The Sun.
London, England, 1851-03-20 00:00:00

THE SUN,

that this periodical enumeratiorfof the number of inha-
bitants is the only secure means afforded to a Govern-
ment of carrying on a wholesome system both of legis-
lation and administration. Without acquiring some
precise knowledge of the extent of the masses whose
interests are entrusted to their keeping, the statesmen
of a great commonwealth can never conduct the
labours of the Government with anything like an
adequate regard to its requirements. It has there-
fore been arranged, almost from time immemorial,
that the responsibilities of the rulers of the earth
shall be aided towards their fulfilment by a census
taking place at intervals—at least such has almost in-
variably been the case in every land blessed with the
advantages of civilization. As far back as the time
immediately preceding the Christian era, we learn
from the solemn records of Holy Writ, that such
was the custom prevalent in Judaea, then under
Roman and Pagan domination. It is re-
lated by each of the four Evangelists, that
MARY and JOSEPH at the period of the Nativity
were overtaken in Bethlehem by that tremendous
event while proceeding to inscribe their names upon
the census-list—" the whole world," according to the
language cf the Scriptures, then hastening " to be
enrolled." So it was, more or less, before the com-
mencement of the age of Christianity—so it has been,
more or less, from the epoch of its first establishment.
Considering the immense numerical increase in the
human family in modern times, it is assuredly far
from surprising that the expenses of taking a census
have very considerably increased. Nevertheless, with
this necessary increase in expenditure, we have acquired
a greater facility than was perhaps ever before possessed
of obtaining a truthful knowledge of the numbers
of the population. The machinery of society has
been so far perfected by enterprise and industrial ap-
plication that no very considerable difficulty exists
now-a-days of obtaining any class of facts whatever.
Let it be remembered that in the daily records of
England—her newspapers—the future historian will
be able to trace every species of particulars relating
to our public or domestic life as a people, and the
gist of our observation will be apparent. Journalism
is so far acting as the pioneer of history. Looking
back from the distance of one or more centuries to
the present generation, the annalist may, through the
mouldy old volumes of newspapers stored away in the
cellars of the British Museum, learn with the utmost
precision imaginable data in abundance, which we find
it scarcely possible to scrape together in shreds and
patches from the chronicles of our departed ancestors.
They will there be enabled to calculate to a fraction
the cost of our food and our raiment, the wages of
our labourers, the extent of our imports, the preva-
lence of insolvency or otherwise, with all the fluctua-
tions in capital and interest, in commercial hope and
despair, in the relative and even shifting proportions of
employment and its compensation. From these ma -
nifold details a just estimate may be arrived at 33 to
the actual prosperity or sufferings of the community.
With the assistance of the regulations and systems
acted upon in all the political and mercantile under-
takings of the empire, the census now resolved upon
by the Legislature may be rendered almost faultless
in its minute exactitude. Nothing, indeed, is re-
quired to secure this advantage to it but the cordial
and conscientious co-operation of the people them-
selves in filling up the printed forms of the calculation.
Against the wilful misstatements of the unscrupulous
of course our rulers have no protection whatsoever•
The truthfulness of the facts written down by the
head of every household it is compelled perforce to
leave to their own ideas of right or wrong. Seeing,
however, that no conceivable advantages can be de-
rived from an erroneous filling up of the census-list,
it may assuredly be counted upon with something
like certainty that the facts collected together are
precise and veritable.
It will remain with the properly constituted
authorities to estimate the exact state of the
nation, after obtaining the aggregate num-
bers of the census. The difficulty of accom-
plishing thus much may not be conjectured by
many individuals. In order to acquire any adequate
notion of the progress made of late years by the people
of the United Kingdom it will be necessary to examine
other documents besides the lists of the census—it
will be necessary, for example, to compare those
lists with the records elsewhere accumulated by
the Registrar-General and the Inspectors of Emi-
gration, the amount of the annual mortality
and the number of those who have periodically left
our shores, being carried away to other countries in
the great game of colonization. Without the due col-
' lation of these very different catalogues of the dead, the
living, and the emigrants, without contrasting them
carefully with each other, no correct idea of the ad-
vance made by the nation can possibly be obtained.
In order that all this may be properly cared for
sufficient time must be permitted to those entrusted
with the labour before the Parliamentary documents
referring to the new census can be printed for cir-
culation.

