The Sun.
London, England, 1851-02-08 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, SATURDAY EVENING,

persecution against the professors of any creed or

rdigion.

ut to be
provided, we must consider the character of the in-
jury already inflicted, and of the dangers to be
guarded against at all future times. The insult—
the aggression which excited the just inuignation of
the British people, and occasioned public meetings
to protest against the unwarranted and unwarrent-
abie assumption, iu evE-ry district aud locality
throughout the length and breadth of the land—was
the mapping out and allotment of the English soil
into ecclesiastical divisions ; the conferring of terri-
torial authority and territorial titles of honour on
persons selected by a foreign prelate, without the
sanction or assent of her MAJESTY, or her constitu-
tional advisers, and doing that in the most contume-
lious and offensive manner. All recognition of the
domestic Government was studiously withheld.
There was not, as the Noble Premier justly remarked,
" the smallest reference to the United Kingdom being
an independent state ; it was not made a question
from the beginning to the end whether there can be
any power existing in this country, the consent of
which ought to be asked, or whose lawful powers
ought to be respected." Dr. WISEMAN himself de-
clares—" We govern and shall continue to govern
the counties of Middlesex, Hertford, and Essex."

" What is this," said Lord JOHN, " but an assump-
tion of territorial sovereignty ?" There is but one
answer that can be returned to such an interrogatory,
and that is an unqualified affirmative that it is such
an assumption. We may be told that it is a
mere "form," meaning nothing—aspiring to no-
thing—that it relates to episcopal administrations,
to spiritual jurisdiction over those in communion with
the Church of Rome. If so, it is an obnoxious, an
offensive, an insulting, and a senseless form—a form
utterly inconsistent with the allegiance due to our
beloved SOVEREIGN, whose unquestionable rights and
prerogatives her faithful and loyal subjects will not
willingly see invaded or usurped. The liberal
Dutchman might have complied with the forms of the
Japanese Government, and willingly trampled
on the crucifix, the earthly emblem of the
redemption of mankind ; but we do not
suppose that PIO NINO, or those who now speak of
the " mere form" as a matter of the most perfect in-
difference, would feel disposed to deny their SAVIOUR,
or to heap contumely upon his name in deference to
the dictates of a foreign power, although that power
were only exercised within the territory or dominions
of the monarch that insisted upon that form. We do
not believe that the English Roman Catholics would
be disposed to repudiate their religious doctrines, to
swear to that to which in their souls and conscience,

they believed to be incorrect and unfounded, because
they were told that they were "mere forms." It the
plea thus set up were worth anything, the Emanci-
pation Act was an act of supererogation ; for what
objEction could there be to " a form ?" It is really an
insult to the common sense of the community to re-
peat such arguments, or to suppose that Join
BULL is SO very gullible—so very easily led by th,
nose as to be influenced by such unmiigated trash,
such ridiculous twaddle.

The fitting answer to this usurpation is to prohib.

•
the assumption of these titles by the parties on whom
they have or may be conferred. This is i❑ the true
spirit of the principle asserted by the Roman Catholic
Relief Bill, which was so gratefully received by the
Roman Catholic hierarchy of Ireland in the year
18129. The law is slightly extended to meet the pre-
sent exigency, for the prohibition will relate not only
to the assumption of the titles of Bishops of the Es-
tablished Church, " but from any territory or place
within the United Kingdom." The nature of the late
aggression shows this extension to be essential, and
strictly in accordance with the doctrine acted on
twenty-two years since.
There is a second branch of the new Bill relating
to the Roman Catholic endowments and charities that

might without some special legislation pass into the
power and control of the parties thus appointed
by the Papal rescripts. It appears perfectly
reasonable that while we object to the assumption
of the titles we should also object to the assumption
of any substantial powers supposed to belong to these

titles. We believe that it is the anxious desire of
every conscientious Roman Catholic to have these
" sacred funds" protected from any misuse or misap-
plication, and that they should ever be devoted to the
objects for which they were originally created. This
will be one of the objects of the new Bill, and on this
account, if on no other, we believe that it will
receive the assent and approbation of our Roman
Catholic brethren.

