The Sun.
London, England, 1834-01-28 00:00:00

like sensible men, who know in what manner
they can make their immense power subservient
to the ends they have in view.—Morn. Chown.
The clergy and laity of the Church of Eng-
land are zealously and admirably performing
their duty, by showing to the world that they
will be no parties to any scheme of Church
reform which meddles with the doctrines, ritual,
discipline, or internal polity of the Church not
having the entire approbation, announced in a
manner the most formal and authoritative, of
the proper guardians and representatives of that
great and beneficent national establishment, but
that to any scheme of Church reform destitute
of this essential claim to support and confidence
they will oppose a calm, steady, and determined
resistance. There are two articles in our paper
this day to which we refer with equal pride
and satisfaction, as they attest the fact that the
sons and disciples of the Church are prepared
to withstand any assault upon her doctrines,
privileges, and endowments, and as they esta-
blish by irrefragable argument that the rights of
the Church cannot be assailed without invalidating
and effacing the title to every description of pro-
perty. The articles to which we allude are the
address of the clergy of the diocese of Glou-
cester to their pious and venerable Bishop,
with the excellent and appropriate answer it re-
ceived from that learned and virtuous Prelate ;
and the extract we have made from the admirable
letter to Lord Althorp on Church Reform by
the Rev. J. Gate. We have no such vanity as
to suppose that anything we can say could in-
crease the interest with which our readers will
refer to the interchange of sentiment between
the Bishop of Gloucester and the Clergy of his
diocese, and we therefore simply refer them to
the report of these important and valuable com-
munications. In reading them it is almost im-
possible not to feel for the moment a confident
assurance that the Church, which can boast such
advocates and champions, must, in spite of Mi-
nisterial or radical enmity, be entirely safe. But
the experience of other countries and of our own
forbid us to indulge the anticipation that a
religious establishment can be maintained in op
position to irreligious assailants by dint merely
of the zeal and the piety of its instructors and
disciples. The sophistical assailant must be-met
by men who will engage with him in strenuous
controversy, and oppose him with weapons of a
keener edge and truer temper than any which
he can wield. Such a champion of the Church
is the Rev. Gentleman a specimen of whose ad-
mirable work we this day submit 'to our readers.
The pretence that Church property is public
property—a pretence which, under a great
variety of forms, has always constituted the whole
argumentative stock in trade of those who have
sought to despoil the Church, while they pro-
fessed to reform it—this pretence is exposed and
repelled completely and triumphantly in the
very able argument to which we refer. It is
there conclusively shown that the property of
the Church is not public property, unless the
whole land of the kingdom be public property
also ; that every portion of it is inseparably
blended with individual rights ; and that those
individual rights are' more ancient in their
origin, and more substantial in their foundation,
than the right of any other class of private
proprietors in the country to their possessions.
It has been foolishly assumed that in dealing
with the temporalities of the Church the rights
of property will be sufficiently attended to if the
life interests of actual incumbents are maintained
inviolate. A more erroneous notion it is impos-
sible to conceive. In every instance the dignities
and benefices of the Church include property in
reversion as well as property in possession. The
lands and houses appropriated to the maintenance
of Episcopal Sees and of Chapters have been
alienated from the property of the Crown upon
the plainly understood condition that they shall
remain for ever unimpaired, and that the Sove-
reign shall have the right of appointment to the
ecclesiastical dignities which convey a right to
the enjoyment of the rents and profits for life.
The lands which once belonged to the Sovereign,
and which now belong to the Church, can be
resumed upon no principle which would not
justify, and even require, the resumption of all
the land which the Kings of England have
ever granted to individuals. The same thing,
mantis inutandis, may be said of all private
endowments, whether cathedral or parochial,
where the right of appointment or presentation
has been reserved. It is evident, also, that, as
respects the property of the church, there are
an infinity of remote and contingent rights,
which cannot be invaded without the greatest
injustice, and for which it would be impossible
to establish any scale of compensation. The
whole property of the church may, in fact, be
said to be private property. The incumbent of
a living or of a dignity has a life interest, form-
ing a proportion of the property. Another
portion resides in the King, the Corporation,
or the individual who has the right of presen-
tation. In many cases, with respect, for in-
stance, to College livings, there may be an in-
choate right in a boy on the lowest form of a
country grammar school. In many cases there
is an inchoate right in a boy from the very mo-
ment of his birth. There is no end to the va-
rious shades and degrees in which the rights
of property are blended with the endowments
and internal polity of the Church. The King, '
as a corporation sole, is a large proprietor, and
including what belongs to this Corporation, it
may truly be said that every particle of the en-
dowments and revenues of the Church is private
property, and that the Legislature has no right
to touch it, unless upon the clearest reasons of
public advantage, and not even then without
providing full compensation to the parties who
may be injured by its interference. We oppose
the revenues of Canterbury to those of Woburn ;
the tithes of a parochial clergyman to the snug
box and garden of a retired citizen ; the just
and legal expectations of the youth at our &l-
ieges to the chances upon which other young
men may hiirly calculate as to what their fathers
shall please to leave them ; and we do not
.
those
scruple to
declare
tinos
of property is to be
assailed,
the opinion, that
if one
sailed of,
descriptions
the other will not be long secure, and ought not
to be secure for a day.—Morning Post.

On the 21st inst. An old woodman, with his
daughter and one of his sons, was at work in the forest,
near the river Vesles, which divides the departments of
the Aisne and the Marne, when another son, aged about
48, came, anti having. picked a quarrel with his father, at
length struck him with violence on the head with a
chet. The daughter fled in terror, screaming fir assist-
ance, and was followed by tile ruffian, who also gave her
a blow with the hatchet, laid her senseless on the ground,
and afterwards made his way towards the river, with the
intent of drowning himself; but whether be accomplished
his object is doubted, from the overflowing of the river
preventing him from reaching the deep stream. The old
man, who is 78, and his daughter, were conveye I to ti e
hospital. Hope', are entertained that his life may be saved,
but hers is despaired of.--Frencli Paper.