From these and other considerations having a like
tendency, we cannot but think that a proceeding
of the nature referred to should have the witty motto
festina lente for its guidance. Precipitation in the
matter would effect but little good, tied might result
in an incalculable amount of evil. Therefore it is that
we are solicitous no needless haste should be shown
in carrying out the scheme to an unnecessarily rapid
completion. And we feel satisfied at the same mo-
ment that every intelligent advocate for retrench-
ment in the expenditure of public moneys in the
national service will coincide with us in regarding
the census as a proper object for the display of a
liberality amounting even to munificence. Its im-
portance is such, we conceive, as to justify dis-
bunements which made for a different purpose
might be judiciously stigmatised as extravagant. No
sane well-wisher of the country can grudge for an in-
stant one single fraction of the sums granted by the
House of Commons for the compilation of a series of
papers which may be looked upon as being literally
an index to the social, commercial, political, moral,
and religious wants of the community. As consti-
tuting such an index we anticipate the completion of
the new census about to be taken in the United
Kingdom with no small degree of curiosity and
solicitude.

Of the burthens upon land, the copyhold tenure,
the almost sole existing remnant of the feudal laws,
will be found, when correctly understood, one of the
greatest. It is a mistaken notion that the lords of
manors would be prejudiced by abolition on the
terms proposed—full compensation for their rights ;
indeed, a majority of the lords derive such small pro-
fits from their manors that, as great landowners, they
would be benefited by an immediate abolition even
without compensation. The opposition to abolition
,emanates from the combined co-operation of a body of
farmers and speculators, mere traders in the litigation
and extortions that may be worked out of ill-defined,
absurd laws, affording great opportunities for all the
chicaneries of heartless men who can trade upon the
timidity and necessities of others.

The lords, generally speaking, however, as great
landowners, must be great sufferers from the extreme
complexity of the innumerable cedes of laws. In
the acquisition of a house, or a portion of a
garden, it is not unusual for the purchaser
to have the investigation of several titles.
Lands copy hold of different manors are so intermixed
with freehold that even in parts round London—in
Richmond, Twickenham, Stepney, Islington—an
enormous tax is paid in the investigation of titles as
to what, from the negligence or incapacity of stewards,
there is in truth at last no certainty. The land at
Holloway, on which so many thousands are now being
expended by the City in the erection of a new prison,
was part of a manor in which, for ninety years, the
admissions on descent were taken by the lord accord-
ing to common law ; but a few years before the pur-
chase by the City it was discovered that the ancient
and binding custom was borough English. In the
adjoining manor the custom is gavelkind—so that, if
a man b partitallarly lucky he may become possessed
of a house or garden in Islington, gcverned by and
descending according to three different codes of laws.
This is no stretch of the imagination as to the ab-
surdity of the law of England as to lands. The
Castle House at Bungay is held of three manors ; and
a church in Hertfordshire was for a long time, and
may be now, unconsecrated because it was built on a
piece of land at the junction of three manors.
known only to professional men in the
The lords, as great landowners, suffer to a
degree
pur-
settlement,
doe, mortgage, and all other traneac-

tions relating to land. The Court of Chancery
will not sanction the purchase of an estate, howsoever
large, out of a fund held upon trust for investment in
land, if there be any portion of it copyhold.
The present LORD CHIEF JUSTICE and the late Sir
ROBERT PEEL, ten years ago, denounced the copy-
hold laws as the remnant of a barbarous age. The
celebrated horses Waxy and Smolensko were seized
as heriots—a custom which arose from the mere
practice in ancient times of a present to the lord
from the copyholder on his succession to an estate,
and Sir ROBERT'S celebrated picture of" Le Chapeau
de Paille" would have been subject to seizure as his
best chattel, for a heriot on a trumpery bit of copy-
hold land, if he had not bought up the whole manor.
As an amendment of the law, the mere abrogation of
the thousands of codes overrunning the whole land,
and the consequent reduction of the law of real pro-
perty to one well-linown system, usually denominated
freehold, would be the greatest and most ready of all
reforms, and be quite free from the great difficulty
in all other legislation, that of creating new questions
upon a new code. Moreover, it is hard to under-
stand how a perfect system of registration of deeds of
freehold lands can be brought into due operation,
whilst a large quantity of copyhold land, capable of
identification, lies intermixed therewith.

