The Sun.
London, England, 1834-08-11 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY, AUGUST 11, 1834.

country, are to be ground to dust. We hope their old
antagonists will be correspondingly grateful for the as-
sistance which they have given them in this trying
crisis. We hope they will, in their turn, be generous
enough not to halloo the Political Unions upon them
whenever they attempt again to creep up the heights
of power, or to set on their servile Press, to call
for the extinction of the. House of.. Lords—
whenever it dares to thwart the career of
their ambition. Yes, the Whigs have framed, and
their political opponents have supported, that Bill
which the Bishop of Exeter justly describes when he
says, " The tendency of the Bill in this part of its
enactments is to harden the heart of man—to increase
his selfishness to an intensity of which he was never yet
clieved capable—to confound practically his sense of
right and wrong—to completely deaden his moral
feeling ; and it told him, in effect, that, by an Act
of Parliament, he was released from the duty which
he owed to God as his Creator, and to man as his
fellow-creature. Such was the tendency, the moral'
tendency of the Bill ; and he would ask their
Lordships if they were prepared for such a mea-
sure ?—to make a sacrifice of every principle of justice
and humanity, and to play the tyrant over that fair and
helpless portion of the creation which it was their first
duty as men to protect I" Again said the eloquent
Prelate—and we repeat those sentiments, because we
think they ought to be engraven on the hearts of the
men of England—" If their Lordships were to pass the
Bill, they would, for the sake of morality,' have re-
duced a fellow-creature--aye, he should emphatically
repeat—they would have reduced a fellow-creature, one
who was the equal of the highest among them in the
eyes of the Father of All, to the condition of being
without either hope or fear in this world for her mis-
conduct. W7:3 that a desirable state of things to pro-
duce ? He feared that the great majority of women
who were reduced to that state, who were the mothers
of illegitimate children, merged into those depraved
classes, who would continue, under any circumstances,
to run their course -of crime. But, amongst those who
did suffer themselves to be led astray from the path of
virtue, it was only natural to suppose that there would
be some who, in spite of their error, would not have
lost every feeling of honour, who would still have about
them some lingering regard for the charm of self-respect,
some hope of that without which life was odious and
burdensome, the respect and esteem of others. With
such women the latent but un-extinguished feelings of
implanted honour would be perverted into guilty con-
flict with the best instincts of her nature, and their
Lordships should be prepared to hear of the mo-
ther's hand being raised against herself or against
her babe, rather than that she must endure the in-
evitable and lengthened shame and privation that must
be consequent upon her crime. When there was a pro-
bability of this occurring but in one case (and lie
solemnly declared that the foreknowledge of even
one such case would induce him to give this law of in-
justice every opposition in his power), when even one
solitary result might flow from a law founded upon that
monstrous principle of doing evil that good might come
of it, he confessed he shuddered at the idea of being a
participator in its enactment." But another of the
Prelates of our Church—the Bishop of London, did not
shudder at the consequences of reducing the Malthusian
doctrines into practice. Be that his fame as a minister
of the Gospel of Mercy l—his enemy could wish him no
other. This Learned Prelate, who was only supporting
the system to which he had already set his signature,
would have the bastardy laws abolished because perjury
is sometimes committed under them ; why so it is under
all our laws, civil and criminal. Men are sometimes
hanged upon perjured evidence ; sometimes acquitted.
If the Bishop of London's argument be worth anything,
it should go to the extent of justifying the abolition
of all our laws, civil and criminal ; for as the proceed-
ings of courts of justice daily show, perjury, to the
detriment of the property, the liberty, and even the
lives of men, is very often committed in their ad-
ministration. But, unfortunately for his argument,
the logical Bishop adduced instances under the bas-
tardy laws in which the perjury was not successful ;
showing that injustice is not always done, even in those
instances in which injustice is intended. As to the
Lord Chancellor, one of whose former speeches seemed
to strike at the root of the whole of that beautiful
system of social charity which used to be admired as
the peculiar ornament and pride of this country, lie did
not attempt to grapple with the speech of the Bishop
of Exeter, or with the powerful arguments of Lord
Wynford. He appealed, indeed, to France and Bel-
gium, and Ireland against the poor laws. France,
that swarms with vagrants, and in the capital of which,
in Paris, " the most polished city of the world," it has
been shown that one-third of the whole number of
yearly births is illegitimate. Now it cannot be the
poor laws that make the females so unchaste in
France, for they have none. And this practical ex-
ample shows, as well as that of Belgium, where also
the proportion of illegitimate births is exceedingly
great, that the repeal of the laws of bastardy will not
preserve the chastity of females, while it will afford a
boundless license of vicious indulgence to those sordid
profligates who care not what extent of female
misery they create, provided they are not obliged to
pay for it. But why appeal to France, or Belgium, or
still more wretched Ireland, for the advantages of living
in a state of nature, as far as the poor and illegitimate
children are concerned. Why not direct our attention
to New Zealand, or Otaheite, or Owyhee, where man
exists in still more of the perfection of a state of nature ?
What a gross mistake was that of our forefathers when
they took the poor out of a state of nature—when they
declared that guilty men should maintain their innocent
offspring-.when they decreed that-a single error of a
confiding and betrayed woman should not drive her to
the agony and crimes of irremediable despair—when, in
fact, they planted the tree of Christian charity, in
our isle, and fenced it within the pale of British
law, throwing its branches far and wide over all the
children of calamity. "Whatever becomes of this odious
and un-English Poor Law Bill, we have done our
duty—liberavimus animam—on the heads of its 'au-
thors be the consequences which humanity will have
to deplore. They have their triumph, and must gather
its fatal fruits.—Morning Herald.
It is now, we understand, a settled matter that the
majority of the Lords will reject the Irish Tithe Bill,
which is this evening to be read a second time in
their Lordships' House. Upon what data the Oppo-
sition Peers adventure to execute such a determina.

