
the see. Of course, the spread of such a precedent will
materially depend upon the views of the bishops and
their clergy. Where the views as to the sacerdotal
character of the clergy are high, it is not likely that
lay assistance of this kind will be much sought after,
but where more moderate opinions prevail the admis-
sion of the laity may become more general.