The Sun.
London, England, 1869-08-18 00:00:00

THE Stf,N, LONDON; WEDNESDAY EVENING, AUGUST 18, 1E69.

RAILWAYS AND CHITRCH RATES.

Most of the railway companies have determined
not to pay any more church rates. The
Bristol and Exeter shareholders, however, are
threatened with a discussion of the question at their
next meeting. The subject is specially commented
upon in the annual report. The directors point out
that, previously to the passing of the compulsory
Church Rates Abolition Act, they uniformly declined
to contribute to the voluntary assessments which
were in existence in many of the parishes through
which their line passed, and paid only such rates
as were " made and leviable legally on the parish at
large." Now that the payment of church rates is a
matter of individual option rather than of legal
obligation, the directors hold that the same con-
siderations apply to the present rates as to the
previous voluntary assessments. They, however,
leave the shareholders to decide whether such rates
shall in future be paid; and a Mr. Upcott, of
Cullumpton, has given notice that he will move, at
the approaching half-yearly meeting, " That the
company pay their church rates as hitherto, in
general fair:less to other contributors, and on con-
siderate and equitable grounds ; the land through
which their line passes having been purchased with
such existing charge, and the present statute requir-
ing the churchwardens to make and levy a rate in
the fair and equitable assumption of its payment."

manager, and, consequently, the punncation or tne journal
was forthwith suspended. The Ministry can hardly be
deemed very severe, however, since the Asino of Florence.
a violent journal of the most extreme sort, has been seized
forty•three times within the last few months, and
is still allowed to continue its publication. The
fact is, that the Ministers wish to avoid making a
new law or rendering the editors responsible, and hope
that the very intolerance of the Opposition journals will
weary the public. In Palermo, where the clerical and
religious reaction has shewn itself strongly in the Muni.
cipal Council, some uneasiness is felt, and the Liberal
party is much agitated. There is great bitterness of feel-
ing between the two parties.

nent, with a regular organized system in England of
training a considerable proportion of the islanders
to settle in the States. To anticipate an interruption
to a system so beneficial to both nations is to believe
more than we do in the " cussedness " of human
nature. hitherto BULL and JONATHAN have been on
the other tack, but the change is marked and grow-
ing more distinct every day. In the first place, the
political connection between England and America
is doomed, and almost severed. The absorption
into one nation of the North American Continent is
then so obviously for the advantage of every dweller
on it that the end can be safely left to the laws of
self-interest. So enormous then will be the Republi-
can domain, so considerable the foreign element
pouring in, even from Asia, that it becomes almost
a necessity for the native American to be strength-
ened by the stock which originally gave to the coun-
try its prevailing language, institutions, and religion,
if he desires to preserve them against those growing
influences. Such a Training-School to supply this
want could be furnished only by England to the great
advantage of the United States, and the more, as
the people of both lands assimilate i❑ political in-
stitutions. Large bodies of citizens whose still loved
fatherland was England would then have an in-
fluence in the Republic, the beneficial effect of
which Englishmen do not yet understand, but when
they do they will more desire to work out that in-
fluence than they ever did to split America into hos-
tile nations, or to build up in rivalry a new Do-
minion. What England wants is security, what
England dreads is America ; there is no necessity
for ROEBUCK'S legacy, " beware of America," for it
is implanted in the national heart ; and Americans
should not forget that their own threats have sown
this seed, while their growth has implanted the
fear, whose natural fruit was the earnest wish to
see divided into hostile sections, the dreaded na-
But, as we before observed, both are on the
wrong tack, for the obvious advantage of each is to
work together to make North America the great
dcmain of the Anglo-American race. Our plat-
form is simply this—the severance politically, of all
connection with America ; the extension of the
Republic over the North American Continent ; and
the free flow to the States of an English emigration
trained for the citizenship. These are our planks,
which are much more likely to proluce a good
effect than in lending covert aid to the Rebel Con-
federacy, or in erecting a rival nation in the new
Dominion by way of a counterpoise to the Republic.

tion.