The Sun.
London, England, 1851-03-27 00:00:00

dreads persecution in the most salutary and necessary
precaution. They calculated on the support of men able
and influential, who had frittered away the manly creed
of their forefathers into a metaphysical abstraction re-
sembling, so far as an entity so unreal can resemble any-
thing, the faith of the Vatican much more nearly than
the creed of England. They have had the support they
counted on. The Liberals have given them the benefit
of their liberality and the Peelites of their sophistry, and
yet these forces, combined with the united Roman Ca-
tholic party, have met with a most signal defeat, the
like of which is hardly recorded in Parliamentary an-
nals. The power which the Pope in his arrogance did
not condescend to notice has declared itself with an una-
mity which, on a matter of so much importance, could
hardly have been expected, and which nothing
but the strongest feeling within the House, acted
upon and kept alive by an equally strong feeling
without it, would be sufficient to account for.
When it was found that there was such a
thing as a popular will in England, and that
the people were not likely to pass by the Pope and the
Cardinal with the same convenient blindness as to their
proceedings with which those eminent personages chose
to be affected with regard to them, it was thought ne-
cessary by Cardinal Wiseman to appeal to those who
had made their existence so suddenly and disagreeably
manifest. The Cardinal might have demurred to the
jurisdiction, he might have objected to submit the claims
of his ancient and infallible Church to the decision of a
nation of heretics, deeply imbued with what Gregory
XVI. called " that worst species of indifferentism, a
propensity to private judgment." This, however, the
Cardinal disdained to do. He voluntarily selected the
people and Parliament of England for his judges, and
Ile must not quarrel wijah the decision because it is not
such a., he most presumptuously hoped, and most shah
lowly led the Court of Rome to anticipate. No future
flights of metaphor, no new achievements of style, can
persuade any one hereafter to confuse his proceedings
for a moment with the feelings and institutions of the
English nation. The Pope and the Cardinal are con•
victed of haviag most wantonly and gratuitously com-
menced a movement which was not, as they pre-
tended, national, which was not, as they hoped,
indifferent to the nation ; but which w:,s emiueotly
anti-national and anti-popular. They have made a
(olemn display in the sight of all Europe, not merely of
folly and impertinence, but of weakness and unpopu-
larity. They have destroyed the prestige which the
conversion of a few enthusiastic young gentlemen bad
riven to their cane, and rendered it impossible even for
themselves to assert for the future that the faith of
Rome has any hold whatever on the public mind of
England. But, while nothing can be more complete as
a demonstration of opinion than the gigantic majority in
the House of Commons, it must be fairly admitt.-T1 that
we have not advanced a single stop towards the ultimate
settlement of the question. Although the second
reading was so triumphantly carried, tho Ministerial
Bill has xeally ,no supporters. It tenders, as
Mr. Gladstone truly ebaerved,ltaleptisepar
the Pope has any right to found ligiopries and
create bishops within the realm of another sovereign,
but whether British subjects ought to be allowed to bear
the titles derived from such bishoprics. Of this false
issue Mr. Gladstone dexterously availed himself, and en-

deavoured to persuade the House that the question was,
whether the appointment of bishops should be declared
void because made by a foreign Power, and thus entirely
got rid of the question as to the validity of the creation
of bishoprics. A strong party in the House will at-
tempt, and we sincerely trust with success, to exempt
Ireland from the operation of the measure, and an effort
will doubtless be made to restore the second and third
clauses to the Bill. The proposition of Mr. Walpole,
supported by Sir Frederick Thesiger, being, as we be-
lieve, by far the most reasonable and logical method of
dealing with the subject, would also require attention.
The question as to the inclusion of the second and third
clauses in the first, upon which every lawyer who has
addressed the House expresses a different opinion, will
also have to he discussed, and the event of that discussion
is fraught with consequences most serious to the stability
of the Ministerial measure. Thus we have only just
launched from the shore into a stormy ocean,
full of dangers and difficulties, and our guests may
find us in May engaged in discussing the details of a
measure not very agreeable to their sympathies or pre-
judices. We cannot imagine that the party of Sir Robert
Peel has improved its position by the part it has adopted
in the recent debate; nor, whatever may be thought of
Mr. Gladstone's talents as a debater, do we think that
his speech will add much to his reputation as a practical
and far-sighted statesman. The elaborate argument by
which he seeks to prove that tlite aggression of the Pope
should have been met by negotiation is, with reference to
the position of the Roman Pontiff, simply puerile. The
Popp, as a temporal prince, bas nothing to lose, and
strong in his weaknass, can afford to defy our power.
As an ecclesiastical potentate, ho set all on the cast
when he issued his rescript. Negotiation, though it
might have prevented it, could never recall it. Besides,
Mr. Gladstone was at great pains to show that the Pope
is in the hands of the ultra party in the Roman Church,
the party bitterly hostile to this country, and determined
intheir arrogance and bigotry to push matters to every GR.-