Inopportune as the time may appear to be which
has been selected by the French Ministry—the
Ministry, so called, of Transition—for the presenta-
tion of the Dotation Bill to the Legislative Assembly,
—we look forward most confidently to the ultimate
achievement, under every circumstance, of a triumph
over his antagonists by the Prince Louis NAPOLEON.
Supposing the measure to be reluctantly accepted by
the Assembly, that must manifestly constitute a
signal victory on the part of the PRESIDENT. Sup-
posing, on the other hand, that the Ministe-
rial requirement of an increased allowance to
the chief magistrate be rejected, the result
would be yet more advantageous to the
interests of the Elysee entailing upon the Prince the
necessity of a direct appeal to the country. Such is
the alternative presented to the representatives of the
French people—an alternative certain, under all
auspices, to bring about their complete discomfiture
—a discomfiture falling down on them either from
within or from without, either through the fact of
►heir ossn spontaneous concession, or through the
more terrible and more disastrous event of
an adverse decision pronounced against them
by the multitude. Suffering, as they are,
at this present moment under the ignominy
and irritation of a defeat, the Legislators of the Re-
public cannot be conceived to entertain any very
generous sentiments towards its chief magistrate;
and the mere coincidence of the contention following
so immediately upon the growth of these acrimonious
feelings cannot fail very materially to diminish the
strength, the self-possession, the vigour, and the com-
bination of political parties in the bosom of the
Assembly. Louis NAPOLEON is doubtless conscious
of this when he empowers his extra-Parliamentary
Administration to force the obnoxious Bill thus pre-
cipitately on the Legislature.
Briefly—the Assembly may be declared to have
got itself into a dilemma. Between the positions of
its present alternative it can find no loophole for
escape from a wholly unavoidable discomfiture. The
PRESIDENT has driven the rival power to this strait
with an adroitness most admirable, and we may add
most commendable also, from our appreciation of its
complete legality. Biding his time with a serene
reliance upon events, he has set aside as innocuous
even the enmity of the most redoubtable statesmen of
all shades and colours of political principle, and hascast
away those yet more formidable leaders of public
opinion who have contrived ty acquire for themselves a
certain prestige and influence without any principle
whatever. TRIERS has failed in withstanding the
impassable resolution of the PRESIDENT. BAROCIIE has
found his vaunted strength to be equally impotent.
CHANGARNIER has dwindled into the insignificance of
a simple representative. The whole faction of con-
spirators, Legitimatists and Orleanists, Monarchists
and Counter• Revolutionists of all characters, have
experienced the force of an integrity against which
intrigue has proved altogether ineffectual.

Whatever may be the course pursued by the As-
sembly in regard to the question of an increased
Dotation, we may count with certainty upon the
sympathies of the people being enlisted in the cause
of the PRESIDENT. Gratified to observe that their
confidence in his patriotism, shown in his selection
in preference to so many other illustrious candidates,
was in no manner displaced, the electors through-
out France are exulting in the vigorous attitude
assumed by himself against the united and factious
opposition of an irritated and irritating Legislature.
There is nothing so peculiarly calculated to arouse
the interest of the French multitude than a display
of energy such as that which has been recently
shown by LOUIS NAPOLEON in his dealings with his
assailants. The manifest faithfulness of the adherence
shown by him to his oaths is another reason for their
being prejudiced in his behdlf. While the circum-
stance of his contending singlehanded against the

most wily intriguers in Christendom, and breaking
asunder, one after another, their plots against the Re.

public, confirms their joyful recollection of the
Six millions of votes given in his favour in 1848, on
the eves-niernorable 'Oil of .aieernOer. Having him-
self brcken none of his pledges to the nation, and
having demonstrated most clearly the insincerity of
his various antagonists, Louts NAPOLEON has earned
for himself a right to look forward in every emer-
gency such as the present to the plain-
spokeu rtiel decisive support of the popu.
isdun. That support, we douot not, will be
accorded to him on the instant of its demand—the
nation regarding not only his Presidential antecedents
with complacency, but viewing the conduct of the
most conspicuous Members of the Legislative As-
sembly, his personal and unrelenting enemies, with
repugnance.

Upo❑ the events of the next fortnight much of the
future of France is dependent. We must examine
the reported discussions of the Republican Legis-
lature if we would obtain an inkling of the probable
results of the present quarrel about the
Dotation. Meanwhile we may rest satisfied that no
weakness or pusillanimity will he visible in the ad-
ministration of the affairs of the country, so long;as a
BONAPARTE grasps the reins of the government in
the capacity of a Democratic PRESIDENT.

