The Sun.
London, England, 1869-06-01 00:00:00

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srIRIT OP THE PUBLIC JOURNALS. I

The Times remarks that it would • De, easy to dilate on
the triumph secured at the final stage of the Irish Church
Bill in the House of Commons. It does not remember
any measure of the same character which has been so
decisively approved. But the prominent feeling excited
inside and outside the House of Commons by the event of
Monday night is one of relief. A variation of half a
dozen or of•half a score in a majority considerably exceed-
ing a hundred is nothing. When a natian has decided in
favour of a particular policy it is lost labour to watch the
accidental changes in parliamentary divisions. The Times
is thankful that the Irish Church Bill has been approved
by 361 voices against 247 because itisourduty to be thank-
ful; but when thankfulness becomes a matter of duty it
implies a confession that there is some other feeling which
would find expression before it if men spoke their minds
freely. It rejoices that the bill has advanced so far, that
the work is well-nigh accomplished, that the goal is near.
The task, it may be confessed, has been great. Those who
have opposed and endeavoured to thwart the measure are
perfectly right in (I,2claring that it is in itself a revolution.
It marks the substitution of justice for ascendancy, the
establishment of equality instead of privilege ; and it
intended that the revolution shall bring peace instead of
disorder, contentment and prosperity in place of chronic
discontent p.ml anarchy.

The Poet thinks it was, perhaps, only natural that the
Opposition in the House of Commons should avail them-

selves of the opportnnity of renewing their protest against

the measure for the disestablishmeut nrul clisendowrnPnt

of the Irish Church on the motion for the third reading
of Mr. Gladstone's bill. It was, however, no less
certain that the determination of the House to

pass the bill would remain unaffected, and that
_ _ _

the final vote would be carried by a majority no
Ices formidable than that which carried the measure

through its preliminary stages. Without intending it Mr.
Disraeli furnished the most conclusive evidence of the

necessity of the measure which he so loudly condemned.
If socialism and civil war are to be avoided ; if the Irish

people are to become contented ; if the laws are to be
respected, and the rights of property observed, these
results can alone be obtained by removing that badge of
superiority which has so long created an undying antago-
n's-n between two numerically unequal sections of the

Irish people. If a Church be not the Church of the
nation, it ought, at least, to be the Church of the poor.
The Standard says that the fate of the bill in. the

House of Commons was never in doubt, and it is now

decided. The division settles nothing that was not settled
two months ago, and tells our readers nothing more than
they knew when the first division in committee shewed
how abj,!ct and indissolutile was the bondage to which

Mr. Gladgtone had reduced the most independent mem-

hers of the Liberal party. The bill has been debated in
the Ifonse.of Commons, but never considered ; the only
furactift of that assembly has been to register the deci-
sions of the First Minister, and to preserve his draft bill
from the emendations which so important and so sweep-

ing a measure ought naturally to have received in
passing through committee. Whatever hope may remain,

