The Sun.
London, England, 1869-01-27 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Times, in commenting upon the hardships of rate.
payers, remarks that it is in the metropolis that the
grievance of rates compels attention by its bulk and by
its rapid increase. It is impossible to say what the
metropolitan ratepayer may not expect before long,
unless there comes a very great change. It matters not
what the object is, all the rates are rising with the
steady uniformity of a universal deluge, while it cannot
be said that the ordinary services are better performed
than heretofore, or that the extraordinary works in
progress are near completion. Many changes demanded
by the convenience of the general public have
contributed to swell the rates. Turnpike gates cannot be
removed, the immense mileage of the metropolitan roads
cannot be lighted, watered, duly patrolled, and kept
tolerably free from mendicants, without growing additions
to the rates. Every fresh contribution to the convenience
or the luxury of the metropolis and its visitors entails
more police, more prisons, more asylums, more work-
houses. We grow and develope, as we are, with all our
virtues, and all our vices, all our facilities, and all our
burdens. But the sum total of our social obligations, as
expressed in the little slips of printed paper left at
our doors by a whole tribe of collectors, tells with
serious effect on limited incomes and failing powers. They
that have life and the world before them think they can
pay everything, give them only time. To the majority
of this metropolis rates and taxes rise, not with an increas-
ing facility of payment, but with declining means and
opportunities. The adoption of the huge metropolitan
scale might be necessary, and it certainly illustrates itself
in some very grand operations; but the cost threatens to
be beyond even metropolitan means, and the problem be-
fore us is to find out how London shall flourish and Lon-
doners not decay.
The Post thinks that the recent judgment pronounced
On Ritualism has not been satisfactory. No decision
would have satisfied all parties, but this satisfies none. A
large section utterly repudiate the right of such a court as
the Judicial Committee to deal with such questions as
were brought before it in the recent suit. A much larger
number, though not unwilling to accept the court as a
court of construction simply, yet complain bitterly of the
principle on which the law has been construed, and of the
animus of the court. A third section—the extreme
Evangelicals—represented by such men as Dean
Close and Mr. Ryle, consider the judgment
perfect in every particular, and construe it as
Peing stringently 'operative against the Ritualists, and
inoperative against themselves. It is no good sign for the
;Church that none of these parties seem to take a common
sense and practical view. Some extreme men have avowed
their intention of ignoring the judgment altogether and
proceeding with their altar lights, &c., as before, till com-
pelled to abandon them. Others submit under protest,
alleging that a doctrine is impugned, and denying the
competency of the court. The atmosphere of the Church
is charged with stormy matter, and the skill and modera-
;Lion of its leaders are tried to the uttermost. There
is no denying that never since the Gorham judgment
has there been so much agitation, and this must
account for the extraordinary language and hot impatience
of some eminent leaders of the High Church party. Mr.
Bennett, Mr. Lowder, Mr. Edwards,. and some others,
who have either spoken publicly or have written to the
papers, have taken up a position from which calm reason
and simple justice must utterly dislodge them. They
have divided the great High Church party into two dis-
tinct camps, one of which decides to obey the law how-
ever hardly it presses them, while the other leaves it an
open question whether the law should be obeyed or not.
The Daily News refers to the letter which Lord Russell
has written to Mr. Chichester Fortescue, and declares
that the noble earl does not know his own mind on the
Irish questions. His last letter illustrates, we are con-
strained to say, the infirmity which has partially marred
a career which, after every deduction, must be confessed
to have been fertile of services to his country. Lord
Russell, we fear, does not yet fully know his own mind on
the Irish Church question. His first letter to Mr. Chichester
Fortescue contained a plan for the ecclesiastical settlement
of Ireland. His second letter withdrew that plan. His
third letter is a partial re-assertion of it. No. 2
contradicts No. 1, and No. 3 contradicts No. 2,
without harmonising with No. 1. What No. 4
will say Mr. Chichester Fortescue will probably
!vainly conjecture—Davus est non CEdipus. The faculty
of surprise must by this time be exhausted in the mind of
the Chief Secretary for Ireland. Lord Russell reverts to
his scheme of indiscriminate endowment, and casts aside
the conditions under which alone it would be equitable.
