The Sun.
London, England, 1869-04-19 00:00:00

SPIBIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Times is anxious that no time should be lost in the
settlement of the Irish Church question, since the two
years it has already occupied have done much to aggra-
vate the land question and delay its solution. The Church
has always suffered by being the Church of the
landlords, and the landlords have equally suffered
by the possession of a Church which was an
emblem of oppression. The landlord is generally
of English extraction, a heretic in the eyes of his tenants,
seldom much among them, and often disposed to take a
political side against them. The law by which he lets,
and they hold, his land should be well-defined and strong,
yet considerate, and without needless harshness. Parlia-
ment will have to address itself to this task as soon
as it has put its present work well out of hand. The task
will not be the easier for the delay, or for the
semblance of victory given to the native Irish cause;
but this must not be laid to the account of those
who are now doing an act of justice, but rather to
tfwse who have so long hindered and delayed it.
The Times asks whether it would not he possible for
Government to take up Lord Clanricarde's bill of last
session without further delay. Let there be no mere
" understandings," which are fruitful in misunder-
standings, but an actual agreement between landlord and
tenant. Last year's bill aimed at simplifying, facilitating,
and cheapening the legal forms necessary for a contract,
which for the future was to be express, and to be in com•
pliance with some plain rules. With short printed forms,
signed in duplicate or triplicate, duly registered, and
charged with very moderate fees, it is at least reasonable to
hope that dispute may be avoided for the future where there
has been no intention to do wrong. It is too true that there
often is an intention to overreach, or to cling to some old
notion more agreeable than anything in black and white.
It is also too true in Ireland, as in every other country,
that the legal profession does not uniformly assist the
Legislature, or anybody else, in avoiding disputes and
cheapening business ; but such a measure as we have
described would throw the burden of the quarrel on those
who refuse to be bound by their owu signature when it
stands in their way. Is it impossible to make an attempt
in this direction this year, with three months yet
unbroken? Certainly there will be more time for it
next year, but who can say what even this year may not
bring forth?

The Standard says: Throughout the history of the United
Church of England and Ireland there is no parallel for
an assemblage like the Conference which has just closed
its session at Dublin. Throughout the two meetings, and
in all the speeches, there was no one to say one word in
palliation of the bill—no one to whisper even the idea of
compromise. Unyielding resistance to a measure of un-
paralleled wrong seemed to be the temper of all present in
an assemblage composed of the flower of the Irish clergy
and laity, and of traditional moderators like the bishops.
The same spirit animated the lay demonstration at which
Lord Crofton presided on Thursday. The Irish Pro-
testants read too truly the purpose of the bill
to allow themselves to cherish any false hopes.
Their Church is to be degraded and robbed, not
because of its abuses, not because such a policy is just
and lawful in itself, but in order to gratify a powerful and
malevolent rival. This, the guiding motive of the bill, is
impressed on its every clause, in the distinction as to the
mode in which the compensation money is allotted, and
in the ingenious provision for the gradual extinction of
the Church. They see clearly enough that the scheme of
." impartial disendowment" is so contrived as to become one
of endowment in the case of Rome. It is "levelling
down," as regards the Protestant Church, it is "levelling
up as regards the Roman Catholic Church. The one

is to be degraded and plundered in order that the other

may be aggrandised and enriched. Is it a thing to marvel
at that, plainly discerning the ultimate purpose and result
of the measure, they should prefer to offer a passive re-
sistance rather than he deluded into any acts of co-opera-

tion by which they might eventually become accomplices
in the conspiracy for establishing Roman Catholic ascen-
dancy.

The Post believes that the result of the division on the
first of Mr. Disraeli's amendments augurs ill for those
which follow. The point raised on Friday night was
essentially distinct from any of the issues which remain
to be tried, but it was also one on which there certainly
was more to be said in favour of the Opposition theory
than on any of the rest. In this respect, therefore, the
division of Saturday morning may be regarded as a crucial
test. If the Conservative party not merely failed to
secure the rejection of the clause abolishing the authority
of the Crown in dealing with the Anglican Church in
Ireland—for such a result must have been anticipated—
but even failed to shake in any degree the strong phalanx
of their opponents, or to diminish its numbers, then
their cause must be regarded as hopeless indeed
when they attempt to prevent the enactment of the disen-
clowment clauses. There was, perhaps, more to be said
in support of the objectioh to the absolute severance
between the Crown and the Irish Church than will be
supplied in any subsequent stage in committee ; and no
one can doubt that the defeat of Mr. Disraeli on Saturday
morning was infinitely more damaging than lie expected.
In converting the Established Church in Ireland into a
voluntary institution there must and can be no half
measures. If that Church possesses—and no one doubts
it does possess—the elements of vitality, it will live and
flourish independently of the supervision of the State.
None but those who disbelieve in its tenets can possibly
hold a different opinion. The Protestants of Ireland, on
the contrary, so far from being discouraged by the de-
cision of the House of Commons, should rejoice in it, and
they may derive fresh confidence in their own strength
and their own resolution when they find themselves
entirely untrammelled by any vestige of State inter-
ference.