SAMUEL :MORTON VETO, Esq.
(From the Illustrated London Xews.)
Until witkin the last few years, the moving and seconding
of the Address was regarded as a piece of mere conventional
routine, assigned by Ministers to some youthful follower of
the Government, as a facile introduction to the practical for-
malities of Parliament. It was a duty entirely honorary,
involving little labour, entailing no responsibility, and
awakening no expectancy, for it was confined to the utter-
ance of the simplest platitudes in support of the trite com-
monplaces of which then, as now, speeches from the Throne
are made up. Of late years, however, there has been a whole-
some innovation on the practice, and Ministers of either party
have been accustomed to look about them with yearly in-
creasing anxiety for Members of the Legislature whose abili-
ties shall not only suffice for a comprehensive amplification of
the topics glanced at in the Royal Message, but whose per-
serial character and position shall guarantee, as far as possi-
ble, the honesty and disinterestedness of their advocacy.
These requirements are possessed in an eminent degree by
the Member for Norwich. Identified with the people, of
popular predilections, and, in his own person, a natural
type and exponent f the material progress of the coun-
try, the splendid amplitude of his fortune exempts him
from susceptibility to official blandishment; while the
pride of good old English descent, and an honoured Eng-
lish name, give him an abiding interest in the maintenance
of all that is worth preserving in our " territorial constitu-
tion." Hence the moral value attached to the support of
such men as Mr. Peto—a value that, it must be admitted,
was greatly enhanced by the sobriety of view, solidity of
judgment, and manly tone which characterised his Tuesday's
speech. While necessarily putting a free and liberal con-
struction on the acts, and still more on the motives, of the
Cabinet and its leader, he abstained from everything in the
slippe of indiscriminate panegyric calculated to compromise
the principle that has governed him through life—the sen-
timent so expressively apostrophised in Smollett's ode—
" f by spirit, Independence, let me share,
Lord of the lion heart and eagle eye."
Mr. Peto, the eldest son of Mr. William Peto—who, until
the period of his death, which took place about two years
ago, resided at Cannon-court, Cookham, Berks—was born at
Woking, in Surrey, in August, leo9. He is, consequently,
sut little turned of forty years; and yet bow familiar has his
name, during the lest twenty of them, been, as the operative
constructor of many of the greatest architectural and engi-
neering enterprises of the present century 1 Even before the
attainment of his majority, the singularly practical aptitude
of his talents had so matured the fruits of his seven
rears' experience, under the tuition of Iris uncle, Mr.
Henry Peto, that, on the death of that gentleman, in
183 J, he found himself the successor to a moiety of his very
large business—his joint partner being Mr. Thomas Gris-
sell, another nephew of the deceased, and who had had a
share in the house for some five years previously. Mr
Peto also came into possession of a very large fortune by his
uncle's will. The seemingly precocious ripening of Mr.
Peto's judgment will appear to be less inexplicable when it
is stated that, in pursuing the study of his business, he did
not confine himself to a mere acquaintance with its theory,
but gave a laborious and zealous devotion to the manual
sursuit of the three several handicrafts chiefly required in
such establishments. He worked—and those who know his
character can judge of the energy he imparted to his labours
—not as the relative and future heir of one of the leading
contractors of the kingdom, but as if he were destined,
during his whole lifetime, to earn his livelihood as a jour-
neyman, in the capacity f a carpenter, a bricklayer, and a
mason; and there cannot be a question that, besides the in
estimable utility he derived from the insight thus volun-
tarily acquired into the mechanism of labour, so essential to
his calculations in its employment in vast organised masses,
he also thus became familiarised with what may be called the
idiosyncracy of the English mechanic, and he has, conse-
quently, been enabled to convert such knowledge to the ac-
complishment of the moral results observable on his works.
These render almost literally applicable to all his under-
takings of a like nature, the remarks made nearly six years
ago by the late exemplary Bishop of Norwich, who, on the
occasion of opening upwards of eighty miles of railway be•
longing to the Eastern Counties Companies, said :
" Mr. Peto is a Dissenter, and he (his. Lordship) envied the
sect to which he belonged the possession of such a man, and
he would gladly purchase him at his own price; and heartily
he prayed that he would ore long become a member of the
Church of England. He was a Churchman, and holding
high office in the Church, and believed that in that Church
was the purest faith ; but he was still a Catholic Christian,
and, as such, would hold it as a dereliction of his duty if he
did not express his approbation, respect, and regard for the
exertions used for the moral benefit of the railway labourers
by Mr. Peto. He was always most anxious to see good
done, and rejoiced to see it from whatever quarter it came;
and he could not, and would not withhold his pleasure of
gratification at the great good done by Mr. Peto. All down
the line he had met with his agents, and had found them
not merely giving directions and instructions, but also giving
to the men religious and school-books for the education of
themselves and their children; and thus showing them that
education can civilise the mind, reform the habits, and ele-
vate the understanding. The gin-shops were left deserted,
and the schools were full. The good and exemplary conduct
of Mr. Peto's railway labourers under this system deserved