whatever prospect there may be that the worst
iniquities and most glaring inconsistencies of the
bill may be redressed, rests upon the firmness and
the judgment of the House of Lords. That that august
body will treat with deserved contempt the hints of
coercion or open menaces of violence by which Liberal
journals have sought to intimidate them, we can have no
doubt whatever. As little do we doubt that, under the
guidance of so consummate a lawyer as Lord Cairns, so
experienced a statesman as Lord Derby, the Lords will
exert their authority in the manner most likely to effect
their object, and to secure justice for the Church without
provoking a collision which must imperil the Constitution.
We have every hope, therefore, that the 1 ill in its present
shape will not become law. If it should, it would remain
for generations the scandal of our statute-book--a stand-
ing monument of the unscrupulous injustice to which fax-
Cons passion may lead a British Parliament, and of the
suicidal fojly to which a short-sighted and grasping ambi-
tion may impel a great political party.•-
, The Daily News says that the Irish Church Bill has
been read a third time and passed in the House of Com-
mons by an overwhelming majority. It goes now to the
House of Lords, and everything may be hoped from the
good sense and patriotism of that assembly. Its judg-
ment on the merits of great questions is not always
marked by discernment or penetration. But the Peers
are Englishmen ; they have moral sympathy with their
countrymen, even when they are in intellectual dissent
from them. They know when the nation has spoken;
and when its verdict is decisive and final. To the appeals
and remonstrances of Irish deputations they will reply,
" Non possunurs." Even Lord Elcho on Monday night
recognised the inevitable, and deplored the absence
in our Ccnstitution of those Conservative checks
which belong to the balanced Government of the United
States, under. which the revoluti6nary measure pro-
posed by Mr. Gladstone could not, he insisted, have
been so peremptorily pressed forward to its fatal conse-
quences. The great Republic is avenged of its detractors.
The debate of Monday exhibited the conflict of opinion
which divides the minority, and renders its moral force
inferior to even to its numerical strength. Lord Elcho
did not speak in the same sense as Mr. Adderley, and the
opinions of Dr. Ball were by no means in accordance with
those of Mr. Talbot. There are, it is now quite clear, on
the Irish Church question two parties within the Conser-
vative party, each of which is more adverse to the policy
of the other than to that of the Government. One section
dislikes Mr. Gladstone's hill, but much prefers it to the
policy of levelling-up. Another section, equally hostile to
the bill, yet more resolutely rejects the idea of maintaining
things as they are. The Conservatives are weaker, there-
fore, than their numbers imply; and the sense of irrecon-
cileable discord in their own ranks will doubtless do some-
thing to diminish the reluctance with which the Lords
will accept the measure to which, on Monday night, the
Commons, by an overwhelming majority, renewed their
sanction.
The Herald cannot affect to be surprised at the result of
Monday's division, though it it is none the less convinced
that the leaders of the Constitutional party were well
advised in resolving that the bill should not pass through
its final stage save with the reiterated censure of those
who hold that it is unjust, tyrannical, and revolutionary.
It was, of course, a forlorn hope which was so gallantly
led by Mr. Maden-Holt. A majority such as
that which obeys the nod of Mr. Gladstone
is not to be convinced by argument or won to
relenting by mere considerations of equity and
fairness. It is simply a voting power worked
by a kind of machinery which Mr. Gladstone alone can
set in motion, and it would have been as feasible to strive
to influence it by reasoning as to appeal to the conscience
of a piece of clockwork. The Conservatives divided the
House because it was the right- thing to do, whatever
might be the result, because they were bound to enter
their protest to the very last against a measure which they
conceive to be of a most pernicious and unconstitutional
character, and because they may purge themselves from
all responsibility for consequences which they hold to be
as inevitable as they moat be deplorable.
The Tel declares that the debate on the third
reading of the Irish Church Bill would end only in one
result, was recognised by Tory not less.emphatically than
by Liberal speakers ; and hence "the air of unreality"
which marked Monday night's discussion in the Commons
from its very opening. Amore lifeless or a more purposeless
array of words was never called forth by a great subject,
and Mr. Cardwell seol:e with the severity of justice when
he declared it to .he "an unworthy occupation of the time
of the House." A generation hence people will regard
the opposition which the measure has encountered, and
the predictions of rational woe which it has excited, with
as much wonder as we now regard the frantic hos-
tility and the wild prophecies of national ruin
that greeted Catholic Emancipati, n, the first Reform,
Act, and the Repeal of the Corn Laws. Our
children will marvel bow, even by political perversity,
religions appeals could have been made against what,
with all reverence, may be called a truly religious mea-
sure, Mr. Disraeli, it is true, anticipates a different
result, and on Monday night, to paint the future, lie
dipped big rhetorical pencil "in dyes of earthquake and
- 'eclipse." But Mr. Disraeli's genius has ever been fated
to serve as •the handmaid of bad causes, and his predic-
tions to be falsified by events. "He will add but another
to the list of eminent Conservatives, like Lord Lyndhurst
and Leild Derby, whom the stern Nemesis of distorted
genius had doomed to be ever w eon.; ; and the future will
have to saY that never did the Commons of England per.
form a more wise, a more religious, or, in the highest sense
' of the term, a more Conservative act than when they read
' a third time the bill for destroying that alien ecelesia3ti,:al
- ascendancy which has made the name of Ireland a bye word
.
among the nations.

The Star thinks that the debate on the thir.l reading, of
the Irish Church Bill was a very L1u!1 aff.or. '111.3 growing
persuasion that the Lords would pass the bill without
even attempting any serimis modifwation of it had de-
-7---d 0.13 la,t c.,-remony in the lIous:2 of Comunnts6TAll
7 :itc::_A, anti tholrlh Trlcro''
1-1

w'i'g felt 1),-.m.1:: .orate their wiah
w re lih,rate.l were fc,r the roost -,part so devoia of
originality and spirit that there wai nothing in the in, i-
dents of the debate to atone for its lack of general iwpor•
tame and attractiveness. The task of moving the rejec-
tion of the bill was undertaken by one of the gentlemen
who represent for the duration of the present Parliament
the degeneracy of Lancashire. The result of the debate
NVPS, of coarse, a foregone conclusion, and the bill is now
safe on its way to the House of Peers.

Ann Hatlia;vay'z cot ga.:6l-.111 at Shat.
brd-(74-Ayqn are advertised for sale by private- ccntract.