The Daily News calls attention to a e fact that while
;the war of politics has been raging with unusual violence
in the House of Commons, the House of Lords has been
:usefully occcupying its peaceful leisure in discussing some
social difficulties, the solution of which is of the
greatest importance to the country. Perhaps the
most important of those discussions was that which
took place on Friday night, on pauperism and its
'cure. Lord Houghton undertook to represent to their
lordships the views of those persons who would have
•Government endeavour to eradicate pauperism by sending
Away our paupers. He found no very optimist view of
.our national condition to prevail among his audience. The
.old aristocratic notion that, because the poor are always
with us, it is useless to attempt to alleviate poverty, finds
no spokesman among the Peers. All who took part
in the discussion agreed that the question is
urgent, and must speedily be dealt with. Side by
aide with our increasing wealth is an increasing poverty,
and all congratulation at the one is dashed and mocked by
contemplation of the other. Lord Overstone said he
believed that we are, as a nation, saving £150,000,000 a
year ; but what advantage is it that wealth accumulates
if men decay? Our wealth does not seem to cure our
poverty, and the great problem of the day, as reccgnised
by the Peers on Friday night, is to find why it does not.
It is a real step in advance to have it universally reeolcr
nised that pauperism is a disease, and that there is some-
where a remedy for it.

The Herald thinks that the report addressed by Colonel
Rich to the Board of Trade on the subject of the great
railway accident at Abergele is entitled to a good deal
more attention than is generally bestowed six months
after the event to which they refer on ordinary documents
of this kind. Accidents of the Abergele class are attribut-
able to the quantity and extent of the miscellaneous traffic
with which prosperous railways in this country are flooded.
lie points, it is true, to various regulations which are
habitually disregarded, greatly to the augmentation of risk in
travelling, and brings deliberately a terrible charge against
railway companies in general, when he says that good
rules are printed and issued to the railway servants for
the sake of being produced in event of an accident, while
they are systematically disregarded in practice. This
charge, however, works round to the conclusion we point
out. Why should the companies permit their servants to
violate good rules, except that by this violation a greater
quantity of business can be carried on than would be
possible otherwise? But even if all the best regula-
tions possible in reference to signalling trains and
shunting the slow ones in time to let the expresses
pass are punctually carried out, it remains obvious that
the more traffic there is on a line the more danger there is
of collision. The more railway companies try to push
slow goods trains along a line while a fast passenger train
Is hurrying up towards them on the same rails, trusting
that the slow train will crawl off on to a siding before it is
caught, the greater does the danger become. It is obviously
true that while the present system prevails, closer atten-
tion to the existing- rules would make it less hazardous
than it must remain as long as the rules are—as Colonel
Rich says they are—constantly violated in practice.
The Telegraph moralises over the recent death of an
unknown woman, aged 75, in the Westminster Work-
house, from opium eating, and fears that the vice is on the
increase amongst us. The likelihood would seem to he,
that for everyone who dies of delirium tremens from
spirit-drinking, or from the breaking-up which finally
kills the opium-eater— whatever the learned name for the
disease may be—there are a hundred who are. indebted to
opium or gin for shattered serves, dazed brains, and wild
thoughts. They live at fever-heat for an hour or two of
Vie day or ri,bt and at half-stroke for the remainder,
bara,ssed, depressed. unfit to do man or woman's
work in the world. Kindly Nature steps in,
and the victims die of some disease which, though
painful and sad enov.ph 's not so awful as the delirium '
produced by spirit drinking, or as the possibly- more ago-
nising despair of the opium-eater. In England, however,
the use of the drug is as yet a secret vice ; and to compare
like with like,-we mast take the opium den of the East
with the drinking slum of the West. It seems a pity that
we should unite the vices of both hemispheres. IVe have
our brewers and distillers—why call in the druggist? To
:thew how people can live who do not poison themselves
with gin or opium, we should add that the deaths of
thirteen persons were recorded last week who had reached
00 years of age and upwards.'Those persons must have
been poor dull people withot a notion of fast life ; for it
is not everyone who takes to laudanum and
hope to reach the years of the 'gin that can
Immo.of St Um.