But the enfranchisement of copyholds is opposed
by Mr. GOULBURN and Mr. HENLEY. They opposed
Mr. AGLIONBY'S Bill last year, and being defeated on
the general principle, they came forward in the cha-
racter of friends of the poorer copy holder, and with the
aid of some stragglers who profess enfranchisement
to their constituents, but love the importance and pa-
tronage of lordship of manors, gave the Bill a stab in
the back by an amendment that enfranchisement
should only be compulsory on lords on the applica-
tion of three-fourths of the copyholders, which they
well knew would place enfranchisement entirely at
the will of the lord.

The enfranchisement of the lands of tithes has been
one of the moat successful acts of modern legislation.
The enfranchisement of copybold lands and the con-
sequent exemplification of the law of real property,
will not be the less creditable, and seems a necessary
accompaniment to the law for the registration of
deeds.

The lords of manors, as great landowners, have had
legislation all their own way from the time of CIIARLES
IL, when in the plentitude of power they cast off
their own fines and burthens to the Crown at the ex-
pense of the nation, by the grant of an hereditary
excise on the beverages of the people, the first of the
excise laws, and their refusal to extend to the copy-
holders and the community in respect of copyholds
the like enfranchisement and principle of legislation
they have exercised for their own advantage in the
case of tithes must be dangerous, and their friends
will render them great service by compelling them to
sanction the compulsory principle of enfranchisement
recommended, on the motion of the late Sir ROBERT
PEEL, by the report of a Select Committee of the
House of Commons as long back as 1838.

THE FRENCH REPUBLIC.

We have received the Paris journals of yesterday.
It will be recollected that some time since the
Archbishop of PARIS addressed a pastoral letter to
his clergy, recommending them to abstain from poli-
tical agitation. The Bishop of Chartres, M. CLAU.
SEL DB COUSSERGUES, has issued a pastoral, in which
he attacks in terms which appear to have been
culled from the vocabulary of our own PIIILLPOTTS,
the pastoral of the Archbishop of PARIS. Unlike the
Archbishop of CANTERBURY, however, the Arch-
bishop of PARIS does not chose to submit to the vul-
gar insolence of his suffragan, and he has accordingly
issued the following ordonnance :
" Whereas the Bishop of Chartres, by his pastoral
letter of the 12th inst., addressed to the clergy of his
diocese, has, in contempt of all hierarchical order, at-
tacked an act of our jurisdiction, by which we traced
out to our clergy the line of conduct which they were
to follow in political affairs; and whereas he formally or-
dered that his letter should be published in our diocese
through the medium of the public journals; and whereas
if it were permitted to each bishop to meddle in the in-
ternal administration of other dioceses, and by docu-
ments published in other dioceses, to censure measures
of pure discipline, episcopal authority would be anni-
hilated, the bonds of obedience dissolved, and the go-
vernment of the Church rendered impossible; whereas,
moreover, in the same letter, the Bishop of Chartres
imputes to us pernicious errors and doctrines, of which
there is no trace in our pastoral letter; whereas, this
attack directed against our jurisdictional authority, and
this forgetfulness of all respect for our dignity as Metro-
politan, as well as the scandal which results from it, will
not allow us to be silent on the subject, however we
might desire to be so on account of the great age and
the virtues of our suffragan; looking at all these reasons
we refer to the Provincial Council of Paris, which will
be held this year, the pastoral letter of the 12th March,
1851, of the Bishop of Chartres."
• _