to be a tale told three times three, with one cheer more ;'
and let it be recorded as a fact, of which there could be no de-
nial, not one labourer in the Norwich district had been guilty
of misconduct that made him amenable to the law." The
allusions of the Bishop to the orderly conduct of Mr. Peto's
labourers were corroborated by the Dean of Ely at a sunse-
quent part of the evening. " For," said he, "in my district
1 have never had so little criminal magisterial business
during the period I have had a seat on the bench as during
the progress of the works on the Eastern Counties Railway
under Mr. Peto; although for a period of two years three
thousand of his men have been in my immediate vicinity."
Lord George Bentinck, in his remarkable speech, recom-
mending, as an antidote to the effects of the Irish famine the
employment of twenty millions sterling in the construction
of railways in that country, also made highly complimentary
allusion to Mr. Peto's system of management among his
English railway labourers; and Mr. Peto's observations on
Irish labour in his speech on Tuesday, are particularly de-
serving of remark. The system pursued by him may be de-
scribed, in brief terms, as combining discipline, personal
freedom, moral a 'monition reduced to practice, and a total
avoidance of ostentatious purism, in a degree never before
exemplified in relation to the same heterogeneous and some-
what unmanageable materials. It is nos, however, to be
supposed that his effective control over his dependants isowing
to any of that brusqueness of mien and domineering manner
which some masters believe to be essential to their ascend-
ancy. On the contrary, his demeanour to his inferiors is as
unobtrusive and considerate as his bearing to his equals is
courteous, polished, and self-possessed. He has also the
secret not only of attaching to him those immediately con-
nected with him in his vast operations, but of imbuing them
with the animus that impels himself to an ever-vigilant su-
pervision of the welfare of the people or the interests com-
mitted to his care. Hence, though his works may be pro-
gressing in may different quarters, his spirit is equally
übiquitous, and with the like result in all. To enumerate
those works, would be to name a large portion of the leading
railway undertakings in England, for Mr. Peto has con-
structed above one-seventh of them.
The partnership subsisting between Mr. Peto and Mr.
Grissell was dissolved by mutual consent in 1845, the latter
gentleman continuing, on his own account, the erection of
the Houses of Parliament, the greatest of the many pub-
lic structures undertaken by the firm. Among such
structures may be mentioned the Model Prison at
Clerkenwell, H ungerford- market, the Reform and the Ox-
ford and Cambridge Clubs. It is also worth noting, at the
present moment, when the Aladdin-like celerity of Paxton's
Crystal is exciti mg such astonishment, that the Lyceum Thea-
tre was built by the firm in sixteen weeks, and the St. James's
in thirteen—two of the most perfect and elegant edifices of
the kind in the metropolis.
Though, as we have seen, in the very prime of life, Mr.
Peto is gradually withdrawing himself from the more active
personal control o f matters of this nature, but finds a con-
genial coadjutor in the person of his present partner and
brother-in-law, Mr. Betts.
In our sketch of Lowestoft, in September last, we took oc-
casion to speak of the value and extent of benefits conferred
on that delightful watering-place by Mr. Peto, who, in ad-
dition to being the Lord of the Manor of the township on
which the New Town of Lowestoft is, or we should rather
say, has been, erected, is also the proprietor of the extensive
and beautiful neighbouring estate of Somerleyton, purchased
from Lord Sydney Godolphin Osborne, a few years ago.
Here he has re-constructed the family mansion in a style of
massive splendour and taste well befitting the ancestral oaks
surrounding it. Mr. Peto has recently still further added to
his landed possessions by the purchase of the extensive Lan-
cashire estates of Lord Suffield—a proof, by the way, of his
faith in the ability of British agriculture, under proper di-
rection, to sustain itself in its old pre-eminence, no matter
what may be the competition of the foreigner. He has,
since his first connexion with Somerleyton, been a magistrate
of Suffolk, and, more recently has received his commission as
Deputy-Lieutenant for the same county.
The connexion which the purchase of Somerlevton gave
Mr. Peto with Norwich, induced the Liberal electors, early in
1847, to solicit him to become a candidate at the then ex-
pected election—no small honour, when it is remembered
that for upwards of forty years previously the city bad been
represented in the Wlsig interest by Mr. Smith, and subse-
quently by his son, Sir. Benjamin Smith. Mr. I'eto was
placed at the head of the poll by an immense majority. His
colleague in the representation is the Marquis c f Douro.
Mr. Peto is married to the eldest daughter of Henry Kel
sail, Esq., of Rochdale

THE QUEEN'S SEEECH.—We were indebted to the
courtesy of Mrs. Bingham, Broad-street, for an early copy of
The Sun, of Tuesday, containing her Majesty's Speech on
opening Parliament.—Bristol Jlercury.

We have authority to state that Lord Norrevs (as
well as Lord Nelson, and Lord Byron) has been incorrectly
announced among the recent converts to tie Roman Catho-
lic Religion.

We are informed that without waiting for the pass-
ing of the new Bill, it is intended by certain parties to pre-
sent an indictment against Cardinal Wiseman, and that Mr.
Edwin James, Q.C., Mr. Hugh Hill, and Mr. Lush have
been already retained on behalt of the prosecution.
THE PAPAL AGGERssION DEBATF.—Amongst
the occupants of the space below the bar yesterday evening,
during this debate, were the Duke of Argyll, the Bishop of
Oxford, the Earl of Carlisle, Lord Monteagle, and several
Itcron Catholic Biehops,