tion, and with what motives, and to what ends, is to
us, and we believe to the public, a subject of extreme
perplexity. The whole world are aware that for some
years past not 5 per cent. of the tithe to which the
clergy were by law entitled has been collected through-
out three-fourths of Ireland. But there are those who
assert, that if the law was not enforced, it might have
been enforced, and that only a little more vigour was
wanting to put down effectually the conspirators against
the payment of tithe. Who then were the conspira-
tors so easily and quietly to be subjugated ? They
were, we lament to say, the whole population of Ire-
land, excepting merely the inhabitants of some small
districts in the north ; and as for the facility of crush-
ing them, we need do no more than appeal to Mr.
Stanley. That Right Hon. Gentleman has ever been
an ardent (perhaps not equally judicious) advocate
and supporter of the Church. He sacrificed place
and power for the sake of it. While Secre-
tary for Ireland, he employed all the skill and
energy of which he was master, and all the military
and civil power which was at the disposal of the
King's Government, on an experiment, of which the
object was to solve the question whether tithe could
not be collected for the use of the established clergy.
Mr. Stanley, in full Parliament, assured the nation
that this experiment had entirely failed ; that the
ob-
stinacy as well as the dexterity of the people surpassed
and defeated the zeal, the skill, and perseverance of
the public functionaries, both soldiers and police ; that
the small amount of property seized upon, even if sold
for the full value, would have cost the country 200 per
cent., but that being seized. it was worth hardly an
for no man would venture to buy it. Now, when
such things ar2 acknowledged on such authority, it is
not, probably, too much to assume, that the collection
of tithe from the tenantry of Ireland, as a permanent
source of peaceable and comfortable subsistence to the
established clergy, is altogether out of the question. The
state must look elsewhere for means of feeding its reli-
gious Ministers. An appeal has been made to the land-

lords of Ireland, not precisely the appeal which we should,
in the first instance have approved, but one which has
been ,met by them, both Catholic and Protestant, in a
spirit far from hostile or unkindly towards the Church.
The bill proposed by Ministers, or rather that which
has passed the House of Commons, secures to the
clergy a direct payment from every Irish landlord of
60 per cent. upon the nominal amount of tithe now
payable by his tenants, and one of 20 per cent. in ad-
dition, from the consolidated fund, so long as the per-
petuity fund arising from the sale of Bishops' leases
shall be insufficient for such a supplementary purpose.
Here, then, in lieu of a nominal 1001. not actually.
realising 101., and that levied not merely at an enor-
mous cost of money and vexation, but at the imminent
and frequent risk of murder—here, we say, is a law
which secures to the clergyman 801., paid by men of
property, and taking place of all other debts, without
violence, trouble, risk, or popular obloquy, enabling
the clergyman to live in repose, and on terms of undis-
turbed good neighburhood with the people who have
hitherto been alternately his victims and his persecutors.
If the clergy of Ireland refuse such a settlement,
they are insane. But they are far from refusing it.
The great bulk of them rejoice over, and thankfully
embrace it as a Godsend, which for years past they
could not dare to have anticipated. It is not for the
benefit of the church, nor in accordance with the spirit
of the Protestant clergy, that the opposition to this
measure, which we now deplore and deprecate, has
been prepared by a certain political party. If the com-
fort of the clergy, if the welfare, nay the existence of a
Protestant church in Ireland were really dear to the
opposition Lords, they would hail the Tithe Bill as the
most inappreciable blessing to both and to the country.
But they meditate no such interests as these. They
want to overthrow the Ministry and to usurp the
Government, an object in which they will utterly fail.
They want at all events to embroil the whole frame and
internal relations of the empire—to plunge everything
into confusion (and in that they bid fair, unhappily,
to Prove successful, even beyond their wishes), and
then turn round upon the liberal Government with
this honest and manly apostrophe—" Ay, we told
you so. We knew that you could not rule the
kingdom peaceably ; here 'is another "Civil war
in Ireland, and it is all your fault." The Tory
Peers deceive themselves in fancying that a stratagem
so base and vile as this will have any effect upon the
British nation but to the detriment of those who have
recourse to it. They deceive themselves egregiously in
expecting that it will weaken the Administration of
Lord Melbourne. The country will find itself dis-
appointed and maltreated by the same faction which
lays its oppressive hand upon the Ministry, and will
but turn towards the latter with the sympathy of a
common indignation. Looking at the whole of this
important and most alarming crisis, we hope—but
alas ! it is against reason and experience—that the
chiefs of the Opposition will yet pause upon the
brink of the precipice which yawns alike for them-
selves and for the country, and ask themselves what
they are about to do A present convulsion through-
out Ireland will be the least evil of their workman-
ship. When the Parliament shall be resummoned,
as it surely will be, for October or November next,
what a tale will be unfolded of the condition of the
prostrate church !, What a prospectus of future ani-
mosity, fury, misery, and anarchy throughout the ill-
starred island for which the selfish and harpy soul of
faction has no touch of human pity ! We do protest
most conscientiously, that at no period within our re-
membrance have we given way to such deep anxiety
for the social fate of Ireland, as at the moment when
we are writing these remarks, and under the melan-
choly anticipation with which the portentous threat of
this day's proceedings in the House of Lords has filled
us. It is no paltry partisan solicitude,—it is no nar-
row thought for the persons of this or that Adminis-
tration. We tremble for the Church—for the name
of Protestantism in Ireland—for the interests of reli-
gion—for the being of civilized society ; and would to
God that we could impart our apprehensions to those
individuals by whom they have been so fearfully ex-
cited.—Times.