tremity against us. To be sure Mr. Gladstone has, with
great ingenuity, in flat contradiction to his former sta'e-
ment, sought to prove that this was the measure, not of
the ultra, but moderate party at Rome; but, as both
these statements cannot be true, and as the former is
confirmed by the unexceptionable authority of Lord
Shrewsbury, we take the liberty of adopting it in pre-
ference to its contradiction, which Mr. Gladstone asserts
with equal confidence. Mr. Gladstone admits that we
have a right to see that the aggression is not of a tem-
poral nature, and in the same breath denies our right to
inquire into the necessity of the new hierarchy; but is
not the fact that the new hierarchy is not wanted for
spiritual purposes pregnant proof that it is intended to
serve some temporal object? If we aro to leave to the
Roman Catholics unfettered judgment as to what ec-
clesiastical changes they require, and, under the advice
of Mr. Gladstone, to renounce the use of our reason
on the subject, what safeguard does he leave us
against the encroachments of a religion which
has ever refused to distinguish between tem-
poral and spiritual authority, and always em-
ployed the second as a means of obtaining the first?
Mr. Gladstone admits the arrogance of the brief and the
pastoral, but he does not admit what is quite as evident
as their arrogance, the claim of dominion which they
put forth on behalf of a power which has never renounced
its claim to the feudal sovereignty of England. We
ought, he says, to meet this arrogance with fresh conci-
' Luton, for, if not, we shall unite the Ronan Catholics
against us, and strengthen the hands of the ultra party
at Rome. Surely, after we have seen the Roman Catho-
lic Members putting up their votes to auction for the
purpose of revenge, and felt in the recent aggression the
utmost rancour of the ultra party at Rome, but little is
left for us to fear. Whatever be Mr. Gladstone's merits
as an apologist of the Pope, they are not appreciated
either by the House or the country, neither of which
evince the least inclination to place themselves under the
guidance of statesmen who, regardless of the just sus-
ceptibilities of the nation, conceal their own lukewarm
attachment to Protestantism behiad the loosely-worn
mask of a spurious liberality.
DAILY NEWS.—After a fortnight's hearing of the
opinion of parties relative to the Ecclesiastical Titles
Assumption Bill, the House of Commons have decided
by 438 votes against 95 that it will proceed with the
measure. That there exists a majority for strengthen-
ing the Bill, at least as far as regards England, and for
rendering it, as the Leeds Mercury justly desires, self-
executory, there cannot be a doubt. And that there is
also a general desire to exempt Ireland, if it can be done,
without giving a triumph to Rome, is also very mani-
fest. And yet the Bill would not affect any of the pre-
sent Roman Catholic bishops in Ireland, save one. One
of the great difficulties in the debate, as well as in deal-
ing with the question, is certainly the habit in which
political parties have been of humouring and flattering
the Irish Roman Catholics, instead of meeting them in
the manly and -open language of frankness and honest
respect. The language of Peelites, Whigs, and even Ra-
dicals, has so long been that of cajolery and compliment,
that instead of being able to meet the Irish intelligent
Roman Catholic face to face, and telling him what is
objectionable and dangerous in his Church, government,
. and religious tendencies, this duty has been so shrunk
from and blinked, that the language, when necessarily
resorted to, has all the air of insult. The Whigs have
now been reduced to the necessity of speaking thus
openly to the Roman Catholics, of objecting to the con-
sequences of their Roman allegiance and Austrian con-
nexion, and to the principle of rendering all political
considerations subordinate to the desires or the honours
of their priesthood. The necessity of stating these ob-
jections, of acting upon them, and making them matters
of legislation, has fallen on the Whigs; whilst the onus
and the obloquy are rejected by the Peelites, who, with
Sir James Graham, continue their old cajolery to the
Irish Roman Catholics, in the vain, the idle, and inte-
vsted hope of swelling a party. It is this attitude of
the Peelites which has given inveteracy to the debate,