The Sun.
London, England, 1856-08-01 00:00:00

LONDON, FRIDAY, AUGUST 1, 1856.

The political horizon is cloudless. There is a
perfect calm on every side. Ministers exult in
the cessation of official labour, and the certainty
of six months' ease before an adverse division can
again disturb their serenity; while her MAJESTY'S
Opposition are scarcely less gratified at the enjoy-
ment of their holiday. Both have accomplished
their objects. The Government, compelled to re-
linquish the greater portion of the measures which
they brought forward, affect a satisfaction which
they cannot feel, and assert that the various pro-
positions will be materially improved by the de-
lay ; while the Opposition, excluded by their own
dissensions from any chance of office, are more
than contented with the havoc they made
amongst the Ministerial bantlings. All are
rejoiced at 'getting from the heat and dust
of the metropolis, to their country homes, and
the enjoyment of their own peculiar hobbies.
The state of the atmosphere too Invites to ease.
London exercises a centrifugal force, driving all
its inhabitants, who have the power of selecting
their own habitations, away from its heated
thoroughfares, where those alone who have sweltered
under the tropics can possibly endure existence.
Any invitation to action will not, under such
circumstances, be very cordially received ; and
yet we are obliged to call on every earnest Re-
former to exert himself zealously and indefatig-
ably if he desires to witness the success of the
measures which he deems essential to the welfare
and prosperity of the country. This is of all
others the time when the pressure from without
can best be applied. Hon. Gentlemen who have
committed no very flagrant breaches of promise
will hasten to meet their constituents, and to ren-
der the accounts of their respective stewardships.
They will have ample time to consider and reply
to every reasonable suggestion. When Parliament
is sitting they can put forward the pressure of
business as a plausible excuse for delay. But
such cannot be the case during the recess. And
it is by the preparations made at that time, the
Bowing of the political seed at the proper period,
that a goodly crop of fruit may be anticipated in
due season.
The last session was virtually a blank. Almost
every enactment worthy of notice was specially
alluded to in the Commissioners'.--we regret that
we cannot say "Royal "—Speech at the close of
the session, and the elaborate statement exhibited
the beggarly account in the clearest light. Apo-
logies have been freely made for the shortcomings
of the session. It was said that the termina-
tion of the War justified repose ; and that
we should rest contented at the cessation of our
belligerent labours, although all the enhanced
taxation is still enforced with unabated rigour.
Other excuses will be found for inaction
next year, unless the proper means be adopted to
stimulate the official faineants to some degree of
exertion.

It
ie, therefore, incumbent on every real Re-
former to bring forward his views without
delay. Agitation is the element indispens-
-able to succe,s. There are Parliamentary,
fiscal, financial, monetary, and legal changes
that must be brought forward when Parliament
re-assembles. What would be thought of the
husbandman who remained idle until the arrival
of the harvest ? It is to his skill and activity
dv.ring what may be called the dead season that
he owes his crop. Let Reformers profit by the
salutary lesson, and exert themselves when their
efforts can really be beneficial.

There are many measures which have been
postponed, and which, therefore, have vested
rights for consideration. The chances for mat-
ters that hare not already been before the House

are comparatively trivial, unless they have been

thoroughly discussed and excitement manifested
before the meeting of Parliament ; and it is this
discussion and excitement that we require from
those who profess themselves desirous of impor-
tant changes.

The whole taxation of the country must be re-
vised. Several of the war taxes will cease next
year ; and although the income tax, with all its
oppressive inequalities, will be continued to the
sth April, 1858, some modification will be indis-
pensable if they hope to have it continued beyond
that time.

Notice must also ba given to the Bank of
England. Something must be done respecting
the charter, which has been unduly continued
two years beyond the legitimate period. These
are matters that can no longer be procrastinated,
and to which the people of England should there-
fore at once direct their attention.