This pastoral of the Bishop of CHARTRES is repro-
bated by every organ of public opinion except the
Univers, the writers in which avow their desire to see
the Inquisition revived and the massacre of St. Bar-
tholomew re-enacted. In speaking of this pastoral
the Presse says--
" There are two religions, as there are two lines of
politics; the one which God has made and which con-
stantly tends to elevate man, to perfect him, to ennoble
him by liberty, by labour, by instruction, and by ag-
grandisement in social life, in material as in moral order;
the other, which has been disfigured by ignorance and
by egotism, and which has for object to oppress and
stifle all noble instincts, all legitimate aspirations, and all
generous ideas, by proscribing hope, glorifying intole-
rance, and proclaiming the eternity of servitude and
of misery. The pastoral letter of the Bishop of Char-
tres is a reply to that of the Archbishop of Paris.
The two religions are opposed to each other in this
struggle between two pontiffs. In reality it is only the
field of battle which is changed. The contest which
has just arisen in the church is also that which divides
politics into two camps: on the one side force, or
authority; on the other, right, or liberty. We sin-
cerely think that the ideas which we defend can only
gain by being thus raised above purely worldly interests
into the domain of spiritualism. The more closely poli.
t;cal truth approaches moral truth, the more it is visible
and powerful. We therefore eagerly open our columns
to this controversy. Oar readers may remember the
Christian-like manifesto of M. Sibour; let them now
real that of M. Clausel Coussergues, and compare
them. The opinions developed in this pastoral letter are
such that neither religion nor politics, neither good sense
nor conscience, can allow to pass without reprove!. We
protest against such abominable impiety."
The Ordre, the organ of the ODILON BARROT
party, says— . _ _

" It will be remembered that, in a recent pastoral, the
Archbishop of Paris, in developing the rules of conduct
prescribed for priests in political matters by the last
Provincial Council, reminded his flock, in the noblest
terms, of the accomplishment of certain duties, such as
respect for the laws, love of country, and charity to
the poor. Mgr. do Chartres, one of the most zealous
representatives of that fraction of the Catholic party
of which the Univers is the organ, does not think fit
to adopt certain opinions put forth by the Arch-
bishop in the document above alluded to. He does
not merely suggest his doubts in a confidential and
respectful manner to his ecclesiastical superior, but he
publishes a protest addressed to the clergy of the diocese
of Chartres, and entitled, Pastoral letter, containing
observations on the last pastoral letter of the Archbishop
of Paris.' If this proceeding on the part of the Bishop
of Chartres is to be regretted, as showing the dissen-
sions existing in the church, it is still more so, on the
ground that it exhibits certain dignitaries of the Catho-
lic clergy in direct opposition to ideas which arc in strict
conformity with the spirit of Christianity."
The Moniteur, under the head of " Communicated,"
contains the following :—" The details given by the
Messager de l' Assemblie and other journals respecting
what passed in a late sitting of the Council of State,
when the law on the responsibility of Ministers was
put on the order of the day, are altogether erroneous,
especially the language attributed to the President of
the Council of State. The truth is, that when the
Minister requested a few days' delay to consider the
project drawn up by the section of legislation, the
adjournment was at once voted unanimously by the
Council."

The Sixteenth Committee of Parliamentary Initia-
tive yesterday resumed the discussion on the proposi-
tion of M. ST. BEUVE for remodelling the customs
duty tariff on the free•trade principle. M. GREVY
declaredthat, without adopting to its full extent•the pro-
position under discussion, he considered it deserving of
being taken into consideration, as there were ques-
tions involved in it which merited a favourable solu-
tion. He expressed himself opposed to the pro-
tective system as now established, which, he said,
had no other result than to paralyze manufactures
and lessen consumption, and maintained that the
agricultural interest ha-1 everything to gain by
the application of a liberal system of custom duties.
M. Lansur expressed his opinion that the discussion
of the proposition would cause too much perturba-
tion among the manufacturing interests, and that it
would be more prudent to reject it. The existing
state of affairs in his opinion, required that the
status quo should be maintained. M. HOVYN-TRAN.
CHERE advocated the proposition being taken into
consideration, as it was important to decide whether
free-trade principles should be adopted, or whether
the system of protection should be continued, to the
manifest injury of the shipping interests, and the in-
ternational commerce of the country. The Com-
mittee, after some further discussion, decided against
taking the proposition into consideration.
The Assembly yesterday voted the second reading '
of the spgm Duties Bill by a large majority.