The application of the revenues of the State to the endow-
merit of the Roman Catholic Church will be equally
offensive to most Protestants, whether the sum amounts
to £120,000 or is four-fold that amount. A plan which
treats four millions and a half of Roman Catholics as if
they were the moral equivalent of less than seven hundred
thousand Protestants and of rather more than half a million
Presbyterians, and which contemptuously leaves out of
account the Wesleyan and other denominations, is not
likely to find many friends. It flagrantly violates that
religious equality which is the object of legislation ; con-
tradicts the resolutions of the late House of Commons ;
and falsifies the issue on which the appeal to the country
was made and answered. Lord Russell defends his pro-
posal on the ground that the promotion of religion and
morality is a primary object of a civilised State; a position
which he justifies from Cicero and Polybius, as well as
from Plato and the great men of the Athenian Common.
wealth. The suppressed premiss of Lord Russell's argu-
ment, that the promotion of religion and morality
depends on State endowments, we leave to the considera-
tion of the English Nonconformists and the Free
Churchmen of Scotland. Enough has been said of a
scheme which, with the best intentions on the part of its
author, contributes nothing but confusion to a contro-
versy in which the issue ought to be simple and the pur-
pose plain. Lord Russell's pamphlet may embarrass Mr.
Gladstone ;it may help Mr. Disraeli. The best that can
be hoped is that it may be harmless. Mr. Chichester
Fortescue may possibly somewhere about the Easter recess
be the recipient of a fourth letter from Earl Russell on
the State of Ireland, retracting the third.
Thee Telegraph makes some remarks upon the sudden
death of, the successful candidate for Manchester. In his
way the deceased gentleman was a remarkable man.
During the Chartist agitation, more than twenty years
ago, Mr. Jones was a leader of the extreme party ; he was
a" torch and dagger " Chartist, and, thanks to his alliance
with Mr. John Frost, he had to pass a considerable time
in Coldbath-fields Prison. There he improved the time
by writing Chartist verses, and, because the authorities
would not give hits ink to note down his effusions, he
wrote them with the blood which he drew from his own
That incident shews the character of the
man. He was extreme, rather " sensational,"
and fond of doing things in a " loud " fashion.
His subsequent career, however, was less open to cri-
ticism. - If he did not modify his opinions, he chose
a less violent mode of expression ; and for some years,
indeed, he almost dropped out of sight. When the agita-
tion for Reform again brought him to the surface, be did
not preach the "torch and dagger" policy, but was con-
tent with more practicable objects. It must also be
admitted that, in the interval of his obscurity, the public
had been slowly coming up to some of the positions which
had been occupied by his party. Two years ago, in
London, he dealt with the subject of the land laws in a
lecture which would once have been denounced as revolu-
tionary, if not seditious; but, meanwhile, Mr. Mill and
other Radical teachers had been at work ; and, though
the arguments were generally combated, they had
become too common either to shock or surprise.
Nor was the slightest horror excited by the plea
for Democracy which Mr. Jones uttered at Edin-
burgh, in his public discussion with Mr. Blackie,
the clever and eccentric Professor of Greek. Indeed, the
Chartist's " Democracy " turned out to be what is now
rather moderate Liberalism. Perhaps, however, the most
signal triumph of his views is seen in the case of the
Ballot. Less than a generation ago, be was a " leader of
the forlorn hope" which strove to storm the electoral
fortress ballot-box in hand. At that time the success of
the effort seemed hopeless ; yet the bulk of the nation
has come over to the idea that vote by ballot is inevitable ;
and, what is still more strange, Mr. Jones was, a few
days ago, the victorious candidate in the first English
attempt to shew that in election interests the Ballot would
work. Radicalism has hid many abler and better
leaders ; but, in the records of the struggle for popular
power, the name of Ernest Jones will have to be
inscribed.

arm.

The Star affirms that it has seldom had to record an
event so painful and so shocking as the sudden death of
Mr. Ernest Jones. His illness was not even known to the
public, and therefore his unexpected departure from
amongst the living will startle those who, whether they
were personally acquainted with him or not, were familiar
with his name as that of a leider of the people.
His death is the more tragical as taking place in
less than three days after the ballot which
marked him as the . candidate of the Liberal party
for ti.e seat which an anticipated vacancy may place at
the disposal of the electors of Manchester. Comment is
needless on the sadness of thus dying when a career of
singular activity and chequered by misfortunes was apps.
rently about to be crowned with a triumph which would
have compenaated the %eteran Reformer for all his labours
and sufferinp. There is something in this aspect of the
melancholy occurrence which appeals to the human
sympathy of men of all parties; and we can-
not doubt but that this svmpathy will on
all hands be feelingly expressed. To die when
a new career of usefulness was opening up to
the disinterested and oft-tried man of the people—when
his services, which had in years past exposed him to
obloquy, comparative penury, and, as many will think, to
persecution, were about to receive the honourable reward
which he coveted—is about as melancholy a fate as can
befall a public man. The only gleam of consolation in it
is that Mr. Jones lived- -long enough to know that he had
been actually chosen by the Liberal electors of Manchester
to be their standard-bearer in the contest which is believed
to be impending. •