Release from the squabbles of the Ministeral
and Opposition benches enables us to take a some-
what wider glance than we have done for the last
six months, or to look a little more attentively
at topics more important than those of just the
passing hour. Amongst these none can be of
graver consequence, politically, as well as for its
own sake, than the course of English and Euro-
pean thought on the subject or subjects of Reli-
gious Toleration, Freedom, and Equality. Poli-
tical liberty or slavery has so uniformly gone hand
in hand with the same ecclesiastical conditions
that it is impossible not to recognise their close
connection ; and to this day, and in this country,
it is obvious that religious and political creeds
have a very close connection. As sea sand indi-
viduals among them believe in the spirit al powers
of the Priesthood, so, as the 'rule, do they
believe in the right Divine of Kings and Nobles,
and lean to an unquestioning obedience to
the powers that be. The limitations are
that individuals are often better than their
creed both in Church and State ; and that those
who believe in the supremacy of the Church,
whether governed by the POPE or by Anglican
" Successors of the Apostles," must appear in oppo-
sition to the Civil Government when CZESA.R, and
the POPE, or his Anglican substitutes, are in conflict.
Absolutists in their religious creed may, like Irish
Roman Catholics, become Radicals, when their
faith, or its head are placed at auy civil disad-
vantage ; the rule, however, is that rejection of
ecclesiastical and of political assumptions go to-
gether. The kernel of the Republic, on the first
overthrow of the Stuarts, was the Congregational
Independents and Baptists ; the strength of the
Stuarts, after the restoration, was the High
Church party; and in the American War of In-
dependence, the Puritans and Episcopalians were
respectively, as classes, the Republicans and the
Loyalists of the contest.
To all, therefore, who would look below the
very surface, and who are interested in the posi-
tion of civil liberty and of absolutism, the ad-
vances of religious independence or of priestcraft
will be always anxiously watched. The spirit of
Toryism mast ever sympathise more or less with
the triumph of the priest, and the spirit of Free-
dom with successful vindication of full religious
equality. For ourselves we distinguish but two
great classes in religious matters ; it is wholly out
of our province to judge of the merits of beliefs ;
but of the merits of a tendency to rely on the
authority of the priest, or on the results of con-
scientious inquiry, we have more to say.
The former tendency qualifies men for passive
obediefce, the latter for free action as citi-
zens of a free state. We are aware that
the captives of pricstcraft allege that it was
by an act of careful inquiry they were led to sell
their mental liberty ; hence, that they did,
once for all, exercise their right of
what is awkwardly termed private judgment.
It is not for us as politicians to discuss the consis-
tency of theological bondage with the spirit of
Christianity—we only know that experience, as
well as theory, shows that he who can arrive at the
conclusion that a priest has, for him, the keys of
thekingdc►nof Heaven, and that he may implicitly
submit to his authority, is just the man to take
an electoral tenantcy under auy Duke who believes
that he " may do what he will with his own ;"
and that the step is but an easy one indeed from
faith in absolute human authority in Divine
matters, to passive obedience in secular matters.
A glance at the world, at the Europe, or even the
England of the day, is proof enough of this. All
over the earth the Religious Freemen
are the Civil Freemen, and the serfs of
the Priest are the slaves of the Autocrat,
while in proportion as men are restless under
either bondage do they also endeavour to throw
off the other. "No Bishop, no King," said
JAMES I. "No Pope, no Autocrat," is the
Imperial dogma no R. In Russia, so essential is
the one kind of slavery to the other, that CZAR is
Pope and Emperor in one.
To glance first at our own country, how far do
the ecclesiastical tendencies of the day favour
hopes of advancing Freedom ? We think strongly.
For the last tea or twenty years we have all been
staggered with the advances of Puseyism, and the
very natural progress from PIISEY to the POPE,
from Oxford to Rome. As a foreign and well-
qualified observer, however, remarks, that fever is
cooling down ; partly it raged chiefly among senti-
mental ladies and juvenile clergymen, and partly
the great realities of the Eastern War gave all
classes something of graver importance to think
about than ecclesiastical mummeries, and pretti-
nesses, and dreams. Well, indeed, if we have
got as much as that out of a war for which we so
magnanimously saddled ourselves with all the cost
for nothing. Be that as it may, the compara-
tively subdued tone of Puseyite Bishops and cler-
gymen is sufficiently apparent, though the former
cannot relinquish their powers of obstruction in
the House of Lords, as the questions of marriage,
education, and the Jews have sufficiently shown
this session. Whether, now that the military
cloth will attract less attention, the graver colour
will more successfully renew its proselytising
attacks on the fair serrernains to be seen.

The fact, most hopeful, in our view, is the
incroa.sed activity of laymen in Church mat-
ters. This is due very much to the
exertions of the Dissenters. They have both
roused the Church, in mere self-defence, to
greater efforts, and, at the same time, resisted
further grants from the State ; hence the Church
has been driven to voluntary association, and to
depe ndenco on the contributions of the laity.
With: Englishmen it is almost • '1)1 to impossi esepa-
rate o mtribution and control; the result has been
ous associations within the Church itself,
in which the laity have much influence and
power, . The new churches and schools, pastoral,
aid sc ,cieties, and the like, all tend to give the
laity- in the Church of England a position they
have 4 not hitherto taken. Even a large section of
the .Convocationists demand a representation of
the laity, and understand that the people are at
lea'
it as essential a part of the Church as the
dic rg-y. In Scotland the purely voluntary
support of the Free Church must, it would
sE erra, be favourable to lay influence ;
th °ugh we cannot reason thus unconditionally,
4 ce Wesleyans are probably one of the most